Social Gospel In The 19th Century

Social gospel was a movement that sprung up in the late 19th century and early 20th century in the United States in response to social conditions. During this time period, conditions of the industrial revolution and increased immigration led to terrible conditions for the poor (Foner, 2014). In urban areas, poor families were packed into small unsanitary tenements. City slums were filled with disease, over-crowding, and crime. Factory workers, who were often very young children, were forced to work long days in unsafe conditions for very little money (Foner, 2014). Leaders of social gospel sought to address these problems with “practical Christianity” (Martin Luther King, Jr..., 2015). Though the movement was widely criticized as not bringing
about any actual change or reaching past the Christian middle-class, social gospel ideas brought about many changes in American society. Throughout most of the 19th century most Christians advocated for a laissez faire approach to economics (Bateman, 2015), but in in the second half as the public became more aware of the conditions of workers, in part due to the work of “muckraking” journalists such as Jacob Riis, author of How the Other Half Lives, some progressive ministers began to view the injustice and greed of unfettered capitalism as un-Christian.
(Rauschenbusch, 1907) Among these was Washington Gladden, a pastor and leading member of the progressive movement. Gladden is known as one of the fathers of social gospel in the United States. After viewing a strike of shoe-factory workers in Springfield Massachusetts, Gladden came out strongly pro-union on the labor issue and even wrote a book, Working People and Their Employers, that advocated for workers’ right to unionize. (Bateman, 2015) Other leaders of Social Gospel in the United States include: William Dwight Porter Bliss, a Christian socialist who was concerned with labor reform, Shailer Mathews, dean of University of Chicago’s Divinity School and advocate of social reform, and Walter Rauschenbusch, a pastor, prolific writer, and key thinker of the movement. Rauschenbusch wrote several books that developed the foundations of social gospel. Among these were: Christianity and the Social Crisis, The Social Principles of Jesus, and a Theology for the Social Gospel. Rauschenbusch hoped these writings would help organize a disperse and mostly unstructured
movement (CITATION).
The main way that Social Gospel was a departure from previous movements in Christianity was that it was a shift from private to public morality.
Previously Christians had focused on morality within one’s self and one’s family, but advocates of social gospel argued that it was the Christian duty to address societal immorality and that the social issues of the time were inherently moral issues. (CITATION) Rauschenbusch wrote: “"It is important to note, further that the morality which the prophets had in mind in their strenuous insistence on righteousness was not merely the private morality of the home, but the public morality on which national life is founded" (1907). Rauschenbusch emphasizes the importance of public morality through the example of John the Baptist’s close relationship with Jesus. He states that John’s dedication to social betterment is indicative of his belief that societal immorality was the impediment to the coming of “the Kingdom of God” (Rauschenbusch,
1907)
Critics of Social Gospel have said that it never brought about any actual social change and that it failed to reach past the middle class, but Social Gospel has issued in a variety of improvements into the United States. Social Gospel mindsets led to the establishment of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), and the Salvation Army in the United States. These organizations improved the lives of the lower class in many ways. The YMCA and YWCA provided recreation areas for children in the city as well as providing a variety of other opportunities to their members. The Salvation Army focused on “the three Ss”: soup, soap and Salvation. (CITATION) Social Gospel churches at the time began to open their doors on Sunday afternoons to teach the gospel to the poor, which in turn increased literacy (CITATION) But perhaps most importantly, the ideals Social Gospel laid the groudwork for later progressive movements and influenced later social rights movements.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a self proclaimed advocator of the social gospel (Martin Luther King, Jr..., 2015) and applied social gospel teachings in his quest for civil rights. King read the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch, including Christianity and the Social Crisis and “...wrote that its message ‘‘left an indelible imprint on [his] thinking by giving [him] a theological basis for the social concern which had already grown up in [him]’’ (Papers 4:474).” (Martin Luther -King, Jr..., 2015)