Labor, Empire, and The Social Gospel: Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Jane Addams

Author(s):  
Leonard Rogoff

Educated at the Horace Mann school and Smith College, Weil represented a rising generation of college-educated women who were scientifically trained in new ideologies of social theory and public reform but found themselves unsuited for any particular career. Feeling the conflict of social and family claims, as defined by Jane Addams, Weil prized her autonomy but returned to her native Goldsboro. There she sought to move social welfare programs from their origins in the Social Gospel and religious societies to scientific principles of social reform. She began her social welfare career working with impoverished school children and joined Home Culture Clubs and the local Woman's Clubs.


1967 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 456-469
Author(s):  
John R. Aiken

While it is true that the social gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch is more than the religious strain of the progressive movement, there is no doubt that he sought a christianized social order, one in “harmony with the ethical convictions which we identify with Christ.” And he was much concerned with the Kingdom of God, the “growing perfection in the collective life of humanity, in our laws, in the customs of society, in the institutions for education, and of the administration of mercy.”


1977 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph E. Luker

While American Society was coming apart in the 1960s, an impressive array of historians rallied to condemn what Rayford Logan called “the astigmatism of the social gospel” in race relations. Preoccupied by the ills of urban-industrial disorder, they suggested, the prophets of post-Reconstruction social Christianity either ignored or betrayed the Negro and left his fortunes in the hands of a hostile white South. The indictment of the social gospel on this count hinged upon the racism of Josiah Strong, the faithlessness of Lyman Abbott, and the complicity in silence of Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, and the others.


1993 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob H. Dorn

For American Protestants who were sensitive to the profound social disruptions associated with rapid industrialization and urbanization in the late nineteenth century, the twin discoveries of the “alienation” of the working class from Protestant churches and of a rising and vibrant socialist movement caused much consternation and anxious soul-searching. Socialism offered not only a radical critique of American political and economic institutions; it also offered the zeal, symbols, and sense of participation in a world-transforming cause often associated with Christianity itself. The religious alienation of the working class and the appeal of socialism were often causally linked in the minds of socially-conscious Protestant leaders.


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