Talk:Social Gospel/Archive 1

Decline of the Social Gospel movement
The decline of the Social Gospel movement in the United States well predates the ascendancy of the modern Christian right movement. The article dates them fairly accurately, with the decline of the Social Gospel movement beginning in the mid-20th century, and the rise of the modern manifestation of the Christian right in the 1980s (many would say precisely in 1980). Obviously cause-and-effect is lacking for this chronology to be correct; perhaps it is better said that the Social Gospel collapsed under its own weight and later the Christian right moved in to fill the vacuum, but this would require lots of refinement to present in a NPOV fashion. Rlquall 00:20, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Needs to fix a present slant
The page is strongly POV in that it entirely neglects evangelical involvement, which was at the root of the Social Gospel. I have removed the following statement to here for talk, as it is a particularly egregious POV expression.

"Part of the Christian "modernism" trend with a strong emphasis on social justice, the movement is a rival to the later movements of evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity."

The social gospel arose from the great evangelical awakenings as the church saw its duty to be involved with the needs of the world. However as liberals took over control of many of the mainline denominations in the 20th century, it changed focus from being what the churches should be doing, and became a lobbying effort to get the government to do it. Most of the mainline denominations in the US have a department that lobbies in Washington. At the same time Evangelicals are heavily involved in many activities to feed the poor and visit the prisoner, etc. The page needs to be rewritten to conform to the facts, and have the POV slant removed. Pollinator 13:46, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Could you please site some sources fro this opinion as Henry F. May: Protestant Churches and the Industrial America, Spenser Mille & Joseph Fletcher: The Church and Industry, David Holmes: A Brief History of the Episcopal Church, Hopkins: Rise of the Social Gospel, and Washington Gladden: Reflections all seem to contradict everything you have said. Jfmiller28 22:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The core advocacy areas of the Social Gospel movement, like child labor laws and universal education, were about changing social structures to achieve Christian goals. Since social justice is principally defined in terms of achieving social ends through structural change, it's very hard to argue that the Social Gospel movement was not about social justice.  Practically all Christians would agree that feeding the poor and visiting the prisoner are noble activities, but they are by definition not an exercise in social justice.


 * The fundamentalist movement was, again by definition, a reaction to Christian Modernism and the liberal theology and social interactions it promoted. Evangelicalism is a pretty broad term, but arguably few institutions self-identifying as part of that movement have ever endorsed the practices of the Social Gospel movement.  People who practiced evangelism certainly were at the root of the Social Gospel, but that has no bearing on Evangelicalism.


 * Some Christian Wikipedians may likewise not endorse the Social Gospel or the involvement of churches in social justice, and they have a right to their POV. Since the sentence removed on 29 December 2006 appears to me to be a NPOV statement of historical fact, I recommend adding it back in to the article mainspace.  I will probably make that change soon, absent further discussion.  --Belgrano (talk) 22:56, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

new redirect needed
Someone should put a redirect here from "the social gospel." I don't know how to do it. ForgetfulDoryFish (talk) 15:33, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Never mind. I figured it out and made it. ForgetfulDoryFish (talk) 17:41, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

cumulative problems
The discussion page documents a number of problems with the Social Gospel article. A primary one is the heavy POV. There are others.

One problem is that speculative and tangential associations result in lack of focus and distraction to the reader. Thus, from the very beginning there's a reference to millenarian thinking that's blown out of proportion in regard to the heart of Social Gospel belief; also, the exact citation was not given. As a result, the reader hears nothing about the proclamation of the kingdom of God on earth back then but is instead focused on language about a future Second Coming.

In the next paragraph, the claim that the "Presbyterians said it best in 1910" is argumentative, though the quote is a good one.

To claim that Americans being "disgusted by the poverty level and the low quality of living in the slums" was the occasion for a religious response is an unfortunate way to phrase the connection between social conditions and a moral, religious, and ethical response.

Undefined labels in the article help to obscure the fact that the nineteen-century liberal theology espoused by Social Gospelers was highly evangelical in nature. Today's notions of liberal theology and evangelicalism as separate schools of thought should not obscure the earlier unity for Social Gospelers.

Insufficient distinction is made between Social Gospel in America and a comparable socialist movement in Britain. More like the U.S. movement is a Canadian counterpart that goes unmentioned.

The article insuffienctly recognizes the limited social and geographical context for the main proponents of the movement. Most were white Protestant clergy from particular Christian denominations in northern U.S. cities.

The article fails to note the confluence of historical, social, economic, and political contexts out of which the Social Gospel arises. Linkage of those unique contexts and Social Gospel ideas with more modern-day organizations and persons is problematic.

To claim that the Social Gospel is still a force in the Twenty-First Century is to blur unique historical contexts that should remain distinct. Too much of the Social Gospel ideology is no longer relevant in a postmodern culture, even if certain aspects of the movement remain timeless.

As a movement, it loses much of its force when World War I disabuses its adherents of their belief in the power of Progress in the social and political realms. Greater consideration is needed to determine how long the movement lasted, but the impression is given that it's discernible after 1980. I suggest that the reason the movement is still remembered and honored is not because it's alive and well, but because the commitments and ideals it espoused are still valued so highly today in discussions of economic and social injustices.

Much more needs to be done to trace the considerable legal and social impacts the movement had in the early twentieth-century, and then also some of the lasting values that we uphold today. Postmodder (talk) 17:17, 8 December 2008 (UTC)Postmodder
 * Postmodder is a bit too vague.
 * "heavy POV" none is specified
 * "speculative and tangential associations", none are specified
 * "millenarian thinking that's blown out of proportion" most historians emphasize the Kingdom on Earth theme (which = millenarian )
 * "said it best in 1910" if Postmodern has a better quote let's hear it
 * "unfortunate way to phrase the connection" Historians repeatedly mention the connection between slums and the Social Gospel
 * "liberal theology espoused by Social Gospelers was highly evangelical in nature" unclear what that means. "evangelical" in 2008 sense? not so.
 * "Insufficient distinction ...and a comparable socialist movement in Britain" Agreed. while the Brits get a wholly separate short section, it is poorly done and should be dropped
 * "white Protestant clergy from particular Christian denominations". actually the Blacks were active too (esp AME and AMEZ as Luker shows) and this should get mentioned. Laymen were just as active as clergy. The movement seems to span pretty much all the major Protestant denominations, but see footnote 1
 * "confluence of historical, social, economic, and political contexts" it references the broader Progressive Movement which covers those topics
 * "Linkage of those unique contexts and Social Gospel ideas with more modern-day organizations and persons is problematic." Maybe, but the folks today do talk about the older movement and there is a direct line of continuity.
 * "Too much of the Social Gospel ideology is no longer relevant in a postmodern culture, even if certain aspects of the movement remain timeless." very vague. The religious rhetoric about the poor & homeless and about environmental issues echoes 1900--indeed it is true that commitments and ideals it espoused are still valued so highly today
 * "Greater consideration is needed to determine how long the movement lasted" The article is reasonably clear: It mentions New Deal and says "After 1940, the movement withered, but was invigorated in the 1950s by black leaders..." Rjensen (talk) 21:01, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * alas now Postmodder has ignored the detailed response above and tried to strip religion out of the Social Gospel movement and inject his own POV, saying it emerged from socialism (which had a very weak presence in the movement). For that matter "economics" and "sociology" which he mentions were just starting in the 1890s when the movement was well underway. He says " To the political left of the Social Gospellers were Communists and Socialist Christians" which is weird and not based on any sources. (The Communists appeared after 1917, the term "Socialist Christians" was not used.)  Meanwhile he wants to slip in left wing views hostile to capitalism that again are not based on the sources. He deletes the religion parts --in an article on religion! Please bring controversial ideas to this talk page first, and please have some solid historical references to back it up. Rjensen (talk) 23:00, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

A Catholic Perspective?
Under the See Also section there's a link about a "Myth" from a Catholic perspective: http://web.archive.org/web/20070313145740/http://tcrnewscom.blogspot.com/2006/09/myth-of-social-gospel-one-man-decrying.html

This appears to be a blog or certainly just one person's take. What legitimates this link for inclusion on Wikipedia? If it's not the pope of the church hierarchy, is it a relevent Catholic perspecive for inclusion in an encyclopedia? Could someone address this and check out the link for legitimacy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.112.217.55 (talk) 16:53, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Quaker Involvement
There needs to be some indication of the involvement of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in the Social Gospel movement from Woolman's Plea for the Poor to folk like Cadbury and his worker villages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kiwimac (talk • contribs) 20:11, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Clarify?
From third paragraph: "After 1980 it weakened again as a major force inside mainstream churches; indeed the those churches were losing strength. "

I am lost as to the intent of the second bit of that... I will not attempt to edit it, as I have no clear idea of what it was originally intended to convey. Jehar 18:51, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Another phrase that I would edit for clarity, if I knew what was meant: "Pastor Moody’s experience led him to believe that the poor were too particular in receiving charity." Does the editor mean picky, that is the poor spurned assistance that didn't meet their standards? Seems unlikely... Cgmusselman (talk) 21:17, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Labour Church cross-reference
The William Irvine article has cross reference of Labour Church to this site but Labour Church is not even mentioned here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.148.6.11 (talk) 19:13, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Consistent capitalization
The footnotes had a lot of references where the data for the same book was given multiple times, because different page numbers were cited. I merged those references, using named references and the rp tag.

Another thing I noticed was that the article uses both "Social Gospel" and "social gospel", sometimes in the same paragraph. For consistency, I think we should use either upper or lower case. I would suggest lowercase, because Rauschenbusch uses lowercase throughout A Theology for the Social Gospel. But I will leave that to someone who is more familiar with the literature than I am.

If we do go with lowercase, the title should probably be changed to "Social gospel". However, there are a lot of pages that link to the uppercase "Social Gospel". That might be an argument for going with uppercase.

I also tagged the section on A Theology for the Social Gospel with a primary tag, because the only footnotes are to the book itself, which is a primary source. We list a lot of secondary sources, and I think this section might benefit from have more about what those secondary sources say about the book. --Margin1522 (talk) 20:34, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Chronology?
The recent edit credits Henry George for the term, but Washington Gladden is credited later for being a founder. Gladden's publication seems to precede George by a decade. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bharshaw (talk • contribs) 19:17, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Not so exclusively "left"
I don't think that it's quite so cut and dried, that the Social Gospel is so exclusively associated with the (modern) political left, or with liberal Christianity. This is especially problematic when the article claims that the social gospel declined with the rise of the Christian right. A case could easily be made that the "Christian right" is just as much a part of the Social gospel movement as Abolition and Prohibition were (that is, some historians of religion do make this case). — Mark (Mkmcconn) ** 13:52, 1 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Correct; in the post WW1 years the Social Gospel movement was split in complicated ways. WW1 marked the apex of the all-encompassing evangelical umbrella YMCA movement under Mott. The social gospel was its official theological arm promoted through its publishing house. The YMCA & social gospel both lost ground after WW1.
 * Four prominent trends in the interwar years were a secular socialist spinnoff (Sherwood Eddy moved in this direction), a left political right theological move (Niebuhr), a revivalist liberal spiritualism (Frank Buchman & his Oxford Movement seeking to "change the world" - later to give rise to AA), and Christian fundamentalism going 'back to the Bible' and away from social change.
 * Into this mix go intellectual influences such as Talcott Parsons' social theory, which in spirit was greatly inspired by his Father's social gospel beliefs. Parsons is usually regarded as a leading social theorist of the conservative wing of sociology and led Harvard's interdisciplinary social science department after WW2.
 * The fracturing of the social gospel movement seems to have been part of the larger crisis of confidence in Western Civilization provoked by the cataclysmic industrial scale barbarism of WW1. Books such as Husserl's "Crisis of the European Sciences" and Whitehead's "Science and the Modern World" reflected the general loss of faith in the necessary conjunction of science, religion and "progress". Asd154 (talk) 15:59, 6 July 2016 (UTC)


 * How does the Christian right fit in?? Maybe we need some theology. The Social Gospel was 95% post-Millenarian (Second Coming is AFTER we perfect the earth by human efforts) and 95% of Religious Right is Pre-Millenarian (Second Coming will be soon, prepare mostly for it) Rjensen 16:18, 19 December 2005 (UTC)


 * What about Mr. Bush’s Compassionate Conservatism? “No Child Left Behind” and faith-based initiatives (whatever was left from the effort after 09/11) seem to me like somehow going in the spirit of Social Gospel (and Dicken’s Christmas Carol which should be mentioned as a precursor of Social Gospel movement, I believe). Ceplm (talk) 08:26, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Social Gospel categories?
I'm surprised there are no Social Gospel related categories. I haven't been involved much in categorization, so others have more insight on the best way to implement this. I recommend Category:Social Gospel theologians as a subcategory of Category:Theologians by movement, and perhaps simply a Category:Social Gospel. In any case, there should be some category for the many biographies for Social Gospel figures like R. Heber Newton. Sondra.kinsey (talk) 19:16, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Social Gospel origins earlier than suggested
It is fair to say that the social gospel movement originated as far back as the abolitionist movement during the 1850s/1860s and then continued to gain momentum into the late 19th century through many social organizations that became the basis for the modern-day United Way. The Beecher family should be cited as early leaders of the Social Gospel movement, specifically Henry Ward Beecher. However, it should be noted that it was primarily a number of separate movements in the mid-19th century but really did not become a coalition and an ideal until the turn of the century. There is no evidence that the Abolitionists tended to worship the state, as the Social Gospel movement de facto did. On the contrary the Abolitionist movement was about liberty (ending slavery), whereas the Social Gospel wished to roll back liberty and expand the roll of force (the state) in human affairs.2A02:C7E:1CC3:8A00:D5AB:FCB5:E003:6766 (talk) 20:20, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I would disagree that the social gospel is opossed to evangelical christiality as many of the earlyest proponents on this idea where evangelicals. A good example of this is james kier hardie who could be seen as one of the founders of chrisitan socialism and was an evangelical lay preacher.

Lack of any critical section in the article.
The article assumes that the economics and politics of the Social Gospel movement was-and-is correct - i.e. that more government spending and regulations would have the beneficial effects that the Social Gospel movement assumed it would. No where in the article is the case that increasing the use of force (the state) in human affairs will have negative effects ever considered. The article might as well be titled "the cast for the Social Gospel movement", the case that more government spending and regulations will have positive (not negative) effects - rather than being a balanced reference article.2A02:C7E:1CC3:8A00:D5AB:FCB5:E003:6766 (talk) 20:25, 14 January 2022 (UTC)