The Global Church Era · c. 1886-1918 · N. America (urban, industrial)
The Social Gospel
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About This Movement
In 1886 Washington Gladden published Applied Christianity, and in the same year Walter Rauschenbusch took a pastorate on the edge of Hell's Kitchen in New York, where what he saw of tenement life reorganized his theology. He and others formed the Brotherhood of the Kingdom in 1892. His Christianity and the Social Crisis appeared in 1907 and went through thirteen printings in five years, and A Theology for the Social Gospel followed in 1917. Charles Sheldon's novel In His Steps (1896) put the same instinct into a form anyone could use: asking, before each decision, what Jesus would do. In 1908 the newly formed Federal Council of Churches adopted the Social Creed of the Churches — the movement's clearest institutional mark, and the ancestor of the denominational social statements that came after it.
Sources
- Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Christianizing the Social Order (1912) and A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917) (primary) — The movement's own foundational texts. The 1907 book went through thirteen printings in five years; he died in 1918.
- Washington Gladden, Applied Christianity (1886) (primary) — The movement's opening published statement; year from standard reference.
- Charles M. Sheldon, In His Steps (1896) (primary) — The mass-readership carrier, and the source of the 'what would Jesus do' reading practice, treated here as part of the Social Gospel rather than as a movement of its own.
- The Social Creed of the Churches, adopted by the Federal Council of Churches (1908) (primary) — The movement's institutional document, also linked to the broader mainline Protestant tradition of the same era.
- Christopher H. Evans, The Social Gospel in American Religion (NYU, 2017) (secondary) — The current single-volume account.