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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
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.
1. Howard Hopkins, Charles, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865—1915 (New Haven, 1940), p. 244.Google Scholar
2. Dombrowski, James, The Early Days of Christian Socialism in America (New York, 1936)Google Scholar; May, Henry F., Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York, 1949; reprint, 1967)Google Scholar; Handy, Robert T., “Christianity and Socialism in America, 1900–1920,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 21 (1952): 39–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. Works that give little or no attention to socialism include White, Ronald C. Jr., and Hopkins, C. Howard, The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America (Philadelphia, 1976)Google Scholar, and Gorrell, Donald K., The Age of Social Responsibility: The Social Gospel in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920 (Macon, Ga., 1988).Google Scholar The relationship is central in Dressner, Richard B., “Christian Socialism: A Response to Industrial America in the Progressive Era” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1972)Google Scholar; Craig, Robert H., “Seek Ye First the Political Kingdom: Christians and Socialism in the United States, 1890–1940” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1975)Google Scholar; and Frederick, Peter J., Knights of the Golden Rule: The Intellectual as Christian Social Reformer in the 1890s (Lexington, Ky., 1976).Google Scholar Craig and Frederick criticize middle-class Christian radicals in this period for failing to commit themselves to a class-conscious movement.
4. William McGuire King has offered a provocative categorization of the Social Gospel, based on how three major figures in the movement, including two of these three subjects, appropriated Jesus' teachings to their own time. For Shailer Mathews, Jesus was “the transformer of culture”; for Peabody, he was “the scientific philanthropist”; for Rauschenbusch, “the nonviolent radical.” These categories correspond to three types of the Social Gospel King has found in American Methodism: “social evangelism,” “social engineering,” and “social reconstructionism.” I selected my subjects because of the intrinsic interest of their views of socialism, not because they fit King's categories. Though Gladden would not serve as a stand-in for Mathews, King's interpretation of Peabody and Rauschenbusch corresponds very closely to my findings. McGuire King, William, “The Biblical Base of the Social Gospel,” in Sandeen, Ernest R., ed., The Bible and Social Reform (Philadelphia, 1982), pp. 59–84Google Scholar; and idem, “The Emergence of Social Gospel Radicalism: The Methodist Case,” Church History 50 (1981): 436–449.
5. On race relations, for example, Ralph Luker places Peabody right of the center of the Social Gospel, and Gladden left of that center; he finds in Rauschenbusch the “personalist” emphasis that would nourish Luther King, Martin Jr., Luker, Ralph E., The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885–1912 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), pp. 230, 315–324.Google Scholar
6. Tholuck, Peabody wrote, “impressed himself chiefly by the singular purity and charm of his character and the daily habit of his kindly life.” Peabody, Francis G., Reminiscences of Present Day Saints (Boston, 1927), pp. 69, 83–84.Google Scholar See also Herbst, Jurgen, “Francis Greenwood Peabody: Harvard's Theologian of the Social Gospel,” Harvard Theological Review 54 (1961): 45–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Robinson, David, The Unitarians and the Universalists (Westport, Conn., 1985), pp. 133–136, 305–306.Google Scholar
7. Dombrowski, , Early Days of Christian Socialism, pp. 63, 69Google Scholar; Hopkins, , Rise of the Social Gospel, pp. 91–92, 167–168Google Scholar; Peabody, , Reminiscences, pp. 135–137.Google Scholar
8. Hopkins, , Rise of the Social Gospel, pp. 116, 163, 292–293.Google Scholar
9. Hopkins, , Rise of the Social Gospel, p. 207Google Scholar; Herbst, , “Peabody,” p. 58.Google Scholar
10. Peabody, Francis G., Jesus Christ and the Social Question: An Examination of the Teaching of Jesus in Its Relation to Some of the Problems of Modern Social Life (New York, 1900), pp. 5, 9, 13–15, 18–20.Google Scholar Antisocialist writers often screeched both about socialist atheism and about the antifamily and free-love proclivities of some socialists. Peabody was not as hysterical as some writers but also saw in socialism an assault on the family. See ibid., pp. 139—144; idem, The Christian Life in the Modern World (New York, 1914), pp. 38–42.
11. Peabody, , Jesus Christ and the Social Question, pp. 24–28, 57–63Google Scholar; idem, Jesus Christ and the Christian Character: An Examination of the Teaching of Jesus in Its Relation to Some of the Moral Problems of Personal Life (New York, 1913), pp. 6, 198; idem, The Christian Life in the Modern World, pp. 26–27, 85, 112–113.
12. Peabody, , Jesus Christ and the Social Question, pp. 77–79Google Scholar; idem, Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, p. 6; idem, The Christian Life in the Modern World, p. 28.
13. Peabody likened his hermeneutic to the case method in legal studies. Peabody, , Jesus Christ and the Social Question, pp. 80–82Google Scholar; idem, Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, pp. 74–75; idem, The Christian Life in the Modern World, pp. 27, 30–31.
14. Peabody, , Jesus Christ and the Social Question, p. 102.Google Scholar
15. Ibid., p. 110; Peabody, , Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, p. 16.Google Scholar
16. Peabody, , Jesus Christ and the Social Question, pp. 122, 118Google Scholar; idem, Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, pp. 9, 15–16; idem, The Christian Life in the Modern World, p. 82.
17. Peabody, , Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, chs. 5–6.Google Scholar
18. Peabody, , Jesus Christ and the Social Question, ch. 4.Google Scholar
19. Peabody, . Jesus Christ and the Social Question, pp. 271–272Google Scholar; idem, The Christian Life in the Modern World, pp. 116, 133–134.
20. Peabody, , Jesus Christ and the Social Question, p. 297.Google Scholar
21. Dorn, Jacob H., Washington Gladden: Prophet of the Social Gospel (Columbus, Ohio, 1967).Google Scholar
22. Gladden's increasing support of unions can be traced from his Working People and Their Employers (1876), through “Is It Peace or War?” in his Applied Christianity: Moral Aspects of Social Questions (Boston, 1886), pp. 102–145 , to his The Labor Question (Boston, 1911). A comprehensive account is in Dorn, Gladden, ch. 8.
23. Gladden, Washington, “The Strength and Weakness of Socialism,” Century 31 (1886): 737–749Google Scholar; reprinted as ch. 3 in Applied Christianity. For other examples of this approach, see Gladden, , “The Use and Abuse of Parties,” Century 28 (1884): 170–175Google Scholar and Moral Gains and Losses of the Temperance Reformation (Charlottesville, Va., 1895).Google Scholar
24. Gladden, , “The Strength and Weakness of Socialism,” pp. 739, 741.Google Scholar
25. Gladden, Washington, Tools and the Man: Property and Industry Under the Christian Law (Boston, 1893), p. 255.Google Scholar
26. Washington Gladden, sermon delivered at First Congregational Church of Columbus, 23 Jan. 1898, reel 28 (microfilm, ed., 1972)Google Scholar, Washington Gladden Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio. See his “Socialism and Unsocialism,” Forum 3 (1887): 122–130Google Scholar, and “Moral Tendencies of Existing Industrial Conditions,” Outlook 63 (1899): 871–877.Google Scholar
27. Voss, Carl H., “The Rise of Social Consciousness in the Congregational Churches: 1865–1942” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1942), pp. 55–56.Google Scholar
28. Gladden, sermon delivered 6 Jan. 1901, reel 32, Gladden Collection.
29. Gladden, Washington, “Christianity and Socialism,” Chautauquan 30 (Nov. 1899): 138–141.Google Scholar
30. Gladden believed that profit sharing experiments would avoid these dangers and supported them until the mid-1890s when their paternalism became apparent to him. Gladden, , Applied Christianity, pp. 86–94.Google Scholar
31. Gladden, , Tools and the Man, pp. 260–270.Google Scholar He repeated some of these and other strictures in Christianity and Socialism (New York, 1905), p. 122.
32. Gladden, sermon delivered 27 May 1894, reel 25, Gladden Collection.
33. Gladden, sermon delivered 23 Sept. 1894, reel 26, Gladden Collection.
34. Gladden, Washington, Ruling Ideas of the Present Age (Boston, 1895), pp. 81–82, 77.Google Scholar
35. Gladden, “The Philosophy of Anarchism,” sermon delivered 29 Sept. 1901, reel 33, Gladden Collection.
37. He saw this religious and ethical dimension in Bellamy's, EdwardLooking Backward (1888)Google Scholar, Gronlund's, LaurenceOur Destiny (1890)Google Scholar, and Fabian writings. See Gladden, Washington, sermons on Looking Backward, 1 Sept. 1889 (reel 21)Google Scholar, Our Destiny, 19 Apr 1891 (reel 22) , and “Two Types of Socialism,” 10 May 1908 (reel 40)Google Scholar, Gladden Collection; idem, “Mr. Bellamy's Utopia,” Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 16 Aug. 1890, p. 37. Gladden opposed Bellamy over equality of rewards, which, because of differences in effort, efficiency, and ability, would in fact be inequitable. Both Gronlund and Bellamy helped to “Americanize” socialism by infusing it with religious idealism. Quint, Howard H., The Forging of American Socialism (Indianapolis, 1953), ch. 3Google Scholar; Gemorah, Solomon, “Laurence Gronlund's Ideas and Influence, 1877–1899” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1965).Google Scholar
38. Gladden, , “Christianity and Socialism,” Chautauquan, p. 140.Google Scholar
39. Gladden, , Christianity and Socialism, pp. 9, 19, 23, 35.Google Scholar
40. Gladden, , “Moral Tendencies of Existing Industrial Conditions,” pp. 876–877.Google Scholar
41. Gladden, , Tools and the Man, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar Gladden was not always consistent in balancing the individual and the social. A “true socialism,” he declared, would “socialize the individual,” rather than change society by “outward pressure.” But he still insisted that Christianity encompassed both. Gladden, Christianity and Socialism, pp. 185, 306.
42. His first biographer considered Rauschenbusch “a convinced socialist,” and a recent writer thinks he “came about as close as one possibly could to embracing socialism without joining the party.” Sharpe, Dores R., Walter Rauschenbusch (New York, 1942), p. 219Google Scholar; see also Frederick, , Knights of the Golden Rule, p. 155.Google Scholar
43. Rauschenbusch, Walter, Christianizing the Social Order (New York, 1912), p. 394Google Scholar; Sharpe, , Rauschenbusch, pp. 195–196Google Scholar; Frederick, , Knights of the Golden Rule, pp. 148–150Google Scholar; Minus, Paul, Walter Rauschenbusch: American Reformer (New York, 1988), pp. 60–65. Though Rauschenbusch found George's emphasis on land too narrow, he considered it important and faulted socialists for neglecting it.Google Scholar
44. For the organization of the Boston and New York societies, see Dawn 1 (15 May 1889): 3–4 and ibid. (Feb. 1890): 5. For Rauschenbusch's involvement see Sharpe, , Rauschenbusch, p. 86Google Scholar; Minus, , Rauschenbusch, p. 67Google Scholar; and Rauschenbusch, Walter, “London Letter,” Dawn 3 (07 1891): 9–11.Google Scholar Though W. D. P. Bliss, the SCS's organizer, spoke in Gladden's church and Gladden wrote for the Dawn, Gladden did not call himself a Christian Socialist. See “Mr. Bliss's Lecture Trip,” Dawn 2 (06 1890): 93–94Google Scholar; Washington Gladden, “The Eight-Hour Problem,” ibid. (July-Aug. 1890): 137–147.
45. Minus, , Rauschenbusch, chs. 5–6Google Scholar; Sharpe, , Rauschenbusch, ch. 7Google Scholar; Howard Hopkins, Charles, “Walter Rauschenbusch and the Brotherhood of the Kingdom,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 7 (1938): 138–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
46. Sharpe, , Rauschenbusch, pp. 91–92.Google Scholar
47. Rauschenbusch, Walter, “The Ideals of Social Reformers,” American Journal of Sociology 2 (09 1896): 203, 209, 211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
48. Ibid., pp. 211–218. Hudson, Winthrop S. has emphasized the necessity of personal religious experience for Rauschenbusch in “Walter Rauschenbusch and the New Evangelism,” Religion in Life 30 (1961): 412–430Google Scholar, and Walter Rauschenbusch: Selected Writings (New York, 1984).Google Scholar
49. Rauschenbusch, , “Ideals of Social Reformers,” p. 219.Google Scholar Rauschenbusch explained why the church should be interested in social conditions in a subsequent article, “The Stake of the Church in the Social Movement,” American Journal of Sociology 3 (07 1897): 18–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
50. “Socialism is of Two Kinds: The Practical and the Dogmatic Contrasted,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 25 Feb. 1901.Google Scholar He criticized Marxists' emphases on surplus value and the industrial proletariat, argued that authoritarianism made their scientific pretensions mere “cant,” and accused them of “turn[ing] one of the sublimest movements the world has ever seen into the squealing of a drove of pigs where the rear pigs are trying to push away the front pigs and get their noses into the trough too.” Practically, he argued that refusal to work for short-term gains would expose workers to further mental and physical degradation and leave them unprepared to administer socialist institutions when the new order came. Sharpe incorrectly considered this lecture Rauschenbusch's most representative treatment of socialism and included it in Rauschenbusch, pp. 203–216.
51. Shannon, David A., The Socialist Party of America: A History (New York, 1955), chs. 1–2.Google Scholar
52. Rauschenbusch, Walter, Christianizing the Social Order (New York, 1912), pp. 397–403.Google Scholar
53. Rauschenbusch to Francis G. Peabody, 14 Dec. 1912, Box 26, Rauschenbusch Family Papers, American Baptist-Samuel Colgate Library, Rochester, N.Y.
54. Walter Rauschenbusch, Lecture notes for “The Right and Wrong of Socialism,” 1914, Box 20, Rauschenbusch Papers.
55. Rauschenbusch, Walter, “Christian Socialism,” in A Dictionary of Religion and Ethics, ed. Mathews, Shailer and Smith, Gerald B. (New York, 1923), pp. 90–91.Google Scholar
56. Rauschenbusch, Walter, Christianity and the Social Crisis (New York, 1907), p. xiii.Google Scholar
57. Ibid., pp. 8, 54–55, 67, 133.
58. Ibid., pp. 12–13, 82.
59. Ibid., pp. 27–31, 98–112, 152–160.
60. Ibid., pp. 47–48.
61. Ibid., pp. 81, 77, 120–133.
62. One historian considers Rauschenbusch's approach to the Bible inconsistent. More intent to find sanction for social activism than to apply the hermeneutical principles of liberal biblical scholarship consistently, he interpreted passages that fostered social passivity as “in history” and passages that undergirded activism as “absolute, timeless, infallible authority.” Altschuler, Glenn C., “Walter Rauschenbusch: Theology, the Church, and the Social Gospel,” Foundations 22 (1979): 140–151.Google Scholar
63. Rauschenbusch, , Christianity and the Social Crisis, ch. 5.Google Scholar
64. Bowden, Henry W., “Walter Rauschenbusch and American Church History,” Foundations 9 (1966): 237Google Scholar; Sherman Barnes, “Walter Rauschenbusch as Historian,” ibid. 12 (July-Sept. 1969): 257; Massanari, Ronald C., “The Sacred Workshop of God: Reflections on the Historical Perspective of Walter Rauschenbusch,” Religion in Life 40 (1971): 261–262.Google Scholar Believing that church historians' lack of interest in the common people had distorted their whole perspective, Rauschenbusch argued that church history must be “translated into the History of the Kingdom of God” and encompass all social groups. Rauschenbusch to Ely, Richard T., 17 04 1903Google Scholar, Ely, Richard T. Papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. (microfilm ed., 1982), reel 25.Google Scholar
65. Rauschenbusch, , Christianity and the Social Crisis, pp. 405–408.Google Scholar
66. Rauschenbusch, , Christianizing the Social Order, pp. 321–322, 313.Google Scholar
67. Ibid., p. 405.
68. Hilmar Rauschenbusch to Walter Rauschenbusch, 23 Apr. 1915, Box 29, Rauschenbusch Papers.
69. Rauschenbusch to William F. Cochran, 8 Aug. 1916, Box 30, Rauschenbusch Papers; Rauschenbusch, Walter, “The Imperative Demand,” Christian Socialist 11 (15 03. 1914): 5.Google Scholar
70. Herman A. Sarachan to Rauschenbusch, 3 Jan. 1915, Box 99, Rauschenbusch Papers; Rauschenbusch to Harry Laidler, 6 Mar. 1914, and to Rose Pastor Stokes, 9 Mar. 1914, Rose Pastor Stokes Papers, Socialist Collections in the Tamiment Library, 1872–1956, New York University (microfilm ed.), reel 67.
71. Many other signatories were party members. “The Case for Benson,” New Republic 8 (7 10 1916): 243–245.Google Scholar
72. Harry W. Laidler to Rauschenbusch, 28 Apr. and 11 July 1916, Box 30, Rauschenbusch Papers; Rauschenbusch, Walter, “The Appeal of Socialism to a Christian Mind,” Intercollegiate Socialist 5 (12 1916–01 1917): 8–9Google Scholar, and “Combining Christianity and Socialism,” New York Call Magazine (22 04 1917)Google Scholar and Christian Socialist 14 (3 01 1917): 1–2. In each article he used “we” when referring to socialism.
73. Minus, , Rauschenbusch, p. 182. In one of his most poignant statements of the grief he felt over the war, Rauschenbusch wrote: “I am still a Socialist, and see the real causes of war in the exploiting classes and nations. I am still a Christian, and in the midst of the war have written an exposition of the Social Principles of Jesus, in which few Christians believe. I am more than ever a pacifist.” Rauschenbusch to W. H. P. Faunce, 11 Feb. 1917, Box 32, Rauschenbusch Papers.Google Scholar
74. Charles A. Ruby to Rauschenbusch, 29 Oct. 1912, Box 26; Anna Rochester to Rauschenbusch, 23 Mar. 1909, Box 25; Herbert T. Cash to Rauschenbusch, 27 Oct. 1908, Box 25; and J. G. Lauderbaugh to Rauschenbusch, 12 Apr. 1910, Box 25; Rauschenbusch Papers.
75. “I got it from you in the first place,” Cochran wrote, “that the highest duty of a millionaire is to make the future rise of millionaires impossible, or something to that effect.” Rauschenbusch promised to buy a typewriter with one gift and “hammer as much good Christianity and Socialism out of it as I can.” William F. Cochran to Rauschenbusch, 10 Mar. 1915, and Rauschenbusch to Cochran, 11 Mar. 1915, Box 29, Rauschenbusch Papers.
76. Frederick I. Bamford to Rauschenbusch, 1 Nov. 1907, Box 25; Margaret W. Thompson to Rauschenbusch, 16 May 1912, Box 93; Charles E. Forsyth to Rauschenbusch, 19 Feb. 1908, Box 25; John Hughes to Rauschenbusch, 4 Dec. 1914, Box 28; and A. E. Breckenridge to Rauschenbusch, 7 Jan. 1914, Box 93, Rauschenbusch Papers.
77. Clarence L. Wright to Rauschenbusch, 15 June 1909, Box 25, Rauschenbusch Papers.
78. “Current Literature,” Christian Socialist 4 (1 06 1907): 6–7. Representative letters include Weeks to Rauschenbusch, 22 Mar. and 28 Apr. 1904, Box 24, 4 and 7 June, and 26 Sept. 1907, Box 25, Rauschenbusch Papers.Google Scholar
79. Scudder, Vida D. to Rauschenbusch, 21 09 [1912], Box 93, Rauschenbusch Papers.Google Scholar
80. In 1900–1918 John and Laura Rockefeller gave the Rauschenbusches about $8,000 for personal use. Minus, , Rauschenbusch, pp. 59–60, 96–97, 133–134.Google Scholar
81. Ibid., pp. 52, 90–91, 100, 162–163, 173–174.
82. Scudder to Rauschenbusch, 9 Oct. [1912], Rauschenbusch Papers.
83. Once he understood that the ISS promoted the study of socialism, he identified himself with it. Rauschenbusch to Algernon Lee, 17 Apr. 1911, and to James Franklin, 17 Aug. 1911, Box 26, Rauschenbusch Papers.
84. Rauschenbusch to L. B. Avery, 12 June 1914, Box 28, Rauschenbusch Papers.
85. Pauline Rauschenbusch to Eugene V. Debs, 3 May 1926, The Papers of Eugene V. Debs, 1834–1945 (microfilm, ed., 1983), reel 4, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Ind.Google Scholar
