Recently a local paper published an article by a retired pastor lamenting the loss of the “Social Gospel,” the mainline Protestant church’s reformist response to the challenges of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The social conditions that necessitated this response, he says, were in part the result of the closing of the American frontier and the completion of the cross-country rail system. What emerged was a new national identity. At the same time, a new urban/industrial economy was rapidly replacing the older rural/agricultural model.
This led to widespread migration into the nation’s cities, from the farms and small towns of America, as well as from places the world over. This mass influx of immigrants produced overcrowded cities filled with those seeking economic opportunity and a new life.
The Social Gospel, he writes, sought to “apply the teachings of the New Testament to social problems, especially justice issues like economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean environment, child labor, inadequate labor unions, poor schools, and the danger of war.” (I think that just about covers it!)
What this author doesn’t mention are the various intellectual trends ascendant at the time, ones that undergirded the entire project. Here one sees the confluence of Darwinism, Hegelianism, an increased reliance on the sciences, as well as the burgeoning consolidation and social ordering wrought by the Civil War.
The country was moving away from the perceived anomie of antebellum America and toward a newer, higher social ordering. William James’ now-famous phrase, “the moral equivalency of war,” perfectly captured this new, disciplined, unified, even militarized effort to address the nation’s social ills, many of which were caused, or so it was thought, by America’s prior lack of unity and purpose, conditions that presumably had led to war.
This new campaign would be spearheaded by a newly-empowered group of highly-educated, highly-trained, highly-organized experts in the fields of government, science (including the new social sciences), and religion.
Hidden in the background, however, were the presupposing ideas of an altogether unlikely figure, the German philosopher Georg W.F. Hegel (1770-1831). From his perch at the University of Berlin, he had become world-famous for developing a wholly new way of understanding and interpreting history.
For Hegel, history does not move aimlessly or even in circular fashion, but progressively and inevitably, from lower to higher form. His “historical dialectic” argued that each era resolves and reorders the inherent weaknesses and contradictions of the prior one, until, eventually, history arrives at perfection, at an actual moment in time, as God has so ordered it.
History, for Hegel, was being directed by “Geist,” or the Spirit of God, moving inexorably in and through time toward higher and higher forms of rational, civilizational advancement. Perhaps most surprisingly, and disturbingly, Hegel also believed that the vehicle for the Spirit’s work was the State! It was the State that would lead us to the Promised Land!
Not only did this view of history seem related to Darwin’s (1809-1882) concept of evolutionary change, but it also fit in with the heated optimism of America’s Gilded Age.
Here there was a conscious movement away from the rural, individualistic, sectarian, prejudicial, haphazard world of early America and toward a new urbanized, educated, scientifically-ordered, universal, consolidating movement directed by a new leadership, itself reflecting this new emerging consciousness.
Writers and thinkers of this period, in fact, spoke quite openly about the need for each citizen to subsume his or her private interests to this new corporate identity, to sacrifice individual freedom and autonomy in order to fulfill the ideal of solving humanity’s problems. We all just needed to get on-board!
No institution took to this project as eagerly as the mainline Protestant churches. Here was the opportunity to serve God selflessly and sacrificially, and in a bold new way. In this effort the church would be fulfilling the Gospel’s righteous demand to serve humanity.
Moving beyond the feckless limitations of the past, a past redolent of ignorance and selfish strife, we were now on the cusp of replacing it all with a higher ordering based on Christ’s love.
I recently found a keynote address given in Philadelphia by my grandfather, Paul Leinbach, in November 1913, at the Golden Jubilee of the Reformed Church in the United States’ Board of Home Missions (its 50th anniversary).
An educated man who’d received three honorary doctorates before the age of 35, my grandfather was clearly up-to-speed on all the latest thinking. His address, in fact, perfectly captures the high-minded idealism of the then-fashionable Social Gospel.
Having recently arrived in New York, he describes its immense social problems and the daunting challenges facing a city teeming with immigrants from all over the world, many of whom poor and dispossessed.
He goes on to disparage those unconcerned with their plight as well as those who fail to see what Jesus would see, our common humanity.
The church, he argues, must work together with government and business leaders, and embrace the newest insights of science, including those of Darwin and modern historicism (Hegel?). He gently critiques the older version of Christianity, with its narrow emphasis on regeneration and doctrine. A brave and intrepid church must not cower in the face of new discoveries and new insights. It must embrace change if it is to effectively tackle the world’s great problems.
The very title of his address is telling: “On to the Conquest.” At one point, employing the Social Gospel’s militaristic language, he exhorts the faithful to “go into this conflict and win the victory.”
Also in keeping with the best Social Gospel theory, he proudly asserts that the church’s scholarship at that time had never been “so wide-awake and aggressive” in the pursuit of modern truths. Never had there been “as many of the brainiest men of the world” pressed into service, all working to effect Christ’s purposes.
Even in hindsight, one is hard-pressed to dismiss the sentiment. After all, what Christian wouldn’t desire genuine progress in ameliorating human suffering? For what was within reach, as he saw it, was the very “leavening of the nation’s life with the spirit of Jesus.” How is that a bad thing?
And yet, he missed something. In championing newer, modern scientific truths, he assumes the “fixed” truths of the Gospel shall forever remain. All that would change is forward-thinking interpretation.
In this he failed to foresee that the newer, modern truths would eventually replace these earlier foundational Gospel truths. Over time the church would look increasingly to the culture for its identity and self-understanding, if not its marching orders.
In the same vein, he failed to see that by deemphasizing regeneration and doctrine, the church might come to lose its unique, spiritual character.
Both these phenomena speak to what is perhaps the greatest failing of the Social Gospelers: the failure to fully appreciate the centrality of the church as the locus of Christian life.
As my grandfather’s statement implies, the “nation’s life” was now the focus of the “spirit of Jesus,” not, ironically, the church of Jesus Christ! For many, in fact, the church’s unique self-understanding, together with its insistence on personal spiritual development and biblical insight, was an impediment to progress, serving only sectarian purposes.
What was needed instead was unity of thought and purpose, a common language and a common perspective. All the particulars within society must be broadened and brought into conformity with the culture’s larger objectives.
Yet, and this is the dirty little secret, without a nation full of Christs, its collective efforts will surely fail both God and humanity. Which is why the church must recover its traditional task of making disciples, instead of serving as yet another voice, or interest group, within an increasingly cacophonous and secularized public square.
This problem, of course, is symptomatic of much pioneering, utopian thought. It assumes that the foundations of the past and present will forever remain sturdily in place. Whatever changes are made, in other words, merely build on what came before.
But, alas, these very same foundations, if not strengthened and re-fortified by each age and generation, eventually will crumble, along with each succeeding historical accretion built precariously on top of it.
It is perhaps noteworthy that the local pastor who wishes for the return of the Social Gospel commits the same errors that led ultimately to its demise, i.e. a return to (or continuance of) the same broad, bland, universalized, all-encompassing stratagems that actually diminish the vitality of the varied building blocks upon which any healthy society depends.
Without the seemingly unglamorous, yet indispensable, soul-work of the local church, work that focuses on personal salvation and spiritual growth, the church is in danger not only of losing its salt, but of losing the very spiritual resources it needs to effectively address all ongoing human ills.