They echo the old fundamentalist charge against the Social Gospelers: that Christians who focus too much on trying to reform the unjust institutions of this world risk playing down the call to salvation in the hereafter — and also become pawns of godless social engineers.
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Matthews was the most influential clergymen in the Pacific Northwest, and one of the most active Social Gospelers in America.Dale Soden, Matthews, Reverend Mark (1867-1940), HistoryLink, January 13, 2007. Accessed online 7 February 2009. He was an enigmatic figure, holding views in common with both Christian fundamentalists and liberals, especially the Social Gospel movement.
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"Social Gospel" principles continue to inspire newer movements such as Christians Against Poverty. Reinhold Niebuhr has argued that the 20th century history of Western democracies has not vindicated the optimistic view of human nature which the social gospelers shared with the Enlightenment.Reinhold Niebuhr, "Walter Rauschenbusch in historical perspective." Religion in Life (1958) 27#4 pp 527-536.
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Matthews was the most influential clergymen in the Pacific Northwest, and one of the most active Social Gospelers in America. The American South had its own version of the Social Gospel, focusing especially on Prohibition. Other reforms included protecting young wage-earning women from the sex trade, outlawing public swearing, boxing, dogfights and similar affronts to their moral sensibilities. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, took on new responsibilities with the enlargement and professionalization of missionary women's roles starting in 1886 with the Southern Methodist Woman’s Parsonage and Home Mission Society.
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A powerful influence in mainline northern Protestant denominations was the Social Gospel, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with traces extending to the 21st century. The goal was to applyChristian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice and social evils such as economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean environment, child labor, lack of unionization, poor schools, and the dangers of war. Theologically, the Social Gospelers sought to put into practice the Lord's Prayer: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven".Cecelia Tichi, Civic Passions: Seven Who Launched Progressive America (and What They Teach Us).
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The Social Gospel was a social movement within Protestantism that applied Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean environment, child labor, lack of unionization, poor schools, and the dangers of war. It was most prominent in the early-20th-century United States and Canada. Theologically, the Social Gospelers sought to put into practice the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:10): "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". They typically were postmillennialist; that is, they believed the Second Coming could not happen until humankind rid itself of social evils by human effort.
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George Boardman was a founding member of the Brotherhood of the KingdomGary J. Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, 1805-1900 (Published by Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) page 91 in 1892, a group of the leading thinkers and writers of the Social Gospel movement at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Other pastors and authors who founded the group with Boardman were leading Social Gospelers Walter Rauschenbusch, Samuel Zane Batten and Leighton Williams. Boardman is probably best remembered for the quotation attributed to him as: > The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you > reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and > you reap a destiny.
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The Social Gospel movement peaked in the early 20th century, but scholars debate over when the movement began to decline, with some asserting that the destruction and trauma caused by the First World War left many disillusioned with the Social Gospel's ideals while others argue that the war stimulated the Social Gospelers' reform efforts. Theories regarding the decline of the Social Gospel after the First World War often cite the rise of neo-orthodoxy as a contributing factor in the movement's decline. While the Social Gospel was short-lived historically, it had a lasting impact on the policies of most of the mainline denominations in the United States. Most began programs for social reform, which led to ecumenical cooperation in 1910 while in the formation of the Federal Council of Churches.
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