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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)
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)
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)
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
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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.
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)