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Conservative Social Christianity, the Law, and Personal Morality: Wilbur F. Crafts in Washington

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Gaines M. Foster
Gaines M. Foster
Affiliation:
professor of history at Louisiana State University.
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Extract

In 1895, Wilbur F. Crafts opened on office in Washington, D.C. and proclaimed himself a Christian lobbyist. Over the next quarter century, until his death in 1922, he mobilized churches and individual Christians to pressure Congress on behalf of bills, some he had written, to limit divorce, to control sexuality, and to restrict or prohibit the use of narcotics and alcohol. He also led an unsuccessful campaign for federal censorship of the movies. Crafts deserves more attention than historians of American religion have paid him. His legislative accomplishments render his career important in itself, but an analysis of his theology and lobbying efforts also helps historians better conceptualize social Christianity and the social gospel.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 71 , Issue 4 , December 2002 , pp. 799 - 819
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2002

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63. On the larger movement of which Crafts was a part, see Foster, , Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).Google Scholar