Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
While American Society was coming apart in the 1960s, an impressive array of historians rallied to condemn what Rayford Logan called “the astigmatism of the social gospel” in race relations. Preoccupied by the ills of urban-industrial disorder, they suggested, the prophets of post-Reconstruction social Christianity either ignored or betrayed the Negro and left his fortunes in the hands of a hostile white South. The indictment of the social gospel on this count hinged upon the racism of Josiah Strong, the faithlessness of Lyman Abbott, and the complicity in silence of Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, and the others.
1. Gossett, Thomas F., Race: The History of an Idea in America (New York, 1963), pp. 176–197,Google Scholar and passim; Logan, Rayford W., The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1965), pp. 171–173, 183 and 273–275Google Scholar; and Reimers, David M., White Protestantism and the Negro (New York, 1965), pp. vii, 53–54 and 79–80.Google Scholar See also Ahlstrom, Sydney E., A Religious History of the American People (New Haven and London, 1972), pp. 691 and 923Google Scholar; Ahlstrom, , “Introduction,” Theology in America: The Major Protestant Voices from Puritanism to Neo-Orthodoxy (Indianapolis and New York, 1967), p. 75Google Scholar; Bucher, Glenn R., “Social Gospel Christianity and Racism” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 28 (Winter, 1973): 146–173Google Scholar; Dorn, Jacob Henry, Washington Gladden: Prophet of the Social Gospel (n.p., 1966), pp. 291–294Google Scholar; Fredrickson, George, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (New York, 1971), pp. 288, 320–304Google Scholar and passim; Grant, Curtis Robert, “The Social Gospel and Race” (Ph. D. diss., Stanford University, 1968)Google Scholar; Hopkins, Charles Howard, “Foreword in the 1967 Edition,” The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism: 1865–1915 (New Haven, 1967), p. viiGoogle Scholar; May, Henry F., “Introduction to the Torchbook Edition,” Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York, 1967), p. ixGoogle Scholar; Miller, Robert Moats, American Protestantism and Social Issues, 1919–1939 (Chapel Hill, 1958), pp. 9–10Google Scholar; and Scheiner, Seth M., “The Negro Church and the Northern City, 1890–1930,” Seven on Black: Reflections on the Negro Experience in America, ed. Shade, William G. and Herrenkohl, Roy C. (Philadelphia and New York, 1969), p. 108.Google Scholar
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10. Thomas, John L., “Romantic Reform in America, 1815–1865,” American Quarterly 17 (Winter, 1965): 656–681Google Scholar; and Fredrickson, George M., The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (New York, 1965).Google Scholar
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12. No doubt many spokesmen for social Christianity thought of themselves as bold advocates of reform, but Henry May is basically correct in identifying a conservative's preoccupation with social order in the early years of the movement. Over the course of time, many of them came to see industrial conflict as a symptom of prior economic dislocation. See May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America; and, for example, Dorn, , Washington Gladden, pp. 203–235.Google Scholar
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14. Among others, one might also mention Collyer, Robert, Colwell, Stephen, Frothingham, Octavius Brooks, and Tying, Stephen H. Jr See Swint, Henry Lee, The Northern Teacher in the South, 1862–1870 (Nashville, 1942), pp. 171–174.Google Scholar
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17. Among others, one might also mention Aaron L. Chapin, Harlan Paul Douglass, A.J. Lyman, Frederick A. Noble, Francis Amasa Walker, and William Hayes Ward. This list is drawn from Drake, “American Missionary Association,” pp. 289–293, the pages of the American Missionary, and occasional papers of the A. M. A. The major studies of the social gospel have not mentioned the Association and have given little attention to home missions in general.
18. Power, , “A Crusade to Extend Yankee Culture,” pp. 638–653.Google Scholar
19. Abott, Lyman, “Southern Evangelization,” New Englander 22 (10, 1864): 701Google Scholar (cited in Brown, , Lyman Abbott, p. 37)Google Scholar. On Northern social Christianity's fear of a declension into barbarism in the South see Gladden, Washington, “Moral Reconstruction,” in The Nation Still in Danger; or Ten Years After the War: A Plea by the American Missionary Association, with Confirmatory Articles by Rev. T. D. Woolsey, D.D., L.L.D., Hon. Frederick Douglass, Rev. Washington Gladden, Gov. D. H. Chamberlain, and Hon J. P. Hawley (n.p., 1875), p. 15Google Scholar; Josephus Cook, The Three Despised Races in the United States; or, The Chinaman, the Indian, and the Freedman. An address …, American Missionary Association Pamphlet no. 3 (New York, 1878), pp. 18–30Google Scholar; Cook, , “Enfranchised Ignorance in the South,” Boston Monday Lectures, Conscience, with Preludes on Current Events (Boston, 1879), pp. 117–123Google Scholar; Cook, , “Equal Educational Rights for Black and White,” Boston, Monday Lectures. Marriage, with Preludes on Current Events (Boston, 1879), pp. 169–179Google Scholar; Mayo, Amory Dwight, “The South, the North, and the Nation Keeping School,” in Christian Educators in Council. Sixty Addresses by American Educators; with Historical Notes upon the National Educational Assembly Held at Ocean Grove, N. J., August 9–12, 1883. Also Illiteracy and Education Tables from the Census of 1880, ed. Hartzell, John C. (New York, 1883), p. 160Google Scholar; Mayo, National Aid to Education: An Address Before the American Social Science Association, at the Saratoga Meeting of 1882 (Boston, 1883), p. 19Google Scholar; Ascombe, , “Contributions of the Quakers to Reconstruction,” p. 36Google Scholar; and Morrow, , Northern Methodism and Reconstruction, pp. 33 and 127.Google Scholar
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26. Richard Hofstadter first linked racism to imperialism, seeming to suggest that the former was the necessary assumption of the latter. Hofstadter, , Social Darwinism in American Thought, pp. 170–200Google Scholar. He was left, however, with the anomaly of white southern Democrats forming the base of political anti-imperialism. Ibid., p. 192. by conceiving the two logically as polar opposites, the tendency of Northern Republicans to imperialism and of southern Democrats to anti-imperialism becomes understandable.
27. Strong, Josiah, Religious Movements for Social Betterment (New York, 1900), p. 54.Google Scholar The objection that Northern missionaries to the South did not expect the freedmen to be equal participants in Anglo-Saxon culture is specious. Like most antislavery Northerners, they believed the freedmen were heir to the cultural burdens of slavery, but these would in time be shed. Moreover, the missionaries preferred to operate integrated institutions where that was feasible and often sent their children to the mission schools. Yet the task of evangelizing the South finally took priority over integration. Like most conservatives, the missionaries ultimately believed that social order was the necessary assumption for social justice. See, for example, Swint, , Northern Teacher in the South, p. 19Google Scholar; and Lyman Abbott to Samuel J. May, Jr., February 23, 1866, Lyman Abbott Correspondence, Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection, Olin Library, Cornell University.
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46. Tourgee to W. S. Scarborough, November 27, 1889, W. S. Scarborough Papers, Wilberforce University Library, Wilberforce, Ohio. The letter continues in some elaborate detail explaining how such an organization among southern blacks might be modeled along the lines of the Klan. I am in debt to Professor William Gravely of the University of Denver for bringing this letter to my attention.
47. On the National Citizens Rights Association units at Oberlin and Grinnell, see Olsen, , Carpetbagger's Crusade, p. 313Google Scholar; and Charles L. Fitch to Tourgee, February 24, 1892, no. 6053; Tourgee to Fitch, n.d. (ea. February 28, 1892), no. 6065; Fitch to Tourgee, March 3, 1892, no. 6079; Fitch and Charles D. Seaton to Tourgee, Mary 17, 1892, no. 7614. Albion W. Tourgee Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The best studies of the social gospel at Oberlin and Grinnell are Barnard, John, From Evangelicalism to Progressivism at Oberlin College, 1866–1917Google Scholar (Columbus, 1969), pp. 61–62, 85–105, and 114–126; and Handy, Robert T., “George D. Herron and the Kingdom Movement,” Church History 19 (1950): 97–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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