Christianity and the Commonwealth: Socialism, the Social Gospel, and the Struggle for the Soul of the Nation

In 1908, Unitarian pastor Bertrand Thompson observed the momentous growth of the labor movement with alarm. "Socialism" he wrote, "has become a distinct substitute" for the church.

In the generation after the Civil War, the workers who moved North and West to populate factory and mining towns had little association with traditional Protestant churches. Clergy affiliated with these churches saw the emergence of a religiously-unaffiliated working class as an assault on their authority over the nation. In response, they created the Social Gospel movement, a cross-denominational movement of clergy affiliated with the Federal Council of Churches, to combat the possibility that the increasingly popular socialist and labor movements would inaugurate a secular, modern welfare state that made little room for churches.

In The Gospel of Church, Janine Giordano Drake argues that Christian social reformers of the early twentieth century, usually understood as "liberal," can be best understood as pro-business moderates and theocrats. Despite their rhetoric, when workers went on strike, most ministers were unwilling to side with workers and against businesses-they defended segregation, circulated wartime propaganda, and took millions of dollars from big business to fund anti-union evangelical crusades.

Drake traces the rivalry between organized labor and the American churches from 1880 to 1920, highlighting how the rise in labor and agricultural movements at the turn of the century ran parallel with low church-attendance, high circulation rates of socialist newspapers, and outdoor revivalism, as communities animated by a shared commitment to a Christian Commonwealth took the place of formal religion for thousands of working people. War for the Soul of the Christian Nation deftly examines how well-resourced Social Gospel ministers' efforts to assert their authority over industrial affairs directly undermined workers' efforts to bring about social democracy in the United States.

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