ABSTRACT
Social Security is generally described as a "social insurance" program. This chapter presents the essential idea, as propounded by one of its founding fathers, and address arguments about its validity. The "social gospel" was an important strain in this movement. Social gospelers stressed salvation not of individual souls but of society. Environment, they argued, was an important cause of sin, hence social reform was imperative. The social gospel movement increasingly looked to the State as the only sure means of effecting the needed reforms. On the whole, the mainstream media reception to the Social Security Act was friendly and respectful, not to say supine. The vast majority of media reporting of the Act's passage and provisions simply repeated the administration's depiction of the program. During the 1936 presidential election campaign, Social Security burst into prominence in the national consciousness amid bitter controversy.
