ABSTRACT
The Social Gospel Movement was a reform movement in Protestantism in the United States of America that emerged in the late nineteenth century. After the American Civil War, Protestantism in the United States divided into two camps: one more conservative, which gave birth to the fundamentalist movement, and the other more liberal, which delivered the Social Gospel Movement. The social context for the latter was the dominance of the Gilded Age and the extremes of economic inequality fostered by the “robber barons” or “captains of industry.” This chapter describes the evolution and character of the Social Gospel Movement in the United States from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries (1885–1925). It describes the historical context, leaders, ideology, and shortcomings of the movement and argues that the movement was organic and developing. It had a lasting impact on the doctrine and practice of mainline churches, on ecumenical councils such as the National and World Council of Churches, and on social movements such as the Civil Rights Movement and liberation theology in the late twentieth century.
