ABSTRACT
Introduction to Chapter 2: This chapter is concerned with the importance to the history of religion in America at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth centuries of the Social Gospel Movement, which was largely a Protestant response to the ill-effects of immigration, industrialization, and urbanization. It explains how social, cultural, and economic conflicts challenged not only how Americans viewed themselves but also how they viewed the purpose of religion. American cities attracted people from abroad and from the rural areas of America with economic opportunities not available to them at home, but cities also posed the specters of poverty and exploitation that challenged their bodies and souls. To this religion could not remain indifferent. The major response was the Social Gospel, which took many churches beyond the salvation of souls. Before addressing the Social Gospel, however, the chapter provides a brief coda to our discussion of the Third Great Awakening, the passing of the revival’s principal figure, Dwight L. Moody, and the revival’s turning to two new and quite different religious movements, the Social Gospel and fundamentalism.
