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The Bulletin THEOF THE CONGREGA BULLETINTIONAL LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES SECOND SERIES | VOL. 11 NO. 3 | 2015 5 From the Director 6 Redeeming the American Dream: The Gilded Age Gospel Of Social Salvation 17 The Social Gospel and the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch, Henry Hugh Proctor, and Georgia Harkness 23 Union Made 28 The Last Puritans: Mainline Protestants and the Power of the Past; Dr. Kenneth Minkema Interviews Peggy Bendroth 1 COVER First Congregational Church, Atlanta, Congregation with Rev. Henry Hugh Proctor RIGHT Marble sign , Congregational House. Photograph by: Leise Jones Photography The Bulletin is a journal, published three times a year by the Congregational Library and Archives, covering the history and significance of the Congregational tradition. To respond to articles in this issue, email us at [email protected]. The Bulletin (ISSN 0010-5821). Copies are sent to all members. Memberships are: $325 sustainer; $200/$150 supporter dual/individual; contributor $80/$50 dual/individual; $25 student. Reprints of this issue are available. Write or call Congregational Library and Archives, 14 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108; 617-523-0470 ext. 230; or email [email protected]. Printed in the U.S.A. The Congregational Library and Archives strives to enliven a tradition of care for the world’s future by preserving and interpreting the stories of the past and to serve anyone desiring to learn more about one of the nation’s oldest and most influential religious traditions and has been since its founding in 1853. The Library is located just down from the Massachusetts State House in Congregational House at 14 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts. TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 From the Director 6 Redeeming the American Dream: The Gilded Age Gospel Of Social Salvation by Norman Erlendson 17 The Social Gospel and the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch, Henry Hugh Proctor, and Georgia Harkness by Christopher Evans 23 Union Made by Heath Carter 28 Minkema Interviews Bendroth THE AMERICAN CONGREGatIONAL ASSOCIatION THE CONGREGatIONAL LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES BOARD OF DIRECTORS CHAIR SECREtaRY TREASURER Charles Hambrick-Stowe Richard Elliott Stephen Silver Robert Bachelder Norman Erlendsen Nicholas Iacuzio Frederick Balfour Mark Gabrielson S.C. Campbell Lovett Christopher Bartel Stephen Gray Elizabeth Nordbeck Mary E. Biedron Richard Harter Marjorie Royle Francis J. Bremer James Hopkins Barbara Brown Zikmund EMERITUS Richard H. Taylor Harold Worthley STAFF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR DEVELOPMENT ASSIStaNT ARCHIVIST Margaret Bendroth Joanna Albertson-Grove Cristina Prochilo LIBRARY DIRECTOR DIGItaL PROJECT ASSOCIatE LIBRARIAN SPECIALIST/WEBMASTER Tom Clark Steven Picazio Robin Duckworth DIRECTOR, NEW ENGLAND DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT ARCHIVIST HIDDEN HISTORIES Cary Hewitt Jessica Steytler James F. Cooper DIGItaL ARCHIVIST Sari Mauro 4 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Margaret Bendroth FROM THE DIRECTOR I SUPPOSE ALL OF US HAVE HEARD THE which made a profound mark on American society comment at some time: “Thank goodness we’ve and American church life. Congregationalists like “evolved” beyond the sins of the past. Whenever Washington Gladden were central figures in its I see a handicapped ramp on a building or an progress and spread, and the denomination was African-American baseball player, I emphatically profoundly affected by the movement’s soaring agree, and I feel genuine gratitude for all those ideals and deeply biblical vision. We can say that who struggled to make it so. But I am also wary of this is one more area where Congregationalists self-congratulation. We are not looking down from made an impact far beyond their modest numbers. a high rung on some moral ladder. We are not the I hope that this issue of the Bulletin, bringing first to spot social evil and inequality. you both cutting-edge scholarship and food for thought, inspires you as well. This issue of the Bulletin focuses on the Social Gospel, a movement now over a century old, 5 REDEEMING THE AMERICAN DREAM: The Gilded Age Gospel of Social Salvation Norman Erlendson James Truslow Adams coined the phrase tough times but has grown stronger as it continues “American Dream” in the 1930s. He defined the to inspire reform movements dedicated to removing Dream as “the vision of a better, deeper, richer life unjust restrictions that deny the promise of a better, for every individual, regardless of the position in richer life to all citizens regardless of religion, race or society which he or she may occupy by the accident of gender. birth. It has been a dream of a chance to rise in the economic scale… unhampered by unjust restrictions… The American Dream has been the and the hope of bettering the physical conditions inspiration and rallying cry of protesters and social of living, and of lessening the toil and anxieties of reformers throughout our history. The Social daily life.” 1 Adams’s catchphrase was new, but the Gospel movement of the late 19th century was an idea was not. The concept of an American Dream attempt to preserve the promise of the American was seized upon by other writers and has been Dream for “the least of those who lived among traced back to the Puritan dream of making New us” during America’s Gilded Age. Its leaders saw a England “a city upon a hill” and to the Preamble baser metal beneath the nation’s glittering surface. to the Constitution.2 Adams saw the Dream as They shined a light on the grim faces of millions of waxing and waning at different times in American working poor for whom the American Dream was history. He thought it was in eclipse during the truly an impossible dream. Great Depression. But Adams was confident that GROWING PAINS the Dream would eventually reemerge stronger The Social Gospel movement began as a than ever and advance toward greater realization for Christian response to the political and economic more citizens. The Dream not only survived those 6 forces that drastically transformed America in with photographs that became the basis of a the decades between 1860 and 1900. This was an bestselling book, How the Other Half Lives, (1890). era that saw the rise of big business and big cities. Riis was the first to expose the nation to the Those who lived through it witnessed America plight of its working poor. It was a revelation to undergo the greatest changes in its history. In a the Better-Off-Half of American society, which mere 40 years, the America that was a nation of up to that point had largely turned a blind eye to small towns and small farms became the world’s the slum-dwellers who were on their very door greatest industrial power. The nation’s population step. Middle class Americans who lived together doubled, its Gross National Product quadrupled in their own homogeneous neighborhoods, were and the size of its cities exploded. The percentage shocked and shamed into action “by intrepid men of people living in cities increased from 25% to and women who plunge for a time into the life of 40%. Between 1850 and 1900 New York grew from the lower classes and return to write books about 500,000 to 3.5 million, Philadelphia from 120,000 this unknown race that lives in the next block”.4 to 1.3 million, and Chicago went from a mere 30,000 to become America’s second largest city Washington Gladden (1836-1918) and with 1.7 million residents. By 1895 the American Walter Rauschenbucsh (1861-1918) were among economy was dominated by giant industrial the first to recognize the desperate plight of corporations that only came into being after a rapidly growing underclass of wage earning the Civil War. They were run by moguls whose industrial workers. Gladden was the pioneer personal fortunes approached the billion dollar who wrote Working Men and Their Employers mark, and whose lifestyles rivaled or exceeded in 1876. Thirty years later Rauschenbusch wrote, those of the fabled royal families of old Europe. Christianity and the Social Crisis. It was the single These titans of American Industry and Finance most influential book produced by the Social lived in the spotlight of the press, and were Gospel movement. It was the product of ten years regarded as national heroes. But their fortunes of ministering to the poor in the Hell’s Kitchen were made possible by the millions of men, section of New York City, followed by ten years of women and children whom they employed to work theological reflection on the social implications in their mines and factories 12 to 14 hour days, of Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God. six or seven days a week for a mere 3 to 5 dollars He came to believe that America was facing its per week. “Profits were enormous against meager greatest social crisis. He argued persuasively that wages—never before have the rich been so rich the well-being of laboring families and democracy and the poor so poor—an imbalance that helped 1 itself were put at risk by the new industrial order percent of the population by 1890 to own as much as the remaining 99 percent put together.”3 The Never before have the rich been crushing poverty, the appalling living conditions, so rich and the poor so poor and miseries associated with life in squalid, disease-ridden tenements were all documented by Jacob Riis in a series of public lectures illustrated “ ” 7 Most disturbing to them was the powerlessness of workers and their realization that the traditional American value of honest, hard work leading to a better, richer life could no longer be taken for granted as it had been in previous generations. THE WAY WE ONCE WERE The celebration of free labor and the American work ethic was a popular theme in early America.
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