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lNFORMATlON TO USERS This manumpt has been re- fiwn the micrdilm master- UMI films the text directly ftom the ofighal ar copy submitted. Thus, some and dissertation -8s am in Cypemiter face, while athers may be fiany type of computer printer, The quality of this repmdudh is d.pend.nt upon the qualii of the copy submittad. Broken or indistinct mnt cdored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print Meedthrough, substandard margins, and imptoper alignment can adversely affectreproductioH. In the unlikety event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there an missing pages, these will be noted- Also, if unauthorized wpyright material had to be moved, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e-g.,maps, drawings, charts) are reprockrced by sectbning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sectWts with small overlaps. Photographs induded in the original manuscript have beerr reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6- x W bladc and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. Bell & Hawdl IWbrmation and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 USA C(FIGHTINGTHE GOOD FIGHT": SALVATION, SOCIAL REFORM, AND SERVICE IN THE UNITED CHURCH OF CANADA'S BOARD OF EVANGELISM AND SOCIAL SERVICE, 1925 - 1945 A thesis submitted to rhe Faculty of Emmanuel College and the History Department of the Toronto School of Theology. In partial fulfhnent of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Theology awarded by Victoria University and the University of Toronto Ian McKay Manson Winnipeg. Manitoba February, 1999 0 Ian McKay Manson, 1999 National Library Bibliot h&que nationale 1*1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bib t iog raphic Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaON K1AON4 OttawaON K3AON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive Licence allowing the exclusive pennettant a la National Library of Canada to Bibliotheque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prster, distriibuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette these sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format electronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriete du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protege cette these. thesis nor substantial extracts f?om it Ni la these ni des extraits substantieIs may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent Stre imprimes reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Board of Evangelism and Social Service and Its Antecedents CHAPTER If Visions and Realities of a New Age CHAPTER III Evangelism and the Yearning for Religious Renewal CHAPTER IV The Search for a New Economic Order CEIAfTER V Christian Philanthropy and Social Service CHAPTER VI Theological Reformulation and the Realities of Wartime CHAPTER VII Christian Faith and the Task of Social Reconstruction CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY Since the publication of Richard Allen's classic study. The Social Passion. in 1971, the Canadian social gospel movement has been analyzed in a variety of interesting and provocative ways. Over the last quarter century, several important studies have maintained that the thinking of many social gospellers was characterized by the belief that human progress tvas inevitable, that the human race was capable of perfection, and that a properly transformed and redeemed society really could mimr heaven on earth. According to this view, Canadian Protestant social reformers optimistically believed that the Kingdom of God could easily be established on earth if Jesus' way was followed. However, historians conclude. Christian teachings all too frequently ended up mirroring the dominant cultural assumptions of the age. Canadian liberal Protestantism therefore became captive to the forces of modern culture it sought to challenge and was thus rendered incapable of transforming the secular forces which increasingly dominated Canadian society. This line of thinking has been developed with greatest clarity in works by Ramsay Cook. David Marshall. and P. Travis Kroeker. In his seminal study. The Regenerators, Cook suggests that, in seeking to salvage Christianity from the hvin threats of Danvinian science and historical criticism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, liberal Christians transformed their faith "into an essentially social religion." Many Canadian social gospellers replaced affirmations about God's transcendence with an insistence upon God's imminence, thereby substituting "theology, the science of religion" with "sociology, the science of society." Christianity's traditional preoccupation with questions of personal salvation and the nature of God's relationship with humanity was gradually replaced by a single- '~amsa~Cook, The Reocnerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian hglish Canada Foronto: University of Tomato Press, 1985). 4. minded concern with social salvation and a new focus on the ways people should relate to each another. According to Cook, this new theology had ironically become captive to the forces ot secularization because it insisted "that Christianity was not separate from modem culture but rather should be adapted to it" and "that a society in which God was imminent was one that could eventually become the kingdom or God on eartkW2 David Marshall also argues that Protestant theology "declined" during this period and became increasingly tied to the notion of social progress. In Secularizing the Faith: Canadian Protestant CIergv and the Crisis of Belief. 1850- 1940,he contends that social gospellers led the Protestant churches on a "march of progress towards the Kingdom of ~od"~Under the influence of Iikral theology and the various biographical studies of Jesus' life which appeared at the turn of the twentieth century. many liberal ministers abandoned notions of God's mysteriousness and interpreted scripture in a different way. Clergy increasingly emphasized "economic, social and political themes in their sermons" and articulated a theology in which the "moral and social improvement of society became the chief article of Christianity, while aItruism became a Christian's highest ~alling.'~Canadian social reformers ignored mounting evidence that such dreams were unrealistic. and were unable to abandon their "stagnant and optimistic assumption that Canada was a progressive society on the path to realizing the Kingdom of' ~d"' Finally, P. Travis Kroeker's recent analysis of social gospel theology in Christian Ethics and Political Economv in North America also concludes that this 'David B. Marshall. Secularitin- the Faith: Canadian Protestant Clerov and the Crisis of Belief. 1850-1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto Ress, 1992). 4. 'Ibid., 69. Ibid ., 228. religious approitch was far too optimistic. Kroeker rejects Ramsay Cook's secularization thesis because it "represents the social gospel agenda as a strategy for saving the relevance of Christianity in the face of an intellectual crisis" rather than seeing "the movement as growing out of a substantive religious vision of reality.'6 Nevertheless, Kroeker believes that this version or Christianity failed because it accepted "too many or the assumptions of the modem ideology of liberal progress." He suggests the social gospel naively asserted "that the Kingdom of God is gradually being realized through the instruments of human control over nature and history. and that all that remains to be done is to democratize the instruments of production. since their morally disordered organization lies at the heart of the social ~risis."~Thus he concludes that the social gospel represented "a positivist laith that a modem scientific society Ied by enlightened managers in the service of cooperative community can overcome natural and social alienation-"' Students of modem Protestant theology will bc we11 familiar with such arguments, for they echo many of the criticisms that so-dled "neoathodox" and "Christian realist" theologians leveled at the social gospel during the middle decades of this century. As the eminent American church historian Robert Handy recently remarked, one can observe "in the mid-1990s a treatment or events and writings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in part through the prism of the 1950~."~Indeed, several notable similarities can be seen between the judgments found in these three monographs and the theological critiques advanced by critics of the social gospel nearly fifty years ago. Cook, Marshall. and Kroeker repeat the 'P. Travis Kroeker. Chris tian Ethics and Politid Economy in North America @loorreal & Kingston: McGiII-Queen's University Press. 1995). 21. 'bid,. 22. %kt T. Handy, review of The &Pins of Walter Rauschenbusch's Social Ethics, by Donovan E. Smucker, Church Histow 65 (June 19%): 306- standard assertion that the social gospel's neglect of many central traditional themes in theology weakened the church and contributed to the decline of Protestant Christianity. Each volume also emphasizes the idealistic aspects of social gospel thought and suggests that social gospellers failed to offer a realistic analysis oC the contemporary situation. Finally, all three books regard

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