How Did Washington Gladden Influence Society

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Primary Source review #2 The Social Gospel Washington Gladden (1836-1918) was a leading American Congregational pastor and very early in its existence, a leader in the Social Gospel movement. He held pulpit positions in New York and Massachusetts. He was also one of the leading members of the Progressive Movement, serving for two years as a member of the Columbus, Ohio city council and campaigning against Boss Tweed as acting editor of the New York Independent. Gladden was one of the first leading U.S. religious figures to support unionization of the workforce; he also opposed racial segregation. He was a prolific writer, with 40 books to his credit, as well as a number of hymns. One of his greatest works for the Social Gospel movement…show more content…
As Conrad Cherry (1995) showed, when the Social Gospel fell out of favor in the pulpits of mainline churches, its influence continued in Protestant divinity schools. It remained a vital force there well into the second half of the twentieth century. When the young Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived at Boston University in the 1950s to study theology, he found the Social Gospel tradition alive and well. He then used the theology of the Social Gospel to build the foundations of his own arguments for the civil rights of blacks. King was assassinated at the time that he was beginning to turn his focus to questions of economic justice, but like his predecessors in the late nineteenth century, he too combined a theological passion for the freedom of America’s blacks and for the equitable treatment of America’s workers. Martin Luther king believed in the” triple evils of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM are forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle. They are interrelated, all-inclusive, and stand as barriers to our living in the Beloved Community. When we work to remedy one evil, we affect all evils. To work against the Triple Evils, you must develop a nonviolent frame of mind.” ( TheKingCenter.org) This is the work of the social…show more content…
We can see clearly the negative affects it had on Christianity, in which Gladden believed. We can also see the great affect the social gospel has in our day among racial segregation, poverty, and communism. W The Social Gospel has a worthy place in history as it helped to reform and shape the face of our

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