Just Immigration and the Social Gospel

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Authors

Blankenship, Anne M.

Issue Date

2020

Volume

21

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Journal Article

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Research Projects

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Abstract

This essay reconsiders the nation’s current immigration problems by examining how social gospel leaders faced the country’s first immigration laws based on the standards they devised and asks who, if any, exemplified the heart of the social gospel in relation to immigration. It focuses on four leaders of the social gospel: Washington Gladden, the so-called Father of the Social Gospel; Walter Rauschenbusch, the movement’s most prominent theologian; Josiah Strong, a leader of the social gospel most often, if perhaps unfairly, remembered for his proclamations of Anglo-Protestant superiority; and Sidney Gulick, a missionary and social activist. While immigration was a major issue in the United States then and now, scholars have given little attention to the relationship between the social gospel and positions on immigration policy. The essay argues that while founders of the movement like Gladden and Rauschenbusch did not live up to the movement’s potential in regard to immigration, leaders like Strong and, to a much greater degree, Gulick did.|Keywords: social gospel, immigration, Walter Rauschenbusch, Washington Gladden, Josiah Strong

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Rabbi Myer and Dorothy Kripke Center, Creighton University

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1941-8450

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