About the Social Gospel?

Sorry, you're going to have to write your own paper....

The Social Gospel is how Universal Health Care got started in Canada with Tommy Douglas.

Check out the website of the PBS show, "NOW with Bill Moyers."

http://www.pbs.org/now/society

/socialgospel.html

From the website:

"Observing America in the late 19th century, British writer G.K. Chesterton called the United States 'a nation with the soul of a church.' At that time, the Protestant church began tackling social reform in what has become known as 'social Christianity,' or sometimes 'Christian socialism,' which was later adapted into the more moderate 'Social Gospel.'

"The movement was a response to the rapid urbanization, industrialization, and mass immigration of the late 1800s. Protestant clergymen became interested in securing social justice for the poor, partly as an attempt to expand the appeal of the Protestant church in cities, where the Roman Catholic church was especially popular among the large immigrant population. Traditionally, the Social Gospel has focused on issues as varied as poverty, unemployment, civil rights, pollution, drug addiction, political corruption, and gun control.

"The READER'S COMPANION TO AMERICAN HISTORY mentions three leaders of the Social Gospel movement: Washington Gladden, who 'sympathized with workers and urged them to seek unity in Christianity,' William Dwight Porter Bliss, who worked with the Knights of Labor and Socialist party, and Walter Rauschenbusch, a New York City Baptist minister who 'called for a democratic cooperative society to be achieved by nonviolent means.' . . .

"The Social Gospel rejected the conservative individualistic social ethic, instead developing a distinctively optimistic rationale as a result of 'the theological liberalism that emerged out of attempts to reconcile the Christian faith with evolutionary thought, historical-critical analysis of the Bible, philosophical idealism, and the study of other world religions.'

"The core of Christian progressivism was 'work in this world to establish a Kingdom of God with social justice for all.' The results of the movement were mixed. Although it helped liberalize organized religion and inspired many political and social reformers to look at reform in moral terms, the Social Gospel failed to win over many urban immigrants, and offered few long-term solutions to urban problems.

"However, the work of the progressive social reformers was not in vain. Organized social concern and many of the reforms it inspired have remained intact through the twentieth century and continue today, evident both in current social welfare programs."

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So: Considering that our current President began his working career as a community organizer in an urban area (Chicago), I'd say that the Social Gospel is alive and well. And. Rev. Jeremiah Wright isn't really that far afield from the Social Gospel at all.

Gospel means truth. Social gospel is sometimes considered to be what is know as common sense and accepted by those who use it.

Atheism is good. Atheism rocks. Atheism is wonderful. Praise be to ATHEISM. Hallelujah! I haved been saved by Atheism!

What?