Content provided in partnership with
A Kingdom on Earth: Anglo-American Social Christianity, 1880-1940
Canadian Journal of History, Dec 1997 by Jeffrey Cox
A Kingdom on Earth: Anglo-American Social Christianity, 18801940, by Paul T. Phillips. University Park, Pennsylania, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. xxvii, 303 pp. $55.00 U.S. (cloth), $16.95 U.S. (paper).
Paul T. Phillips has placed in the middle of his book a photographic "gallery of social Christians" from Britain, the United States, and Canada. Peering at the reader with looks of deadly earnestness are Bishops B. F. Westcott, Charles Gore, and William Temple; novelists Thomas Hughes, Charles Kingsley, Mary Ward, and Ralph Connor; theologians F.D. Maurice, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Reinhold Niebuhr; social theorists T.H. Green and R.H. Tawney; politicians Henry George, Norman Thomas, and J.S. Woodsworth; and an array of clergymen including Hugh Price Hughes, Samuel Barnett, Washington Gladden, George D. Herron, and S.D. Chown.
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
Phillips's argument rests on the principle of classification conveyed by the photographs. Although not usually treated in the same context because of the conventions of national and denominational historiography, these social Christians shared concerns that were communicated through an international network of publishing and lecturing. Most of them were clergymen, or lapsed clergymen, of the mainstream Protestant churches: Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Congregationalist, with the occasional Quaker. A few were prominent lay Christians, or in some cases lapsed Christians. The churches of Scotland are notably lacking for some reason, and the churches of Australia and New Zealand beyond the scope of this study.
Critics of the social Christians accused them of promulgating opinions that were pale reflections of secular thought, but Phillips believes that their ideas were rooted in theological commitment. One of the strengths of the book is his determination to take seriously liberal Protestant theology. The diverse group of social Christians held in common the belief that the modern world, with its excesses of individualism, has brought on a new social crisis which the churches have a collective obligation to ameliorate. In the nineteenth century, the crisis was seen as one of urbanization; in the twentieth century, class conflict or war. The theological starting point for such discussions has been the incarnation, the doctrine that God was actually present on earth in the human form of Jesus. This Divine presence continues, in some way, in the church. This is orthodox doctrine, but social Christians have taken the argument one step further. In their view, the church's primary mission is not the Roman Catholic approach of maintaining its social and political position, or the evangelical revivalist approach of recruiting individuals into the church, but social reform and social amelioration. Even in denominations with extreme individualist traditions such as the Baptists, social Christians have been for the most part collectivists, markedly friendly toward the state.
Phillips is interested in the secular influence of social Christians over nearly a century, but when he attempts to measure influence his principle of classification dissolves into hundreds of individual cases. That these were influential people he can establish beyond doubt, but the collective nature of their influence appears to be beyond his grasp. Many people admired social Christian novels such as Mary Ward's Robert Elsmere and Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, but few could agree on a political party to carry out their ideas. Social Christians were notorious for their vagueness. They acted in dozens of political parties and hundreds of social reform organizations, and were badly divided over issues ranging from temperance to pacifism. Those who attained power (and Phillips puts into that category both Lloyd George and Stafford Cripps) appeared to improvise when in office very much like other politicians. Archbishop William Temple stands as an exemplar of social Christian influence. A man of undoubted leadership skills in high circles in Britain, he appears with hindsight to have had few specific achievements to his credit.
Stressing social Christian influence on politics and public policy, Phillips pays less attention to their influence in the churches, the most popular voluntary institutions in the English speaking world. He notes the well-known paradox that members of the theologically liberally Congregationalist denomination voted by large margins against Franklin D. Roosevelt while the southern Baptists, hardly touched by social Christianity, voted for the collectivist New Deal. Why have prosperous, socially conservative denominations consistently paid the salaries of collectivist social critics? It appears reasonable to assume that one consequence of the apparent lack of fit between congregation and clergy has been to deter the partisan political polarization of religion, with its disastrous consequences for the churches in continental Europe and Latin America.
This is a topic that could lead in many other directions, including an examination of the influence of social Christianity on the mainstream foreign mission boards. In 1914 the Rev. C.F. Andrews of the Anglican Cambridge Mission to Delhi, a disciple of the Rev. B.F. Westcott, delivered a sermon in Lahore Cathedral. Speaking in the heart of the British imperial presence, he declared that the presence of Christ in India might now be found with Gandhi, in the Indian National Congress. Few other missionaries followed Andrews's social Christian logic that far, but many others were willing to follow his reasoning part of the way, and throw themselves into schemes of social amelioration rather than evangelism.
Find Research Guides for:
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »