The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885-1912

by Ralph E. Luker

Overview

In a major revision of accepted wisdom, this book, originally published by UNC Press in 1991, demonstrates that American social Christianity played an important role in racial reform during the period between Emancipation and the civil rights movement.
As organizations created by the heirs of antislavery sentiment
foundered in the mid-1890s, Ralph Luker argues, a new generation of black and white reformers—many of them representatives of American social Christianity—explored a variety of solutions to the problem of racial
conflict. Some of them helped to organize the Federal Council of Churches in 1909, while others returned to abolitionist and home missionary strategies in organizing the NAACP in 1910 and the National Urban League in 1911. A half century later, such organizations formed the institutional core of America's civil rights movement. Luker also shows that the black prophets of social Christianity who espoused theological personalism created an influential tradition that eventually produced Martin Luther King Jr.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807847206
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	03/02/1998
Series:	Studies in Religion
Edition description:	1
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.03(d)

About the Author

Ralph E. Luker, adjunct professor of history at Morehouse College, is author of the Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement and editor of the memoirs of Mary White Ovington.

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface
1. Introduction
Part I. The Decline of Nineteenth-Century Racial Reform
2. Christianizing the South
3. The Redemption of Africa
4. In Search of Civil Equity
5. The Savage End of an Era: Barbarism and Time Unredeemed
Part II. The Racial Mission Renewed
6. Education for Service
7. Urban Mission
Part III. Civil Wrongs, Civil Rights, and Theological Equations
8. A Prophetic Minority at the Nadir
9. A Prophetic Minority from the Nadir to the NAACP
10. Theologies of Race Relations
11. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliographical Essay
Index

Illustrations

Atticus G. Haygood
Mohonk Mountain House
White missionaries with African converts to Christianity
Henry Codman Potter
Henry McNeal Turner
George Washington Cable
Albion W. Tourgée
Ida B. Wells
Francis Greenwood Peabody
Booker T. Washington
Robert C. Ogden, William Howard Taft, Booker T. Washington, and Andrew Carnegie
Reverdy Ransom
Atlanta's First Congregational Church and Henry Hugh Proctor
Boston Guardian cartoon caricaturing Booker T. Washington and Northern allies
W. E. B. Du Bois
Washington Gladden
Josiah Strong
Josiah Royce
Edgar Gardner Murphy
Thomas Dixon, Jr.
Harlan Paul Douglass
Walter Rauschenbusch

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Massive, thoroughly documented, clearly written, [and] judicious.—Church History



Broadly conceived and meticulously researched, this is the most thorough study yet done of religion and racial reform in the Social Gospel era. Luker has made a major contribution to a reinterpretation of American religious history that makes race continuously (and not just intermittently) a central theme in the story.—David W. Wills, Amherst College



Historians of American racial reform in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have treated this movement largely in secular terms. Through prodigious research in manuscripts and dusty tracts, Ralph Luker has enriched and corrected that literature by a detailed account of the role of social gospel leaders and footsoldiers in the work of black social amelioration, education, and social protest. He presents the social gospel spokesmen in all their diversity, black and white, conservative and liberal, enthusiastic and agonizing. After Luker's work, the black-white struggle over social justice will never be the same, particularly in its intellectual and attitudinal dimensions.—Louis R. Harlan, University of Maryland at College Park



[Luker] has given the proper prescription to cure the astigmatism of the historians looking at the social gospel and racial reform, and provided a gold mine of references for more extensive digging.—Christian Century



Luker makes a good case for broadening the definition of the Social Gospel to include the white and African-American reformers who struggled for solutions to racial strife and injustice. . . . Superb.—American Historical Review

Editorial Reviews

[T]his is the most thorough study yet done of religion and racial reform in the Social Gospel era.

David W. Wills, Amherst College

Massive, thoroughly documented, clearly written, [and] judicious.

"Church History"

ÝLuker¨ has given the proper prescription to cure the astigmatism of the historians looking at the social gospel.

"Christian Century"

ÝM¨akes a good case for broadening the definition of the Social Gospel to include the white and African-American reformers.

"American Historical Review"

ÝT¨his is the most thorough study yet done of religion and racial reform in the Social Gospel era.

David W. Wills, Amherst College

He presents the social gospel spokesmen in all their diversity, black and white, conservative and liberal, enthusiastic and agonizing.

Louis R. Harlan, University of Maryland at College Park

Massive, thoroughly documented, clearly written, Ýand¨ judicious.

"Church History"

"[T]his is the most thorough study yet done of religion and racial reform in the Social Gospel era.

David W. Wills, Amherst College"

"He presents the social gospel spokesmen in all their diversity, black and white, conservative and liberal, enthusiastic and agonizing.

Louis R. Harlan, University of Maryland at College Park"

"Massive, thoroughly documented, clearly written, [and] judicious.

"Church History""

[Luker] has given the proper prescription to cure the astigmatism of the historians looking at the social gospel.

"Christian Century"

[M]akes a good case for broadening the definition of the Social Gospel to include the white and African-American reformers.

"American Historical Review"

From the Publisher