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• social gospel
  social gospel

  noun

  a movement in America, chiefly in the early part of the 20th century, stressing the social teachings of Jesus and their applicability to public life.
• Social Gospel
  Social Gospel

  A religious movement that arose in the United States in the late nineteenth century with the goal of making the Christian churches more responsive to social problems, such as poverty and prostitution. Leaders of the movement argued that Jesus' message was as much about social reform as about individual approaches to salvation (see also salvation).

social gospel

American  

noun

Protestantism.

1. a movement in America, chiefly in the early part of the 20th century, stressing the social teachings of Jesus and their applicability to public life.

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Social Gospel Cultural  

1. A religious movement that arose in the United States in the late nineteenth century with the goal of making the Christian churches more responsive to social problems, such as poverty and prostitution. Leaders of the movement argued that Jesus' message was as much about social reform as about individual approaches to salvation (see also salvation).

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Etymology

Origin of social gospel

First recorded in 1915–20

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

social gospel Social Gospel

In her book, “Toward a Womanist Ethic of Incarnation: Black Bodies, the Black Church and the Council of Chalcedon,” Marshall Turman critiqued the Morehouse social gospel tradition, even interviewing Butts.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 6, 2024

His priestly parsimony came with a social gospel.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 9, 2020

Reaching him on his family’s Alabama farm in the nineteen-fifties, it introduced him to the social gospel.

From The New Yorker ● Apr. 3, 2019

Churches were moved to intervene through their belief in the concept of the social gospel.

From Textbooks ● Dec. 30, 2014

After all, King himself was speaking, first and foremost, as a preacher, fulfilling an emerging mission of religion: preaching the social gospel of justice and equality.

From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson

“It was the Baptists who preached a kind of Social Gospel that captured my attention and imagination,” he said.

From New York Times ● Jan. 2, 2021

Here he encountered the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch, an early-20th-century proponent of the Social Gospel, and fell in with a group of civil rights activists.

From New York Times ● Aug. 25, 2020

It was brought to life in the Social Gospel movement of the early 20th century and the Catholic Church’s long-standing commitment to social reconstruction.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 10, 2020

The early 20th-century Social Gospel movement put Protestant Christians at the forefront of activism on public health, labor, and wealth inequality—and offered a religious justification for action.

From Slate ● May 15, 2016

“If you weren’t so pretty, and hadn’t that delightful air of having just embraced the Social Gospel, you’d be a prig,” he said to himself.

From Man and Maid by E. (Edith) Nesbit