There was a profound difference between Christian Socialism and the so-called “Social Gospel.” Janine Giordano Drake explains these differences in her new book The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement. Drake argues that Protestant reformers associated with Mainline Protestantism and the Federal Council of Churches undermined workers’ efforts to bring about social democracy in the United States.
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This was a fantastic episode, and I’ll definitely need to get a copy of Janine Giordano Drake’s book. It touches on several areas related to my current research project, and I’m curious about how the socialist cooperative commonwealth that she discusses compares to the more republican cooperative commonwealth of George McNeill, Terence Powderly, and the Knights of Labor.
Tangential to the podcast discussion, would you happen to know if anyone has done work about the Christian Advocate? Its editor, James Monroe Buckley, plays a bit part in my project.
Hi Phil: Not aware of any work on the Christian Advocate or Buckely. Drake’s book was a deeply satsifying read. Thanks for the comment.
Thanks, John. Buckley has a dated, non-critical, biography, a type of work that shows up too often in the bibliography that I’m compiling. I suppose that I shouldn’t complain too much (my project is an updated biography of someone whose only book-length treatment is an early 20th century hagiography), but I’m surprised that someone like Orville Platt, a Senate leader at the turn of the 20th century, hasn’t had a biography in over 100 years. I’ve been looking at his early political career, spent in local elective office during the turbulent 1850s, and it’s a far more fascinating story than the brief gloss that appears in his biography.
I’ve started reading Drake’s book, but real life has kept me from making much progress. I look forward to things settling down and being able to spend more time with it.