The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement

by Janine Giordano Drake

In 1908, Unitarian pastor Bertrand Thompson observed the momentous growth of the labor movement with alarm. "Socialism," he wrote, "has become a distinct substitute" for the church. He was not wrong.

In the generation after the Civil War, few of the migrants who moved North and West to take jobs in factories and mines had any association with traditional Protestant denominations. In the place of church, workers built a labor movement around a shared commitment to a Christian commonwealth. They demanded an expanded local, state and federal infrastructure which supported collective bargaining for better pay, shorter work-days, and an array of municipal services. Protestant clergy worried that if the labor movement kept growing in momentum and cultural influence, socialist policies would displace the need for churches and their many ministries to the poor. Even worse, they feared that the labor movement would render the largest Protestant denominations a relic of the nineteenth century.

In The Gospel of Church , Janine Giordano Drake carefully traces the relationships which Protestant ministers built with labor unions and working class communities. She finds that Protestant ministers worked hard to assert their cultural authority over Catholic, Jewish, and religiously-unaffiliated working-class communities. Moreover, they rarely supported the most important demands of labor, including freedom of speech and the right to collective bargaining. Despite their heroic narratives of Christian social reform, Protestant reformers' efforts to assert their authority over industrial affairs directly undermined workers' efforts to bring about social democracy in the United States.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Christianity, Economics, Politics

328 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2023

Reviews

[K Kriesel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was presented to me as the history of mainline Protestant leaders squelching the Catholic labor movement. That's not at all an accurate description! So I'm disappointed from my first reading, but that's not a reflection on the book. The history of white Christianity and class in the Gilded Age is complicated, and the book is pretty complicated too.

That being said, this is an important and very well done book. I was struck by just how much of white Christianity at that time is the same as it is today, from low Church attendance to church leaders bending to the will of wealthy donors to conflicts between people who want religion to be a part of everyday life outside of church & people who misinterpret that as militant atheism. And as my personal library bends more towards the history of Catholicism in Chicago, I definitely want my own copy of this book.

I wish Drake had gotten more funding, as there are several maps throughout the book that would benefit from color rather than being grayscale. And I would LOVE an audiobook of this!

[Wes Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and thorough study of religion and labor studies for Gilded Age and Progressive Era America. Highly recommend for graduate and advanced undergrad courses.

[Thomas Mackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forces a rethink on origins of Christian Nationalism and the merger of conservative Protestant culture and partisan politics.

[Ashlee · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engrossing and thought-provoking read.