Social Gospel in Black and White - (Studies in Religion) by Ralph E Luker (Paperback)

About the Book

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

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

[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"