For twenty years I have sprinkled discussions of the black social gospel into various books while imploring scholars that we need a book on this tradition. Finally I applied the imploring to myself, because the greatest legacy of the justly renowned social gospel movement is not the one recounted in books about Walter Rauschenbusch, Washington Gladden, Jane Addams, the Federal Council of Churches, John Ryan, and all that.
A black tradition of the social gospel arose during the same period as the famous white one. It had its own identity and integrity, while sharing important things with white progressive Christianity. Martin Luther King Jr. was steeped in it. His role models were second-generation black social gospel leaders, and their role models were black social gospel founders. The things that defined the black social gospel made it distinct, controversial, and historic. This tradition has an unsurpassed legacy in American religious history by virtue of its role in the civil rights movement. Yet it was ignored for decades and lacked almost any literature until recently.
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