Christopher H. Evans is Professor of History at Boston University and author of Histories of American Christianity: An Introduction and Liberalism without Illusions: Renewing an American Christian Tradition and editor of The Social Gospel Today, among other titles.
"Evans has made an important contribution both in his excellent
explanation of the origins and nature of the social gospel and his
strong case for seeing its influence extending well into the
twentieth century. In doing so, Evans writes primarily about
individual social gospel figures, many of them well-known, others
not as prominent, including women and African American ministers or
reformers. His brief discussions of these figures are the heart and
the strength of the book."
*Church History and Religious Culture*
"Christopher Evans has broken the Social Gospel out of the
theological and ecclesial boxes that have been used to contain and
domesticate its message. In The Social Gospel in American Religion
readers will appreciate the true scope of the Social Gospel witness
for over the last century and recognize its prophetic relevance and
urgent resonance for today's broken world in need of Good
News."
*Rev. Paul Raushenbush,Senior Vice-President for Public Engagement,
Auburn Seminary*
"Christopher Evans has done it again. In this finely-crafted study
one of the foremost scholars of the American Social Gospel weaves a
story that is at once breathtaking in scope and full of subtle
analysis. Anyone interested in the vital intersection of religion
and reform in modern United States history will want to read this
book."
*Heath W. Carter,author of Union Made: Working People and the Rise
of Social Christianity in Chicago*
"Evans provides a new and much needed history of one of Americas
most important religious movements. With seeds planted during the
Second Great Awakening, the fruits of the Social Gospel extend to
the end of the 20th century, and, in ironic ways, even into our own
time. Evans tells the story of a long Social Gospelfrom before the
Civil War to after Civil Rights to Barack Obama. This book should
become, in short order, the standard history of the Social
Gospel."
*Barry Hankins,Professor of History, Baylor University*
"Few subjects in American religious history invite
interdisciplinary inquiries and readerships as much as does the
Social Gospel. In the formal sense, it could be confined to a
narrative of liberal American Protestantism c. 19001920. But, in
the telling of Evans, its story begins a century earlier and,
associated with new names, continues its reach into the present.
Readers who have interests in the ethics of social reform, liberal
theology and its opposition, African-American and feminist studies,
rhetorical analyses of popular preaching, straight-out sociology,
and the larger American historical contexts of movements and
emphases like the Social Gospel will find reason to read this book
with care."
*Journal of Interdisciplinary History*
"In recounting the social gospels full story, Evans fights off
caricatures of the movement from the neo-orthodox left and defends
the social gospel against appropriations by the religious right.
The end result is a well-written and insightful addition to the
intellectual history of social Christianity in America."
*Mark T. Edwards,Fides et Historia*
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