Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition

In the early 1880s, proponents of what came to be called “the social gospel” founded what is now known as social ethics. This ambitious and magisterial book describes the tradition of social ethics: one that began with the distinctly modern idea that Christianity has a social–ethical mission to transform the structures of society in the direction of social justice. This book describes the founding and development of social ethics as a discourse in the realms of the academy, church, and general public. It analyzes the three major traditions of social ethics, explains their revisions and offshoots, interprets evangelical and neoconservative alternatives, and delineates the various confessional and cultural standpoints from which religious thinkers have construed the social meaning of Christianity. Almost from the beginning, “social ethics” named a specific academic field and a way of thinking about Christian ethics that transcended the academy. Dorrien pays attention to both meanings, bringing together prominent academic voices and important exponents of social Christianity, including pastors, movement activists, and self–styled “public intellectuals”. Engagingly written by one of the field′s leading figures, this book is set to become the definitive reference guide to the history and development of social ethics.

Acknowledgments. Plates. Introduction. 1. Inventing Social Ethics (Francis Greenwood Peabody, William Jewett Tucker, and Graham Taylor). 2. The Social Gospel (Washington Gladden, Josiah Strong, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Harry F. Ward). 3. Lift Every Voice (Reverdy C. Ransom, Jane Addams, and John A. Ryan). 4. Christian Realism (Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, John C. Bennett, and Paul Ramsey). 5. Social Christianity as Public Theology (Walter G. Muelder, James Luther Adams, John Courtney Murray, and Dorothy Day). 6. Liberationist Disruptions (Martin Luther King Jr., James H. Cone, Mary Daly, and Beverly W. Harrison). 7. Disputing and Expanding the Tradition (Carl F. H. Henry, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, Michael Novak, and Jim Wallis). 8. Dealing with Modernity and Postmodernity (Charles Curran, James M. Gustafson, Gibson Winter, Cornel West, Katie G. Cannon, and Victor Anderson). 9. Economy, Sexuality, Ecology, Difference (Max L. Stackhouse, Dennis P. McCann, Lisa Sowle Cahill, Marvin M. Ellison, John B. Cobb, Jr., Larry Rasmussen, Daniel C. Maguire, Sharon Welch, Emilie M. Townes, Ada María Isasi–Díaz, María Pilar Aquino, and David Hollenbach). 10. Borders of Possibility: The Necessity of “Discredited” Social Gospel Ideas. Index.

Gary Dorrien is the Reinhard Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University. He is the author of 14 books and over 200 articles that range across the fields of ethics, social theory, theology, philosophy, politics, and history.