SOCIAL(IST)GOSPEL

There’s another Christian movement that’s changing our politics. It has nothing to do with whiteness or nationalism

Analysis by John Blake, CNN
Mon, November 13, 2023 at 6:03 AM MST·12 min read

Just days before he would lead an unprecedented strike against the Big Three automakers, Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, did something extraordinary.

Fain, a middle-aged, bespectacled man who could pass for a high school science teacher, was warning auto workers they would probably have to strike, citing resistance by automaker CEOs whose companies he said made “a quarter of a trillion dollars” in profits while they “nickel and dime our members every day.”

He then paused before saying, “Now I’m going to get personal.”

Fain started talking about his Christian faith. He cited scripture, including Matthew 17:20–21, where Jesus told his disciples that if they have faith the size of a mustard seed they can move mountains because “nothing will be impossible for you.” He said that for UAW members, organizing and making bold demands of automakers was “an act of faith in each other.”

“Great acts of faith are seldom born out of calm calculation,” added Fain, who often carries his grandmother’s Bible. “It wasn’t logic that caused Moses to raise his staff on the bank of the Red Sea. It wasn’t common sense that caused Paul to abandon the law and embrace grace. And it wasn’t a confident committee that prayed in a small room in Jerusalem for Peter’s release from prison. It was a fearful, desperate, band of believers that were backed into a corner.”

Fain’s faith did move a corporate mountain — three, to be exact. After a six-week campaign of strikes, the UAW reached a historic agreement with General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Chrysler-owner Stellantis that would give workers their biggest pay raise in decades. The victory (it still has to be ratified by UAW members) not only reinvigorated an emboldened labor movement in the US, it also marked the revival of another movement in America: the Social Gospel.

Fain’s sermonette was remarkable because labor leaders don’t typically cite the Bible in such detail to justify a strike. But they once did. Fain’s decision to blend scripture with a strike is straight out of the Social Gospel playbook.

Members of the Writers Guild of America join UPS Teamsters during a rally ahead of a possible UPS strike on July 19, 2023, in Los Angeles. - Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

The Social Gospel was a Christian movement that emerged in late 19th-century America as a response to the obscene levels of inequality in a rapidly industrializing country. Its adherents took on the exploitation of workers and unethical business practices of robber barons like oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, who, when once asked by a reporter how much money he needed to finally have enough, purportedly said, “Just a bit more.”

The Social Gospel turned religion into a weapon for economic and political reform. Its message: saving people from slums was just as important as saving them from hell. At its peak, the movement’s leaders supported campaigns for eight-hour workdays, the breaking up of corporate monopolies and the abolition of child labor. They spoke from pulpits, lectured across the country and wrote best-selling books.

The popular trend of people wearing WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) bracelets, for example, didn’t start off as Christian merchandizing. It was the slogan of a popular 1897 novel, “In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do,” written by the Rev. Charles Sheldon, a Social Gospel leader.

Fain’s sermonette underscores a trend that has largely gone unnoticed: The Social Gospel movement is making a comeback. Some may argue it never left.

When it comes to religion, stories about White Christian nationalism command most of the media’s attention today. But a collection of American intellectual and religious leaders are showing that there’s another type of Christianity that’s also shaping our politics, and it has nothing to do with Whiteness or nationalism.

These leaders include the UAW’s Fain, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, independent presidential candidate Cornel West, the Rev. William Barber II, the Rev. Liz Theoharis and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond. The most famous follower of the Social Gospel is the Rev. Martin Luther King, who was assassinated while helping lead a labor strike of sanitation workers.

All the above leaders are carrying on the torch of the Social Gospel in one way or another. They are using the Bible, as Social Gospel leaders once did, to argue in various ways that Christian deeds are more important than creeds and that unfettered capitalism “thrives on selfish impulses that Christian teaching condemns.”

Reverend William Barber speaks during an anti-poverty demonstration at the US Supreme Court in Washington on November 15, 2021. - Jemal Countess/Getty Images

It might sound like hyperbole to say that this resurgent form of the Social Gospel is changing our politics. But its proponents have helped reshape many Americans’ perspectives.

More Americans now believe that Big Tech monopolies are a growing threat to prosperity; more support a dramatic raise in the federal minimum wage; and more believe that government should help those least able to help themselves — whether it’s young people struggling with staggering student loans or the government sending money directly to families and small businesses impacted by the Covid pandemic. All these shifts in attitudes and policy reflect in part the influence of the Social Gospel.
Would Jesus go on strike?

Fain embodies this shift in thinking. He reached deep into the Social Gospel throughout the UAW strike, routinely deploying what one commentator called “strikingly Christian rhetoric.”

Christopher H. Evans, author of “The Social Gospel in American Religion: A History,” said he heard the Social Gospel in Fain’s UAW speeches.


“It sounds like there’s very much an emphasis on Jesus is for the worker, Jesus stands in solidarity with the laborers,” said Evans, a professor of the history of Christianity at Boston University. “That’s his consistent message and it runs through a lot of the tradition of the Social Gospel going back to the late 19th century.”

Mining companies used to employ child workers, called "breaker boys," to break large lumps of coal into smaller pieces and remove impurities. These young workers were photographed in the late 1800s in Kingston, Pennsylvania. - Library of Congress

There was once a “deeply pro-labor vein of Christianity” in the late 19th and early 20th century that galvanized powerful working-class movements, wrote Heath W. Carter, author of “Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago,” in a recent essay.

“For countless workers throughout American history, traditional faith and labor militancy have gone hand in hand,” said Carter, an associate professor of American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. “From the labor movement’s earliest days, workers insisted that they organized because the Bible told them so.”

Union-friendly newspapers brimmed with scriptural quotations. The Gospel of Luke supplied some perennial favorites: ‘Woe unto you that are rich! For ye have received your consolation’ (6:24) and ‘the laborer is worthy of his hire’ (10:7).”
The modern-day Social Gospel prophets

Other current leaders carrying the Social Gospel torch have helped shape debates around everything from health care and minimum wage to attitudes toward the poor.

Sen. Warnock, for example, cites Matthew 25, where Jesus says people will be judged by what they do for “the least of these,” to argue for expanding Medicaid to recalcitrant states. In doing this, he is walking in the theological steps of the Social Gospel.

When the Rev. Barber, the founding director of the Yale Divinity School‘s Center for Public Theology and Public Policy, ties issues like climate change, immigration and voter suppression to his Christian faith, he is evoking the Social Gospel.

“The same forces demonizing immigrants are also attacking low-wage workers,” he said in an interview several years ago. “The same politicians denying living wages are also suppressing the vote; the same people who want less of us to vote are also denying the evidence of the climate crisis and refusing to act now; the same people who are willing to destroy the Earth are willing to deny tens of millions of Americans access to health care.”

But perhaps the most surprising place to find the Social Gospel is in the work of an Ivy League professor who is changing the way we look at poverty in America. Matthew Desmond is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.” and “Poverty, by America.”

In his books Desmond argues that poverty is not the result of an individual’s moral failures but the result of a system in which “keeping some citizens poor serves the interests of many.” He also has said the US government has the resources to eliminate poverty.

Matthew Desmond, whose books include, "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City." - Amir Levy/The New York Times/Redux

“I want to end poverty, not reduce it,” he said in one interview. “I don’t want to treat it; I want to cure it.”

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Desmond is the son of a pastor. His books and interviews are filled with scriptural references that could be taken right out of a Social Gospel sermon from the late 19th century.

During another recent interview, Desmond said the moral outrage that’s characteristic of his work reflects his faith.

“I feel like often, throughout the Scriptures, when you see God getting really angry, it’s because some disadvantaged group is getting screwed,” he said. ”It’s like Isaiah 61:8 — ‘I, the Lord, hate robbery. I hate injustice. I love justice.’ This kind of righteous hate is something that I try to channel.”
How the Social Gospel differs from White Christian nationalism

If the Social Gospel was, and is, such a profound movement, why isn’t it better known today? And how does it differ from the most scrutinized form of Christianity in contemporary America: White Christian nationalism?

The second question is a tricky one, because it’s inaccurate to say that White evangelical Christians don’t have a tradition of social reform. In the 19th century, many White evangelical Christians fought for the abolition of slavery as well as women’s rights. Where many diverge from Social Gospel followers, however, is primarily in their attitudes toward poverty.

Many White evangelical Christians in the 19th century believed in a trickle-down spirituality — if individuals are saved, they will go on help the poor and transform society, said Evans, the Boston University professor. But the shocking explosion of poverty in cities of the Northeast US in the late 19th century made that belief seem inadequate.

Social Gospel advocates in the late 1800s spoke out against the economic inequities that helped create crowded urban slums like this one in the Five Points neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City, circa 1885. - Archive Photos/Getty Images

“What do you do when you’re faced with the tenements filled with children dying of contagious diseases, where you have mass poverty?” Evans said. “The (Social Gospel) leaders were saying that capitalism as an economic system created these issues, that wealth was concentrated in the hands of a very small number and it’s not trickling down to serve the poor. There is no social safety net, and no regulation of factories and sweatshops.”

Perhaps the best distillation between a Social Gospel approach and a White evangelical approach can be heard in the wry observation of the Brazilian theologian Dom Helder Camara. He once said: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
The future of the Social Gospel

For various reasons, the Social Gospel had gradually lost steam by the mid-20th century. The optimism embodied by its leaders seemed misplaced after the horrors of World War I. White evangelical culture grew in prominence. The mainline Protestant churches that carried, and still preach, its message began to lose members and influence.

But the prominence of people like Fain and other leaders who are carrying on the Social Gospel tradition prove that it remains relevant. They also exemplify a future where figures outside of traditional religious organizations — labor leaders, scholars, nontraditional pastors and other spiritual leaders — embody the Social Gospel message.

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain speaks during a rally in support of striking UAW members in Detroit on September 15, 2023. - Rebecca Cook/Reuters

“There’s probably going to be a number of more movements like the United Auto Workers where people apply Christianity toward questions being raised about labor, wealth and capital,” Evans says. “It (The Social Gospel) won’t have the institutional muscle it had before, but you could still have these voices and followers.”

The climate in contemporary America seems ripe for the Social Gospel message. After decades of decline, major unions, including the Teamsters, the Writers Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild, and others are flexing their muscle. Support for unions surged last year to its highest level since 1965. Inequality has soared to record highs. And a Pew survey last year found that a majority of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 had a negative view of capitalism.

It may be too much to expect the Social Gospel to return to its previous place of prominence. And the soaring optimism of old Social Gospel reformers may now seem as outdated as wobbly black-and-white silent films.

But what’s unsettling is that so many of the issues that early Social Gospel leaders battled are plaguing America again a century later. There a shocking concentration of wealth at the top, courts and corporations are crushing worker’s rights, and exploitive child labor — once seen as an appalling vestige of the past — has returned to parts of the US.

Fain’s UAW’s sermonette may have a moved a mountain, but there are so many more that remain.

John Blake is the author of “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”

Even Christians who are Democrats are abandoning the Social Gospel

Survey data show that church attendance, not party, is more likely to determine how Christians view the kingdom.

An unhoused man in Seattle. Photo by Steve Knutson/Unsplash/Creative Commons

October 6, 2022

By 

Ryan Burge

(RNS) — About a decade ago, the conservative commentator and radio show host Glenn Beck told listeners to “look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can.”

In essence, Beck was telling his followers to reject a strain of Christian theology that dates back at least 100 years in the United States: the Social Gospel.

Popularized by the Rev. Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist pastor, in the early 20th century, this theology focuses on issues such as poverty, exploitation, disease and hunger as the primary action items for the church. Instead of focusing on the individual problem of sin, Rauschenbusch and other advocates of the Social Gospel believed Christians should focus on reforming institutions in the United States to make the country more equitable and fairer for all people.

Do American Christians still embrace the core principles of that doctrine? Or do they agree with Beck?

“Views of the Social Gospel Among Christian Groups” Graphic courtesy of Ryan Burge

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RELATED: Are today’s seminarians tomorrow’s corporate leaders?

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Certain aspects of the Social Gospel still enjoy widespread approval. For instance, about 80% of Christians believe that “God instructs us to protect the poor,” and only 15% believe that “addressing social issues distracts people from achieving salvation.”

Other facets of the Social Gospel provoke more disagreement. While 61% of nonwhite evangelicals agree that “social justice is at the heart of the Gospel,” that sentiment is only shared by 36% of white evangelicals. About 3 in 5 white evangelicals — twice the rate of other Christian groups — agree with the statement “God is more concerned about individual morality than social inequalities.” 

Given that white evangelicals are outliers on a number of questions related to the Social Gospel, and white evangelicals’ tendency to vote for Republicans, it seems probable that their divergence from nonevangelicals’ views on social justice is more about political partisanship than about theological tradition. The data confirms that suspicion.

“Views of the Social Gospel, by Political Partisanship” Graphic courtesy of Ryan Burge

For instance, a Christian who is Republican is twice as likely as a Christian Democrat to believe that “building the kingdom of God on earth is only about bringing people to Christ, not changing social structures.” Two thirds of Democrats who are Christians believe that “social justice is at the heart of the Gospel,” while just 36% of independents and 35% of Republicans of the faith share that belief.

Given that Democrats are more likely to embrace tenets of the Social Gospel, it would be fair to believe that they are hearing these beliefs amplified in their churches, while Republicans are hearing more discussion of personal salvation and individual responsibility. 

To test that theory, I put together a data model to determine how religion interacts with political partisanship to shape people’s beliefs about the Social Gospel. This model only included respondents who identified with a religious tradition; the religiously unaffiliated “nones” were excluded. I controlled for age, income, education, gender, race and other basic demographic factors.

“God is more concerned about individual morality than social inequalities” Graphic courtesy of Ryan Burge

Clearly, Republican Christians, regardless of church attendance, are more likely to believe that individual morality is more important than societal inequalities. Church attendance only accelerates this belief, with more than half of Republicans who are weekly attenders agreeing on personal morality, compared with less than 40% of those who never attend.

Not much of a surprise. But for the Democrats, the data gets more interesting. The more that they attend church, the more likely they are to embrace a message of individual responsibility as opposed to societal sin.

If those on the left side of the political spectrum are attending churches that preach a strong version of the Social Gospel, those messages are not finding their way into the hearts and minds of the average liberal churchgoer. In fact, the data says just the opposite: The more Democrats go to church, the more they hold views on individual responsibility in common with Republicans.

That may come as a surprise to many progressive Christian communities and organizations that focus squarely on Social Gospel concerns like the Poor People’s Campaign, but there is no evidence to be found here that religious Democrats are more likely to focus on the problems that preachers like Rauschenbusch focused on during the Progressive Era.

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RELATED: Robert Putnam thinks religion could play a role in healing divisions

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Instead, American Christianity is being seen more and more as a vertical relationship with God as opposed to a horizontal relationship with those in the community.

Ryan Burge. Courtesy photo

(Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and author of “The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going.” He can be reached on Twitter at @ryanburge. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Ahead of the Trend is a collaborative effort between Religion News Service and the Association of Religion Data Archives made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation. See other Ahead of the Trend articles here.

ON THE SOCIAL GOSPEL IN CANADA SEE

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https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-religious-roots-of-our-free.html

 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2007/03/may-day-for-mackay.html

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Cooperative Commonwealth=Free Market 

CREATING A CHRISTIAN AMERICA: 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT NATIONALISM IN THE GILDED AGE AND PROGRESSIVE ERA 

by BLAKE WILLIAMS 

Bachelor of Arts, 2006 

Texas Christian University

Introduction

The United States, for the better part of its history, existed as a “Protestant Christian” nation. The creation and cultivation of this distinction began in the seventeent century with the immigration of English and Dutch Protestants to the New World. In the New World, these Protestant groups founded and administered colonies in seventeenth century through the eighteenth century, the Atlantic seaboard provided a laboratory for Protestant groups to establish “Christian states . . . informed by . . . God’scontinued guidance over his nation.”

The distinction of the United States as “Protestant” shaped many Americans’ perception of the greatness of the country, which Louis Snyder described as “messianism.” This meant, according to Snyder, that Protestants viewed their country as the pinnacle of civilization capable of transforming not only the destiny of the New World but also the destiny of the world. From the colonial era through the national era, the belief in messianism united colonial Protestants behind a strong “Protestant nationalism,” or the belief that the nation’s strength and national character stem fromembracing, promoting and protecting the Protestant Christian values of the country.Protestant nationalism derived from two interacting beliefs. The first, that thestrength of the United States stems from Protestant Christianity and the racial traits ofAnglo-Saxon race (this point would not be emphasized until immigration issues in theearly nineteenth century). The second, in order for the United States to maintain thatgreatness, Protestantism needed to be monolithic and completely ingrained in the sociocultural landscape of the country. This belief transcended denominational lines, despite differences in theological and liturgical styles, fueling Protestantism to keep America

 The English Puritan establishment, which gained prominence in the New England colonies following the transfer of Dutch and Swedish lands to England by 1664, established their territories as “holy experiments” with the goal of creating a society so faithful and a church so pure that its light would shine and transform the world. Within the colonies, the process of achieving a Godly society meant there was no room for dissention—not from other faiths and not from those within the purview of the Puritan church. In every colony, laws, customs, liturgy, social constructs and government bodies were created by religious elements to promote a unified and pure Christian society. Christian (which to them meant Protestant) and to promote its expansion into all corners of society.

In the nineteenth century, Protestant nationalism drove many endeavors, including the desire to expand the borders of the country to the Pacific Ocean. Dubbed “Manifest Destiny” in 1839 by John O’ Sullivan, the expansion westward took on mythic status in American society, thanks in large part to the writings of prominent clergy like Lyman Beecher, father of Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher-Stowe, and popular Americans like Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph. These works articulated the importance of American expansion as early as 1835 and shaped perceptions of the region as an “empire of mind, power and wealth” that would be a “glorious benefit” for the nation.

 The appeal to both religious and nationalist themes served western expansion well as manifest destiny gained widespread support by a majority of Americans. In the end, westward expansion, coupled with the social crusades against Mormons and Catholics, show that, despite the “secular” face of American society, the United States was, according to Richard Wolf, near “monolithic in its Protestant orientation and character.”

Beginning in the 1850s, the social and economic changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution weakened the Protestant grip on the country and, conversely, the strength of nationalist Protestantism. As society became more industrial and urban, moving away from the close-knit agrarian communities, Protestant churches failed in their duty to guide this transition. Instead, they remained inert and overly hostile to voices within their religious traditions calling for change. Eventually, the lack of action towards the socio-cultural changes in the industrial era created schisms in the major Protestant denominations (Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians). From the 1870s to the mid1880s, in fact, the gulf between those wanting to confront these changes and those that wanted to ignore them grew substantially eventually splitting denominations into “liberal” churches, which emphasized temporal salvation and an active clergy, and “conservatives,” who maintained the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and spiritual salvation.

In the years immediately following the Civil War, the divisions between Protestant groups deepened. By 1870, the nationalistic Protestantism that dominated the seventeenth through the early nineteenth century vanished. Yet the disconnect between society and the Protestant church would not last. In the late nineteenth century, Ohio Congregationalist Washington Gladden and New York Baptist Walter Rauschenbusch emerged to guide Protestantism back into the hearts of American society while pushing notions of Protestant nationalism into new directions.

In the 1880s, Gladden and Raushcenbusch articulated a theology that refocused colonial messianic nationalism in a nineteenth century context. These men argued that the United States had a special destiny to fulfill as the biblical “City on a Hill,” specifically that America was destined to usher in the kingdom of God.

 Yet social unrest, stemming from political and social clashes in many southern states, threatened America’s destiny. “City upon a Hill” is a phrase that derives from the “Salt and Light” metaphor found in the Gospel of Matthew, which calls the children of God to shine on the world and glorify the word of God for all. 

Not willing to give up on seeing the creation of a Christian America and the kingdom of God, Rauschenbusch, Gladden and their contemporaries articulated a national reform campaign based on “Christian obligations,” which emphasized that every Protestant had the duty to make the country more Godly and to emulate the good works of Jesus Christ to do so.

 In the late 1890s and early twentieth century, Charles Sheldon popularized Christian obligation with the motto “What would Jesus do?” helping fuel the “Social Gospel” movement, which combined Christ emulation with a program of social reform and reconstruction aimed at Christianizing the country.

This new dynamic between faith and society and the programs of reform it would spawn proved popular amongst Americans as social reform swept from coast to coast.

 In fact, liberalism would supplant conservatism and its doctrines of predestination as the primary theological doctrine well into the twentieth century. In the end, the push for social reform and the establishment of the Kingdom of God reignited a nationalistic commitment to the Protestant faith that would last through World War I.

In the nineteenth century, Protestant nationalism became an influential part in shaping the American experience at almost every level of society. Despite the appearance of a nationalistic Protestantism in everything from nineteenth and twentieth century Matt. 5.13-15 KJV (King James Version). In the American context, John Winthrop, governor and leader of the Massachusetts Bay Company, referenced the biblical term in a 1630 sermon he gave on route to their new home in the New World. In his famous invocation he pronounced that the new colony would be “a City upon a Hill” watched by world. Since Winthrop’s time, the term “City on a Hill” defined a special meaning for the birth, growth, and success of America as the preeminent country on earth. In the nineteenth century, Washington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch used the term to give an eschatological meaning to their vision of social reform. social reform to early twentieth century internationalism, scholarship defining and discussing, explicitly, Protestant nationalism is lacking. In fact, with the exception of Warren L. Vinz’s Pulpit Politics: Faces American Protestant Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (1997), Louis Snyder’s Varieties of Nationalism (1976), and Russell B. Nye’s The Almost Chosen People (1966), few works even give a name to Protestant nationalism.

What does exist and what ultimately influences the study of American Protestantism, are works that examine the broad concepts of Protestantism in America. In general, this type of scholarship populates the field of American Protestant history and holds many luminaries as Martin E. Marty, Sidney E. Mead, H. Richard Niebuhr, Robert T. Handy, Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and Randall Balmer and Lauren F. Winner.

 Each one of these historians offers insightful looks into Protestantism including theology social relevance, political significance and general histories on the development of Protestantism in the United States.

Scholarship on American Protestantism also exists in the form of regional studies. Works on Northern and Eastern Protestantism represent the most oft-studied areas of Protestantism in America with Willem A. Visser ‘T Hooft, Charles Howard Hopkins and Martin E. Marty devoting countless pages describing the emergence and importance of the various socio-religious movements, including liberal theology and Social Gospel. Charles Howard Hopkins’ The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism,1865-1915 (1940) in particular offers insightful looks at society in the northeast and, in great detail, explains the path of the social gospel from a placid ideology to a dynamic source of social reform. 

Scholars of Southern and Western Protestantism, likewise, offer detailed insights into the dynamics of Protestantism. Works by Southern religious historians C. Vann Woodward, Glenn Feldman, Beth Barton Schweiger and Donald Mathews offer excellent insights into the relationship between faith and society and how that dynamic defined the social and racial structure in the South. Similarly, Ferenc Morton Szasz, Sarah Barringer Gordon, and other Western historians examine how Protestantism shaped and defined relationships between non-Protestant groups, like Mormons, Native Americans, Chinese immigrants and Catholics. More importantly though, these historians analyze how eastern Protestantism shaped and influenced development of the West, ultimately bringing the region into line with the rest of the country.

Combining these various approaches to studying American Protestantism, this work will show that behind the movements of reform, expansion, exclusion and discrimination lays a very specific goal of nineteenth century Protestants—the creation of a Christian America. More importantly, it will show that driving the Protestant quest for a Christian America is a salient and potent Protestant nationalism that united the mainline (and dominant) Protestant groups in a common desire to protect and promote that idea. In order to accomplish this task, it is important to trace the development of nineteenth and twentieth century Protestant nationalism, including the environment in which it developed and the various forms it took after the Civil War. 

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The Bible verses dividing Washington: How Matthew 25 became a political litmus test

(RNS) — 'He told me that Matthew 25 was about individuals, and not nations,' Sen. Raphael Warnock said, referring to Speaker Mike Johnson. 'The text actually says nations.' Warnock added: “It's a very narrow individualistic faith, and I think it has consequences for the kind of policy you end up with.”

FILE - Migrants seeking asylum line up while waiting to be processed after crossing the border Wednesday, June 5, 2024, near San Diego, Calif. (AP Photo/Eugene Garcia)

Jack Jenkins
July 1, 2026 

RNS

WASHINGTON (RNS) — When Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia walked into Speaker Mike Johnson’s office last month, the two men already held starkly different political views. By the time the meeting ended 30 minutes later, it was clear they also sit on different ends of the Christian spectrum.

Warnock, a Democrat and pastor of a prominent Black church, had raised questions in an interview with The New York Times a few days prior about whether the speaker’s Republican politics reflected his professed faith. The senator described himself as a “Matthew 25 Christian,” referring to a biblical passage that features Jesus telling his followers a parable in which “all the nations” are judged by how they care for the “least of these” — described as the hungry, the stranger and the imprisoned, among others. How, Warnock had told the Times, do you “say a long prayer, hold hands with your fellow legislators and then cut a trillion dollars out of Medicaid?”

In response, Johnson, a Southern Baptist from Louisiana, called for the confab and offered a diametrically opposing interpretation of Matthew 25.

“He told me that Matthew 25 was about individuals, and not nations,” Warnock told Religion News Service, referring to Johnson. “The text actually says nations.”

Warnock, a member of the Progressive National Baptist Convention who holds a Ph.D. in systematic theology and recently published a faith-themed book, added: “It’s a very narrow individualistic faith, and I think it has consequences for the kind of policy you end up with.”

The Johnson-Warnock meeting, which the Democrat has otherwise described as “respectful,” added to the brewing debate over Matthew 25 that has been building over the last year, pitting mainline pastors, Black protestants and the pope against evangelical politicians put on the defensive amid outspoken religious criticisms of President Donald Trump’s policies.

Sen. Raphael Warnock, center, speaks from the steps of the U.S. Capitol during a rally against the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” June 10, 2025. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)
RELATED: Warnock, declaring ‘spiritual crisis,’ urges public, private sectors to help meet needs

Matthew 25 itself is hardly unheard of among Democrats. Former Vice President Al Gore, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have all publicly cited it in the past. But the passage received a moment of global recognition in November, when Pope Leo invoked Matthew 25 after he was asked by reporters about the president’s immigration policies.

The Bible, Leo quipped, “says very clearly: at the end of the world, we’re going to be asked, ‘how did you receive the foreigner?’”

When a reporter for Migrant Insider asked Johnson in February if he had any response to Leo, Johnson insisted Matthew 25 was directed at individuals, “not to the civil authorities,” and later published a lengthy post on X expanding on his reasoning.

The post proved divisive. It was celebrated by evangelical conservatives such as author Allie Beth Stuckey and Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, while more than 40 Catholic Democrats in the House signed a letter that amounted to a theological rebuke of Johnson. The Rev. William Barber II, a prominent anti-poverty activist and Protestant, called for Johnson to participate in a public theological debate about immigration.

How Johnson, who has not attended seminary or pursued degrees in theology or biblical studies, arrived at his interpretation is not clear. Representatives for the speaker declined multiple requests for an interview on the topic, and his precise take on Matthew 25 does not appear to be universally held within the SBC, Johnson’s denomination. The SBC’s congregation-focused structure generally precludes uniformly conscripting specific Bible interpretations in a formalized way, and a spokesperson for the denomination deferred to the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the group’s political arm. Asked about the passage, an ERLC spokesperson told RNS the group does not “have a position” on the interpretation of Matthew 25.

Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., takes the oath to be the Speaker of the House at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

But there have been many interpretations over time, and other evangelical thinkers have offered takes similar to Johnson’s, albeit with different twists. In an email to RNS, Pastor Robert Jeffress, a longtime Trump supporter and prominent Southern Baptist pastor in Texas, argued that, while there are “many passages in the Bible that encourage care for those who are unable to help themselves,” Matthew 25 “is not one of them.” Instead, he insisted the “least of these” is a reference to “a specific group of Jewish evangelists” mentioned in the Book of Revelation.

Judith Gundry, an evangelical scholar and New Testament professor at Yale Divinity School, told RNS in an email that there are Bible verses that urge followers of Jesus to aid the vulnerable. But mention of the “least of these, my brothers and sisters” in Matthew 25, she argued, is a reference to disciples who are “fleeing persecution.”

Gundry insisted her interpretation is “not peculiarly Evangelical,” and noted a biblical passage can have political implications regardless of how different scholars determine its context. But Heath Carter, a professor of American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary, said the broader debate over Matthew 25 may reflect “deeper, longer-standing divides” among U.S. Christians that date back at least a century.

On one side of the theological chasm, he said, are those who believe Christianity is “oriented around the salvation of individual souls” and that “the way that you change society is by changing every soul within it.” Their de facto opponents, however, hold that “inequality and social problems spring from structural or systemic roots” and argue that “part of what it means to be a faithful Christian in the modern world is to fight against inequality and its structural forms.”

Carter said Christian concern about broader structural issues surged in the aftermath of the Civil War and eventually culminated in a movement known as the social gospel, which became popular in the early 20th century. The social gospel, which stressed the threat of societal sin and the need to care for the poor, is credited with playing a role in the passage of the New Deal. Decades later, Civil Rights icon the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — whose pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta is now filled by Warnock — said he was a “profound advocator of the social gospel.”

However, even the social gospel movement did not fall neatly along religious lines.

“Back in that day, evangelicals were social gospelers in many cases,” said Carter, who authored the book “Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago.”

The Gospel of Matthew. (Photo by John Snyder/Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

Others see Johnson’s interpretation of Matthew 25 as evidence of Trump’s influence. “It’s just striking to see these interpretations that now completely exempt the actions of government from religious or even ethical obligation towards (the) less fortunate,” said John Compton, a Chapman University professor and author of the book “The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving Their Neighbors.” “This idea that the individual should never act through government, or that the government should never be the vehicle for compassionate action toward others — I don’t think you really find that very much prior to the Trump years.”

Another example of Republican politicians challenging faith leaders on their interpretations of Matthew 25 came up in March. At a congressional hearing on the Department of Homeland Security’s Minnesota deportation efforts, the Rev. Mariah Tollgaard, a United Methodist minister in St. Paul, read a statement criticizing the president’s immigration policies and mentioned Matthew 25. In response, GOP Rep. Michael Cloud, a former communications director at an evangelical megachurch, brandished a Bible and argued that “Christ didn’t say” to “lobby your government,” that taxes are coercive and Christian “charity” is ultimately voluntary.

Cloud’s office didn’t respond to questions about his remarks, but Tollgaard, denied time to respond in the hearing, told RNS by email that the congressman’s framing “flattens” Scripture.

“In the Bible, God’s people are instructed to build structures of shared responsibility — laws about gleaning, Jubilee debt release, and care for the stranger — that are not optional but are understood as expressions of covenant love, what we might today call the common good,” she wrote. “And even if one wanted to argue that caring for those in need should be the work of individuals, in a representative democracy our government is precisely the means by which people, acting together, shoulder that responsibility.”

Tollgaard added: “Matthew 25 is not a bootstraps story about self‑optimization; it is Jesus’ stark reminder that God’s judgment is revealed in how a community treats those who are hungry, sick, strangers, or imprisoned.”

It is unclear whether Cloud, Johnson and other conservatives who read Scripture like they do will popularize their interpretations of Matthew 25. Warnock said he is not looking to get into a “back and forth Bible study” about Scripture because he is “not interested in living in a theocracy.”

But as a pastor, he felt an obligation to push back. Warnock still questions the faith of fellow lawmakers like Johnson who pray before passing legislation such as last year’s sweeping, GOP-led domestic policy megabill, which Warnock and others have argued will ultimately cost millions access to healthcare. It was an act, the Senator suggested, that ignores the Bible’s call to care for the poor.

“Religion just ends up being one tool in their political project,” Warnock said. “I don’t think it’s about the religion.”

A TikTok Jesus promises divine blessings and many worldly comforts

A scholar of American religion explains how a new phenomenon of Jesus images on TikTok is tapping into the prosperity gospel, a Christian belief that God will reward faith with this-worldly comforts.

Jesus images on social media promise divine rewards for today's fast-paced age. (TikTok)

November 16, 2023

By 

Brandon Dean

(The Conversation) — The TikTok profile Daily Believer (@believerdaily) has 70 videos with computer-generated Jesuses looking directly at the viewer, beseeching them to stop scrolling and watch the next minute’s worth of content.

All these Jesuses are long-haired and bearded, recalling artist Warner Sallman’s ubiquitous 1940 painting “Head of Christ.” Some wear the crown of thorns, some look alarmingly like the actor Jared Leto. Nearly all promise a surprise or “good news soon” in exchange for the viewer liking, commenting “Amen” or sharing it with their friends and family. With this digital outreach, the Daily Believer has gained, as of Nov. 13, 2023, 813,200 followers and over 9.2 million likes.

As a scholar of religion in the U.S. and its intersection with popular culture, I have been studying the ways American Christians use media and popular culture to perform religious work and evangelical outreach for the past 13 years. I argue that this TikTok phenomenon, in which viewers are promised good luck for sharing, liking and commenting on videos of a computer-generated Jesus, is close to what is known as the prosperity gospel – that is, a Christian belief that God will reward faith with this-worldly comforts, like health and wealth.

Computer-generated Jesus

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If they do, they will receive a blessing within an hour. If they do not, computer-generated Jesus issues a thinly veiled threat of damnation by quoting Matthew 3:10, which has John the Baptist saying, “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

It is a TikTok chain letter – one whose creator can be monetarily compensated, by TikTok, between 2 cents and 4 cents for every 1,000 views. For example, “Welcome Jesus into Your Home” could have earned the creator $900 from TikTok views alone, with the possibility for additional money earned on sites like Facebook Reels.

It is simple and effective. While the Daily Believer’s views are dwarfed by TikTok megastars like socialite Kylie Jenner and social media personality Khaby Lame, its engagement percentages are much higher, receiving some form of engagement from about one out of every four viewers.

Whether or not there are religious motivations underlying the Daily Believer’s desire for viewer engagement, there are monetary benefits for sure. The TikTok Creator Fund pays creators who have over 10,000 authentic followers based on the number of views, comments and sharing.

Faith equals wealth and health

Preacher T.D. Jakes attends the grand finale Woman Thou Art Loosed! Homecoming Day 2 at Georgia World Congress Center on Sept. 22, 2022, in Atlanta, Ga.
Marcus Ingram/Getty Images

Religious and monetary motivations are not mutually exclusive. In fact, their union is key to one of the more popular recent developments in American and global Christianity – the prosperity gospel, a subsection of Charismatic Christianity that says God will ensure followers’ material wealth and happiness as long as they believe in God.

The closest nonreligious analogy to the Daily Believer’s content is the chain letter where the recipient is promised good luck for forwarding and curses for breaking the chain. Such letters had their heyday in the mid-20th century as paper letters and in the late 1990s and early 2000s as emails and social media posts.

Two of the United States’ most famous preachers, T.D. Jakes and Joel Osteen, teach that individual faith in God will be rewarded by God in the form of material wealth and health.

However, the Daily Believer further simplifies this formula. Viewers don’t really need to have a specific set of Christian beliefs to participate and benefit. All that they need to do is to say “I believe” and share the content with friends and family.

Turning likes and shares into cash

This lack of denominational-specific beliefs allows for the widest possible engagement with a wider Christian community.

The TikTok videos can appeal to a spectrum of Christian groups that may have theological, ethical and social disagreements.

Additionally, the Daily Believer’s requests for social media engagement is analogous to the prosperity gospel’s idea of tithing. In the prosperity gospel, tithing – the donation of a portion of your income to the church – is framed as “seed faith,” a monetary investment to demonstrate a person’s faith, and lack of faith will be punished as surely as faith is to be rewarded.

Seed faith and engagement with the Daily Believer’s TikTok videos have the same ritualistic function – give a little time, money or effort to get even more material rewards. They also both serve to make the person behind the request wealthier or increase their cultural clout.

Warner Sallman’s portrait of Jesus, ‘Head of Christ.’
Uncle Bobbit/flickr, CC BY

By framing these requests as coming directly from the Son of God, not the influencer or content creator, the Daily Believer has made engagement with its social media religious work, which comes with a promise of divine reward in the here and now. It has transformed like-farming – the social media phenomenon of asking for viewer engagement – into the word of God.

Use of Jesus’ image

At the same time, it is difficult to see the Daily Believer’s content as having a missionary or outreach function. It seems aimed at those who would already consider themselves Christian and offers little in the way of persuasion or explanation of why someone should be a Christian.

The Daily Believer is not the only TikTok profile engaged in a type of “smash that like button if you love Jesus” content production. Within the larger phenomena of #ChristianTikTok, there are multiple profiles engaged in theological discussion and doctrinal issues. There are even more profiles that forgo discussion in favor of performing praise and worship.

The use of Jesus’ image as the deliverer of the message is more unique.

But the Daily Believer, with its digital Jesus and its bare-bones gospel of “Believe,” serves as an example of a new expression of an ancient religious motivation – the securing of this-worldly health, wealth and reward in exchange for following the will of the deity or deities.

(Brandon Dean, Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Iowa. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)