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Monday 22 October 2012
Is Obama the 'wrong' kind of Christian?

There was a time when Obama’s brand of Christianity would have been understood by millions of Americans, historians say.

The Social Gospel and progressive Protestantism dominated the American religious square from the end of the 19th century up to the 1960s. At times, the traditions blended together so seamlessly that it was hard to tell the difference.

The Social Gospel rose out of the excesses of the Gilded Age in the 1880s, when urban poverty spread across America as immigrants crammed into filthy slums to work long hours in unsafe conditions.

Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist pastor in a New York slum, urged the church to take “social sins” as seriously as they took individual vices. Churches began feeding the poor and fighting against other social ills.

“The notion that religious people should be about feeding the poor and helping the homeless is a carryover of the Social Gospel,” says Charles Kammer, a religion professor at Wooster College in Ohio. The Social Gospel was adopted by many Protestant churches in the late 19th and early 20th century, says Bass, the church historian. Some of the Social Gospel churches grew popular because they provided the poor with everything from English classes to sewing instructions and basketball leagues.

“The first American megachurches were liberal, Social Gospel urban churches,” Bass says.

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  6. littlecitywitch reblogged this from azspot and added:
    AWESOME article, do give it a read!
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  9. hipsterlibertarian said: Ah yes, he’s so interested in fighting social sins like poverty that he bombs the poor of Pakistan right out of existence. They’ll never be impoverished again! -_-
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