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Reinhold Niebuhr's ‘Christian realism’ was in significant part a rejection of the pacifism and optimism of the Social Gospel movement in the United States. Even though Niebuhr had initially been sympathetic to the movement, he came to dismiss its belief that the realization of the kingdom of God, proclaimed by Jesus, could be expected in the foreseeable future. He thought the movement's great confidence in human progress was naiïve, and that its belief in education's power to foster a law of love (and thus to eradicate the sin of selfishness from individuals and institutions) lacked a proper understanding of original sin. Recognizing the force of Niebuhr's criticisms of the Social Gospel movement, this chapter sets out to ask whether Niebuhr's thought is as effective a riposte to another and much more recent strand of thought in Christian ethics: the ecclesially centered ethics of Radical Orthodoxy. Measuring Radical Orthodoxy's thought against Niebuhr's is given added interest by the fact that Radical Orthodox thinkers themselves — and especially John Milbank — have explicitly and critically engaged Niebuhr, and have described what they see as the ‘poverty’ of his idea of Christian realism for contemporary ethics.

This chapter considers whether religion has a place in the American workplace. It is often argued that the presence of religion in the office and other work areas creates conflict and division and that employers and employees would be far better off if it were barred from the work environs. While religion in the workplace may be disruptive and divisive, the question is whether it should it be prohibited. This chapter provides a historical background on the presence of religion in the American workplace, with particular emphasis on forces that have introduced religion to the workplace such as the Social Gospel Movement and the Faith at Work Movement. It also examines the conflict caused by the introduction of religion to the workplace, especially the one involving Christians who are motivated by their religious beliefs to spread the faith among their fellow workers.

This chapter deals with the involvement of religious groups in politics. The topic bears a close relation to the previous chapter; what religious groups should do politically depends partly on what should count as good reasons for officials and citizens to make up their minds. Of special relevance are conclusions that citizens are properly influenced by religious and other comprehensive views and that legislators properly take such judgments of citizens into account. The chapter seeks to answer the questions surrounding religion and politics.

The Episcopal church had no firm policy on how the riches of the wealthy elite should be spent philanthropically, but it during the Gilded Age it was entering a period of considerable and often heated debate as to what form charitable giving might best take and who was responsible for the plight of the poor. The Social Gospel movement, in which Episcopalians participated actively, was one major theological and institutional response to these questions. Another philanthropic issue of the day was the provision of cultural institutions like museums and libraries. Episcopalians were not unique among American Christians in discovering the religious potential of the material world. Wealthy Episcopalians donated or made available to the public their private collections of art, or funded public cultural institutions. The culture of urban America was manifestly enriched by their benevolences under the aegis of a church that had room for both the prophetic judgments of the Social Gospel and the sensual opulence of the Gospel of Art.

Transatlantic legal comparison informed many early 20th-century American legal reforms. Such comparativism became intertwined with developments in American internationalism, shaped by the social service orientation of the Social Gospel movement. Alongside the growing popularity of scientific conceptions of legal practice and social evolution, the American legal community underwent a process of professionalization that created a set of institutions that became the core aspects of exporting “American law” abroad—without acknowledging their own internal diversity and domestic contestations. This professionalization began to merge with the missionary view of development to lay the groundwork for an emphasis on exporting American law. The chapter presents early Chinese observations of American law, and the complicated reactions of disillusionment and self-interested misrepresentation that arose from the idealized missionary presentation of American society.

The Gilded Age was fraught with paradox. On the one hand, it was a period of economic centralization and integration; on the other, it was a period of social fragmentation and isolation. This paradox—this inevitable conflict between economic integration and social anomie, between the rise of big business and the ruination of smaller enterprises—runs through most of the major regulatory and legislative changes in the United States during the late nineteenth century. This chapter examines the changes at all levels of government during the Gilded Age. It looks at the turmoil in the agricultural sector of the economy, the rise of the Social Gospel movement, regulation of railroads and public utilities, antitrust laws and meat inspection, urbanization and state and local political economy, and patronage at the local level.