Link, Arthur S., and Richard L. McCormick. Progressivism. The American History Series, eds. John Hope Franklin and Abraham S. Eisenstadt. Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1983.  

Claiming that in general the progressives “sought to improve the conditions of life and labor and to create as much social stability as possible” (2), the authors point out that because of differences in ideology and methodology, progressivism was not a unified movement.  Link and McCormick are less sure about “who” the progressives were, not being willing to limit them to the common people recapturing power from big business—the earliest interpretation of Benjamin DeWitt, Vernon Parrington, and Charles and Mary Beard, or western and southern farmers—the target of John Hicks and C. Vann Woodward. Nor does the 1950s consensus view convince, especially Richard Hofstadter’s, who said the progressives were the backward, selfish, moralistic urban middle class aiming for a “status revolution.”  Instead, they emphasize that the ordinary people had tremendous clout in the progressive movement, but that the programs and goals of the progressives were much more diverse than earlier studies have contended.

In the late 19^th century, social reformers made limited gains because of entrenched conservative principles: a defense of weak government, a denial that U.S. class conflict existed, and loyalty to 2-party politics.  Progressive forces continued to develop by the turn of the century, linked by certain shared ideals.  They agreed that corporate industrialism was a permanent feature of life, thus the goal should be to improve, not destroy, big business.  Progressives were also optimists, believing science could make the world a better place.  The authors also state that evangelical Protestant values infused the movement.  Finally, they believed that public and private interventionism was necessary to bring about desired reforms.

Focusing on specific reform movements in order to identify particular traits of progressivism, Link and McCormick divide their analysis into two sections—a transformation of politics and government, and social justice and social control.  They see Teddy Roosevelt’s second term as the time when the old system of trusts tied to inefficient government began to fade.  They argue T.R. was both a conservative and a progressive, and label him and Woodrow Wilson as “radical” in their energy and vision.  Roosevelt sparked progressivism at a national level by inspiring public opinion about reform and by creating an administration that could solve social problems.  Progressivism reached its apogee under Wilson, so that “politics and government at every level were transformed even more profoundly than they would be by the New Deal.” (47)  The authors hold that progressive political reforms made a strong impact on American life, especially by making Americans “better” voters.  Unfortunately, though new administrative boards and interest groups composed of “experts” had largely replaced the old machine politics, big business still played a hand in politics by often controlling those boards.

Link and McCormick argue for a limited success of social reform in the early 20^th century.  Though many laws were passed regarding housing and working conditions especially, the belief that laws would fundamentally change behavior was naïve. Carrying out those laws continued to be problematic.  Professionals also instituted a wide range of reforms in the pre-war years, including medical innovations, education, and urban improvements.  Unfortunately, these reformers also used a great deal of social coercion in their attempts to make life better—and in the process, argue the authors, often ignored social justice.

WWI damaged the optimism of the progressives in particular and society in general, and combined with a post-war malaise, the movement sputtered.  An overall lack of realism about the complexity and divisiveness of American society and the interplay between industrialism, government, and science, hurt the progressive cause.  Perhaps, argue the authors, the goals were too lofty and they were doomed to failure almost by definition.  This highly readable survey of the progressive era is not only concise and balanced in its argument, but also provides a clear overview of the historiography of its subject.

Gary Scott Smith, The Search for Social Salvation: Social Christianity and America, 1880-1925. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000.

          We, as historians, face an interesting challenge at the dawn of the twenty-first century.  Specifically, we must strive to move beyond simplistic, mono-causal notions of events, personalities, movements, and eras of the past.  The problem is, we typically agree that history is much more complex than the way in which it was presented by some of the historical pioneers from the previous century.  What that means, practically, is that we often struggle to make “original” contributions to a given historical topic; instead, we more often make “explicit” the complexity that we assume is true of much of American history.  Such is the case with The Search for Social Salvation—it may not break new historical earth, but it does uncover more completely many explicit assumptions about the complex nature of social Christianity between 1880 and 1925.

          Smith acknowledges in his introduction that he is building on the work of many previous scholars who rejected the simplistic two-party model that social Christianity could be divided easily between conservatives, those who believed that individual salvation and otherworldliness must be stressed, and liberals, those who emphasized social action and a public transformation of society.  He argues that the coalition of Christians committed to remedying the ills of the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was much broader than previously thought, was committed to action and not just criticism, and that, because the level of cooperation was so high in the war against the evils of the American social system, social Christianity “was as widespread, long-lasting, and influential as any other religious social reform movement in American history” (11).

          For those unfamiliar with the scholarship of the social gospel, Smith provides a helpful summary of key historiographical issues in his first chapter, concentrating on the participants and motives of those involved in social Christianity.  As a window into the diversity that was social Christianity Smith delineates various individuals and groups involved over the decades.  Included in his list is political reformer W. T. Stead, Social Gospel novelist Charles Sheldon, and Walter Rauschenbusch—an advocate of Christian socialism.  To show the involvement of both women and blacks, he explores the work of Vida Scudder and Reverdy Ransom.  The Men and Religion Forward Movement of 1911-1912 illustrates an evangelical component in social Christianity.  The author believes one of his most significant contributions to the study of social Christianity is his examination of two relatively ignored groups: businessmen, including John Wanamaker, John J. Eagan, Arthur Nash, Nelson O. Nelson, and Samuel Jones, and contemporary conservative critics of the movement, especially those within the Presbyterian Church.  Of course, the danger of recognizing such a “complex, multifaceted, and ideologically pluralistic movement” means, as Smith himself realizes, that “social Christianity cannot be neatly delineated or easily analyzed” (37). 

          A number of the biographical pictures, like those of Stead and Sheldon, offer very little that is new to the assessment of social Christianity, but do remind us of the range of individuals and ideals involved in the movement.  The concept of “Christian socialism” espoused by Rauschenbusch, for example, shows how remarkable it was to make social Christianity work, when so many fled almost automatically from association with such a concept.  More of a concern is the author’s occasional tendency to catalog rather than analyze these individuals’ involvement in the social gospel.  For example, instead of an extended critical assessment of the role of blacks in social Christianity, Smith “lists” the various associations, publications, activities, and so forth, tied to them, and leaves it to the reader to determine how and why such a list proves their contribution to social Christianity (230-232).

          The sections on the involvement of businessmen and evangelicals, both of which move beyond listing to a more substantial analysis, are a major contribution to our understanding of the complexity of social Christianity.  Smith shows that a considerable number of businessmen, who almost by definition would seem opposed to the ideals of the social gospel—ideals that if taken seriously might challenge the extent of their profit—were challenged and changed by the principles of the social gospel and therefore adopted a “golden rule” approach to business.  He asserts that by the 1920s “the Golden Rule was widely heralded as the basic principle of business” (305).  Similarly, the author illustrates that The Men and Religion Forward Movement was an example of evangelicals cooperating with the social Gospel agenda.  Ironically, as he shows in his section on conservative critics of social Christianity, this “Christian-based” social gospel movement was successful and unified when the specific religious components remained undefined, and split finally when the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s insisted that religion be defined.

          Though The Search for Social Salvation is sometimes inconsistent in its level of analysis, it nonetheless is a strong introduction to the study of social Christianity and contributes to our understanding of the complexity of this movement.