The History and Future of "Social Christianity": A Conversation with Professor Heath Carter
On the History of Social Christianity and its Importance in our "New Gilded Age", What's dying and What's emerging in the Church, and Being an Evangelist for Institutions
This is the tenth and final podcast, and podcast-related post, in this series. Next week’s post will announce the focus for the next series.
Have you ever sensed something true and beautiful in the words and witness of the likes of Martin Luther King Jr, Cesar Chavez, or Dorothy Day – Christians who believed that the gross inequality in America was sinful; that the inequality had more to do with sinful societal structures than with individual behavior; and that Christians bear responsibility for resisting and reforming those systems? Have you ever wondered about the history of this theological tradition which scholars call “social Christianity ”, and what knowing that history can teach us about how to keep the tradition alive today?
I talked about these matters with Heath Carter, Associate Professor of American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary and its Director of PhD studies. Heath is the author of numerous books and articles, including Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago (Oxford University Press, 2015). We talked about: his call as a professor writing at the intersection of Christianity and American public life; why he thinks we’re living in a “New Gilded Age” and what that means for the direction of the social Christian tradition today; understanding the place of the Catholic Worker in the social Christian lineage; and why he’s an “evangelist for institutions.”
Beyond just the pleasure of learning more about the history of the social Christian tradition, I enjoyed Heath’s honesty and optimism about the decline of mainline Protestant churches. Speaking about Princeton Seminary he said, “We've been in the past a finishing school for elite Presbyterians, and all these worlds that we've long served are now going away. And so, what new life will come up in the midst, even as this thing that is definitely dying is dying, and in my lifetime will be mostly gone?” I appreciated how Heath could hold two things to be true, in a single sentence and in a whole interview: the reality of the breakdown of the “ecclesiastical machinery”, and the simultaneous possibility for the emergence of creative and daring new ministries, and important and long-lasting institutional reforms.
I hope you appreciate his knowledge, honesty, and optimism as much as I did. You can listen to the podcast below or find it on your favorite app via my website:
Helpful links:
Heath speaks here in more detail about the history of social Christianity since the Civil War. You can read a related article here. You can find a full list of his bylines here.
Heath shares about the books, theology, and communities that surrounded him growing up as an Evangelical in Southern California. These include: Saddleback Church, dispensationalism, and the Left Behind book series.
Heath mentions the influence of his academic mentor Mark Noll and his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.
These are a few of the historical figures whom Heath mentions writing about: Harry Emerson Fosdick, Mary McDowell, Frances Perkins, Harry Ward, and George Whitefield.
Here is information from the Pew Research Center about the “Nones”, the term sociologists use for the religiously unaffiliated. Heath talks about this group during our discussion of trends in church attendance.