Christ the Carpenter

As we discussed last week in our comparison of Catholic parishes and Jewish synagogues, the ccentral working theme for the class has emerged. The enormity, the complexity, the diversity and the insanity of the city of Chicago forced religious communities to make certain adaptions to survive urban life. And as we saw, these adaptions were not always welcomed. For our discussion of Protestants in the city, we'll be spending two weeks discussing the kinds of adaptions and reactions churches went through in engaging the city--adaptions and reactions that in many ways continue to influence today's culture wars.

We begin with the emergence of a "Social Gospel" among liberal Protestant theologians at the turn of the twentieth century. The University of Chicago was one of the most important intellectual centers for the social gospel movement, and we'll be reading a central text by University of Chicago theologian Shailer Mathews. Read pages 24-35.

And then we'll discuss one of these Social Gospel ideas in practice with the Chicago Commons. The organization is actually still in existence, but the original building run by Graham Taylor at Grand and Morgan stands in disrepair.