Some extra reading on the Social Creed!     [4-12-08]

Witherspoon Issues Analyst Gene TeSelle recommends these books as background and enhancement for anyone who is interested in dealing seriously with the New Social Creed, as it comes up for discussion at the General Assembly in San Jose.

TIME FOR A NEW SOCIAL AWAKENING

by Gene TeSelle, Witherspoon Issues Analyst
[8-20-07]


We are fast approaching the hundredth anniversary of the so-called Social Creed of the Churches, adopted in 1908 at the founding of the Federal Council of Churches. It was a dramatic statement by what we have come to call "the public church." Currently the Methodists and the Presbyterians, as well as the National Council of Churches, are looking ahead to an appropriate commemoration.

We cannot help noting the similarities between 1908 and 2008. Inequalities of income and wealth in the U.S. are now greater than they have been since the "Gilded Age" of the late nineteenth century. Corporate and government scandals are approaching the same level, too. Many of the principles enunciated in the Social Creed and in the general mood of the Progressive Era, such as a "living wage" sufficient to support a family, are being reasserted; but they are also regarded as unfeasible by many shapers of public opinion today.

There are also significant differences. The problems addressed by the Social Creed were national in scope; because these problems could not be addressed adequately at the local or state level, new kinds of federal legislation were advocated and eventually adopted. In our own day we see a further broadening of scope as the much-celebrated globalization of the economy brings all the workers of the world into potential competition with each other and requires a new kind of global response.

In this situation corporations have greater power than many national governments. Wal-Mart, for example, has forced domestic and foreign suppliers to cut their costs by lowering wages in the name of "competition." A new generation of trade agreements (NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, CAFTA) gives corporations new rights to challenge local, state, and national laws or regulations. The right of labor to organize and bargain is often challenged — through legislation, administrative action, or private violence. Protection of the workplace and the environment against hazardous conditions is all too frequently ineffectual or nonexistent. Non-governmental organizations have urged corporations and entire industries to adopt "codes of conduct," but monitoring and enforcement have been difficult.

As we anticipate the hundredth anniversary of the Social Creed, then, we must ask not only what in it is to be reaffirmed but how it ought to be modified and strengthened to meet new challenges in national and global economies.¹

Crisis and Response

The period from the Civil War to the turn of the century had seen a growth in industrial capacity, the size of corporations, and opportunities for employers to put new pressures on industrial and railroad workers, farmers, and small businesses. Various labor movements and unions arose, as well as farm organizations such as the Grange and the Farmers' Alliances.

Henry George's Progress and Poverty (1879), Laurence Gronlund's The Cooperative Commonwealth (1884), Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888), Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives (1890), the journalism of Henry Demarest Lloyd starting in the 1870s and summed up in Wealth Against Commonwealth (1894), the novels and editorial activity of William Dean Howells, W.T. Stead's If Christ Came to Chicago!(1894), and Charles Sheldon's In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? (1897) all helped to alter the framework within which people looked at social problems.

This first phase, from 1880 to 1900, did not bring much change; its importance was in identifying problems, raising consciousness, critiquing existing conditions, outlining utopian solutions, and demonstrating that those affected were ready to organize and express their indignation, often militantly.

The second phase began around 1900. The reform agenda that had been building since the 1880s became effective when new political leaders caught the public's attention and captured its loyalties — Robert La Follette, a Republican; William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat; and especially Theodore Roosevelt, a maverick who was sidelined into the office of Vice-President to keep him out of trouble but soon became President after the assassination of McKinley.

In addition, the new mass-circulation periodicals brought investigative and advocacy journalism to a high pitch. Their exposés of corporate malfeasance and urban poverty were read and heeded by middle-class people throughout the country. These started in 1901 and 1902 and had their heyday during the Roosevelt administration, whose reforms were fueled by stories in the popular press. Momentum slowed after 1906, perhaps because of their success, perhaps because of the public's satiation with this kind of journalism, but most clearly because of concerted pressure from advertisers, news distributors, and investors.

Multiple Narratives

The main narrative tends to concentrate on urban problems and especially on industry and labor, and this was also the focus of the Social Creed of 1908. It was here that the problems of unrestrained power, indifference to consequences, and violence by police and anarchists were most evident; where coordinated action could best be organized; and where the largest number of legislative victories could be gained in the political climate of the early twentieth century.

There are other narratives, however, that focus on other issues, with varying outcomes.

● The labor movement was highly diverse, ranging from the conservative craft unions to the growing Socialist Party, which itself ranged from militant workers to middle-class and professional idealists, and the radical IWW, organized in 1905.

● The agrarian movement in the Midwest gained political expression first among the Populists and then in the La Follette wing of the Republican Party and the Bryan wing of the Democratic Party, with needs and demands that went far beyond what could be achieved in national legislation.

● Race was an issue largely ignored in the Social Creed and in national-level politics, though a number of Protestant leaders were deeply involved with the schools and colleges that their home mission boards supported in the South.² The Niagara Declaration of 1905, inspired by W.E.B. DuBois, called for equal rights (they had to meet across the river in Canada, not being able to find integrated accommodations in the U.S.). The Springfield race riots of 1908, in Lincoln's own city, stimulated a number of white leaders to take action. The two groups joined to found the NAACP in 1909 on the hundredth anniversary of Lincoln's birth.

● Gender. Women became increasingly influential during the late nineteenth century. By 1900 they were a majority of high school graduates and 20 percent of college graduates, and they were entering the professions (medicine, law, social work, government service, and, decades later in most denominations, ministry). The image of the "New Woman" emboldened many of them to transgress traditional roles; marriage vows began to omit the word "obey"; there was a growing campaign for what was called "woman suffrage" (successful only at the late date of 1920). Concern for "uplift" of the poor shifted from the activities of "charity ladies" to full-time professional activity in settlement houses and social work. This led in turn to solidarity with working women and support for unionization and labor legislation, led by Jane Addams and Florence Kelley.

The Social Gospel Years

The Social Gospel era was animated by revulsion at the evils of the time. Rauschenbusch had much to say about the "kingdom of evil," the supra-personal structures and ideologies that threaten or cajole human behavior. Theodore Roosevelt spoke of "Armageddon" during his 1912 campaign. Awareness of evil led many people to look for the potentialities, human and divine, for reform and renewal.

The churches' first response was at the local level, where poverty and social change were directly encountered. New York City was a focal point, where Frank Mason North had been corresponding secretary of the Church Extension and Missionary Society since 1892. It was he who, in 1903, wrote the hymn "Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life," first published in the Methodist hymnal in 1905.

New York experienced earlier and with greater intensity than other cities the flight of congregations from older to newly developing neighborhoods. Congregations that decided to stay began with "city missions," often involving foreign-language ministries; then moved to the "institutional church" offering a full range of services and activities; and eventually saw that such efforts would be inadequate without changing the legal framework within which workers and tenants and consumers encountered corporations and banks and landlords.

The Presbyterians were the first to set up a national-level ministry to workers and immigrants, starting in 1903 at the instigation of Charles Stelzle. Opposition soon arose, especially in Pittsburgh, where Presbyterians were not only religiously conservative but dependent upon the steel industry, and Stelzle resigned in 1913 in order to save some of the programs he had created. (He had already founded the Labor Temple in 1910 and continued to minister there.) The Presbyterian achievement was noted with appreciation in other Protestant denominations, which soon developed their own national programs.

Origins of the Social Creed

The statement that came to be known as "the Social Creed of the Churches" grew out of developments in the Methodist Church. The Methodist Federation for Social Service (later Social Action) was founded in Washington, DC, in December of 1907; its organizers were later received in the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt. As the 1908 General Conference approached, its leaders conceived the idea of a formal statement of principles concerning the social problems of the time, and Harry F. Ward jotted down the first draft on a Western Union pad. The eleven principles were adopted by the 1908 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in May.

In December of 1908 the Federal Council of Churches was founded in Philadelphia, in accordance with a Plan of Federation agreed on in 1905. Frank Mason North delivered a much-appreciated report on "The Church and Modern Industry." At its conclusion he presented a list of social reforms — Ward's eleven, now expanded to fourteen. In 1912 it would be expanded to sixteen, and to more in 1919; various denominations adopted their own versions of the creed.

The statement was adopted enthusiastically and without dissent, after a supportive address by Stelzle, on December 4, 1908. It reads as follows:

We deem it the duty of all Christian people to concern themselves directly with certain practical industrial problems. To us it seems that the churches must stand —

For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life.

For the right of all men to the opportunity for self-maintenance, a right ever to be wisely and strongly safeguarded against encroachments of every kind.

For the right of workers to some protection against the hardships often resulting from the swift crises of industrial change.

For the principle of conciliation and arbitration in industrial dissensions.

For the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational disease, injuries and mortality.

For the abolition of child labor.

For such regulation of the conditions of toil for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community.

For the suppression of the "sweating system."

For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practicable point, and for that degree of leisure for all which is a condition of the highest human life.

For a release from employment one day in seven.

For a living wage as a minimum in every industry, and for the highest wage that each industry can afford.

For the most equitable division of the products of industry that can ultimately be devised.

For suitable provision for the old age of the workers and for those incapacitated by injury.

For the abatement of poverty.

To the toilers of America and to those who by organized effort are seeking to lift the crushing burdens of the poor, and to reduce the hardships and uphold the dignity of labor, this Council sends the greeting of human brotherhood and the pledge of sympathy and of help in a cause which belongs to all who follow Christ.

This "creed" was not binding on the member organizations. The Federal Council had no such powers; it spoke only for the delegates attending the meeting. But it quickly demonstrated its convincingness, its moral authority, and it was formally adopted by several of the member denominations in the next few years. If reception and fecundity are tests of validity, then the Social Creed is a major instance, for it was widely affirmed, imitated, and adapted in new forms.

General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. responded to this "social awakening" several times, adopting rewritten versions of the Social Creed and, in typical Presbyterian fashion, adding biblical and theological backing. These were the Assemblies of 1910 (the same one that adopted the "five fundamentals"), 1914 (adopting a "United Declaration" by the four major Presbyterian churches), and 1920.

Achievements and Disappointments

The high point of the Progressive Era came in 1912, when the platforms of all four parties supported woman suffrage and a variety of reform measures. Theodore Roosevelt, disappointed with his hand-picked successor, ran a third-party campaign under the banner of a new Progressive Party. Woodrow Wilson's candidacy gave the South a major role in national politics, and his support for progressive measures began a long-lasting realignment making the Democratic Party the standard-bearer for progressive causes. It was also in the 1912 campaign that Eugene Debs received his largest number of votes.

And yet it should also be noted that voter turnout declined from an all-time high of 78% in 1896 to a low of 56% in 1912. Perhaps it was the result of procedural reforms that did away with traditional voting habits; perhaps it meant that the political issues were too complex or did not speak to the condition of everyone.

We cannot go into all the legislative achievements of the Progressive Era, for it is a long list. There were also four constitutional amendments: income tax, direct election of senators, prohibition, and woman suffrage. But many of the new laws were overturned by a conservative Supreme Court; the list of the Court's decisions is amazing and disappointing.

Entry into the First World War slowed the impulse toward reform, for reasons that were clear even at the time: disillusionment about possibilities for peace and reform, diversion of attention to the war rather than domestic issues, shock at losses in lives and costs to the federal budget, the repressive measures unleashed by the Wilson administration, and the mood of reaction following the war.

There were unforeseen consequences for social relationships, too. The wartime need for workers, just when the war shut off the flow of immigration, initiated the "Great Migration" of African Americans from the South to the industrial cities of the North. And it was the war that brought passage of both the prohibition and the woman suffrage amendments to the Constitution.

The ending of the war led to a brief period of Wilsonian idealism, with fresh attempts to shape the future according to American democratic values. Both the Federal Council and the Catholic bishops issued calls for "social reconstruction" in 1919. On the world scene, the U.S. was in a strong economic position and felt a corresponding responsibility toward all regions of the world. The Senate's refusal to join the League of Nations convinced the churches that they must take a role in shaping foreign as well as domestic policy.

In 1919 the Interchurch World Movement was organized with a start-up gift from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., independent of but cooperating with the Federal Council of Churches. It had one moment of glory. The 1919 steel strike prompted its Industrial Relations Department to form a Commission of Inquiry. Although the strike was crushed by "Judge Gary" of U.S. Steel in January of 1920, the Commission continued its work, and its Report on the Steel Strike of 1919 was issued in July. It had done better fact-finding than the press and government agencies. Despite outcries from the steel industry and other segments of the business community, the Commission's findings were generally accepted. Over the next few years U.S. Steel quietly ended the twelve-hour day and the seven-day week and raised its wages. In many respects the report was the most impressive achievement of "social Christianity," even though it was issued at a time when the public's receptivity was fading — indeed, in the very year that is often designated as the end of the Social Gospel era.

Social Concern Continues

Max Stackhouse suggests that there have been at least five social gospels: (1) the original one, stretching at least from 1880 to 1920; (2) the "Christian realism" of Reinhold Niebuhr and others, from the Thirties into the Cold War era, which began with readiness for social conflict and then was transmuted into anti-Stalinism (often influenced by longstanding Socialist and Trotskyite misgivings about Stalin); (3) the civil rights movement, whose leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., acknowledged the influence of Walter Rauschenbusch, and which was soon enlarged to include women and other groups that were the target of discrimination; (4) liberation theology in its various modalities in the Third World and then in the U.S., moving beyond the language of civil rights to speak of domination and the need to be liberated from it; and now (5) an emerging "public theology" in the era of globalization, which has the task of simultaneously championing civil rights, fostering interfaith dialogue and cooperation, and opposing social oppression in its many modes in order to reform the common life.

The influence of "social Christianity" and the Social Creed extends, however, far beyond those forms of Christianity that can be called heirs of the Social Gospel.

● The United Methodist Church has adopted "Social Principles" that are reviewed every four years for inclusion in its Discipline. Since 1972 the term "Social Creed" has been reserved for a brief statement that is suitable for use in Sunday worship and is included in the Methodist Hymnal.

● Evangelicals are aware of the social dimensions of our biblical heritage. Evangelicals for Social Action has grown out of a 1973 conference led by Ronald Sider, Richard Mouw, and others.

● Jim Wallis and the Sojourners Community have prepared A Covenant for a New America, looking for the way to move "from poverty to opportunity." It is available online at www.covenantforanewamerica.org

● The National Association of Evangelicals produced a statement, entitled "Call to Civic Responsibility," in 2004, and in 2005 a 380-page book, Toward an Evangelical Public Policy (Baker Books, $25 paperback). There are five or six chapters that discuss the biblical call for social and economic justice, in language that sounds like our Presbyterian statements.

● The Roman Catholic bishops have issued several statements about the economy, with their own particular stress on the dignity of labor and the need for participation in decision-making.
While Christians may differ on many points of doctrine and practice, they often find themselves united in their perspectives on major economic issues.³


Notes

1.    The most comprehensive survey is Donald K. Gorrell, The Age of Social Responsibility: The Social Gospel in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1988). How it should be "updated" is explored in The Social Gospel Today, edited by Christopher H. Evans (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001).

2.    See Ralph E. Luker, The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885-1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), and, with a more "national" perspective, Ronald C. White, Jr., Liberty and Justice for All: Racial Reform and the Social Gospel (1877-1925) (New York: Harper & Row, 1990).

Concerning a new social creed:

For background, see Gene TeSelle’s recent article in Network News. Click here, and go to pages 9-10.

I missed your discussion but have read some of your materials. I appreciate the retention of distinctive Christian statements that reflect the origin of our belief. It seems to me, however, that the draft is light on a couple items.

If we want to change the situation in a fallen world we must proclaim Jesus’ identity and teaching. In particular we must pledge ourselves to love God and to love people created in His image. These two OT commands are reiterated by Jesus in the NT. In the draft there is an agenda but no personal pledge of specific things that a signatory/ adherent pledges to do. It seems that those who hold to this pledge will get government and society to do things but not do anything personally.

Here I suggest that there be a commitment to begin with ourselves and then involve others. That I will love everyone as I love myself. That we will pray for Divine blessing for the poor and oppressed. That we will pray for eyes to see and ears to hear what God would have us to perceive and do. That we will donate at least a third of our giving to the cause of alleviating the plight of the poor. That we will spend at least two hours each week as volunteers working to assist the socially marginalized. That I will teach my children that the greatest in the Kingdom of God are those who serve. That I will seek to encourage others to follow the example of Jesus who gave His life in the service of others.

Sincerely,

Robert W. Smith

We invite you to add your thoughts on the Creed and this response to it.
Just send a note!

About a month ago we posted a note from Rita Nakashima Brock, inviting people to join in an on-line discussion of the "Social Creed" that is now in the drafting process.

She has just sent out another invitation, which we’ll pass along here, since this drafting of a new social creed is something we in Witherspoon support enthusiastically.

We have also received, in the past couple days, four notes commenting on the draft. Here they are — and we encourage you to add your thoughts here, as well. Just send a note!
 

Comments on the draft Social Creed

Received January 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sounds good!

Jack Sawyer, President
Parker Street Foundation
2330 Parker Street
Berkeley, CA 94704-2818
(510) 5t40-0940 (voice and fax)
jacksawyer@comcast.net

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Received January 3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have never read the 1908 creed until now and it left me cold with its emphasis on men. I read the new creed and found it to be a wonder creed and blueprint for improving our current and future world. "In faith, we celebrate the full humanity of each woman, man and child, all created in God's image." That statement is awesome and inclusive and a motto to live by.

Thank you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We need to add:

A reaching out to all people of all nations and faiths with our hearts and minds open and a eagerness to understand their history, their faith, and their culture, but with a determination to not interfere, to tolerate, and to help only when help is requested.

To study peace, to believe it can be a reality, to put time, effort, and money into bringing it about all around the globe.

To learn all we can about this world and to leap into the challenging dialog of where we are going now, should we be going there, what would it be like, would it be good.

To understand our world systems, challenge authority, value our growing ability to evaluate what happens around us. To educate ourselves throughout our lives.

A determination that all people might experience the full potential of their lives, including the joys.

A determination to face our fears, understand them, and conquer them.

Joan Stallard

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[12-7-06]

The Presbyterian Church, along with other denominations and the National Council of Churches, has been involved in conversations aimed at formulating a new "Social Creed" for the 21^stcentury, marking the 100^th anniversary in of the creation of an earlier Social Creed in the year 1908.  See story below >>

Now theologian Rita Nakashima Brock is planning to initiate an on-line discussion to give many more of us a chance to get involved in the process – thinking, formulating our own ideas, and more.

Here is the invitation she has sent out:

Dr. Brock’s note lists these "selected principles from the 1908 Social Creed":

You may want to look at the current draft of the new Social Creed for 2008.

We in Witherspoon encourage you to read, reflect, and get involved in the conversation on January 8 - 9, 2007.

PC(USA) leads effort to commemorate 1908 creed with a new one

by Jerry Van Marter, Presbyterian News Service    [11-16-06]

ORLANDO, FL - November 16, 2006 – The National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC) has received for study the draft of a "social creed" that commemorates and builds upon the original Social Creed of the Churches of 1908 calling for economic and social justice.

"It is not enough to celebrate the centennial of the 1908 social creed," said the Rev. Chris Iosso, a Presbyterian instrumental in the ecumenical development of the new document, entitled "A Social Creed for the 21st Century.

"It can strengthen the common witness of our communions on a broad range of social concerns - far broader than in 1908," he told the NCC's General Assembly here Nov. 9.

The 1908 social creed was originally formulated by Methodists and addressed primarily "sweat shop" and child labor.

Some of the issues addressed in the new creed that "were not touched upon in 1908," Iosso said, are women in the workplace, temperance (alcohol and drug abuse), prison reform, racial justice, environment, peace and "the global framework that presses on us today."

Indeed, the impact of globalization on the world's social and economic order and sustainability of the earth's resources give the new creed a far more international focus than was in the 1908 creed, Iosso noted.

Its principal author, Frank Mason North, told the Federal Council of Churches (now the NCC): "The church must give itself fearlessly and passionately to the furtherance of all reforms by which it believes that the weak may be protected, the unscrupulous restrained, injustice abolished, equality of opportunity secured and wholesome conditions of life established. Nothing that concerns human life can be alien to the Church of Christ."

The NCC's Justice and Advocacy Commission will continue to work with the NCC's 35 member communions on the development, circulation and use of the new creed in the run-up to the 2008 centennial commemoration.

Member churches adopted and adapted the 1908 creed for their own use, the same model that's being pursued with the new creed, Iosso, coordinator of the PC(USA)'s Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP), told the assembly.

For instance, he said, Methodists this time around are developing a prayer book and musical version to attract younger congregants to the creed.

Last summer's 217^th PC(USA) General Assembly approved a study and feedback process for Presbyterians as further work is done on the new social creed in preparation for the centennial celebration of the 1908 document.

ACSWP will continue to lead the PC(USA)'s study and use of the new social creed.
 

We deem it the duty of all Christian people to concern themselves directly with certain practical industrial problems. To us it seems that the Churches must stand - For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life. For the right of all men to the opportunity for self-maintenance, a right ever to be wisely and strongly safe-guarded against encroachments of every kind. For the right of workers to some protection against the hardships often resulting from the swift crisis of industrial change. For the principle of conciliation and arbitration in industrial dissensions. For the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational disease, injuries and mortality. For the abolition of child labor. For such regulation of the conditions of toil for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community. For the suppression of the "sweating system." For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practical point, and for that degree of leisure for all which is a condition of the highest human life. For a release from employment one day in seven. For a living wage as a minimum in every industry, and for the highest wage that each industry can afford. For the most equitable division of the products of industry that can ultimately be devised. For suitable provision for the old age of the workers and for those incapacitated by injury. For the abatement of poverty. To the toilers of America and to those who by organized effort are seeking to lift the crushing burdens of the poor, and to reduce the hardships and uphold the dignity of labor, this council sends the greeting of human brotherhood and the pledge of sympathy and of help in a cause which belongs to all who follow Christ.

A Social Creed for the 21st Century (Draft version, Nov. 1, 2006)

Remembering the prophetic Social Creed of the Churches of 1908, we respond to God's call to transform our social order toward justice and peace, and to address the 21st century's great challenges of globalization and sustainability. Hearing also concerns of churches and peoples around our globe, we pledge ourselves to specific practices of personal and social responsibility that reflect our Triune God's gracious will for all creation. We rejoice in the Biblical vision where all "shall long enjoy the work of their hands ... (and) ... not labor in vain or bear children of calamity" (Isaiah 65:22-23)

In faith, we celebrate the full humanity of each woman, man and child, all created in God's image, by standing for:

In love, despite the world's sufferings and evils, we honor the deep connections within our human family and seek to awaken a new spirit of cooperation by working for:

In hope, we pledge to heal the environment, recognizing our responsibility for its health and our interdependence with Creation and one another, by working for:

• Redirection of military spending to more peaceful and productive uses.

• Relationships of mutuality among the world's churches and faith communities.

With all those who labor and are heavy-laden, we commit ourselves to a culture of peace and freedom that embraces non-violent initiatives, human dignity and greater equality, with a deeper spirituality of inward growth and outward action. By these means, we witness to our hope in the God who makes all things new, whom we know in Jesus Christ.

The "Social Creed" of 1908: Some Background

by Gene TeSelle, Witherspoon’s Issues Analyst   [11-13-06]

This article was published earlier in the Summer 2006 issue of Witherspoon's Network News

We Presbyterians have a long relationship with this topic. We were in the forefront of urban missions (what we now call racial ethnic ministries, a hundred and more years ago). This meant dealing not only with immigrants speaking many languages but also with the problems of working people. When the Presbyterian Church appointed Charles Stelzle to deal with these issues, it was the first national-level action of the sort, and it was soon imitated by other denominations.

When the Social Creed was adopted at the founding meeting of the Federal Council of Churches in 1908, it was introduced by Frank Mason North, a Methodist who a few years earlier had written "Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life." Stelzle was the one who moved adoption, and it was approved unanimously. (We should note that "Social Creed" was not the self-designation of the document, but it was characterized that way within a few days, and the name stuck.)

The Presbyterians adopted their own social statements, adaptations of the Creed, at the 1910 and 1920 Assemblies (the latter used the term "Social Creed"). Since they wanted more biblical and theological grounding (does that sound typically Presbyterian?), they produced a joint statement by the Northern and Southern churches, the United Presbyterians, and the Associate Reformed Presbyterians. (I have collected a number of statements produced through the years, all different, but all related.)

Our General Assembly took the initiative several years ago to celebrate the 100th anniversary and look into the feasibility of a new statement. A "resolution team" has been appointed by ACSWP and has met several times, joined by representatives from other denominations and the National Council of Churches.

It is not unrealistic to think about a new statement. Indeed, the National Association of Evangelicals produced a "call to civic responsibility" in 2004; last year a 380-page book, Toward an Evangelical Public Policy, was published by Baker Books ($24.99 paperback), and it is well worth reading. It has five or six chapters that discuss the biblical call for social and economic justice in language that sounds like our Presbyterian statements. The Roman Catholic bishops have made statements about the economy, with their own particular stress on the dignity of labor and the need for participation in decision-making. Concerns about economic justice unite us.

We are aware of the differences from a hundred years ago. Then the task was to be aware that issues of labor were national in scope, connected by railroads; now they are international, connected by air freight and container ships and eighteen-wheelers. Then the major political parties were regionally diverse; now they are much more polarized. Then it was assumed that most workers were males, women did not have the vote in most states, and the most that could be expected was "protection" of women and children; now women are accepted in the workforce and their rights are recognized by law, even when pay and treatment do not keep pace.

The resolution team has tried to follow an open-ended process in thinking about a new statement, not jumping to conclusions. We have done a number of trial drafts in various groups, taking different approaches — an updating of the 1908 statement, or a totally different statement starting from today's problems, or an emphasis on biblical and theological principles. The United Methodists have suggested a song, and this is not inappropriate in our post-print culture. But all these are tentative; we do not want premature closure.

I might mention, finally, two insights that came out of these recent discussions. After 9/11 we are deeply aware of the issue of security, and not only in the military sense. And after Katrina and Rita we have a renewed appreciation for the role of government in our social and economic welfare. Any statement made in 2008 will have to be aware of these and other features in our own context.

When a draft has been prepared, it will be sent out for discussion to a variety of groups — Presbyterian colleges and seminaries, congregations, and other constituencies. We expect new insights to arise out of this process, just as they have already arisen within the resolution team's discussions.

The Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP), during a meeting in San Antonio, TX, Oct. 11-14, made minor changes in a draft document called the "Social Creed for the 21st Century," before forwarding the proposal to the Justice and Advocacy Commission of the National Council of Churches.

The 216th General Assembly called for conversations and studies to commemorate the centennial of the 1908 Social Creed of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. That statement engaged churches in advocating for reforms such as an end to child labor, the six-day week, occupational safety, a living wage, and other steps aimed at moving American society closer to what a "Christ-like God" was believed to want for all Americans.

Beyond celebrating the past, the action calls for looking forward with "a survey of key Christian principles to guide 21st century Presbyterians and others in addressing major and likely future concerns, such as the lack of health insurance for 44 million Americans, the outsourcing of jobs to countries without human rights or environmental safeguards, and the impact of growing economic inequality on our democracy ..."

This is obviously a project close to the heart of Witherspoon's values. As a first step toward supporting the study, Gene TeSelle offers a background paper on the Social Creed, and Chris Iosso explores some of the details of the 1908 statement, and what such a new statement might mean for us today.

by Gene TeSelle
[9-27-04]

The statement that came to be known as "the Social Creed of the churches" grew out of developments in the Methodist Church. The Methodist Federation for Social Service was organized in Washington, DC, in December of 1907 (it was a sign of the times that the organizers were later received in the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt). Looking ahead to the 1908 General Conference of the Methodist Church, they conceived the idea of a formal statement about the social problems of the time, and Harry F. Ward jotted down the first draft on a Western Union pad. The eleven principles were adopted by the 1908 General Conference.

A year later, in December of 1908, the Federal Council of Churches was founded in Philadelphia. This time the key person was Frank Mason North, a veteran of urban ministry and author of "Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life" (this hymn came to be known as "the hymn of the Federal Council of Churches"). North delivered a much-appreciated report on "The Church and Modern Industry." At its conclusion he presented a list of social reforms -- Ward's eleven, now expanded to fourteen. This statement was adopted enthusiastically and without dissent. (In 1912 it would be expanded to sixteen, and to more in 1919; various denominations adopted their own versions of the principles, especially the Presbyterians, who wanted to strengthen the doctrinal framework.)

The classic statement was adopted December 4, 1908. It reads as follows:

We deem it the duty of all Christian people to concern themselves directly with certain practical industrial problems. To us it seems that the churches must stand:

For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life.

For the right of all men to the opportunity for self-maintenance, a right ever to be wisely and strongly safeguarded against encroachments of every kind.

For the right of workers to some protection against the hardships often resulting from the swift crises of industrial change.

For the principle of conciliation and arbitration in industrial dissensions.

For the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational disease, injuries and mortality.

For the abolition of child labor.

For such regulation of the conditions of toil for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community.

For the suppression of the "sweating system."

For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practicable point, and for that degree of leisure for all which is a condition of the highest human life.

For a release from employment one day in seven.

For a living wage as a minimum in every industry, and for the highest wage that each industry can afford.

For the most equitable division of the products of industry that can ultimately be devised.

For suitable provision for the old age of the workers and for those incapacitated by injury.

For the abatement of poverty.

To the toilers of America and to those who by organized effort are seeking to lift the crushing burdens of the poor, and to reduce the hardships and uphold the dignity of labor, this Council sends the greeting of human brotherhood and the pledge of sympathy and of help in a cause which belongs to all who follow Christ.

The statement was never called a "creed" in the official actions of the Federal Council, but it soon came to be called that, since it was a brief statement of principles deserving immediate attention.

As we enter the 21st century we may feel that it is "déjà vu all over again." In the U.S. we have seen the reforms of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society undone through court decisions, federal legislation, and lax enforcement by federal agencies in the face of the overwhelming power of the corporations to lobby and litigate. On the world scene we have seen protections for workers undermined in the name of "free trade" and "comparative advantage." It is beyond question that we need a new social creed, and one that is worldwide in its scope. The World Alliance of Reformed Churches at its recent meeting declared the world-scale inequalities of wealth and power to be a major issue for the churches. It is time to get to work.

What does this mean for us 100 years later?

[Reflections added by Gene TeSelle on 11-18-04]

As we approach the hundredth anniversary, we cannot help noting the similarities to our own time. Inequalities of income and wealth in the U.S. are now greater than they have been since the "Gilded Age" of the late nineteenth century. Many of the principles enunciated in the Social Creed and in the general mood of the Progressive Era, such as a "living wage" sufficient to support a family, are regarded as absurd and unfeasible by many shapers of public opinion today.

The problems addressed by the Social Creed were national in scope; indeed, it was because these problems could not be addressed adequately at the local or state level that new kinds of federal legislation were advocated and eventually adopted. In our own day we see a similar broadening of scope as the much-celebrated globalization of the economy brings all the workers of the world into competition with each other.

In this situation corporations have greater power than many national governments, and a new generation of trade agreements (NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, CAFTA) gives corporations new rights to challenge local, state, and national laws or regulations. The right of labor to organize and bargain is often challenged by law or by private violence. Protection of the workplace and the environment against hazardous conditions is all too frequently ineffectual or nonexistent. Non-governmental organizations have urged corporations and entire industries to adopt "codes of conduct," but monitoring and enforcement have been difficult to achieve.

by Christian T. Iosso
[9-27-04]


The founders of the Federal Council of Churches did not pick a set number of planks for what became the "Social Creed of the Churches." Rev. Charles Stelzle, head of the Presbyterian Department of Church and Labor, and founder of the Labor Temple in New York City, preached for an hour in support of the Creed at the first Federal Council meeting, before its unanimous approval. The planks had to be broad, morally compelling, and clearly tied to the 'platform' of Jesus: the Kingdom of God. This brief report suggests several considerations for the ecumenical and social ethical work to be undertaken by agencies of the General Assembly and our partner denominations.

We are now familiar with concise sets of social goals or policies, from arbitrary elements cobbled into a "Contract with America," to elements in a Politics of Meaning, to "middle axiom" statements of direction in ecumenical and denominational statements. In public policy, we may even remember Wilson's "14 Points," or Roosevelt's "4 Freedoms." Some may also remember a double-handful of commandments, though the 1908 Social Creed echoed more the Beatitudes. The original Social Creed's goals were partly fulfilled in the New Deal and the achievement of protection for unions, and even that partial fulfillment occurred, in part, because the churches wrestled with and added to that concise and concrete set of social goals.

The General Assembly overwhelmingly supported the dual recommendation of the Theology committee, to ask the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy and the Office of Ecumenical Relations to develop plans to celebrate the Centennial of the Social Creed and consider developing a new one. Advocates invoked Walter Rauschenbusch, perhaps the key theologian of the Social Gospel, and saw the Social Creed as one of the Social Gospel's most effective results.

Ecumenically, one would hope that the National Council of Churches of Christ, the Federal Council's successor, could be strengthened by a celebration of one of its founding documents: a "bill of promises," so to speak. Some communions dislike using the word "creed" for anything but the doctrinal product of a church council; other, "non-creedal" churches, try to avoid them altogether. Thus it may be best to have those denominations that were "present at creation" in 1908 develop the historical celebration and invite in the others.

It may be a mistake, however, to split the two words in "social creed." The FCC founders knew they were doing "applied Christianity," or what we now call, social ethics. They also knew the shared context of what historian Timothy L. Smith called "revivalism and social reform," the widespread assumptions of Christian responsibility for society that drove Prohibition and other efforts to "Christianize" the social order. The Social Creed focused on the world of work, as decent employment was crucial to the moral development of each worker and (mainly) his family. Before specific planks were added about the right to organize, the Social Creed reflected a social ethos that valued cooperation over competition, partly on the family model.

Janet Fishburn's 1981 book, The Fatherhood of God and the Victorian Family, illuminates the efforts to preserve and protect the family that were part of the Social Gospel. Talk about "family values!" Urbanization, industrialization, immigration, advances in communication, transportation, education and health care were changing life rapidly. The family and the Church needed to hold fast. The role of men and fathers is also stressed, from the manhood formed in industrious, temperate and disciplined work to the altruism, loyalty and willing self-sacrifice of fatherhood. This generally conservative view of family distinguished the key Social Gospel thinkers from some of the early 20th Century Socialists, who wanted to reorganize domestic relations as well as property.

However liberal in spirit, the Social Gospel movement was evangelical in its effort to convert even Social Darwinist social determinism in God's direction. The prophets in the "Brotherhood of the Kingdom" were out to prevent Christianity from becoming an otherworldly and individualized affectation of the middle and upper classes. With a nod to Thorstein Veblen, they were already very worried about materialism and "conspicuous consumption." But how applicable is the Social Creed's emphasis on labor now, when, as Andre Codrescu jokes, there is still an American working class, but it lives in Southeastern China?

If a new Social Creed would address globalization (actually continuing Rauschenbusch's belief that the Kingdom of God included an international community of moral and social progress), the ethos side of such a Creed would be wise to look at the needs of families in our country. Already we are familiar (ha!) with the concepts of "family" and "living" wages. But the global and family poles of concern point to questions of shape and comprehensiveness in any contemporary statement. And wouldn't it be essential to re-affirm progressive taxation, urge higher taxation of "unearned wealth" again, and address the epidemic of gambling…?

In a cross-cultural and inter-religious context, we can affirm (as Troeltsch and Tillich did years ago) that Christianity is inherently social in its congregations, schools, hospitals and even monasteries. We can trace the evolution of modern democracies to Reformation and conciliar roots, and ideas of tolerance and church/state separation especially to the Puritan and Presbyterian debates in the English Revolution--highly influential in our own. But a Social Creed can not provide a full political ethic. It should prompt political creativity, greater democracy, more equitable social and environmental trade-offs. So much good thinking has been done on Just, Participatory and Sustainable ethics, earth ethics, and in-depth treatments of many social and economic questions. A necessarily concise Social Creed would bring together this thinking and seek to create new consensus.

A key question for a new Social Creed would not be how idealistic or how optimistic it would be, but how Christian. In keeping with the original phrase, "of the churches," I would urge that its vision of fulfilled human life, however universal in aspiration, should be explicitly Christian in inspiration. The past century saw blistering attacks by the "Christian Realists" on the supposedly "optimistic" Social Gospel liberals (though Niebuhr never took on Rauschenbusch directly, and his was perhaps the strongest Christology). Realism, now shorn of its own form of "macho" Christianity, appears in neo-conservative form to bless the most militarist nationalism of our current administration. Where have all the bad flowers of original sin gone?

In very broad strokes, what was once derided as Anabaptist separatism (Church against World), has become through John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas and others, the "Church as a Social Ethic." That is, the church itself needs to be a "contrast model" to the larger society, illuminating the distinctiveness of the Christian message. Christianity itself can not be reduced to principles. Principles depend on lived creeds and ethos, which themselves reflect a story-based internal culture, language, and forms of character-forming community. What some advocates of this "contrast model" forget, though, is that doing social policy in a thoughtful, careful and prophetic way is part of our distinctive mainline Christian tradition and identity.

PVJ's Facebook page

Mitch Trigger, PVJ's Secretary/Communicator, has created a Facebook page where Witherspoon members and others can gather to exchange news and views. Mitch and a few others have posted bits of news, both personal and organizational. But there’s room for more!

John Shuck’s new "Religion for Life" website

Long-time and stimulating blogger John Shuck, a Presbyterian minister currently serving as pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton, Tenn., writes about spirituality, culture, religion (both organized and disorganized), life, evolution, literature, Jesus, and lightening up.

Click here for his blog posts.

John Harris’ Summit to Shore blogspot

Voices of Sophia blog

Heather Reichgott, who has created this new blog for Voices of Sophia, introduces it:

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