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Gary Dorrien, Socialism and Christianity in Early 20th Century America. Ed. by Jacob H. Dorn. (Westport: Greenwood, 1998. xvi, 252 pp. $59.95, isbn 0-313-30262-6.), Journal of American History, Volume 88, Issue 3, December 2001, Pages 1119–1120, https://doi.org/10.2307/2700493
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This biographically oriented volume on American Christian socialism in the late Progressive Era focuses on littleremembered movement leaders. The cause of American Christian socialism attracted several prominent advocates in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, notably the Episcopal priest and movement builder William D. P. Bliss, the Congregational prophet George Herron, the Episcopal literary critic Vida Scudder, and, most important, the Baptist social gospeler Walter Rauschenbusch. The present work says very little about these figures, however, apparently on the ground that a good deal has already been said. Jacob H. Dorn is a professor of history at Wright State University and the author of a fine biography of the American social gospeler Washington Gladden. While the dream of democratic socialism is currently “out of fashion,” he acknowledges, the personal stories of its early twentiethcentury Christian proponents remain instructive examples of personal commitment “to the good of all and of passionate efforts to spread that commitment.”
