@utaustinaaup.bsky.social @cwa-tseu.bsky.social @austindsa.bsky.social

@city.bsky.social
hammerandhope.org/article/los-...

"Let [no one] speak on these themes...who does not thoroughly know what [they are] talking about. There is a great deal of crude preaching...the whole effect of which is mischievous...[we need] patient and thorough study; to evade [difficult questions] would be infidelity to our trust." Gladden 1902

Whitewashing the "social gospel" and substituting it for socialism, evades history, it's problematic precepts, and ignores a Christian socialist tradition at odds with its bourgeois piety, whiteness, and church centered idea of "social salvation." To borrow from Gladden, we don't need evasion.

Gladden, Social Salvation, 1902 "The strenuous socialist" believes "the conduct of the greedy capitalist and the soulless corporation is morally defective...[but] selfishness is not confined to the upper classes." This inarguable point in effect is to call socialism a "poor philosophy of life."

Washington Gladden was never a socialist, unless socialism is understood in the most watered down sense of the word. He advocated collective bargaining and arbitration, but despised strikes and sympathized often with the owners. He preferred "cooperative" ie profit-sharing models.