Union Made

Heath W. Carter is an assistant professor at Valparaiso University, where he teaches a variety of courses on the history of the modern United States. He is a co-editor of two forthcoming volumes that study religion in American history.

More than an important contribution to understandings of religion and the labor movement, the book also challenges interpretations of the Progressive Era by arguing that the Social Gospel—widely accepted as the creation of middle-class ministers—was in fact inspired by working people who had developed their own vision of Christianity a generation earlier....Written in a style sophisticated enough for the scholar yet accessible enough for the advanced undergraduate, this book is a must read for students of labor, religious, Gilded Age, and Progressive Era history.

• Acknowledgements ; Introduction: The Working-Class Origins of Social Christianity ; Chapter 1 - "Is the Laborer Worthy of his Hire?" The Decline of Democratized Christianity in Antebellum Chicago ; Chapter 2: "Undefiled Christianity" - The Rise of a Working-Class Social Gospel ; Chapter 3: "It Pays To Go to Church" - Ministers, "the Mob," and the Scramble for Working-Class Souls ; Chapter 4: "With the Prophets of Old" - Working People's Challenge to the Gilded Age Church ; Chapter 5: "The Divorce Between Labor and the Church" - Working People Strike Out on Their Own in 1894 Chicago ; Chapter 6: "To Christianize Christianity" - Labor On the Move in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago ; Chapter 7: "Social Christianity Becomes Official" - The Rise of a Middle-Class Social Gospel ; Epilogue: The Fate of American Social Christianity in the Twentieth Century and Beyond ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index