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Difficulty: MediumImmigration, Urbanization, and Social Culture

“The church is to a large extent responsible for the alienation of the working classes from its services. In our great cities, the classes are rapidly separating; the rich are becoming more exclusive and the poor more hostile. . . . The church must find a way to bridge this chasm. It must show a genuine sympathy with the struggles of the laboring people and seek to apply the principles of Christian ethics to the relations between capital and labor.”
— Washington Gladden, *Applied Christianity*, 1886

Which of the following late nineteenth-century movements was most closely aligned with the goals expressed in the excerpt?

  1. A
    The Populist movement, which mobilized rural farmers to advocate for the free coinage of silver and government regulation of railroads.
  2. B
    The expansion of the Market Revolution, which shifted manufacturing from home-based workshops to regional factories.
  3. The Social Gospel movement, which advocated for religious institutions to address urban poverty and industrial working conditions.Answer
  4. D
    The promotion of laissez-faire capitalism, which argued that government and moral interventions in the economy disrupted natural laws.

Answer

The Social Gospel movement, which advocated for religious institutions to address urban poverty and industrial working conditions.
The excerpt expresses the view that religious institutions must address the widening gap between the rich and the poor in industrial cities. This directly aligns with the Social Gospel movement of the late nineteenth century, which urged churches and Christians to actively participate in social reform, help the urban poor, and advocate for better labor conditions as a moral duty.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the author's argument and historical context in the provided excerpt.
The author, writing in 1886, argues that churches are losing the working class and must bridge the gap between rich and poor by applying Christian ethics to labor-capital conflicts.
Identifying the core message and time period is essential for placing the source in its correct historical context.
2
Relate the author's message to late nineteenth-century reform movements.
The idea of using Christian ethics to solve Gilded Age industrial and urban problems is the defining characteristic of the Social Gospel movement.
This connects the specific details of the source to the correct historical movement.
3
Evaluate the options to identify the correct movement and rule out distractors based on chronology and ideology.
The Populist movement was rural and agrarian; the Market Revolution occurred earlier; laissez-faire opposed this type of intervention. The Social Gospel is the only matching concept.
Ensures the correct answer is selected and historical errors are avoided.

Key Concept

The Social Gospel and Urban Reform
Estimated Time:1m 0s
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Topics

Immigration, Urbanization, and Social Culture

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