The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of the Social Gospel in Asia, c. 1890s-1930s 25-26 Aug 2016

Title : Vectors of Practicality: The Social Gospel, the YMCA and the Evangelical Missionary Movement in the United States and Asia. C. 1890s-1930s Venue : AS8 Kent Ridge Campus Organiser : Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore Event Title: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of the Social Gospel in Asia, c. 1890s-1930s 25-26 Aug 2016 Synopsis: Keynote address by Prof Ian Tyrrell This paper concerns the cross-national and trans-cultural exchanges that occurred between Asian societies and cultures on the one hand and American missionaries and reformers in Asia from the 1890s to the 1930s on the other. A central part of the paper sets the Social Gospel in the context of this multilateral and reciprocal process. It interrogates and contextualizes the concept of a Social Gospel in U.S. historiography, concentrating on the role of the Social Gospel as a concept informing this missionary and modernizing reform work through certain vectors. The paper argues that the YMCA was a crucial vector for the transnational transmission of Social Gospel ideas and practice, due to organizational and practical characteristics, especially the non-denominational and international focus of “Y” work and the activities of travelling and national secretaries. Whereas even recent revisionist discussion of the Social Gospel still concerns mainly its internal gestation and impact, through the YMCA there was a substantial transnational engagement. While this Social Gospel work was transnational and international in many multilateral directions, the focus was very much on Asia because of the imperatives of American evangelical missions. This work opened spaces of social and economic innovation, particularly in the sector of agriculture where Americans and their allies in China and India started innovative programs to combat famine and promote agrarian development before World War I. Though paternalist in certain ways, these programs made central the roles of indigenous workers, and were able because of the breadth and depth of missionary contacts to draw upon a wider range of influences than the churches and missionaries themselves. In turn, this transnational work spurred reciprocal flows to the United States. The work had impacts on the entire structure and strategy of mission activity in the United States by the early 1930s, underlining and reinforcing ecumenism and an internationalist ideology. The nature of the Social Gospel ideology facilitated these transfers of knowledge and helped to push the ideology in the direction of secularism.