Shailer Mathew’s Lives of Jesus: The Search for a Theological Foundation for the Social Gospel

This book focuses on a significant, but neglected, leader of the social gospel movement, University of Chicago theologian Shailer Mathews (1863-1941). In two widely read lives of Jesus-The Social Teaching of Jesus (1897) and Jesus on Social Institutions (1928)-Mathews laid a foundation for social gospel theology that dealt carefully and creatively with the charge that the social gospel enculturates Christian faith. Lindsey’s book engages in a close reading of the two Mathews books, and concludes that Mathews’s foundation for social gospel theology prefigures political and liberation theologies in important respects, and thus deserves reappraisal.