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The Progressive Soul of American Prohibition

Traditional prohibition histories make a big to-do about evangelical Christianity. But as Chapter 14 explores, the evangelism of the Progressive Era was not about Bible thumping, or otherworldly damnation. Rather the social gospel—most famously pioneered by the Baptist Walter Rauschenbusch—was about uplifting the poor and downtrodden as per Jesus’s example. Social justice meant doing right by your fellow man, not getting him addicted for profit. Rauschenbusch’s evangelism was socialism with a Christian moral compass. This chapter examines the social gospel, including Henry George’s famed “single tax” on unearned income as a way to remedy the vast inequalities of wealth and power. Neither temperance nor evangelism was antithetical to new medical-science and social-science approaches the liquor question. The chapter traces the effects of this evangelism on the antiliquor progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt in New York politics.