Evangelicals traded collective social redemption for individual salvation as liberalism embraced the Social Gospel

Evidence

I call premillennialism a theology of despair because it allowed evangelicals to throw up their hands in resignation. At the same time that the Social Gospel began to take hold among Protestant liberals, based on the conviction that God can redeem not only sinful individuals but also sinful social institutions, evangelicals shifted their focus to individual regeneration. — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 55

Categorization

• DEFINE: Balmer’s potent coinage ‘theology of despair’ plus the contrast with the Social Gospel is the precise conceptual pivot of the chapter.
• XREF: connects to: Evangelicals abandoned social reform for individual conversion as proto-liberals embraced it; Nineteenth-century evangelicals adopted British premillennialism as a theology of social disengagement — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 54; American evangelicalism was politically reformist long before it aligned with the right — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 41 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Evangelicals abandoned social reform for individual conversion as proto-liberals embraced it #corroborates (1.00)
• Nineteenth-century evangelicals adopted British premillennialism as a theology of social disengagement #expands (0.85) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 54
• Northern evangelicals led abolition and common-school movements for poor and immigrant children #exemplifies (0.85) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 47
• Belief in Christ’s imminent return absolved evangelicals of duty to reform society #expands (0.85) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 55
• American evangelicalism was politically reformist long before it aligned with the right #corroborates (0.80) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 41
• Premillennialism let even moderate evangelicals defer racial justice to the Second Coming #expands (0.80) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 267
• Individual salvation attempts mystify freedom while only social action authenticates it #contradicts (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1916
• Early evangelicals championed women’s rights until reactionary fundamentalism displaced egalitarianism #exemplifies (0.75) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 64