Steel City Gospel: Protestant Laity and Reform in Progressive-Era Pittsburgh

by Zahniser,Keith A.

• ISBN13: 9780415970310
• ISBN10: 0415970318
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-04
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Steel City Gospeltells the complex story of Pittsburgh citizens' struggle to define and eliminate the problems plaguing their city during the Progressive Era. Despite liberal churches' desire to "stay out of politics," Pittsburgh's socially conscious Protestant laity undertook and promoted the city's most significant reform. Demonstrating the power religious language, ideas, and institutions had in shaping progressive reform in Pittsburgh, this cross-disciplinary study addresses significant debates in the fields of Progressive-Era political history and American religious history, while telling the story of an industrial city in a crucial era of change.

Table of Contents

Series Editors' Foreword	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(26)
Pittsburgh Protestant Churches and Early Progressive Reform in the Steel City	27	(30)
Pittsburgh's Activist Laity: Agents of the Moral Reform Discourse	57	(22)
Pittsburgh Reformers and the Search for Moral Government	79	(32)
Graft, Vice, and the Reform of Pittsburgh's Government	111	(36)
Back to the Churches: the Christian Social Service Union and the Reclamation of the Moral Reform Discourse	147	(44)
Conclusion	191	(28)
Notes	219	(30)
Bibliography	249	(18)
Index	267