1861–1918

Urban revivalism and the Social Gospel in the United States

Responding to urban growth, Protestants built up the YMCA and Sunday schools. Dwight Moody left business in 1861 and became America's and England's leading urban evangelist. Later (1886) he inspired the founding of the Student Volunteer Movement. He was succeeded by the coarser Billy Sunday (converted 1886). Sunday's popularity faded by the 1920s amid the Scopes "monkey trial" (1925). In England, William and Catherine Booth founded the Salvation Army (1864).

Labor strikes in 1877, 1886, and 1892, along with rising social inequality, gave rise to the Social Gospel movement. Its leading theologian was Walter Rauschenbusch – a pastor in New York's slums, influenced by Ritschl. He taught the corporate nature of sin and the need to change social institutions in the name of the Kingdom of God. The movement was undercut by the collapse of liberalism after World War I and Rauschenbusch's death in 1918.

A different response to industrial wealth was Andrew Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth" (1889). It urged the rich to give away their fortunes during their own lifetime.