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THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
Critical Thinking Activity
Welcome to Your Critical Thinking Activity!
In this activity, you will draft an essay or slide presentation comparing and contrasting Social
Darwinism with the Social Gospel. Social Darwinists applied Darwin’s natural selection and
survival of the fittest theories to society. They maintained that capitalism strengthens a nation by
allowing the most financially fit to rise. Therefore, they believed that government interference,
such as using public funds to assist the poor and limiting competition, disrupts natural selection.
The Social Gospel blended ideas from German socialism and American Progressivism, and
proposed that society should follow biblical teachings about charity and justice. Supporters
prescribed aiding the poor, ending child labor and reforming the financial system.
Objectives
 Draft an essay or slide presentation that compares and contrasts the ideologies of Social
Darwinism and Social Gospel
Assignment Overview
In this activity, you will choose one of the following:
Choice 1: Write a 1½-page, single-spaced comparison-and-contrast essay or
Choice 2: Create a slide presentation consisting of 10 slides (You will not present your slide
presentation unless directed to do so by your teacher.)
Pacing
 This activity should take you approximately 2 to 3 hours to complete.
Rubrics
Use these rubrics to evaluate your work:
 Comparison-and-Contrast Essay Rubric
 Slide Presentation Rubric (for Choice 2 only)
Activity Details
1. Read the following texts (located at the end of these instructions):
 Excerpt from A Theology for the Social Gospel by Walter Rauschenbusch
 Excerpt from “Wealth” by Andrew Carnegie
2. Search the Internet for information on one of the following people: William Graham
Sumner, Billy Sunday, Dwight L. Moody, or Walter Rauschenbusch, and his relationship
with Social Darwinism or the Social Gospel.
3. Draft a 1½-page, single-spaced comparison-and-contrast essay or 10-slide presentation
that includes the following:
 Write a brief biography about the person you read about on the Internet and his
relationship with Social Darwinism or the Social Gospel.
 Discuss the differences between Social Darwinism and the Social Gospel.
 Discuss any similarities between Social Darwinism and the Social Gospel.
 Which ideology, Social Darwinism or the Social Gospel, do you think is best for
society? Explain your answer.
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The Progressive Era
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Name
Class
Date
THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
Critical Thinking Activity
From “Wealth” (1889) by Andrew Carnegie
It is well, nay, essential for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes
for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilization,
rather than that none should be so. Much better this great irregularity than universal squalor. . . .
The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts
and luxuries, is also great; but the advantage of this law are also greater still, for it is to this law
that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train.
But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it, as we say of the change in the
conditions of men to which we have referred: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it
have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the
race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome
therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of
environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few,
and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the
future progress of the race. . . . It is a law, as certain as any of the others named, that men
possessed of this peculiar talent for affair, under the free play of economic forces, must, of
necessity, soon be in receipt of more revenue than can be judiciously expended upon
themselves; and this law is as beneficial for the race as the others.
From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917) by Walter Rauschenbusch
The social gospel seeks . . . to create a more sensitive and more modern conscience. . . . Sin is
essentially selfishness. . . . Interests that organize powerful lobbies to defeat tenement or
factory legislation, or turn factory inspection into sham; for nations that are willing to set the
world at war in order to win or protect colonial areas of trade or usurious profit from loans to
weaker peoples; and for private interests which are willing to push a peaceful nation into war
because of the stock exchange has a panic at the rumor of peace; [t]hese seem the
unforgivable sins. . . .
It is not enough to think of the Kingdom as a prevalence of good will. The institutions of life must
be fundamentally fraternal and cooperative if they are to train men to love their fellowmen as coworkers. Sin, being selfish, is covetous and grasping. It favors institutions and laws which permit
unrestricted exploitation and accumulation. This in turn sets up antagonistic interests, increases
law suits, class hostility, and wars, and so miseducates mankind that love and cooperation
seem unworkable, and men are taught to put their trust in coercive control by the strong and in
the sting of hunger and compulsion for the poor. . . .
A divinely ordered community, therefore, would offer to all the opportunities of education and
enjoyment, and expect from all their contribution of labor. . . . Sin selfishly takes from others
their opportunities for self-realization in order to increase its own opportunities abnormally. . . .
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The Progressive Era
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