Seeking God's Kingdom: The Non-Conformist Social Gospel in Wales 1906-1939 (University of Wales - Bangor History of Religion)

This book records and analyses the theological work produced during a particularly productive and important period in Welsh religious history. It also sets this work in wider and European intellectual and philosophical context. The bulk of this book is taken up with an analyses of the work of the four main protagonists of social thinking among Welsh Nonconformists between the two World Wars. It critically describes their wider theological schemes and shows them to have been archetypal theological liberals rather than specifically social gospellers. The reaction against theological liberalism is then discussed and the book offers some answers to the question why the so-called 'social gospel' had come to an end by 1939. These include the probability that there was no such thing as a 'social gospel' in Wales, that different theological positions were being adopted by younger Nonconformists and the main protagonists were busy with other work, waylaid by illness or dead.