Review by Choice Review
Burns (independent historian) has written a notable social and cultural labor history of the US working-class movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Those who adhere to the consensus idea of US history--little class conflict--will be shaken by Burns's thesis that labor uprisings (and socialism) were at least partly dependent upon the teachings of a secular Jesus as a model for attacking wealth and privilege. Washington Gladden's and Walter Rauschenbusch's Social Gospel movement, although significant, pales in comparison to the ideas of authors Bouck White and George Herron, who offer as a model, often through their deeds, a non-divine Jesus who mingled with the poor and supported their aspirations to overturn Roman rule. These men and others, such as Eugene Debs, urged workers to "go and do likewise," ridding themselves of the ruling elite in the Gilded and Progressive eras. This then was a new "theology" that served many as a usable past. Labor historians will gain much from Burns, as well as from Jim Bissett's Agrarian Socialism in America: Marx, Jefferson and Jesus in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1904-1920 (CH, Jan'00, 37-2942). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. P. D. Travis Texas Woman's University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
