Power in the Social Gospel: Howard Kester, Claude Williams and the Southern Tenant Farmers Union
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This essay explores how social gospelers in the U.S. South organized for relational power by building institutions for economic and political democracy in the 1930s and 1940s. In their organizing, Howard Kester and Claude Williams built relational power and institutions that fed the institutional ecology of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. While it might be surprising to find a worthwhile analysis of power by social gospelers like Kester and Williams, they keenly understood the role of power in theology, the work of the church, and movement building, especially as they organized for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU). Kester and Williams built relational power by building institutions through which grassroots people organized to build political and economic power to confront the ravages of racial capitalism.
Source: Religions
DOI: 10.3390/rel15091091
Author: Aaron Stauffer
Institution: Vanderbilt University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,046
OpenAlex ID: W4402367048