It is because they viewed the Gospels as blueprints for social harmony that their critics have tended to dismiss their vision of the Kingdom of God as innocent and their faith as a form of despiritualized ethics. As H. Richard Niebuhr lamented, they offered “a God without wrath [who] brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”46 However, in their efforts to address Nietzsche’s criticisms of their faith, the Social Gospelers exhibit a conscience more agonized than previously thought. Though they rejected Nietzsche’s advocacy of
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