Strong, Josiah

Josiah Strong (1847–1916), Congregational minister and social reformer, best known for his book Our Country, was born in Naperville, Illinois, but grew up in Hudson, Ohio. He graduated from Western Reserve College in 1869 and was ordained in 1871 after graduating from Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. After two years at a church in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Strong returned to Western Reserve as chaplain and instructor (1873–1876). During a pastorate at the First Congregational Church of Sandusky (1876–1881), he became interested in social reform. He served as secretary of the Ohio Home Missionary Society, from 1881 to 1884, before being called to the Central Congregational Church in Cincinnati.

In 1885, commissioned by the American Home Missionary Society to update an 1858 evangelistic treatise titled Our Country, Strong wrote the book that made him famous. Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis described the perils facing Anglo-Saxon North America, including immigration, Romanism, Mormonism, socialism, and the city. To Strong, the term Anglo-Saxon meant all English-speaking people, including the assimilated immigrants who strengthened the American stock. He believed that informed Americans could overcome the threat to Protestant hegemony described in his book, and could also help civilize other countries. Our Country sold over 175,000 copies during Strong's lifetime, but it has earned him a reputation among historians as a racist and imperialist.

Impressed by his work, the Evangelical Alliance, formed to promote interdenominational cooperation, named Strong its general secretary in 1886. Strong moved to New York City and began to focus on urban problems. Finding the Alliance's approach to social reform too conservative, in 1898 Strong formed the League for Social Service, which was renamed the American Institute for Social Service (AISS) in 1902. With members worldwide, the organization engaged in research, education, and publication about social problems and their solutions and sponsored the Safety First movement to improve working conditions in factories. AISS publications included Social Progress: A Yearbook (1904–1906) and The Gospel of the Kingdom: Studies in Social Reform (1908–1916).

Strong wrote 11 books and published numerous sermons, articles, and speeches. An early proponent of the social gospel, he was as influential as Washington Gladden, Richard Ely, and Walter Rauschenbusch, with whom he shared a grounding in liberal theology and the social sciences and a belief in the Christian responsibility to work for reform in the material realm. Strong endorsed institutional churches, social settlement houses, and civic reform legislation. He continued to advocate interdenominational cooperation—although his ecumenism was limited to Protestants—and, in 1908, helped found the Federal Council of Churches. Exemplifying the more conservative wing of the social gospel, Strong combined statistics with evangelical rhetoric to galvanize American Protestants into assuming a national and global role of social service.