Texas Baptists in the twentieth century struggled to overcome prejudice and embrace racial equality. While historians have generally agreed that Baptist leadership in Texas was more progressive in regard to race relations than that of other southern states, Texas Baptists acquiesced to calls for racial justice with great difficulty. This study seeks to analyze the relationship between Texas Baptists' understanding of social Christianity and their views of racial equality. Furthermore, this study seeks to examine the extent to which white Texas Baptists actually changed their racial views and incorporated African Americans into their church services following the civil rights movement. An analysis of the racial transformation of one of Texas' most famous Baptists, W. A. Criswell, and the history of the Christian Life Commission, which is the ethical arm of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, provides great insight in to the racial progress made by Texas Baptists in the twentieth century. As Texas Baptists enter the twenty-first century and encounter a large and growing Hispanic population, the findings of this study will render aide to those who wish to embark on a new future by learning from the mistakes of their past.

In the late nineteenth century, traditional Protestant social thought which stressed the idea of individual regeneration underwent a gradual readjustment to include the reforming impulse directed towards saving society from the collective ills of industrial life. In order to understand more precisely the origin and nature of this transformation, this study examines the social composition of three Hamilton churches --Centenary Methodist, Central Presbyterian and Christ's Church Cathedral --from 1890 to 1899, a critical decade in the history of religious and secular arrangements in Canada. It is premised on the proposition that local congregations provided the immediate context in which the new social gospel was often developed; they were the recipients of its message and their susceptibility to it would deeply affect its future course. This study belies the uncritical view of businessmen as heroic "Captains of Industry" or as unfeeling exploiters of an underprivileged working class. The high degree to which most of the lay leaders participated in the business and spiritual affairs of their church and the range of their community interests is suggestive of the extent to which the sacred and the secular were intertwined. Drawn from the middle classes, they saw themselves as directing agents responsible for the material, moral and social well-being of society. At the center of their belief system was the notion that practical consistency in character and conduct must form the basis of a rational capitalistic organization of industrial labor. While most of the lay leaders would never make the shift to the social gospel associated with the new liberalism, their action in manifesting a robust Protestant spirit engaged with social ills as they saw them clearly set a mood of social optimism and a style of activism on which the social gospel could thrive. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)