1836-1918
Congregational Minister

Roots.

Solomon Washington Gladden, the "Father of the Social Gospel" and one of the most influential clergymen in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was born in Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania, in 1836. His father died when Washington was six years old, resulting in his being raised by his uncles on a farm in Oswego, New York, a part of the country that had been swept by religious revivals in the 1830s. At sixteen Gladden began working for the Oswego Gazette, the first of many affiliations with newspapers throughout his career. He attended Oswego Academy and in 1856 enrolled at Williams College, graduating in 1859. He was soon married and licensed to preach. He had led a rather ordinary life in his first twenty-four years. But Gladden was no ordinary man.

Clergyman and Author.

In 1860 he became pastor of the First Congregational Church in Brooklyn...