Building Bridges: Church Women United and Social Reform Work at Mid-Twentieth Century

Church Women United is a national movement of Protestant women, of all races and ethnicities who came together across denominational lines.[1] The assembly operated under the guiding principle of uniting Protestant women in service to their Lord and Savior and working toward women’s total integration in church and society. Having originally formed in the early years of the twentieth century, and worked within the Federal Council of Churches, this group sustained their focus on the Social Gospel and feminism throughout the remainder of the century.

From its inception Church Women United, in all its various forms, has been two-pronged: Feminism and Social Gospel. This paper explores the practices of some liberal Protestant women during the mid-twentieth century and the bridges they built. Since the group is two-pronged in its purpose, this paper delves into how the women understood and executed their feminist consciousness as well as the Social Gospel across the middle decades of the twentieth century. This history significantly changes our understanding of the origins of the Second Wave of Feminism by showing its vitality in the 1940s and 1950s, and its energy within the Protestant community.

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[1] Church Women United is the current name for the organization. The women, as this dissertation shows, underwent numerous attempts to organize and hence there are a variety of names throughout the first six decades of the century: Committee on Allied Christian Agencies (1924), National Commission of Protestant Church Women (1928), National Council of Federated Church Women (1930), National Committee of Church Women (1938), United Council of Church Women (1941), General Department of United Church Women of the National Council of the Churches of Christ (1950), United Church Women (1966), Church Women United (1968).

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