"An Account of My Stewardship": Mercer Green Johnston, the Episcopal Church and the Social Gospel in Newark, New Jersey, 1912-1916

In the 1890s, the advent of the idea that the church had a duty to act as a corporate institution to solve the social problems of industrial society threatened to alter radically the nature of parish life and challenged the authority exercised by influential laymen on the vestries of many Episcopal parishes. Here, Bonner discusses the account of Mercer Green Johnston, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Newark NJ from 1912-1916, on how the reform process was handled at the parish level. Johnston's story casts light on the theology and reform activities of the broad church party and the inevitable conflict between rector and vestry that such activities provoked.