Although a Methodist minister, J.S. Woodsworth eventually left the church because, as he once explained, he could not continue to bury dead babies and pronounce their death the decision of God ("The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.") when he knew that the cause of the tragedy was bad milk, the only kind available to their impoverished parents.

Woodsworth's viewpoint was that of a "social gospeller." In both English- and French-speaking Canada, social gospel movements, highly influenced by similar trends in Britain and the United States, arose at the turn of the century, peaked during World War I and then gradually dissipated in the post-war years. The movement had a powerful influence on Canadian society that lingers to this day.

The social gospel movement hoped to create a society based on the Christian principles of love, charity, humanity, brotherhood, and democracy. Adherents of the movement felt the church should not be concerned with individual sin and salvation, but with social problems such as prostitution, alcoholism, intolerable living and working conditions, and the exploitation and racism faced by immigrants. Social gospellers believed that as social conditions changed, individuals would become better people, and eventually the "Kingdom of God on Earth" would be attained.

William Lyon Mackenzie King explained the movement's ideals this way in his book Industry and Humanity: "Abundance of life is to be attained, not through any brute struggle on the part of men or nations in accord with some biological law of survival of the fittest, but through mutual service in accord with the principles of a higher law, the law of human brotherhood which finds its sublime expression in Christian sacrifice and love."

With such a perspective, social gospellers worked to bring relief to the poor, to educate people as to the social evils caused by greed, competition, and materialism, and to encourage greater governmental involvement in social problems. As part of their agenda, social gospellers felt the government needed to provide assistance for the unemployed and disabled and to regulate industries so that they would be forced to be more socially responsible.

In the 1930s, social gospel ideals found their expression in the new party founded by J.S. Woodsworth and his associates, the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). (Socialists hold that the community as a whole should own and control wealth production, distribution, and exchange, in order to stop the gross economic inequalities that develop in a system based on private enterprise.) Through this party's influence, the social gospel movement prepared the way for the modern social security system Canada has today.