The social gospel movement was not a unified and well-focused movement, as it contained members who disagreed with the conclusions of others within the movement. Rauschenbusch stated that the movement needed "a theology to make it effective" and likewise "theology needs the social gospel to vitalize it." In "A Theology for the Social Gospel" (1917), Rauschenbusch took up the task of creating "a systematic theology large enough to match social gospel and vital enough to back it." He believed that the social gospel would be "a permanent addition to our spiritual outlook and that its arrival constitute a state in the development of the Christian religion", and thus a systematic tool for using it was necessary.