Herron is best remembered as a leading exponent of the so-called Social Gospel movement and for his highly publicized divorce and remarriage to the daughter of a wealthy benefactor which scandalized polite society of the day.

Herron referred to his father as "a humble man who believed in the Bible and hated unrighteousness", with Christian ancestors dating back to the days of the Scottish Reformation.

[7] Herron became interested in the Social Gospel movement and organized a study group called the Institute of Christian Sociology while in Iowa.

According to historian Howard Quint:[8] Bluntly, Herron told his audience that the existing social and religious order was wrong because it placed a premium on competition, self-interest, and material power.

Such a civilization failed to secure morality and justice, since it put the weak at the mercy of the strong and at the same time minimized the paramount Christian principles of stewardship and sacrifice.

[9]Herron's sermon was published in The Christian Union magazine and thereafter reprinted as a pamphlet, gaining the author a national readership for the first time.

"[11] Quint remarks that this earned Herron not only a "host of idolizing followers", but also a "sizeable number of critics who, in varying degrees of hostility, considered him a menace to established social and religious institutions.

Combined with his outspoken political views, this provided fodder for Herron's opponents, who forced him to resign his teaching position at the Congregationalist college in 1899.

[6] Polite society was scandalized by the minister-turned-socialist father of five who had taken up with a younger woman; the court sensationally awarded his former wife and children Carrie Rand's personal fortune of $60,000 at the time of his divorce.

[6] Herron and Rand married in May 1901 in an unconventional ceremony in Rochester, New York, officiated by Christian socialist minister William Thurston Brown.

A gifted public speaker, Herron was called upon to deliver the nominating speech for Debs at the 1904 National Convention of the Socialist Party, held in Chicago.

[18] The summer of 1914 saw the shattering of the fragile European peace with coming of World War I. Herron immediately cast his lot with the Entente Powers of Great Britain, France, Tsarist Russia and Italy in the conflict with the combined forces of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires.

Knowing as he did the iniquities of the Entente Powers, the secret treaties and understandings, the jockeying and trading for economic and political advantages even during the progress of the war, and the frightful anachronism of the Russian autocracy, he could still believe that the only hope for a change world lay in the overthrow of the German system.

[25] Unsurprisingly, Herron was bitterly opposed to the decision of the Socialist Party of America to continue its militant opposition to the conflict at its 1917 Emergency National Convention held in St. Louis, Missouri.

Herron was greatly disappointed with the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, with a draconian Treaty of Versailles which made a "perjury" of official Allied war objectives.

On August 16, 1922, he published in London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Ruskin House, 40 Museum Street, W. C. I, the book: Revival of Italy in which he praised the social reforms of the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.