The Social Gospel Revisited

 

A little more than a hundred years ago a great movement swept across American Christianity—the “Social Gospel movement.”  In 1897 Charles Sheldon, Christian Socialist, published his book In His Steps arguing that real Christianity is about doing what Jesus would do: hence WWJD. The book strongly influenced Christians including Baptist preacher and theologian Walter Rauschenbusch who added his writings to the movement.  The social gospel movement argued that the work of the church was not merely getting people to heaven but it was bringing heaven down to earth by working for a world that is closer to kingdom-of-God values.  Our work was not just getting people saved from hell, but saving them from the hell on earth.

 

Ministers who had focused on helping people get their “ticket to heaven” began focusing more on bringing heaven to earth. Massive church programs were launched to feed the poor, bring justice to the oppressed and relieve pain and suffering.  Settlement houses were founded for needy immigrants, missions were started in cities, and health care was given to the poor.  The YMCA that had started to help conserve the faith of rural Christian kids moving to wicked cities quickly joined the movement and turned toward serving the needy.  Churches in the social gospel movement banded together politically to pass child labor laws, bring better education for the poor, ban prostitution and alcohol, and reduce the hours for working mothers along with ending the required twelve-hour work day for Steel workers hat robbed children of their father every evening. 

 

Most mainline churches were swept into the “social gospel movement.”  Sermons about heaven or hell gradually disappeared and were replaced by sermons on enlisting Christians in the great work of reforming the nation and establishish God’s kingdom on earth.  While many ministers in the movement argued for a both/and approach—for both personal conversion and the social gospel, still many mainline churches gradually downplayed personal conversion in favor of social reform and justice.

 

But for every movement in the church there is usually an equal and opposite movement.  In opposition to “the social gospel” movement other churches pushed back claiming they were “sticking with the old time gospel” of personal conversion not reform and justice. These churches were a minority. They continued to preach about heaven and hell and called people to get saved.  They argued the social gospeleers had abandoned the real gospel and replaced it with a watered down version of do-gooding. They attacked Sheldon, the author of In His Steps, for his not believing in the Virgin Birth or the resurrection of Jesus and were wary of the book. They believed the best way to reform the world was not to launch social programs but to get people saved. They believed when a person was “gloriously converted” marriages were healed, husbands quit abusing their wives, alcoholism disappeared and the resulting hard-working sober Christians would even rise in their economic status.  They considered the real problem was sin, not injustice or poverty. They accepted the role of government is doing social welfare work but believed the church should provide what the government never could—the spiritual resources of dramatic converting delivering life-change resulting from the Holy Spirit’s converting work in the lives of the poor and needy. These church who opposed to the social gospel eventually became what we now call “evangelicals.”

 

It’s no secret that the evangelicals who once opposed the social gospel are now flocking toward it.  New speakers like Shane Clayborne and new books like Richard Stearns’ The Hole in Our Gospel are calling evangelicals back toward greater social action. Evangelicals in 2010 are where the mainline church was in 1910.  There is a new wave in the works and individual churches are deciding to join up or stand by.

 

What I’m wondering is how evangelicals will survive the social gospel differently than the mainline church. Will evangelicals merely trade one hole in the gospel and make another—filling in the hole of social reform while cutting out another hole of personal conversion?  Of course we will try to keep both, but will we succeed? How will evangelicals avoid the snares the mainline churches got caught up in? Are evangelicals now actually the new mainline churches as we hold all the high ground and great churches as the sluggish downtown mainline churches have become the sideline churches? So, where will this new social gospel movement take us and how can we take personal conversion along too? Or should we?

 

So, what do you think?

The discussion of this column is on Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=161502633

 

Keith Drury   October 19, 2010

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