The Social Gospel

I used a term in a recent blog that perhaps not all of you are familiar with: the social gospel.” It has been a common term that I have used most of my life, but it is not a common term today, so, I decided to write a bit about it.

Historians tend to see it as essentially a protestant movement of the 20^th century, particularly the early part. In essence the social gospel is the attempt to apply Christian ethics to social problems that face our society. As a Presbyterian, it is reflected, eloquently in my opinion, in the first chapter of our form of government as labeled as The Great Ends of the Church:

F-1.0304 The Great Ends of the Church

The great ends of the Church are:

the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind;

the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God;

the maintenance of divine worship;

the preservation of the truth;

the promotion of social righteousness; and

the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.4

The conditions in the country when the social gospel was prominent were similar to what they are now. During the 19^th century, lacking the governmental controls that came into being in the 20^th century following the Great Depression. There was widespread poverty, great unemployment, a lack of child labor laws, a few laws dealing with the safety net that came into being under the leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The so called Protestant Ethic was also prominent in people’s thinking. That was the idea that good people worked hard and therefore were rewarded by God with wealth, while poor people were being punished by God because they were slackards. Not unlike how we hear the Wall Street people describing the Wall Street Occupiers. It was prominent in the Old Testament times prior to the wisdom writers. The wisdom writers (authors of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon) looked around the world and saw that a lot of good people were having a hard time of it and a lot of nasty folk were making out like bandits economically. So they rejected that type of thinking, as the Social Gospel contingent rejected similar thinking in their day.

Most mainline churches today still support the Social Gospel in one form or another feeling that we need to take care of people’s physical needs before we go out evangelizing them. The good news of the gospel includes care for people as well as the proclamation of salvation through Christ. And we are beginning to see more evidence of this type of thinking emerging in the more fundamental and non-denominational mega churches of today.

To give an example we can turn to how the church has done missionary work at various times in history. Some might remember an Ingrid Bergman movie who played a rather slow woman who just wanted to help to poor African babies; she saw them as less that her so she could help them. And so churches sent missionaries off to various countries to tell them about Jesus and in the process demonstrate the superiority of American culture and values and save their poor little ignorant souls. Fortunately, churches gained a more enlightened understanding of mission work, meeting people where they were, accepting them and their culture and providing help in living a more productive live before evangelizing them. In my home town and my church, (true story this time), a young man named Frank Younkin , felt called to be a missionary. He grew up on a farm, went to Iowa State University to learn the latest agricultural skills, and then to seminary. He and his wife Anita spent their lives in Thailand and similar places. Basically he taught farming practices that would work well in their countries, and Jesus likely was talked about a bit as well. To me that is the social gospel done properly in mission work.

One fella felt it necessary to explain my job to me as a pastor one day (one of many over the years). He said, I had but one thing to do, evangelize. I thanked him and thought privately, bull. My job, as a teaching elder is to help others grow in their faith so the may live the Christian life more fully and share it with others. The least of my work is so-called evangelism. My work as I saw it was to be aware of my church, my community, my state, nation and world, and to perceive what were it’s needs. And share those perceptions with others, who, if touched by grace, wanted to respond to the needs of others and care for them. Social gospel. Again I didn’t seem my primary job as doing the social gospel, but awakening need to do so in others and help them with their ministry of the social gospel. In other words, I mainly told stories, like Jesus did, to awaken our awareness of our needs to give thanks and share with others God’s bounty.

After all, how many times can a person be saved? For me, it was once and that took place at Golgotha (where Christ was crucified). But our response to the good news is to live as good citizens of the kingdom of God, here and hereafter. And that means taking care of each other.

Another great example I believe I shared before. The fella who runs the local gas station woke up one Sunday morning to tons of snow and all churches had cancelled their services. So, he said to his family, “Let’s go do something good today.” And he did, he went all over town with his snowblower cleaning out people driveways. That is the social gospel.

Matthew 25

³⁴“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. ³⁵And here’s why:

I was hungry and you fed me,

I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,

I was homeless and you gave me a room,

³⁶I was shivering and you gave me clothes,

I was sick and you stopped to visit,

I was in prison and you came to me.’

³⁷“Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? ^38-39And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ ⁴⁰Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’

⁴¹“Then he will turn to the ‘goats,’ the ones on his left, and say, ‘Get out, worthless goats! You’re good for nothing but the fires of hell. ⁴²And why? Because—

I was hungry and you gave me no meal,

I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,

⁴³I was homeless and you gave me no bed,

I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,

Sick and in prison, and you never visited.’

⁴⁴“Then those ‘goats’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?’

⁴⁵“He will answer them, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.’