March 16, 2010
Should churches and individual Christians seek to help people with material problems and social needs, remedy social ills, and improve social institutions? Throughout history many congregations, Christian organizations, and individual believers have labored to do these things. Today, however, some political conservatives denounce the "social gospel" as misguided and unbiblical and counsel Christians to avoid or leave congregations that stress social justice.
Television talk show host Glenn Beck urges Christians to run away as fast as they can from all churches that use "‘social justice' or ‘economic justice'" on their websites. Rather than expressing the mission of these churches to reduce poverty and promote human rights, Beck asserts, these terms are simply "code words" for communism and Nazism. Social justice, he claims, is "a perversion of the gospel."
Kim Moreland, a research associate for Charles Colson's BreakPoint, argues that adherents of the social gospel believe they can "completely eradicate poverty and other types of social ills" largely by using the political process. Instead of preaching "the good news of the Gospel," they allegedly argue that laws and government programs can create the good society.
In "The Shameful Social Gospel" T. A. McMahon, president of The Berean Call ministry, accuses proponents of the social gospel of assuming that Christians can best win people to their faith by alleviating the human suffering produced by poverty, disease, social injustice, and civil rights abuses. The social gospel is "a deadly disease" that reinforces "belief that salvation can be attained by doing good works" and acting morally and sacrificially. Every time Christians have undertaken practical actions to benefit humanity, McMahon contends, they have "compromised biblical faith and dishonored God" because the Bible does not command the "church to fix the problems of the world."
These commentators and others who censure the church's social mission misread both history and the Bible. Certainly, some social gospel advocates have ignored evangelism and individual piety, and others have rejected Christian orthodoxy. However, many other Christians have endeavored both to save souls andhelp the poor and oppressed. They have often argued that these two missions are integrally related. William Wilberforce and other members of the Clapham Sect worked zealously in England in the early 1800s to abolish slavery, make work safer and better compensated, and assist the indigent. At the same time, leaders of the Second Great Awakening created numerous reform societies in America to achieve these same ends and to help other troubled groups. Many of the evangelicals who espoused social Christianity in the years between 1880 and 1920 labored to improve working conditions, management-labor relationships, and patterns of social interaction, renovate slums, reduce crime, abolish child labor, and increase racial justice. While working to win converts and plant churches around the world, thousands of Christian missionaries have also built hospitals and schools and tried to abolish slavery, end social abuses, and create more just societies.
