Darryl's Blog
Evangelicals and social action
After a trip to South Africa, megachurch pastor Rick Warren began to re-examine Scripture with new eyes. What he found surprised him. "I found those 2,000 verses on the poor. How did I miss that? I went to Bible college, two seminaries, and I got a doctorate. How did I miss God's compassion for the poor?" Warren is not alone.
In his upcoming book Consuming Jesus, Paul Metzger argues that historical influences have led evangelicals to an antipathy toward social engagement. Once again, he uses D.L. Moody as an example of someone who has influenced evangelicalism.
Moody saw social activism just as he saw theological debate: as a distraction from evangelism. Moody cared for the poor early in his ministry. Later on, he grew frustrated that people seemed more interested in having their physical needs met. "If I had a Bible in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other," the wrote, "the people always looked first at the loaf; and that was just the contrary of the order laid down in the Gospel."
Moody still cared for the poor, but he believed that evangelism was the most effective way to address social concerns. Metzger calls this "trickle-down social ethics" - that "by changing hearts we will eventually be able to change the world." Metzger calls this view well-intentioned but "shortsighted and problematical."
While we should not discount the necessary role evangelism and regeneration play in the transformation of lives and societies, Moody's emphasis - especially when combined with hypermoralism (the "don't drink, don't chew, don't date girls who do" kind of thinking) - fails to engage social inequities adequately. Contemporary evangelicalism's nearly solitary emphasis in many quarters on the "miracle motif" (evangelism and conversion) betrays a fundamental blindness to the immoral structural realities that oppress the poor and keep them poor...[Moody's] views on social engagement may owe as much to American culture's influence on his thinking as they do to his reading of the Bible and his regard for "Christian" values. The same may be said about many evangelicals in present-day American culture.
Metzger identifies another factor that has led to evangelical antipathy toward social engagement: fear of falling victim to "guilt by association." In other words, "one could easily be charged with going down the path of liberalism by showing signs of a social consciousness and conscience" via the slippery-slope claim that "social action leads to liberalism." Metzger concludes:
The fundamentalist reaction to the social gospel movement overshadowed and overwhelmed the classic evangelical understanding of the gospel, which involved spiritual renewal and social reform. Although "social gospels" that reduce Christian faith to social action by making faith a predicate of activism are clearly problematical, so are those versions of the Christian faith that fail to see the gospel as social. The good news of Jesus Christ orders and reorders the whole of life.
I find the same concerns expressed, by the way, in Carl Henry's 1947 book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. "Fundamentalism [at the time the same as evangelicalism] is wondering," he wrote, "just how it is that a world-changing message narrowed its scope to the changing of isolated individuals."
I've often wondered why evangelicals have often been wary of social engagement. This is still going on today, except the "slippery slope" that evangelicals talk about is now probably toward the emerging church, not liberalism. But as Carl Henry wrote 60 years ago, "The redemptive message has implications for all of life; a truncated life results from a truncated message...The cries of suffering humanity today are many. No evangelicalism which ignores the totality of man's condition dares respond in the name of Christianity."
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Interesting stuff Darryl, kind of comes back to the Gospel and what is it exactly.
Reminded me of what I read today http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/0114.htm
Check out this excerpt:
One of the proofs of our Saviour's mission is not only that the poor hear the Word, but are influenced by it and are gospelized. Oh! how great a work it is to gospelize any man, and to gospelize a poor man. What does it mean? It means, to make him like the gospel. Now, the gospel is holy, just, and true, and loving, and honest, and benevolent, and kind, and gracious. So, then, to gospelize a man is to make a rogue honest, to make a harlot modest, to make a profane man serious, to make a grasping man liberal, to make a covetous man benevolent, to make the drunken man sober, to make the untruthful man truthful, to make the unkind man loving, to make the hater the lover of his species, and, in a word, to gospelize a man is, in his outward character, to bring him into such a condition that he labours to carry out the command of Christ, "Love thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself." Gospelizing, furthermore, has something to do with an inner principle; gospelizing a man means saving him from hell and making him a heavenly character; it means blotting out his sins, writing a new name upon his heart—the new name of God. It means bringing him to know his election, to put his trust in Christ, to renounce his sins, and his good works too, and to trust solely and wholly upon Jesus Christ as his Redeemer. Oh! what a blessed thing it is to be gospelized! How many of you have been so gospelized? The Lord grant that the whole of us may feel the influence of the gospel. I contend for this, that to gospelize a man is the greatest miracle in the world. All the other miracles are wrapped up in this one. To gospelize a man, or, in other words, to convert him, is a greater work than to open the eyes of the blind; for is it not opening the eyes of the blind soul that he may see spiritual matters, and understand the things of heavenly wisdom, and is not a surgical operation easier than operation on the soul? Souls we cannot touch, although science and skill have been able to remove films and cataracts from the eyes. "The lame walk." Gospelizing a man is more than this. It is not only making a lame man walk, but it is making a dead man who could not walk in the right way walk in the right way ever afterwards. "The lepers are cleansed." Ah! but to cleanse a sinner is greater work than cleansing a leper. "The deaf hear." Yes, and to make a man who never listened to the voice of God hear the voice of his Maker, is a miracle greater than to make the deaf hear, or even to raise the dead. Great though that be, it is not a more stupendous effort of divine power than to save a soul, since men are naturally dead in sins, and must be quickened by divine grace if they are saved. To gospelize a man is the highest instance of divine might, and remains an unparalleled miracle, a miracle of miracles. "The poor are evangelized."
Can you say amen!!
Let's reach out to the poor practically, but while we do lets share the Gospel so they too can be saved. Ohterwise, we aren't loving them like Jesus.
george, I'll say "AMEN!"
Darryl, I think the problem "evangelicals" have with "social action" is that for too many it BECOMES the gospel. When I hear folks in the emerging church talk about being "missional" by doing "social justice" I seldom hear a CONTEXT for that call. I seldom find that call ROOTED in the GOSPEL - and by Gospel I'm referring to the traditioanl protestant understanding of the Gospel - the veiw that finds its roots in Luther and Calvin, etc.
Often, I find "missional" social action to be simply another law. I'm motivated to do it because it will "advance the Kingdom" or it's "kingdom work" or something like that. Or that it makes the world a better place.
I seldom hear anyone motivate others towards social action or "missional" work because of the glory of God in the Gospel. I believe our emphasis should NOT be on Social Action or "missional" activities, but on the GOSPEL - the only message with the power to move us to give ourselves to love and serve others.
Keller has made the point that churches that do evangelism usually don't do social action, and that churches that do social action often can't evangelize out of a paper bag. It's quite a different set of skills and way of thinking.
I agree that the Gospel will lead us to both - but it seems like a rare thing for this to happen, maybe because we haven't seen it modeled often enough.
We can't wait for someone else to model a whole Gospel. We need to do it.
It continues to baffle me that the polarities created by both "Gospel only" evangelicals and "social engagement" ones still exist. It is true that many Bible believers ignore social activism far too much. But it also needs to be said that far too often those involved socially never give any acknowledgement to the life changing power of the Gospel. They reduce the Gospel to their social activism. It needs to be recognized that a poor family helped out of their poverty will still die in their sins if they do not come to Christ alone, through faith alone by grace alone. It may be true that many will not believe if they never have their social needs addressed. But it must be must be recognized that helping people socially is not the Gospel. It will not tell people that they are lost and in need of rescue by Christ. People will not absorb the Gospel message by osmosis simply because someone fed them. There is no choice to make here. We are called to help people where they know they are needy and to teach them about a greater need of which they may be ignorant.