Thoughts on the "Social Gospel."

This is just going to be a short rant on the pejorative and thoughtless use of the term “social gospel.”

It is common among fundamentalists of today to use this term in ways which denigrate, in a passive/aggressive sort of way, all those for whom the betterment of society, the help of the downtrodden poor and generally the alleviation of unnecessary suffering or hardships are valid—albeit partial—expressions of their Christianity. This is unfortunate and, in my view, dishonouring to Christ.

The common response of these people is to create a “package” through an arbitrary and false dialectic of “either/or” which in turn allows him or her to isolate the whole idea, to allow him or her to begin applying hedges, warnings, restrictions and eventually prohibitions against what has come to be seen as something illegitimate and impure, “not the Gospel.”

But of course this process of isolation is only partially based in reality or the Bible. A case in point is the reliance on such verses as Deut. 15:11a “For the poor will never cease to be in the land;” and which Christ referred to in Matt. 26:11: The—false—sentiment behind these verses can only be maintained by reading such verses, and others like them, out of context and in so doing are to deny many other verses such as: Deut 15:7; 1 Sam. 2:7-8; Job 29:12; Psalm 72:13; Prov. 22:22; Matt. 19:21; Luke 18:22 (chosen almost at random!) that clearly indicate God’s greater and overarching concerns for the poor and the needy.

In fact, in order to maintain this dichotomous belief, one has to ignore entire sections of the Bible altogether, in both Testaments, but especially in the Gospels, Acts and one or two of the apostolic letters. (I’m thinking of the obvious passages such as Matthew 22, 25 and Luke 14 as well as others.)

To imply that a “social gospel” even exists is downright dishonest. The only ones who would be willing to defend such an idea are those for whom the complete and finished work of Christ has not been accomplished (i.e. liberals). There is only the Gospel. There is no “other Gospel” with which it must compete. The choice of the “true gospel” over against the “social gospel” is not—however much the fundamentalists among us would like to have it—an “either/or” choice. It has been presented to us that way of course, in an attempt to keep people from realizing the falseness of the whole idea. It is subterfuge, pure and simple. The choice is and always was a “both/and” choice. The Gospel is a call to fallen sinners to repent and believe in God’s one and only Son for salvation from the guilt and dominion of sin and from eternal destruction. There is no other Gospel. But this gospel is based on love; love for God and love for others. This fact simply cannot be denied by anyone claiming to be a Christian. The gospel includes a compassionate response from disciples of Christ even as He taught and exemplified. God’s loving-kindness for the suffering and ill-treated is evident in page after page of the Bible; God’s love of justice and fair-dealing is everywhere expressed. It seems to me that those who call themselves “Christian” cannot turn away from these truths without turning away from their Lord and King for whom these truths were self-evident.

Those among us in the Reformed tradition who tend towards the view that there are two competing gospels: the one “true gospel” and the other “social—read false—gospel” at the same time pride themselves on being the inheritors of the Reformation itself and those lofty ideas, doctrines and principles rediscovered in the Bible by men such as Zwingli, Beza, Bucer, Knox, Calvin and Luther and wrested from the grasping hands of those who had either forgotten or who deliberately chose to ignore those very things in favour of dark superstition, oppressive social and political control of the people or conversely a new humanism that would place man at the very centre of the universe.

But these same people forget their own history, or have never bothered to learn it. They forget, for instance that when John Calvin came to Geneva, that city was a cesspool of immorality and suffering and that it was largely his biblically-based program of social reform that made the city a silk purse out of what had hitherto been a sow’s ear.

Wherever the Protestant Reformation took hold, conditions of average people improved dramatically. To assume that a significant part of the “success” of the Reformation, and the spread of the Gospel was not due to social change brought about through various means (including a bent for republican democracy, universal education and social welfare for the disenfranchised) is simply to ignore history (and we all know what happens to those who ignore history).

Nor is this truth is not confined to the Reformation. Throughout the history of the Christian church during revival after revival, the spread of the Gospel and the improvement of average living conditions has gone hand in hand. I think now of the labours of such Christian men (some Calvinists, some not) as Samuel Rutherford, William Wilberforce, John Newton, George Whitefield, the Wesleys and so on. Again, to deny this simple fact is to deny the truth and to grieve the Holy Spirit as well, who was and is the actual agent of such change.

So let us hear no more charges against the “social gospel.” In fact, let the term drop from our vocabulary. “There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:4-6).

Soli Deo Gloria.