A Defense of the Social Gospel


I earlier posted about the Wall Street Journal commentary by Joseph Loconte, which argued that the Social Gospel was not sufficiently Christian. Pastor Chuck Currie, a UCC Minister has posted a good counter. He briefly attacks LoConte and then points to a longer paper he wrote about the topic in 2004:

First, a little background from a modest paper I wrote on Rauschenbusch while in seminary:



By the turn of the last century a new theology emerged within the United States called the social gospel. Walter Rauschenbusch, the son of German immigrants and a Baptist, was the major proponent of this new theology. The social gospel sought to address issues of sin and salvation within the context of the Industrial Revolution and the great poverty it spawned in urban centers. The social gospel asked Christians and their churches to become advocates for the “least of these” in a society that had abandoned the poor. Rauschenbusch’s theology was optimistic. He saw human progress as an event always moving forward with the great potential for improvement of the human condition. The social gospel became the dominant theology within American churches until the optimism it expressed collapsed under the weight of two world wars and a growing sense among Christians that human progress was not always a forward event. Despite its shortcoming the Social Gospel remains one of the most important theological movements of the modern era and even today continues to impact the work of mainline Christian churches. There is much that we can learn from this theology and incorporate into the lives of our modern churches.


One of Rauschenbusch’s major works was the 1907 Christianity and the Social Crisis. As Loconte points out, the book has been republished to celebrate the 100th anniversary of this important contribution to theology. Loconte, like most writers for the WJS, is a right-wing ideologue. He has been associated with the Ethics and Public Policy Center and The Heritage Foundation, both arch conservative think tanks.


. . .


Loconte’s own analysis is simplistic, filled with errors, and written from the perspective of one whose organizations are often unconcerned with the plight of the "least of these." It is hardly justifiable to suggest Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel cannot be called Christian. Rather then argue point by point let me simply reprint here what I wrote in 2004 and let those interested enough in the debate draw their own conclusions about the meaning and what I believe to be the positive impact of the Social Gospel.



Walter Rauschenbusch and The Social Gospel


Read it all.

To repeat what I wrote before about the Social Gospel, I think that Walter Rauschenbusch's contribution cannot not be forgotten. At the turn of the Century, the Church was too comfortably aligned with the rich and powerful, and the Social Gospel was an important reminder of the message of Jesus about our obligation to the least of these.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Giles Fraser on Gay Marriage

Image
The Rev. Gileas Fraser offers thoughtful piece on gay marriage on BBC Radio this morning: Back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the Book of Common Prayer was being put together, marriage was said to be for three purposes: First, It was ordained for the procreation of children … Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication .. Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. How do these three concerns relate to the prospect of gay marriage? The third priority insists that marriage is designed to bring human beings into loving and supportive relationships. Surely no one can deny that homosexual men and women are in as much need of loving and supportive relationships as anybody else. And equally deserving of them too. This one seems pretty clear. The second priority relates to the encouragement of monogamy. The Archbishop of Canterbury himself has rig...
Read more

Religious Map of United States

Image
This map shows which of eight major Christian denominations has a plurality in the United States, county by county. the map obviously does not capture the full story given the rich diversity of Christian denominations in the United States, but it does show much of the regionalization of the major denominations. The map and analysis can be found here . Hat Tip to my friend Jim .
Read more

New Climate Change Study

What a coincidence. Yesterday, I blogged about the James Dobson et al "We Get It" effort to deny climate change. Yesterday, NASA scientists issued a new report showing a strong causal link between human activity and climate change. Here is the Science Daily report: A vast array of physical and biological systems across the earth are being affected by warming temperatures caused by humans, says a new analysis of information not previously assembled all in one spot. The effects on living things include earlier leafing of trees and plants over many regions; movements of species to higher latitudes and altitudes in the northern hemisphere; changes in bird migrations in Europe, North America and Australia; and shifting of the oceans' plankton and fish from cold- to warm-adapted communities. "Humans are influencing climate through increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and the warming world is causing impacts on physical and biological systems attributable at the global scal...
Read more