Social Gospel
Defined as:
Social gospel mostly agrees with how Jesus' ethical teachings could remedy the problems caused by “Gilded Age” capitalism. They believed the Second Coming could not happen until humankind rid itself of social evils by human effort.
History:
-major leaders included Richard T. Ely, Josiah Strong, Washington Gladden, and Walter Rauschenbusch
Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist minister and theologian, advocated for a “social gospel.” He believes Christianity must address social questions. Western civilization is passing through a social revolution unparalleled in history for scope and power. Its coming is inevitable. Religious belief must be put into practice to right society’s wrongs.
“God is acting, and Christ is here now” so it is up to men and women like him to act on the message of Christ and help create the kingdom of God on earth.
“Christianizing the social order means bringing it into harmony with ethical convictions which we identify with Christ” (Walter Raushenbusch).
“The purpose of all that Jesus said and did and hoped to do was always the social redemption of the entire life of the human race on earth” (Walter Raushenbusch).
“The Kingdom of God is not a matter of getting individuals to heaven, but of transforming the life on earth into the harmony of heaven” (Walter Rauschenbusch)
The social gospel helped bring about good social reform, and many people in need were helped by this movement. Unfortunately, it fell short in communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Ex. Salvation Army YMCA, soup kitchens, etc….
Beliefs:
their teachings de-emphasized salvation, sin, heaven, and hell
-they believed that man's primary issue was evil in society, and only when these evils were conquered could a person concern himself with his own personal sin
-as long as man was under evil institutions, he could not stop walking in sin
-most people who followed the social gospel were postmillennialists and believed that Christ would come only after His kingdom was established on earth
-they seek to fulfill Matthew 6:10 by bringing the kingdom of God through their good works
-the social gospel is often connected to progressive politics and liberal theology
***Christian faith practices as a call not just to personal conversion but to social reform.
-The Social Gospel is a social movement within Protestantism that aims to apply Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice
-embodies the principles of charitable work and social justice. The movement encouraged addressing social issues through faith-inspired actions.
-Advocates of the movement interpreted the kingdom of God as requiring social as well as individual salvation and sought the betterment of industrialized society through application of the biblical principles of charity and justice.
***Fundamental Christians believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, which means they believe every word in the Bible is literally true and cannot be contradicted by humans. THey also believe in the Virgin Birth, Resurrection, Atonement, and imminent Second Coming of Jesus Christ
Vs.
***Social Gospel of Evangelical Christians who are typically more tolerant, accepting, and against the advocacy of sacred texts. There are no absolutes. The gray areas of society is where true Christianity can be seen
Deconstructing & Reimagining Church:
-considers himself/herself to be one that is part of the evangelical christianity faith of social gospels
-open-minded, forward-thinking progressives. Instead, it’s about how messages like this are helping me rethink almost everything I thought I knew about the Christian faith
-the issue is not doctrine; it’s attitude. It’s not theology; it’s posture. It’s not the brain; it’s the heart. In short, it doesn’t really matter what kind of Christian you are. What it comes down to is what kind of person you are
-absolutism is just a category of weaponization against humanity
-believing causes fear, anxiety, and depression
“My desire is to discover how we can move away from Christian nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and church hurt to reclaim the Gospel of Jesus together,” so “when I hear those who claim that ‘God is being pushed out of schools,’ love challenges me to hear they are saying they love their faith and fear it is being taken away and try to comfort them by reminding them that God is far too big and powerful to be pushed out from anywhere” (Rev. Benjamin Cremer).
ReThinking Christianity:
-how to navigate faith in the midst of uncertainty and reimagining what it means to be a progressive Christian
-challenges the idea that Christianity is outmoded and anachronistic, and instead presents a "systematic theology" for the post-scientific age
-a crucial factor is the way younger people think about community and by extension religion. They regard religion as a matter of optional personal programming.
-The world is moving in profound ways. We should not think that Christianity is disappearing. It is, however, changing.
Moral Imagination:
This sensitivity to grasp the details of lived experience makes all the difference in understanding whether an action is ethically correct or not
Pastors/Leaders: Preaching Jesus as a social justice warrior
Nation/Patriotism:
It shattered my ingrained nationalism to hear Jesus talk about the glory of God being revealed through him by being lifted up on the cross rather than taking the throne of power over the kingdoms of the earth.
The narratives of patriotism, Christianity, and especially masculinity just didn't seem to fit what I was learning about Jesus. I arrived at the point of having to choose between the ways of Jesus and the Christianity I had inherited.
-discuss really helpful ways to communicate in ways that don't cause others to feel like you are infringing on their freedoms.
These myths were the lenses through which I read the Bible and they influenced everything from the way I prayed to the way I voted.
-the United States of America was a nation called by God to usher in Christ’s kingdom in the world is the myth of nations identity
Symbolic Christianity:
-also protests symbolic changes it doesn’t approve of such as the removal of American flags from church sanctuaries, saying “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas,” kneeling to protest racial injustice during sporting events, or even changes to Starbucks cups or shifts in beer advertisements.
Ex. Ten Commandments to be posted in school classrooms.
This is prioritizing symbolic change rather than substantive change. Imagine what this makes our culture think of Christianity.
-Posting the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms is more about expressing Christian ownership and dominion of those classrooms, rather than any real desire to bring actual power and proactive change to those schools for the better.
Laws: Symbolic Christianity also cares more about something being legal or illegal, for the symbol it will serve to others that it voted to uphold something that matched its values, rather than consider how such laws will actually impact the needs of others, negatively or positively.
Ex. Voting:
We can think of all the bills criminalizing abortion and all the anti-trans bills across the country as examples of this. Where it is more important for something being “illegal” in order to send a message about our values than it is to consider the actual impact it will have on the very people those laws are aimed at.
I think this is also why there is such resistance within many Christian circles to addressing the sins of racism, capitalism, sexism, homophobia, and so many others in the history of the United States. Addressing these things fundamentally shakes one of the bedrock symbols of symbolic Christianity: the symbol of a Christian nation.
Substantive Christianity:
- Christianity also looks for ways it needs to change itself in order to make substantive change in the world. In the Bible, this is called “repentance.” Substantive Christianity takes a sober and honest look at its own current and historical sins, especially against the vulnerable, marginalized, and oppressed, and intentionally looks for ways to bring healing and change its own actions moving forward.
Ex. Substantive Christianity will make symbolic changes, like removing flags from church sanctuaries, taking down pictures of white, European Jesus, and taking down confederate monuments, all in the work of making substantive changes in confronting and repenting from religious nationalism and racism.
Ex. pastor at a multi campus church where our slogan is "All Means All." voiced our solidarity with our LGBTQ+ siblings.
Relationships:
Who would be our “Samaritan?”
I know that for my fundamentalist Christian church growing up, Jesus would have used an LGBT Christian or a Muslim American as the one who showed God’s compassion and helped the injured man.
The reality is that Jesus is always challenging our narrow definitions of who our neighbor is. Challenging our beliefs that have simply written certain people off as “unclean” and “unholy.”
-culture War mentality: culture is evil the world is evil and so we have to defend our faith rather than this is the world that God so loved that God sent Jesus into the world and so they're not our enemies they're our neighbors and so how do we come alongside not combative but in love
-redefine like what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves and we were to redefine who our neighbors even are
-strive to live alongside humanity
-Jesus humbled himself and is servant to all
-Jesus lives alongside us in this complex human existence
-even the son of man didn't come to be served but to serve and to give his life away as a ransom for many and it's like
2nd Amendment:
-Needless to say, getting to know Jesus, the early church, and scripture in a more intimate way, caused me to dramatically reimagine the beliefs surrounding my patriotism, my faith, and my masculinity, especially in how they related to weapons
–Idolizing Guns Is Part Of The Gun Problem
-a specific social media empire with an unapologetic vision of gun rights, which is tied to the -Christian homeschooling movement "pro-life," I believe gun violence is central to that conversation.
-This is one of the best investigative looks into the relationship between gun violence and the gun industry
-I continue to hear the phrase “it’s a sin problem, not a gun problem” used by Christians as a defense against regulating guns in any way.
-Guns were treated as a symbol of pride and independence. The way the 2nd amendment was presented in my social circles, I understood it to be on the same level of sacredness as my Christian faith and patriotism.
2nd Amendment vs. Abortion:
Imagine what our culture thinks about the God we claim to worship, when it hears so many Christians moving heaven and earth to demand legislation that would save fertilized eggs, yet not doing the same when it comes to gun violence.
Abortion:
-unspoken patriarchal and racist myths and assumptions about women and women’s sexual activity.
-The problem is our inability to trust women to act as rational, capable, responsible moral agents who must weigh the concrete moral question of what to do when they are pregnant or when there are problems during a pregnancy.
-The abortion issue was championed to mask the real issue that gave opposition to desegregation.
-I discovered for myself that abortion is never directly mentioned in the Bible.
-Yet the Hebrew and Greek equivalents of the word “abortion” do not appear in either the Old or New Testament of the Bible.
-it doesn’t mention abortion directly, there are however several thousand verses calling for the use of wealth and resources in a way that prioritizes the needs of the poor, the immigrant, the marginalized, and the oppressed. This is the same call I would read Jesus preaching about all over the gospels.
-I still cared about the lives of unborn babies, but now I also cared just as much about the lives of women and the poor and wanted to discover how to approach this complex issue in light of the gospel of Jesus.
-I would also discover that the main reason abortion became such a charged political issue for my tribe of Evangelical Christians was not because of Roe v Wade as I had previously thought, but because of another Supreme Court case: Brown v Board of Education.
“I couldn’t hold my hardline stance on abortion without also holding demonizing beliefs about women and disregarding their lived experiences. I realized that in my belief system, I wasn’t loving women as my neighbor like Jesus was calling me to, but rather, I was treating them like an enemy to be conquered in order to save the unborn. I realized that I wasn’t really “pro-life” because I was dismissing the lives, rights, and well-being of women. Instead of seeing their lives as being just as sacred as the unborn, I reduced their entire personhood to an immoral caricature of someone I was told to hate. I was accusing people of dehumanizing unborn babies, yet I was dehumanizing pregnant women in the same way. I was just doing the same thing to women I believed other people were doing towards the unborn,
We would have taught about this data instead of relentlessly demonizing "those people" and chasing after making abortion illegal rather than ever understanding the complexities behind the root causes of the issue itself” (Rev. Benjamin Cremer).
- the impact of the numerous abortion bans that have been passed into law across our country since Roe was overturned.
“I soon realized that I couldn’t hold my hardline stance on abortion without also holding demonizing beliefs about women and disregarding their lived experiences. I realized that in my belief system, I wasn’t loving women as my neighbor like Jesus was calling me to, but rather, I was treating them like an enemy to be conquered in order to save the unborn. I realized that I wasn’t really “pro-life” because I was dismissing the lives, rights, and well-being of women. Instead of seeing their lives as being just as sacred as the unborn, I reduced their entire personhood to an immoral caricature of someone I was told to hate. I was accusing people of dehumanizing unborn babies, yet I was dehumanizing pregnant women in the same way. I was just doing the same thing to women I believed other people were doing towards the unborn”
- It is really important to hear the lived experiences of women whenever possible.
Gender Expression:
Social media exploded with Christian outrage over what was wrongly thought to be a mockery of the Lord’s Supper during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. During this time, I read some of the most hostile, arrogant, and demonizing words this week from people who claim to follow Jesus towards people they don’t even know.
-this outrage then evolved into disparaging and prejudicial claims about female athletes, from rugby, and gymnastics, to boxing
-just don’t think we Christians realize how fragile we make ourselves look when we act as if a single act of artistic expression poses an existential threat to our faith as if God is offended by all the exact same things we are
-suspicion isn’t a fruit of the Spirit
-we have seen and experienced how when we base Christian belief on a rigid set of knowledge, it is not long before it leads to absolutism or fundamentalism or even extremism
-when Christians, or adherents to any movement, believe they and they alone are the sole arbiters of truth, imposing their strict set of knowledge on others, socially, politically, and religiously will soon follow
***When we have this absolutist mindset, no matter what end of the political or theological spectrum we find ourselves on, we will continue to take our rigid and inflexible ideas on things like war, abortion, or human sexuality, and use them as the truth by which we not only engage with those who disagree with our perspective, but go as far as making policies and laws to enforce that definition of truth upon the lives of others, giving them no choice but to live in the way of our truth or reap the consequences.
“An individual’s lived experience or personal beliefs matters little in this absolutist approach, especially if it causes them to disagree with our absolutist definition of truth. They must abide by the way of our definition of absolute truth if they wish to live a truthful life. In this framework for Christians, even the most coercive practices, policies, and laws will be justified and even defined as “loving” because they are seen as saving others from a life of lies and evil and compelling them into “God’s truth” (Rev. Benjamin Cremer).
“How they were "written off as beyond redemption" because they were single, or LGBTQ, or had an abortion, or simply voted democrat. Someone just told me a few days ago about how they were forcibly removed from their ministry position for simply trying to talk to their church's teens about the reality of racism after the murder of George Floyd” (Rev. Benjamin Cremer).
Christianity with the Insanity: Use Jesus as justification for open borders
Slogan: Love Your Damn Neighbor
-Things Jesus never said:
-Feed the hungry only they have papers
-Clothe the naked only if they are from your country
-welcome the stranger only if there’s no risk
-love our neighbor only if they look like you
Ex Happy National Coming Out Day! God loves you as you are! Always has. Always will.
Ex. Christian Nationalism is just white supremacy in bible drag
Ex. We have an obligation to protect “the least of these” in our society. That includes not voting for candidates who seek to deny rights to immigrants, LGBTQ people, or women
Ex. A gay Christian isn’t a contradiction–it’s a reflection of the diversity of God’s love.
“Learning to value someone’s humanity over a set of beliefs, over doctrines or theology, is a vital part of recovering from high control religion” (Dr. Laura Anderson).
Today’s Social Gospel-Stay alert because
“This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; They fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:6).
“Then the Lord said to me, ‘The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and delusions of their own minds” (Jeremiah 14:14).
“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (Timothy 4: 3-4).
There are absolutes not to be watered down, distorted, or lied about!
Correct and sound doctrine is crucial to salvation and growth in spiritual maturity. It comes as no surprise that God warns us many times in Scripture to be aware of false teaching. Christians need to be able to recognize false teachers in order to know when they are being led down a path that God did not intend!