THOUGHTS ABOUT THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

Dear Brother Waddey:

I take exception to your thoughts about the Social Gospel. I have been involved in missions and used community development projects to help the people as I taught them. I am neither liberal nor conservative, I am just a Christian who desires to make a difference in the lives of the people that I serve.  I will concede that there is always a danger of more emphasis being placed on these programs and ministries by some missionaries.  How do yo think the early Christians more effectively reached out to the people? By ignoring their needs and only interested in preaching the plan of salvation?  Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit the orphans and widows in their troubles and to keep oneself unspotted by the world" George.

Dear Brother George:

Thank you for writing me regarding my piece on the Social Gospel. You correctly said, "Perhaps I misread you completely."  I too have great interest in preaching the gospel to every creature.  I have made 11 overseas trips working in 19 different nations.  Two of those trips were to Africa.  I have helped train and send missionaries.  When I clearly qualified my meaning, "Let me hasten to add that all of them are good and beneficial..." you evidently did not understand the message.

Come let us reason together for a moment:

• Is there such a thing as the Social Gospel? (You can verify this by consulting your encyclopedia).

• Did the Social Gospel movement flourish among our denominational neighbors beginning 80 years ago to the present?

• Did the Social Gospel movement advance the salvation message of those bodies or overwhelm and bury it?

• Did they ever recover and return to a gospel evangelistic program?

• Have we fulfilled the great commission of Christ if our primary purpose in sending workers to foreign fields is to minister to their physical needs?

• If we provide every person in the developing nations a quality of life such as we know here in America will that result in the salvation of their souls?

• Is there any other way to save the lost than by teaching them the gospel of Christ?

• Is it possible for fellow-Christians to embrace a faulty philosophy of missions such as the Social Gospel?

• A century ago the Disciples of Christ denomination was once a part of the Lord's church.  They embraced the Social Gospel.  The missionaries they sent out were sent to promote the Social Gospel.  Today that denomination is a dying body.

• Each year their numbers decline.  They have no evangelistic message to send. 

• They have been swallowed up by the ecumenical movement of liberal Protestantism.  They demonstrate the danger about which I warned.

• If you can imagine the way of Christ as a great highway with ditches on either side.  On the left is the ditch of liberalism...which takes unwarranted liberties with God's expressed will.  On the right in the ditch of ultra conservatism or extremism which imposes unnecessary human restrictions on their fellow Christians.  The truth stands between those two extremes.  In our contemporary American English conservative does not equate with extremism.  It is a desire to be faithful and loyal to the original intent and will of the Founder of our Faith.  I am sure you are a Christian?  Are you a faithful disciple, loyal to the will and intent of the founder of our Faith?  If so you are conservative in contrast to those among us who are boldly taking liberties with the things of Christ.  Among the things they are taking liberty with are:

  • Our praise to God (by their willingness to add instrumental music);

  • The role of women in the church by ignoring Christ's limitations on women and allowing them to fill public leadership roles in the church);

  • The nature of the church by treating Christ's church as a denomination and granting approval and fellowship to those denominational bodies men have founded.  If these things do not bother you then you are like them, liberal in your approach to the Faith.

  If you will reread the Great Commission of our Master he said "Go preach the gospel to every creature" with the intent of saving their souls (Mark 16:15-16).

  As we fulfill that mission, we do good to all men as we have opportunity (Gal. 6:10).  We will always do best if we remember to do things in Christ's appointed way.  If you are young (which I assume you are) I predict that you will live to see many of our churches here at home and in foreign fields abandon the idea of going back to the Bible and restoring the ancient faith of the first Christians. They will become denominations just as the Baptist, Pentecostals, etc.  The seeds of liberalism have been widely sown...like the tares Jesus mentioned.  A garden that is overgrown with weeds is gradually smothered out.  The same is true of a religious movement such as ours.

May God bless you in his service. Always remember, That Christ sent us to preach the Gospel (I Cor. 1:17).