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Christians on the left and the right argue that more believers should attack today's social ills. They often point to William Wilberforce and other 19th-century British evangelicals as examples to imitate. So how relevant are these examples today?

To answer that question, Christian History editor Mark Galli interviewed John Wolffe, senior lecturer in religious studies at The Open University in Britain. John edited Evangelical Faith and Public Zeal: Evangelicals and Society in Britain, 1780-1980 (SPCK, 1995).

What rationale did British evangelicals give for getting involved in social reform?

First, there was the view associated with Lord Shaftesbury: social reform is a preparation for people's hearing the gospel. The preaching of the gospel is absolutely vital, but if people live below a certain level of human dignity or material comfort, they may not respond to the message. If people work 12 or more hours a day, six days a week, they're not likely to go to church on Sunday. They're going to stay in bed trying to recuperate.

Second, both Shaftesbury and Wilberforce believed that Britain was accountable to God for how it treated its weaker, less-privileged members. Wilberforce once said it would be "a strange exception to all those established principles [of] Divine Providence … if national and personal prosperity were … found to arise from injustice and oppression."

Were postmillennialists—who believe Christ will establish his kingdom after the world has been substantially improved—more likely to get involved in social action than were premillennialists?

Yes, broadly speaking, with a few striking exceptions. For example, Shaftesbury was a premillennialist. He was pessimistic about human potential. He believed that a direct and spectacular divine intervention of Christ at his Second Coming is necessary to save the world. But he also believed that intervention by the state through law was necessary to save people from the worst excesses of early industrialism. The world was vulnerable and under divine judgment. The Second Coming, which Shaftesbury felt was imminent, was a spur to swift action.

But Shaftesbury is untypical. The more common premillennialist view was that preaching the gospel should take priority, and nothing else ultimately matters.

Did evangelicals tend to join one political party over another?

Especially on the issue of slavery, there was a great deal of bipartisan effort. The main issue was not whether you were a Tory or Whig (the two major political parties). Party membership was fluid then, and both parties were essentially aristocratic cliques. The real issue for many in those years was whether you were anti-slavery. It wasn't until the 1830s that Anglican evangelicals, for a number of reasons, moved toward the Conservative Party (formerly Tory).

Did uncompromising idealism gain evangelicals their political victories? Or did they compromise some ideals to achieve progress?

Some compromise was necessary. Shaftesbury went through anguish about this, but he soon learned to modify his agenda so he could achieve some of it. For example, he really wanted to limit the number of daily working hours in factories to ten but agreed to a ten-and-a-half-hour work day to at least make some progress on the issue.

What issues divided evangelicals?

Evangelicals were divided on slavery. Some believed, as did many Christians in the American South, that slavery was justified biblically. Even those who believed slavery immoral disagreed on how best to eradicate it: immediately or gradually? By force of law, persuasion, or military might?

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