“The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) now expresses its deep concern about the threat of a nuclear holocaust and urges our national leaders to rededicate their efforts to obtain a meaningful arms control agreement that will scale down the nuclear arms race.” Such was the wording of a resolution passed by the NAE at its annual convention in Arlington Heights, Illinois, last month. Arthur Gay, pastor of the South Park Church in Park Ridge, Illinois, was elected president of the 3.5-million-member association.
Some commentators were surprised that the usually staid and conservative NAE expressed such feelings about the present danger of nuclear war, but the resolution reflects the growing influence of its Evangelical Social Action Commission (ESAC). This group has been quietly working behind the scenes to sensitize the parent organization to the significant sociopolitical problems of the day.
In the ESAC workshops at this year’s convention, a number of experienced social workers, urban pastors, and even a juvenile judge explained how churches could assist families during the current economic crisis, combat violence in the family, and preserve the legal rights of children.
The commission traces its origins to the 1951 convention, where a forum on social action was included in the program that focused on the relationship between Christianity and particular politico-economic systems, labor-management differences, and race relations issues.
A prominent personality in the forum was Carl F. H. Henry, whose tract The Uneasy Conscience of modern Fundamentalism had sparked considerable discussion in evangelical circles about social concerns. When the 1951 convention decided to create the Commission on Social Action, he was named its chairman. After he stepped down in 1956, lesser-known figures headed the agency, and its attention was mainly directed to individualistic efforts like developing social welfare programs and combating alcohol.
An important milestone in the body’s history was the merger with the Commission on Evangelical Action in 1973. The latter’s function had been to look after religious freedom concerns and articulate an evangelical viewpoint on governmental and political matters. It worked closely with the NAE Office of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C.
Renamed the Evangelical Social Action Commission, its scope of interest expanded into areas like arms control, minority development, and political activism. Two well-known black evangelicals served as chairmen during the next eight years: Clarence Hilliard of Chicago (1974–78) and John Perkins of the Voice of Calvary (1978–82). They did much to galvanize the organization into becoming a genuine social action body.
In 1976, ESAC developed the NAE’s resolution on hunger and in 1977 asked to have a phrase on social concern included in the statement on Scripture debated by the convention. In 1978, it cosponsored a resolution endorsing the Panama Canal treaty and in 1979 actually secured passage of a resolution on the threat of war that called on the U.S. government “to exercise reasonable restraint in the production and use of its military capability and to encourage other nations to do the same.”
It also inaugurated the “Faithful Servant Award” to recognize evangelicals whose lives have been distinguished by a devotion to meeting the needs of the whole person. The first recipients were Paul Rees and Frank Gaebelein. This year it was bestowed upon the septuagenarian Louis Rawls, pastor of the Baptist Tabernacle on Chicago’s South Side and one of the NAE’S oldest black members.
Recently, Rufus Jones, who retired last year as general director of the Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society, was appointed ESAC’S first executive director. David Crail, a Wesleyan church pastor in Chicago, succeeded John Perkins as chairman. Perkins in turn was named to the prestigious NAE executive committee, the first black to serve in that capacity.
The respect that ESAC has gained in NAE circles and the attention being paid to its recommendations provide evidence that the NAE is developing more of a social conscience than its critics have realized and that it has moved appreciably from the sociopolitical conservatism of its earlier days.
