Preaching Is Social Action

“Preaching is all right. But preaching is not social action.” This is a distinction one frequently hears today when talking to a member of the activist generation. Even in evangelical circles, many now insist that mere preaching is not enough; the minister and the church, as the church, should be involved in social action. In fact, some would almost go to the extreme of saying that preaching is definitely secondary to social action. If the church today is going to make any effective impact on the twentieth-century world, it must act—preaching is only talk and in the long run means very little. Looked at properly, however, the faithful preaching of the Gospel is social action.

The term social action is generally used today to mean the taking of direct action to accomplish some desired social purpose. The action may be taking part in a boycott or some other form of demonstration, working for open housing, setting up a coffeehouse or a day-care or tutoring center, renovating a house for a low-income family, or any of dozens of other worthy possibilities. Yet while these things may be good and useful in their way, they deal only with surface phenomena. They seek to remove a deep-seated tumor from society by applying a plaster to the surface. The world’s deepest need today is not something that merely dulls the pain, but something that goes deep in order to change the basic unit of society, man himself. Only when men individually have experienced a change and reorientation can society be redirected in the way it should go. This we cannot accomplish by either violence or legislation. These methods may indeed alter things for a time, but usually the old disease reasserts itself. Another approach must be found if the problem is to be lastingly solved.

This was Paul’s contention in writing to the Corinthian church. The intellectuals, the Greeks, said that philosophy would meet man’s need. The activists, the Jews, held that man needed power and outward signs to solve his difficulties, whether spiritual or material. Paul, however, pointed out that the trouble with both was that they sought the wrong type of wisdom and the wrong type of power. To deal with the problems of man, they needed to have the wisdom and the power that really came to grips with man’s most basic problem, his fundamental difficulty: himself.

That this is true today seems evident. The intellectuals and the activists have joined hands to bring about a revolution in society that will create a new world. University campuses, the main streets of most large cities, and even church buildings have become the stages for all kinds of direct action to bring about economic and social change. Yet so often the problems have remained when the immediate objectives, however worthy they were, have been attained. In some cases those on whose behalf the action was taken have come to follow a policy toward others that they themselves originally suffered under and condemned. The basic need is to change man’s whole outlook, or what the Bible knows as his “heart.”

This is the purpose of preaching the Gospel. As Paul pointed out in Second Corinthians 5, the apostolic work of the Church is to seek to reconcile God and man. This means that a radical change must come in man himself, for basically he is at enmity with God. He wants to assert his independence, while God calls upon him to acknowledge his creatureliness and sinfulness. Because he is a creature he is utterly dependent upon God’s sustenance and because he is a sinner he can hope in nothing but God’s grace (Col. 1:15 ff.). When the Holy Spirit makes this message effective, a man becomes a new creature who accepts and obeys the Gospel preached to him (1 Cor. 2:10; 2 Cor. 5:17).

The regenerating effect of the preaching of the Gospel is not, as some would maintain, merely a “religious” matter. It affects and changes the whole of a man’s life. It results in his seeking to obey Christ in all things and to put the lordship of Christ into effect in every aspect of his activity.

The first effect of accepting the Gospel is that it changes one’s relations with other persons. The full proclamation of the Gospel must stress that the Christian’s relations in the home, in business, in the church, indeed everywhere, must be subordinate to the kingship of Jesus Christ. The implications of the Christian faith for personal relationships appear whenever the Gospel is properly and fully proclaimed.

This does not end the list of the social contents of preaching or of Christian responsibilities. The individual Christian faces God’s call “to do justice and to love mercy,” something he cannot hope to achieve unless society itself seeks justice and mercy. This too is involved in any adequate preaching of the Christian message. The Christian must recognize that he has the duty of advocating measures that favor justice and equity within the civil society in which he lives, and in assisting those of other societies to do the same thing within their social systems, no matter how different they may be. This may mean certain types of direct “social action”; but much more important, if the Gospel is properly preached, it can become so pervasive that a society gradually comes to the place of seeking to fulfill Christian ideals almost unconsciously.

Looking back in history one may see how preaching has been a highly effective form of social action. The early Church, the sixteenth-century reformers, the evangelical revival of the eighteenth century—all display the same characteristics. None of them put social action in the forefront of their activities. They did not seek to set up new social, economic, or political regimes. They did not provide funds for groups seeking liberation or equality. Their prime—one might even say their sole—objective was winning men to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. They felt that from this achievement all other good results would flow.

The influence of their work shows that they were by no means wrong. The impact of Christianity on the society of the Roman Empire was powerful for the elevation of the status of women, the care of the poor, the abolition of slavery. The Reformation may be said to have had an even greater political, economic, and social influence. Many ideas that are being talked about today, such as the equality of all persons, the rights of the individual, and the responsibility of people to “do their own thing,” are secularized versions of the teachings of Luther, Calvin, and their followers. Many of the social and political reforms of the nineteenth century likewise sprang directly out of the Evangelical Revival, leading to social and political action to protect exploited workers, to free Negro slaves, and to help the poor and downtrodden.

Reforms came, however, not through the efforts of a church lobby, but through individual Christians who took effective steps within the government. Yet measures such as the British factory acts pushed through parliament by the Earl of Shaftesbury would never have been effective had not society supported them. Christians provided the climate of opinion that made the reform laws effective. Christian preachers such as Simon, Chalmers, and Beecher, in preaching the Gospel, called upon Christians to have compassion to their fellow men and laid upon them the responsibility of doing something to show that compassion. In preaching the Gospel, these men made a deep impression that had widespread social effects.

In all ages the Church’s commission is to preach the Gospel of God’s reconciling grace in Jesus Christ. That must be its primary concern, for that was the trust committed to it by its Lord. Contrary to what the Church seemed to think in the Middle Ages and to what many Protestant church executives seem to think today, the Church is not to rule the world. Nor is it to seek to present men with a plan for a new economic or political society. Its job is to bring men into the Kingdom of God through faith and obedience to Christ. But in so doing it faces the Christian with the duty of acknowledging Christ’s lordship over all of life. This demands of the Christian a constant search for righteousness, justice, and equity in all things.

The preacher brings the message of the Gospel to Christians who live in the world, and who should seek to influence society to obey Christ. True, not all in society will become Christians, and many Christians may fail to see or understand fully the social implications of their faith. Yet those who do hear, understand, and act will work toward the regeneration of society as a whole. It is these persons who will take the social action that will really change society, because they themselves have been changed through the preaching of the Gospel of God’s grace.

The social action that results from true gospel preaching is not like that advocated by contemporary revolutionaries, who talk of changing institutions and techniques but nothing more. It goes much deeper, for it deals with sin, which is the cause of our problems in society. Furthermore, because it originates in the grace of God, it is expressed not by hate but by love. It works toward its objectives not by burning or looting or other forms of coercion but by seeking to persuade all men to do justly and to love mercy. Through the preaching of the Gospel, men are brought to Christ, and then sent forth to manifest him in the world by seeking to make his divine righteousness and grace effective in man. Preaching is true social action.

W. Stanford Reid is chairman of the Department of History at Wellington College, University of Guelph, Ontario. He has the Th.M. from Westminster Seminary and the Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

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