Social Reform: An Evangelical Imperative

I find myself standing in a no-man’s-land.

I have deep sympathy for social revolution. I am disturbed, however, by radical churchmen who emphasize social action but have little Gospel. They promote voter registration, march in protests, conduct study classes, fight racism, struggle for the rights of migrants, agitate against the war in Viet Nam—all things that ought to be done—but they have little concern for forgiveness of sin, the new life of faith, and a joyous and vibrant relation to Christ alive.

I have a deep commitment to evangelical Christianity. Yet I am equally disturbed by evangelicals, especially Bible-belt fundamentalists, who are gung-ho to get people converted but who have little social vision and less social action. They say, “Preach the Gospel but stay out of politics,” meaning: “Don’t disturb things in our community.” “No race mixing,” meaning: “Keep the Negroes out of our schools and our lily-white churches.” “Poor people are just lazy,” meaning: “We don’t want to pay our maids and janitors honest wages.” “People in the slums just don’t want anything better,” meaning: “We don’t care if people rot in the inner-city cesspools while we go about our business in suburbia.”

Believe me when I say I have prayed earnestly that I will be able to speak about this in terms of urgent love. I want both the activists and the pietists to see the failure of half-gospels. Elton Trueblood is right: intense social action without a life of devotion produces damaging results, “one of which is calculated arrogance” (The New Man for Our Time, p. 21). But he also says that while concentrated attention upon devotion, evangelism, and piety may lead us to focus upon the love of Christ, it may also lead us to “forget those whom Christ loves” (p. 27). Both the social activists and the evangelicals need to become reconciled to a larger Gospel than either has ever known alone.

About seventy years ago the social gospel arose, with some good aspects despite its rather defective theology. But evangelicals wouldn’t touch it, and the possibility of a merger of social action and evangelism was lost at a time when that combination was sorely needed. Later the Federal Council of Churches tried to implement the social gospel and unite it with evangelism—particularly under the leadership of Jesse Bader. But that effort was soon dissipated into a largely social and political concern.

Theological liberalism lacked both an evangelical Gospel and an urgent motivation. Neo-orthodoxy might have helped had it not been so obsessed with human sinfulness. It is curious that a movement that accurately diagnosed the disease of human sin failed to offer an experience of salvation to cure the condition.

The radical theologians of our time are still too confused to offer much help. They have a concern for social action, but their ministry is largely man to man. Their emphasis upon acknowledging our humanity tends to erase any distinction between the Christian and the sinner.

A New Evangelism

Now evangelism has re-emerged, through departments of evangelism in the churches and extra-church movements such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Campus Crusade for Christ, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, and the work of Billy Graham and other evangelists. I thoroughly approve these efforts; I want them also to be concerned for the social sins of our times and to correct not only men’s souls but their social behavior.

I do not want to be misunderstood: we may provide the most effective social revolution possible and still have a pagan society. Permit me to quote what I have written elsewhere:

I get the impression that we often conclude that if we establish day-care centers, tutoring classes, recreation for juveniles, half-way houses for alcoholics, counseling opportunities for confused adults, if we minister to hippies, operate coffeehouses, live in the inner city, engage in protest rallies, promote open housing, and all the other needed activities to heal the hurt of people—that the kingdom is thereby established.

The fact is: we can do every single one of these things, and do them all perfectly, and still never be the people of God nor proclaim the Gospel [“Dilemmas of an Evangelical Methodist,” Christian Advocate, Dec. 25, 1969, p. 8].

On the other hand, if we engage in traditional evangelism but fail to take our places at the disease centers of society, we still have a pagan culture. It may be an ecclesiastical form of paganism, but it is paganism nonetheless.

Revolutions are part of the climate of the times—the Marxist revolution, the hippie revolution, the ecological, ecumenical, and racial revolutions—and the most radical of all is the Revolution of Christ. Unless we are committed to this certainty, we shall miss the golden opportunity of our day. The seventies demand a revolution big enough to match the glamour of the Gospel!

What are some of the signs of this Christian revolution?

• A young priest resigned from a well-to-do Episcopal parish to establish Emmaus House in the heart of the inner city. He lives among exploited people, and the “House” is a center for their struggle for recognition. He is their representative in search of open housing, adequate wages, better education, medical care, justice in court, and other social improvements.

• Cliff-dwellers in apartment houses stirred the soul of a church, and it now pays a young couple to live among them with no job description except that people there need Christ.

• A professor in an evangelical seminary takes groups of students into the Harlem and Chicago ghettos to live among the poor people. He tells me that though some seminary supporters are surprised, when they see the results they approve.

• Youth in a Methodist church prepared special music for a Sunday-night service. Wearing semi-hippie garb and strumming guitars, they sang their own arrangement: “Where have all the meek ones gone—long time ago?” “Where have all the mourners gone—long time ago?” “Where have all the peacemakers gone—long time ago?” Never had the Sermon on the Mount so moved a congregation as on that night!

• Two couples, college graduates, took over an unused school building and made of it a “Christ Center.” In the “Catacombs,” runaways, addicts, lonely outcasts, university students—a cross section of downtown city life—find food, shelter, friendship, worship, and a new way of life.

• Students who are committed to non-violence join marches, not to burn and brutalize but to act as reconcilers and keep violence from erupting. Quietly standing between groups that hate each other, they are able to get the hotheads to “cool it.”

• Two Anglican missionaries fled from China to Hong Kong, where they found that the nearest thing to Red China was the Old Walled City, a refuge for criminals, prostitutes, and drug addicts. Though the area was out of bounds for Westerners, Mrs. Donithorne opened a milk bar, established a school, conducted worship, loved the unfortunate people, while her husband celebrated Holy Communion.

• A white Methodist congregation in Atlanta requested the appointment of a black man as pastor. This church was determined to minister where the people lived.

• A little baby lay helpless in a hospital bed in Korea, tubes inserted into his nose and mouth. He was a pathetic bit of humanity. But the child would soon be up and busy, said the doctor, a life saved through love. This child had been rescued from the city dump heap by evangelical Christians.

• One of our Candler graduates, after extensive studies in pastoral care and faithful ministry as a hospital chaplain, chose to join the staff of a Negro Baptist church in Atlanta. Here he found an open door of service—a white man among black people, a Methodist in a Baptist church. His wife, a polio victim on crutches, also a Candler graduate and an ordained Methodist minister, stood with him. Last summer he was robbed, shot, and killed while at work. His wife demonstrated a triumphant faith in that dark hour, even offering a prayer of victory at the cemetery. John Howard, a white martyr in a black community, joins others who have lost their lives for the Kingdom. And his ministry continues among those he loved.

• In Saigon, four men, in a ten-ton truck with a $40,000 cargo of critical medical supplies, felt God wanted them in Cambodia. They struggled through battles, open fields, and blasted highways to get to Phnom Penh, where they met a war casualty—one among thousands. But let them tell their story:

He was only twenty-eight, with a wife and child. He had lost a leg and his eyesight while defending his village against the Viet Cong. The disfiguring scars on his face were still a raw pink. I put my arm around his shoulder to reassure him, and felt the tense muscles start to relax. His fingers quietly explored their way over the sides of the chair down to the wheels. It took only a moment for the realization to sink in that this was a wheelchair—his wheelchair. And then his scarred face broke into a smile, accented by a trickle of tears from his sightless eyes. I will not soon forget that moment of emotion when I saw love unlock a life.… We had a time of thanksgiving … that God had protected us … and that He had allowed evangelical Christians to be the first on the scene with this tangible expression of love and concern for the suffering Cambodian people [letter from W. Stanley Mooneyham, president of World Vision International, July 6, 1970].

• Devoted Christian young people in Berkeley, California, have united to present Christ at the center of militant protest—to members of the SDS, Black Panthers, Mao Tse-tung followers, and all the rest. Through witness groups, personal testimony, underground newspapers, public meetings, and daily contacts, they salvage disillusioned youth and turn them on for Jesus!

Many other examples could be given, for there is an “endless line of splendor” reaching around the world. Never has the door been so wide open for evangelism as now. In fact, as E. Stanley Jones says, “not only is the door open—the whole side of the house is down!” What is required is a wholehearted advance using sanctified imagination to grasp this opportunity for Christ. Timid, take-it-or-leave-it evangelism is out of place in our day.

Now: Some Convictions

In my struggle with this theme, some convictions have emerged.

In the future, less and less evangelism will be done at the church building. There will be less emphasis upon the church as a place to go; it will be, rather, a crusade in which to participate. No place is out of bounds for him who is mastered by Christ alive. I understand the comment of the half-drunk woman in a pub who had repeatedly seen the minister come in and sit among the drinkers. She finally said, “I know why you are here. You are here to represent Jesus” (Gordon Winch, in Listen to the World). The Gospel from a drunk!

Evangelism must be structured around the needs of people in the world. We are called to invade for Christ any place where there is a sub-Christian living. As Oral Roberts so often says, “a need exists to be met.” It must never be said that the Black Muslims are more concerned with the education of Negroes than are evangelicals. It must never be said that SDS agitators on campuses are more concerned for peace than are evangelicals. It must never be said that the Black Panthers are more concerned about feeding hungry children in ghettos than are evangelicals. It must never be said that marchers in civil-rights protests are more concerned for poor people than are evangelicals. It must never be said that labor unions and the Coca-Cola Company are more concerned for migrants than are evangelicals. Wherever there is a human need, that is where we belong.

There must be a simplification of our message and mission. We must confront confused and suspicious people clearly with Christ and his Way. We may have to apologize for the failure of organized Christianity, but we never have to apologize for Christ. Over forty years ago the Jerusalem Meeting of the International Missionary Council adopted a statement that stresses the central authority of Christ for our task: “We believe in a Christ-like world. We know nothing better; we can be content with nothing less” (Report of the Jerusalem Meeting, 1928, p. 406). I like the attitude of E. Stanley Jones: “I am a candidate for conversion. Bring me something better than Jesus and his Way, and I’ll take it.”

“Therefore …”

After analyzing a situation and giving a theological judgment, Paul headed his directives for action, “Therefore.” I have no directives, but I do have some suggestions.

All Christians should give adequate time to a thorough study of the needs of the community, problems in such areas as drugs, crime, slums, hippies, migrants, pornography, racism, family life, unemployment, housing, disease, poverty, affluence, and recreation. Three questions ought to be asked and answered: (1) What are the specific facts? (2) What should we do about them? (3) When do we begin—and how?

We should take a new look at theological seminaries; they may be doing more harm than good. What can we expect from our pulpits when their occupants are men trained under teachers who profess no faith in God, doubt his existence, regard Jesus as only a good man and not a Saviour, have no place for prayer, minimize the authority of the Bible, dismiss any idea of spiritually transformed lives under the Holy Spirit, do not believe in life after death, and have long since come to regard our evangelical heritage as out of date. I do not suggest that seminaries become Bible institutes, though at present worse things may be happening. But if there is little hope in giving major attention to the Gospel in our seminaries, which I suspect is true, at least the fairness doctrine ought to provide evangelicals with equal time. Unfortunately, it seems to be more and more difficult to secure evangelicals as faculty members.

Some method should be devised to utilize the methods and dynamic of various evangelical movements. No one has a monopoly on how to make the Gospel meaningful; we can learn from anyone committed to Christ and his mission. This is a call to unite in a crusade to turn America and the world toward the Cross.

We need an evangelism of ideas—conversion in attitudes. It is not sufficient to secure commitments to Christ unless there are substantial changes in the way we think. Attitudes of superiority, greed, racism, apathy, deadly routine religion, the status quo, and all the rest need to be brought to the altar to be changed. We must go to our knees in godly sorrow and repentance for the sub-Christian attitudes that we possess—and that possess us.

But, of course, there is one supreme secret of it all: Everything done in evangelism for revolution must be born in prayer. The number-one need in evangelism today is the need for prayer. Billy Graham is right: the secret of his ministry lies in the consecrated prayer of vast numbers of people. I do not attempt to explain it, but I believe that in some strange way beyond our understanding, “effectual, fervent prayer” still availeth much. It is not “To your tents, O Israel.” It is “To your altars, O Church of the living Christ!”

I close with words from Leighton Ford: “God’s revolution is going to go on, with or without you and me. But I don’t want to get left behind. So this is my prayer: Lord start a revolution, and start it in me!” Amen!

Radical Chic Is Out

Stewart Alsop pointed out recently that “radical chic suddenly isn’t chic any more. Instead, it has become a bore, and because it has become a bore, it is dying” (Newsweek, Dec. 14, 1970). He is referring, of course, to the latest “feast of unreason,” the New Left and its catastrophic effect upon thought and action in America. And he seems to be correct in his analysis. The New Left movement is a failure and a crashing bore, and the sooner it passes from sight, the better we will all be.

But radical chic as a style or a response is a problem for the churches also, and churches are much slower to change than the society at large. If we are not careful, society may well pass on to other preoccupations while the churches are left holding the bag. That would be most unchic! So let’s consider some of the specifics of radical chic, identify its tone and style, and ponder how to aid its passing from the Christian scene.

Radical chic is an empty-headed student defacing the walls of a university he is attending with scholarship aid and under an open-door policy with the inscription, “America is a fascist state.”

Radical chic is the ponderous announcement by the ultra in theologians that “God is dead” before any real work has been done to see whether the reports of this death might be, as Mark Twain said, “greatly exaggerated.”

Radical chic is deploring the bigness, anonymity, and destructive alienation caused by the merging of business and industries into heartless conglomerates while working from extra-parish positions to further the objectives of COCU.

Radical chic is complaining about waste in government while spending more on pet food than on feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and healing the sick (the benevolent outreach of any viable church).

Radical chic is moaning about the meaninglessness of life while churches are unattended and libraries and museums are ignored.

Radical chic is, in other words, a cop-out. It is a mood, style, or attitude that permits the chic to be radically for an ideal while ignoring pressing realities such as truth and hard work and self-discipline.

A world “run by burly sinners” is precisely the world to turn the tin-pot saints of the radical chic movement into objects of derision and contempt. And as this contempt gathers momentum in the larger society, the Church, while abetting the process, must see to it that all the pressing issues of our contemporary life that have been frustrated and obscured by this movement are still held steadily before us, waiting for those who are serious and ready to work—poverty, war, injustices and discrimination against women and Negroes, abuse of the environment, overpopulation. The radically chic are the prodigal sons of our time. Both society and the Church are the waiting father, waiting and hoping for the return to serious business of those who really want to work.—PAUL DOUGLAS, pastor, First Congregational Church, Rootstown, Ohio.

Claude H. Thompson is on the faculty of Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. He has the B.D. and Ph.D. from Drew University. He is the author of “Theology of the Kerygma.”

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