5 Evangelism & Social Action
Evangelism & Social Action The fourth unnecessary polarization concerns our Christian evangelistic and social responsibilities.
It has always been a characteristic of evangelicals to occupy themselves with evangelism—so much so that one not infrequently comes across a confusion of terms as if evangelical and evangelistic mean the same thing. In our evangelical emphasis on evangelism we have understandably reacted against the so-called social gospel, which replaced individual salvation with social amelioration, and, despite the outstanding record of nineteenth-century evangelicals in social action, we have been suspicious of any such involvement ourselves. Or, if we have been socially active, we have tended to concentrate on good works of philanthropy (caring for the casualties of a sick society) and have steered clear of politics (concern for
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the underlying causes of a sick society).
Sometimes the polarization in the church has seemed complete, with some people exclusively pre occupied with evangelism and others with socio political action. As an example of the first, let us consider some groups of the so-called Jesus People.
Now I am very far from wanting to be critical of the whole movement. Yet one of a number of hesitations I have concerns those Jesus communes which seem to have rejected society and withdrawn into their own fellowship, except for occasional evangelistic forays into the wicked world outside. Vernon Wishart, a minister of the United Church of Canada, wrote about the Jesus
People in the November 1972 issue of his church's official magazine Observer. He described the movement as "a reaction to a deep cultural and social malaise" and an attempt to "overcome a flattening of the human spirit" caused by materialistic technocracy. He was appreciative of their genuine Christian commitment:
"Like the early Christians they live simply, in a loving way, studying Scripture, breaking bread together and sharing resources." And he recognized that their intensely personal relation to Jesus and to one another was an antidote to the depersonalization of modern society. At the same time he saw this danger: '"Turning to Jesus can be a desperate attempt to turn away from
Bal anced Christianity the world in which he is incarnate. Like drugs, a Jesus religion can be an escape from our techno-culture." In these last sentences Vernon Wishart has put his finger on the main issue. If Jesus so loved the world that he entered it by incarnation, how can his followers claim to love it by seeking to escape from it? As Sir Frederick
Catherwood has written, "To try to improve society is not worldliness but love. To wash your hands of society is not love but worldliness."1
The opposite polarization seems to have been evi dent at the assembly of the World Council of Churches'
Commission on World Mission and Evangelism held in Bangkok in January 1973. Because it was titled
"Salvation Today," many hoped that a fresh definition of salvation would emerge that was both faithful to Scripture and relevant to the modern world. But we were disappointed. The preparatory documents and the conference itself attempted to redefine salvation in almost entirely social, economic and political terms.
It is true that there were references to personal salvation from sin, and that the purpose of the call for a ten-year moratorium on sending missionary money and personnel to Third World churches was to help them to become self-supporting. Nevertheless, the overall impression of Bangkok is that missionary and evangelistic labors are out of favor in ecumenical
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circles while the real mission of the church is to identify with the liberation movements of the day.
"We see the struggles for economic justice, political freedom and cultural renewal as elements in the total liberation of the world through the mission of God."2
Of these two extremes the characteristic evangelical fault is the former, not the latter. We are not likely to mistake justice for salvation, but we have often talked and behaved as if we thought our only
Christian responsibility toward non-Christian society was evangelism, the proclamation of the good news of salvation. There have, however, been welcome signs of change. We have become disillusioned with the "copout" mentality, the tendency to opt out of social responsibility, the traditional fundamentalist obsession with "microethics" (smoking, drinking and dancing) and the corresponding neglect of "macroethics" (race, violence, poverty, pollution, justice and freedom). There has also been among us a growing recognition of the biblical foundations, both theological and ethical, for Christian social action.
Theologically, there is a recovery of the doctrine of creation. We have tended to have a good doctrine of redemption and a bad doctrine of creation. Of course we have paid lip service to the truth that God is the Creator of all things, but we seem to have been blind
Bal anced Christianity to its implications. Our God has been too "religious," as if his main interests were worship services and prayer meetings attended by church members. Do not misunderstand me: God does take a delight in the prayers and praises of his people. But now we are beginning to see him also (as the Bible has always portrayed him) as the Creator, who is concerned for the secular world as well as the church, who loves all people and not Christians only, and who is interested in the whole of life and not merely in religion.
Ethically, there is a recovery of the duty of neighborlove; that is, of the command to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. What this means in practice will be determined by who and what Scripture tells us our neighbor is. He or she is a person, a human being, created by God. And God created them neither bodyless souls (that we should love only their souls) nor soulless bodies (that we should be concerned exclusively for their physical welfare) nor even bodysouls in isolation from society (that we should only care for them as individuals and not care about their society). No. God made humans spiritual, physical and social beings. As human beings our neighbors may be defined as "body-souls-in-community."
Therefore the obligation to love our neighbors can never be reduced to the loving of only a bit of them. If
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we love our neighbors as God created them (which is God's command to us), then we shall inevitably be concerned for their total welfare, the welfare of their bodies, their souls and their society. Martin Luther
King expressed this well: "Religion deals with both heaven and earth. . . . Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that doom them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a dry-as-dust religion."3 I think we should add that it is worse than that: It is actually a false religion.
It is true that the risen Lord Jesus left his church a Great Commission to preach, to evangelize and to make disciples. And this commission is still binding upon the church. But the commission does not super sede the commandment, as if "you shall love your neighbor" were now replaced by "you shall preach the gospel." Nor does it reinterpret neighbor-love in exclusively evangelistic terms. Instead, it enriches the commandment to love our neighbors by adding to it a new and Christian dimension, namely, the duty to make Christ known to them.
In urging that we should avoid the rather naive choice between evangelism and social action, I am not implying that every individual Christian must be
Bal anced Christianity equally involved in both. This would be impossible.
Besides, we must recognize that God calls different people to different ministries and endows them with gifts appropriate to their calling. Certainly all Christians have the responsibility to love and serve their neighbors as the opportunity presents itself, but this will not inhibit them from concentrating—according to their vocation and gifts—on some particular concern, whether it be feeding the hungry, healing the sick, personal witness, home evangelism, local or national politics, community service, race relations, teaching or other good works of love.
Although every individual Christian must discover how God has called and gifted them, I venture to suggest that the local Christian church as a whole should be concerned for the local secular community as a whole. Once this is accepted in principle, individual Christians who share the same concerns would be encouraged to coalesce into study-and-action groups—not for action without prior study or for study without consequent action, but for both. Such responsible groups would give themselves to the prayerful consideration of a particular problem with a view to taking action in tackling it. One group might be concerned about evangelism in a new housing development in which (so far as is known) no Christians
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live or among a particular section of the local community—a residential hostel, a prison, students, school dropouts and so on. Another group might be burdened about immigrants and race relations, about a slum district and bad housing, about a retirement home or a hospital, about lonely retirees or single people in rented rooms, about a local abortion clinic or porn shop. The list of possibilities is almost endless.
But if the members of a local congregation were to divide up the church's evangelistic and social responsibilities according to their concerns, callings and gifts, much constructive work could surely be done in the community.
I do not know any better statement of our double Christian responsibility, social and evangelistic, than that made during the Fourth Assembly of the World
Council of Churches at Uppsala in 1968 by W. A.
Visser 't Hooft, former WCC General Secretary:
I believe that with regard to the great tension between the vertical interpretation of the Gospel as essentially concerned with God's saving action in the life of individuals and the horizontal interpretation of it as mainly concerned with human relationships in the world, we must get out of that rather primitive oscil-
Bal anced Christianity lating movement of going from one extreme to the other. . . . A Christianity which has lost its vertical dimension has lost its salt and is not only insipid in itself but useless for the world.
But a Christianity which would use the vertical preoccupation as a means to escape from its responsibility for and in the common life of man, is a denial of the Incarnation, of God's love for the world manifested in Christ. . . . It must become clear that church members who deny in fact their responsibility for the needy in any part of the world are just as much guilty of heresy as those who deny this or that article of the Faith.
My plea in this book has been for a balanced biblical Christianity, in which we avoid the common polarities of the Christian—and especially evangelical—world.
We need to emphasize both the intellectual and the emotional, remembering that nothing sets the heart on fire like truth; both the conservative and the radical, resolved to conserve Scripture but to evaluate culture according to Scripture; both the structured and the unstructured, for each can supplement the other; and both the evangelistic and the social, for neither can be a substitute, a cloak or an excuse for the
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other, since each stands on its own feet as an authentic expression of that love for our neighbor to which God the Lord still calls his people.
In at least these four areas (and they are not the only ones) we have good biblical warrant to replace a rather naive either-or with a mature both-and. Let us place our feet confidently and simultaneously on both poles. Don't let us polarize!