Social Gospel?

I am a nationally-read columnist with a PhD. I had real problems with your article on Leadership Journal’s website: “Passionate, But Not About Mel’s Movie.” You said, “Don’t show the emerging culture a movie about Jesus: show them a movement of people living like Jesus.” You implied that the message of Jesus is not what the world needs, and that only brotherly love and compassion matter. This sounds like the old Social Gospel (Rauschenbusch, et al), which lost the gospel and replaced it with serving physical needs. You have dishonored the Word by underestimating its power. It is the gospel that wins the world, not soup kitchens. Soup kitchens are merely platforms to preach the gospel. Please don’t take this as an attack. Like you, I am wrestling with how we can most effectively win our world.

Thanks for your thoughts and questions. Several replies come to mind.

1. First, I need to tell you that the article was not intended to be about the film. As I clearly state in the article, I wrote that piece before the movie had even been released! My complaint was with the marketing campaign which presented the movie as the best outreach opportunity in 2000 years, which I found – and still find – disgusting and stupid and dangerous. (I feel even more so after seeing the movie). The editors of LJ or CTI changed the title and gave the article a slant to fit it into the very hype I was complaining about, but these things happen.

2. I don’t think I implied that the message of Jesus is unimportant, and I’m sorry that I gave you that impression. Actually, I think the message of Jesus is exactly what the world needs! It is so absolutely important that when I finally saw the film, I was all the more disappointed in it for maximizing special effects of blood and flesh, while minimizing the message of Jesus!

3. While I don’t think that “only brotherly love and compassion matter,” I am not ashamed to say that they really do matter! Without them, everything else we do is nothing. In fact, I see them at the heart of the message of Jesus, second only to loving God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. Our goal is to speak the truth in love. To pursue either without the other is a terrible mistake.

4. You’re the second person to tell me I sound like an advocate of the 19th Century Social Gospel, and to compare me to Rauschenbusch (whom I’ve never read, and whose name I can’t even spell – maybe I’ll have to read him). Perhaps you’re right; perhaps I’m a 19th century evangelical in the tradition of Wilberforce and the abolitionists rather than a 20th century one in the tradition of Robertson or Falwell. Perhaps, though, the current evangelical understanding of the gospel is so often truncated into a proclamation without demonstration, that to mention demonstration automatically makes one sound foreign. Let me assure you: I believe in a both/and – not either/or – approach. We need proclamation of the message of Jesus, plus demonstration of the fruit of doing what Jesus said. Otherwise, Jesus himself said, no one should believe our proclamation – since “by their fruits you shall know them.”

5. I’m sorry you feel I have dishonored the Word. I hope you will pray for me, whether or not your diagnosis is accurate, because it is my deepest desire to honor the Word, and the Bible too, by which I live.

6. I agree: soup kitchens don’t win the world. But their importance may go beyond being “merely platforms.” The gospel of the kingdom, as I understand it, integrates everything we do – from preaching to praying to serving to confronting injustice – in one holy passion: to see God’s will be done on earth as in heaven. Frankly, I think that we need to fight poverty on the front end (addressing its causes) and not just the back end (addressing its effects via soup kitchens, etc. – as important as these are), and the message of Jesus addresses both ends, and everything in between.

7. “Effectively win our world” is language that makes me think of Robert Webber’s book, “The Younger Evangelicals.” He contrasts what he calls “pragmatic evangelicalism” with “younger evangelicalism.” You might find that book helpful in understanding where people like me are coming from, and it may help you understand your own position better as well.

8. In spite of these push-backs, I want to affirm how much you and I have in common, because I at heart think of myself as an evangelist – which sounds like a calling close to your heart as well. I want to be a disciple who makes disciples, in authentic community, for the good of the world.