THE CRISIS OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM

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Chapter 2 The Social Gospel

We have a Social Gospel. We need a systematic theology large enough to match it and vital enough to back it … a theology to make it effective; but theology needs the Social Gospel to vitalize it. (Rauschenbusch 1945:1)
Belief in the Kingdom of God now takes a new lease of life. It no longer looks for its coming, self-determent as an eschatological cosmic event, but regards it as something ethical and spiritual, not bound up with the last things, but to be realized with the cooperation of men…Mankind today must either realize the Kingdom of God or perish. The very tragedy of our present situation compels us to devote ourselves in faith to its realization. (Schweitzer 1950)
Globalization, as multidimensional as it is, and mission, as diversely interpreted as it is, is interrelated in the third millennium. These two aspects go hand in hand from a religious point of view and raise some legitimate concerns. The connection is not only historical (where examples can be viewed as destructive and exploitive), but also important in terms of the potential for future contributions to a planetary civilization. The need for a basis from where values – derived from Jesus’ way – can be constituted with good intent by the religious; values integral for instigating faithfulness to God’s unvarying intention with our macrocosm. Such a basis for the NHKA to proceed from into the world has to have a foundation of interest towards the social sphere.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the critics’ dismissive opinions46 of the Social Gospel movement condemned the potential of the movement to a mere era of liberation theology in North American history47. The movement proved more resilient than the critics thought it would be. More recent theologians gave sufficient attention to the Social Gospel as movement enabling us to begin asking whether the rumours of its demise had been greatly exaggerated, or not (White & Hopkins 1976:xi). Carl Deger (1950:347) has summed up the Social Gospel movement in this way: ‘The acceptance of the Social Gospel stepped outside the churches to intersect the political, social, and economic forces of changing America’. The Social Gospel movement proved to infiltrate more than only theology in North America. Even though there are an increasing number of scholars engaging in new research on the movement, our knowledge of the Social Gospel is still in its infancy. This study will work with the relevant recent writings on the Social Gospel concerning its history and origin. What we know, or thought we knew, about the movement might not be so transparent. We therefore need a new comprehensive history of the movement. The Social Gospel fathers48 had some initial intentions with the Social Gospel. These intentions, when studied more closely, may be less polemically distorted than what the neo-orthodox critics assumed it to be:
What was so clear to so many in 1940 is less clear in 1990. Political theologies flourish, efforts to define a faithful Christian social philosophy abound. It seems likely that a fullscale critical history of the Social Gospel constructed today might offer an analysis rather different from that of Hopkins, setting these preachers, teachers and activists in the contexts of the several kingdom theology which have characterized theology in this century. From this perspective, a movement, which seemed to be the last muscular twitching of an already moribund theological liberalism, might be rehabilitated. (Yeager 1990:5)
The still useful, and sometimes neglected, foundational structures and voices of the Social Gospel movement can be retrieved. It is, however, suggested by Lindsey (1997:232) that if there is any contemporary attempt to appraise the Social Gospel theology and discover its significance for Christianity today must do more than analyze its roots in the liberal theology of the nineteenth century: ‘it must also recognize its affinities with political and liberation theology. Therein lies its importance’ (Lindsey 1997:232).
According to Lindsey, the kingdom theology of Shailer Mathews is in the political and liberation theologies, an important current that runs through twentieth-century Christian theology. The important turning point is in the eschatological turn as a critique of liberal theology’s collapse of faith into culture. ‘In this respect, it anticipates the very critique that would be pressed by dialectical theologians against the Social Gospel’ (Lindsey 1997:232). But, in its attempt to discover some basis for seeing the eschaton as proleptically affecting history, while adopting a stance of eschatological realism, Matthews’ kingdom theology also avoids what may have been dialectical theology’s diversion from the mainstream of twentieth-century theological reflection, insofar this theology did not adequately deal with the relationship between eschatology and history. Christianity, to be sure, has exhibited social dimensions throughout its history, but in the Social Gospel was an indigenous movement growing within the matrix of American Protestantism. ‘Interacting with the changing realities and problems of an increasingly urbanized nation, the Social Gospel viewed itself as a crusade for justice and righteousness in all areas of the common life’ (White & Hopkins 1976:xii).
The movement, according to White & Hopkins (1976:xvi), ‘coalesced more around action than belief’ and that persons and organizations ‘were drawn together because of pressing social needs’; therefore the importance of post colonialism critique to use an nativist essentialist optic to view the intrinsic intent of the movement. Such an optic clearly explain the intention the movement had in its time. Understanding the nativist/essential intent of the people informs this study in a practical way, namely to consider the Social Gospel as foundational for approaching mission in the third millennium. There was need, and a movement of people came together to take action. This action has direct relevance for Christian religion and social life in today’s world.

History

As mentioned in § 2.1, it is important to reconstruct the history of the Social Gospel to interpret the context in which it evolved, as well as the criticisms and interpretations it received. From its starting point in history, the Social Gospel was not, and is not, a movement with the intension of spiritual devotion alone. Rauschenbusch (1945:2) explains that the Social Gospel is ‘built on the conviction that the Social Gospel is a permanent addition to our spiritual outlook and that its arrival constitutes a stage in the development of the Christian religion’. With the turn of the nineteenth-century, it was clear that there was a turn in the social sphere regard the understanding the church had about the religious crisis wherein it found itself. The Social Gospel was part of the ministry of churches and accepted in various denominations as ‘not simply a prudent adjustment of church methods to changed [social] conditions but has a religious compulsion behind it’ (Rauschenbusch 1945:3). Rauschenbusch continues by saying that it has taken the ‘place of conventional religion in the lives of many outside the church and constitutes the moral power in the propaganda of Socialism.’ According to Rauschenbusch ‘we need not waste words to prove the Social Gospel is being preached’, it has become orthodox’ (emphasis added, 1945:3).
Dorn (1967:303) is of the opinion that the Social Gospel movement was ‘essentially an urban movement’. The exponents of the movement were men, like the fathers of the Social Gospel, but also the masses born in rural communities that saw how urbanization posed problems for churches and public social Christian life. These new challenges included industrialism, poverty, immigration and the rapid growth of cities that paralyzed urban government and public order that slowly broke down to a socalled ‘flower of civilization’ – but were often instead ‘the smut of civilization’ (Dorn 1967:303). The problems in the late nineteenth-century, viewed from a dispirited middle class white male’s perspective, was the misrule seen in the corrupt alliances among politicians and between politicians and public-service corporations; the intellectual and moral debasement of the urban population by immigration from rural areas and abroad, indiscriminate charity, and the exodus of the
churches and the established classes; manipulation by state legislatures; partnership and the orientation of urban to national parties; and the disease fostered by ward politics. (Gladden 1897:184) Gladden pictures late nineteenth-century corporations and government as a bunch of ‘creatures in their offices’. A year later he preached specifically against three groups that profited from the weakness of the municipal governments: ‘Political spoils men, public service corporations, and the vicious classes namely the saloonkeepers, gamblers, and their allies’ (Gladden 1899; emphasis in the original). It is clear that the background from which the Social Gospel movement started also had context specific problems, for example, the difference in urbanization between a small settlement like North Adams and a cosmopolitan city like New York at the time. Each nuance of the context in Northern America had an influence on the Social Gospel writers, and one should understand why these writers wrote against the smut of civilization. The geographical boundaries of the movement are currently being redrawn to include the forgotten voices of the movement. ‘Long forgotten reform movements – race, women, and anti-imperialism, for example – can now be seen alongside better-known and admittedly more vigorous efforts in the industrial arena’ (White & Hopkins 1976: xii).
The Social Gospel arose in an era when North Americans lighted their dwellings with candles or kerosene lamps and commuted by horse drawn carriages. Later in the Social Gospel movements’ time, the dawn of the twentieth century with widespread electrification, the automobile, the airplane, and mechanization of agriculture, altered the life for most North Americans. There were many important technological developments of that period. The public sphere changed at a rapid pace. This reality urged the churches and the public to either adapt or stagnate in its traditional form.
The writers of the Social Gospel were in the centre of these developments. They used the cannon, sabre, and rifle and later with weapons that relegates the technology of the Civil War to a military museum, to fight the war. The carnage of these battles were to such an extent that ‘theological reflection on the morality of war moved at a sharp disjuncture from all previous moral teaching about war and peace’ (Lindsey 1997:36).
The social movement’s fathers thus wrote from their own complex backgrounds and interests. Confronted by the new challenges of urbanization, they all had to adapt and survive in what Gladden (1909:91) called ‘a mighty monster, with portentous energy’. Rauschenbusch discovered, during his first clerical appointment, that Hell’s Kitchen was not a safe place, and Josiah Strong remarked that ‘[t]he City is the nerve centre of civilization. It is also the storm centre’ (Strong 1885:128). This study will focus on Washington Gladden (February 11, 1836 – July 2, 1918), Shailer Mathews (May 26, 1863 – October 23, 1941), and Walter Rauschenbusch (October 4, 1861-July 25, 1918). What will follow is a cursory introduction to the origin and history of the Social Gospel and focus on their theology of the Social Gospel relevant to this study (see § 2.1.2 – 2.2.2). It is interesting to note how assured the Social Gospel writers were to their cause, and how the Social Gospel gave structure to it. The question is whether this is merely a dated movement as some suggest, or is it possible to identify, through interpretation, a Social Gospel in Jesus’ life and words. If the answer were yes, it would maybe change the tone of disapproval towards the Social Gospel. Gladden, some would claim, is the father of the Social Gospel movement. Gladden featured as an important figure in American religion in the period between the Civil War and World War I. Two ever-present themes in Gladden’s theology over the years were liberal theology and the Social Gospel. ‘In both areas Gladden was a pioneer if not a profound or original thinker’ (Dorn 1967: vii). Gladden showed considerable zeal throughout his ministry to the Congregationalist cause. He preached and propagated the virtues best in a summery address before the Central Ohio Congregational Conference (Ohio State Journal Oct, 1891). The theological development of Gladden falls into two principal categories: Firstly he moved away from the ‘tenets of the Calvinism that prevailed in the evangelical churches in his youth’ and ‘secondly, he attempted to adjust his thought to modern biblical criticism and evolutionary science’ (Dorn 1967:141). Gladden, in his development as theologian, reformulated what he regarded as cardinal elements of Christianity in terms of what was acceptable to the modern mind. Through his speculative theology, he was influenced by the Romantic Movement and considered intuition to be as valid a source of truth as reason, and rarely took interest in purely logical discussion. Naturally, his liberal tendencies brought unrest in his time.49 Gladden defended his thoughts against themes such as ‘second probation’, ‘eternal sin’, ‘evolution’, and ‘universal salvation’ as interpreted by the church. This sparked an era in Gladden’s time where the authority of the Bible was contested, its infallibility redefined, and the use of the Bible in the church reconsidered. Gladden believed that he could propagate the findings of biblical criticism without diminishing respect for the Bible. ‘Indeed, he was sure that these findings made the Bible more remarkable than ever’ (Dorn 1967:163). Significantly, Gladden’s career spanned this period of rapid change. A child of orthodoxy, he had been a theological pioneer in the decades after the Civil War, and he lived to enjoy many years of liberalism’s supremacy. Gladden saw liberalism as:
[t]he idea of the supremacy of God; the idea that God’s method of creation is evolution; the idea that nature in all its deepest meaning is supernatural; the idea of the constant presence of God in our lives; the idea of the universal divine fatherhood and of universal human Brotherhood. (Gladden 1913:6)
This assertion reflects the social dimension of liberal theology as foundation for the Social Gospel. Reflecting on this era of liberal theology, Kenneth Cauthen comments that Evangelical liberals stood squarely within the Christian tradition and accepted as normative for their thinking what they understood to be the essence of historical Christianity. These men had a deep consciousness of their continuity with the main line of Christian orthodoxy and felt that they were preserving its essential features in terms that were suitable to the modern world. (Cauthen 1962:28)
Gladden concluded that those who ‘loved God and their neighbour were saved from sin, regardless of their creeds’ (Gladden 1913:83). ‘Gladden judged men by their works, not by their creeds, and theology was, for him, always the handmaiden of religion’ (Dorn 1967:181).

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
1.1.1 Why choose a missiological-based theme as (inter-disciplinary) topic?
1.1.2 The problem to be investigated
1.1.3 Hypothesis
1.1.4 Literature review and need for this research
1.2 RECENT DEBATE: THE CRISIS OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM
1.2.1 The globalized Christian question: The third millennium debate
1.2.2 Discerning about the actuality of globalization
1.2.2.1 Stackhouse: God and globalization of the common life
1.2.2.2 Robertson: Glocalization, church’s identity and its mission
1.2.2.3 Scholte: Supraterritorial globalization
1.2.2.4 Summary of perspectives
1.3 CURRENT MISSIONAL REACTION
1.3.1 The missional imperative today
1.3.2 Contemporary mission in recent research
1.3.2.1 Missio Dei
1.3.2.2 Jesus’ commission to πάντα τὰ ἔθνη
1.3.2.3 Edinburgh 2010 Volume II: Witnessing to Christ Today
1.3.2.4 Deductions drawn from all views
CHAPTER 2: THE SOCIAL GOSPEL
2.1 INTRODUCTION
2.1.1 History
2.1.2 Shailer Matthews
2.1.2.1 Social teachings of Jesus: Sociological exegetical procedure
2.1.2.2 Mathews’ kingdom of God: A biblical foundation
2.1.2.3 Mathews’ eschatological realism
2.1.3 Washington Gladden .
2.1.3.1 Liberal Theology and the Social Gospel
2.1.3.2 Equality: The Golden rule and the nations
2.1.4 Walter Rauschenbusch
2.1.4.1 Social Gospel: A permanent addition to Christian religion
2.2 CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM THE THEORIES
2.2.1 Revisiting Social Gospel footprints (19-1980)
2.2.2 A theology for the Social Gospel of the Third Millennium
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY: POSTCOLONIAL HERMENEUTICS
3.1 POSTCOLONIAL THEORY: POINTS OF DEPARTURE
3.2 METHOD
3.3 A FUNCTIONAL MODEL TO STUDY THE SOCIAL GOSPEL OF JESUS FROM A POSTCOLONIAL ESSENTIALIST/NATIVIST OPTIC
CHAPTER 4: RICHARD HORSLEY’S JESUS IN ROMAN PALESTINE
4.1 INTRODUCTION
4.2 INTERPRETATIVE CONCEPTS OF HORSLEY’S MEDITERRANEAN
4.3 KINGDOM NARRATIVES OF JESUS
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION
5.1 INTRODUCTION
5.2 CONCLUDING REMARKS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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