2 Cor 5:19 might not be the obvious place to go for a Christmas Day meditation but it’s where my thoughts are this morning.
social gospel
Peter, Do You Love Me?
Brilliant stuff from Nick at Restless and Reforming: Jesus: Simon, do you love me? Peter: Yes Lord, you know that I love you. Jesus: Fight injustice, homophobia, racism, you name it. Simon Peter, do you love me?
The Problem with Churches and "Social Justice"
Darryl explains.
Why Being "An Evangelical" Today is Complicated
Clair MacMillan, National Director of the Church of the Nazarene in Canada recently published a characterization of what it is to be “evangelical” in Canada (HT: Bill Jones): Evangelical Christianity begins with the biblical assumption that God loves all people equally and . . . Continue reading →
Ridderbos: The Kingdom Of God Is Not Brought By Human Action
[The] absolutely theocentric character of the kingdom of God in Jesus’ preaching…implies that its coming consists entirely in God’s own action and is perfectly dependent on his activity. The kingdom of God is not a state or condition, not a society created . . . Continue reading →
Rauschenbusch, The Lost Gospel, Outrage, And The Mob
In Bottum’s revisionist account, Protestant preacher Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) looms as the figure who most succinctly defined the spiritual mission of 20th-century Mainline Protestantism and its heirs. He put “social sins” at the front of the Mainline imagination. “The six social sins, . . . Continue reading →
The Gospel Is Not Social
Between Monasticism And Transformation
Like Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) before him, Rauschenbusch’s Pietism had not equipped him to address the challenges before him. Like Schleiermacher, Rauschenbusch turned to the liberals for answers. He synthesized his Pietist theology with Albrecht Ritschl’s theology of the Kingdom of God. The Social Gospel movement wanted to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. Their optimistic eschatology (doctrine of last things) told them that they could do it. They were inspired by the Modern idea of the universal brotherhood of humanity and the universal fatherhood of God. As many others before them had done the Social Gospel movement harassed the Christian faith to their social agenda. Continue reading →
With Janet Mefferd On The Social Gospel
Here’s today’s episode of Janet Mefferd Today in which we discussed the “social gospel,” Walter Rauschenbusch, the emergent/emerging church movement and what it means that evangelicals seem to be heading back to this well for inspiration. We also talked about some alternative . . . Continue reading →
The Gospel For Discontent Millennials (And Everyone Else)
HB reader David wrote to ask about a social program in which his congregation is involved and his question is one that I get regularly. My reading and experience with Millennials, i.e., those born between 1982 and 2004, tells me that there . . . Continue reading →
Christian, Why Do You Sing A Swedenborgian, Social-Gospel, Hymn Written By A Unitarian Minister?
“It Came Upon The Midnight Clear” (now typically titled, “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear”) was first published in 1834. It was written by Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810–76), an Unitarian minister with Swedenborgian convictions. C. Michael Hawn, who teaches sacred music, describes . . . Continue reading →
AGR: Christianity And Liberalism
It was a pleasure to join Chris Gordon recently to talk about one of my favorite books, Christianity and Liberalism. Published in 1923, it became Machen’s most well-known work. In it he lays out briefly but clearly the difference between Christianity as . . . Continue reading →
Resources On The Social Gospel And Social Justice
Audio and articles on the history and theology of the social gospel and on the problem of the confusion of the law and gospel as Christians seek to bring the faith to bear on contemporary social issues. Continue reading →
On Samuel, Social Justice, And The Prophetic Office Of The Church
It is not difficult to find calls for the church to be “prophetic” especially toward the end of “social justice.” Of course we should favor social justice since nature and Scripture (e.g., Rom 13:1–7) both teach us that it is the function . . . Continue reading →
With Presbycast: What Is The Gospel?
It is always fun and edifying to talk with the Presbycast Guys, whom some have called the voice of confessionalist dissent in America. Last night we were discussing the question: What is the gospel? The answer to this question might seem obvious . . . Continue reading →
Resources On Social Justice And Racism
Among the many resource pages on the HB is the resource page on the social gospel and social justice. Among the resources are a couple interviews I did with Chris Gordon on Abounding Grace Radio on the gospel and social justice. Here they . . . Continue reading →
Chris Gordon: Did Therapeutic, Moralistic Deism Give Us A “Woke Church”?
The joining of the church and the world in America has been years in the making. The American churchgoer was trained to view the church as having the sole purpose of making people happy, commonly labeled as moralistic therapeutic deism. Whatever struggle . . . Continue reading →
Your Ethnic Identity Is Important But It Is Not Ultimate
Christians are not Gnostics. Against the Gnostics, Christians have, since the first quarter of the second century, affirmed the essential, inherent goodness of creation. Against the Gnostics and Marcionites we also affirmed the unity of the covenant of grace. Both of those truths help us to address the problem of ethnic tensions in Christ’s church. Continue reading
So You Say You Want A Revolution?
Addressing The Impatience Of Our Age
In the wake of the disaster that was World War I, in which about 8.5 million military personnel died and an even greater number of civilians died, there developed in this country and in Europe a desire not only for a future . . . Continue reading →
On The Gospel And Social Justice With Chris Gordon
Only someone in an isolation chamber could imagine that this world is not fallen. Even the most fact-resistant naturalist (who cannot begin to explain why there is something rather than nothing) concedes that the evolutionary process in which he places so much . . . Continue reading →