In the most recent issue of Revelant Magazine they deal with some burning issues facing the church today. I’d like to post all of them to generate some discussion. Each question is responded to by a panel of 8 members of the broader evangelical (and I use that word loosely) community. They are Jim Wallis (Founder of Soujourners, a politically active ministry), Chuck Colson (Founder of Prison Fellowship and Breakpoint), Nancy Ortberg (writer and speaker), Cindy Jacobs (Co-founder of the prayer ministry Generals International), Brian McLaren (prominent voice in Emerging Church movement), Shane Clairborne (Founder of The Simple Way Monastic Community), Steve Brown (Professor at Reformed Theological Seminary) and N.T. Wright (Bishop of Durham).
Today’s Question: Is our focus on social justice out of balance?
Jim Wallis: It’s unfortunate we even have to ask that question. I’ve been fighting the false dichotomy between evangelism and social justice my whole life; it’s even wrong to call for a balance between the two, because they are not two separate thigns. Christians in the global south talk about an integrated, holistic Gospel of the Kingdom of God. It changes personal lives; it brings social justice; it transforms individuals, communities, societies, and even governments. God’s aim is to make all things new.
The message to Christians today is very clear. Any gospel that isn’t good news among poor people simply isn’t the gospel of Jesus Christ; any evangelism that doesn’t include social justice ignores the perfectly integrated life and message of Jesus.
If we’re not calling people into deeper levels of personal relationship with God, we’re not taking the gospel seriously. If we’re not engaging the world, bringing empowerment to the marginalized and addressing the specific injustices of our time, we’re also not taking the gospel seriously. It’s that simple.
Chuck Colson: The Great Commission charges us with the responsibility to make disciples and baptize people in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There is also a Cultural Commission that flows out of Genesis 1, which gives us the responsibility to care for all that God has created. In fulfilling the cultural mandate, we work fervently for social justice to help the poor. No one can read the Scriptures and come to any other conclusion.
Both the Great Commission and the Cultural Commission are part of God’s plan of creatoin, clearly mandated in Scripture. But if you press me, I’d say that if people weren’t being led to Christ, they wouldn’t assume the cultural mandate. So I suppose if there were a priority, it would be the Great Commission.
Nancy Ortberg: I think that for a lot of people, social justice leads to evangelism. Jimmy Long has written a book called Generating Hope, which takles about how you present the gospel in a postmodern setting. [He says] people who didn’t grow up in the church are gong to, if they do come to know God, probably experience two conversions, not one.
The first is the conversion to community. That will allow them to live close enough to God’s people to get a view of the God who sits in the center of those people. Their second conversion then will be to God. SO as we authentically live out social justice in our lives, evangelism will be an outcome of that, and I also think evangelism will bring people into our churches who will be very committed to social justice.
Many churches I come in contact with have all kinds of programs for banquets, teas, and Bible studies, which in and of themselves are not bad, but there is not an equal amount of serving the poor, getting our hands dirthy and coming alongside people in need. The church has to go to them. People started clamoring around Jesus initially because he was healing people, and when they got close enough, they began to hear his message: “The Kingdom of God is available right now.”
Brian McLaren: The most important thing is for us to stop putting evangelism and social justice in opposition as if they are enemies. That shows the degree to which we have become captive to a colonial, consumerist, dualist mindset, where religion or salvation is a private matter of the heart or soul and eternity, and social justice is a secondary concern because it involves bodies and politics and history. As long as we’re playing in that field, we’re playing somebody else’s game.
We need to remember that Jesus doesn’t teach us to pray, “May we come to Your kingdom in heaven after we die, where, unlike earth, Your will is done.” He teaches us to prya, “May Your kingdom come here to earth. May Your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven.” When God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven, people who are alienated from God come back in relationship with God - which is evangelism. And people who are mistreated by others are given justice and relief - which is social justice.
Shane Claiborne: When I look at Jesus, [evangelism and dealing with injustice] are inseparable in his life. People are hungry for the gospel that embodies a social, political, alternative to the patterns of our world. To me, that is the very essence of what spread within the early church - they were caring for the poor, preaching another Kingdom and another emperor other than Caesar. It was absolutely magnetic because the faith people had placed in Rome was at an all-time low, so when they were saying, “We’ve got another Kingdom,” people were like, “Yes, we’re ready, because the world as we’ve experienced it is not working.” The beautiful thing is, people are saying the same thing now.
Steve Brown: A follower of Christ doesn’t put on a “social justice” hat and then an “evangelism” hat and then try to discern which hat to wear the most and which hat is most valuable. Why? Because it isn’t a hat; it’s the head and the heart. You can’t exchange either. They are integral to the person.
When a Christian sees someone who is physically hungry, a Christian feeds the hungry person. Why? Because hungry people can’t understand the plan of salvation? No. Simply because that person is hungry. That’s what Christians do. And if a person is spiritually hungry, a Christian becomes “one beggar telling another beggar where he or she found bread.” Why? Because that’s what Christians do.
N.T. Wright: Justice and evangelism are things which have to go on through the work of the church simultaneously. I really don’t think wehave to make the choice, and to suggest we do, as our culture has suggested over the last 200 years, is to put a split in the world that has little or nothing to do with the vision we find in Scripture where Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of God. He is telling them about God’s sovereignty happening in a new way, which is evangelism. But the way it works out is the fact of what he’s doing for the poor. As the church is getting its hands dirty doing what needs to be done to help the poorest of the poor, people realize this gospel really does make a difference - it can never simply be a matter of the heart. It’s got to be a matter of real conditions of people.
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April 26, 2008 at 12:22 am
Jennifer
I love it. I agree that evangelism and social justice are not in opposition. I mean, I don’t know that Luke would have said it that way, but I’ll say it that way. We need to go holistic. Can’t go straight for the soul and ignore the stomach. But at the same time, I don’t think it’s in line with the love of Jesus to only care for people’s physical needs in hopes that it will lead to their accepting of our gospel. I think if we really love like Jesus loved, we’ll just want to see hungry people fed, and systematic injustice corrected, because we love people, not because we have an agenda.
May 17, 2008 at 8:08 pm
hensleyzachary
I know that this thread is old, but I read rereading it and I have a few comments.
I’m always torn by passages like these. Whenever I hear people talk about social justice, unfortunately, I think that often it’s a cover for some form of socialism. Often if you look at the kinds of things, say, the One Campaign pushes for, it’s often increased foreign aid to African countries or increased subsidies for the smaller farmers over against the larger farmers. In these cases, calls for social justice amounts to plundering tax payers. I am then reminded of Paul’s outrage that people were accusing Paul of supporting a method of doing evil that good may come from it.
Or these calls might be directed at fairness issues like equal pay (for equal work) for women, but one must understand that such a policy must make a loaded definition of what equal work is and can only be implemented by aggressing against private property rights.
Even if such calls for social justice are not meant in this light, often it’s put in the light of mandates for the church. However, one is hard-pressed to explain, I think, the model in Scripture that Paul took money from Xians to give to suffering Xians in Judea–certainly there were suffering non-Xians. Even in James, the context is, arguably, a context of intra-church welfare. The same goes for the selling of property in Acts.
I’m not saying that one ought not help non-Xians, but I certainly think that there is a wide gap between the available Biblical textual evidence and these assertions that it is the Church’s duty to feed all people everywhere.
However, giving alms to the poor can help the immediate need, but the situation will just be that much worse tomorrow if you don’t fix the problem today. Unfortunately, people are too happy to soak up the collectivist propaganda that learn sound economics.
We have trusted in governmental interventions in the name of fairness and have reaped a harvest of world-wide poverty and war.