List Books arguing against the 'Social Gospel' ? Would you guys recommend me works?

Firstly, please don't jump me on this. I'm sure I won't be, but I don't know the political demographics of this forum.

Some books I'm aware of are Christopher Cone's book on the Bible and Government, "The Least of These", Gorman's book on Abortion. I'm looking for recommendations. I own Cone's book and Gorman's book (not the pre-pub one), but anything old or new, and anything with unique angles are welcome.

I have several areas of specific interest, and one of them is trying to push back from attempts to co-opt the Gospel for nefarious political ends. This includes Dominionism, Anglo-Israelism, and other stuff, but those folks have next to no power (thank the Lord!). But leftists do. My focus is trying to convince leftist Christians of their error, but I welcome works that will help me convince Christians who are trying to do the same thing on the political right. I do, on occasion, encounter them.

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MJ. Smith

I've read your post several times coming from a tradition that is both conservative and very social gospel oriented. I've not seen either of the books to which you refer, have heard of Dominionism but not Anglo-Israelism, and haven't a clue as to who you define as "leftist Christians" ... perhaps what I would call Marxist Christians? I have been reading several books that I would consider to cover some "social gospel" issues but I need a better description of what you are looking for.

Barnabas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078276#Comment_1078276

Not home. I'll provide tomorrow since I'm going to be out late. My imprecision I can see. Sorry about that.

Jan Krohn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078278#Comment_1078278

I think we need to define "social gospel" properly to find suitable books. I don't see it as a gospel that promotes social action. Social action is an integral part of the Gospel, and Jesus sets the example with how he treats the poor. Leave that out, and you have no gospel at all.

The "social gospel", as I understand it, promotes orthopraxy above orthodoxy, compromises on truth, and calls for activism rather than repentance.

I don't have a particularly big library, but for some recent research, I found that there's a lot of material scattered among the resources. Key words to use for the search include: emerging church, emergant church, feminist theology, black theology, liberation theology, post-evangelical, neo-evangelical. Searching for social gospel proponents is also likely to bring up some good rebuttals. Try: Clark Pinnock, Gregory Boyd, Scot McKnight, Rob Bell. Also, search D.A. Carson's works for postmodernism. He has many good insights.

Rosie Perera

As a descendant of one of the early leaders of the Social Gospel movement in the Episcopal Church (Bishop Henry Codman Potter), my initial reaction was defensive. But I know we're not supposed to be defensive on the forums, and you asked for people not to jump on you, so I won't.

The Assessment section of the entry on "Social Gospel" in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, Vol. 5, might give you a starting point, and some further references to check up on:

3. Assessment

3.1. By the 1930s several criticisms of the Social Gospel appeared in the United States. Reinhold → Niebuhr (1892–1971) and others criticized the overly optimistic assessment of human existence found in the theology of the Social Gospel. Niebuhr also criticized liberal theology in general for too easily identifying Christian love with prudential mutuality.

Niebuhr’s brother, H. Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962), insisted that Jesus does not command love for its own sake. What filled Jesus’ soul was not love as such but God. The Social Gospel is theologically mistaken, which manifests itself in its ethics. As H. R. Niebuhr put it in his book The Kingdom of God in America (1937), liberalism meant that “a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministration of a Christ without a cross” (p. 193).

Similarly, developments in economics, law, politics, and social reform challenged the method of social analysis used by the Social Gospel. Theologians also have questioned the use of the Bible in the theology of the Social Gospel, arguing that the teachings of Jesus cannot simply be translated into contemporary life.

3.2. Recently, other criticisms, as well as adaptations of the themes of the Social Gospel, have appeared on the American scene. For many Christian theologians the idea of Christianizing the social order is nothing less than simple accommodation of the Christian message to American political and economic power. The drive to accommodation is the basic weakness of every form of liberal theology, including the Social Gospel. Accordingly, the task of the church is not to transform society but, rather, to foster a community of peace empowered to witness to a sinful world. The social message of the church, in other words, is its own distinctive order of life.

Other theologians worry less about the possible accommodation of the Social Gospel to the wider society and its values, since, manifestly, the church always has engaged and always must engage social realities. These thinkers, however, insist that a vision of Christian faith delimited to the political and economic situation in one nation fails to grasp the complexity of the emerging global social reality. In the age of globalization and worldwide ecological endangerment, forms of economic, political, social, and ethical analysis must be widened in order to address these new realities. Like the Social Gospelers, these thinkers argue that one must show the relevance of Christianity to the present age. The fact is that present global realities exceed the framework of thought found in the original Social Gospel movement.

Finally, it has been argued that the feminist and womanist movements among the various Christian churches represent and yet also revise many of the impulses of the Social Gospel. From the early feminist movement until today, it is clear that the plight of women within any society is linked to economic and political forms of oppression and exclusion. In order to further women’s equality, power, and flourishing, it is necessary, thereby, to transform the social order. This transformation also requires a revising of Christian faith in order to address systemic forms of → sexism and oppression. In this way some of the themes of the Social Gospel have been adapted to a new situation.

3.3. Granting these criticisms and adaptations, the theology of the Social Gospel has left a lasting mark on progressive Protestant thought in the United States. The churches owe to it their deep awareness of social realities, their concern for social justice, and their hope of possible social change. Moreover, as theologians increasingly explore the centrality of praxis for theological reflection and assert the need to examine, criticize, and transform the social order (→ Liberation Theology), the Social Gospel provides resources for articulating the relation between Christian faith and social justice.

Bibliography: A. ABELL, American Catholicism and Social Action: A Search for Social Justice (Garden City, N.Y., 1960) • H. BECKLEY, Passion for Justice: Retrieving the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch, John Ryan, and Reinhold Niebuhr (Louisville, Ky., 1992) • W. J. D. EDWARDS et al., eds., Gender and the Social Gospel (Carbondale, Ill., 2003) • C. H. EVANS, The Social Gospel Today (Louisville, Ky., 2001) • W. C. GRAHAM, Half-Finished Heaven: The Social Gospel in American Literature (Lanham, Md., 1995) • R. HANDY, ed., The Social Gospel in America, 1870–1920 (New York, 1966) • H. HOPKINS, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865–1915 (New Haven, 1942) • H. R. NIEBUHR, The Kingdom of God in America (New York, 1937) • D. OTTATI, “Social Gospel,” New and Enlarged Handbook of Christian Theology (ed. D. W. Musser and J. Price; Nashville, 2003) 468–70 • W. SCHWEIKER, Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics: In the Time of Many Worlds (Oxford, 2004).

William Schweiker, “Social Gospel,” The Encyclopedia of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI; Leiden, Netherlands: Wm. B. Eerdmans; Brill, 2008), 69.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078282#Comment_1078282

I don't see it as a gospel that promotes social action

I suspect you'd have trouble with the eye of the beholder. Dorothy Day quickly comes to mind ... one of my favorites.

Barnabas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078294#Comment_1078294

Liberal, liberationist, Marxist, feminist, socialist attempts to hijack the gospel. Attempt ing to co-opt government into mass redistribution schemes by taking the Bible out of context. I'm looking for resources which will help me convince christians who are leftists to stop quoting Jesus out of context to promote their agendas. I'm not heart argue against pragmatic uses of welfare for the helpless though. I'm working within principal. I also have a problem with enforcing a Christianization of society above all else which is associated more with the American right. I speak of the misuse of scripture to petition government to use force to obtain usually unchristian ends.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078296#Comment_1078296

Thanks to Rosie and Chrisser, I now understand that my starting point of definition of terms is sufficient antithetical to the terms as intended by Chrisser, that I have nothing to offer.

Barnabas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078299#Comment_1078299

Thanks to Rosie and Chrisser, I now understand that my starting point of definition of terms is sufficient antithetical to the terms as intended by Chrisser, that I have nothing to offer.

Well thank you for being honest. You're a very kind person and I respect you. I assume we'd disagree strongly if I understand that statement correctly. I'm not against social welfare by government either. I'm just not a fan of revolutionary ideologies. I don't want people reading worldly revolution into words directed toward disciples who needed to not be tied by property and thus be even more vulnerable to persecution.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078302#Comment_1078302

I'm not against social welfare by government either. I'm just not a fan of revolutionary ideologies.

You are correct that we would disagree strongly although we would agree that political revolutionary ideologies are not something to be a fan of. But there is also the aspect that "liberal" in the sense you seem to be using it applies to mainstream Protestant theology - not an area that I know broadly; "social welfare by government" is not what I understand by "social Gospel"; "feminism" to me is simply another perspective worth considering along with dalit, mujerista, ethnic, post-colonial, et. al. - sometimes useful, often not. To me, the term "social gospel" is redundant for which, in a perfect world, there would be no need. So you can see, I'm sure, that it would take you hours to get me to understand what you are looking for and the forums is not the place to do it. I do understand very generally what you want and know it is outside what I know much about.

Barnabas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078304#Comment_1078304

I guess I'm wasting people's time while eating my foot. By liberal I mean two things, and as always I say things in in poor ways, theology which ends up tampering with essential beliefs you'd find in creeds, and attempts to claim certain practices are morally acceptable, like abortion. I could be wrong, but post colonial I assume requires punishment of European countries and America for their previous sins by exploiting conquered nations. Such things are awful. But I attempts to hijack our government s to pillage our wealth and resources causes alienation, resentment, and serves only to entrench lingering prejudices.

I absolutely want to support persecuted christians worldwide. My undergraduate final research paper was about medieval Christian Nubia. I don't want to eat my foot further so I'm trying to explain my thinking. I may be entirely wrong about the perspectives you listed. Im at the point where i wouldnt mind never seeeing any political news again. Most of what i see comes from 'revolutionary' or 'progressive' movements. Which is why im foolishly complaining on the internet about them. I do see the opposite which i xislike as well. But not much.

If administrator thinks appropriate maybe delete or lock this thread. Sorry.

J. Remington Bowling

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078327#Comment_1078327

You may be interested in what Thomas S. Kidd says about the social gospel in his most recent book, America's Religious History (2019). I will quote from several places in Kidd’s book, which servesto piece together the complex narrative surrounding the social gospel. Quoting from a wide range through the book may give you the impression that this is a big topic Kidd discusses in a sort of continuous fashion. It’s not. Kidd’s book is organized around important eras and his discussion of issues like the social gospel is more touch-and-go in parts.

First, his definition of the social gospel: "the idea that the gospel must be lived out in loving service." Kidd offers this in the context of discussing that Dwight Moody was "skeptical about the Christian social reform movements" and "that he saw the world as 'a vessel going to pieces on the rocks. God puts a life-boat in my hands, and says: 'Rescue every man you can.'' God wanted him to save souls, not reform society" (164).

"The 'social gospel" was an activist movement that overlapped somewhat with modernist theology. Social gospel advocates argued that churches needed to respond to public problems by ministering to the 'least of these' in America and around the world.The most obvious problems in the late 1800s were those posed by mass urbanization and immigration. Traditional Christian groups like the Salvation Army integrated evangelism in the cities with education, vocational training, and provision of food and shelter to those with desperate needs.

Some of the momentum behind the social gospel had carried over from pre-Civil War reform movements. The temperance or antialcohol crusade had made significant strides before the Civil War, and it was reinvigorated in 1874 with the founding of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). [...] The WCTU and groups like the Anti-Saloon League engaged in a campaign to prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcohol. They ultimately secured the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1919. Prohibition lasted for thirteen years. Although it did reduce America's per capita consumption of alcohol, prohibition was widely viewed as a failure because of the black market for alcohol and the criminal syndicates, led by bosses such as Al Capone, it spawned.

The social gospel was a subset of the larger Progressive movement for reform. Progressives focused on alleviating the abuses of industry and big business, making government more democratic, and addressing the plight of America's poor. Social gospel advocates contended that America must apply Christian principles to everyday problems. This philosophy, in its simplest form, was popularized by Congregationalist minister Charles Sheldon's 1896 bestseller In His Steps. This book showed how church members changed the life of a town by just asking, 'What Would Jesus Do?' and living out Christ's precepts. The slogan WWJD enjoyed a brief renaissance in 1990s Christian youth culture, though by then the concept was more tied to maintaining personal holiness than seeking social transformation.

More substantive social gospel treatises came from journalists, pastors, and theologians. One was British journalist William Stead's If Christ Came to Chicago! (1894). [...]In the book, Stead exposed terrible poverty, corruption, and crime in the city. He insisted that Jesus would never have countenanced Chicago's suffering, and neither should Christians" (pp. 180-181).

"Some theological conservatives worried about the social gospel. To them, the movement's charitable work seemed to substitute for the 'good news' of salvation through Christ. Lost people living in improved societies still faced the wrath of God when they died, fundamentalists warned. Not all social gospel advocates embraced modernist theology, but enough did so to give the social gospel a reputation for liberalism. Rauschenbusch, for example, was a Universalist who denied that anyone would suffer hell's eternal torments. The Ohio Congregationalist minister Washington Gladden likewise wrote dozens of books on the social gospel, and questioned Christians' traditional views of the Bible. He insisted that 'intelligent pastors' no longer believed in the Bible's infallibility. Most fundamentalists would concede that the church should minister to the poor. One of the authors of The Fundamentals reminded readers that working among the poor did not require the 'adoption of a so-called 'social gospel' which discards the fundamental doctrines of Christianity and substitutes a religion of good works.'" (pp. 183-184)

"Anticommuinist civil spirituality reached its height in the mid-1950s when Congress added the phrase 'one nation under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance and made 'In God We Trust' the national motto. [...] Americans in the 1950s wanted to demonstrate their anticommunist bona fides. This was the fearful era of Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations of suspected communists in America. [...] J. B. Matthews, chief investigator of the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities, charged that Protestant ministers were the single largest cohort supporting the Communist Party. Without much evidence, he claimed that seven thousand Protestant pastors had been drawn 'into the network of the Kremlin's conspiracy.' Their communist sympathies grew out of the ''social gospel' which infected the Protestant theological seminaries more than a generation ago,' Matthews argued. 'Many graduates of the 'liberalized Protestant seminaries abandoned religion altogether in favor of the 'social gospel.'' [...] Even sober observers, such as Reinhold Niebuhr, worried that some liberal American pastors really did have communist leanings, even if they were not technically communists themselves" (pp. 211-212).

“The connections between communism, universities, and white mainline churches were overstated, but they did exist, at least in indirect ways. Communist cultivation of American churches was not just a story within white-led mainline congregations and seminaries. Even before the Cold War, communists made halting efforts to build bridges with the African American church, hoping that the oppression they faced might make blacks more open to a radical critique of capitalism. Communists often found black ministers wary of their atheism. Baptist pastor Milton Sears sought to root out communist influence in his Birmingham, Alabama, church in the early 1930s. He drew contempt from communist organizers in the city and from communist sympathizers within his congregation. The animosity came to a head in 1933 when a procommunist mob confronted Sears during a service, and Sears ran them out of the building as he brandished a shotgun” (213).

Though Kidd doesn’t explicitly say so, his analysis does give some evidence that communism and the social gospel eventually made deeper inroads into black churches. But a similar thing could be said for evangelical churches, at least in regards to the social gospel (minus the communist sympathies):

“At the time of the 1962 showdown over inerrancy, though, Carl Henry had already left Fuller Seminary. He was more comfortable as a public intellectual among evangelicals than as a seminary professor, so he agreed to become the founding editor of Christianity Today. ... a flagship periodical for post-World War II American evangelicals. In the founding issue's editorial, Henry wrote that the magazine would 'apply the biblical revelation to the contemporary social crisis, by presenting the implications of the total Gospel message for every area of life." (p. 224)

My own sketch of the overall picture we get from Kidd’s analysis here and in his other book, Who is an Evangelical?, would be this: there has always been an element of “the social gospel” as Kidd first defined it on page 164, within American Christianity broadly and evangelicalism specifically. In fact, opposition to this loose idea of a social gospel was used to keep many Christians from condemning slavery and, after the Civil War, was used by Christians as an excuse to not speak out about things like segregation.

This, in turn, lead to unfortunate splits between black Christians and white Christians who would otherwise be united evangelicals. Had Christians not used “we just need to focus on saving souls” as an excuse to overlook serious evils, the church today could be much more unified.

The fact that the label “the social gospel” was adopted early on by more liberal (modernist) theologians than conservative theologians lead to a guilt-by-association fallacy or poisoning the well fallacy in some respects, at least if we adopt Kidd’s definition of social gospel on page 164, since many evangelicals were already and would continue to be adherents to activities that helped bring about social reform (cf. page 194 for instance).

This illusion of a division was further pushed by the communist-atheism threat, mainly in the Cold War era. But, as Tom Holland shows in his recent book, Dominion (2019), the link between communism and atheism is itself an accident of history. “Communism” in some form was adopted by many Christians (usually considered radicals) long before Marx. (Of course Plato advocates a half-form of it too in the Republic, though I don’t recall Holland touching on this.) And because the atheist-style communism was smart to exploit real divisions from real abuses between white and black Christians, this has led to even more unfortunate and unnecessary division. Atheist-style communism further lead to a solidification of white evangelicals within the Republican party, but starting with Eisenhower not Ronald Reagan.

Where one draws the borders around “social gospel” or Dominionism can be a rhetorical tool used to bludgeon who you please. Virtually every Christian inside and outside of America could be accused of some form of social gospel or dominionism or theocracy. But it’s mostly an excuse for a lazy form of attack. Both anti-abortion movements and racial reconciliation movements are attacked as social gospel. And, in the past, anti-slavery and anti-segregation movements were attacked for being social gospel.

This isn’t to say that there is nothing to attack in something we might call “social gospel” but it does mean that we have to be incredibly nuanced in what it is we are attacking. Otherwise, we are likely to find ourselves sawing off a branch we’ve been sitting on for a long time.

Barnabas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078330#Comment_1078330

Hmmmm. I must consider all which has been said. Im in the hospital for monthly treatment. Rhetoric to smear is something i worry about. Mj smith. I feel i might be missing someyhing. To oversimplify would be a mistake i dont want to make. Im highly interesred i n cultyral perspectives wlrldwide. But i prefer to avoid politics. I need to finish reading trinity amo g the nations. Avoiding alienation is important. I did not realize the term social hospel has been used as a bludgeon. I am afraid that whites are driven away because of progessive movements. The reverse is true but now the paradigm isnt the same as it was when people fought against segregation and unequsal treatment. I now must consider changing my use of lsnguage!

Thank you to everyone for your comments. I am typing w 1 finger. IV fluids

Barnabas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078336#Comment_1078336

I must not fall inyo guilt by association for ethnic perspectives. Please bear with me. I have criplled processing due to some minor brain damage. I understand complex things, but its kind of a bottleneck in speed

Barnabas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078304#Comment_1078304

I am very grateful for your comments. You are tresting me gentlty. To others, thank you very much as well.

I'm not against social welfare by government either. I'm just not a fan of revolutionary ideologies.

You are correct that we would disagree strongly although we would agree that political revolutionary ideologies are not something to be a fan of. But there is also the aspect that "liberal" in the sense you seem to be using it applies to mainstream Protestant theology - not an area that I know broadly; "social welfare by government" is not what I understand by "social Gospel"; "feminism" to me is simply another perspective worth considering along with dalit, mujerista, ethnic, post-colonial, et. al. - sometimes useful, often not. To me, the term "social gospel" is redundant for which, in a perfect world, there would be no need. So you can see, I'm sure, that it would take you hours to get me to understand what you are looking for and the forums is not the place to do it. I do understand very generally what you want and know it is outside what I know much about.

Thank you Remington and Rosie as well. This has been informative.

Jon

I’ve heard that Chelsen Vicari’s book “Distortion” is a good one for this topic, and it looks like it’s on sale from Logos this month.

https://www.logos.com/product/42917/distortion-how-the-new-christian-left-is-twisting-the-gospel-and-damaging-the-faith

Additionally, Dan Jensen has a book called “A False Kind of Christianity” , but you’ll have to grab that one from Amazon, as it doesn’t look like Logos has it.

Disclaimer: I have not read either of them, or any other book on this subject, but I have friends that are concerned enough with this to have mentioned it.

SineNomine

As a general comment applicable to this thread and many others:

It's helpful, when looking for a resources advocating for or against a particular position, to avoid doing so using formulas remotely resembling the following: "The evil ABC people, who hold DEF terrible views with GHI horrible implications causing problems JKL in broader society to the detriment of MNO good things, like the Gospel, ...."

The strong belief that someone is wrong about something and the desire to find books advocating against that position do not require, conjointly or severally, that one's request(s) and the resultant discussion(s) characterize the ostensibly erring person(s) in a negative light.

Anecdotally, requests that are stated in neutral language have a much higher success rate on these forums both in terms of receiving assistance in finding resources and in not violating the forum guidelines regarding, among other things, not discussing matters of theology on the forums.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078338#Comment_1078338

Another book I've found very helpful in understanding the tension between the evangelical sharing of the Gospel (good news of salvation) and the "Social Gospel" (doing good works to help the poor, for example, which some have said was a distraction from the more important work of saving souls) was Dynamics of Spiritual Life by Richard Lovelace. I've tried to get Faithlife to bring it out in Logos format, but no luck so far. However there is at least now a Kindle version of it. Before that was available, I had already done all the work to scan it and OCR it, and I have it in my Logos library now as a PB.

The book contains a history of spiritual renewals. And it makes the point that there have always been these two strands -- the more evangelical "saving souls" side, and the "social gospel" side. Neither one is healthy without the other. We need both. But "the theory and motivation behind many initiatives of the social gospel have been graceless echoes of the self-righteous and guilt-motivated concerns of secular humanism." For it to be transformative, it needs to be motivated in biblical and prophetic thinking.

Lovelace posits that reuniting these two disparate strands of the church would bring yet another renewal. "If a widespread mutual movement toward sanctification in these two sectors would occur, the result would be an immense release of spiritual power within Western Christianity and the recovery of the stature and initiative lost by the church in the division of its forces in the late nineteenth century."

RRD

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078417#Comment_1078417

https://www.logos.com/product/182495/dynamics-of-spiritual-life-an-evangelical-theology-of-renewal-expanded-edition

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078421#Comment_1078421

https://www.logos.com/product/182495/dynamics-of-spiritual-life-an-evangelical-theology-of-renewal-expanded-edition

Oh right! I'd forgotten that they did eventually get it, and I'd already pre-ordered it. My brain is full of too many other details to keep track of stuff like this. [:D]

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078327#Comment_1078327

I guess I'm wasting people's time while eating my foot.

No you are not. You are using language in a way that many people on the forums will find familiar - and some of us will not. Usually, I can tell when someone's terminology is too far from mine for me to genuinely understand - in your case I did not. In an apologetics class, this was one of the first things the teacher taught us - many religious arguments are because we are using the same word to mean different things. As an example he used his Mother who had just moved to Florida and "looking for a church". She was a New Yorker, daughter of a pastor, and had spent 80+ years in the same prominent church. In Florida, she was looking at 3 separate denominations (none her "own") that had been recommended by friends and ultimately chose her favorite because it had "the best music". To us, the story seemed unbelievable - we could understand parish-shopping, or shopping for the "nearest rite" (Orthodox or Catholic) but to shop denominations implied a very different understanding of the word "church".

Fortunately, these differences are not right or wrong, they are simply different meanings of a word among different population groups - no more meaningful that the soda/pop/coke carbonated beverage divide in the US. I would suspect that our difference on feminist, dalit, post-colonial ... is simply a difference of experience in who we have read. The first example I read was the Dalit Commentary from India - the Dalits being the "untouchables", written by Dalits for Dalits (and the rest of India) - not a Westerner trying to pretend to be able to see through the eyes of a Dalit. And when I think American feminist, the first person who comes to mind is Renita Weems. If I wrack my brain, the only name that I come up with that may fit into the group you refer to is Leonardo Boff.

I do appreciate your taking the time to help me understand what you are looking for and why. You are simply out in an area using a vocabulary in which I am unable to be helpful.

P.S. I did not even know that "Social Gospel" was a Protestant movement; it has a different meaning in Catholic circles:
[quote]

Dear brothers and sisters: the Church is a teacher in humanity. Faced with these systems, she presents a culture of love and of life, restoring hope to humanity, hope in the transforming power of love lived in the unity willed by Christ. For this to happen, it is necessary to follow a path of reconciliation, dialogue and fraternal acceptance of one’s neighbour, of every human person. This can be called the social Gospel of the Church.

The Church, in carrying out her mission, sets before the world a new justice, the justice of the kingdom of God (cf. Mt 6:33). On various occasions I have spoken on social themes. It is necessary to keep speaking on these themes, as long as any injustice, however small, is present in the world; otherwise the Church would not be faithful to the mission entrusted to her by Christ. At stake here is man, the concrete human person. While times and situations may change, there are always people who need the voice of the Church so that their difficulties, their suffering and their distress may be known. Those who find themselves in these situations can be certain that they will not be betrayed, for the Church is with them and the Pope, in his heart and with his words of encouragement, embraces all who suffer injustice.

John Paul II, Homilies of Pope John Paul II (English) (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2014).

Hamilton Ramos

Hi Chrisser:

Very interesting topic. Thanks for bringing it up.

A quick look at FL e book shows some interesting resources:

https://ebooks.faithlife.com/search?query=social%20gospel&sortBy=Relevance&limit=60&page=1&filters=status-live_Status&ownership=all

Some of the products in the above page I do not have. Will consider adding to my "would like to have".

attempts to co-opt the Gospel for nefarious political ends

Some bright mind (God given talent) said that: "Those that do not get involved in politics are doomed to be ruled by those who do" [very rough paraphrase].

Bad guys at times rule because more pious do nothing about it. And sometimes when pious people get involved, they loose their North, and end up being same or worse than that they replaced.

Complex issue.

Christian development entails helping people take care of themselves, their communities, and the like. Nothing wrong to try to help in that sense, but without a true moral transformation, the effects are unsustainable.

Big business sometimes get to have too much influence in politics. A possible solution is the middle way: cooperatives. Cooperatives working in a free market society turn out to benefit more people in a more humane way. They are better institutional citizens that develop innovative socioeconomic projects good for many stakeholders and limiting to abusers.

Example: I belong to a multiple services cooperative. My car loans and mortgage are kept with it, and part of what I pay go to our very own retirement fund (separate from the Government's).

Financial institutions have tried to influence Government to basically obstaculize cooperatives, just because we do not let them exploit us. Thank God they have not been successful.

Social gospel does include self-responsibility encouragement, and coupled with moral transformation lives can be positively affected for the better.

Problem is that progress requires involvement. I had to volunteer as Board of Director, Overwatch committee, etc. for many years to help the cooperative take off. We had to learn, act with morals, and make decisions in a consensus way. Had to learn to work with different personalities with very different points of view, and needed to learn to compromise and creatively work together for the benefit of the whole group.

We need to learn to be part of the solution, there is no other way.

Peace and grace.

Joseph Sollenberger

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078432#Comment_1078432

M.J. stated. "I do appreciate your taking the time to help me understand what you are looking for and why. You are simply out in an area using a vocabulary in which I am unable to be helpful."

An excellent point was made. We often do not know the way in which an individual understands a term that we think is used in a single way only. Our life experiences and backgrounds truly impact our understanding of language, and often create surprising misunderstandings. I am been annoyed by pages of definitions at the beginning of legal contracts, but I do understand why this is necessary.

Understanding what another individual understands about a particular term or phrase is a key first step in discussions. Many times my first impressions are not correct, and I find much more common ground than expected. This idea of perceiving the other individual's understanding of a term was so important in my profession of teaching chemistry because so many common words had a very technical and narrow meaning when used in chemistry. Students had to practice shifting their understanding and use of language based on the setting and context—something that is not intuitive and easy for many to do.

I read the forum and learn much about different understandings of scripture, beliefs, and practices among believers. I see in these discussions so much that is in common among the participants, if only people would take time to understand one another. Yes, I understand there will be differences that do not reconcile, but so many times these are based on starting assumptions that may or may not really matter in a salvific sense. I grew up in a small denomination that strongly felt that they had the only members in Paradise (primarily based on the mode of baptism). In college I went to a worship service of another denomination and was surprised to discover that the services and beliefs of this group were really not very different from my home church, other than the thoughts and practice related to baptism. That experience, almost a half century ago, was both shocking and refreshing.

The visit to that worship service taught me that many strongly held assumptions about other believers were not valid. It taught me that there is much in common among believers, even if the worship style differs. It taught me that what I was learning about thinking in chemistry applied to life in general, specifically the three questions: 1. What do I know? 2. How do I know what I know? 3. What do I do with what I know? Thus, I approach all areas of life testing my thinking and understanding. In some areas, thinking and preferences hold steady under the testing. In some areas former convictions are tested and shown to be simply preferences. In other cases the testing revealed that the ideas did not align with the Kingdom and must be rejected. The testing continues

My plea is that we listen gently to one another. Work at understanding how language is being used by seeking clarification and not assuming that our understanding matches the understanding of another. Practice grace in allowing other approaches to belief and practice that may not fit our own experiences or preferences.

I am sure many of you are familiar with the story of the tour of Paradise in which a newly arrived group of residents is being shown around and are instructed to be extremely quiet and in no way draw attention as one hall is visited; the explanation for stealth was that in that hall, the residents thought they were the only ones present in Paradise. I no longer wish to be a member in that exclusivist hall.

I will now return to observation mode.

Shalom,

Joseph

Barnabas

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1078505#Comment_1078505

I read everything but I'm going to have to reread and unpack it all, as well as take down notes on books mentioned. As usual, my adhd and personality drives me like Jerome's in that I end up starting dozens of projects all at once and as a result end up finishing none of them. I'm glad I made a poorly worded post as it's taught me to pay much more attention to terminology. I'll come back later to comment more if something important occurs to me. Easier now that I'm not hooked up to IV fluids. All comments are appreciated. Thank you especially to MJ Smith, Joseph, Rosie, J Remington, Jan Krohn, and Hamilton.