Isaiah 1:15-17; Luke 4:16-21; Acts 4:32-37
Not long ago, a well-known media personality urged Christians to leave their churches if they found the term social justice on their church website. His reasoning: Communists and Nazis both used the term social justice. The flaw in his reasoning: We would have to give up all our good ideas if we ran from each idea that has been misused by some unwise group or some ungodly group. A valid kernel in his reasoning: Some churches, not only liberal, but also conservative, advocate for partisan social causes that they would better leave outside the church. A strong counter to his reasoning: Anyone who carefully reads the Bible should conclude that concern for social justice is essential to the faithful people of God.
The opening books of the Bible make clear that God created human beings to work together in community to care for creation, to sustain the good and varied richness that God has created for our sustenance and enjoyment, and to remember that we are indeed responsible for the well-being of our spouses, our children, our brothers and sisters, our parents, our neighbors, and even the strangers and aliens residing among us. Our basic assignment as God’s children is to represent God’s nature and heart and purposes, and that assignment has not changed in its essence through all the millennia of human history. Working for social justice is part of our reason-for-being as children of God.
The Old Testament is clear that social justice is to be embodied in the community life of the people of God. Their religious calendar included a Sabbath day every seventh day providing rest from human endeavors and labor (applying even to indentured servants and working beasts), a Sabbath year every seventh year providing rest for the land from cultivation and relief for debtors and indentured servants from their condition, and a Jubilee year every fiftieth year for returning citizens to ownership of their share of family property. The basic social justice point is that no one was to be left indebted or indentured forever, that no one was to be left without inheritance or without hope for a new beginning, that no one was to be prevented from drawing near God in faith and repentance, seeking healing, blessing, and empowerment. Although it seems likely that these laws were seldom if ever fully enforced, the Old Testament prophets repeatedly railed against those who schemed to defeat the purposes of such laws, who sold the righteous for silver, the needy for a pair of sandals, who trampled the head of the poor into the dust and turned aside from the afflicted. The words of Amos echo through the ages, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” Nothing in the New Testament eliminates that high valuing of social justice. The realities of human corruption, of urbanization and division of labor, and of invading foreign empires made the Jubilee laws impracticable, but did not invalidate their purpose.
Jesus announced a new way of implementing the purpose of the Jubilee laws, through caring communities of faith, in which each believer is given spiritual gifts to use for the well-being of the whole community and in which the community sees to it that its opportunities and resources are appropriately distributed. The church is Spirit-anointed to follow Jesus in proclaiming good news to the poor and liberty to the captives and the oppressed.
There were places in the first century A.D. in which Christians were, because of their faith, cut out of the economic life of the larger community, places in which their very survival depended on their developing a secondary local economy in which they supported the enterprises of one another so that they could continue to live and bear witness in the larger community to the goodness of their Lord Jesus. These Christians demonstrated extraordinary resourcefulness and generosity in keeping their fellow believers and their Christian mission afloat. Luke says that the early Christians in Jerusalem did not consider anything their own, but as belonging as needed to the fellowship and mission of their crucified Savior and risen Lord.
Acts 4:32-37: “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.”
Imagine how that attitude of viewing nothing as our own would revolutionize our churches today!
Pursuing social justice is not a matter of being politically liberal or conservative. We can hold any number of views on what the government ought to do about social problems, and still agree that the people of God must devote their energies and resources toward correcting real injustices that are contrary to the heart of our loving Creator and Redeemer. We may favor or oppose any variety of government remedies, and this still does not relieve us of the personal obligation to make a positive difference in the name of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ.
When I say that churches ought not be involved in politics, I am not saying that individual Christians ought not be involved in politics. My concern is that churches not divide themselves along political lines and that churches not hinder their outreach to unbelievers by making a politically biased presentation of the gospel. Wise government policies can be of some help, but high Christian ideals are never totally achieved through political means. Never has happened, never will. There is always work left for the church. Our job together as the church is to do the work of Jesus.
Although I like to see churches steer clear of political advocacy, churches must be involved in concerns of social justice. Christian hearts must indeed be sensitized to the plight of victims of injustice, or we are not representing the heart of our Creator and Redeemer, which is the purpose for which God created and redeemed us.
Today in Protestant circles, concern for social justice is sometimes associated with theological liberals, people who do not really believe in the Bible or in the biblical God. But, prior to the time that skeptical, liberal Bible scholarship came to the forefront in the mid-nineteenth century, most Americans who were strong Christians, whether Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, or members of our Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, swam in both the evangelical and the holiness streams of living water, and were encouraged to swim in the social justice stream as well. This made sense because the founding figures of the three streams—evangelical, holiness, and social justice--were the same people, people like Nicolas von Zinzendorf, John and Charles Wesley, John Newton, and a generation later, our own Barton Stone.
I will give two historical examples of the combined evangelical/holiness/social justice streams.
The first example comes from a little more than a forty year period in England, from about 1792 through 1833, the generation after von Zinzendorf, Wesley, and Newton. A group of activist Christians began to buy or build houses in Clapham, England, a village in a natural setting then still a few miles south of London. Most, though not all of them were Anglicans, but their theology was evangelical and their personal spirituality and morality was of the holiness type. Most, though not all of them, were wealthy. The wealthy supported the Christian labors of those who were not. Their motive in living together was to offer mutual encouragement in Christian living and in implementing certain Christian goals for social justice. Their Christian faith was so much part of their motivating energy that opponents derisively dubbed them “the Clapham sect,” or “the Clapham saints.” The best known member of this circle was William Wilberforce, but there were something like two dozen other members of the circle who made major contributions to their work on behalf of spiritual, moral, and social causes. In over four decades of labor, this little group supported the emergence of world missions, of Bible translation and Bible distribution organizations, of the Sunday school movement and the Sunday observance movement, of broader schooling and Christian social work among the poor. They campaigned against blood sports, dueling, gambling, and cruelty to animals. Politically, they sought to reform Britain’s governance of India and the related actions of the East India Tea Company, they sought to reform England’s prisons, they brought into being the African country of Sierra Leone, and most notably, they did more than any other group in history to bring down slavery not only in the British Empire, but also worldwide. Yes, their most publicized actions may have been political, but, while their political actions were taken with Christian motivations, they were not taken, so far as I know, in the name of the church. My point is that their social justice labors emerged from evangelical tradition faith and from holiness tradition spirituality. It was because of the richness of their faith and spirituality that the Clapham saints made such a difference for social justice.
Just before the time that work of the Clapham saints was winding down in England, the work in America of Charles G. Finney was beginning. Finney was the foremost revivalist and the leading evangelical and holiness spokesperson in America from the mid-1820’s for another forty to fifty years. My University of Chicago American history professor who listed Jonathan Edwards as one of the two most influential Americans in our entire history, listed Charles Finney as the other. My professor believed that Finney produced more lasting change in 19th century American life than any other person. It has been estimated that over half a million converts to Christ were won at Finney’s revivals and that 80% remained strong Christians for the rest of their lives, and that does not begin to count those who came to Christ through the efforts of those Finney taught and influenced. Finney encouraged his converts to work for social reform in the areas such as health, temperance, sexual morality, Sunday observance, women’s rights, the abolition of slavery, and the humane treatment of prisoners, the insane, and the handicapped, a list very similar to the previous work of the Clapham saints back in England. Why was Finney’s work so successful? Beyond his obvious gifts for communication, it was his deep spiritual life that made the difference. And it was the spiritual life he conveyed to others that produced so many workers for social justice in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century.
Then, in the latter half of the nineteenth century and opening decades of the twentieth century, liberal, skeptical Bible scholarship emerged and split the church. The theological liberals proclaimed what they called the social gospel, but lost the biblical gospel that could win souls to Christ. The theological conservatives kept the emphasis on personal evangelism and personal morality, but drew back from the social dimensions of their previous work which they now saw as tainted by theological liberalism. The conservatives tended to slip into judgmental self-righteousness, to which the liberals responded with a culturally elitist self-righteousness of their own. The chasm kept widening. That sad state of affairs endured for more than a century, and how much poorer we American Christians are because the spiritual streams were separated.
We are at last seeing the emergence of a new generation of evangelicals with a social justice agenda that includes, not only opposing abortion, but also alleviating poverty, advocating creation care, peacemaking, prison reform, and refugee relief. Many young evangelicals appear to be re-uniting the evangelical, holiness, and social justice streams. May their tribe increase!
Let me tell you what I believe about our times; I believe:
1. that the American people are discovering that many of the solutions to our problems will not come from government or from the other large institutions that fund our two major political parties, but will emerge from the grassroots.
2. that, as we choose simpler and healthier lifestyles, live closer to our neighbors, and live on a more human scale, our lives will be more meaningful and more fulfilling.
3. that our hope for better lives is closely tied to the teachings of Moses and the Prophets, of Jesus and the Apostles, and especially closely tied to the purpose of Jesus for his church, that we are to be bearers of new hope to the world.
4. that the mission statement of our church, “Building a Community of Hope through Jesus Christ,” is especially well-suited to our time and place and compels us to be about Jesus’ work of social justice.
5. that, if we truly choose to follow God’s leading right here and right now, we can make a profound impact for the better on Carroll County and beyond, both now and in the future.
6. that we will be most effective if we operate with the force of all six streams of living water in harmonious cooperation. My point for today has been that the evangelical, holiness, and social justice streams of Christian spirituality definitely belong together, not in opposing camps. Let’s get past our prejudices and take a holistic, biblical viewpoint that will make a real difference for the better right here, beginning right now.
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