The social gospel

The Church has failed to respond to many of the social concerns of the world throughout its two thousand year history. However, Jesus proved through his preaching and teaching that he believed caring for the needs of all people to be essential for the purpose of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth; many would argue that this was Christ’s central message. Among those who adopted such an understanding of the gospel was Walter Rauschenbusch. Perhaps this mindset was formed in him as a result of the austere working conditions of his peers during the era of industrialization. His tenure as pastor of a Baptist church in the Hell’s Kitchen slums in New York certainly must have influenced his thinking. While the social gospel movement had its beginnings in the late 19th to early 20th century, many perceived this as an attempt to override traditional theology altogether, which is also a prevailing attitude among fundamentalists today. This is possibly why it has taken such a long time to prove affective in reforming the mindset of the Christian community at large. According to promoters of the social gospel, the modern world has to be reached through new avenues emphasizing economic and political justice. For this reason many Christians latched on to the movement in an attempt to meet contemporary needs and stand against growing tides of injustice. The Roman Catholic Church began to address the concerns of the modern world under the pontificate of Leo XIII and later clarified by Pius XI in 1931. This was due partly to the political conditions in Italy and surrounding European nations. Also, the economic status of some was good while others lived in extreme poverty. As a result of the papal encyclicals and the works of thinkers like Rauschenbusch, the universal Church of Christ was finally being awakened to the social ills in the world. Rauschenbusch argues that Jesus and the other prophets were primarily concerned with the conditions of the world around them in the face of the people to whom they preached their message and not about doctrinaire systems of belief and religious ceremonial regulations. In fact, Jesus and the prophets condemned such religiosity in favor of truly righteous living, which can only be accomplished in the way one relates to others in a social context. Personal religion composed of individual morality and faith should not serve as the only aspect of the gospel made visible in the preaching of the Church but in order to be fully proclaimed should include a juxtaposition of this and social justice. After an introduction on the reasoning, intent and purposes of the social gospel Rauschenbusch moves into a theology of the social gospel. He adds that this is a foundational formula that tries to centralize the doctrine of the Kingdom of God. Essentially he seeks to show how the Kingdom of God is meant to serve as the focus of all dealings with society. A key idea is taken up in one of his points in his work The Social Gospel, “…the Kingdom of God, at every stage of human development, tends toward a social order which will best guarantee to all personalities their freest and highest development.” In this statement is a return to the understanding that Jesus taught that all persons are valuable and should be able to achieve their fullest potential while on this earth. If the Kingdom is truly established in a society, then conditions therein will be established which would enable all to accomplish such. Accordingly, the Church should be concerned with establishing the Kingdom of God on earth. However, according to Rauschenbush the Church has often worked against the Kingdom because its institutions are merely worldly establishments when it is not living for the Kingdom. He also argues that the Kingdom of God should not be perceived as existing only within the confines of the Church but rather includes all activities of human life. He believes that the Church stands alongside other social institutions such as the family, the industrial organization of society and the State as those entities wherein the Kingdom of God resides and persists. In Rerum Novarum Pope Leo XIII makes an effort to modernize the Roman Catholic Church in relation to social problems. He is especially concerned with the economic state of his contemporary society, namely the unequal distribution of wealth. Leo takes up several issues in his encyclical including private property, wages and trade unions. According to Leo private property is a right given to man by God; a proper wage is one that is sufficient to maintain an individual and his family comfortably; trade unions are natural associations formed justifiably to assure these appropriate wages and working conditions. This document was supplemented 40 years later by a successor Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. Pius’ purpose is to build upon and expand the teaching of his predecessor, focusing on what will serve to assure economic and also political justice. He reaffirms the right to private ownership of property but adds that neither the abuse or lack of use of property renders the right void. However, one cannot go beyond one’s own rights of ownership so as to occupy all property available that could otherwise serve another’s needs. When “natural law itself does not give guidance” in matters pertaining to the proper use of property, the State should impose its authority in a way that will benefit the common good. The State’s authority is not limited to matters of personal property but extends to the ordering of society in such a way that would eliminate class discrimination and abolish dictatorial forms of government. A society must also implement a just wage wherein a person’s labor is sufficiently compensated. The pope also rejects communism and socialism as unchristian forms of government. Rauschenbusch, Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI share a common commitment to at least a form of the social gospel. However, since the movement is associated for the most part with liberal Protestant Christianity, even Rauschenbusch himself being a liberal during his time, it often does not correlate well with traditional Roman Catholicism. Although the popes do not embrace the social gospel movement per se, they do indirectly embrace its spirit. The concern of all is that the basic needs of the people living in the modern world are met. The popes naturally believe the center of which should be the Church while Rauschenbusch believes it to be the Kingdom of God, which exists in the whole of society. Overall, the gospel socially applied does stem from the teachings of Christ and as a result from the Church of Christ. Christ is still teaching this message through the vessel of his body on earth, which is the Church. Whether Rauschenbusch would admit it or not it was the influence of the Church in the first place, by proclaiming these teachings of Jesus from Scripture and Tradition, that he became aware of the need for a social gospel and essentially served as the source of the social gospel itself.