Evangelism, Politics and the Mission of the Church: Where John Stott Led Us Astray

John Stott was a hero of mine when I was 17 years old. If memory serves, I would have been 17 in December of 1973 when I attended Urbana '73 as a high school senior. John Stott was the Bible Study leader that year and his expository preaching impressed me beyond measure. I had never heard preaching like that. It was powerful and authoritative, but not because of the charismatic personality of the preacher or because of rhetorical tricks or emotional manipulation. It was powerful because it was so obviously a mere "bringing out" of what God's Word said that it carried with it the authority of God himself. It made me want to give my life to doing that as my main work.

So John Stott had a huge impact on my life and particularly my decision to forgo scholarships to two secular universities in order to attend Atlantic Baptist College that next Fall in order to begin preparation for pastoral ministry.

1973 was a fateful year in church history. It was the year of Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War. It was the year of yet another unprovoked war of aggression by the Arab nations against Israel and the Arab oil embargo. The Cold War was raging and world Communism was on the march. Many in the West were calling for compromise or even capitulation to Communist ideals.

I was politically naive at time and susceptible to left-wing ideas. I would soon read Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and Jim Wallis' Sojourners magazine, as well as The Politics of Jesus . Rather than putting them in their historical and cultural/political context, I naively read them as apolitical people discovering deeper truth in the Scriptures with no agenda and no cultural pressures driving them in a socialist direction. Gustavo Guttierez had published A Theology of Liberation in 1971 and the World Council of Churches meeting in Bangkok in 1973 brought to a climax a process of re-defining salvation as political/social liberation. It would be a year later, in 1974, that John Stott would play a leading role in the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization.

Stott was the chair of the drafting committee which produced the Lausanne Covenant. At Lausanne, a number of third world evangelical theologians, such as Rene Paidilla, who had been influenced by the rise of liberation theology and felt the need to respond to it, created a controversy over the relationship of evangelism to social action.

Looking back 40 years later, one wonders if Evangelicalism was not somewhat unnerved by the aggressive propaganda of the WCC, liberation theology and third-world Marxist movements which claimed that the Church was "irrelevant" and, worse, supporters of the oppression of the poor. Using dependency theory and a Marxist critique of Capitalism, they pressed the claim that if the churches were not engaged in class warfare and the anti-capitalist struggle, then they were no better than the oppressors of the poor and, in fact, on the side of the evil oppressors. Evangelicals, whose record of social service had been exemplary, were put on the defensive because they were not politically engaged in the anti-Capitalist struggle. Simply doing education, agricultural and medical work in the service of the poor no longer "counted."

At Lausanne, there was much debate about the need to redefine the Gospel to include social action (politics) in the basic definition of the mission of the Church. In his book, Christian Mission in the Modern World, published in 1975, John Stott capitulated to this way of thinking.

This book is remarkable for a gigantic inconsistency at its heart. On pp. 133ff Stott describes the process by which the WCC moved from a commitment to evangelism as the heart of the mission of the church, to a claim that personal evangelism and social action were both equally part of the mission, to a a view of mission that was in practice almost exclusively political/economic. This process is traced in the documents the WCC produced between 1961, when the International Missionary Council was merged with the World Council of Churches in New Dehli to the meeting in Bangkok in 1973 when salvation was defined as liberation. The process included an uncritical acceptance of the Marxist critique of capitalism and an evaluation of the Marxian definition of social justice as compatible with and, in fact, the true teaching of Scripture. Clearly, Stott is unhappy with some of the radical implications of accepting the Marxian critique of religion, but he accepts it as to a large extent valid. This is incoherent.

Therefore, Stott suggests basically that we Evangelicals ought to take the first step along the path taken by the WCC by elevating social action (political action, class warfare) to a level of equal importance and priority as personal, verbal evangelism, but he warns against taking the second step of letting politics crowd out evangelism. But it is difficult to see why he thinks Evangelicals will be able to hold back when the WCC was not able to do so. This is the contradiction of the book: if we see that the WCC journey led to disaster, why not propose a different course rather than proposing to go only half way down the WCC path?

Stott's tremendous credibility with Evangelicals gave him a huge amount of influence over the movement. He admits that at the Berlin Congress on World Evangelization, an event sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in 1966, he had held to and proclaimed the traditional view that evangelism is the central mission of the Church and the heart of the Great Commission. Social service (compassionate service) and social action (political struggle) both belonged to the sphere of discipleship - the teaching disciples to obey all things Jesus taught us which occurs after conversion proper. As such, they are among the many things from parenting to art to creation care that should be part of the Christian life. But the unique mission of the Church is first and foremost to evangelize - to preach the good news of salvation through the shed blood of Christ - and then Christians should be discipled to do good works with social service and social action among them.

But in The Christian Mission in the Modern World, Stott says he has changed his mind. Social action (politics) can no longer be regarded as merely one of the areas in which Christian discipleship must be worked out after conversion, now it must be viewed as integral to the Gospel itself. It must be seen as being as much the mission of the Church as preaching the Gospel of sin and salvation. This is a watershed in the development of Evangelical theology and I believe it is the root of the Evangelical Left and the widening gulf we are witnessing today between traditional Evangelicals and those who are attracted to progressive politics as the true mission of the Church.

If Stott is right in 1975, he was wrong in 1966. And if he was wrong in 1966, then most of the Fundamentalist movement from B. B. Warfield to J. G. Machen to Billy Graham and C. F. H. Henry was wrong and, in particular, the Fundamentalist and Evangelical critique of the Social Gospel is wrong. Instead of accusing the liberal Social Gospelers of apostasy, the most they should have said is that they over-emphasized politics and under-emphasized evangelism.

But this cannot be right because the problem with liberal Protestantism is not that it under-emphasizes a Gospel message it still believes and preaches occasionally; the problem is that it no longer believes the Gospel at all. This is apostasy and it is not theoretical or some sort of prediction for the future; it is all around us today. Back in the 1920s it might have been argued that the prediction that the liberal denominations would utterly abandon the Gospel was over-pessimistic and hypherbolic. But we live in the 21st century and now vaguely humanistic ideas of tolerance, inclusion and moral relativism have completely crowded the Gospel out of many liberal denominations. It is no longer a prediction, but a fact of history.

The amazing thing, however, about Stott's 1975 call to expand the mission of the Church to include politics alongside evangelism just as the WCC had done 10 years earlier and the Social Gospel had done earlier in the first half of the 20th century was that Stott made this call after the evidence was in and the verdict of history had pronounced negatively against this course of action.

In the 4th century the difference between the Nicenes and the Arians was just one iota (the Greek letter "i"). The Greek term "homoousios" meaning "same being" defined the orthodox doctrine of the deity of Christ and provided the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity, while the Greek term "homoiousios" meaning "similar being" was Arian heresy. The Gospel was at stake then and, I believe, it is at stake today.

The difference between saying that politics is part of the mission of the Church equal in importance to evangelism, on the one hand, and saying that evangelism is the heart of the mission and politics is just one of many areas in which the Lordship of Christ must be worked out by the disciple, on the other, may seem minute and technical. But I believe it is absolutely fundamental to a biblical and orthodox definition of the Gospel and the mission of the Church.

The Marxist ideology that defines class warfare as fundamental to history is the source of the error, in my view. Marxism put third world Evangelicals on the defensive by claiming that the Evangelical Church was complicit with the oppression of the poor if it did not take the Marxist side in the class struggle. Evangelicals were too quick to accept the Marxist premise that class warfare is fundamental to history. Since Evangelicals did not challenge the fundamental Marxist heresy at this point, they were twisting themselves into pretzels trying to avoid the charge of being complicit in the oppression of the poor. It seemed to many Evangelicals that if they could not prove their sympathy for the poor, they would never be able to evangelize effectively. So their motives were good; they just didn't think deeply enough.

Instead of accepting the Marxist critique of capitalism in the first place, Evangelicals should have challenged the premise that economics determines everything and that class warfare is therefore fundamental to history. Evangelicals should have rejected the Marxist understanding and substituted a biblical view that history is determined, not by economics, but by human worship of or rejection of God.

With Jonathan Edwards they could have viewed revival as the fundamental indicator of Divine Providence in history and therefore the true meaning of history. They should have realized that we cannot accept half of Marxism because it is a totalitarian system of thought before it is a totalitarian system of political economy. They should have refused to consider themselves complicit with the oppression of the poor just because they were not engaged in class warfare against the capitalist class.

In fact, they should have re-affirmed the position that Marxian socialism always and everywhere leads to poverty, tyranny and scarcity whereas free enterprise leads to prosperity, freedom and an increase in human dignity. That they could not do this was tragic for poor people. Socialist ideology has held much of the third world down in poverty and degradation for far too long and if Evangelicals are complicit in anything they are complicit in not challenging the pessimistic, Malthusian ideology that defines Marxism and prevents true development of the economy to the benefit of all.

But the key reason to critique Marxism is not that it does not work (although it cannot create wealth), but rather that is is theologically heretical. It works with a Rousseauian view of human nature as intrinsically good but corrupted by society and as infinitely plastic and therefore susceptible to social engineering designed to create a Utopia on earth. This is the fundamental Marxian heresy and it leads to a re-definition of salvation as earthly, political liberation and a secularization of Christian eschatology. Sin becomes unjust economic structures and salvation becomes the implementation of socialism. The Church becomes a political organization and a tool of the Revolution with no intrinsic value except insofar as it serves the political goals of the Marxist revolutionaries in their war against the capitalist system.

This heretical view of human nature leads necessarily to violence, repression and totalitarianism. When social engineering fails to produce the desired results, instead of abandoning the ideology the tendency is to double down on the engineering and turn the screws tighter. This is how a naively optimistic ideology leads inevitably to oppression and slavery. And "Christian Marxists" are complicit in this crime against humanity and the tragedy is that they, of all people, ought to know better.

Will Evangelicals go the way of the WCC? Almost certainly a major segment will do so, although there will likely be another split in the movement just as there was in the early 20th century when Evangelical Protestantism split into Fundamentalism and Liberalism. We are living through this split and every Evangelical church and institution is choosing sides.

Although it pains me to say so, I think John Stott was wrong in 1975. He is still a hero to me for many reasons. He is a godly, spiritual, humble, honest and generous man and one of the great Bible expositors of the 20th century. But he was right in 1966 and wrong in 1975. He did so much to show us where the WCC went wrong but he failed to point out a direction we could take to avoid ending up in the same bog of apostasy. The Evangelical Left is in great part his legacy and this is sad beyond words.

Glenn Beck and Social Justice: Part V: Social Justice and Evangelicals

Finally, in our series on Glenn Beck and social justice, we come to an Evangelical perspective as articulated by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president, Al Mohler, on his blog recently in response to the Beck controversy. He wrote a post entitled: "Glenn Beck, Social Justice and the Limits of Public Discourse." Mohler began by acknowledging that there is a sense in which justice in society is a properly Biblical concern.

"Is Glenn Beck right? That is the question most in the media were asking, along with a good number of Christians who were aware of the debate. With just a few words, Beck, a convert to Mormonism, set the world of American religion into a frenzy of discourse.

At first glance, Beck's statements are hard to defend. How can justice, social or private, be anything other than a biblical mandate? A quick look at the Bible will reveal that justice is, above all, an attribute of God himself. God is perfectly just, and the Bible is filled with God's condemnation of injustice in any form. The prophets thundered God's denunciation of social injustice and the call for God's people to live justly, to uphold justice, and to refrain from any perversion of justice.

The one who pleases the Lord is he who will "keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice" (Gen. 18:19). Israel is told to "do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor" (Lev. 19:15). God "has established his throne for justice" (Psalm 9:7) and "loves righteousness and justice" (Psalm 33:5). Princes are to "rule in justice" (Is. 32:1) even as the Lord "will fill Zion with justice and righteousness" (Is. 33:5). In the face of injustice, the prophet Amos thundered: "But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:18). In a classic statement, Micah reminded Israel: "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8).

To assert that a call for social justice is reason for faithful Christians to flee their churches is nonsense, given the Bible's overwhelming affirmation that justice is one of God's own foremost concerns."

But then Mohler shifts gears and says:

"But, there is more going on here. Glenn Beck's statements lacked nuance, fair consideration, and context. It was reckless to use a national media platform to rail against social justice in such a manner, leaving Beck with little defense against a tidal wave of biblical mandates.

A closer look at his statements reveals a political context. He made a specific reference to Rev. Jeremiah Wright and to other priests or preachers who would use "social justice" and "economic justice" as "code words." Is there anything to this?

Of course there is. Regrettably, there is no shortage of preachers who have traded the Gospel for a platform of political and economic change, most often packaged as a call for social justice.

The immediate roots of this phenomenon go back to the mid-nineteenth century, when figures like Washington Gladden, a Columbus, Ohio pastor, promoted what they called a new "social gospel." Gladden was morally offended by the idea of a God who would offer his own Son as a substitutionary sacrifice for sinful humanity and, as one of the founders of liberal theology in America, offered the social gospel as an alternative message, complete with a political agenda. It was not social reform that made the social gospel liberal, it was, its theological message. As Gary Dorrien, the preeminent historian of liberal theology, asserts, the distinctive mark of the social gospel was "its theology of social salvation."

Even more famously, the social gospel would be identified with Walter Rauschenbusch, a liberal figure of the early twentieth century. Rauschenbusch made his arguments most classically in his books, Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) and Theology for the Social Gospel (1917). In a 1904 essay, "The New Evangelism," Rauschenbusch called for a departure from "the old evangelism" which was all about salvation from sin through faith in Christ, and for the embrace of a "new evangelism" which was about salvation from social ills and injustice in order to realize, at least partially, the Kingdom of God on earth. He called for Christian missions to be redirected in order to "Christianize international politics."

The last century has seen many churches and denominations embrace the social gospel in some form, trading the Gospel of Christ for a liberal vision of social change, revolution, economic liberation, and, yes, social justice.

The urgency for any faithful Christian is this -- flee any church that for any reason or in any form has abandoned the Gospel of Christ for any other gospel."

Mohler, as a good Evangelical should, makes politics secondary to the most central concern of the integrity of the biblical Gospel. He goes on:

"As I read the statements of Glenn Beck, it seems that his primary concern is political. Speaking to a national audience, he warned of "code words" that betray a leftist political agenda of big government, liberal social action, economic redistribution, and the confiscation of wealth. In that context, his loyal audience almost surely understood his point.

My concern is very different. As an evangelical Christian, my concern is the primacy of the Gospel of Christ -- the Gospel that reveals the power of God in the salvation of sinners through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The church's main message must be that Gospel. The New Testament is stunningly silent on any plan for governmental or social action. The apostles launched no social reform movement. Instead, they preached the Gospel of Christ and planted Gospel churches. Our task is to follow Christ's command and the example of the apostles.

There is more to that story, however. The church is not to adopt a social reform platform as its message, but the faithful church, wherever it is found, is itself a social reform movement precisely because it is populated by redeemed sinners who are called to faithfulness in following Christ. The Gospel is not a message of social salvation, but it does have social implications.

Faithful Christians can debate the proper and most effective means of organizing the political structure and the economic markets. Bringing all these things into submission to Christ is no easy task, and Gospel must not be tied to any political system, regime, or platform. Justice is our concern because it is God's concern, but it is no easy task to know how best to seek justice in this fallen world.

And that brings us to the fact that the Bible is absolutely clear that injustice will not exist forever. There is a perfect social order coming, but it is not of this world. The coming of the Kingdom of Christ in its fullness spells the end of injustice and every cause and consequence of human sin. We have much work to do in this world, but true justice will be achieved only by the consummation of God's purposes and the perfection of God's own judgment.

Until then, the church must preach the Gospel, and Christians must live out its implications. We must resist and reject every false gospel and tell sinners of salvation in Christ. And, knowing that God's judgment is coming, we must strive to be on the right side of justice.

Glenn Beck's statements about social justice demonstrate the limits of our public discourse. The issues raised by his comments and the resultant controversy are worthy of our most careful thinking and most earnest struggle. Yet, the media, including Mr. Beck, will have moved on to any number of other flashpoints before the ink has dried on this kerfluffle. Seriously minded Christians cannot move on from this issue so quickly."

Mohler correctly raises the fundamental question of the nature of the Gospel, which is addressed to individuals and not to cultures or societies. He acknowledges, however, that once people have become Christians, they will be involved in social reform and politics and that is good. But he is primarily concerned about getting the Gospel right and rejecting the social gospel. This is the role of Evangelicals: constantly to remind the Church Catholic of the Gospel.

The Social Gospel versus the Biblical Gospel

Over at City of God, Dan is puzzled by the fact that Mars Hill Church expects social reforms like men becoming more responsible for their wives and children as a result of establishing a new church in a new community and preaching the gospel of personal sin and salvation through the cross. He writes:

"I was watching a video done by Mark Driscoll’s ever-expanding Mars Hill in which one of MH’s pastors, A.J. Hamilton discusses leaving Seattle for the campus that Mars Hill is setting up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

What struck me in this video was that Hamilton was asked about what he’d like to see MH accomplish in Albuquerque and he responded by talking about fatherless children and men who leave women. MH’s goal would be to “raise up Godly men” so that they could take care of women and children."

Dan then writes: "Is not the concern of Mars Hill over encouraging men to take care of the children and single mothers of their communities a form of social gospel?"

I would say to Dan and to all who may be wondering how the biblical gospel of sin and salvation relates to social improvements that "No, the concern of Mars Hill in this case is not a form of the social gospel."

The biblical gospel is not the social gospel, but the preaching of the biblical gospel does result in social improvements as individuals are converted and lives are transformed. The point here is that conversion and transformation are possible through the biblical gospel, but are not possible through the preaching of the social gospel. Only where there is a deliberate focus on Jesus Christ crucified, risen and ascended is there any possibility of actual transformation of life. Where repentence is not preached, there is, unsurprisingly, no repentence. Where forgiveness is not preached there is no life of grateful response. Where the power of the Holy Spirit is not preached, there is no transformation.

The social gospel locates the problem (sin) in social structures rather than in human hearts and it proclaims that political and economic changes will result in social improvements. Instead of depending on the work of the Holy Spirit, it proposes that we expect change to come from government regulation and funding. There is no need for repentence of sin, forgiveness on the basis of the shed blood of Christ on the cross or faith in Christ as the basis of salvation. In the social gospel, the world gets better through law, not through gospel. Hence, the social gospel is misnamed: it is not really gospel, but law. And the preaching of law apart from transforming grace is never good news. It is the worst possible news in the world: it is moralism and it is only welcomed by Pharisees. Brian McLaren's "New Kind of Christian" is really an old-fashioned Pharisee with his consciousness raised and a new set of legalisms (aka "issues").

The biblical gospel results in transformed lives, repentence from sin, faith in Christ and a new way of life. The biblical gospel really is good news because it does not call on people to buckle down and try harder to do the right thing out of altruism. The biblical gospel says that God has done something stupendous for us that we could never have done for ourselves and that what God has done makes a new life in the Spirit a real possibility for those who believe.

The biblical gospel has resulted in social improvement throughout the history of the Church. From the impact of the Wesley's revival preaching on 18th century England to the "redemption and lift" phenomenon studied by sociologists in Latin American Pentecostalism where conversion results in sobriety, family stability and growing material prosperity, to the luminous tradition of medical and agricultural missions carried out by 19th centuries committed to preaching the biblical gospel and to helping people practically, the biblical has always had spectacular results in the area of social improvement.

The common charge that the preaching of the biblical gospel is "pie in the sky" is simply re-cycled Marxist propaganda. By "pie in the sky" Marx actually means, not that the biblical gospel does not feed the poor, cloth the naked and take care of widows and orphans (for it manifestly has done those things for 20 centuries), but rather he means that it delays the revolution Marx so desperately seeks. It delays revolution because the biblical gospel does not teach people to put all their hope in the Party as the vanguard of the revolution, its emphasis on sin disabuses people of Marxian utopianism, and its emphasis on sin and salvation teaches people to put their hope in God, not guns.

The biblical gospel, when preached with conviction and believed by the masses, transforms society in a way that socialism can only pretend to do. The problem with the biblical gospel is not that it is not "social" enough, but that it is not believed, preached and embraced. But when the biblical gospel is not embraced, the social gospel is a poor substitute because it has only the form of religion but denies the power thereof.