A New Social Gospel
The Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
November 8, 2009


Message: A New Social Gospel

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2009.

The thing about the phrase:
the social gospel –
the thing about that phrase is that
one is tempted to ask,
what, like there is some other kind?

The social gospel –
this was a term used in the early part of the 1900’s
to describe a group of mostly liberal theologians and activists
who became deeply concerned with poverty,
urban conditions,
exploitation,
and the like.

Maybe you remember those photos
taken by Jacob Riis of the tenements and slums
of New York, in the 1880’s –
I read about them and saw them in my American History class –
How the Other Half Lives –
that was the title of his first collection.
And these photos helped to spark outrage
and a concern for the welfare and justice of the downtrodden.

Of course, this was not new:
Theodore Parker, and others, generations before,
preached loud and often
about the “most-neglected”,
the ones who fall through the cracks.
Parker was, in many ways, ahead of his time.
But by the turn of the century,
a social gospel was proclaimed from many a church.

Some folks took it seriously:
one prominent leader, a Baptist named Walter Rauschenbusch,
had worked in Hell’s Kitchen,
preached and served concrete human need,
in some of the toughest neighborhoods in the city.
Lots of the folks who cared about the social gospel
meant it –
they spoke against the tides of the gilded age,
they worked for both justice and charity,
they gave up comfortable positions
to serve the poor.

These ones –
they breathed in peace
and breathed out love.

They did the work that was real –
passed the bags along,
made a difference.

But not everyone approached the social gospel in this way.
For a lot of folks,
hearing a little bit about how tough some folks had it,
well, it made them feel better.

Sometimes this was simple Calvinism:
they suffer because God wills it,
I have plenty because God wills it,
so the poor be damned.

But just as often, it was the pity of the well-to-do;
the sort of benevolence that makes one feel like we’ve done something
when we haven’t really risked,
haven’t really heard the gospel message.

You know what I mean:
the ones who send a few dollars and feel their guilt relieved.
Maybe you’ve done that – god knows I have.
This is an understandable move:
it makes perfect sense,
to do a little,
and then try to put it out of our mind.

To show up at the one thing,
to vote once,
in the big election everyone is talking about,
even if we ignore the little elections that make a difference.
It’s understandable,
because to practice the social gospel is risky.

And here’s the thing,
about that phrase,
the social gospel:
here’s that thing again:
as if there was any other kind.
As if the gospel was anything but social.

A rich man asked Jesus
“what must I do to inherent eternal life?”
And Jesus said,
“you know the commandments:
you shall not commit adultery,
you shall not murder,
you shall not steal,
you shall not bear false witness,
honor your father and mother.”
and the rich man said:
“I’ve done this all my life.”
and Jesus,
“OK, you’re fine.”
Oh, wait, that’s not what it says.

Did any of you hear about this thing recently:
the conservative bible project?
What it is is that a group of folks
want to take all the liberal stuff out of the people.
All the stuff about helping the poor,
or the injustice of greed,
or loving your enemy,
all that stuff.
I’m not kidding – this is a real thing.
I was so ticked when I read it,
because it proves what we Unitarians have been saying
for 2000 years:
that Jesus, and God, and the prophets – they are flaming liberals.

The conservative bible project,
that’s where they would end the gospel.
“Oh, you’ve kept all the “do nots” --
then you are fine.”
But that is not what Jesus says.

He says:
“There is one more thing you must do to have eternal life.
Sell all you own and give the money to the poor.
Come, and follow me.”

The thing about the phrase, the social gospel is:
like there is any other kind.

Dieter Hessel says the question is not
whether a congregation has a social ministry,
the question is what kind.
One of retreat?
One of exile from the world?
One of private piety,
of apocalyptic fantasy?

Or might we have a social ministry
of engagement?
Of striving for justice?

There is no other gospel, save a social one.

Well, to return to our story –
the generation after the social gospel movement
came the neo-orthodoxy movement:
Karl Barth and all that jazz.

And this movement leaned away from the optimism
of social gospel liberalism.
They were still an engaged faith:
it was, after all, Barth who instructed preachers
to prepare with the bible in one hand
and a newspaper in the other.
But these neo-orthodox folks objected
to the sense of progress and “onward and upward forever”
in liberalism.
And, after the great depression,
and the second world war,
and the holocaust,
and Hiroshima,
one can understand doubts
about humanities ability
to do justice,
to rise above our divisions,
to travel upward and onward forever.

While these debates were happening
in academic and theological circles,
folks on the ground were still living out the social gospel –
the only gospel they knew to be true.

Dr. King and Rosa Parks and the thousands of others,
who knew one gospel:
that all were brothers and sisters,
all were creatures of the same god,
the god who stood for justice and equality.

In Latin American, a group of religious leaders –
folks who worked in the slums and the barrios
of Ecudador and Mexico and Brazil,
they started preaching and working with the poor,
the dispossessed,
those who had lost their land and their lives
to the powers of corporatist governments,
more interested in cheap bananas for American supermarkets
then the lives of their own people –
and these religious leaders did more than preach and work,
they listened.
They let the poor folks lead.

And their theology became clear:
they called it liberation theology.
It was simple, really:
Jesus, God, was on the side of the poor.
God, they said, had a preferential option for the poor.

All you had to do was read the text, really:
sell all you own and give the money to the poor.
I care nothing for your festivals,
but let justice roll down like waters.

The main difference between the liberation theologians
and the social gospel folks
was that the liberation theologians were not liberals.
They were mostly Catholic priests,
and a lot of them were Marxists,
but they were theologically more conservative:
they had far stricter interpretations of morals, the bible, the trinity
and the rest.
But they were hearing and preaching the same gospel:
that the life of faith
is the life of justice.
Period.

The last generation has been dizzying.
Liberation theology came under assault
from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.
The pope sent his chief enforcer:
A Cardinal named Joseph Ratzinger
to put a stop to all this troublemaking, Marxist, stuff.

But others picked up the mantle,
and continued to care about the poor,
the dispossessed,
the disenfranchised.

Liberal churches in this country
have largely been reactionary in the last decades.
We reacted against Vietnam,
and then we reacted to the women’s movement –
in ways both positive and negative.
We were against Star Wars and Nuclear weapons,
and against the Christian right –
especially when it came to church and state –
We’d lurch from issue to issue,
driven by our compassion for whomever might be before us that day:
refugees from El Salvador,
people with AIDS,
immigrants,
gay and lesbian people,
and so on.

It was in this time period that a minister of our church in Rochester, NY,
unsatisfied with our scattershot approach to social justice,
did a lot of thinking
and created a new model:
in this model,
groups within the church would organize
and work for a sustained amount of time on a particular issue.
People who were passionate about that issue
could engage at that level.
It was a good model, and you all adopted it here:
a model with task forces and a social justice council of all the task force leaders.

These task forces have done a lot of really amazing work
for many years.
This town is a lot stronger because of that work.
Human need has been met through human acts.
The flag of justice has been flown with pride.

Yet, in last years long range planning process,
you articulated a hope that we could add to this important work:
that we could, in fact,
take on a single issue of justice
as a whole congregation
for a sustained amount of time.
This would not replace the task force model,
but add to it:
it would be something that we would work on for years,
something that we would serve the needed,
and learn and teach,
and organize for justice,
and lobby and influence,
and join coalitions, or start them.

This would be something where we would be know:
we are the church that does X.
That walks its talk.
That is serious, and accountable, and engaged.

We are not alone in this desire to take the social gospel seriously.
To stand on the side of love,
to stand on the side of liberation,
to have a preferential option for the poor, the forgotten.

We are not alone.
Other churches, here in Rockford and in other parts of the world,
are doing this work in this way:
Think of Zion Lutheran and Zion Community Development.
My friend and colleague Allison Miller,
the minister of Unitarian Universalist congregation
in New Jersey – a congregation smaller than this one –
has helped to start an interfaith job training and social service agency,
which is housed in their building,
which serves all comers.
It’s work that’s gotten her on the local news,
that’s impressed the community,
and, most importantly,
that has served justice.
They don’t just help folks find jobs.
Starting from their accountable relationship with those in need,
they work to change laws and structures
that make it hard for the dispossessed to advance in the world.
Other congregations I know have focused on being the green church in town,
or being the peace church,
or being the equal rights church,
and so on.

As you came in to worship today,
you were give one of these little green slips of paper.
If you haven’t already done so,
you will have a chance later to write down your idea,
and put it in the suggestion box in the narthex.
Be specific,
but also large enough that we could do lots of things over many years.
What would serve justice?
What would make lives better?
What connects to your own sense of purpose,
to your own hopes and hurts?

The social justice committee will tally these ideas,
group like with like,
and then a task force to be named by the social justice committee
and the board of trustees
will lead you all in a conversation about these ideas,
so that you can select an area to work on together.
I hope that you are as excited about this as I am --
I think it will be great,
I think that like a pitcher cries for water to carry,
people cry for work that is real.

Here’s the thing:
the thing about that phrase,
the social gospel.
Is there any other kind?

Here’s the thing:
the think about that phrase:
liberation theology.
Is there any other kind?
I mean, is there any kind of theology, worthy of respect,
that doesn’t care about liberation?

Is there any kind of gospel,
of good news, that is worthy to be heard,
that doesn’t have a concern for society?
I called this sermon “a new social gospel” –
What’s new about it?
The new social gospel –
The work for justice in our times –
Is different from the work of prior ages.

It gathers together the best of the past –
The radical vision of Jesus of Nazareth,
The commitment to the forgotten of Theodore Parker,
The sense of responsibility of the social gospel movement,
The accountability to the poor of liberation theology.

But it tries to avoid some of their mistakes.
It is not as apocalyptic as Jesus was –
It knows this is a long struggle.
It laves behind the patronizing attitude of the original social gospelers,
It is more interested in coalition-building
And less interested in Karl Marx
Than liberation theology.

The new social gospel is a movement of spirit:
Where we breathe in peace
And breathe out love.
It is a movement grounded in accountable relationships,
Nurtured in effective coalitions.
We know now – at least we ought to –
That the struggle is long, and complicated,
And that you have to work on many fronts at once,
You have to stay nimble,
And you have to stay grounded and principled.

The new social gospel movement sees that injustice
Is always part of a web of relationship,
And so is justice.

It’s personal. It’s about what we eat,
And what we drive,
And how we heat our homes,
And where we buy our things,
And so on, and so on.

It’s structural.
It’s about the opportunities for meaningful participation
In the structures of power
Which influence our lives.
It’s about asking “who benefits from this arrangement?
who loses and is that fair?”

It’s spiritual.
It’s about a vision of equality,
A faith in the dignity of all –
Maybe not “upward and onward forever” –
But a faith that human beings can do human good,
That all are brothers and sisters,
And it is about the courage to live that way.

I look forward with great hope
To what we will do together.

We are going to sing together in a moment,
Number 170, We are Gentle Angry People.
But before we do that,
Now is your time to fill out your little green slip of paper.