Evangelicals and Social Action

From John Wesley To John Stott

Ian J. Shaw

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781783596584
• eBook ISBN:
  9781783596591
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

Evangelical Christians around the world have debated for years the extent to which they should be involved in ministries of social action and concern.In Evangelicals and Social Action Ian J. Shaw offers clarity to these debates by tracing the historical involvement of the evangelical church with issues of social action. Focusing on thinking and practices from John Wesley, one of the architects of eighteenth century evangelicalism, to John Stott's work in the second half of the twentieth century, he explores whether evangelism and social action really have been intimately related throughout the history of the church as Stott contended.After an overview of Christian social action prior to Wesley, from the early church through to the eighteenth century, Evangelicals and Social Action explores in detail responses from the evangelical church around the world to eighteen key issues of social action and concern - including poverty, racial equality, addiction, children 'at risk, ' slavery, unemployment, and learning disability - encountered between the 1730s and the 1970s. Drawn from a wide range of contexts, these examples illuminate and clarify how Evangelical Christianity has viewed and been a part of ministries of social action over the last three centuries.With an assessment of the issues raised by this historical survey and its implications for evangelicals in the contemporary world, Evangelicals and Social Action is a book that will help better inform the debates around the evangelical church and social action still happening today. This is a book for anyone wanting to deepen their knowledge of the history of the evangelical church, and anyone wanting to better understand Christian social action from an evangelical perspective.

Part 1

THE BROADER PICTURE

1a

Christian gospel proclamation and social action: from the early church to the Reformation

The socially marginalized formed a large proportion of the population of the Roman world into which Christianity was born. Because the literature of the time gave them scant attention,1 the extent of destitution is significantly underestimated. To be poor, and that included many in work, was normally to be hungry.2 Archaeological evidence from Corinth indicates high levels of infant mortality, widespread malnourishment and people working long hours under significant duress.3 Up to 95 per cent of the population were highly vulnerable to any crisis in the food supply.4 Some wealthy individuals in the Roman world were generous to those in need, although often for political purposes. When Roman writers praised good deeds, they were referring to actions done to receive a reward, something very different from the ‘simple heartfelt compassion of the Christians’.5

Paul’s letters mention a few wealthy and influential people, but most Christians were artisans, labourers or slaves (1 Cor. 7:21–22). In 1 Corinthians 1:26–28 he lists the ‘weak’, the ‘lowly’, ‘the despised’. The majority of church members at Corinth ‘appear to have been poor or very poor’.6 1 Corinthians 11 suggests some were living below the subsistence level.7

Writing around ad 150, Aristeides set out the characteristic Christian social ethic:

They labour to do good to their enemies . . . They despise not the widow, and grieve not the orphan. He that hath distributeth liberally to him that hath not . . . if there is a man among them that is poor and needy, and they have not an abundance of necessaries, they fast two or three days that they may supply the needy.

In contrast to wider society, Christian benevolence was not done for show or praise: ‘the good deed s which they do, they do not proclaim in the ears of the multitude, and they take care that none shall perceive them’.8 A similar point is made of Christians in the second-century Epistle to Diognetus: ‘They love all men, and are persecuted by all . . . They are poor, and make many rich; they lack everything, and in everything they abound.’9

Justin, also writing in the second century, believed many were changed from opposition to faith through the care demonstrated by Christians to their neighbours.10 He refers to a weekly collection taken for ‘orphans and widows and all in want through sickness or any other cause’, including ‘those in prison, or strangers from abroad, in fact of all in need of assistance’.11 Tertullian, writing from North Africa reports Christians donating to ‘the deposit fund of kindness’. This was

for the nourishment and burial of the poor, to support boys and girls who are orphans and destitute; and old people who are confined to the house; and those who have been shipwrecked . . . or banished to islands, or in prison, or are pensioners because of their confession.12

This powerful example, Tertullian noted, led non-Christians to declare ‘how they love one another’.13

In the early centuries of the church contagious diseases had a devastating effect, especially the epidemics of ad 165 and 251. The first epidemic saw up to a third of the population of the empire wiped out, and at the height of the second some 5,000 people a day died in Rome alone, and perhaps two-thirds of the population of Alexandria.14 Panic and social chaos ensued. Most who could, fled, abandoning the sick and dying: others threw infected family members out into the streets. Dionysius, however, reported the compassionate response of Christians: ‘Unsparing of themselves . . . visiting the sick without a thought of the danger, assiduously ministering to them, tending them in Christ.’ Many Christians caught the infection, ‘and when they had cared for and restored health to others died themselves’.15 Because the provision of food, water and basic nursing care can considerably reduce mortality in epidemics, many thousands of lives were saved by their courageous actions.16

In the fourth century the emperor Julian the Apostate, who turned in hatred on his one-time Christian faith, found his efforts to reintroduce paganism hindered by the ‘moral character’ of Christians. Their ‘benevolence toward strangers’ was something the pagans never matched. Christians had, in effect, created a ‘miniature welfare state’.17 Literally living out Matthew 25:35–40 proved highly attractive to those outside the faith.

The care of the poor and sick was seen in the holistic approach of Basil of Caesarea (c.330–79), who had the Basileias built, the first Christian hospital for the care of the poor, sick and dying.18 Gregory of Nazianzus (c.329–90) asserted benevolence was a wise spiritual investment by believers, declaring Basil’s hospital a

storehouse of piety . . . in which the superfluities of their wealth, aye, and even their necessaries, are stored . . . no longer gladdening the eyes of the thief, and escaping both the emulation of envy, and the corruption of time.19

Gregory declared love for the poor a fundamental component of Christian discipleship.20

Augustine of Hippo believed that good works were ‘faith expressing itself through love’.21 He strongly denied that by giving alms people could ‘purchase impunity to continue in the enormity of their crimes and the grossness of their wickedness’.22 Good works did not make a person a Christian, but the ‘purpose of the new birth is that we should become pleasing to God . . . we then begin to live piously and righteously’.23 Augustine warned against giving attention to physical needs alone, rather than spiritual. It was foolish

to think that we ought to be readier in running with the bread, wherewith we may fill the belly of a hungry man, than with the word of God, wherewith we may instruct the mind of the man who feeds on it.24

Gospel proclamation and social action belonged together.

In his highly influential Pastoral Rule (c.590) Gregory the Great explained that charity should be done ‘humbly’, out of ‘understanding that the things which they dispense are not their own’. Because wealth already belonged to God, it also, in a sense, belonged to the poor. Quoting the textus classicus of social concern, Matthew 25:42–43, he warned of the spiritual danger faced by those who have ‘indiscreetly kept’ their own goods, by not responding to the needs around them.25

One statement appearing to question the connection between gospel proclamation and social concern, ‘Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary use words,’ is frequently attributed to Francis of Assisi (c.1181–1226). This is problematic for two reasons. The first is that Francis never said it. In chapter 17 of his Regula non-Bullata (1221) he did say, ‘let all the brothers preach by their deeds’, but the phrase was not included in the Rule of Francis itself. The second reason is that Francis was convinced that words were necessary. Indeed, the same chapter urges preachers to promote the ‘utility and edification of the people, by announcing to them vices and virtues, punishment and glory’, albeit with ‘brevity of speech’.26

Thomas Aquinas’ vast Summa Theologiae, written between 1265 and 1274, notes how giving alms supplies one’s ‘neighbour’s corporal needs’, but also brings spiritual fruit by investing treasure in doing the commands of God, which ‘bring thee more profit than gold’. However, this should not be the primary intention in the act of giving.27 Unlike Francis, however, no clear connection is made by Aquinas between good works and Christian proclamation.

With such theological support the medieval monastic movement became a major provider of charitable aid, education and care for the sick. However, for all Aquinas’ cautions, the popular misunderstanding that charity had direct personal spiritual value became widespread, drawing on the apocryphal text Ecclesiasticus 3:30, ‘almsgiving atones for sin’. Benevolence became a means by which the rich could gain merit before God. As the fourteenth-century Italian Dominican monk Giordano da Pisa unfeelingly put it, ‘God has ordered that there be rich and poor . . . Why are the poor given their station? So that the rich might earn eternal life through them.’ By the late medieval period poverty was a growing social issue, with up to 75 per cent of Europe’s urban population suffering some form of material need.28

In the sixteenth century the Reformers deliberately shi...

Table of contents

• Foreword: A text for our time
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1
• 1a
• 1b
• Part 2
• EVANGELICALS AND ISSUES OF ECONOMIC DEPRIVATION
• 3
• 4
• 5
• EVANGELICALS AND EDUCATION ISSUES
• 7
• 8
• EVANGELICALS AND PEOPLE AT RISK
• 10
• 11
• EVANGELICALS AND ISSUES OF RACE
• 13
• EVANGELICALS AND ISSUES OF HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
• 15
• 16
• 17
• EVANGELICAL RESPONSES TO ISSUES OF SOCIAL AND FORENSIC PATHOLOGY
• 19
• Conclusion
• Search items
• Notes