Social Evangelism

se the terms social service and evangelism are both overworked. One has long been and the other is fast becoming a SOCIAL EVANGELISM house of refuge for the crowd that cry Lord, Lord, but do not the things that I say. The shibboleth is shouted but the deed remains undone, the fact unaccomplished. The crowd prefers the easy enthusiasm of the bleachers to the stern struggle of the field, would rather cheer the embarking regiment than seek the enlisting office. When the Church actually labors at the tasks of evangelism and social service, they are found to be interdependent. Social service is found to have definite evangelistic values, and evangelism to have genuine social worth. In fact, a social evangelism appears. The social service movement is far from being the superficial propaganda described by its superficial critics. It does not propose to make the Church a mere agent for social reform. Its purpose is the regeneration of the social order, and it promotes reforms only as they are the working out of social salvation. It has never sought to substitute a soup and 2 WHAT IT IS soap salvation for spiritual regeneration, but it does believe that regeneration must affect the whole of life. Its chief concern is not with externalities but with getting the very dynamic of God into all human movements. When the regenerative purpose and power of the social service movement is recognized, social service and evangelism are seen to have a relationship even closer than that of parallel agencies of the Kingdom. One is the insepa rable complement of the other. The social awakening in the Church is the culmination of evangelical Christianity, which replaced a formal intellectualism that had neither spiritual power nor ethical results. It is the completion of the movement to vitalize Christianity, which could not be contained in feeling any more than in creeds. A scientific world, taught to know reality, demands of religion ethical results. This puts an addi tional task upon evangelism. It must secure the realization of God in the outer as well as 3 SOCIAL EVANGELISM the inner life, it must obtain the witness of the Spirit in the contacts of the Christian with his fellows. This is precisely the purpose of the social movement in the churches. This is also the test of its worth and the future of our faith depends upon the ability to meet this test If social Christianity cannot put more of God into human life than has been realized by the purely individualistic, emotional type, then our religion has no triumphant place in the ongoing of the race. Evangelism that almost threadbare term has come to mean something more than the aggressive promulgation of the gospel. In its recent manifestations it has come to mean the aggressive attempt to secure individual ad herents to organized Christianity. To confine its objective to individuals alone is a grievous limitation of the purpose and function, the power and the goal of our faith... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.