Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 25:1 (Mar 1982)
Article: Evangelicals And Social Concern
Author: Frank E. Gaebelein

JETS 25:1 (March 1982) p. 17

Evangelicals And Social Concern

Frank E. Gaebelein*

Evangelical social concern is no new thing. Nearly eighty years ago the Church historian, F. J. Foakes-Jackson, wrote:

No branch indeed of the Western Church can be refused the honor of having assisted in the progress of humane ideas and non-Christians have participated largely in the work of diffusing the modern spirit of kindness; but the credit for the inception of the movement belongs without doubt to that form of Protestantism which is distinguished by the importance it attaches to the doctrine of the Atonement … History shows that the thought of Christ on the cross has been more potent than anything else in arousing compassion for suffering and indignation at injustice … The later Evangelicalism, which saw in the death of Christ the means of free salvation for fallen humanity, caused its adherents to take the front rank as champions of the weak … Prison reform, the prohibition of the slave trade, the abolition of slavery, the Factory Acts, the protection of children, the crusade against cruelty to animals, are all the outcome of the great Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century. The humanitarian tendencies of the nineteenth century, which it is but just to admit all Christian communities have fostered, and which non-Christian philanthropists have vied with them in encouraging, are among the greatest triumphs of the power and influence of Christ.1

Yes, the record is clear. Such classic studies as Timothy Smith’s Revivalism and Social Reform2 and, in relation to the effects of the Wesleyan revival, J. W. Bready’s England: Before and After Wesley3 document our heritage in social involvement.

But toward the end of the last century and in the early years of the present one, along with the rise of the social gospel and the emergence of modernism in America, something happened to social concern among fundamentalists (I use the word because our current usage of “evangelical” and “conservative evangelical” arose later). Fundamentalist social concern went into an eclipse. This was due in great part to that earlier “battle for the Bible” in which fundamentalist leaders closed their ranks against modernism with its denial of basic Christian doctrine and its link with the more radical Biblical criticism. Also, in their zeal for defending the gospel and the Scriptures, these leaders reacted against the social gospel being promoted by the liberal Protestant establishment.

The term “social gospel” (surely unfortunate in view of Gal 1:6–9) ste...