Archive: Social Reform: An Evangelical Imperative in the Crisis

by Steve | Oct 1, 1970 | Archive - 1970

Archive: Social Reform: An Evangelical Imperative in the Crisis

Condensed from an address by Dr. Claude Thompson
Professor of Systematic Theology
Candler School of Theology

The Gospel demands involvement in social change as a crucial dimension of obedience to Jesus Christ.

The subject assigned is: “Social Reform: An Evangelical Imperative.” But I should like to restate it: “Evangelism for Revolution!” I prefer revolution if it can become sufficiently radical – and Christian. I would even say we require a violent revolution, to shake the old forms of religion into a shambles and rebuild them according to New Testament faith.

It needs to be as world-shaking as that revolution inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth 20 centuries ago. The time has come for the Church to “put away childish things” and get with the revolutionary tide of the time – with Christ as the Great Revolutionary.

There are two ways to come to this revolution. One is by judgment. The shortcomings of the Church can be so accented that condemnation gets major attention. But this is not the mood needed today. Rather, we need to come to this revolution in repentance and humility. It will require that we hold before the Christian community the opportunity, the open door, the glad romance, the day of privilege of entering joyously into our task. This is the day for a revolutionary faith. The ’70’s demand a revolution big enough to match the glamor of the Gospel!

We really should note that this theme has already been given by Leighton Ford at the Congress of Evangelism. He said: “Revolutionary evangelism will mean earning the right to speak to lives bruised and battered by social upheaval. Can the Gospel win a hearing, for example, in the urban ghettos, where militants wear buttons saying, ‘I hate Jesus,’ and where the Black Muslims say that Christianity is ‘”whitey’s” religion’?

I find myself in a strange dilemma. I have deep sympathy for the social revolution. But so often it lacks any Gospel! And I have a deep commitment to evangelical Christianity. But so often it is defective in its vision of human need! I find myself standing in a no-man’s land between the misguided humanism of the Ecumenical Institute or the MUST program on the one hand, and on the other inept evangelism that is out of touch with human degredation.

Thus I am disturbed because of two groups in the Church. The radical activists put all the emphasis on social action but have little Gospel. We are thus willing to promote voter registration, march in protests, conduct study classes, fight racism, struggle for the rights of migrants, agitate against the war in Viet Nam, and all the rest. And all these ought to be done! But – there is little concern for forgiveness of sin, the new life of faith, and a joyous and vibrant relation to Christ alive.

On the other hand, I am equally disturbed because of evangelicals – especially conservative fundamentalists of the Bible-belt – who are gung-ho to get people converted but who have little social vision and less social action. They say: “Preach the Gospel but stay out of politics,” meaning: “Don’t disturb things in our community.” “No race-mixing,” meaning: “Keep the Negroes out of our schools and our lily-white churches.” “Poor people are just lazy,” meaning: “We don’t want to pay our maids and janitors honest wages. ” “People in the slums just don’t want anything better,” meaning: “We don’t care if people rot in the inner-city cesspools while we live in suburbia.”

Believe me when I say I have prayed earnestly that I speak here in terms of urgent love. I want both the activists and the pietists to see the failure of their half-gospels. Elton Trueblood is right: intense social action without a life of devotion produces damaging results, “one of which is calculated arrogance. ” But he also says that concentrated attention upon devotion, evangelism, piety, may lead us to focus upon the love of Christ, but we “may easily forget those whom Christ loves. ”

I do not want to be misunderstood: We may provide the most effective social revolution possible and still have a pagan society. Recently I wrote in the “Christian Advocate”:

“I get the impression that we often conclude that if we establish daycare centers, tutoring classes, recreation for juveniles, half-way houses for alcoholics, counseling opportunities for confused adults, minister to hippies, operate coffee-houses, live in the inner city, engage in protest rallies, promote open housing, and all the other needed activities to heal the hurt of people-that the kingdom is thereby established. “The fact is: we can do every single one of these things, and do them perfectly, and still never be the people of God nor proclaim the Gospel.”

But on the other hand, if we engage in evangelism of the traditional brand, but fail to become participants at the disease centers of society, we will still have a pagan culture.

Let me illustrate.

We are happy that the Salvation Army rescues drunks and prostitutes. But suppose they come to our adult Sunday school classes?

We tend to reject long-haired hippies. But do we hear the creative words they may be speaking to us?

We take pride in Methodism’s ministry to black people. But what if one moves on our street? One church with a half million dollar plant moves to a white suburb rather than admit one little Negro girl to membership.

We boast of our adult classes – birthday banks, flower funds, friendship circles, “opening exercises,” and all that goes to keep us from adequate Christian education. But do we ever DO anything?

We are disturbed at our dirty and cluttered city streets. But what do we do to encourage adequate paving, regular trash collection, street lights and clean-up campaigns?

We are shocked at the crime waves rolling over our communities. But are we willing to get involved to promote civic righteousness, adequate police protection and an educational program to correct the condition?

We are confused at the conduct of protesters against war. But what do we do to stop it – even to writing letters to Congress?

These are but some examples of the current dichotomy between evangelism and social action bedeviling our Church.

Traditionally, the women of Methodism have been the thrust of a great missionary and evangelical appeal. From reports which I have had and read from the 1970 Assembly at Houston, and from the emphases which I find in the official periodicals of our General Board of Missions, the “New World Outlook” and “Response,” I wonder if we are moving too far in the direction of endorsing the philosophy of the New Left in social activism?’ls there a danger that, even in our concern for social reform, we shall surrender our basic purpose to lead people to Christ?

We are in a world of revolutions. I t is part of the climate of the times.

There is the Marxist Revolution. I watched a CBS report from Canton, China. As I heard the children excited and joyously singing the revolution of Mao Tse-Tung, I wondered why we haven’t taught our children to sing the revolution of Christ.

There is the “hippie” revolution. We may want it to go away, but it won’t. It may have a new name, tomorrow, but the demand that every person “do his own thing” will remain.

There is the ecological revolution. Painfully, we learn that we can’t survive in the filth with which we fill our world. It is an evangelical imperative to clean up our environment – just in order to live.

There is the ecumenical revolution. If Protestants are hesitant here, the Roman Catholics will teach us. I tell my Roman Catholic friends that they shouldn’t be surprised at the revolution in the Church – Pope John was the first Protestant Pope we have had since St. Peter.

We live within a refugee revolution.

In five years the number of refugees has more than doubled. There are more than 17 million of them! That is a column of marchers – three feet apart – reaching around the world more than 7 times! Only many of them are too weak from hunger and disease to march at all.

There are the freedom and racial revolutions. Millions of non-whites have been emancipated. The white man will not control the world of tomorrow. The people down under are rising to new freedom, and most of them are non-white. About 3 out of every 5 persons on earth are non-white, and soon it will be 4 out of 5. Methodism has been tardy in moving into racism within our own ranks as well as into the problem nationally. We must see that black people can never be content to live in substandard housing, be denied jobs because of their color, crowded into ghettos, mistreated in the courts, given second-class education, kept in poverty, and denied the rights of American citizens.

And there is revolution in evangelism. It used to be said if you weren’t converted the first two weeks in October (or was it August?) you had to wait until next year. The pattern was largely the revival meeting.

But today Billy Graham reaches millions via television, radio and through the films. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes goes into high schools and universities – to lead people to Christ. The Campus Crusade turns multitudes of laymen into personal witnesses for Christ and His Way. Dave Wilkerson promotes a redemption center in New York’s ghettos. Alan Walker, as well as our Board of Evangelism, establishes Contact, a telephone ministry. A theological student begins a lakefront ministry and reaches masses of vacationers. Oral Roberts has college youth sing the Gospel around the world. Folk singers, often with rock music, get a hearing among dissident youth on the beach, in jazz festivals, in the hippie colonies and even among the drug addicts. A college revival “breaks out” and spreads across the nation. The list is endless. The Gospel does go forth

Revolution is not optional! We are all in it! We live within the climate of many revolutions. Our only options are the ones to which we give our devotion. Unless and until we are committed to the certainty that the Revolution of Christ is the most radical of all, we shall miss the golden opportunity of our time. Let me repeat: The ?O’s demand a revolution big enough to match the glamor of the Gospel!

In my struggle with this theme, some convictions have emerged:

(1)  In the future, less and less evangelism will be done at the church building. There will be less emphasis upon the church as a place to go and much more emphasis upon it as a crusade in which we participate. No place is out of bounds for him who is mastered by Christ alive.

I understand the comment of the half-drunk woman in a pub who saw a minister come in to sit among the drinkers. She said: ” I know why you are here. You are here to represent Jesus. ” The Gospel from a drunk!

(2)  More and more the idea of the church sending missionaries and evangelists will be modified. Now the Church must see itself as the Gospel in mission. To become a Christian is to become an evangelist. As someone says: “Every man is either an evangelist or he needs one.”

(3)  Evangelism must be structured around the needs of people in the world. We are called to an invasion for Christ any place where there is sub-Christian living. As Oral Roberts so often says: “A need exists to be met.”

For example, it must not be said that the Black Muslims are more concerned with education of Negroes than are the evangelicals. It must never be said that the SDS agitators on campuses are more concerned for peace than evangelicals. It must never be said that labor unions and the Coca-Cola Company are more concerned for migrants than are evangelicals. Wherever there is a human need – that is where we belong.

(4)  There must be a simplification of our message and mission. We must confront people in their confusion and suspicion clearly with Christ and His Way. We may have to apologize for the failure of organized Christianity. But we never have to apologize for Christ.

(5)  There must be the same urgency in social revolution as was evident in the camp meeting. Let me bring it even more up to date. We must have the same vibrant note of victory as that found in the crusade led by the late Martin Luther King, Jr. Two themes will forever be insistent calls for action: “I have a dream! “We shall overcome – some day! But that “some day!” must not be pushed into such a dim future that it is beyond our vision now.

Finally, I make these suggestions:

(A)  Each local church should give adequate time for a depth study of the needs of the community: drugs, crime, slums, hippies, migrants, pornography, racism, family life, unemployment, housing, disease, poverty, affluence, recreation – what have you. Three questions ought to be asked and answered: What are the concrete facts? What ought WE do about them? When do we begin – and how?

(B)  Plan for some person or persons in each church to see at first-hand what is happening in overseas missions and ai home. We must be stirred by conditions and actions now taking place. Nothing, absolutely nothing, equals the impact of meeting concrete situations. My wife and I will forever remember Viet Nam villages as we walked among the masses of refugees in Quang Ngai.

(C)  Give careful study of Part Ill of the 1968 Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, entitled “Social Principles.” This could become the outline for the social revolution in any community in America. It is both theologically sound, socially relevant, and evangelically exciting.

(D)  Youth and adult classes should be converted into centers of evangelical social revolution. At this point I should like to say that I am far more concerned about the kind of teachers we have than I am about the kind of literature they use.

(E)  We should take a new look at theological seminaries. They may be doing more harm than good. What can we expect from our pulpits when men are trained under teachers who profess no faith in God; who doubt His existence; who regard Jesus as only a good man – not a Savior; who have no place for prayer; who minimize the authority of the Bible; who have dismissed any idea of spiritually transformed lives under the Holy Spirit; who do not believe in life after death; and who have long since come to regard our Wesleyan heritage – both theologically and evangelically – as out of date?

I do not suggest that seminaries become Bible institutes – though, at present, worse things may be happening. But if there is little hope in giving major attention to the Gospel in our seminaries (which I suspect may be true) at least the fairness doctrine ought to provide evangelicals with equal time. Even the government would approve this. And, unfortunately, it seems to be more and more difficult to secure evangelicals as faculty members.

(F) Some experimental enterprises might be attempted: Witness centers at shopping areas, perhaps store-front churches, reading rooms with counselors available, community- wide action for social improvement, “house-churches,” task forces for civic action, coffee-houses or “hippie-havens,” recreation programs, etc.

But remember: there is a dimension of concern which the evangelical Christian has which goes beyond the ministry of secular organizations. It is to lead people to Christ as Savior and Lord. There must be planning and prayer – actually prayer and planning-to see to it that persons are joyously confronted with the claims of Christ.

(G) Some method should be devised to utilize the methods and dynamic of various evangelical movements. While this Convocation is essentially Methodist, we can learn from all groups seeking to make the Gospel meaningful for our time. No one has a monopoly on how to do it – and surely not on the Gospel. Perhaps at other convocations, or in smaller assemblies, it might be possible to have presentations from various perspectives as to how we may reach America for Christ. Included would be, of course, our own Board of Evangelism, and Campus Crusade, Alcoholics Anonymous, Young Life, National Council of Churches, United Christian Ashrams, Lay Witness groups, World Vision International, Laubach Literacy movement, Christian World Liberation Front, ghetto workers, the Key Bridge leaders, International Fellowship of Prayer, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, Ford Philpot –anyone committed to Christ and His mission. This is a call to unite in a crusade to turn America and the world toward the Cross.

(H) We need an evangelism of ideas-conversion in attitudes. It is not sufficient to secure commitments to Christ unless there are substantial changes in the ways we think: attitudes of superiority, greed, racism, apathy, deadly routine religion, the status quo and all the rest need to be brought to the altar to be changed. We must go to our knees in Godly sorrow and repentance for the sub-Christian attitudes which possess us.

(I) We need a new grasp of the Bible in social revolution. What of the picture of the final judgment in Matthew 25:31-46? Blessedness and lostness both were directly related to ministry to concrete needs of people-hunger, clothing, loneliness, illness and captivity. Is anything more contemporary? If I read this correctly, it is a call to an evangelical revolution for the ministry of servanthood, the Gospel in action, when the “word becomes flesh.”

(J) But, of course, there is one supreme secret of it all: Everything done in evangelism for revolution must be born in prayer. Were I to name the number one need in evangelism today, it would be a need for prayer. Billy Graham is right: the total secret of his ministry lies in the consecrated prayer of vast numbers of people. I do not attempt to explain it. But I believe in some strange way beyond our understanding, “effectual, fervent prayer” still availeth much. It is not “To your tents, 0 Israel.” It is “To your altars, 0 Methodism!”

I close with words from Leighton Ford: “God’s revolution is going to go on, with or without you and me. But I don’t want to get left behind. So this is my prayer: Lord, start a revolution, and start it in me!”

Archive: Unity Among Dis-United Methodists

by Steve | Oct 1, 1970 | Archive - 1970

Archive: Unity Among Dis-United Methodists

Condensed from an address by Dr. C. Philip Hinerman
Vice Chairman, Good News Board of Directors
Pastor, Park Avenue United Methodist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Our ultimate hope is Jesus Christ, rather than human wisdom, plans, organization and programs.

Isn’t it ironic that we’ve formed a new denomination and chosen for a title the United Methodist Church? That would be funny, if it were not so tragic.

Here we are, a group of evangelicals, and we can’t even agree among ourselves. About 150 points of view are represented here tonight among all of us. Every one of us has a different idea, and a different approach. If we tried to get a resolution passed here, if it had any teeth in it at all, it would fail to pass muster.

There is just one thing holding us together, and that is our love for the Lord Jesus, and our great desire to see His Gospel proclaimed to a whole world.

Let me say two or three things about what I think is going to happen or not going to happen. I see several things I think are already happening.

First, I do not see any great spiritual awakening happening in the immediate future in America. Nor do I see a great conservative or evangelical renewal taking place in Methodism. I’m not worried about being charged with being a pessimist when I say this.

I’m not worried about being charged with being the carrier of bad news or one who depresses the people. What I am concerned about is to make sure that I’m reading the signs of the times correctly.

Nothing could be more wonderful than for a great spiritual awakening to break out tomorrow, to come and save America and the world in this sad and mad hour when we’re about to destroy ourselves. And I pray that out there somewhere in the tomorrows there is a new Wesley, a new Luther, a man of God’s appointing about to be raised up for just such an hour as this. But I’m only reporting to you that tonight I do not see this happening, as of this hour.

I think a rather overpowering case can be made for the exact opposite of spiritual awakening in our time. Instead, you and I are seeing the most terrible falling away from faith and Christian morals that has ever happened anywhere, in any land, at any time in the whole Christian Era. The spirit of antichrist fills our land.

Nor do I see any great swing back theologically or spiritually in the United Methodist Church, in the decade or in the immediate future.

Look at the power structure of our denomination. You must if you’re going to understand the realities of power and political force and the prevailing ideology in the church that exists today.

I know fellows that are very optimistic about the future and about our church. These friends attempt to put the very best connotation possible on every little event that happens at their annual conferences. If it’s a little bit more conservative this year than it was last year, that’s a source of hope. Or if there’s an evangelical or neo-evangelical article that appears in “Together Magazine,” that seems to imply a great trend is taking place. Or if a mild evangelical gets employed in a great bureaucratic office in Nashville, that seems to give you hope. Maybe we’ll be saved by the bureaucracy after all!

But these are not the realities of power politics in the church. These hopeful signs are not affecting the men and the ideas that control budgets and control boards, and control agencies.

To know what’s really happening in the church today you need to read the various journals. For instance, “New World Outlook,” the official publication organ of the socalled Board of Missions. You need to read the latest social pronoμncement of the Board of Evangelism. You need to note the radical social action of some of our theological seminaries. You need to read that sociological document called the Episcopal Address. But above all these things, if you want to know where the church is, and where we’re going, and what kind of politics prevail, then you must study the budgets of the church. These show where Methodism’s heart and mind really is!

These all show one thing: these all show the real spiritual condition of the United Methodist Church today. They show the intellectual ideology of the power structure of the denomination. It is no longer to save the souls of men and women. The prevailing ideology of the church is no longer to rush out with importunity to reach men possessing eternal souls and bring them in their lostness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and into the eternal relationship with God that’s possible only through His shed blood.

I’ll tell you what the prevailing ideology is in this church that I love, this church that I was born into and have been a servant of all the days of my life. It is total dedication to the improvement of men’s social and physical conditions.

It is a church dedicated to providing better housing, better lighting, better streets, better air to breathe. I heard of a fellow who has just been appointed to be Chairman of Water, Sanitation and Garbage for his annual conference. In this polluted environment of ours, that’s a job devoutly to be sought! It is a church dedicated to fairer employment practices, to better race relationships, to better international relations. (And that, of course, is contingent always upon the international and political prejudices of the particular board or agency.)

I don’t have any trouble saying all of this. This is the church that I read about today in all of our journals. I think without hesitation it is possible to say that this is the central thrust of our boards, our agencies, the episcopacy, our college faculties, our theological seminaries.

I read an amazing document by one of the evangelism leaders of a large American denomination the other day. He said that we are not to convert the souls of men in America in the name of evangelism – because 80% of the Americans have already been converted to Christ! So social action, social involvement, improving the bodies, and the physical conditions of the men constitute evangelism today.

For 20 years I’ve lived in an interracial community and served in an interracial church situation. I think if anybody in this room cares about the bodies of people, I care. If anybody in this room cares about living dangerously, I care. If anybody in this room cares about changing the structures of society, for the human betterment of the people of this country, I care about that.

But that’s all secondary, if you’re a Christian man! If you believe men have souls, and that they are alienated and estranged from God (that’s a nice way of saying that they are lost) then I’ve got to fight for something better than better plumbing, better housing and better race relations – long overdue as some of these civic and cultural and social issues are. I must become a man possessed to pluck brands from the burning, as John Wesley said. That’s terribly old hat, terribly old fashioned. And it is utterly antiquated as an ideology in our church and in our time.

But if it is true, and I have neglected it, then in that hour when I stand before the living God in judgment I must give an accounting of the deeds that I have done, and the kind of trumpet that I have sounded. I do not see any great revival coming. And I do not see any evangelical turning in the United Methodist Church in the near future. But one thing I do see happening in the future is the rapid emergence of COCU as a great ecclesiastical and political reality. This, I believe, is coming with fantastic speed. It may well be an institutional reality in this decade. And it is coming, as you all know, from the top down, rather than from the bottom up. But it is coming none the less. And we are all going to be swept into this great debate in the next quadrennium, about whether we want in or whether we want out. We shall all be driven to decide whether we want to belong to a great super denomination with junior and senior bishops controlling the political realities of the church. And it will be a church with a creed that is surely the lowest common denominator of a doctrinal statement, written so very carefully so as to offend the fewest possible people.

The COCU planners are having a great deal of difficulty deciding whether to let us out if we want to get out. That is, local congregations. That’s rather interesting, isn’t it? I think they’ve already changed their mind two or three times. I rather feel boxed in already!

I read in the “Christian Century” a report of one delegate who was at the committee writing up the proposed plan of union. And when they were debating whether to let local congregations vote to get out, one of the fellows, according to the “Century,” said: “Absolutely not! Don’t give any local congregation this option. Else, all those conservatives will leave us.”

So apparently, at least some of the delegates want us all to stay in COCU’s bosom. That surely ought to make for the happiest fellowship this side of Pentecost.

Recently Dr. Donald Bloesch, who teaches at the United Presbyterian theological seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, wrote an amazing prophecy about all of this. He said “I hesitate to predict the future course of the ecumenical movement, but I can suggest one possibility on the basis of present trends. Instead of one church, there might be very well two churches emerging in the not too distant future. One of these will be Hierarchal, Monolithic, and Syncretic, concerned with worldly power more than biblical truth. The other will be Evangelical, Spiritual, Charismatic, and authentically Catholic. This spiritual church will be a church under the Bible intent on bringing the world under the dominion of Christ; the worldly church will be a church that practically deifies its own tradition and external forms. The spiritual church will be missionary minded: it will see its mission as going out into the world and upholding Jesus Christ as the Savior of the lost. The worldly church will seek to promote dialogues with the world religions as well as with Marxism and other forms of secular humanism, in order to discover a common unity. The spiritual church will be intolerant, and exclusive in matters of faith, but its intolerance will be based upon the love of Jesus Christ that goes out to all men. The worldly church will seek to advance itself, and therefore will be preoccupied with correct forms of ministry and polity. The spiritual or charismatic church will gladly die for the advancement of the Kingdom of God and for the conversion of the lost.”

There will be a noticeable tension between the spiritual church and the secular culture, whereas the worldly church will tend to reflect and embody the values and the goals of the culture.

Dr. Bloesch concludes: “True ecumenism does not deny structural unity, but it does seek to bring all things in subjection to Jesus Christ and His Gospel. It does not even rule out the papacy. But as Bonhoeffer has affirmed, only a Pope who submitted unreservedly to the Word of the Bible could be the shepherd of a united Christendom.”

Now please hear me clearly. I do not say that we are not to trust men. I do trust people. But I will not put my ultimate trust into the hand of any man, any institution. I want to belong only to One – to entrust myself only to that Terrible and that Awful and that Saving Name.

I was preaching in a Western conference, this last year, and I was talking about the Good News Movement. I got through preaching one day, preaching about like I have here tonight. Various people came up and made good comments or critical comments. And after a while, a young fellow that I’ve known for some time came up to me. He’s been out of seminary about eight years. He’s gone from a little tiny church to a great big church, and to a number of very prominent political positions in his annual conference. He knows the right people and knows how to say the right words.

He came up to me and he said, “Hinerman, you know what you are? You guys with Good News are a bunch of losers.”

I said, “You mean I’m a loser?”

He said, “Oh no, Phil, I didn’t mean you. I meant all your friends are losers. They’re just not smart. They just don’t know how to play the game. They’ve lost out. They lack expertise. They lack sophistication. They just don’t know how to make it in today’s church, and in today’s world.”

That’s what I like about the new breed – their modesty, their humility, their never-failing self-effacement. It’s beautiful.

The sad thing is he really believes that. But I want to tell you that it doesn’t take very much brains to be political in today’s church. And it doesn’t take a great deal of personality to get ahead in today’s church. What it does take is a thing called loyalty. You join up. You belong to the Machine. And you don’t make your criticisms of the great denominational monolith in public, or on the printed page.

I believe the committed evangelical will work for true ecumenism, seeking fellowship with evangelicals in all the denominations. I think Bloesch is probably right: God is preparing His Church, His elect, that company of believers. You are not self-righteous, my brothers, when you believe that Christ died for your sins and when you know that you are a sinner who has been saved by grace, and that you could go to hell even yet if you lose contact and fellowship with Him. To declare this is not being self-righteous.

I believe God is raising up in all denominations a band of His own, a band of believing people who are willing to die for Jesus’ sake. I don’t believe it matters much what label is over the door anymore. When people leave my church and tell me they’re moving to Chicago, or to Duluth, or to Dallas, and they say “Do you know anybody down there? Do you know a good Methodist church there?” I say, “You find some place where your soul is fed, out of the Word of God.”

I believe that the committed evangelical will work harder than anybody else in the church for real human justice. I believe that we evangelicals will work harder for the alleviation of human suffering and for the changing of all corrupt and prejudiced social structures. This canard that the evangelical has never been socially involved has been put to the lie and it is by scholars like Timothy Smith who magnificently point out that it was the revivalism of the 19th century that produced many of the great social institutions of the 20th. If we do have a revival today in America, out of that revival will come more human justice, more compassion for our brothers, whatever the color, than out of all the social pronouncements of the church to this hour.

The evangelical will do something more than be born again. He will do something more than just get converted. He will put his total trust and make his surrender totally to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and as the Son of Man, The Savior of the world. He will continue to work within the denomination, and within the denominational structure as long as possible, until he is driven out or led out. But he will not make his commitment to any man or to any Machine. He will get rid of that terrible fear, in the visceral areas of his life. He will stand up, Luther-like, God’s free man.

I grew up in the South, and I grew up in the evangelical tradition. I remember that great old southern prophet, of the early half of this century, Henry Clay Morrison. I will remember one thing he said after I have forgotten all the other things. Henry Clay Morrison had been a Methodist all his life. When he was 80 he was still saying, “I don’t belong to the Methodist Church. I am a member of the Methodist Church. I belong only to God!”

The true evangelical man has a mighty faith, he has a victorious hope. He isn’t a pessimist; he is God’s supreme realist.

Because his hope is in the Lord of history. The lord who speaks. And he trusts the Lord who acts in man’s time and in man’s history.

His hope is in the Parousia*, the hope of His blessed appearing. The world’s darkness deepens all about us. Times become more venal, and men more evil, and institutions more corrupt. But this man of faith looks up, because his redemption and his salvation draws nigh.

*Parousia: the physical return of Jesus Christ, as prophesied in the Bible.

Archive: The Black Crisis in the Church

by Steve | Oct 1, 1970 | Archive - 1970

Archive: The Black Crisis in the Church

Condensed from an address by Tom Skinner, Evangelist

Black Americans are not much influenced by a church whose Gospel excludes personal involvement. Wanted: Christian radicals who are willing to be fools for Jesus Christ.

It’s a real pleasure and opportunity to be here. I appreciate very much your broadmindedness in allowing a renegade Baptist to address you.

I believe there are three main crises that we must deal with in our time. One is the crisis of identity. It is a crisis that is becoming acute across our country. People want to know who am I? Why am I here?

The second crisis is a crisis of community. Once I find out who I am, the question is, “Who is the person next to me? The person I work with?”

The third issue is POWER. Once I find out who I am, and once I find out what’s my responsibility to my neighbor, where do I get the power to pull it off? Where do I get the power to be what I ought to be?

Now in the light of that, what is the black crisis that we face? And what is the Church’s response? What is the evangelical response to this crisis of our time?

To clearly understand, we must try to get into historical perspective how that crisis developed. To do that I must take you back to when the first ships landed in America at Jamestown in 1619. On those ships were approximately 40 black people. Notable among them was Isabel and Antony who sired the first black family on American soil in 1624. Black people have been a part of American society from its very inception.

Between the periods of 1619 and 1660 our country had no race problem, as we know it today. Our country, rather, had what was known as indentured servanthood. People who were criminals or who were in jail for one reason or another in England, were allowed to be released from jail as they were bought by more prosperous people who were coming to the New World. Those indentured servants would work for seven years; then they would be released to develop their own lives. Both black and white people held indentured servants.

Both black and white people were indentured servants.

But by 1660 there developed cries from certain sectors of society. The white indentured servants could run away, and very easily assimilate into the rest of society. It was very difficult to recapture them. But black people who ran away – It was very easy to recapture them because of their high degree of visibility. It was therefore decreed that only black indentured servants would be used.

By 1701, slavery became a permanent way of life in American society and only black people were subjected to this. During this period of time, millions and millions of black people were shipped as slaves from Africa via the West Indies, to the United States. Along the way, hundreds and thousands of them died.

Someone with a moral conscience began to ask the question, “How do you justify killing so many people?” To provide a rationale and basis for the slave trade, someone answered, “Suppose they are not people. Suppose they are subhuman. Suppose they do not have a soul. Suppose they do not even have a brain. Suppose they are just slightly higher than animals.”

Upon such remarks and such theories was predicated the whole philosophical basis and rationale for slave trade.

Slavery was upheld by three sectors of society. One, it was upheld by the economic system because slavery was economically feasible. Two, it was upheld by the political system. Politics and economics in American society have always run hand in hand. The third sector that upheld slavery was the church. There were numerous religious institutions in American society that preached that slavery was ordained by God and that God had ordained that black people should be hewers of wood and all the rest.

On a slave plantation, very few children went around saying “Mommy” or “Daddy.” Because they didn’t know who they were. The slave masters, rather, developed what was known as a stud system. This was where a healthy male slave would be allowed to cohabit with a healthy female slave until she was pregnant. Then he was moved to another quarters to do the same thing. Within the course of 10 years he could have brought into the world 100 children – and never allowed to “father” any of them.

During this period of time, with the exception of some radical Christian groups, the church in general never opened its mouth. And that same church which condemned immorality, which held up high moral standards about marriage and about sex, still allowed immorality to prevail among slaves in order to breed other slave children, in order to keep the economic system going.

In 1865 Emancipation came. And the black man was set free. But all Emancipation did was to decide what the slave was not. It never defined what he was.

Society then turned to the former slave and said, “Now that you are free, you are to settle down. Become the husband of one wife, the father of your own children. And you are to assimilate into American cultural society.” They expected this man to “pull himself up by the bootstraps” and make his way in the world.

The amazing thing was that he began to do it. Between 1865 and 1877, black people began to move into the main stream of political life. Between those 12 years, the state legislatures in South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana were controlled by black politicians. The speakers of the house in the state legislatures of South Carolina and Florida were black. A black man was Lt. Governor of the State of Louisiana for four years.

By 1877 there developed cries from certain sectors of society which said that the former slaves were moving too far too fast. They said, “He has only been freed for 12 years. Don’t these black people know that these things take time? They must learn to be patient. ”

Between 1877 and 1901, all kinds of attempts were made to eliminate black people from public political life. The last black person to be elected to the United States Congress and Senate was in 1901. Between 1877 and 1925, more than 6000 black people were lynched in this country. They could be disarmed, their women raped, their children beaten, their homes burned. But they could not have recourse to the courts of law.

In 1918, World War I came. The black man put on an American uniform and went off to defend the American system. Now you must give him credit! He had been denied his rights. He had been disenfranchised, relegated to 4th class citizenship. He could not buy a home in any community he could afford to live in. He was not allowed to vote. He could be lynched for looking at the wrong person too long. He was forced to walk on the other side of the street. He was subject almost to animal existence. And yet he put on a American uniform and went off to defend the democratic principles of a nation that had so nobly denied him those principles!

Today, more than 17 percent of the fighting forces in Viet Nam are black; 43 percent of all the casualties in Viet Nam are black. It is not the black man who is burning his draft card and running off to Canada.

As a result of being stationed in the armed forces in World War I, the black man became exposed to such large cities as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles. And word began to trickle back to the south, where then 90 percent of the black population lived, that if black people would migrate North they would find greater economic and political opportunity. So during the late 1919’s and early 1920’s there was a fantastic movement of black peoples to northern cities.

But when they arrived North, they discovered that the patterns of segregation were not too different from the South. They were forced to live only in certain communities. They could buy or rent only in certain neighborhoods. They discovered that when they moved into certain communities in large numbers, whites moved out in large numbers.

Ironically, and sadly and tragically, among those people who packed up their belongings and ran, were those Bible-toting Christians who said that Christ was the answer. They sold their homes and moved out and at the same time said “the Gospel was for everybody. ” But they said that while they were running.

I was born and raised in New York City. Let me, in seeking to develop this crisis for you, relate to my own personal experience. My bitterness and my attitude reflected then much of the attitude that exists now in the black community towards the Church and towards Jesus Christ.

My father being a preacher, I grew up in church. I went through a fantastic search for identity – trying to find and discover who I was. I knew I was black. I knew I lived in a black community. But no one ever told me what that meant.

Turning on the television, I found nothing that I could really identify with. There was Rochester. They said that was me, and I said, “No Way!” Of course there was Amos and Andy. That was an insult.

During this whole period of time there wasn’t anything I could say with dignity and honor, that is me.

I had the impression – the strong feeling – that I had been left out. That I had been denied. Eventually, I entered into a life of violence. I didn’t care what happened to the people around me, because when one doesn’t know who he is, there is no possible way by which he can relate to anybody else. During this period of time I came under the influence of a group of people at school in Harlem, known as the Black Nationalists. My social science teacher was a nationalist. Very candidly he said “Tom, your problem is that you’ve been brainwashed. You’ve been educated and trained and brought up under Christianity which is nothing more than a white man’s religion given to black people in order to keep them in their place.”

They pointed out to me that the leading exponents of hate, segregation and bigotry in American society were Christians. They pointed out that the most segregated hour in American society was 11 o’clock on Sunday morning. They pointed out that the church was irrelevant to me as a black man because the church presented an irrelevant Christ, and an irrelevant religion and an irrelevant theology.

Buying this, I rebelled while continuing to go to church. I joined the Black Nationalist movement because I felt it was the only hope for freedom for black people. This was the response of an overwhelming number of other people who grew up in my community. And it is an overwhelming response of young angry black men and women across America today.

I had difficulty in responding to anything that was religious because there were two basic extremes that I had met with. One was what I call the pseudo-existentialist, better known as the beatnik or the hippie. He looked at life and said it was difficult and complex. The Establishment was corrupt. The people in it were mixed up. The world had no worthwhile values. So he copped out. Sat on a mountainside, created his own world, established his own values, and, in fact, became his own god. He was a coward because he didn’t have the guts to face life.

But on the opposite extreme was another coward. He was what I called the hyper-Christian. He called himself, “A Bible-believing fundamental, orthodox, conservative, evangelical Christian.” He had a half a dozen Bible verses for every social problem that existed. The problem was, he would never get involved.

You went to him and told him that a place like Harlem existed, with 40% slums. You told how there were more than 45,000 drug addicts supporting an average habit of more than $50 per person per day. And you tried to explain that you could set your watch as to when the police would drive into the neighborhood to collect their bribes to keep the rackets going. You told this evangelical how it was not uncommon for some ghetto mother to wake up in the night and send a piercing scream through the community as she discovered that her few-weeks-old baby had been gnawed to death by a vicious rat.

If you went to this Christian and you told him some of this, his reply was “What those people up there need is a good dose of salvation.” That was true – but I never saw him in Harlem, ministering that dose. If you told him about the social complexities, and the racial oppression, of black communities like Harlem, he would come back and say, “What we need to give those people is Christ. Christ is the answer.” I would agree: Christ is the answer. But Christ has always been the answer through somebody. It has always been the will of God to saturate the common clay of a man’s humanity with His own life, and then send that man out in open display in a world of conflict as a living testimony that it is possible for the invisible God to make Himself visible in a man. So that Christ through man becomes the answer.

My evangelical friends would say Christ was the answer, but they would never come. They would spend millions of dollars to send missionaries to reach black people across the sea. But they would not spend one dime to cross the street of their own town to talk to a group of black people.

Nobody told me how Christ would solve the problem of racism.

Nobody told me how Christ would stop white people from lynching black people.

Nobody told me how Christ would bring racial justice in the courts for black people.

Nobody told me how Christ would make it possible for black people to buy a decent home.

The nagging question was, If Christ was the answer, then why were all those Christians who had Christ still bigoted? Why were their churches still segregated? Why were they running away from black people?

One night I was mapping out strategy for a gang fight. I was listening to my favorite radio disc jockey when my program was interrupted. A man started talking, from II Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17, “If any man be in Christ he is a new creation.”

I wanted no part of it because I had a problem with this guy Jesus. The impressions that I got of Christ was that He was some kind of softie. An Anglo Saxon, middle class, Protestant, Republican. Irrelevant to my kind of situation. Jesus came off very smooth. Very effeminate, very soft. And I said, “There is no way I can be committed to that kind of Christ. He would never survive in my neighborhood. We would do Him in on any street corner, and we wouldn’t have to wait until after dark. He just didn’t seem tough enough, based on the way the church painted Him, to deal with my kind of dilemma.

Further, I had difficulty with this person Jesus because the church pictured Jesus as the head of the American System. They wrapped Him up in an American flag. They said a vote for Jesus was a vote for America. They made it that Jesus was the president of the New York stock exchange, chairman of the Republican Party, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. Super-capitalist extraordinary. Jesus Christ, therefore, came across to me as a segregationist, who was prepared to step on me to keep me from being where I ought to be, as a black person.

Let me say to you, with all the love I know how to say to you, as evangelicals – stop allowing yourselves to be brainwashed by other people in this country who call themselves conservative! They are not conservative theologically. They are not conservative Biblically. They happen to be conservative politically. Anybody who uses the word conservative, we bring them right into our ranks, whether they are committed to Jesus Christ or not.

Christ’s life, His Death, His resurrection and His shed blood, from that you cannot move me. But ask me to adopt certain political ideologies, in the name of conservatism, I cannot do that.

Jesus Christ is not an American, any more than He is a Russian. He’s not a Republican, any more than He’s a Democrat. He’s not a capitalist, any more than He’s a socialist or communist. He is the Lord of Heaven and earth!

If you have a political point of view, about Viet Nam or about race, don’t try to put God in it. Search out the Scriptures. Find out where Jesus would be, before you ask Him to endorse your particular political views.

It would be an insult to me as a black person to say that the reason I’m angry and the reason I’m militant is because the communists got to me. I don’t need a communist to tell me a man’s got his foot on my neck. I don’t need a communist to tell me that I can’t buy a home in the community I can afford to live in. I have the God-given intelligence to know this for myself. I’m reaping the results of discrimination, not the communists. A radical is a person who gets to the root of a problem

A radical is a person who deals with diseases, not symptoms. A revolutionary is defined as taking an existing situation that is unworkable, doing away with it and replacing it with a system that works.

For the first time in my life, I heard on that radio broadcast that the whole reason that Jesus came was to be a true revolutionary! “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. ”

There is something wrong with man’s nature. He is cut off from God. He is independent from God. He is doing his own thing. The results are racism, hate, war, murder, lust, violence and conflict. Jesus came by His death to destroy this human nature. By His shed blood to forgive it, and by His resurrection to impart a new man-a man who is willing to trust HIM. Now if that is not revolution, what is?

There arose in the hills of Jerusalem a radical revolutionary by the name of Barabbas. And they had to arrest Barabbas as an insurrectionist, a murderer and an anarchist.

But out on those same streets was another radical. His name was Jesus. He had no guns, no tanks, no ammunition. Of all the dumb things in the eyes of the militants, He went around preaching a thing called the Kingdom of God!

Fundamentally, there would have been no disagreement between Jesus and Barabbas in terms of diagnosing the Roman system. Barabbas probably said, “the Roman system stinks! It’s oppressive, it’s militaristic, it’s racist.” And Jesus would have agreed. But the disagreement between Jesus and Barabbas would have been in the propagation of the solution. Understand this.

Jesus would have said, “Barabbas, alright. Everything you say about the Roman system is right. But what are you going to do about it? You are going to replace the Roman system with your own messed-up kind of system. And there is basically no difference between you and the Romans.

“What I have come to do, Barabbas, is to establish a whole new order. And that new order is built on Me. I’ve come to establish a whole new Kingdom, and that Kingdom is not like anything that exists. I’ve come from heaven. God has sent Me as His son, as One who was with Him before the foundation of the world, to impregnate the common clay of men’s humanity with new life. And I’ve come to bring a new Kingdom into the hearts of men.”

Jesus went out, and began to rap that down. And by the hundreds, people began to come around Him and sit at His feet. At the feet of a Man who was more alive than any man they’d ever met. From miles around they came.

Jesus’ words went out with such weight! His light became so effective! Who He was penetrated so that people began to drop everything and come after Him. He began to shake the whole Roman Empire. Without firing a shot. But a whole Roman system is shaking beneath this Man’s life and message. So they had to arrest Him. Because He was dangerous. He came to change the system, and anybody who tries to change the system is dangerous.

So they locked Him up. And they made the mistake that’s been made down through history. They thought they could get rid of an idea by getting rid of the man from whom the idea originated. So they nailed Him to a cross-little realizing that they were playing into the hands of God.

The whole reason that Christ came was to bear in His own body our sin. Our independence. Our alienation from Him. When He hung on that cross the Bible declares He was the just dying for the unjust. He who knew no sin became sin that we through Him might become the righteousness of God. On that cross He shed His blood to cleanse us of the works of our independence. On that cross He was experiencing the hell we deserve. He was becoming the sacrifice, the Lamb of God, in our place.

They didn’t know that. They took Him down off that cross, laid Him in a tomb, rolled a stone over His grave. They wiped their hands and they said, “That is one radical that will never disturb us again. ” And they went away content that it was all over.

But three days later Jesus Christ got up out of the grave. The Bible declares that He arose as a new man, the Leader of a new creation. The Establisher of a new order.

I discovered Him. I found Him. I became attracted to that Christ. Not a namsy-pamsy sissyfied Jesus. Not an effeminate, soft Christ. But a Christ of justice. A Christ of mercy. A Christ of love and compassion. I was in accord with Him because I discovered that when He walked the face of the earth, He rubbed shoulders with people like me. He ate and drank with sinners. (He was even disregarded by the “Fundys” of His day, who wrote Him off on the grounds that He was hanging out with worldly people, losing His testimony.)

I found out that He was my kind of Jesus. So I gave my life to Him. Now I know who I am: I am God’s son! A member of the royal family of God.

There are a lot of people who haven’t changed their attitudes. There’s still places I can’t live. Still people who don’t want to fellowship with me. Still folks who shake my hand and call me their dear colored brother. My answer to them is simply this: “I’m God’s son. If you don’t want to rub shoulders with royalty like me, that’s your problem, not mine. ”

I know what my responsibility to my neighbor is. My responsibility is to love, not looking for anything back. And all I ask is that you give me the privilege to love you. Whether you love me back or not is totally irrelevant.

Now don’t mix that up with softness. Don’t think that because I love you that means I will allow you to walk over me. Because if I allow you to walk over me, you are not only dehumanizing me, you are dehumanizing yourself. And I love you too much to let you do this.

Now I have the power to be God’s son. Jesus Christ, the Resurrection and the Life, now lives in me. Knowing this has relieved me from trying to carry around in my inside pocket a bunch of rules and regulations. Don’t do this! Stay away from that! Don’t touch that! Don’t go near that!

Praise God, I’ve been delivered from those evangelical hang-ups. All I have to do is simply make myself available – allow Jesus Christ to do His thing in me. I have not had to give up my blackness in order to be a Christian. But Jesus Christ now lives His life through my redeemed blackness.

I challenge you as Christian evangelicals – that is the revolutionary Christ you will have to preach. Not a Christ of any man’s system. But a Christ who is God.

There’s no way that I can respond to your Jesus when I discover you have moved out of the neighborhood to avoid me. There is no way that I can respond to your Christ when you have sheltered your sons and daughters because you’re afraid I’m so irresistible they’ll have to marry me. There’s no way that I can respond to your Christ if your church remains segregated and closed. There is no way that I can respond to your Jesus if you’re not willing to pay the price of being a real brother to me. And a brother is a person who lays down his life for his friend. That is what the Church is going to have to do if it’s going to meet the present crisis.