Category: Social Gospel

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The Social Gospel – Part 1

Gary Gilley of Southern View Chapel, (Springfield, IL), has written an extensive and engaging two-part series on the social gospel. This article pulls together the various elements and manifestations of the social gospel, revealing its grasp on the evangelical church today.

(You can view Part 2 Here)
Reprinted in full, with permission
Original article can be found here

One of the important issues which the church has always had to address is that of its role in society. In the Old Testament, the Lord chose Abraham to be the father of a called-out race of people. Years later, the Lord would establish the nation of Israel under the Mosaic Covenant. Detailed laws and regulations were given to Israel at the time including how that nation was to be governed, how poverty was to be dealt with, how widows and orphans were to be helped and how injustices were to be corrected. All of these matters were addressed almost exclusively within the context of the nation of Israel, with relatively minor concern for the surrounding nations. Continue reading “The Social Gospel – Part 1”

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The Social Gospel – Part 2

Gary Gilley of Southern View Chapel, (Springfield, IL), has written an extensive and engaging two-part series on the social gospel. This article pulls together the various elements and manifestations of the social gospel, revealing its grasp on the evangelical church today.

(You can view Part 1 Here)
The original article can be found here

In the first part of this study, we examined together the history of the social gospel as it presented itself in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and then documented a resurgence of the social gospel agenda as found at the present time.  The original social gospel movement began as an appendage to the emerging liberalism that started in Germany and ultimately swept through the Western church.  As the growing liberal movement matured, it left behind most doctrinal distinctives held by earlier Protestants and eventually came to be defined by social action.   Continue reading “The Social Gospel – Part 2”