Don’t Be Fooled by the Social Gospel
The Social Gospel has nothing in common with the true Gospel of Jesus Christ...
During the 2019-2020 presidential primary election season, Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg attacked then Vice President Mike Pence for his “old-fashioned” Christian beliefs about marriage, sexuality, and sin. Buttigieg maintained that his personal brand of “Progressive Christianity” allows him to still commit to the faith that Jesus Christ taught in the Gospels while remaining married to his male partner.
Buttigieg’s position is far from biblical… But at the same time, he is totally in line with today’s version of the “Social Gospel”, an overt rejection of the Gospel according to Jesus.
The original Social Gospel first began as a movement in the late 1800s that applied Christian ethics to social issues like poverty, alcoholism, slums, and child labor. The Social Gospel was a good faith effort by American Protestant Christians to bring society into agreement with Christian principles. They aimed to improve the circumstances of those less fortunate in their communities.
By the 1890s, the Social Gospel had influenced the founding of organizations like the YMCA for young men coming off the farm into big city life, and The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union that was devoted to social reform concerning alcoholism in a program that “linked the religious and the secular.”
In the 1950s and 60s, it was again popularized by civil rights advocates like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Noble enough beginnings for sure, but things have changed... The Social Gospel is now associated with the unbiblical Emergent Church/Progressive Christianity movement.
The current Emergent Church movement and its Social Gospel is based on the idea that as culture changes, the church should change with it to appeal to as many people as possible. The Emergent Church is about experience over reason, spirituality over religion, symbolism over words, unity over doctrine, and feelings over truth. In many cases, the Emerging Church Movement rejects the sufficiency of Scripture by adding to or subtracting from it… essentially denying that biblical truth is absolute.
Most Progressive Christians believe that the Bible is NOT the literal word of God. Instead, they generally believe in “universal salvation” over the biblical concept of personal salvation. The Bible is clear that God redeems only those individuals who repent and submit to the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives. In John 14:6, Jesus said… “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
Progressive Christian teachers in the Emergent Church Movement are more than willing to dilute and twist Scripture to ensure that it is “woke” enough to keep the seats filled. Their “Social Gospel” is designed to deceive Millennials and Gen Z types by promoting seductive and noble-sounding notions like critical race theory, environmentalism, social justice, the open acceptance of homosexual behavior, mysticism, open borders, gender identity, and religious unity.
Progressive Christianity mainly appeals to people’s feelings of narcissistic self-entitlement and their misplaced “love of others”. It’s all about what God can do for them and how others must take the blame for their victimhood. Essentially, they teach the world’s values rather than the absolute truth of Scripture. It is not the Gospel according to Jesus but is a counterfeit version that reeks of socialism.
This has led to an epidemic of “easy believeism”, the false assurance that people are “saved” because they once magically “received” Jesus one Sunday morning without ever submitting to Him as the Lord of their lives. They put their trust in false teachers who leave out the part about the need to turn away from sin and repent of it. In the end, one’s degree of “wokeness” has nothing to do with their salvation…
The Social Gospel has nothing in common with the true Gospel as clearly defined by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians…
“15 Now I make known to you, brethren, the Gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:1-4 NASB)
And further clarified by Peter…
18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. (1 Peter 3:18 NASB)
However, according to the Social Gospel, Christians need to concentrate on the world now, not the world to come. It asserts that Christ’s second coming would not happen until humanity rid itself of social evils. The message of the Social Gospel minimizes or ignores the concept of repentance and magnifies social justice issues as the way to be a “good Christian”.
On the other hand, the true Gospel is most concerned about the state of people’s souls and their eternal salvation, not making our world a better place.
Avoid those who teach any form of Social Gospel. It is a perverted version of Scripture and NOT the message of true Christianity…