The rules of social gospel

The movement never died

Under the headline

John Blake, of CNN, cited one rallying cry of Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Worker, who discussed his Christian faith and talked about the tiniest bit of faith (the size of a mustard seed) moving mountains.

And then the union proceeded to do just that — three mountains, as Blake writes, though Kentucky UAW workers just voted against the tentative agreement.

Citing the Bible in a social justice movement may seem to be confined to a select few (among them Yale’s Rev. Dr. William Barber, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, or the author Matthew Desmond, whose book, “Poverty, By America” is a textbook I’m using in a class this semester), but a spiritual need to make things right drives quite a few people who are appalled by the attaching of white nationalism to Christianity. White nationalism is the antithesis of Christianity.

I count myself among that group. I’m probably what would count as a shitty Christian (I cuss, hold grudges, and have zero patience) but my faith drives my politics and my politics lean hard into the collective. That doesn’t make me a good person. It makes me a practical one. We all do well when we all do well.

This is far from original with me, or with Fain or with Barber et al. At the turn of the last century, the social gospel movement — led by the likes of Washington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch — followed Jesus by reaching out to minister to the most vulnerable. Much of the movement’s goals were accomplished through labor reforms (eliminating child labor, providing workers with a living wage) and the movement’s goals were mostly realized by the time FDR took office.

The social gospel movement encouraged people to stop thinking individualistically (pull yourself up by your own bootstraps) in favor of thinking — and actin— collectively. In fact, the movement went for a time by the name of Christian socialism, but that didn’t play well in Poughkeepsie, so “social gospel” was born.

And then, of course, political winds changed or eliminated those programs and we are right back to a situation where wealth and income inequality are at an all-time high.

A million years ago, I was working for the Joplin Globe in southwest Missouri, writing a story about a woman who ran a prison ministry in the area. This woman — a large, loud type with dangling earrings as big as a baby’s head — was light on gospel and heavy on social — which, as a fundamentalist, I found confusing. I asked her if her goal was to convert inmates and she said that might happen, and I’ll never forget what she said next: “Sometimes, you just have to wrap the gospel in a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.”

Indeed. The dogma will feed on itself. We are here to serve. Those other folks are killing the brand and we’d do well to take it back, loudly and fiercely.

And thank you, Joan, for that Blake link.