An Evangelical Social Gospel?. Timothy L. Suttle

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СКАЧАТЬ Suttle and his evangelical upbringing, his Christian rock fame, and his successful nondenominational Church plantings, the more I became aware that we were—supposedly—from two different “camps” in the theological divide that had separated Christians like Tim and me for a long time.

      As the narrative goes, one hundred years ago (give or take a decade) American Protestants split into two oddly opposing factions with Mainline churches on one side and Evangelicals on the other. Common wisdom held that the mainline churches only cared about social justice and evangelicals only cared about individual salvation. Each side painted the other with increasingly broad and clumsy strokes, resulting in mutual suspicion and even adversarial relationships.

      One of the figures who became associated with this parting of the ways was my great-grandfather, Walter Rauschenbusch. Walter was born into a Christian household and followed the family tradition of pursuing a seminary education and entering the ministry. In 1886, he took a church in the appropriately named “Hell’s Kitchen” of New York City. Rauschenbusch’s goal was, in his words, “to save souls,” and he went about this work with industry and conviction. Yet as he offered spiritual pastoral care to his congregation he was confronted with the reality of the physical and psychological suffering of the working poor of his church. It was a time in America when if you did not have enough money to eat, you went hungry; if you did not have enough money to pay rent, you were out in the cold; and if you did not have enough money for medicine, death was often the result. Rauschenbusch spent too much of his time consoling those who had lost their loved ones only because they were poor. When speaking about his ministry in Hell’s Kitchen, Rauschenbusch lamented: “Oh the children’s funerals! They gripped my heart—the small boxes. I always left thinking—why did these children have to die?”

      This fundamental question of the church’s relation to physical suffering and degradation—“the small boxes” of deaths that happened on account of poverty and deprivation—guided Rauschenbusch’s life and ministry. With a desire to understand the Gospel teachings on tragic injustice that he had encountered, Walter went back to the Bible and wrote this parable reflecting his process of discovery:

      A man was walking through the woods in springtime. The air was thrilling and throbbing with the passion of little hearts, with the love wooing, the parent pride, the deadly fear of the birds. But the man never noticed that there was a bird in the woods. He was a botanist and was looking for plants. A man read through the New Testament. He felt no vibrations of social hope in the preaching of John the Baptist and in the shouts of the crowd when Jesus entered Jerusalem. Jesus knew human nature when he reiterated: “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” We see in the Bible what we have been taught to see there.

      Once Walter had his eyes opened by the suffering of his congregation (an experience he likened to being born again), he saw that the Jesus of the Bible had offered good news to the poor and oppressed in his time, and continue to offer that message to the poor of Rauschenbusch’s own congregation. Rauschenbusch focused on the kingdom of God which was meant to “come, on earth as it is in heaven,” founded on love and equality. In speaking about the Lord’s Prayer, Walter wrote: “There is no request here that we be saved from earthliness and go to heaven, rather we pray here that heaven may be duplicated on earth through the moral and spiritual transformation of humanity, both in its personal and corporate life.”

      Rauschenbusch re-approached scripture and tradition with the suffering children on his heart and discovered that Jesus’s message of redemption had always contained both the personal and the social dimensions—both physical and spiritual redemption were included in the grand invitation of Jesus into the kingdom of God. Rauschenbusch’s whole life, ministry, and writing was all dedicated to creating a society that more closely reflected Jesus’s vision of the kingdom of God.

      Unfortunately, many Christians thought that any talk of transforming society was a distraction from the individual salvation they believed was at the heart of the Gospel, and so Christians began to take sides. Walter was grieved by the fracture of evangelicals from liberals that had already begun during his lifetime. Rauschenbusch always thought of his work as evangelism, and considered the social Gospel an addition to, not a replacement of, the Gospel upon which he had been raised.

      A century later there is a family reunion in American Christianity, and the book you hold in your hand is one more testimony to our reconciliation. What joy it must give my great-grandfather that Pastor Suttle came across his writing and was transformed by the call of the kingdom of God. And Tim is not alone! Over the past few years I have had the pleasure of working side by side with Evangelical leaders and young people, whom I have come to regard as long lost sisters and brothers, separated by an unfortunate divorce that we did not create. Many evangelicals, especially younger ones, are more and more interested in the social message of Jesus. Indeed, most of my invitations to speak these days are from Christian colleges whose students are fired up about questions of social justice because of their love for Jesus.

      At the same time, we in the mainline churches are looking to be revived through a deep commitment to the Christian life, and a personal connection with God that is more traditionally associated with our Evangelical sisters and brothers. We are becoming more interested in the spiritual gifts of our tradition and attempting disciplined spiritual engagement with Jesus, even as we continue the call for social salvation.

      This book is written with an Evangelical audience in mind, and will certainly captivate, challenge and hopefully enrich those of you from that tradition. But the book is equally pertinent to liberal Mainline Protestants, some of whom may be unaware of the Evangelical roots of our own tradition. Both Mainline and Evangelicals will be “turned on” by the spiritual vigor of Rev. Suttle, whose faith comes through on every page, and who is striving to follow Jesus into full engagement with the world.

      A piece of advice that I gave to Tim when he visited me was to use Rauschenbusch as inspiration, but to truly make this book his own reflection on Jesus, the kingdom of God, and authentic discipleship. The result is a book that has theological breadth and depth and a remarkably fresh take on fundamental tenets of our faith. Tim helps us to remember how Rauschenbusch continues to be relevant in today’s difficult world. However he is not merely restating. In his synthesis, he is creating a new theology that is challenging and inspiring.

      One of the great pleasures of reading Rauschenbusch is his witty writing style and his ability with metaphor such as: “Wealth—to use a homely illustration—is to a nation what manure is to a farm. If the farmer spreads it evenly over the soil, it will enrich the whole. If he should leave it in heaps, the land would be impoverished and under the rich heaps the vegetation would be killed.”

      Likewise, Suttle will make you smile with his entertaining writing style and illustrations. Take this one for example: “Belief is a slippery concept. Just imagine you are pulled over by a police officer for driving seventy-five where the limit is fifty-five miles per hour. He asks you why you were driving so fast. Would you say, ‘I know the speed limit is only fifty-five, I believe that in my heart. In fact, I was going fifty-five in my heart, it’s just that I was in a hurry on the outside!’ Once the officer stops laughing, you’re going to get a ticket. Faith is like that. It’s not simply an inner phenomenon.”

      This is a book that is a journey, and we are walking with the author every step of the way. A true pastor, Tim does not rush ahead assuming we will catch up eventually. Instead he guides us through the transformation of his own thinking, using compelling examples from his own life and those of his friends. For instance, he tells the story of a writer in Amsterdam who was struck by the experiencing of witnessing a group of tourists taunt a young woman who was working as a prostitute. The writer raged: “These aren’t animals in a zoo. This is a human tragedy. What’s wrong with you people? This is somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister, somebody’s mother.”

      We are made to wonder: how will the gospel make a difference in the life of the girl in the cage in Amsterdam? The suffering СКАЧАТЬ