Good news and good works are inseparable. - Manila Manifesto
Getting to know John and Vera Mae Perkins has been one of the special blessings in my life. They have lived the kind of incarnational kingdom Christianity that I am pleading for.
John Perkins fled the racism of rural Mississippi as a young man, but after his conversion, John and his wife, Vera Mae, moved back to the small, segregated town of Mendenhall to live and preach the gospel. First they did evangelistic Bible clubs in the high schools, but when they saw how much the black students needed special help, they started a tutoring program. The same attention to the needs of those with whom they were sharing the gospel led to housing programs, medical clinics, and cooperative businesses—even political engagement.
Through everything, John and Vera Mae kept leading people to Christ, discipling a new generation of converted leaders and building the church. For them, evangelism and social concern are inseparable partners.
I want to show how inseparably intertwined they are. In real life, they are frequently very closely interrelated as in the holistic work of John and Vera Mae Perkins. And even when specific organizations properly focus largely on one or the other, there are numerous interrelationships.
I want to explore five specific areas of interrelationship.
The Theological Framework of Biblical Evangelism
Genuinely biblical evangelism provides a theological framework that shows that evangelism is inseparable from social action. This is true as the evangelist explains sin, invites people to accept Christ as Lord, and does both—using the contextual incarnational model of Jesus.
Biblical evangelism calls on people to repent of sin—all sin, not just some privatized list of personal sins. A biblically faithful evangelist will call on people to repent of involvement in unjust social structures in the way that evangelist Charles Finney insisted that converts forsake the social sin of slavery.
Racism, sexism, and economic oppression are an affront to God. Therefore simply by doing biblically faithful, evangelistic preaching about sin, the evangelist challenges unjust structures. By paying equal attention to repentance of both personal and social sin, the evangelist already forges a powerful link to social action.
Similarly, the evangelist who calls on people to accept Jesus Christ as Lord as well as Savior again establishes a framework where social action can flourish. Accepting him as Lord means surrendering every corner of one's life, not just Sunday morning and family life.
Further, genuine evangelism will be an incarnational, contextual evangelism that applies the gospel to the whole context of the persons addressed. Jesus did not throw words at sinners from afar. He lived among them and modeled how the good news of the kingdom brings radical transformation of the status quo. The evangelist is a harmless peddler, not a faithful proclaimer of the gospel, as Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden insist, unless she shows how the gospel challenges men and women "within the whole context in which they live" (Christian Mission in the Eighties).
Evangelism Promotes Social Action
Second, biblical evangelism both results in and aims at social action. Social action is the result of evangelism in the very specific sense that again and again history has shown that new Christians born again by the power of the Spirit are powerfully transformed and consequently change history.
Ultimately, the problems of our world are rooted in sinful rebellion against God. When drug abusers or sexually irresponsible sinners are converted, society improves. When oppressors repent of racism and economic injustice, society improves. New persons create better societies.
None of this, unfortunately, is automatic. Unless Christians are taught about the social implications of the gospel, they will have no positive impact on society. It is naive nonsense to suggest that new converts automatically start correcting social evils.
Southern Baptist evangelist Delos Miles describes in Evangelism and Social Involvement a church where one prominent member ran the bank that refused to make loans to poor folk. Another prominent church member operated a loan office that did make loans to poor folk—at extravagant rates! I wonder if these "born again" church pillars blamed the poor for being lazy and shiftless.
Both men may have said they cared about the poor. They did not recognize their actions as oppressive. The biblical evangelist will insist that being a Christian includes living converted lifestyles and engaging in converted business practices.
If we teach new converts among the poor the truth about justice as well as justification, they will quickly see how to apply that to their oppressive social structures. Nothing is more liberating to poor, oppressed folk than the full biblical message that the One who died for their sins is the God of the poor who abhors unjust structures. When done in a fully biblical way, evangelism creates new persons who turn from sin, live new lives, experience new dignity and worth, and consequently challenge structures of oppression in the name of the biblical God who, they know now, lives in their hearts and reigns in the world. Social action results from evangelism.
Social action is also one goal of evangelism. Christ redeemed us in part to create a people "zealous for good deeds" (Titus 2:14). We have been "created in Christ Jesus to do good works" (Ephesians 2:10). Evangelism both results in and aims at social action.
The Common Life of the Church Shapes Society
When the church truly models what it preaches—when it genuinely breaks through the sinful barriers of racism, class prejudice, and oppression—its very existence has a powerful influence on the larger society. According to H. Richard Niebuhr, the church is a "social pioneer." As it does so, it expresses "the highest form of social responsibility in the church."
The inner life of the church is also an "enfleshed evangelistic word" (Gabriel Fackre, Word In Deed). In his plenary address at Lausanne (published in Let the Earth Hear His Voice), Michael Green underlined the astonishing evangelistic impact of the common life of the early church:
These Christians embraced all the colors, all the classes, and all the untouchables of ancient society.... Their caring for each other in need became proverbial in antiquity. When people saw how these Christians loved one another...they listened to the message of Jesus.... Unless the fellowship in the Christian assembly is far superior to that which can be found anywhere else in society, then the Christians can talk about the transforming love and power of Jesus until they are hoarse, but people are not going to listen.
Ephesians 3:1-7 provides the theological foundation for practical truth. Ephesians 2:11-22 shows how the cross of Christ overcame the worst ethnic hatred of the ancient world and created one new body of Christ wherein the wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile was overcome. Since God accepted both on exactly the same basis, namely faith in Christ's atonement, they were now one. Period.
Then in chapter three, Paul goes on to describe the gospel that he preaches as a "mystery." What is this mystery? Verse six defines this mystery. It is the multiethnic body of believers! "This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and share together in the promise in Christ Jesus. I became a servant of this gospel" (Ephesians 3:6-7).
The new interracial church is part of the gospel. The fact that by God's grace there is now a new redeemed community whose common life is visible proof that the messianic kingdom has burst into history is part of the good news we share.
When the church dares to be the church, when the church models a new reality that transcends the brokenness of surrounding society, it leavens the whole social order. Hospitals and orphanages started among Christians who cared about the needy. Sunday schools began as places to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to illiterate kids caught in the oppression of child labor. Sunday was their only free day. Slowly, the larger society saw that access to hospitals and universal education were good things that everyone should enjoy. Living a model that challenges the neglect or oppression of the larger society often brings social change.
A church that fully implemented New Testament teaching would offer a powerfully attractive alternative to our world so broken by greed, corruption, selfishness, and racism. Think of how a worldwide church, fully implementing Paul's guidelines (2 Corinthians 8:8-15) for economic sharing in the body of believers would challenge our world so tragically divided between rich and poor. Quite apart from any direct political activity, the impact would be enormous. Nothing would be more revolutionary than simply living out day by day the full biblical teaching that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, black nor white, because we are all one in Christ.
When Christian leaders go to government to call for sweeping structural change, we have more integrity and power when we can say: "We are part of Christian communities that are already beginning to live out what we are calling you to legislate." Our call for costly changes in foreign policy toward the Two-Thirds World designed to implement greater global economic justice has integrity only if we are a part of Christian congregations that are already beginning to incarnate a more simple lifestyle that points toward a more just, ecologically sustainable planet. Our call for nuclear disarmament and international peace has integrity only if there is growing peace and wholeness in our families and churches.
If I am not doing everything in my power to allow the Holy Spirit to bring healing between my wife and me, and wholeness among the members of my congregation, then it is sheer arrogance and stupidity for me to call on senators or presidents and tell them how to bring peace in the international community. It is only as the people of God begin truly and visibly to be Jesus' new alternative society, it is only as we genuinely start to incarnate the radical values of Jesus' new kingdom, that we can powerfully impact the unjust structures of society.
The last two points make it clear how evangelism impacts society, as redeemed persons and the redeemed community of believers influence the total order. Sometimes, people refer to this impact loosely as the "spill-over" effect of Christian faith in the world, but that image is not adequate. Too easily it can lead to the notion of two quite unrelated realities of church and world. Certainly they are distinct and dare not be confused. But when the church is faithful to Jesus, it penetrates the world far more profoundly than the image of "spill-over" suggests.
Jesus' own images of salt, yeast, and light are more dynamic and powerful. Each of Jesus' images indicates that the church penetrates deeply into the world. The light shines throughout the darkness. The salt soaks into all the meat. The yeast leavens the whole dough. Quite apart from their direct political engagement, redeemed people who truly model the gospel of the kingdom penetrate and transform society.
Social Action's Evangelistic Dimension
Fourth, social concern also fosters evangelism. When we care for people in Jesus' name, our acts of mercy open hearts to the gospel. When we stand with the poor to challenge the way they are treated, they are more likely to accept our invitation to turn to Christ.
There is, to be sure, potential danger here. Our social concern dare not be a gimmick designed to bribe people to become Christians. Social action has its own independent validity. We do it because the Creator wants everyone to enjoy the good creation. At the same time, when our genuine compassion also has an evangelistic dimension, we rejoice. Again and again, that is exactly what happens when we truly care for the needy and stand with the oppressed who seek justice.
We must, however, face a hard reality. Sometimes, in the short run, challenging unjust structures slows down church growth. If the mainstream German church in the 1930s had clearly and strongly opposed Nazism, there would have been severe persecution and probably a short-term decline in church attendance. In the long term, however, that prophetic faithfulness would probably have helped restore the credibility of Christian faith for secular Europeans who have continued to forsake Christianity in droves since the end of World War II.
Discipleship and the Environment
Fifth, social action can help protect the fruits of evangelism (see Biblical Ethics and Social Change, by Stephen Charles Mott). If inner-city converts must return to a social setting where all the legitimate jobs have moved to the suburbs and drug running seems to be the only way to make a decent living, the temptation to sin is enormous. One could say similar things about many other social problems. William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, condemned environments where "vice has an enormous advantage over virtue." Such a setting, he protested, is "atheism made easy." Social action that creates good jobs in the inner city and gets rid of drug operations will make it easier for new converts to be faithful disciples of Jesus.
EVANGELISM and social action are inseparably interrelated. Each leads to the other. They mutually support each other. In practice, they are often so intertwined that it would be silly and fruitless, indeed destructive, to pull them apart.
Incarnational kingdom Christianity addresses all the deepest concerns of those who focus primarily on individual soul winning. It agrees that nothing is more urgent than sharing the wonderful news of the one mediator, Jesus Christ, who reconciles lost sinners with a holy God. Utopian schemes that forget that sin is deeper than mere social structures will fail.
The disastrous decline of mainline Protestant churches in recent decades is common knowledge. To be sure, some people have left for the wrong reasons. Some parishioners resented their church's courageous stand for racial and economic justice and therefore switched to one-sided evangelical congregations where these "uncomfortable" social topics did not come up.
But the major reason for decline has been the loss of a passion for evangelism grounded in loss of certainty about the central theological truths of historic Christian orthodoxy. If one is not sure if Jesus is truly God incarnate, if one is not sure Christ is the only mediator, then evangelism becomes less urgent or even irrelevant.
Mainline churches should not abandon their courageous stand against racism, economic injustice, and oppression, but they do need to ground their social action in solid biblical orthodoxy. And they need to become as enthusiastic about leading lost sinners to Christ as they are about liberating the oppressed of the Earth.
Incarnational kingdom Christianity offers a better solution. A central key is to teach new converts the full truth about God's concern for the poor and oppressed. Then as new Christians become transformed persons freed from destructive habits, they will reach out in holistic mission to their poor neighbors. Discipled to have an equal passion for evangelism and social change, they will model Christ's incarnational identification with the poor. Rather than moving away from the poor in the slums or rural communities, they will remain there, modeling new possibilities, sharing economic resources, and inviting everyone to Christ.
That is incarnational kingdom Christianity. Christian mission works best when evangelism and social concern come together in the name and power of Jesus.
Ronald J. Sider, a Sojourners contributing editor, was professor of theology and culture at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and president of Evangelicals for Social Action when this article appeared. In 1990, the third edition of his book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger was published by Word. This article is an excerpt from One-Sided Christianity, by Ronald J. Sider. Copyright © 1993 by Ronald J. Sider. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.
The Choice for Incarnation
A friend of mine, Judge Nelson Diaz of Philadelphia, is a wonderful example of incarnational kingdom Christianity. Nelson grew up in Harlem, raised by a poor single-parent Puerto Rican woman. Fortunately, faith in Christ kept him from the destruction of gangs and drugs. Instead, he got a good education, became a successful lawyer, and eventually a judge. In June 1992, he co-chaired the Billy Graham Crusade in Philadelphia.
I was a counselor for that crusade and was there the night Judge Diaz shared his testimony. The audience was deeply moved as he shared his rise from poverty to great success. He also described the racism he faced in law school and the way he organized Hispanic and African-American students to demand change.
What impressed me most, however, was the reminder of where he lives and worships. He and his family live in a very poor section of North Philadelphia. The interracial congregation of African Americans, whites, and Hispanics of whom he is a leader is right in the middle of one of the dreadfully poor and dangerous parts of the inner city. He lives there and worships there because he knows that poor community desperately needs his presence, example, and leadership. Because he trusts Jesus, he dares to stay.
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