Rightly or wrongly, conservative Anabaptists have tended to follow along behind the Evangelicals in navigating the theological landscape. While it is mostly wrong to do so, there are a few good things that have happened, such as the clarification of what the Gospel really is. The present debate over the social justice issue within evangelicalism needs to be carefully examined within Anabaptism.
While there are many tensions within the “big tent” called evangelicalism in the present day, the one that has been brought to the front during the last half of 2018 is the debate over the Gospel and Social Justice. This debate has deep historic roots but most recently flows from a theological war in the mid‑20th century.
In the early 20th century, battle lines were drawn over the truthfulness of Scripture. Those who upheld the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible came to be called the Fundamentalists (there was an extreme right wing of Fundamentalism that we denounce). Those who renounced the authority of Scripture, led by such theological liberals as Harry Emerson Fosdick, came to be known as the Modernists. Fosdick was opposed by men such as J. Gresham Machen (Christianity and Liberalism). The Fundamentalists narrowed the focus of Christian ministry to five or six fundamentals of the faith and generally overlooked the social implications of the gospel. The Modernists emphasized social justice to the exclusion of biblical theology.
By the mid‑20th century, the new Evangelical movement emerged out of Fundamentalism in an attempt to present a more broad‑based message that retained the fundamentals but added the social implications of the gospel. In the intervening years between 1950 and 2018, many new Evangelicals have apostatized from biblical inerrancy and sufficiency and have drifted toward the old Modernist position. Now enters the current debate over the Gospel and Social Justice.
On the one side you have the Conversionists, who proclaim that everything must be gospel‑driven and that one’s personal salvation is necessary to see the world clearly. This view usually calls for a life of separation from the world’s system and sometimes has led to an unbiblical isolationism. Emphasis is placed on evangelism and worldwide missions with little time given to the cultural things of the world.
The other side of the debate is led by those who could be called Transformationists. While they too espouse a biblical gospel, they have placed major emphasis on the social structures of the culture. These are they who would dream of establishing Christian art museums, etc., and would drive our youth into higher education with a view to invading all the professions with Christian people. This idea of “salting the culture,” while it makes good human sense, has seemed to dilute the salvation message in its attempts to integrate the culture with the gospel.
The big question is whether the transformationists can maintain a pure gospel message and the attention it requires while at the same time giving the priority necessary to invading the culture as they dream. History shows that once the issues of changing the social structures of the culture become important, the gospel takes second chair. This has already been illustrated by a movement on the part of many evangelicals away from such gospel‑foundational doctrines as biblical inerrancy and sufficiency.
Nearly 70 years ago, the United States donated many shiploads of wheat to the nation of India because its people were starving and America had an abundance. Studies later determined that rats consumed the vast majority of that wheat. While this may be termed a social problem, the fact remains that it was a gospel problem. Those who believe that animals are their reincarnated ancestors will starve while watching rats consume their food. While it is good and right to share of our abundance with a needy world, our priority must be the gospel. Otherwise, our material sharing is vain.
FCM was founded as a conversionist organization. This does not mean that we do not care about social justice. It does mean that our priority is the gospel at the expense of everything and anything else. We warn that those who prioritize social justice will most likely over time drift away from the gospel altogether. Our responsibility is to evangelize in preparation for our King’s return, not to bring in the Kingdom by making everything right in society. Thus, this becomes an eschatological issue. Will we become Christ’s co‑regents in a literal future kingdom, or is the kingdom now with us, responsible to make everything right in society?
Conservative Anabaptists would do well to think seriously about the gospel and social justice. The transformationists have recently demonstrated a willingness to negotiate the truths of Genesis 1 and 2. Negotiation of other truth cannot be far behind. It seems to this writer that we must adhere to some variety of the conversionist position or we will slowly negotiate away some very important foundations of the gospel.