The Whitworthian

Issue date: 10/9/07 Last Updated: 10/13/07

Perhaps the greatest social failure of the modern American Evangelical church is the imbalance of our response to society's problems.  Our crime is not failing to address issues such as poverty, crime, and racism; rather, it is in failing to address them fully. 

The Evangelical response to social problems ranges from soup kitchens to prison ministries, from En Christo and Cup of Cool Water to Promise Keepers.  These programs offer food for a night, conversation and prayer during a stay in jail, or encouragement to build personal relationships across racial boundaries. 

All of these programs work toward laudable and necessary goals, but they operate at a level that is fundamentally individualistic and temporary.  If we wish to provide a relevant response to the problems that continue to plague our nation and our world, we as Evangelicals must start to see the bigger picture. 

Social problems, by definition, exist on a broad scale and are structural in nature: in other words, they are perpetuated by the very society they plague.  To use a simplistic example, the mass unemployment of the Great Depression was due to a nation-wide economic crisis.  Unemployment was not the result of widespread laziness or ineptitude on the part of American workers, but rather on social forces outside any individual’s control. 

During the Great Depression, soup kitchens were common charities that provided day-to-day sustenance for the unemployed.  These soup kitchens, however, did nothing to fix the problem of unemployment.  Until the U.S. government set to creating jobs under President Roosevelt’s New Deal, the problem of unemployment was not being addressed. 

In a parable, Jesus separates the righteous from the unrighteous based on the action they took for “the least of these:” whether they clothed the naked, fed the hungry, visited the imprisoned.  Whatever we do for those people, Jesus says, we do for him.  Evangelical ministries work hard to live up to the letter of this command by meeting the needy face-to-face and offering our help, our prayers, and our friendship.

However, in focusing our attention only on the individuals who exhibit social ills, we risk disregarding the cultural structures that breed social illness in the first place.  Just as soup kitchens did not fix unemployment during the Great Depression, so our individually-oriented ministries have little impact on society’s widespread problems.  When we fail to combat those widespread problems as well as their personal manifestations, can we really say that we are living up to Christ’s command? 

In "Revolution and Renewal: How Churches are Saving our Cities," Christian sociologist Tony Campolo writes about the church's involvement in combating inner-city problems like gang violence and racial conflict.  He argues that Evangelicals tend to miss the broader angle when it comes to social problems because of our focus on the individual spiritual life.  We see things in terms of right and wrong, good and evil, choices and consequences.

To Campolo, this is a valuable perspective that many liberal-minded thinkers miss -- but he also warns that unless Christians recognize the structural evils as well as the personal ones, our efforts to make change will not be effective. 

The Evangelical response to social problems must be two-pronged: showing love, compassion, and grace to individuals while we seek to combat the social forces oppressing those individuals. Prison Fellowship, a Christian outreach founded by Chuck Colson, represents exactly this balance. 

At the individual level, Prison Fellowship partners with literally thousands of churches to provide visitation, worship services, and spiritual guidance to inmates and their families.  Meanwhile, a subsidiary organization called Justice Fellowship campaigns for reform in the prison system.  The issues Justice Fellowship addresses include restorative justice models and rehabilitation programs, victim and offender rights, and programs designed to combat inmate rape and prison abuse.

By accepting and addressing structural and societal issues along with individual ones, Prison Fellowship has been able to affect important changes in the inmate population and the prison system.  In so doing, it has garnered high praise from secular and religious sectors.

Prison Fellowship, however, is only one organization, and for all the good that it does, we need many more to follow its example if we are to make a lasting difference.

It is time for us, the Evangelical church, to undertake a radical paradigm shift: We must open our eyes to the forces that act outside of individuals and commit ourselves to social reform just as passionately as we have committed ourselves to individual reform.  Only then will we be able to fully address the pains of a broken world.

Trevor Hansen is a  junior majoring in sociology. Contact him at trevor.hansen@whitworthian.com.

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