What is meant by the term "the social gospel"?

[mormonmusic]

I was speaking to someone last night and he used the term "the social gospel". It's not an LDS term, but belongs to the evangelical or broader non-LDS realm. Can anyone describe what this means?

[pam]

I've heard the term before..though I don't know much about it. I know it was a term used around the early 1900's but that's about all I know.

[mormonmusic]

The person I was speaking to actually used it as a modern-day term, with acceptance of people of gay sexual-orientation in the ministry as one of its principles. But the conversation went a different direction and I never did get a definition. I thought PrisonChaplain might know....

[prisonchaplain]

Pam's actually right. The term is from the late 19th and early 20th century. Mainstream churches believed that Jesus charged the church with improving social conditions. By making the world just, beautiful, and humane, Jesus would be so pleased, he would return to take reign over the kingdom we prepared for him. The focus was on social issues, then--so this line of thinking came to be termed "social gospel." In contrast, Fundamentalists (there were no evangelicals back then) believed that the world was rapidly decaying, and that it was on the verge of the Great Tribulation (i.e. Left Behind). All of this controversy was prior to WWI & II, Korean, Vietnam, etc.

IMHO, if the term is used today, it's simply meant as a synonym for "liberal."

[mormonmusic]

"IMHO, if the term is used today, it's simply meant as a synonym for "liberal."

Thanks prisonchaplain -- that was my sense in the conversation I was having -- that it was linking Christianity to liberal values.