Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1958, Page 28

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28 Proceedings of the Forty-fifth Convention

with what Paul says about the church in his letter to the Ephesians.
Both extremes I mentioned are among the dangers of activism.

Strangely enough, though America is considered highly acti-
vistic in its practice of religion, many of the churches of our
country failed in that very field about 50 or 75 years ago. Their
failure called forth a protest in the form of the social gospel.
It also brought into existence the so-called holiness groups, which
according to a recent article in Life magazine are still mush-
rooming in our country. The plain fact of the matter was that the
older established churches had actually become too snug, smug,
and respectable to bother about the plight of the poor, the under-
privileged wage earners, the sweatshops, the exploited children,
the intemperate, the slum dwellers, the colored people, and the
newly arrived immigrants. On the other hand, they closed their
eyes to the misdoings of the rich, the robber barons, the grafters,
the crooked politicians, and, later on, the gangsters, all of whom
were often respectable church members.

It was a case of the parable of the Good Samaritan all over
again. The priest and the Levite, meaning the servants of the
church, were too ocupied with higher matters, perhaps with the
contemplative life, to bother about the woes of mankind and offer
their healing services. Good Samaritans will always appear, and
usually they don’t come from the elite. The Samaritan himself was
a member of a mongrel race. The new Samaritans went beyond
the one in the parable, not only offering their aid to those fallen
among the thieves but trying to find the social causes why thieves
were still on highways and why serious people weren’t concerned
about their misdeeds.

In their enthusiasm for rectifying a sin of omission they
undoubtedly went too far and were often roundly condemned by
the older denominations because they forgot the real work of the
church in their concern for human betterment. The social gospelers
in turn accused the older churches of paying too much attention
to the religion about Jesus instead of the religion of Jesus. “Funda-
mentalists,” wrote Addison H. Leitsch recently, “are still slow to
recognize the social and sociological implications of their own
salvation.” And an editorial writer in the Christian Century of
May 7, 1958, stated: “I am convinced that if we have nothing to
say about bread and peace, there is little chance that we will
be heeded when we talk of redemption and eternal life.”

Actually, however, the churches did learn their lesson. There
are few congregations today, especially in the cities, that do not
have their social programs and their activities for the young.
When we open a foreign mission we think not only in terms of
chapels, but of hospitals, boarding schools, and seminaries to
train indigenous preachers and teachers. The holiness groups have
taught us that we must include the submerged as well as the
respectable in our work of soul winning, but they also illustrate
some of the deficiencies of activism. They are so preoccupied with
evangelism or bringing people to conversion that, in the words
of one critic, Dr. Philip E. Hughes,

the essential task of building up believers by systematic instruc-

tion in the great doctrines of Holy Scripture is largely neglected,

or is carried on at a superficial level. Christians are expected to

exist on milk, without being permitted to develop a stomach