Abstract:
This article introduces South African churches to the reasons why elements of the late 19th
and early 20th century Social Gospel movement encourages local churches to participate in
their respective communities through social contribution. The article argues that the Social
Gospellers understood Christian responsibility as an imperative of ‘participatio Jesu’ through
social integration of living an ethos of oikoumenē. The history of the Social Gospel should
be a relevant influence on mainline churches to understand the tension in the decision to
participate or withdraw from social contribution today.
Description:
This article is a reworked
version of a part of a PhD thesis
titled ‘Globalized
mission and the Social Gospel
of Jesus: A postcolonial optic’,
completed in the Department
of New Testament Studies,
Faculty of Theology, at
the University of Pretoria,
with Prof. Ernest van Eck as
supervisor. (http://hdl.handle.net/2263/46025)
