[Dialogue] New Century, Same Crisis--The Social Gospel 100 Years Later

Sun Nov 4 22:47:13 EST 2007

I still use the Niebuhr paper - but the key for me has to do with his
insights on repentance as an act - "innocent suffering" serves as a window
into discerning the new aspects of the Will of God. I like to start the
workshops with a question like, when has innocent suffering come up and
slapped you in the face? Where were you living your life like always, and
something happened where you said - somebody has to do something about that?
Get enough of these in a list, then ask what's going on behind all this.
Then work thru HRN's model - 1) what public sign of your rejection of this
sin (I think HRN was relating the "turn your back" phrase to the fact that
abolitionists used to stand with their back turned at slave auctions., the
2) what would it mean to abolish this within your own structures, and 3)
what would it mean for you to lead the rest of society in this act of
repentance? Nice workshop with a congregation - avoids social action based
on abstract ideology (Sartre taught us that that got tired) and grounds it
in a group's actual personal experience.

Grace and Peace,

John C. Montgomery

monkeyltd at comcast.net

john.montgomery at acfb.org

678-468-4913 (personal)

Visit My Blog - Notes From the Balcony

www.monkeyltd.blogspot.com

  _____  

From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Len Hockley
Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2007 12:14 AM
To: Colleague Dialogue
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] New Century, Same Crisis--The Social Gospel 100
Years Later

Randy,
Sounds like a possibility.  I'm not really sure who is planning the guts of
the Springboard meeting. Certainly Gillis, Harper and M Jones are involved.

Will the Springboard program team please STAND UP?

Len

At 04:50 AM 11/3/2007 -0700, you wrote:

Len,

HRN put wheels under Rauschenbusch's social gospel and the key insight that
it's not just individual conversion but social (meaning instituitional)
change as well.  We translated what it means to be social pioneers into the
three master strategies of (1) contextual reeducation, (2) structural
reformulation and (3) spiritual remotivation.  Even though all three of
these address social as well as individual contradictions, the
transformation of society's structures is, I believe, the one most directed
at socia change and the one that most often is neglected.  We said 30 years
ago that Niebuhr's social evils of "racialism, nationalism and economic
imperialism" were as predominant then as they were in Niebuhr's time.  I
think that is still true for today.  To the point, today as ever in order to
care for those who care one must address the structures of society which
continue to institutionalize racialism, nationalism and economic
imperialism, and not focus just on the first and last strategies.  No single
one of them is effective unless all three are spinning.

Maybe Springboard should dust off those old strategies and decide what the
contemporary form of them must be.  What do you think?

Randy

----- Original Message ----
From: Len Hockley <lenh at efn.org>
To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>; Order Ecumenical Community
<oe at wedgeblade.net>; Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Friday, November 2, 2007 4:36:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] New Century, Same Crisis--The Social Gospel 100
Years Later

A good read Randy.  

I always  thought there was a basic difference between Reinhold and H
.Richard.  Hooray for H. Richard

Any way you can see this wisdom to be of use to our meeting of
"Springboard"?

Len

At 01:43 PM 11/2/2007 +0000, R Williams wrote:

Colleagues,

In the introduction to the G-O-D Lecture in RS-1 we marked the year 1907 as
the beginning of the 20th century, and we grounded this with events such as
Einstein's theory of relativity, the Bolshevik Revolution, World War I, etc.
One of the events we did not mention was the publication in that year of the
book by Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, which
introduced what has come to be known as the "social gospel."

I have attached an article from Commonweal magazine in which Carey Nelson
Blake states that "Rauschenbusch tore down the wall that separated faith
from the public world and called on the church to address the suffering and
degradation that accompanied the rapid industrialization of the United
States."

Regarding the importance of this for our roots, H. Richard Niebuhr was
clearly influenced by Rauschenbusch when he stated that the church as social
pioneer turns its back on the manifestations of "sin" or "evil", abolishes
it within itself, and leads in the social act of repentance.  For
Rauschenbusch, according to Blake, "Sin was embedded in institutional
arrangements, not just in individual motivations and actions...  A faithful
life demanded of sinners both personal and social repentance."

Another note of interest, Paul Raushenbush, a great-grandson of Walter, has
edited a new edition titled Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st
Century.

I hope you have time to read the attached article.  I would be interested in
your reflections.

Randy Williams

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