My father used to relate the story with considerable affection and humor. The date was Sunday, December 7, 1941, otherwise known as the “day of infamy.” Pearl Harbor Day. My father’s mother called her two sisters in Bethlehem, PA to tell them her husband, my grandfather, had died suddenly of a heart attack in Virginia. He had been scheduled to preach that morning at the dedication of a new church.
Aunt Lucy, my great-aunt, received the news somberly, and then offered this memorable gem, a line that lives on in family lore: “Oh dear,” she sighed heavily, “the cat died today too!”
Nothing like keeping things in perspective. God bless her.
My grandfather is pictured above, a photograph from the cover of the Messenger, the flagship publication of the Evangelical and Reformed Church (now part of the U.C.C.).
Needless to say, I never met him, having been born a full 10 years after his death. But I can say, without fear of contradiction, he certainly was a far better dresser than I.
More substantively, he was a man of significant accomplishment. He served one of the collegiate churches in NYC until, that is, my father’s health concerns forced the family to leave the city.
He then became senior editor of the Messenger, out of Philadelphia, for the next 25 years (right up to the time of his death). In this capacity he served as an influential leader within the denomination, in demand for his preaching as well as his perspective on world affairs.
I have a picture of him taken in 1931 standing next to President Herbert Hoover on the north lawn of the White House, along with 40 other religious leaders. He was invited there every year, until, that is, FDR was elected!
He had been one of the leaders of the “Save the Starving Armenians” campaign which sought to alleviate the sufferings of the Armenians under Turkish rule. He traveled all over the world (I have his passport to prove it). We used to have a bunch of Persian rugs he had received as gifts in gratitude for his efforts in the Middle East. I even have a swagger stick with a silver handle given to him by an official in Egypt, I think.
He was a very learned man, earning top honors throughout his school days. At one point, he was a finalist for the presidency of Franklin and Marshall College, his alma mater, but the “other guy” ended up getting it.
Yet despite being a man of letters, he was also, by all accounts, a mensch. My father once told me of the time he was asked, altogether improbably, to make the case for Christianity before a prize fight in Madison Square Garden! Who ever thought that was a good idea???
The crowd, as you might expect, was not particularly interested in what he might have to say. After all, they had come for the fight, not a sermon. They were loud, boisterous, and clearly not in the mood to listen to, of all things, a pastor. And yet, according to my father, he won them over, I assume because he spoke directly to what was going on in their lives. That’s a rare gift.
And yet, as with us all, he was a product of the age in which he lived. Serving a church in Harlem, he was acutely aware of the many struggles of the huddled masses on the teeming streets of New York. And he sought to address these problems.
Like many of his generation, he embraced the Social Gospel, and I assume for the best of reasons. He was a 5th generation pastor. His father, his brothers, and his uncles mostly all were pastors.
In the Messenger shortly after his death, there appeared various testimonials from denominational leaders, seminary professors, and other church folk. One man wrote about how, when my grandfather was growing up, his family would routinely gather together to read scripture and sing Christian hymns, in German, of course.
Which is to say that the gospel had had a profound effect on him. As such, his devotion to God tended naturally toward concern for the poor and disadvantaged.
With the Social Gospel gaining momentum after the turn of the century, its allure was no doubt irresistible, assuming one was a Christian and concerned with the welfare of others. The idea was to Christianize the institutions and structures of the United States in the hope of eliminating much of the sufferings of humanity.
It was a noble goal. But, as I wrote a year ago in a post entitled, “One Little Problem,” the pioneers of this effort, like those of many newly emerging social movements, assumed the traditional understandings, insights, and benefits of the past would continue unabated. What they failed to anticipate, in other words, was that soon the secular logic of Modernism would replace those rooted in the gospel.
And without the moderating and humanizing effects of the gospel, an impersonal, rationalistic, technocratic approach would come to dominate the effort to “save humanity.”
For years I’ve tried, often unsuccessfully, to explain my objections to the Social Gospel. People would rightfully ask how the church could possibly ignore the needs of the world. I would always maintain that it shouldn’t. And yet addressing these needs should not and cannot be the main task of the church, which is spiritual. But it’s a hard sell, particularly when the mainline church spends so much of its time focused on these issues.
But then I went to church last Sunday. The sermon was based on Acts 6. Here is an account of the early church’s very first internal struggle, a church experiencing both exponential growth and its inevitable “growing pains.”
As the apostles traveled far and wide spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, problems were brewing at home. Some Greek-speaking converts complained that their widows were being discriminated against, while the Jewish-Christian widows were being properly care for.
The church convened to address this clear injustice. As we know, widows in ancient times were dependent solely on their husbands for support. Without them, widows often were forced into destitution or worse.
So what did the early church do? Well, for one thing, they admitted the problem. It was real and needed to be addressed. And what was their solution? They commissioned God-fearing leaders to take care of the everyday needs of the widows among them.
In so doing, however, they declined to make this the focus of the church’s mission. Rather, the primary task of the apostles, and the church as a whole, would remain the ministry of the Word. They were not about to get sidetracked.
Rather than losing focus and becoming a kind of social service agency, they recommitted to the things of the Spirit, while simultaneously ensuring the material needs of the faithful would be met.
After the service, I told the preacher that for the first time I understood Acts 6 as the perfect refutation of the Social Gospel. “It’s the social without the gospel,” I added.
He looked a bit surprised, I think, but then blurted out, “Yes, addressing social needs is something we do, but it’s not our main focus.” It’s about priorities.
“The light had dawned over Marblehead,” as they say in these parts.
The physical and material needs of the world are important, but they’re not the most important. The fact is, we all will die one day. The rate is still 100% And when our time comes, will we be prepared for the supernatural life to come? Or will we be focused on more this-worldly things?
Life today is unfair. Then again, it’s always been unfair. Each of us encounters hardship and struggle. But while the “world” works on the external, we Christians are urged to work on the internal, on the soul, on that which endures beyond time and space.