Being Holy and the Social Gospel

Walter Rauschenbusch

I have always been fascinated with the Social Gospel. It seems so simple, so obvious, and yet so often overlooked. 


Call it what you want; social gospel, social justice, missional, Christian, socialist… either way, the ideas expressed in the Social Gospel are not only accommodating with our Christian doctrine, but encouraging and challenging to our call as followers of Christ.

As a member of the Church of the Nazarene, we have a long history with the Social Gospel, even before there was such a determined thing. Think back to the Los Angeles Church of the Nazarene and their clear ideas of serving the poor incarnationaly and providing the destitute with food, shelter, clothes and the hope of the gospel.

Furthermore, there is a strong relationship between the Social Gospel and the Church of the Nazarene’s quest for Holiness.

I often think that in our desire for perfection, we easily become too consumed. Think back to the Church of the Nazarene from 1915-1945. Part of American Protestantism was focused on the modernism and the social gospel, while the other portion was fundamentalist and in strong rejection of it. While there is certainly a case to be made against socializing with “evil” people, this got an upper hand on the early COTN. What once was a denomination bent on helping the poor, was now a church that needed to distance themselves from the lower lives of society. It was necessary to abstain from vices so that we would not be associated with the corrupt people outside of the Church. 

Even in 2010, we deal with this. What then is the connection between Holiness and the Social Gospel? 

“The spiritual perfection of Jesus consists in the fact that he was so simply and completely filled with the love of God and man that he gave himself to the task of the Kingdom of God without any reservation or backsliding. This is the true standard of holiness. The fact that a man is too respectable to get drunk or to swear is no proof of his righteousness. His moral and religious quality must be measured by the intelligence and single-heartedness with which he merges his will and life in the divine purpose of the Kingdom of God. By contrast, a man’s sinfulness stands out in its true proportion, not when he is tripped up by ill-temper or side-steps into shame, but when he seeks to establish a private kingdom of self-service and is ready to thwart and defeat the progress of mankind toward peace, toward justice, or toward a fraternal organization of economic life, because that would diminish his political privileges, his unearned income, and his power over the working classes.”

-Walter Rauschenbush, “A Theology for the Social Gospel”, pg. 51

Would you join this church?

Would you join this church?

…a simple, primitive church, a church of the people and for the people. It has no new doctrines, only the old, old BIble truths. It seeks to discard all superfluous forms and ecclesiasticism and go back to the plain simple words of Christ. It is not a mission, but a church with a mission. It is a banding together of hearts that have found the peace of God, and which now in their gladness, go out to carry the message of the unsearchable riches of the gospel of Christ to other suffering , discouraged, sin-sick souls. It’s mission is to everyone upon whom the battle of life has been sore, and to every heart that hungers from cleansing from sin. Come

On the day that the Church of the Nazarene became officially organized, this was the first piece of literature they produced; a small advertisement that described what the COTN was like.

I wonder how many of our churches could live up to this today?

It’s a least a goal to aspire towards.

The Grand Nazarene Depositum of Christian Perfection

In John Wesley’s “Plain Account of Christian Perfection” he wrote:

“There is such a thing as perfection; for it is again and again mentioned in scripture.

It is not so early as justification; for justified persons are to “go on unto perfection.”

It is not so late as death; for St. Paul speaks of living men that were perfect.

It is not absolute.  Absolute perfection belongs not to man, nor to angels, but to God alone.

It does not make a man infallible: None is infallible, while he remains in the body.

Is it sinless?  It is not worth while to contend for a term.  It is “salvation from sin.”

It is “perfect love.”  This is the essence of it.

It (Christian Perfection/Perfect Love) is improvable.  It is so far from lying in an indivisible point, from being incapable of increase, that one perfected in love may grow in grace far swifter than he did before.

It is amissible, capable of being lost; of which we have numerous instances.

It is both preceded and followed by a gradual work.

…Therefore, all our preachers should make a point of preaching perfection to believers, constantly, strongly and explicitly; and all believers should mind this one thing, and continually agonize for it.

What Wesley is talking about is Perfect Love. And to him it means everything. Perfect love is the goal of scriptural christianity. Perfect Love is the thing that will bring us closest to loving God and the world as we have been called to do.

Wesley, the chief person behind “Methodism” believed that “Christian Perfection” was a “Grand Depositum”, a gift, given to Methodist to share with the world.

And as a child of the Methodist Church, the Church of the Nazarene, of whom affirms Christian Perfection heavily in their founding documents, must think about how this history should play into their current future.

I’ve often heard that we need a “revival” of Christian Perfection within the COTN. Whether from my pastors or teachers, I’ve heard testimonies that the importance of Christian Perfection has not been emphasized enough in the lives of the COTN.

I tend to agree with most who are arguing for this. I think it’s not just a valuable “tool” or “part” of our doctrine, I think as Wesley would say, Christian Perfection is the goal of “scriptural Christianity”; thus I’m confident in believing that Christian Perfection will lead me to my truest and most faithful form of relationship with God and the world.

However, often I hear people take the opposing side. “Does Christian Perfection really matter THAT much? Typically, they will even say things like, “I’ve been in the COTN my whole life and it’s never been an important issue, so what should I believe that all of a sudden it’s become important?”

This is what brings me to my current point; if Christian Perfection is the “grand depositum” for Methodists, why should Nazarenes worry about it? Sure we can make it a “part” of our doctrine, but it’s not everything…

Or is it?

It’s important to understand here the historical context of the COTN. We are a Christian, Protestant, Wesleyan, Holiness Revival church. Each part of this doesn’t just stand for “one area” of the COTN, it works together to make up the “whole” of the COTN.

This is why I believe that while we are not Methodists, members of the COTN have too been entrusted with the grand depositum of Perfect Love. We are not stealing it from the Methodists, nor we being a “third-wheel”, as if Methodists had a claim to fame and we just tagged along and stole their identity.

Hardly, especially when it comes to something like Perfect Love.

What are we worried about? That the Church of the Nazarene might take “loving God and the world” too seriously?

I highly doubt that John Wesley, in saying that Christian Perfection was entrusted to the Methodists for the benefit of the whole Christian church, would be disappointed with that very Christian church embracing the message which he so believed to be core and fixing their lives upon it. Therefore in doing this, it has become our grand depositum as well.