Social Issue in The Fundamentals

+People criticized "fundamentalists" during the "fundamentalist-modernist" split in Protestant Christianity (after the 1920s) for their lack of social concern. Critics said fundamentalists emphasized saving souls at the cost of ignoring social ills. That's why it's interesting to read an article in The Fundamentals discussing the Christian's social responsibility.

+One of the 100 articles of this series published between 1910 and 1915 was "The Church and Socialism" by Dr. Charles R. Erdman, professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. (Some claim the term, "fundamentalism," came from this series of booklets).

+At the time Erdman wrote this article, the ideas of socialism and communism were becoming increasingly popular among Americans and other countries. So some Christians were trying to connect such economic systems with Christianity. Erdman warned these Christians by showing the weaknesses in every economic system, whether socialist, communist, or capitalist. Christians should be concerned because some suggested a certain economic system was a valid substitute for Christianity.

+It is impossible, Erdman said, "to identify [Jesus Christ] with any social theory or political party... That he insisted upon justice, and brotherhood, and love, and self-sacrifice is evident; but to suggest that these virtues are the monopoly of any one political or economic party is presumptuous."

+Erdman went on to list some of the criticisms socialists had of capitalists and agreed that social wrongs exist in every system. But as to criticizing anyone because of their income level, he said, "It is the glory of the church that it welcomes to its services and blesses by its offices both rich and poor alike, and does more to obliterate class distinctions than any other agency in the world."

+When confronted with social wrongs listed by socialists as reasons to change the present economic system, Erdman said these protests should call the church "to proclaim more insistently the social principles of Christ..." He added that "a true Gospel of grace is inseparable from a Gospel of good works. Christian doctrines and Christian duty cannot be divorced. The New Testament no more clearly defines the relation of the believer to Christ as to the members of one's family, to his neighbors in society, and to his fellow-citizens in the state. These social teachings of the gospel need a new emphasis today by those who accept the whole Gospel..."

+This and other parts of Erdman's article sound familiar even today and especially at the time theologian Carl F.H. Henry wrote his book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Eerdmans: 1947). Henry's book, by the way, was a harbinger of the split between "fundamentalists" and "new evangelicals" in the middle fifties.