Red-Letter Christians, Social Gospel, Jesus and Paul

A recent article in Christianity Today addresses the apparent dichotomy between the central teachings of Jesus and the central teaching of Paul. (See excerpts below).  The author points out that Jesus teachings focus on "the kingdom of God" while Paul's teachings focus on "justification by faith".  A parallel can be drawn to the difference between "individual salvation" and "collective salvation and social progress" which helped shape the development of the Social Gospel movement in the latter part of the 19th century.

Many would say that Christ's teachings encompass both personal salvation and piety AND displaying concern for others resulting in taking individual actions regarding the needs of our fellow man which would collectively bring about changes in the existing societal and religious structures.

Red-Letter Christianity is a relatively new movement but one which harbors similarities to the Social Gospel movement of 100 years ago.  Red Letter Christians focus on the actual words (and deeds) of Christ as delineated in the gospel accounts of the New Testament.  They look at current societal conditions and ask the same question Charles Sheldon asked in his 1897 book, In His Steps.  That question is "What Would Jesus Do?"

Many Christians and Christian groups begin their answers to most questions by referencing the writings of Paul.  But the question is not "What Would Paul Do?", the question is "What Would Jesus Do?"

That is the same question many southern protestants asked in the first half of the 20th century and the central question of this website.  The question "What Would Jesus Do?" ....leads followers of Christ to the ask "What Should I Do?" about the needs and problems I see in my community, my town, my nation.

This website contains accounts of many southern Protestants who took seriously the words of Christ and sought to apply them to the practical problems of their place and time.   Learning more about their stories may provide inspiration to serious followers of Christ of today's generation.

Excerpts from a recent Christianity Today article by Scot McKnight:

• "It can be said without exaggeration that the evangelical movement owes its fundamental strength to the Reformation and the Great Awakenings and revivals of the 18th and 19th centuries; that is, it is a Paul-shaped movement through and through. The early 20th century arrival of the social gospel, which seemed to link "kingdom" with "liberal" and "justice," made the Pauline emphasis within the evangelical movement more pronounced. Furthermore, when some evangelicals recently rediscovered Jesus' kingdom vision, they were frequently warned that they were on the verge of falling for a social gospel."
  
  
• "But something has happened in the past two decades: a subtle but unmistakable shift among many evangelicals from a Pauline-centered theology to a Jesus-shaped kingdom vision. Sources for this shift surely include George Eldon Ladd's The Presence of the Future, the rugged and unrelenting justice voice of Jim Wallis, perhaps most notably in his Call to Conversion, and a growing social conscience among evangelicals"
  
•  "Paul doesn't talk about the kingdom enough to make me think his theology is really kingdom-shaped. His letters include fewer than 15 references to the kingdom. .........some of the central themes of kingdom for Jesus—which are all found in those crucial passages in Luke, such as the opening sermon in Nazareth (4:16-30)—are not found in Paul. Yes, Paul does care for the poor—of Jerusalem, at least. But caring for the poor and the outcast, and a revolutionary message about possessions—well, they just don't show up enough in Paul to lead one fairly to conclude that Paul was essentially teaching the same thing as Jesus. Kingdom and justification are not the same thing."
  
  
• "..the one and only time the word justified in a Pauline sense appears in the Gospels. Luke 18:14 reads, "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God." Jesus is referring, of course, to the tax collector and not to the Pharisee. We could add Matthew 12:37, and perhaps Luke 10:29 and 16:15, but we can't find much in the Gospels that shows Jesus thinking in terms of "justification by faith."
  
  
• "The problem with the two approaches—trying to make Paul fit Jesus' kingdom vision, or trying to make Jesus fit Paul's justification vision—comes down to this: each approach reduces the word gospel. For one group, it is equated with the kingdom. For the other, it is a synonym for justification by faith. To be sure, the word gospel encapsulates both kingdom and justification, but gospel operates on a foundation deeper than either."

Source: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/december/9.25.html?start=1

NOTE:  The author of the article bridges the apparent gap 

between the central  teachings of Jesus 
and the central  teachings of Paul 

in a interesting way.  
Be sure and visit the site to read the
 article in it's entirety.