Martin Luther King and the Social Gospel

"Above all, I see the preaching ministry as a dual process. On the one hand I must attempt to change the soul of individuals so that their societies may be changed . On the other I must attempt to change the societies so that the individual soul will have a change. Therefore, I must be concerned about unemployment, slums, and economic insecurity. 

I am a profound advocate of the social gospel. "   

 ----Martin Luther King, Jr

"Though he was obviously an integral part of the civil rights struggle, King's stated mission was broader. At his core, King was a minister who viewed social issues through a religious context.........For him the Gospel was quite simple, it was the social Gospel; it was the Gospel that was conveyed in the Sermon on the Mount. And when he was a divinity student in his first year, he was asked to put down what was going to be his mission as a social Gospel minister. He said, 'My mission is to deal with unemployment, slums and economic insecurity.' Civil rights was not even on the list."

---Clayborne Carson, 

 history professor at Stanford University 

and editor of "The Autobiography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,"

http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2011_spr/caron_talk.htm

Martin Luther King was well-grounded in the history of the Social Gospel from his college studies.  While in school, King offered a balanced response to the Social Gospel as presented by Walter Rauschenbusch pointing out both it's strengths and weaknesses.   


However, King found that the theological foundations of the Social Gospel addressed his own desire for social change in this world  with his deep Christian values.  His readings of the Social Gospel literature had a strong influence on King and that influence can be seen in King's own writing and actions throughout his life.





Excerpt From:
 The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Clayborne Carson, ed
 (New York: Warner Books, 1998). 

I spent a great deal of time [at Crozer Theological Seminary ] reading the works of the great social philosophers. I came early to Walter Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis, which left an indelible imprint on my thinking by giving me a theological basis for the social concern which had already grown up in me as a result of my early experiences. of course there were points at which I differed with Rauschenbusch. I felt that he had fallen victim to the nineteenth-century "cult of inevitable progress" which led him to a superficial optimism concerning man's nature. Moreover, he came perilously close to identifying the Kingdom of God with a particular social and economic system--a tendency which should never befall the Church. But in spite of these shortcomings Rauschenbusch had done a great service for the Christian Church by insisting that the gospel deals with the whole man not only his soul but his body; not only his spiritual well-being but his material well-being.

 I think that preaching should grow out of the experiences of the people. Therefore, I, as a minister, must know the problems of the people that I am pastoring. Too often do educated ministers leave the people lost in the fog of theological abstraction, rather than presenting that theology in the light of the people's experiences. It is my conviction that the minister must somehow take profound theological and philosophical views and place them in a concrete framework. I must forever make the complex the simple. .

Excerpt from the website:  Martin Luther King Jr and the Global Freedom Struggle.

[SOURCE: http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_social_gospel/ ]

As a self-described ‘‘advocator of the social gospel,’’ King’s theology was concerned ‘‘with the whole man, not only his soul but his body, not only his spiritual well-being, but his material well-being’’ (Papers 6:72; Papers 5:422). His ministry built upon the social gospel of the Protestant church at the turn of the twentieth century and his own family’s practice of preaching on the social conditions of parishioners.

In an 18 July 1952 letter, Martin Luther King wrote to his future wife, Coretta Scott, about his beliefs as a minister and proclaimed: ‘‘Let us continue to hope, work, and pray that in the future we will live to see a warless world, a better distribution of wealth, and a brotherhood that transcends race or color. This is the gospel that I will preach to the world’’ (Papers 6:126). 

The early social gospel movement emerged during the rapidly industrializing American society following the Civil War. Recognizing the injustices of ‘‘triumphant capitalism,’’ some progressive ministers prescribed a large dose of ‘‘practical Christianity’’ to right these wrongs and directly address the social needs of the era (Hopkins, 121). One of the most prominent was Walter Rauschenbusch, a German-American who pastored a church in the Hell’s Kitchen district of New York in the late nineteenth century. 

In Christianity and the Social Crisis, Rauschenbusch traced the social gospel back to the lives of the Hebrew prophets. He stated that rather than ritualistic ceremonies, the prophets ‘‘insisted on a right life as the true worship of God’’ (Rauschenbusch, 5). This ‘‘right life’’ included the belief that ‘‘social problems are moral problems on a large scale’’ (Rauschenbusch, 6).

King read Christianity and the Social Crisis at Crozer Theological Seminary and wrote that its message ‘‘left an indelible imprint on my thinking by giving me a theological basis for the social concern which had already grown up in me’’ (Papers 4:474).

Social gospel proponent Henry Emerson Fosdick, popular pastor of New York’s Riverside Church during the 1930s and 1940s, was an early influence on King’s preaching. Fosdick felt that a church ‘‘that pretends to care for the souls of people but is not interested in the slums that damn them, the city government that corrupts them, the economic order that cripples them, and international relationships that, leading to peace or war, determine the spiritual destiny of innumerable souls’’ would receive divine condemnation (Fosdick, 25). He also emphasized that ‘‘the saving of society does depend on things which only high, personal religion can supply’’ (Fosdick, 38).

King’s family put him on a social gospel path, one that had already been cleared by his grandfather, A. D. Williams, and father, King, Sr. Williams, who was minister of Ebenezer Baptist Church at the turn of the twentieth century, helped form the Georgia Equal Rights League in February 1906, and was a founding member of Atlanta’s branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. King, Sr., succeeded Williams at Ebenezer and, in a 1940 address to the Atlanta Missionary Baptist Association, he envisioned a ‘‘time when every minister will become a registered voter and a part of every movement for the betterment of our people’’ (Papers 1:34). 

In his unpublished 1973 autobiography, King, Sr., asserted that his ministry was never ‘‘solely oriented toward life and death. It has been equally concerned with the here and now, with improving man’s lot in this life. I have therefore stressed the social gospel’’ (‘‘A Black Rebel’’). Other influences on King’s social gospel included Morehouse College president and minister Benjamin Mays, who regularly spoke against segregation in Tuesday morning chapel at the college during King’s years there. He chastised both African Americans who favored a gradualist approach to civil rights and whites who did not ‘‘want democracy to function in certain areas: especially in areas that involve Negroes’’ (Mays, ‘‘Three Great Fears’’).

 King’s studies of Reinhold Niebuhr’s writings at Crozer and Boston University tempered his belief in the social gospel’s typical confidence in liberal theology and its reliance on human agency as a primary force for change. ‘‘While I still believed in man’s potential for good, Niebuhr made me realize his potential for evil as well,’’ King later recalled (King, Stride, 99). He also appreciated Niebuhr’s assertion that ‘‘the glaring reality of collective evil’’ was one explanation for racial hatred (King, Stride, 99).

King arrived as pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church still ‘‘a firm believer in what is called the ‘social gospel’’’ (Papers 6:141). King tied this faith to the nonviolent protest that characterized the Montgomery bus boycott, noting that ‘‘Christ furnished the spirit and motivation’’ for the boycott (Papers 5:423).

 King took to task those churches that separated the secular realities of daily life from spiritual needs. His vision of the church’s role in social concerns was based on the early church’s identity, in his mind, as an institution that shaped social mores and conditions. King believed that God would harshly judge the church’s apathy on these matters and, conversely, praise those clergy who would take public stands on issues confronting their parishioners’ everyday lives.

King remained a proponent of the social gospel despite the many setbacks the civil rights movement suffered in the later 1960s. In a speech delivered the day before his death, King asserted that ‘‘somehow the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones, and whenever injustice is around he must tell it’’ (King, ‘‘I’ve Been,’’ 213).

  

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