Quote of the Day

"Nor was the adoption of these methods of propagating our religion without its effect upon us.  The establishment of schools and hospitals and colleges in great centres, altered our conception of our work as colleges in great centres, altered our conception of our work as missionaries.  They called out large numbers of mission workers of a new type with new ideas of missionary work.  We began to hear such phrases as these:  the gospel of enlightenment, the gospel of healing, the social gospel, and in, in later of years, the gospel of sex equality.    Whilst we continued to speak of our medical and education work in the old way as designed to open doors and attract hearers, and to convert, we began also to speak of medical, educational and social work as forms of preaching the Gospel.  The uplift of the people was a gospel in itself. Christ came to raise mankind, and to raise mankind out of the slough of superstition and evil conditions was, we argued to preach and to practice His Gospel….We practiced the same theory in England in an age of great social upheaval.  Social service was a cry which held and attracted large numbers of the younger and the abler Christian minds, and to a very great extent the Church threw herself into this work.  A church was scarcely considered complete without large institutions, guilds, clubs, halls.  And all of these things were urged upon the generosity of churchmen on the assurance that their provision would prepare the way for Christ. 

We have now had many years' experience of the method of approach, and it is becoming increasingly plain, it is, indeed, already commonly acknowledged, that the Church has not, by these social activities, brought men in any great degree within the sphere of its spiritual influence.  It has not succeeded along this road in imparting that spiritual life which it exists to minister.  Many deplore the obvious fact that, while the institutions have done much valuable work, the great mass of those who have used them have not drawn nearer to the Church or to Christ.  The churches which supported them most strongly have increased neither in number nor in spiritual power in anything like the proportion which the energy thrown into this social work presupposed.  

This is not really surprising; for it is extremely easy to divorce social reform and the alleviation of suffering from religion.  How easily they can be divorced is proved by the common fact that both at home and abroad the Church is being supplanted in these social activities by governments which promote education, and support activities by governments which promote education, and support hospitals ad schemes of industrial reform subsidized from public funds without any religious purpose.  Social reform is not necessarily Christian, and schemes for the amelioration of the conditions of life certainly do not necessarily lead men to Christ, even if they are set on foot by Christian men with the most serious Christian intention."

- Roland Allen

From his book The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church