The Social Gospel movement revisited : consequences for the church

This article introduces South African churches to the reasons why elements of the late 19th and early 20th century Social Gospel movement encourages local churches to participate in their respective communities through social contribution. The article argues that the Social Gospellers understood Christian responsibility as an imperative of ‘participatio Jesu’ through social integration of living an ethos of oikoumenē. The history of the Social Gospel should be a relevant influence on mainline churches to understand the tension in the decision to participate or withdraw from social contribution today.This article is a reworked version of a part of a PhD thesis titled ‘Globalized mission and the Social Gospel of Jesus: A postcolonial optic’, completed in the Department of New Testament Studies, Faculty of Theology, at the University of Pretoria, with Prof. Ernest van Eck as supervisor. (http://hdl.handle.net/2263/46025)http://www.hts.org.zaam201