Social Activism and Politics

The Brotherhood of the Kingdom was a small group of men who met to get political activism worked into the mainline denominations. Their victories included the Federal Council of Churches, which changed its name to the National Council of Churches when the FCC was too openly in favor of Communists.

This became known as the Social Gospel Movement, which reached its peak with the Rauschenbusch lectures at Yale on the Theology of the Social Gospel Movement. The name went away, but the agenda did not.

I believe the Methodists had the first social statement denominational statement, which was quite similar to the FCC's statement. The other established denominations followed.

The program of FDR's administration was the same as the Brotherhood of the Kingdom's, Methodists', and FCC's.

Hillary Clinton's background is often listed as Methodist, but one of the pastors influenced her to study the social activist magazine of the denomination.

 "As a teen, she visited inner-city Chicago churches with the youth pastor, Don Jones, her spiritual mentor until his death in 2009." 

She kept those magazines for many years, and they were packed up and followed her on her moves.

“I am grateful for the gift of personal salvation and for the great obligation of the Social Gospel to use the gift of grace wisely, to reflect the love of God and to follow the example of Jesus Christ to the greater good of God’s beloved community,” she said. “That’s what led me to devote my life in the ways I could to serving others.”
http://religionnews.com/2016/09/08/clinton-describes-activist-social-justice-faith-to-baptists/

 A. D. Mattson taught the Social Gospel Movement his
entire time at Augustana College and Seminary.

In a similar way, the Church Growth Movement is no longer a popular term, but the agenda is so pervasive, no one needs to use it anymore. The Protestant denominations have taken over the agenda and the pathetic theology behind it, without questioning it.

If someone thinks that going to a mainline church - or any other church - has no influence on and individual, look at Hillary Clinton as an example.

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1908 Methodist Social Creed[edit]

The Methodist Episcopal Church stands:

For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life.

For the principles of conciliation and arbitration in industrial dissensions.

For the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational diseases, injuries and mortality.

For the abolition of child labor.

For such regulation of the conditions of labor for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community.

For the suppression of the "sweating system."

For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practical point, with work for all; and for that degree of leisure for all which is the condition of the highest human life.

For a release for [from] employment one day in seven.

For a living wage in every industry.

For the highest wage that each industry can afford, and for the most equitable division of the products of industry that can ultimately be devised.

For the recognition of the Golden Rule and the mind of Christ as the supreme law of society and the sure remedy for all social ills.

When the Federal Council of Churches adopted the social creed in December 1908, they added the following phrase at the end:

To the toilers of America and to those who by organized effort are seeking to lift the crushing burdens of the poor, and to reduce the hardships and uphold the dignity of labor, this Council sends the greeting of human brotherhood and the pledge of sympathy and of help in a cause which belongs to all who follow Christ.^[3]