John Stott and the Lausanne covenant
Evangelical social responsibility defined
The International Congress on World Evangelization meets in Lausanne in July 1974 — Billy Graham's initiative, John Stott's theology — and produces a document that changes the direction of evangelical Christianity.
For much of the twentieth century, evangelical Protestantism has operated on a sharp distinction: evangelism saves souls; social action is the Social Gospel, which is liberal, which is compromise. The two do not belong together.
John Stott argues otherwise. With the precision of the Cambridge scholar he is and the passion of the pastor he has always been, he presses the congress toward a document that insists the church cannot choose between proclaiming the gospel and demonstrating it — that authentic Christian mission includes both the word and the deed, the proclamation and the presence, the announcement of the kingdom and the embodiment of its values.
The Lausanne Covenant is signed by thousands of evangelical leaders from over one hundred and fifty countries. Its statement on social responsibility — that in the mission of the church, evangelism is primary but social action is also necessary — is not universally accepted immediately. It takes decades to work through the implications.
But the document marks the turning point at which evangelical Christianity begins to recover what Menno Simons knew in the sixteenth century: that true evangelical faith cannot lie dormant, that it feeds the hungry and shelters the destitute and defends the poor, not as an addition to the gospel but as its expression.
“We affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty.”
— Lausanne Covenant, Paragraph 5, 1974 AD
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, Because he anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim release to the captives, Recovering of sight to the blind, To deliver those who are crushed,”
The gospel Jesus announced was for the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed.
He did not say: I have come to proclaim good news to the poor, but not to do anything about the poverty. The proclamation and the action belong together in his ministry — every healing, every feeding, every restoration of dignity is the kingdom arriving in a specific person's specific situation.
The Lausanne Covenant recovers what had been divided. Not the Social Gospel that swallows proclamation. Not the evangelism that ignores poverty. The whole gospel — proclaimed and demonstrated, announced and embodied.
What would your faith look like if the word and the deed were fully integrated — if you could not separate what you believe from what you do for the person in front of you?