On this day in Christian History, we go back to year 1857 and travel to New York and mark the birth of Charles Sheldon, one of the leaders of the Social Gospel movement. In the winter of 1896 Sheldon developed a sermon story that he read as a weekly series from the pulpit of Central Congregational Church in Topeka, Kansas. The unifying theme of these sermons was based on posing the question, "what would Jesus do?" when facing moral decisions. He drew some inspiration from William T. Stead's book If Christ came to Chicago! The sermons were later fictionalized into a novel, In His Steps, which introduced the principle of "What Would Jesus Do?" This led to a way of living that became popular at the turn of the 20th century and had a revival almost one hundred years later.
The Baptist minister Walter Rauschenbusch, is widely viewed as the chief architect of the Social Gospel, acknowledged the importance Sheldon placed on imitating Jesus. Rauschenbusch's view of Christianity was that its purpose was to spread the Kingdom of God, not through a "fire and brimstone" style of preaching, but by the Christlike lives led by its members. Echoing Francis of Assisi’s philosophy of preaching with deeds rather than words, ‘It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching’ this was an important evolution in Baptist theology. Rauschenbusch and then Sheldon did not understand Jesus' death as an act of substitutionary atonement; but came to believe that Jesus died "to substitute love for selfishness as the basis of human society. The significance of Sheldon's work , was in underlining the realization that it is hard to live a Christ-like life, given the temptations of modern society. However, he felt that it did not demand what he believed was a necessary transformation of social institutions. The concept of institutional sin was to be developed later by the Latin American liberation theologians.
Sheldon was a very skilled communicator and in touch with the concerns of middle-class America at the end of the century. Of the social issues Sheldon espoused during his lifetime, the two he was most passionate about were equality and prohibition. He believed that all persons were equal and should be treated as such. He pioneered welcoming blacks into a mainstream protestant churches. He was also committed to fair treatment for Jews and Catholics, and proclaimed the equality of men and women. A strong supporter of the feminist struggle for equal rights, he urged women to enter politics. He also pushed for full equality in the workplace
In the 1990s WWJD bracelets became a popular item among young people 1990 when a youth group leader at Calvary Reformed Church in Michigan, named Janie Tinklenberg, began a grassroots movement to help the teenagers in her group remember the phrase. It spread worldwide in the 1990s among Christian youth, who wore bracelets bearing the initials WWJD. Later, a sequel bracelet was generated with the initials "FROG," to provide an answer to "WWJD." FROG was an acronym for "Fully Rely On God’ and publishers increased sales of the public domain book In His Steps and tied it in with marketing of "What would Jesus do?" items. In 2005, Garry Wills wrote "What Jesus Meant", in which he examined "What Would Jesus Really Do", The expression has become a snowclone, sometimes for humorous effect. A snowclone is a cliché that also becomes a phrasal template so What Would Jesus Buy?, "What Would Johnny Cash Do?", and "What would Tintin do?" became popular. It also became a leadership principle given Jesus' methodology of going to the marketplace to preach and lead by example.
To listen to the podcast visit our website at www.pogp.net.
