“I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period.”

— Desmond Tutu

As quoted in God’s Mission in the World : An Ecumenical Christian Study Guide on Global Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals (2006) by The Episcopal Church Office of Government Relations and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Context: I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, ""Now is that political or social?"" He said, ""I feed you."" Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.

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Desmond Tutu 85

South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Priz… 1931

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Context: This age above all ages is a period in history when it should be our prime duty to preach the Gospel of Grace to all our fellow men and women. The love shown in Christ by our God to mankind should constrain all of us who are followers and disciples of Christ to do all in our power to see to it that the Message of Salvation is carried to those of our fellows for whom Christ Our Saviour was sacrificed but who have not had the benefit of hearing the good news. Since nobody can interfere in the realm of God we should tolerate and live side by side with those of other faiths.

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Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“Social Democracy preached against capitalism for half a century. After the November revolution the Reds had the opportunity to direct capitalism into the proper paths: but nothing happened!”

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Die Sozialdemokratie hat ein halbes Jahrhundert den Kampf gegen den Kapitalismus gepredigt. Nach der Novemberrevolution hatten die Roten Gelegenheit, den Kapitalismus in richtige Bahnen zu leiten: aber es geschah nichts!
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“We believe firmly in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. I can see no conflict between our devotion to Jesus Christ and our present action. In fact, I can see a necessary relationship. If one is truly devoted to the religion of Jesus he will seek to rid the earth of social evils. The gospel is social as well as personal.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: Stride Toward Freedom (1958); also quoted in The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1982), by Stephen B. Oates, pp. 81-82 note: 1950s

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Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

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“The gospel has been very imperfectly heard by any one to whom it has brought no other tidings than that of personal salvation. For in truth the individual is saved only when he is put into right relations to the community in which he lives, and the establishment of these right relations among men is the very work that Christ came to do. The individual gospel and the social gospel are therefore vitally related, inseparably bound together no more come to the man apart from the community, than life can come to the branch when it is separated from the vine.”

Washington Gladden (1836–1918) American pastor

Source: The Nation and the Kingdom (1909), pp. 10-11 http://books.google.com/books?id=MSg3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA10

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Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

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“For my part, while I am as convinced a Socialist as the most ardent Marxian, I do not regard Socialism as a gospel of proletarian revenge, nor even, primarily, as a means of securing economic justice. I regard it primarily as an adjustment to machine production demanded by considerations of common sense, and calculated to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all except a tiny minority of the human race.”

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Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 7: The Case for Socialism

“I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period.”

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