6 - Full Circle
Social Theology and criticism in the Inter-War Years
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
Summary
We have, as a divided Church, been impotent to deal with the broken fellowships in political society that brought our nation to the verge of disaster in Ireland, in the industrial sphere with the labour wars; in the community with its extremely rich and extremely poor; and in the great feminine movement. We have been out of touch with, and that despite our most earnest endeavours to reach, the large community of labour.
John White, sermon, 1917In 1926, the Church of Scotland's General Assembly was invited to congratulate the Scottish Christian Social Union on the twenty-fifth anniversary of its founding by David Watson in 1901. Watson became Chairman and was able to enlist Church leaders such as John Marshall Lang, R. H. Story and George Adam Smith into the Union as well as others who were known for their concern about social problems. The aims of the Union were:
To claim for the Christian law the ultimate authority to rule social practice; to affirm the social mission of the Church, and make practical suggestions as to how that mission may best be fulfilled; to investigate, where necessary the social and economic facts in different departments of the national life, and to study how to apply the truths and principles of Christianity to the problems arising therefrom; to take action, as occasion arises, for the furtherance of specific reforms.
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- Information
- The Kirk and the KingdomA Century of Tension in Scottish Social Theology 1830-1929, pp. 101 - 122Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011