Ben Byerly has just posted a summary of an article (by Ralph Winter) on the Evangelical polarization between social action and evangelism. It’s well worth the read. I thought this quote (from Winter) was especially outstanding:

I have not changed my mind at all about the primacy of evangelism and church planting. But I see that we are, to too great an extent, producing a self-collapsing Christianity, insofar as our converts are told that the only important thing to do is to win more converts. It’s like getting the people into the armed forces, and they ask what they are supposed to do. “Oh, well, you are supposed to recruit.” Then they recruit more and more people, and set them also to recruiting still other people. Some day someone says, “Aren’t we supposed to be fighting a war?” “Oh yeah, there’s a war.” We sing songs all the time as if by repeating the same words a hundred times we can make them come true. Christ is so great for us, His cross is so important. All these things are true, but if that’s all we sing, if we don’t turn in the other direction to do God’s will in this world, singing is not enough. One of the pastors at my church said Christians argue all the time how to do church. They don’t talk about how to be church in the world. And that to me is a result of the impoverishment for many years of a lower-class standing and no opportunity to make major changes…

…Evangelicals fritter away more money per year than Bill Gates gives away. Evangelicals often don’t think clearly about what they could do with the resources they have. They have been buying boats and second houses and adding on to their homes. Yet, in the real world it’s the sixth grade kids that are thinking about slavery in Africa. It seems like everyone is thinking about demolishing world problems—except the church. It is as if one could go to church for another 100 years the way things are going and never hear about poverty in Africa, never hear that 45 million people every day in Africa are withdrawn from the workplace because of malaria alone, either because they are sick or are caring for someone who is sick. If we did hear, we might not hear how Evangelicals can deal with it. When we are losing 45 million people in Africa out of the workforce every day, even if Africa had no other problems, it would be a poor continent. We don’t ever hear about that. [Editorial insert (Ben): On the other hand, all people seem to hear about Africa—if they hear anything—is the poverty, war, and crisis.] We may not even pray for malaria scientists. You are supposed to go out of your church door, stay legal, be generous and thoughtful. Don’t mess with society.

I agree entirely. For a church movement that separates itself from the world in so many ways (see: contemporary Christian music), it’s disgusting how the worst parts of the Western world (consumerism, isolationism, and general love of money) have infected it.