Christian Social Witness

In Volume 10 of The New Church’s Teaching Series priest and historian Harold Lewis surveys the social teachings of Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church, presenting a broad historical overview of Anglicanism’s vision of a righteous social order, including the challenges of the new millennium. Lewis asserts that social justice and concern for the poor and marginalized is not an option for Christians, but is integral to the gospel. He begins with a discussion of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, emphasizing God’s concern for the physical and material—as well as the spiritual—well-being of all people. In two historical chapters Lewis traces manifestations of the social gospel in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, including the writings of theologians like F.D. Maurice and William Temple, the work of the Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in England, and the civil rights movement in America. Later chapters discuss the challenges of a new social order that face the church today because of liberation theology, third-world debt and economic justice, and questions of race, gender, and human sexuality. In these chapters Lewis explores ways in which the church has influenced the lives of those who have struggled for equality and justice in the face of discrimination, including the poor, women, African Americans and other people of color, and gay and lesbian people. Cowley Publications.