Demystifying the “Social Gospel: God’s Ultimate Act of Socializing”

In my first book, A Story of Rhythm and Grace, I wrote that I had lived in two worlds: performing in popular music, where racial tolerance was prized, and serving as a pastor in predominantly white evangelical churches that preached love of God and neighbor. Yet I found more genuine racial harmony on stage while touring than inside church buildings or among my white ministry colleagues. My lived reality was that the secular world of rock and roll was more welcoming and affirming than the institution built on the command to love one’s neighbor. The book was not an indictment of the Church; it was an observation about it.

One of my white ministry colleagues, whom I asked to endorse the book, politely refused, stating that it sounded like I was calling for “The Social Gospel.” I had known this person for years, yet the response suggested I had somehow lost my way. If you are unfamiliar with the term, Walter Rauschenbusch, a 19th-century Baptist minister, popularized the term Social Gospel because he believed that, for Christianity to be internally consistent, it must apply the teachings of Jesus—especially love, justice, and service—to reform society and eliminate systemic injustice.

Fast-forwarding to today, many in the evangelical tradition believe the Social Gospel misdirects the Church’s mission from evangelism to left-wing political activism. They argue that while Christians should care for the poor and fight injustice, a Christian’s primary mission is to share their faith. In contrast, I believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ begins with a supreme act of socializing. In my view, when we think about socializing, we usually imagine pretty ordinary scenes—grabbing coffee with a friend, chatting at a party, or catching up after a long week. But underneath all that small talk and laughter is something more profound.

To truly socialize is to tune your life to someone else’s rhythm, producing a harmonic connection between your heart and theirs. And in that sense, the Christian story of God becoming human might just be the greatest act of harmony and socializing the world has ever known. That is why, for people at Bridging Austin, socializing isn’t just about being in the same room as others. For now, our meetups are happening mainly online. It’s about finding balance between voices, learning to listen, and creating harmony from diversity.

Theologically speaking, that is exactly what Christians believe God did through Jesus. God didn’t remain a distant band leader conducting from the heavens. He stepped into the song himself. He immersed himself in our rhythms and our noise, our discord and our joy. He experienced every sound of our humanness, from our laughter to our tears.

So it is wise to remember this. Jesus was not a passive observer of human affairs. He was right in the middle of life’s music, even the “normal stuff,” like attending dinners, celebrating weddings, walking the streets of Capernuam to talk with anyone willing to listen. His life was like a musical score, a mix of social connections, meaningful conversations, and spontaneous gatherings, interspersed with quiet moments. He sang harmony with fishermen, with skeptics, with outcasts. His presence tuned people’s lives toward something richer and more whole.

What matters most in the context of the Social Gospel is who he chose to socialize with. Jesus didn’t just spend time with people in tune with the “hip units,” such as the economically well-to-do or the powerful. He drew near to the people the world considered offbeat and out of key: tax collectors, the sick, the poor, and those otherized for whatever reason. He turned social dissonance into harmony, bringing together people who were never supposed to share the same table, as was the case with the Samaritan woman in the book of John. In today’s vernacular, Jesus was the one who’d place a loudspeaker by everyone’s ear, no matter how far away they were, so every note was heard.

Think about how remarkable that is. If God simply wanted to connect with humanity in some way, that could have been done from a distance—like sending messages from the clouds, performing miracles from afar, keeping the perfect melody sung in heaven uncorrupted by our imperfections. Instead, He chose to enter the jam session of human life—imperfect, unpredictable, and beautifully real. That’s not just communication; that’s a living example of Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s “Communitas.”

For a brief refresher, Frankl believed that genuine community arises from a process in which individuals unite around shared meaning and values rather than social proximity alone, thereby creating bonds through collective purpose and mutual responsibility. This form of bonding stems from what I call, in my forthcoming book Living in The Shadow Love, an “empathetic worldview,” in which people transcend their individual concerns to connect authentically with others in pursuit of something greater than themselves. He called that Communitas; I call that “Bridging.”