Protestant Social Teaching: An Introduction

“If we are to witness moral renewal in our societies, Protestants will have a major role to play, and I say that as a convicted Catholic. This volume, Protestant Social Teaching, comes as a revelation—a revelation that there is a coherent tradition of Protestant moral theology that can still offer concrete guidance to doctors and nurses, statesmen and judges, soldiers and policemen today. The essays on marriage, sexuality, life, dying, work, and the home are particularly insightful. Only by looking backward can we gain the perspective needed to move forward, and these essays offer a model of retrieval in service of practical discipleship. The result is a book that will benefit both Catholic and Protestant readers.”

– Ryan T. Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, author of When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment

For over one hundred years, the Roman Catholic Church has steadily curated a body of papal encyclicals, classic texts, and go-to answers on pressing moral issues of the day, that has come to be known as “Catholic Social Teaching.” Meanwhile, in Protestantism, mainline churches have steadily jettisoned nearly every historic Christian moral teaching in an effort to make the faith more “relevant” and progressive, while evangelicals, though still committed to Scripture, have often done little better in holding fast to the norms that used to guide faithful Christian discipleship when it came to love, war, and everything in between. However, Protestants too have a rich heritage of social teaching, if only they knew their own tradition, a heritage that dovetails on many points with Roman Catholic teaching, but is also inflected by the Reformation’s emphasis on the goods of the family and the nation.

Now, for the first time, we are planting a flag for “Protestant social teaching,” a coherent, catholic, biblical set of convictions about what it means to love one’s neighbor in both personal and political life. The essays in this volume span the breadth of human life, from birth to death, from work to welfare, while providing a clear moral compass on hot-button issues like abortion, just war, and environmental care. This volume brings together contributions from a dozen authors who have deeply studied these diverse moral issues from a classical Protestant standpoint, distilling their biblical and historical insights into short, accessible chapters that can guide the reflections of every pastor or Christian leader.