A Segregated Gospel?

I just received this week's World Magazine. Much of the issue is dedicated to the theme of Abolition - the upcoming movie Amazing Grace (which highlights William Wilberforce's work) in particular.

In reading through the magazine, I've found echoes of a question that we probably should be asking more often...

First, in an interview with Eric Metaxas (who wrote a recent biography of Wilberforce) comes this exchange:

WORLD: You have put Wilberforce in the Hall of Fame of social reform and justice. In fact, you assign him almost the biggest room in that house.

METAXAS: The world that Wilberforce was born into didn't even question the idea of slavery; in fact, the entire worldview of the British Empire was what we today call social Darwinism. The rich and the powerful preyed on and abused the poor and the weak. But Wilberforce saw that the gospel commanded those in power to help the powerless. He pulled this Christian idea right into the social and political spheres.

Wilberforce and his friends were so successful that today we take the idea of a social conscience for granted. Today we argue about how to help the poor and suffering—should the public or private sector take the lead? Of course Wilberforce was so successful that today doing good and helping the poor has become secularized. We've forgotten its roots, that it's a fundamentally Christian idea, brought to us by a Christian man and his friends two centuries ago.

WORLD: Christians on the left seem as enthusiastic about the Wilberforce story as those on right. How does he transcend our political debates?

METAXAS: In Wilberforce's day there was no division between what we today call the social gospel and evangelicalism. Anyone who was a Christian knew that sharing one's faith and helping the poor and suffering were two parts of the same thing—the gospel of Jesus Christ.[emphasis mine] Today those on the left love Wilberforce's social innovations and passion to help the downtrodden. Those on the right love his vibrant evangelicalism.

Then in the magazine's last article (which deals with response to the tornado that hit central Florida last week - too near my grandmother's home, incidentally) comes this bit:

Which churches will be best prepared to save bodies and souls when the next big disaster—hurricane, earthquake, terrorist attack, whatever—hits? Looking at what happened this month after a tornado killed 20 people in central Florida, the answer is clear: churches that already do community-based ministry.

This leads me to one of the questions the emerging movement has been trying to ask (but doing a poor job of, frankly) - why do Evangelicals feel compelled to separate the Gospel into the "spiritual part" and the "needs part"? Why, when the Kingdom of God that Jesus so often spoke of has already been initiated (but is not yet fulfilled) do we still insist on this dubious distinction?

Are we so afraid of someone misunderstanding us that they'll label us "social gospel" advocates? Are we so concerned with swinging the pendulum that far that we've gone too far in the opposite direction? I don't want to send warm bellies to Hell any more than the next Evangelical, but does that mean there's anything wrong with warming bellies in Jesus' name?

I'm sorry folks, but I've just got to ask:

What are we so afraid of?!

Later in the tornado article, the author relates this incident:

Twenty volunteers spent eight hours cleaning up five acres owned by a family that included an elderly man with congestive heart failure and his crippled wife. Their 35-year-old son asked how much the cleanup would cost them.

A pastor responded, "Fact is, it cost a whole bunch—but it was paid 2,000 years ago."

Hatushili