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Additional ResourcesCHAPTER 4: OLIVER JACKSON: CHAMPION OF THE SOCIAL GOSPEL IN NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR
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IntroductionDuring the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, cities in the western world experienced a population explosion and a largely unchecked growth in business and industry. People who lived and worked in these cities were greatly affected by the changes. While they provided employment opportunities to new European immigrants and people who had moved there from the country, they were also, in the words of the Christian Church historian Mark Knoll, "places where social services often broke down, where incredible deprivation lurked just beyond the boundaries of prosperity, and where rootlessness and alienation were becoming ways of life." (1) The changes brought by the growth of cities called for a new way of responding to society's needs. The Salvation Army was a pioneer in responding to the social needs in the United Kingdom and North America, including Newfoundland and Labrador. The Roman Catholic Church, in writings by the Pope called "encyclicals," also drew attention to the needs of the working class. Many members of Protestant Churches in Europe and North America responded to the new social needs based on a particular interpretation of the Gospel, called "The Social Gospel." The Social Gospel movement called for businesses, institutions, and organizations to act according to Christ's teachings.
Enter
Walter Rauschenbush The purpose of all that Jesus said and did and hoped to do was always the social redemption of the entire life of the human race on earth.... Christianity set out with a great social ideal. The live substance of the Christian religion was the hope of seeing a divine social order established on earth. (2)
Click here to view a larger image. Fig. 1: Walter Rauschenbusch, Theologian of the Social Gospel (3) http:spider.georgetowncollege.edu/htallant/courses/his338/students/kpotter/walter.jpg
The
Social Gospel in Newfoundland and Labrador
Jackson (1887-1937) had come as a young lay minister from Wales to Newfoundland and Labrador. After some service in the Methodist Church, as the United Church was called in Newfoundland and Labrador prior to 1925, he received additional theological training in Montreal and was eventually ordained as a minister of his church in Newfoundland and Labrador. From 1918 until his premature death in 1937, he served pastorates in Brigus, Freshwater, and Bell Island. He also became the Superintendent of Missions and Field Secretary of Christian Education, travelling restlessly the coasts of Newfoundland. Jackson also edited the Methodist Monthly Greeting, the Methodist church paper for Newfoundland and Labrador.
Click here to view a larger image. Fig. 3: Oliver Jackson with Summer School students Apostle of the Outports: A Resume of the Life and Work of Rev. Oliver Jackson, B.D., O.B.E. , p. 18.
Throughout his ministry and in many of his articles, Reverend Jackson emphasized two things as most important for Newfoundland and Labrador: self-help through education and cooperation. Jackson considered education as "the greatest factor in evolution," and he saw in it a solution for Newfoundland's serious social problems. Jackson felt that the future of Newfoundland and Labrador belonged to its youth and considered the education of youth a most vital task. Tirelessly, he sought to establish organizations at the church level that would prepare youth. And the most promising among these students he prepared in summer school programs for higher education at Memorial College, the forerunner of Memorial University. To one of those students he wrote these words: "I'm sending you a copy of Glover's Jesus of History and The Social Principles of Jesus, by Rauschenbusch. Make time to read these during the winter and let me hear from you in the Spring about your College course." Despite much work, he still found the time to counsel the best of his students for future leadership in church and society. Two people he took under his personal care and instruction deserve special mention: Herbert Pottle, the future Commissioner for Public Welfare and later a minister in the Smallwood government, and the eminent fisheries scientist Wilfred Templeman. A former colleague and friend remembered Reverend Jackson as follows: He had more influence in shaping my life and tastes than any other man or woman outside my own family. When he came to my home village, we were fast becoming a bunch of hoodlums, organized in gangs and fit for anything. Mr. Jackson took us off the road and set us thinking, studying, playing along different lines. .... During his ministry I gave myself to Christ and His service. I owe much to the man who loaned me books, who talked with me and gave me advice when I needed it sorely, and who was always willing to be a friend. 3
Jackson loved the working people of Newfoundland and Labrador, and his anger at what he saw as unfairness toward them made him rebel against existing circumstances. His belief that a society should act from Christian principles was at the heart of his fight against unfairness. Two years before his tragic death, Jackson wrote, We find it difficult to understand people who are sure that fighting liquor, dancing and gambling is a Christian's duty, but to fight corrupt politics, the Truck System in production, injustice to women, or to try to change the impoverished conditions of many of our fishermen--such as these features do not belong to the minister's duties. This type of reasoning reveals either a lack of faith in the power and range of the Gospel, or elements of fear and cowardice in our Christian experience, or brands us as fundamentally insincere in our confession of loyalty. 4 For Jackson any authentic spiritual awakening could not remain purely private but was also "an awakening of social ideals and a social passion for righteousness."
Fig. 5: Jackson visiting a friend's garden at Brigus Apostle of the Outports: A Resume of the Life and Work of Rev. Oliver Jackson, B.D., O.B.E. , p. 5.
The
Co-operative Movement There are many who fear the idea of Co-operation. The fact is that it is the most hopeful Christian idea arising out of the welter of economic greed and failure today. We can find, through Co-operative Societies, the way by which there can be a release of the motive power of the spirit of our people such as can rejuvenate and reconstruct our producers and our country. And when it is all over the finger of the great Lover of Men will be still pointing to the Co-operative Way as the way of social and economic salvation. It is so because He said, 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.' Love is the Law of Life. 5 Jackson died in service to the people. After attending the first Newfoundland-wide conference on co-operatives, he visited churches on Newfoundland's isolated south coast. Together with a student minister he travelled on a 9-metre, decked mission boat, the Mizpah. By midweek, about a one and a half kilometres from West Point, the single cylinder six-and-a-half horsepower engine failed in a strong southwest wind and rough seas. The boom of the motor-assisted, single-masted boat knocked Jackson overboard. Harris, his student helper, attempted in vain to save him by steering the boat among the dangerous reefs. When huge waves lifted the mission boat and crushed it on the rocks, both men lost their lives.
Notes
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