The 20th and early 21st centuries have seen a number issues which are of importance for Christians gaining wider domestic and European significance. These include the development of the welfare state, as well as its partial dismantling, and the continuing commitment towards the establishment since the 1960s of an equality paradigm that overarches all main areas of public life, such as employment, education, access to goods and services, (including education and housing) advertising policy. It is a paradigm that covers equality not only in relation to race and gender, but also in relation to ethnicity, religion and disability, with age now also on the horizon. In its extension to the more recent concept of social inclusion, it covers unemployment, homelessness and poor housing, relationships between local and national government, taxation, public services and welfare, urban regeneration schemes, rising crime and social dislocation, and issues relating to policing.
There has also been an increasing awareness of differential treatment between, as well as within, communities, the neglect of the idea of community and latterly the growing importance of community policy in urban areas, together with an increasing appreciation of the plight of many rural communities.
The latter part of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century saw the rise of the Christian socialist movement accompanied by a corresponding decrease in the evangelical Christian profile and missionary zeal as the influence of Marxism, socialism and statism made a major impact on Christian social thought and ushered in a period commonly referred to in terms of the ‘social gospel’. This period was characterised by evangelical introspection and a waning of evangelical influence and energy which was not really regained until the last few decades of the 20th century. Interestingly, towards the close of the 20th century evangelicals have again increasingly become involved in the call for social justice in urban priority areas, and they have also became important participants in the inner city debates concerning policing, crime, environment and poverty.
Other areas of concern where evangelicals have remained publicly engaged are education and access to education, issues of sexual morality, as well as the differential social impact of urbanisation and globalisation. Whilst these areas are important for Christians, they have also been the site of many domestic and European legal and political battles. Christians have made contributions to many of these areas and the Evangelical Alliance has sought to maintain support for such efforts. A selection of these areas are discussed in more detail below.
