Greg Johnson

Lutheran pastor Samuel Aughey: whatever states allow, Christ still commands moral suasion; slavery left alone won't die out. "Not my business" works for a neighbour's pesticide usage. Less so for owning a human soul. How can you use your voice? #lutheran #slavery #libertarian #christ #history

Spurgeon, appealing for starving Lancashire mill workers: grace breaks our selfishness until the rich stop thinking their riches are their own. Today we're taught to fear the state's hand on our wallet. Christ's hand, less so. How can you help? #baptist #spurgeon

Free Church leader Robert Candlish: a church using its gifts of zeal and love would be a hive of bees, out in the wilderness, bringing back blessings. In the text, he also lamented how short real Christianity falls. Today, saying so means you hate the Bride. Whom can you kiss? #christian

Puritan Richard Stock: the magistrate exists chiefly fwidows, orphans and the poor. The fence is for saplings, not oaks. Today the oaks feel terribly oppressed, by aid to the poor, by queues, by inconvenience generally. Whose fence might you mend this week? #christian #usaid #bible #puritan

Congregationalist minister Samuel Hopkins: everyone who supported the slave trade, even in ignorance, was an emissary of Satan. Today we doubt the devil exists or blame him for the church sound system. Either way, what we let happen to others goes unexamined. #congregationalist #slavery

Spurgeon: the Philippian jailer's first fruit of repentance was washing the wounds of the men he'd jailed, before he was even baptized. Ours tends to be salt, "told you so," and blaming the magistrates. Whose wounds have you washed? #christian #baptist #repentance

Puritan Edward Leigh: if you can afford what you fancy, you can afford mercy, and pleading poverty to God adds lying to stinginess. Today we audit the poor instead. Is that a phone? A decent coat? A car that starts? What’s in your purse? #christian #presbyterian

Martyr-bishop Hugh Latimer: our abundance exists to relieve our poor neighbours' misery. Today their misery is cited mostly as grounds for moving them somewhere else. A bold new reading of 2 Corinthians. #christian #anglican #puritan #refugees #bible

Puritan William Gouge on Hebrews 13:1–3: to brotherly love add hospitality, care for the sick and imprisoned, intercession for the oppressed, prayer for all. We all endorse love. It's the rest of the list that arrives with terms, conditions and acceptable diseases. #christian #puritan

Alfred Tucker, Anglican missionary bishop in East Africa, pressed colonial officials to stop returning runaway slaves and to abolish slavery outright. Inconvenient both for those sure missionaries were excusing slavery and for those now sure slavery “not that bad” . #anglican #holiness #gospel

Nonconformist John Collinges, in Poole's Annotations: if those who won't welcome strangers go to the devil, what of those who make them strangers? Timely, given our zeal for banishment. Hell's keenest doctrinal defenders still mostly fret about skipped quiet times. #christian #refugees #bible

Congregationalist pastor Edward Lawrence: those who have ventured to the farthest verge of woe are quickest to see want next door. Today "charity begins at home" means the family, full stop. Lazarus at the gate is presumably someone else's household. #christian #congregationalist #bible #compassion

Presbyterian abolitionist John Rankin (1793-1886): Sabbath schools for the enslaved were broken up by men with whips, clubs and guns. Revisionists now cite those Sunday schools as proof of slavery's gentler side. Somehow the clubs never make the brochure. How can you protect kids today? #christian

Matthew 25: why the right hand? David Thomas (1813–1894) notes it's not doctrine: Christ was hungry, and you fed him or didn't. We'll casserole a fellow churchgoer, but hungry strangers moving nearer? Suddenly it's Scrooge asking about the treadmills. #congregationalist #bible #compassion

Puritan vicar William Whately: search any town and most households are stuck fast in the mire of want. Say that now and people sniff for an agenda. His: pity for families caught in the usurer's wax, by others' scheming or their own folly. How can you show mercy in the market? #puritan #presbyterian

Puritan John Bunyan: always selling for as much as you can get isn't done with an eye to God's glory. He saw the cruelty in hard bargains. Some cite "2,000 years of church teaching" minus this bit. Others assume the Reformed never had any decency to cite. #reformed #theology #compassion #puritan

Anglican cleric A.N. Bethune, later Bishop of Toronto, on Corinth: the rich feasted at communion while the poor went hungry. Paul: shall I praise you? Certainly not. Today's rebuke goes, efficiently, to whoever mentions the hungry. But who’s at margins of *your* feasts? #anglican

Free Church of Scotland minister James Stalker: Jesus commanded love of enemies and forgiveness of injuries, on pain of going unforgiven yourself. Utterly new, he said. Still is, apparently. Civic life runs on the grudge as a renewable resource. Whom are you holding out on? #christan #lordsprayer

William Jay, English Congregationalist minister, on enjoying and improving one's life: eluding misery means hiding from our own flesh — pure religion visits the afflicted. Some Christian circles today lament being surrounded by misery and conclude the fix is keeping family away from it. #christian

Charles Simeon, Anglican co-founder of the Church Missionary Society, thought interest fine but exploiting a neighbour's need worthy of "utmost abhorrence." Now that abhorrence lands not on the exploiting, but on whoever mentions it. How can you be kind in the market today? #missions #anglican

John Calvin on Hebrews 13:2's stranger-entertaining angels: skeptics miss the point — per Matthew 25, we receive Christ himself in the poor. Recently told that *praying* for refugees is "an extremely complex issue." Christ, now a foreign policy dilemma. #johncalvin #refugees #christian #bible

Robert Horne, 17th-century Oxford chaplain: hoarding surplus while others starve is theft, even murder — "such thieves eat the poor at their tables of excess." Today's version of that disdain mostly targets anyone who says the poor's suffering is our problem. WhocanUfeed? #christian #compassion

Martin Luther on Psalm 1:2: "Thou shalt not kill" means positive kindness to neighbour, not just restrained anger. Today's "biblical manhood" limits duty to one's household, while counseling rehearses grievances against whole classes so we watch their demise comfortably. Who can you help? #lutheran

James Balmford, 16th-century Presbyterian minister: plague survivors who deny contagion, do poison others and deny God's providence. Christians (CN) now say ADHD meds are unnecessary — beaten via "discipline." Same spirit: your survival, everyone's proof. #masks #presbyterian #conspiracy

Augustus Strong, Baptist theologian, insisted the ‘true Church’ was the one burned by the Inquisition, not the one lighting fires — 30,000 punished, 8,000 burned. Apparently news to anyone who hears ‘religious conviction’ and reaches for ‘Inquisition apologist.’ Truly inspired literacy. #baptist

Calvin (16th-century Calvinist): empty ceremonies worthless; true worship is upright living and neighborly aid. Modern theology has innovatively created elaborate Sunday afternoon rubrics leaving mysteriously no room for neighbor-care. Truly inspired exegesis. #calvinist #johncalvin #presbyterian

Houston (Reformed Presbyterian, Ireland): Christians are bound to the suffering. Today, we’ve helpfully added ideological tests first. Inspired theology. #persecutedchurch #christian #hebrews

Bersier (French Reformed minister): leisure for the rich, ceaseless toil for the poor—shouldn’t that leisure address suffering? Modern: social media eloquence suffices. Inspired theology. #reformedtheology #christian #lazarus

Farrar (Anglican dean): Christ summoned outcasts, fed hungry, embraced lepers. Modern CN pastors: lamenting these outcasts plot takeover. Quite inspired reversal. #anglican #jesus #friendofsinners #welcome #christian

Boardman: Providence put Bunyan in jail to produce Pilgrim’s Progress, and Howard in prison to produce the reformer of hospitals and prisons. Suffering as preparation for changing society. Today’s political prisoners are locked incommunicado. No Birmingham letters emerging from those conditions.

DeWitt (Presbyterian, Princeton): charity and Gospel are one thing. We’ve ingeniously split them anyway. Quite the modern improvement. #presbyterian #christian #charity

Edgar (Reformed Dutch pastor): any system binding the soul to prevent growth, recreation, mental culture is corrupt. It can happen in slavery (it’s wrong, y’all) and even in a small business run by a Scrooge. How can you help workers fully develop? #labor #christian #dutchreformed

Polhill: if you’re rational, Adopted, Blessed—charity abounds in you. If not you, who shall do it? Modern version: earned it myself; welfare (even veteran’s programs) are socialism; the very news of suffering is a threat. Strikingly inspired moral inversion. #anglican #grace #charity #calvinist

Peters (NYC Reformed pastor): Torah and Talmud rank alms and benevolence above all other laws. Modern discourse somehow missed this. Perhaps we decided the ancients were wrong, or simply stopped reading. #reformedtheology #bible #calvinist

Martin Luther: faith, divine trust, neighbor-love invite persecution. The least of these in modern times is “virtue signaling” accusations. Brilliantly efficient—dismiss compassion without argument. Rather diabolical, that.

Tillotson: rich man blamed not for injustice but lack of charity. Modern twist? We invent reasons poverty is deserved, or blame scapegoats, thus dodging moral duty. Genuinely brilliant moral inversion, which is to say, thoroughly wretched. #anglican #bible #christian #foreignaid

Hall reads “give us our daily bread” as communal. God gives more than we need precisely to exercise the grace of giving and open the opportunity of reward. The “us” and “our” are doing considerable work that individualist readings prefer to ignore. #christian #congregational #lordsprayer

Bayly’s confession: allowing someone hungry, cold, and naked to leave your door unaided—their lean cheeks pleading pity, your heart unmoved—is to deceive and suffer Christ himself. Contemporary controversy has moved the argument back a step: whether anyone is actually hungry. Convenient. #gospel

Cyril reads Matthew 25 simply: the condemned did the opposite of what the saints were praised for. Works righteousness remains vigorously policed. Doing the literal opposite of feeding the hungry passes without theological comment. Cyril considered the connection worth making explicit. #christian

Daille: the giver gains more than the recipient receives; the one who refuses charity loses more than the one refused. The food given would have been destroyed by moths anyway. The one who withholds loses eternal life and glory. This accounting features rarely in sermons. #christian #bible