A few years ago I had a conversation with Roger Thurow while he was writing his book Enough: Why The World’s Poorest Starve In An Age of Plenty. His first question to me was, “Why is it that evangelicals are just now becoming involved in social justice issues?”
Roger’s impression was that the only thing millions of evangelicals cared about was evangelism and any interest in issues of poverty hunger disease and orphans was relatively new.  As we talked, I realized that his perspective was probably common.  After all, the largest and most visible ministries and organizations were those focused on evangelism.
While World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, and a few others were familiar to Roger, for the most part his impression of evangelicalism was shaped by Campus Crusade, Navigators, Jews for Jesus, Billy Graham Association, Christian television, and a host of other ministries. Yet, for hundreds of years evangelicals had been at the forefront of social movements – starting with William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect.
Why had that element of evangelicalism been completely subsumed by thousands of organizations interested primarily in saving souls?  Further, why had evangelical philanthropy become so defined by that single interest?
Two things come to mind.
First, dispensational theology became widespread and influential through the broad use of the Scofield Reference Bible and the establishment of Moody Bible Institute (1886), Philadelphia College of the Bible (1913), and Dallas Theological Seminary (1924). Spreading rapidly through the growing network of independent Baptist and non-denominational churches, dispensational doctrine supported the urgency to get the Gospel to those who had not heard.
Why? Part of that urgency was the deeply held belief that once the Gospel had been preached to all nations the end would come. “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations” and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24:14). That single verse was a powerful stimulus to “finish the task.” In fact, that soon became the defining phrase and compelling motivation for North American missions and evangelical giving for decades.
Second, the end of World War II precipitated the formation of hundreds of new parachurch organizations whose founders had been shaped by exposure to dispensational teaching through ministries to the military – like The Navigators.
Dallas Seminary and Moody Institute became major trainers of these new parachurch leaders and the theology of reaching the world was at the heart of their work. Of course, there were many elements that contributed to the expansion of parachurch organizations but many of them were fueled with a theology that fit the parachurch mission perfectly.
The combination of dispensational theology and parachurch organization has set the pattern and standard for evangelical giving ever since.
But that is changing.  I’ll write about that later.