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Walter Rauschenbusch (view source)
Revision as of 02:57, September 12, 2015
, 02:57, September 12, 2015Biography of Unity Magazine, 1918
'''Walter Rauschenbusch''' (1861-1918) an American theologian was a major leader of the [[Social Gospel]] movement, the religious side of the [[Progressive Movement]] in the United States.
'''Walter Rauschenbusch''' (1861-1918) was an American theologian and a major leader of the [[Social Gospel]] movement, the religious side of the [[Progressive Movement]] in the United States.
His father, who came from a line of Lutheran ministers in Germany, immigrated to Americas and became a Baptist. Walter was bilingual, and was very well educated in American and German schools. He taught church history at Rochester Theological Seminary (1902-1918).
==Early Life==
Walter Rauschenbusch was born in Rochester, N. Y., on the 4th of October, 1861. He was the child of a minister, a descendant of a long line of ministers and university graduates. His father came to America in 1845 to work among the German immigrants who were then pouring into this country. For thirty years he was professor in the German department of the Rochester Theological Seminary.
For eleven years he worked in the tenement section of New York City, refusing flattering invitations to editorial and educational positions congenial to him. But he stayed to minister to the poor, the ignorant and the fallen. Caught in the toils of a Russian epidemic his ears were affected and the remainder of his life was largely spent in the silent chambers of the deaf. In 1901, he became a professor in the Rochester Theological Seminary. For five years his chair was that of the New Testament. In 1902 he took the chair of Church History.
==Work as an author==
In 1907 appeared his “Christianity and the Social Crisis,” a book recognized by the far-seeing and the in-seeing students as an epoch-making book which profoundly affected thinkers and preachers. It was a radicalism for which the times were waiting, a radicalism more searching, inspiring and imperative than that which hitherto had separated the “orthodox” from the “liberal” Christian. The Unitarian and the Universalist heresies about the nature of God, Christ, sin and the condition that awaited the soul after death, were remote and uninspiring compared to the radicalism of Professor Rauschenbusch. By the logic of the heart as well as of the head he transferred Christianity from a theological to a sociological basis. He made of Jesus not a theological abstraction but an Elder Brother troubled not with the refinements of philosophy but with the corruptions of society the wrongs of this life
In 1917, there came an enlargement and further application of this principle in his “Theology for the Social Gospel,” in which he reads into the great words of religion the new meaning.
The International Young Men's Christian Association in 1916 distributed over 20,000 copies of a little book prepared for their use by this man, entitled, "The Principles of Jesus." During the war, his books were translated into Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Japanese.
==Death==
In his death the “Forum Movement” has lost one of its most conspicuous and successful speakers. Those who heard him on such occasions well know how skillful he was in lifting debatable problems to non-debatable heights. He could reason but would not dispute. His statements were so clear that he had no need for argument.
==Further reading==
==Further reading==
* Dorrien, Gary. ''The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity 1900-1950'' (2003) [http://www.amazon.com/Making-American-Liberal-Theology-Modernity/dp/0664223559/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260106987&sr=1-excerpt and text search], ch 2
* Dorrien, Gary. ''The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity 1900-1950'' (2003) [http://www.amazon.com/Making-American-Liberal-Theology-Modernity/dp/0664223559/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260106987&sr=1-excerpt and text search], ch 2
===Primary sources===
===Primary sources===
*Rauschenbusch. ''A Theology for the Social Gospel'' (1917). [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=14075615 online edition]; also [http://www.amazon.com/Theology-Social-Gospel-Library-Theological/dp/0664257305/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197517741&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
*Rauschenbusch. ''A Theology for the Social Gospel'' (1917). [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=14075615 online edition]; also [http://www.amazon.com/Theology-Social-Gospel-Library-Theological/dp/0664257305/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197517741&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
*Rauschenbusch. ''Christianity and the Social Crisis.'' (1907)
*Rauschenbusch. ''Christianity and the Social Crisis.'' (1907)
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=-nJJAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA369 Walter Rauschenbusch]
==References==
<references />
[[Category:Theologians]]
[[Category:Theologians]]