Walter Rauschenbusch

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. He is best known for his books Christianity and the Social Crisis and Theology for the Social Gospel. At the time, he was celebrated for his reinterpretation of Christianity for a social viewpoint.

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, became a Baptist, and went 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. Walter was bilingual, and was very well educated in American and German schools.

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 (1902-1918).

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.

Activism

in 1892, Rauschenbusch founded the Brotherhood of the Kingdom with his friends Leighton Williams and Nathaniel Schmidt.

This organization was mainly of the Baptist denomination, of the earnest work of two men in New York City, but it grew to become nondenominational. Its aim was to work for the kingdom of God in the most inclusive sense. The eight principles and methods of the brotherhood were as follows:

(1) Every member shall by personal life exemplify obedience to the ethics of Jesus.
(2) Each member shall propagate the thoughts of Jesus to the limits of his or her ability, in private conversation, by correspondence, and through pulpit, platform, and press.
(3) Each member shall lay special stress on the social aims of Christianity, and shall endeavor to make Christ's teaching concerning wealth operative in the Church.
(4) On the other hand, the members shall take pains to keep in contact with the common people, and to infuse the religious spirit into the efforts for social amelioration.
(5) The members shall seek to strengthen the bond of brotherhood by frequent meetings for prayer and discussion, by correspondence, exchange of articles written, etc.
(6) Regular reports shall be made of the work done by members in such manner as the executive committee may appoint.
(7) The members shall seek to procure for one another opportunities for public propaganda.
(8) If necessary, they shall give their support to one another ta the public defense of the truth, and shall jealously guard the freedom of discussion for any man who is impelled by love of the truth to utter his thoughts.

No sectarian or theological tests are required of members.

The brotherhood had an executive committee of five, with power to manage all ordinary business.

Rise from Obscurity

Prior to the publication of "Christianity and the Social Crisis", Rauschenbusch was a comparatively unknown intellectual. The book's publication established him as a leading figure in the Social Gospel movement.

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.

Works

• Evangeliums-Lieder 1 & 2 (Gospel Hymns) mit Deutschen Kernliedern (1904)
• Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)
• For God and the People: Prayers of the Social Awakening (1910)
• Unto Me (1912)
• Christianizing the Social Order (1912)
• The Trend Toward Collectivism (1912)
• Dare We Be Christians (1914)
• A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917)
• The Social Principles of Jesus" (1918)

Further reading

• Dorrien, Gary. The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity 1900-1950 (2003) and text search, ch 2
• Hopkins, Charles Howard. The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865-1915. (1940), the standard history; online edition
• King, William McGuire. "History as Revelation" in the Theology of the Social Gospel," The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Jan., 1983), pp. 109-129 in JSTOR
• Smith, Gary Scott. "To Reconstruct the World: Walter Rauschenbusch and Social Change," Fides et Historia (1991) 23:40-63
• Smucker, Donovan E. The Origins of Walter Rauschenbusch's Social Ethics 1994 online edition
• White, Ronald C., Jr. and C. Howard Hopkins. The Social Gospel. Religion and Reform in Changing America (1975).

Primary sources

• Walter Rauschenbusch