Michelle Charles, Boston University, December, 1998

Walter Rauschenbusch was born in Rochester, New York, on October 4, 1861. His father was a German Baptist converted from Lutheran pietism and taught for thirty-two years as professor at Rochester Theological Seminary. Rauschenbusch was nurtured in the conservative German Baptist piety.

He was educated both at Germany [1865-1869 and 1879-1883] and at the United States of America [1869-1879] where he attended a private school and a free academy. In 1879, Rauschenbusch had "a conversion experience which led to his baptism on confession of faith" (Handy 1984, 192) and this religious experience influenced his attempts to reconcile "the evangelical gospel with the social gospel" (Handy, 209). Later in 1879, he went back to Germany, and stayed in Gutersloh in Westphalia for four years where he committed himself to classical studies including languages such as Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and German and to art and literature.

He returned to Rochester in 1883 to enter the ministry and attend the University of Rochester and the Rochester Seminary. His experience of a summer pastorate at Louisville, Kentucky in 1884 confirmed his calling to the ministry. After graduation, Rauschenbusch wanted to go to India for a mission work but was opposed by one of the professors who worried about his too liberal views on the Old Testament. Thus, he turned to the pastorate and accepted a call from the Second German Baptist Church in New York City which was located at the edge of "Hell's Kitchen", one of the city's notorious slums. He came face to face with the horrors of poverty and economic insecurity and discovered "how ineffectual was pious, individualistic philanthropy in solving major social problems" (Livingston 1971, 262). He spent eleven years to serve there, developing "his own understanding of Christian discipleship to reach out in love to help the victims of social misfortune and injustice" (Handy, 194).

In 1888, Rauschenbusch unfortunately became deaf which was a result of his hastiness to get up too soon from his sick bed to go back to his ministry for others. Fortunately, however, his physical deafness "contributed to his intellectual achievement, for it partially isolated him and provided more time than he might otherwise have had for concentrated study" (Handy, 195). In 1891, his taking a leave from his parish allowed him opportunities to focus intensively on other social movements and the New Testament studies in Germany. Upon his return to New York, he was ardently involved in religious and social tasks, including his public speeches and writings on social issues, and his participation in an organization of the Brotherhood of the Kingdom, "a group of 'thrice-born men" who met annually to stimulate each other's thinking and to advance the cause of social Christianity" (Handy, 196). During this period, he got married to Pauline E. Rother, a Milwaukee school teacher, who helped her deafened husband go through his physical difficulty.

In 1897, Rauschenbusch was offered a position in the German faculty of the Rochester Theological Seminary and accepted it. In five years he became Professor of Church History on the regular faculty, a position which he held until his death. Little as he wrote as a church historian, he was "a respected and popular teacher in his field" (Handy, 196). Social issues were all about what he did write.

Theology

Rauschenbusch can be classified as a "theologically eclectic" (Livingston, 262). He heavily relied on a variety of theological stances represented by Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Rationalism, evolutionary doctrine at his time in doing his own theology, a theology for the Social Gospel. Even though he was strongly impressed by Ritschl as evidenced by the nature of his theology which his theology was very similar to those of Ritschlian liberalism, it is not possible to regard him as a Ritschlian in the same sense that Hermann and Harnack could be. He never "saw himself as consciously carrying forward the program of a 'school'" (Livingston, 263). Of course, he was definitely a Ritschlian in a sense that he showed no interest in metaphysics, dogma, or philosophical speculation, but rather his strong affinity with the historical Jesus as "the initiator of the Kingdom of God" (Rauschenbusch 1917, 146). His understanding of humanity as "caught in the struggle between his spiritual and natural impulses and conceiving of salvation in ethical and social terms" was a clear sign of the Ritschlian influences upon his theology for the Social Gospel (Livingston, 263). Furthermore, he tried to reconcile these Ritschlian themes with an evolutionary or socially progressive understanding of reality including God and history, which was "more akin to trends in American thought" (Livingston, 263). In this sense, his theology for the social gospel was not a systematic one in an ordinary sense of the term (Handy, 201). However, he made a great effort to put things together which many have considered as separate from each other: science and faith, culture and church, democracy and Christianity, ethics and theology, dogmatics and the social gospel, and the idea of the Kingdom of God, for Rauschenbusch, was the only medium to unite them. He kept retaining the continuity between God and man and between God and the world with "a vision of a regenerated world" (Handy, 199). In this sense, his theology can be called a theology of mediation, accommodation, and "adjustment" (Rauschenbusch, 10-22).

Speaking of methodology, his theology was decisively influenced by a modern historical approach. His work was well acquainted with the work of Harnack. His understanding of history was formed in the light of the theory of evolution. Naturally, this affinity with historical sensibility in his theology led his dominating ideal of the Kingdom of God to be shaped in the light of his historicism and developmentalism. The social gospel that he advocated was always historically oriented, always endeavoring "to see the progress of the Kingdom of God in the flow of history" (Rauschenbusch, 146).

A Theology for the Social Gospel

His major theological work, A Theology for the Social Gospel published in 1917, is his sincere attempt to build a theological foundation for the Social Gospel movement. He says: "We have a social gospel. We need a systematic theology large enough to match it and vital enough to back it" (Rauschenbusch, 1). He makes very bold efforts to "re-adjust" the whole of Christian theology from the insights of the social gospel. The structure of the book is as follows: 1) the necessity of a new theology for the Social Gospel movement by revising the whole system of Christian theology from a perspective of the Social Gospel; 2) the social nature of sin as rediscovered by the Social Gospel; 3) the recognition of the sinfulness of social realities as "the super-personal forces of evil"; 4) the two aspects of salvation, personal and social salvation, and the function of the Church; 5) the Kingdom of God with Jesus Christ as the initiator of it and a democratized God; and 6) other related issues reinterpreted by the social gospel such as the Holy Spirit, Inspiration, sacraments, eschatology, and the atonement. In other words, the first three chapters deal with the legitimacy for a new theology for the Social Gospel movement whereas the rest of the book is an attempt to readjust or reinterpret the whole theological themes "to make room for the religious convictions summed up in 'the social gospel'" (Rauschenbusch, 1). He, then, starts with the idea of sin.

First of all, Rauschenbusch argues that sin exists. Christians always have a strong sense of the existence of sin and try to reach salvation by eradicating the sin. The next question, then, is what sin is. Basically, sin, for Rauschenbusch, is "selfishness" or "egoism" which is "against the good of men, and against the universal good" (Rauschenbusch, 46,47, and 50). This is an ethical and social definition, and it is, he argues, "proof of the unquenchable social spirit of Christianity" (Rauschenbusch, 47). Classical or traditional theology have failed to understand this social aspect of sin, and instead viewed sin as private matter between God and that person. Human beings sin against God, and at the same time, sin against fellow human beings because we human beings are all connected to one another. Here lies the weakness of liberal theology in failing to see the complex social matrix of sin. In terms of the transmission of sin, he advocates the traditional doctrine of original sin though the way he defends the doctrine is totally different. While the classical theology claimed biological transmission of sin from generation to generation, Rauschenbusch asserts that "sin is transmitted along the lines of social tradition" (Rauschenbusch, 60). Sin socially transmitted and accumulated in the species of human beings becomes "collective sins in which we are involved" and, furthermore, the collective sins appear as "the super-personal forces of evil" which as bring about suffering, poverty, and death. These are "spiritual entities beyond the individual" which belong to "the Kingdom of Evil" which is against the Kingdom of God. What, then, is salvation? How can a person be saved? A person or persons can be saved only by turning away from self to God and to humanity. They find salvation only if they give up their selfishness in cooperative work with others to overcome it. This solidaristic religious experience is more Christian than an individualistic one. On the basis of this observation, Rauschenbusch claims that the old, individualistic conceptions of sin and salvation should be reconsidered by a more truly biblical and solidaristic view of humanity proposed by the social gospel. Of course, he does not deny the significance of individual salvation as an essential part of a whole spectrum of Christian salvation (Rauschenbusch, 95). However, he claims, individual salvation is not adequate at the following two points: 1) it tends to ignore Jesus' teachings of discipleship in the Kingdom as servanthood and cooperation but unconsciously emphasizes personal selfishness; 2) it tends to see the individual salvation as ultimate in human salvation so that it does not recognize the necessity of the redemption of social institutions and the urgency to "create an environment in which the individual can be healed and renewed" (Livingston, 266). He makes a point that "superpersonal forces", the "composite personalities" such as the state and the economic institutions are also part of the object of Christian salvation which can be completed by moving them under the law of Christ (Rauschenbusch, 117). If so, the task of the social gospel is to make it happen this comprehensive salvation in society. And this narrow, distorted, and individualistic understanding of Christian salvation can be corrected by a theology focused on the Kingdom of God, which discloses the deeper social aspects of human sinfulness. Thus, he moves on to the idea of the Kingdom of God.

The doctrine of the Kingdom of God is the center of his work, around which other theological aspects are placed to complete a whole construction of a theology for social gospel. Rauschenbusch suggests that the Kingdom of God is "divine in its origin, progress, and consummation, miraculous all the way", "the continuous revelation of the power, the righteousness, and the love of God" (139). It is "the supreme purpose of God, to be realized not only by the redemption of man through the overcoming of evil but also by the education of mankind and the revelation of God's life within it" (140). It is not only "always present and future" but also "always coming, always pressing in on the present and inviting immediate action" (141). "Even before Christ, men of God saw the Kingdom of God as the great end to which all divine leadings were point. In Christianity, the idea of the Kingdom of God gets its distinctive interpretation from Christ" (141), he claims. Furthermore, Rauschenbusch suggests even more radically that the Kingdom is "humanity organized according to the will of God" (142), a nobler social order. He is very optimistic in a sense that "the progressive reign of love in human affairs" (142) will bring "the progressive unity of mankind" (143). Rauschenbusch firmly believes that the Kingdom "was never thought of as a purely internal, spiritual possession of the individual" (Livingston, 263) because what Jesus preached hoped to see "the social redemption of the entire life of the human race on earth. . . and a divine social order established on earth" (Rauschenbusch 1912, 67, 69).

Even though Rauschenbusch is strongly convinced that the Kingdom of God embraces all aspects of human life and "realizes itself through the family, the industrial organization of society, and the State" as well as through the Church (Rauschenbusch 1917, 145), he never identifies the Kingdom of God with utopia. The Kingdom of God is nothing but a historical force that pushes human beings to move toward the Kingdom. It can be only progressively realized with the co-operation of the divine and the human; "there is no perfection but only growth toward perfection", which means only "the approximation of a perfect social order" (Handy, 203). Rauschenbusch hopes that a better social order will come soon (Rauschenbusch 1912, 422).

It should be noted that the doctrine of God is placed after the exposition of the doctrine of the Kingdom of God in A Theology for the Social Gospel. Rauschenbusch claims that the Kingdom of God is "the necessary background for the Christian idea of God" (Rauschenbusch, 178). Interestingly enough, he points out that the idea of God has been historically developed, and that in this sense, the idea of God is a social product created by a particular social group. The concept of God is not unchanging but can change and grow because it is socially formed. More specifically, "the social relations in which [human beings] lived, affected their conceptions about God and [God's] relations to [humanity]" (Rauschenbusch, 174). What was unique in Jesus, he asserts, was his attempt to democratize the concept of God by calling God "our Father": "He disconnected the idea from the coercive and predatory State, and transferred it to the realm of family life, the chief social embodiment of solidarity and love. He not only saved humanity; he saved God" (Rauschenbusch, 174-5). In this sense, Rauschenbusch claims that the social gospel succeeds to the spirit of the Reformation by liberating humanity from wrong conceptions of God (177). Here, he advocates the immanence of God, not denying God's transcendence, in order to keep the democratic concept of God by regarding God's immanence in humanity as "the natural basis for democratic ideas about [God]" (Rauschenbusch, 179). Furthermore, he claims that the democratic understanding of God functions as a theodicy for the sufferings caused by class struggles in an industrial society, and declares the idea of solidarity to solve the current social problems, saying that "the consciousness of solidarity is the essence of religion" (Rauschenbusch, 183, 186). For Rauschenbusch, God is the ground of the social unity of all humanity (Rauschenbusch, 184).

Jesus Christ, for Rauschenbusch, is the initiator of the Kingdom of God. Rauschenbusch is not interested in the traditional, dogmatic exposition of Jesus Christ as the hypostatic union of the divine and the human. Rather, he looks for the historical Jesus as "the perfect religious personality" who overcame "mysticism", "pessimism", and "asceticism", and started a new type of human life through his own unique experience of God (Rauschenbusch, 155-7). Jesus lived out through his earthly life what he taught about the Kingdom of God. In this sense, Rauschenbusch says: "The fundamental first step in the salvation of mankind was the achievement of the personality of Jesus. Within him the Kingdom of God got its first foothold in humanity. It was by virtue of his personality that he became the initiator of the Kingdom" (Rauschenbusch, 151). Jesus' teachings on the Kingdom of God, Rauschenbusch firmly believes, provides the social gospel with a solid foundation for his own understanding of the Kingdom. That is why the social gospel is so much concerned about "the progressive social incarnation of God" which leads the social gospel to focus on "how the divine life of Christ can get control of human society" as the christological concern of the social gospel (Handy, 205).

Rauschenbusch defines the nature of the Christian Church in its relation to the Kingdom: the Church must not exist for itself but for the Kingdom which gives the Church the power to save. For him, the Church is "the social factor in salvation" which "brings social forces to bear on evil. It offers Christ not only many human bodies and minds to serve as ministers of his salvation, but its own composite personality, with a collective memory stored with great hymns and Bible stories and deeds of heroism, with trained aesthetic and moral feelings, and with a collective will set on righteousness" (Rauschenbusch, 119). His idea of the Church is a "congregationally ordered, noncreedal, nonhierarchical, fully democratic" reality shaped by his Baptist background (Handy, 203). He never fails to see the subordinate status of the Church to the Kingdom.

Rauschenbusch is strongly convinced that to realize Jesus' ethical teachings in society is the best way for the Christianization of the social order. That is the reason why his own social ethics are firmly grounded on the teachings of Jesus concerning love. On the other hand, it is also true that his social ethics of love is deeply influenced by the progressive, mildly radical, socialistic thoughts of his time concerning public good, co-operation, and equal rights. He strenuously endeavors to analyze critically capitalism and attacks the evil forces of its "competitiveness, autocracy, and commercialism" (Handy, 207). Against this evil forces of capitalism, what is urgently demanded is "a collective action of the community to change the present organization of the economic life into a new order that would rest on the Christian principles of equal rights, democratic distribution of economic power, the supremacy of the common good, the law of mutual dependence and service, and the uninterrupted flow of good will throughout the human family" (Rauschenbusch 1912, 315). He believes that the goals could be achieved "through the strengthening of the working class, the development of social insurance, the assurance of the right to employment, and the increasing of economic democracy by trade-unionism, cooperatives, and socialism" (Handy, 208). But he never makes a mistake to identify the Kingdom of God with any form of human institution such as socialist state, unlike other Christian socialists. Rauschenbusch is well aware of the potential trap of socialism and asserts that it is the task of Christians to make good use of the merits of socialism to build the Kingdom of God in human society.

For Rauschenbusch, the Kingdom would be realized progressively. He does not believe on the effectiveness of revolution to bring the Kingdom. But there is no contradiction in him between the social and the religious. Both are complementary and reciprocal in building the Kingdom. This is the reason why Rauschenbusch tries to "link the evangelical gospel with the social gospel, to add the latter to the former, and thus to create a public opinion that would bring about renewal of both church and society" (Handy, 209).

Influences

Despite some critical and often negative appraisal of Rauschenbusch's work, the influences of his efforts to build the Kingdom in society upon people should not be ignored, especially in terms of his attempt to reinterpret traditional Christian doctrines in a radical way motivated by the social gospel movement. Rauschenbusch became "the best-known and most perceptive advocate of the liberal social gospel" (Handy, 209). His writings were translated into more than eight languages around the world. Public figures such as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and David Lloyd George came to seek his counsel about social concerns. Above all, one of his great contributions to Christian life and theological thinking in America is his ardent efforts of "effectively calling attention to the social dimension in all religious thought and [of] emphasizing in a way appropriate to an industrial society the importance of the quest for social justice" (Handy, 211).

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Handy, Robert T. 1984. "Walter Rauschenbusch." A Handbook of Christian Theologians. Edited by Dean G. Peerman and Martin E. Marty. Nashville: Abingdon Press.