Rauschenbusch, Walter 1861-1918

RAUSCHENBUSCH, WALTER 1861-1918

Baptist minister and theologian

Youth

For Walter Rauschenbusch, becoming a pastor was not only a matter of finding a calling but also a family tradition. He was the seventh in a line of pastors that reached back to seventeenth-century Germany. But Rauschenbusch, born in 1861 in the United States, became the most liberal and best known in his family lineage. His father, August Rauschenbusch was one of the great patriarchs of American Baptists after shocking his family by converting from Lutheran to Baptist after he moved to America in 1846. Walter followed in his father's foot-steps, though he would eventually approach Christianity differently from the conservative Baptists of the Rochester Seminary, where his father was a professor from 1857 to 1888. Despite his father's altered faith in the New World, Walter Rauschenbusch developed strong ties to Germany, ties that would later cause him grief as World War I began, and German Americans were treated with suspicion and found their loyalty questioned. Rauschenbusch developed these ties with two extended visits in his youth. The first was in 1865-1869, when August Rauschenbusch sent his family to Germany to create a bond between them and his home country. The second visit, with his father, took place in 1879. Walter had earlier in that year undergone a conversion experience and had been baptized in Rochester. He stayed in Germany for four years, attending the Evangelische Gymnasium zu Gutersloh, from which he graduated primus omnium in 1883.

Hard Work for God

Rauschenbusch returned to Rochester in 1883, having decided to become a pastor, He later described the experience that had followed his baptism: "Very soon the idea came to me that I ought to be a preacher, and help save souls…I wanted to do hard work for God." The hard work began at the Rochester Seminary, the only place to study for those interested in working with German Baptists. While attending seminary he also began a course of study at the University of Rochester, from which he was awarded a degree in 1885. Rauschenbusch felt the need to fill gaps in his education. He also wanted the college degree because all of the family's long line of pastors had also been university-educated. The Rochester Theological Seminary was a bastion of conservative theology at the time of Rauschenbusch's study there. For three years Rauschenbusch studied under men such as Howard Osgood and Augustus Hopkins Strong, who disdained the "New Theology," which included critical approaches to the Bible and some acceptance of Darwinian evolution. Osgood was familiar with contemporary critical analyses of Scripture but would have none of it. Despite theological differences, Strong and others recognized the talent and intelligence of the young Rauschenbusch and in fact invited him back to teach in the German department two years later. But Rauschenbusch refused. He was well into what would be his life's work, developing his brand of the Social Gospel.

Pastor

In June 1886 Walter Rauschenbusch moved to New York City to take over as pastor of the Second German Baptist Church, which lay on the northern edge of the city's notorious Hell's Kitchen district. Living conditions for the urban, immigrant poor were abominable at this time as New York was swelling with new arrivals from Europe. Church attendance was poor, with only 125 regular members at the Second German Baptist. He preached his first sermon on Jesus' words "Thy Kingdom Come," a metaphor that would become his dominant theme as his social gospel developed. The young pastor impressed his flock, and attendance grew quickly. Ministering to this church would be Rauschenbusch's major occupation for the next five years and a key period in developing his theological ideas. In the summer of 1888 Rauschenbusch attended a tenday revival held by the popular Dwight L. Moody in Northfield, Massachusetts. Following the revival, he collaborated with Moody's hymn writer, Ira Sankey, on a book of hymns in German, which was published as Evangeliums Leider (1891). By 1889 Rauschenbusch had begun his social preaching, taking the message of salvation beyond the individual and applying it to society. Prompted by the living conditions of his congregation, he had taken to studying economics and social conditions. Economist Richard Ely's Social Aspects of Christianity, which merged economic theory with social theology, had influenced him greatly, and in 1889 Rauschenbusch embraced socialism, though he would never become a member of a socialist party. Later that year he launched his For the Right, a journal of Social Gospel thought that he would not publish until 1891. He had in the meantime led the drive to build a new church for his congregation, which had increased in membership by more than 50 percent in five years. Rauschenbusch's "hard work" was paying dividends.

Beyond New York

In January 1891 Rauschenbusch announced his resignation and his intent to travel abroad. He wanted to study and write, but, also, his hearing, which had faltered badly in his early years as a pastor, was still failing, and his functions as a pastor were affected by his inability to hear. The church did not accept his resignation and instead offered Rauschenbusch a paid leave and an interim pastor to help him in his duties when he returned. Rauschenbusch accepted, with the result that after he returned from abroad, he remained with his church until 1897. He traveled to England first. He had been deeply interested by Fabian socialist leaders such as Sidney Webb, who advocated an extension of equality into the economic realm through education and systematic change, but not through radical or violent overthrow. He viewed enthusiastically the work of William Booth's Salvation Army, in which the working classes were recruited to help the poorer classes. From England Rauschenbusch traveled to Germany, where his ideas took a more theological turn and his views began to ripen. The idea of the Kingdom became the center of his thought and where he thought the energy of the church should be focused. Rauschenbusch wrote that the Kingdom "responded to all the old and all the new elements of my religious life. The saving of the lost, the teaching of the young, the pastoral care of the poor and frail, the quickening of starved intellects, the study of the Bible, church union, political reform, the reorganization of the industrial system, international peace—it was all covered by the one aim of the Reign of God on earth." He returned to the United States on Christmas Day 1891 with his greatest work ahead of him.

Brotherhood

Rauschenbusch remained with the Second German Baptist Church on a part-time basis until 1897. In the interim, however, he continued to study and work for reform. The economic depression that occurred during the 1890s only strengthened his beliefs in a social view of religion. In 1892 he met with Leighton Williams, Nathaniel Schmidt, and Samuel Batten at a Baptist congress in Philadelphia. Together they formed a "society of Jesus," which they later called the Brotherhood of the Kingdom, dedicated to a "better understanding of the Kingdom of God on earth." The group's goal was to be an active brotherhood, applying their theories toward religion and social reform. They were the first group of American Christians to put forth such a comprehensive agenda of reform. Among the group's ideals were international peace, rigorous study of Scripture, better municipal government, and the rights of workers. For five years the Brotherhood of the Kingdom was the focus of Rauschenbusch's work. Thinkers such as Richard Ely, Henry George, Josiah Strong, W. D. P. Bliss, Jacob Riis, and Washington Gladden presented papers and talks for the Brotherhood as it attempted to advance its agenda with a missionary fervor. The Brotherhood met some resistance from conservative Baptists but remained an active force for some two decades.

Teacher and Writer

In 1897 Rauschenbusch took a position in the German Department at the Rochester Theological Seminary, where he would remain until his death. In a sense his church work at the congregational level was over. Walter Rauschenbusch the teacher, the theologian, the lecturer, and the writer would emerge as the Social Gospel grew into the twentieth century. His power as an orator made him a speaker in high demand, but it was the publication of his first book, Christianity and the Social Crisis, in 1907 that made him a nationally known figure. The book was a great success critically as well as commercially. In it Rauschenbusch collected six-teen years of thought, practice, and theology in a warm, graceful style that made the book powerful as well as readable. The book combined history and economics with Rauschenbusch's interpretation of the Kingdom of God, arguing, for instance, for workers' rights, "for human life against profits," for turning Christianity's power "against materialism and mammonism," and for the individual to place his integrity above his income. During the next three years it would be the best-selling religious book in America, with some fifty thousand copies sold. Rauschenbusch followed this with several other books that solidified his position as a preeminent religious figure of the Social Gospel movement. Prayers of the Social Awakening (1912), Christianizing the Social Order (1912), The Social Principles of Jesus (1916), and a Theology for the Social Gospel (1917) all furthered Rauschenbusch's prominence as a theologian. However, one other issue made news as well, causing Rauschenbusch much grief for his ideals as well as his reputation.

The War

The anti-German fervor that accompanied the advent of World War I could not be ignored by a man such as Rauschenbusch. He had relations on both sides of the war in Europe. He was a pacifist disturbed by the butchery of the war, and he was a German American, troubled by the obvious hatred of Germany that had sprouted in America. Rauschenbusch took the role of dissenter in an effort to gain fairness for Germany. In 1914 he published "Be Fair to Germany," an article that accepted claims of German brutality and aggression but noted that Germany was not the only country to practice such things. The article tried to present a neutral view of England and Germany, but was perceived widely as a defense of German aggression. Reaction was strong in the anti-German atmosphere of the times. Still, Rauschenbusch could not keep quiet. In July 1915 he published a joint statement with Charles Aked of San Francisco criticizing America's failure to remain neutral in the war. Private Profit and the Nation's Honors: A Protest and a Plea was published nationwide. The reaction to this piece was even stronger than the first, and Rauschenbusch was forced to withdraw even further. Though he continued to write, including his widely popular The Social Principles of Jesus, Rauschenbusch remained a controversial figure for America during the war and personally felt disappointed in a world seemingly gone mad with war. He died on 25 July 1918 with the war still raging and his own reputation sadly still in question. But his writing and activities left an indelible impression on the relations between church and society in the United States.

Source:

Paul M. Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch: American Reformer (New York: Macmillan, 1988).