Christianity and the Social Crisis of the 21st Century: The Classic That Woke Up the Church

As an progressive Rauschenbusch does the unusual service of taking the time to describe how the past of Christianity, even though often sordid in the details, has set the stage for meeting the needs of the present. Such generous clarity does not appear to have won him much credit. It would seem from some of the contemporary reflections that accompany each chapter that being "soft on sin" (i.e. the centrality of personal redemption) remains the mote in the eye of several commentators. For myself I observe that Rauschenbusch is very hard on the forms of sin that each of us encounters every day. There are no free passes in this book. I find no sense of instant liberation from the nasty inheritence of past shortcomings nor from the moral consequences if we shy from the magnitude of the work undone. I'm dumbfounded that anyone could read Rauschenbusch's critique of greedy capital accumulation as anything other than a description of evil incarnate. Ultimately the power of this book for me is that page after page, in stunning elegence, it challenges the status quo from every angle I can imagine and then some. Time and again I am brought to chuckle at the incisiveness of his metaphors and their aptness at age 100 for our present day. If you believe that Christianity is an inescapably social enterprise, grounded in the world as we experience it directly, this is a highly recommended read. Bill Mullins

Over the years, Walter Rauschenbusch has been a compelling voice, inspiring and motivating me, as a young pastor, to see Christianity as "a great revolutionary movement, pledged to change the world-as-it-is into the world-as-it-ought-to-be." And now, Paul Raushenbush has imparted a precious gift to a new generation of ministers and Christians. He invited some of the most compelling voices of Christian thought--pastors, theologians, scholars, and activists--into the pages to discuss this classic text. With careful reflection and necessary correction, they give the words of Rauschenbusch new life, at just the right moment. It was wonderful to read this rich prose again, and to hear how they echo through the generations, renewing our purpose and hope. Carol Howard Merritt author of Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation

This book presents the Social Gospel, which is similar to Richard Horsley (the Context Group), N.T. Wright's recent book Paul: In Fresh Perspective, and Liberation Theology. The Social Gospel is that Jesus' plan and gospel wasn't about individuals going to heaven rather than hell after they die, by individual belief and individual moral conduct, nor about theology and religious ritual practice, but rather, about social revolution to bring the kingdom of God into being on earth. The first half of the book covers the original meaning of the Jewish Bible, particularly the prophets, and the New Testament. The second half applies that driving Biblical principle -- religion as moral social revolution toward egalitarianism -- to modern social problems (of 1907). Similarly, books using the Context Group or Liberation Theology approach sometimes explain the New Testament as social revolution in the context of the Roman Imperial system and then apply the same type of critique to Global Empire today. Some recent books using this layout are Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now, by Wes Howard-Brook and Anthony Gwyther; and Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder, by Richard Horsley. Per Rauschenbusch, mystical conceptions of Christianity, and purely religious doctrines of personal salvation, err in putting all attention on spiritual regeneration of the individual, and being blind to the social-political revolution that's the major concern of New Testament Christianity. A recent example of this partial view is Timothy Freke's book Jesus and the Goddess. Rauschenbusch's book was definitive in presenting the Social Gospel. It's interesting to see this early 20th Century theory that reads so similar to the recent Context Group and recent N.T. Wright. But like Horsley's Context Group or Liberation Theology, this version of the Social Gospel errs in putting all attention on the social-political revolution in New Testament Christianity, being blind to the regeneration of the person's self-concept and mental worldmodel in the intense mystic altered state that results from ingesting the Eucharist or Lord's Supper. In the spirit of the overall New Testament, against Rauschenbusch, Campolo states (paraphrased): "What is needed is more than a noble ethic and Christ's teachings. We need a miraculous transformation of who we are, that comes as Christ invades our heart, mind, and soul -- as mystical as that sounds. Rauschenbusch's gospel has a God without wrath bringing men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through Christ without a cross." (p. 78, 2007 edition) But Rauschenbusch proves the complementary point as well: the overall New Testament is definitely focused on the objective of social revolution. The two camps of book authors don't only need to be combined together, but rather, integrated: New Testament Christianity was about applying the altered state toward social revolution -- about drawing a parallel

Walter Rauschenbusch, a devout Protestant minister, was horrified by what he described as the "social crisis" that permeated American society and politics in the early 1900s. Yet he did not despair or advocate "more government" as a solution. Rather, he argued compelling that the church must play a central role in restoring social order. Indeed, Rauschenbusch alleged that Christianity's future depended on its capacity to restore social harmony and to persuade businesses to feed the masses, not just cater to elites. Rauschenbusch extolled the value of community, "gemeinschaft, " and excoriated "gesellschaft, " an atomized, anonymous, individualistic society in which people are consumed by materialism and personal gain. Rauschenbusch envisioned a Christian ethic that pervaded the social and economic lives of Americans. He blended ancient Christian thought with the new tools of social science, in order to identify and solve the "social crisis," arguing that "communism" (as he used the term) was fully consistent with Christianity. Rauschenbusch's burden was to show the people where, how, and why Christianity could help them. Rauschenbusch was a seventh generation Lutheran minister, whose father emigrated to American from Germany in the 1850s. Rauschenbusch, the scholar, was a theologian at the Rochester Theological Seminary, where he taught for forty years. He also served the Second Baptist Church in New York City. Rauschenbusch, the theologian, historian, and sociologist published Christianity and the Social Crisis in 1907 and Christianizing the Social Order in 1912.