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6.What lasting impact did the person’s reforms have on American society?

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6.What lasting impact did the person’s reforms have on American society?

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No other American reform movement enlisted as many volunteers, tackled as many issues, or had as many accomplishments. The Social Gospel helped shape the nation’s political policies, social practices and economic system and deeply affected its ethos and customs. They also produced much literature to elucidate the social teachings of scripture, evaluate the causes, nature and scope of America’s social ills, or suggest remedies for them.
The Social Gospel, after 1945, influenced the formation of Christian democracy political ideology among Protestants and Catholics in Europe. To go more into detail about the lasting impact. They established dozens of organizations, created hundreds of institutional churches, devised dozens of biblically based businesses and accomplished many specific reforms. The movement motivated many Americans to use their vocations as vehicles for serving God and others and helped improve the quality of life in the United States and enhance the opportunities and status of the poor and marginalized. Moving beyond platitudes and palliatives, countless Social Gospelers worked to remedy social ills and bring systemic changes. Their participation in the Social Gospel often gave people a deeper purpose in life, a closer relationship with God and greater camaraderie with fellow believers. While their social values, political commitments and economic perspectives helped motivate their actions, their religious convictions were often the most important stimulus. After emerging as a significant force in American life in the 1880s, the Social Gospel had a powerful influence on the nation’s thought, religious attitudes and practices, and social and economic policies and activities. It transformed the ministry of many congregations, altered the ministry of thousands of pastors, influenced the development and agenda of progressivism and helped improve urban living and factory and office working conditions, racial justice and management-labor relations. The Social Gospel also significantly affected seminary education, the ministry of denominational agencies and the activities of the Federal Council of Churches (and later, the World Council of Churches).

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5.To what extent was the reformer obsessed with achieving an impractical goal through fanatical or impractical means?

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5.To what extent was the reformer obsessed with achieving an impractical goal through fanatical or impractical means?

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Honestly, with all the research I did on him. There were barely any negatives in his motives or him being known as any of these traits listed. He was very peaceful in his way of pushing his message and purpose towards the people. The Social Gospel Movement was known to some as a radical group, but so was every other group, or movement during that time being called radical.

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4.What detail(s) of the person’s work made him or her an interesting historical figure?

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4.What detail(s) of the person’s work made him or her an interesting historical figure?

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Walter Rauschenbusch is known as the father of the Social Concern movement in America. Walter Rauschenbusch achieved a national profile as a consequence of the publication of Christianity and the Social Crisis. Rauschenbusch attributed the present crisis to a conflict between the well-being of the mass of the population and the vested interests of the powerful. American capitalism had produced a fundamentally unjust social and economic system. Rauschenbusch strove to create a new society in which the major structures of American society would enable a more equitable distribution of resources. He directed his appeal to the American middle-class and exhorted them to work for the improvement of the working poor. Inaction on the part of the churches meant that they were complicit in perpetuating an unjust social order. By 1887 he was wrestling with two issues: the spiritual care of his congregation and the social conditions of the city that created a chasm between rich and poor.  Rauschenbusch began to publish descriptions of the brutal reality experienced by the poor in New York in Baptist periodicals.  For many of the poor, no matter how hard they worked, would never rise to material and financial safety. Rauschenbusch observed the effects of capitalism on the working poor:

During the great industrial crisis in the 90’s I saw good men go into disreputable lines of employment and respectable widows consent to live with men who would support them and their children. One could hear the human virtue cracking and crumbling all around. Whenever work is scarce, petty crime is plentiful. But that is only the tangible expression of the decay in the morale of the working people on which the statistics can seize. The corresponding decay in the morality of the possessing classes at such a time is another story. But industrial crises are not inevitable in nature; they are merely inevitable in capitalism (Rauschenbusch, 1907, 238).
Rauschenbusch’s experience of pastoral ministry prompted him to rethink his theology. He believed that American Christianity was confronted by a seismic social crisis that cried out for a prophetic response to challenge those forces that exploited the working classes and made their lives intolerable. The themes of crisis and opportunity run like a repeated chorus through the books Rauschenbusch wrote between 1907 and 1917. Rauschenbusch was weighed down by the appalling conditions he witnessed in America at the turn of the century, but he was essentially optimistic that the church could rise to the occasion for the sake of the Kingdom of God. A better social order could be created, although it would never be perfect.
History was the fundamental category in Rauschenbusch’s thought. Rauschenbusch viewed the study of history as a search for signs of the Kingdom of God in human affairs. Although he never wrote a significant piece of historical scholarship, Rauschenbusch nevertheless utilized historical scholarship to make his case for the Social Gospel. He also drew upon sociology. Rauschenbusch was not interested in metaphysical speculation in doctrinal matters. He did not abandon the cardinal doctrines of Christianity, but he did reinterpret them in the light of his understanding of the Kingdom of God which points to a progressive effort to establish a more just social order. The doctrine was primarily about social ethics. The main lines of his thought were laid down in the late nineteenth century. He remained firmly entrenched in the categories of historical contingency, German idealism, evolutionary thought, and personalism. Rauschenbusch critically appropriated these themes in his own theology and ministry. He welded them together with his inherited evangelical piety that recognized the presence and power of a living God to transform human lives.

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3.What success did the individual have in promoting reform?

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3.What success did the individual have in promoting reform?

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Walter was the leader of The Social Gospel Movement that implemented numerous reforms to help other people. One of their most important contributions to society was the creation of settlement houses.
Upon the publication of Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Rauschenbusch gained recognition as the major spokesman of the Social Gospel movement in the United States. He was considered both dynamic and compassionate, and always regarded as an evangelist seeking to win men to a “new birth” in Christ.
He also formed the Society of Jesus

which later expanded into the Brotherhood of the Kingdom helping shape the ethos of the Progressive Reform movement.

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2.What methods did the person use to improve American life?

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2.What methods did the person use to improve American life?

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Rauschenbusch took on what he called “the present crisis” wrought by the industrial revolution and the rise of modern capitalism, arguing that Christian civilization could no longer withstand the injustices of contemporary times—inequality, poverty, physical deprivation, and hunger, worker abuses. He believed that desperate times required genuine moral leadership, and he sought to humanize capitalism by encouraging more direct action. He supported movements such as the settlement houses—urban community centers where low-income people could go for services and classes—as well as labor organizing and solidarity, and Christian volunteerism from preachers and groups like the YMCA and the Salvation Army. Above all, Rauschenbusch counseled people to put their theological principles to work personally by adding “spiritual power along the existing and natural relations of men to direct them to truer ends and govern them by higher motives.”
Walter Rauschenbusch and Gladden both denounced racial inequality and lynching and explicitly extended the brotherhood of man to include African Americans.
Walter Rauschenbusch’s 1907 classic book, Christianity and the Social Crisis served as the most complete statement of faith-based progressivism and offered a compelling argument for the social application of the Gospels.

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1.What criticism of American society did the individual have?

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1.What criticism of American society did the individual have?

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His prominence in the period 1907-1917 coincided with the high watermark of the Social Gospel in America.  America’s decision to go to war against Germany was a bitter blow to Rauschenbusch.  His opposition to war and reluctance to demonize Germany earned him a great deal of criticism in an atmosphere of extreme patriotism and hostility towards Germany.
What Rauschenbusch wanted to do was to “expand the notions of sin and salvation” to embrace institutional sin as well as private, or personal sin. He did not believe that perfection could be achieved but in constantly striving for perfection.
His attitude towards the family, however, has been criticized as too conservative. He tended to differentiate gender roles, upholding the traditional view that the proper realm for women is the domestic, home-making sphere, while men earn and govern. On the other hand, he believed that women possess superior gifts for nurture and that their education would ‘increase beauty in our lives'.
Critics of Rauschenbusch also argue that he neglected the needs of the individual as a moral and spiritual being in his fervor to reform society. In other words, he failed to teach that a love for one's neighbor flows directly from and is required by one's own love for God. However, Paul Rauschenbusch stresses that God’s love was the primary motive for everything that his great-grandfather said and wrote.
Others have argued that Rauschenbusch was too much a child of the Enlightenment, too confident in human goodness, taking too little cognizance of the sinfulness of humanity. On the one hand, Rauschenbusch did believe that lives of faith in action can create a better world, on the other he held that the church had taken insufficient account of institutional and social sin, which could only be tackled by social action. There were enough ministers concentrating on individual salvation from personal sin for him to focus on institutionalized sin. One biographer during that time comments that he: never trivialized the reality of sin and evil. These were forces active in individual human beings and systemically in the institutions and structures of society. Rauschenbusch was convinced that individual human beings needed to be saved.
Four decades later, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, ''It has been my conviction ever since reading Rauschenbusch that any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that scar the soul, is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried.''

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                                       Reform

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                                       Reform

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American Protestant ministers and theologians during the 19th century such as Walter Rauschenbusch espoused this belief, as did politicians such as William Jennings Bryan, and settlement founders such as Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Catholic social justice leaders such as Fr. John Ryan and Dorothy Day pushed for similar values and religious activism, and later civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. followed suit. Many of the most prominent social movements in American progressive history would not have been possible without the inspirational values and moral authority of socially conscious Christianity and Judaism, an idea that we explore in more detail in seeing part three of this series, “Social Movements and Progressivism.”

Progressives working within these faith traditions applied religious morality to the task of transforming American society during the industrial age away from the exploitation of workers and toward more cooperative forms of economic life. These faith-driven progressives insisted that society and governments uphold the fundamental notion that all people are equal in God’s eyes and deserve basic dignity, freedom, political rights, and economic opportunities in life. Religious progressives promoted the notion of community and solidarity above concepts of individualism and materialism and worked to stop unnecessary wars and military aggression across the globe.

The social gospel movement and Catholic social teaching played influential roles in the progressive search for economic fairness and justice in the 20th century. Both traditions promoted the belief that any true commitment to the Gospels and the example of Jesus Christ demanded followers to take concrete steps to address oppression and hardship in this world and to replace the laissez-faire attitudes of the late 19th century with a more communitarian outlook.

Walter Rauschenbusch’s 1907 classic book, Christianity and the Social Crisis served as the most complete statement of faith-based progressivism and offered a compelling argument for the social application of the Gospels. Rauschenbusch stressed how “the essential purpose of Christianity was to transform human society into the kingdom of God by regenerating all human relations and reconstituting them in accordance with the will of God.” The purpose of this argument was to show people how Christian teachings and the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Bible could be put to use to foment social change during a period of want and suffering: “If anyone holds that religion is essentially ritual and sacramental; or that it is purely personal; or that God is on the side of the rich; or that social interest is likely to lead preachers astray; he must prove his case with his eye on the Hebrew prophets, and the burden of proof is with him.”

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    Walter Rauschenbusch Spouse and Children

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    Walter Rauschenbusch Spouse and Children

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While attending a convention in Millwaukee, Rauschenbusch met Pauline Rother, a local schoolteacher, whom he married on April 12, 1892. Rauschenbusch was becoming deaf in one ear, and Pauline helped him learn to cope with this disability. They had five children, Elizabeth, Paul, Winifred, Karl, and Hilmar. Rauschenbusch's father's marriage had been strained. He placed great stress on family values but disliked any public expression of family difficulties, which he believed should be dealt with in private.

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                          Walter Rauschenbusch Parents and Siblings Relationships     

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                          Walter Rauschenbusch Parents and Siblings Relationships     

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His father, August Rauschenbusch, was a German immigrant to America who had been raised as a Lutheran but became a Baptist.  August was educated at Berlin University and ordained to the Lutheran ministry in 1840.  He perceived his main objective as a pastor to be awakening his parishioners to an awareness of their sin and the need to accept Jesus into their lives. In 1844 he sensed a calling to mission work among the German immigrants in the United States.  He crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1846 and commenced a new chapter of ministry.  Attracted to the vigor of Baptist life and increasingly persuaded that the Baptist way of being the church coincided most closely with the teaching of the New Testament, August was baptized as a believer by total immersion in the Mississippi River in May 1850 and commenced activity as a Baptist evangelist and church planter.  He married Caroline Rumps in 1854.  August was invited to lead the German Department at the recently formed Rochester Theological Seminary in Rochester, New York, in 1858. Walter grew up in a home characterized by strict discipline, a keen commitment to excellence in education, and an experiential form of Christian piety.  August Rauschenbusch relocated his wife and children to Germany temporarily in 1865 for a period of four years.  As a consequence of his cultural background and experience, Walter acquired fluency in German and English.

There seems to be little known about Walter’s mother, Caroline Rauschenbusch, except that her marriage to August was very rough. Rauschenbusch biographer Christopher H. Evans notes that the marriage “was volatile and, at the minimum, verbally violent.” Walter would go to write later in life that his parents’ estrangement was one of “the great sorrows in my life.” However, most significantly, during Walter’s pastorate of the Second German Baptist Church in New York City from 1886-1897, Caroline Rauschenbusch filled the important social role of the pastor’s wife in the congregation. Walter was young and unmarried, so Caroline did help support Walter during his ministry in New York – a ministry that would shape his future thoughts as a social gospel innovator.

Walter’s oldest sister, Frida Rauschenbusch Fetzer, was born in September 1855. Christopher Evans notes that he did not develop a close relationship with Frida until his thirties. Not much is known about her. However, clues in a letter regarding her by Walter gives clues that she was a reformer in her own right. Rauschenbusch wrote to Reverend George Huntington:  “Mrs. Fetzer was not simply a wife and mother, but an active missionary force. She was, I suppose, the only college woman among the German Baptists, and she brought over the traditions of educated and progressive womanhood in America . . . She has for years edited the monthly paper of the young women’s organizations and has spoken and agitated wherever possible among the churches for organization and active participation of women in church life.” He goes on to conclude, “According to my judgment she has been more of a pioneering force than any of the American men.” She certainly seemed to have a passion for women and the active participation of women in the church.

I find his other sister, Emma Rauschenbusch Clough, to be perhaps the most interesting member of the family besides Walter himself. She was a missionary in the Telugu Mission in South India, where she educated girls and women. She also endured a major famine and witnessed a “second Pentecost,” when thousands of members of the Madiga clan were baptized. She worked with missionary – and, later, husband — John Clough to build Christianity into the social order of the people that she lived. If Walter discussed social Christianity, Emma actually did it. She earned a Ph.D. degree and later authored two books: While Sewing Sandals and Social Christianity in the Orient (the authorship of which is attributed to her husband John Everett Clough).

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                                                                           Education

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                                                                           Education

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Walter Rauschenbusch was educated in America and Germany. His father arranged for him to study in a German Gymnasium (similar to an American college education) for four years (1879-1883), located in Güterslob, a small city in Westphalia, Prussia. Augu Rauschenbusch wanted his son to experience the German system of higher education, which he believed to be superior to the American version. He also hoped that immersion in the religious and cultural environment of his homeland would reinforce his own orthodox values and piety in his son. Walter Rauschenbusch attended lectures at several German universities: Dresden, Leipzig, Halle, and Berlin.  In 1883 Walter Rauschenbusch commenced studies at the University of Rochester and Rochester Theological Seminary. The university gave him three years of credit based on the education he had received in Germany.  He would need one more year of studies to earn his undergraduate degree. The seminary and the university at Rochester granted Rauschenhusch permission to study for their respective degree programs simultaneously. At seminary, he wrestled with the challenge of reconciling the claims of evolutionary science and evangelical Christianity.  He considered what it meant to claim that Scripture is infallible, and, like his father, developed an interest in the Anabaptists. Rauschenbusch probed the limits of orthodoxy in some of his seminary papers, especially the doctrine of the Atonement. Although some of the theological conservatives on the faculty were troubled by his liberal views, the seminary was pleased with his academic record.  Rauschenbusch possessed an able mind and graduated at the top of his class. Interestingly, the theme that came to dominate his theological agenda in later years, the Kingdom of God, was not especially prominent in his seminary career. Furthermore, when he attended Rochester Theological Seminary, his early teachings were challenged. He learned of higher criticism, which led him to comment later that his "inherited ideas about the inerrancy of the Bible became untenable." He also began to doubt the substitutionary atonement; in his words, "it was not taught by Jesus; it makes salvation dependent upon a trinitarian transaction that is remote from human experience, and it implies a concept of divine justice that is repugnant to human sensitivity." But rather than shaking his faith, these challenges reinforced it.

Walter Rauschenbusch then returned to the United States where he graduated from the University of Rochester in 1884 and graduated from Rochester Theological Seminary of American Baptist Churches USA in 1886. When he returned to America via England, he spent a few weeks in London and made trips to Oxford and Liverpool.

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Born - October 4, 1861
Rochester, New York, US

Died - July 25, 1918 (aged 56)
Rochester, New York, US

An American theologian and Baptist pastor who taught at the Rochester Theological Seminary. Rauschenbusch was a key figure in the Social Gospel and single tax movements that flourished in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.