Christianity and the Social Crisis

by Walter Rauschenbusch

Christianity and the Social Crisis

The review from Amazon.com reviewer
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.

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Genres: Religion, Theology, Nonfiction

ebook

First published January 1, 1907

About the author

Walter Rauschenbusch was an American theologian and Baptist pastor who taught at the Rochester Theological Seminary.

Reviews

[Micah · Rating 3 out of 5]

watered-down Anabaptism

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

ONE OF THE FIRST (AND MOST IMPORTANT) BOOKS OF THE "SOCIAL GOSPEL" MOVEMENT

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) was a Christian Theologian and Baptist Minister. He was one of the most important figures in the "Social Gospel" movement, and later wrote books such as 'the Social Order: A Theology for the Social Gospel,' 'The Social Principles Of Jesus,' 'A Gospel for the Social Awakening' etc. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 429-page edition .]

He wrote in the Introduction of this 1907 book, “the relation between Christianity and the social crisis is one of the most pressing questions for all intelligent man who realize the power of religion, and most of all for the religious leaders of the people who give direction to the forces of religion… but it is plain to any thoughtful observer that the common mind of the Christian Church in America has not begun to arrive at any solid convictions or any permanent basis of action…. This book is to serve as a contribution to this discussion… The outcome of these first … chapters is that ‘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… (This) raises the question why the Christian Church has never undertaken to carry out this fundamental purpose of its existence.”

He admits, “In truth Jesus was not a social reformer of the modern type… He saw the evil in the life of men and their sufferings, but he approached these facts purely from the moral, and not from the economic or historical point of view. He wanted men to live a right life in common, and only insofar as the social questions are moral questions did he deal with them as they confronted him. And he was more than a teacher of morality. Jesus had learned the deepest and rarest secret of all---how to live a religious life.” (Pg. 47) He adds, “no man shares his life with God whose religion does not flow out… into all relations of his life and reconstructs everything that it touches. Whoever uncouples the religious and the social life has not understood Jesus.” (Pg. 48)

He summarizes, “We saw at the outset that Jesus was not a mere social reformer… He has been called the first socialist. He was more; he was the first real man, the inaugurator of a new humanity. But as such he bore within him the germs of a new social and political order. He was too great to be the Savior of a fractional part of human life. His redemption extends to all human needs and powers and relations… But if we were forced to classify him either with the great theologians … or with the mighty popes and princes of the Church… or with the man who are giving their heart and life to the propaganda of a new social system---where should we place him?” (Pg. 92)

He explains that after Jesus’ death, “the disciples at Jerusalem simply continued the life they had lived with the Master… They had a common purse… they continued a family life among themselves and shared what they had As their number increased… Those who were better off… replenished the common purse by larger offerings… But whatever the extent of this generosity may have been, it was always generosity, and not communism in any proper sense of the word… Thus the church at Jerusalem was not quite as communistic as is usually supposed. On the other hand, the other churches were not as completely devoid of communistic features as is commonly assumed.” (Pg. 121-123)

He summarizes, “The fundamental purpose of Jesus was the establishment of the kingdom of God, which involved a thorough regeneration and reconstitution of social life. Primitive Christianity cherished an ardent hope of a radically new era… Thus Christianity as an historical movement was launched with all the purpose and hope, all the impetus and power, of a great revolutionary movement, pledged to change the world-as-it-is into the world-as-it-ought-to-be.” (Pg. 143)

He notes “The Church is rendering some service today in opposing child labor and the sweat-shop system, which are among the culminating atrocities of the wages system, but its conscience has not at all awakened to the wrongfulness of the wages system as a whole, on which our industry rests.” (Pg. 149)

He admits, “It is correctly asserted that the apostles undertook no social propaganda. Paul held no antislavery meetings… Paul was not an anti-slavery man. He doubtless realized the oppressive conditions of many slaves, just as we recognize the hard lot of miners of oyster-dredgers. But to his lofty idealism outward conditions were almost indifferent. He himself bore poverty and homelessness almost with equanimity for Christ’s sake… This is sublime, but it is too rare an atmosphere for the mass of men…” (Pg. 153) Later, he adds, “one of the most important contributions of Paul to spiritual religion [was] that he denied utterly that man could earn merit with God… When the capitalistic impulse tries to accumulate a cash balance in heaven and do business with the Lord on a debit and credit basis, commercialism poisons religion.” (Pg. 168-169)

He observes, “To say that Christianity in the past largely … missed its greatest mission, is not to condemn the men of the past. They followed the light they had… If destiny had put me on the chair of St. Peter, I hope I should have made a good fight against the encroachments of the secular power on the sacred heritage of Christ… But being a twentieth-century Christian, I hope I shall do nothing of the kind. If men of the past flinched in following their ideals, they must answer to God for it. Also if they consciously taught what was unchristian, or quenched the better light in others.” (Pg. 200-201)

He asserts forcefully, “The rapacity of commerce has been the secret spring of most recent wars. Speculative finance is the axis on which international politics revolve… It defrauds the consumer who buys its goods. It drains and brutalizes the workman who does its work… If money dominates, the ideal cannot dominate. If we serve mammon, we cannot serve the Christ.” (Pg. 270-271)

He points out, “When a certain line of poverty has been passed, the churches lose their hole almost completely, in spite of the most heroic efforts of Christian men and women. A social system which lifts a small minority into great wealth, and submerges a great number in poverty, is this directly hostile to the interests of the Church. A system which would distribute wealth with approximate fairness and equality would offer honest religion the best working chance.” (Pg. 308)

He warns, “When two moral principles are … forced into practical antagonism in daily life, the question is which will be the stronger. If the Church cannot Christianize commerce, commerce will commercialize the Church. When the churches buy and sell, they follow the usual methods and often drive hard bargains.” (Pg. 314)

He summarizes, “This is the stake of the Church in the social crisis. If one vast domain of life is dominated by principles antagonistic to the ethics of Christianity, it will inculcate habits and generate ideas which will undermine the law of Christ in all other domains of life and even deny the theoretical validity of it. If the Church has not faith enough in the Christian law to assert its sovereignty over all relations of society, men will deny that it is a good and practicable law at all. If the Church cannot conquer business, business will conquer the Church.” (Pg. 316-317)

He states, “Every great movement which so profoundly stirs men, unlocks the depths of their religious nature, just as great experiences in our personal life make the individual susceptible to religious emotion… The large hope which then beckons man the ideal of justice and humanity which inspires them, the devotion and self-sacrifice to the cause which they exhibit---these are in truth religious.” (Pg. 319)

He asserts, “It is the business of a preacher to connect all that he thinks and says with the mind and will of God, to give the religious interpretation to all human relations and questions, and to infuse the divine sympathy and passion into all moral discussions. If he fails in that, he is to that extent not a minister of religion.” (Pg. 364)

He proposes, “The question is not how quickly Christian thought will realize that individualism is coming to be an inadequate and antiquated form of social organization which must give place to a higher form of communistic organization, and how thoroughly it will comprehend that this new communism will afford a far nobler social basis for the spiritual temple of Christianity.” (Pg. 396-397)

He concludes, “In asking for faith in the possibility of a new social order, we ask for no Utopian delusion. We know well that there is no perfection for man in this life: there is only growth toward perfection… We shall never abolish suffering. There will always be death and the empty chair and heart… The strong will always have the impulse to exert their strength, and no system can be devised which can keep them from crowding and jostling the weaker… At best there is always but an approximation to a perfect social order. The kingdom of God is always but coming.” (Pg. 420-421)

This book will be “must reading,” along with Rauschenbusch’s other books, for anyone seriously the Social Gospel movement, or “political theology” in general.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hard but important read

This book was one of the most difficult to pick up and one of the most difficult to put down. Rauschenbusch takes his time in leading us on a journey through the ancient prophets of Israel, the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and the call to those who claim to be the church of Jesus in our day. While not dismissing the need for personal conversion, the author says that justice is the essence of true religion. Religion must not attempt to travel on it's own. Justice is served, indeed it must be served by the cooperation between business, labor, and people of faith. Each has an essential role to play if society is going to be just.
Rauschenbusch demonstrates a deep knowledge of history and mastery of the English language as he makes his case. This is not an easy book to pick up; but anyone who is serious about the need for social change will have a hard time putting it down.

[Charles H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shows both the possibilities and limits of the "social gospel" tradition. Rauschenbusch makes a radical case for a non-ecclessiatic anti-capitalist Christianity, yet one qualified by his ultimate faith in the state and bourgeois culture and democracy. The cooperative commonwealth is always coming....

[Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure why this book doesn't have a higher rating. While I can't judge the accuracy of his historical analysis, the author's theological arguments were, and still are, revolutionary. His thoughts and others like him inspired Dr. King.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rauschenbusch's main point in this book is a solid one, and has become an idea that is often simply assumed today, though with different implications for different groups - that Christian ethics involves active social reconstruction, and not just individual transformation or exhortation within existing social structures. He writes more like a pastor than an academic, and uses engaging images and pithy, quotable sentences. Some of my favorite were from the fifth chapter, titled The Present Crisis:

"Single cases of unhappiness are inevitable in our frail human life; but when there are millions of them, all running along well-defined grooves, reducible to certain laws, then this misery is not an individual, but a social matter, due to causes in the structure of our society and curable only by social reconstruction."

"If we want approximate political equality, we must have approximate economic equality."

"Wealth...is to a nation what manure is to a farm. If the farmer spreads it evenly over the soil, it will enrich the whole. If he should leave it in heaps, the land would be impoverished and under the rich heaps the vegetation would be killed."

There were also plenty of aspects of the writing that I wasn't a fan of. The first four chapters are comprised of a lengthy historical account, covering in sequence the Israelite prophets, the life of Jesus, the early church, and the fifteen hundred years from the early church to the Reformation. Rauschenbusch seems to me to be too heavily indebted to Harnack's conception of the development of the early church and the general Hegelian perspective of clashing cultural movements slowly developing towards an ideal, and his focus on the prophets to the exclusion of the rest of Israelite religion and society is somewhat two-dimensional. When it comes to Jesus' life, he seems to miss the vital aspect of what Yoder later articulates in his book The Politics of Jesus - the centrality of the cross to Jesus' conception of social ethics - with Rauschenbusch stating at the end of the book that Jesus "failed" in bringing about his social aims because he was killed, and it is only now in the modern era with recent technological developments and global perspective that we can "succeed" in bringing about the kingdom of God (or at least strive towards its approximation). His account of the Catholic church and the medieval monastic movement, set against his clear sympathy towards his middle-class Protestant roots, is partisan and historically reductive, sometimes painful to read. Additionally, though I get the sense that Rauschenbusch himself has a more balanced conception of the advent of the kingdom of God, he writes in a way that could be quite easily misunderstood (a misunderstanding that was possibly one of the factors that propelled it to popularity in its time), feeding into the general hopefulness and expectation for the coming kingdom of God around the turn of the 20th century through technological and scientific advancement.

One feature of the writing I found myself appreciating was Rauschenbusch's nuanced appropriation of Marxian ideas, conveying them in a way congenial to liberal and education pastors at the time, with much of the inherent materialistic atheism reinterpreted. Much of his analysis is Marxian in nature: the division of society into labor and capital, a historical analysis that looks at economic realities as the force that produces genuine change, along with self-justifying ideologies, the alienation of laborers from the means of production and any kind of connection to what they produce, etc. Christianity and the Social Crisis was a seminal work that informed much of the social gospel movement, with profound insights and images that still manage to shine through the faults and omissions that have become apparent in the last century since its writing.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A seminal work. Was the originating influence on the social gospel movement of the early 20th century. Is still worth reading - still valuable for the prophetic call for social justice. Only some of Rauschenbusch's language is outdated. He was a self-proclaimed socialist and spoke of true Christian "communism" as an ideal goal. Course, this was written before the Russian revolution, and his communism was that of the monastery or "Brooks Farm" - not one imposed by a totalitarian state. His socialism was more an ideal goal than a political program. He certainly was not a revolutionary. He envisioned a gradual evolution to a more just society to be achieved by quite conservative means - by the church acting as the social conscience of society. Believed that it should be just as committed to the salvation of society as to that of individuals - that the clergy should assume the role of mediator, the bridge, between the classes, persuading the "possessing" classes to be more generous in respecting the legitimate needs of the workers (e.g. a living wage, collective bargaining, etc) while convincing the latter to forgo violence, to work for change through the political process. Strange to say, like Jonah, his message had an effect. The country did improve. The Robber Barons disappeared. Unions ameliorated the life of the workers. The New Deal more equitably distributed wealth. The Civil Rights movement created more justice, more opportunities for minorities. But somehow the tide turned. Christianity turned away from the "social gospel", turned back to the "Fundamentals", became almost a nationalistic religion, worshiping the status quo, worshiping free-wheeling capitalism, forgetting its mission to bring about the kingdom of God of earth. The need for Rauschenbusch's prophetic call for social justice is just as great now as when he first made it, perhaps greater - his message still necessary, and, as delivered by him, still compelling. He really is a great advocate, a great preacher. In fact, one of the pleasures of reading this book is his rhetoric, the logical structure of his arguments, his masterly use of oratory, of analogy. He makes an unforgettable one comparing money to manure - i.e., when piled in enormous heaps in the barnyard, it does no good - only stinks and draws flies and kills the vegetation beneath it - only when it is spread broadly across the fields, widely scattered, does it creates the rich growth that leads to the big harvest and prosperity for the farm. What could be a better response to "tickle-down" economic theory?

[Jared · Rating 4 out of 5]

This could have been written just 4 years ago, but it wasn't. It was written 100 years ago and seems just as telling and foretelling now as it was then.