In the study of social Christianity, the family name “Rauschenbusch” is a familiar one. Most of the time, however, the surname is synonymous with only one first name: “Walter.” Walter Rauschenbusch was a great mind and social gospel innovator. However, I believe that his family is often overlooked in how they worked with and in social Christianity; or, at the very least, how they influenced Walter in his thinking.
His father, August (or Augustus) Rauschenbusch was a German Baptist evangelist and later teacher in the German Department of Rochester Theological Seminary, where Walter would later be educated. August’s ministry was certainly not based on a social gospel like Walter’s. His driving passion was to save the souls of individuals. He possessed a very intense personality and would be regarded by his peers as “a great man, a man of God.” However, his relationship with his family was one characterized by long periods of absence along with fits of rage when he was present.
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 where 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 PhD 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). Emma Rauschenbusch is a woman that deserves more study and research as part of the Rauschenbusch family legacy.
Andrew Scott, ABHS Student Research Assistant
Sources:
Christopher H. Evans, The Kingdom is Forever Coming: A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004)
Letter from Walter Rauschenbusch to George B. Huntingdon, April 21, 1913. Walter Rauschenbusch Family Papers, RG 1003, box 36, folder 2. American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, Georgia.
Image: Emma Rauschenbusch-Clough, While Sewing Sandals (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1899). Google Books:
