Throughout the history of the Christian religion, there have been different views of Jesus and his redeeming work. In fact, one man once said that “No individual, no Church, no age of history has ever comprehended the full scope of God’s saving purposes in Jesus Christ.” That man was Walter Rauschenbusch. Born on October 4, 1861 to German immigrants Augustus and Caroline Rauschenbusch in Rochester, New York, Rauschenbusch went on to become an advocate for a movement that would later be termed the “social gospel.”
This term, particularly in Rauschenbusch’s thought, was driven by one key concept: the Kingdom of God. Throughout his pastoral ministry in Second German Baptist Church in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen from 1886-1897, Rauschenbusch quickly began to realize that an individual conception of salvation and the kingdom was not enough for his congregation. He realized that the scope needed of this concept had to be broadened. Jesus prayed that God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. This concept of an earthly order of affairs shaped by the teachings of Jesus Christ continued to grow in Rauschenbusch’s writings and teachings at Rochester Theological Seminary where he taught from 1897 until his death in 1918.
In one of his first major published works, “The New Evangelism,” Rauschenbusch talks of the need for a new evangelism to rise up and replace the old evangelism. Rauschenbusch says that “It (the powerlessness of the old evangelism) lies in the fact that modern life has gone through immense changes and the Church has not kept pace with it in developing the latent moral and spiritual resources of the Gospel which are needed by the new life.” In this new life, Rauschenbusch argues, one needs to simply personal piety, e.g. going to church, staying sober, avoiding sexual promiscuity, and so forth. But one must also attend equally to the social realm because choosing only personal sanctity allows one to contribute to an oppressive social system.
Rauschenbusch continued his life work attempting to flesh out this new evangelism that will only come when the church is open and observant to the developments that are happening in the current world around us. For Rauschenbusch himself, these developments were best found in communion with the working class factory worker in inhumane working environments, child labor, and the growing gap between the rich and the poor. What are our markers today? How can we, in the spirit of Rauschenbusch, look to create a more just society based upon the teachings of Jesus? How can we continue to plant the seeds of the kingdom in the soil of our current society for the Father to water? How can we continue the growth of the kingdom? These are questions that we must ask ourselves, for the Kingdom is always but coming.
Andrew Scott, ABHS Student Research Assistant
Source: Christopher H. Evans, The Kingdome is Forever Coming: A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004).
