I recently sent Brian McLaren an e-mail introducing myself as the great-grandson of Walter Rauschenbusch. Brian is a pastor, the bestselling author of, among other books, “A New Kind of Christian,” and a leader in the Emergent Church, one of today’s most vibrant Christian movements.
I had just edited the 100th anniversary edition of Rauschenbusch’s first book, “Christianity and the Social Crisis” (with the updated title, “Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century”), and I was curious to see what Brain thought of Rauschenbusch. I knew that the Emergent Church shared some of my great-grandfather’s concerns, blending evangelical devotion to Jesus while preaching an active response to social questions of the day. But the intensity of Brian’s response caught me off guard.
“Like a lot of people from Evangelical backgrounds,” Brian wrote, “in my childhood and youth I was taught that the "social gospel" was nothing but evil. I heard it a thousand times in sermons...Now, of course, I think this kind of anti-justice, privatized-gospel propaganda is evil!”
Wow.
What strikes me about Brian’s faith journey is how it mirrors mine in reverse. I don’t remember ever hearing about social gospel either, but that’s because in the main-line church I was raised in, the social gospel was so thoroughly integrated into our liturgy and preaching it had no separate name. It was the evangelicals who were the focus of our scorn or distrust. And while I appreciated my church growing up, and our social consciousness, I came to see we lacked the passion about God and Jesus for which our evangelical sisters and brothers were known.
After college, where I majored in religion, I fell away from the church and into several years of alcohol and drug addiction. It was only through the process of recovery that I began to pray actively again and to feel the deep personal connection to God that so many evangelicals feel comfortable speaking about. I began to attend church again and my religious commitments grew so that I decided to attend seminary and pursue a life in the ministry.
It was in seminary when I first actually read my great-grandfather’s work. I found it thrilling. His writing was a response to his experience serving as pastor to a poor immigrant church in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. The plight of his congregation opened Rauschenbusch’s eyes to the crushing problems that industrialization presented to the working poor. When speaking about his work at that church he bitterly recalled: “I buried too many babies.” His experience convinced him that sin was not something that individuals struggled with only, but could be found in the way societies are structured, so that oppression of the poor is commonplace. Rauschenbusch believed that being a pastor meant taking responsibility not only for the spiritual well being of individuals, but for his society, and he began to call his country to repentance for allowing for such poverty and inequality to go unchecked. “In personal religion the first requirement is to repent and believe in the Gospel,” he wrote. “Social religion, too, demands repentance and faith: repentance for our social sins; faith in the possibility of a new social order.” This new social order is was what Jesus described as the kingdom of God. Rauschenbusch believed that it was the hope and work of Christians to help usher in this new kingdom on earth.
While Rauschenbusch clearly was concerned with the social aspects of religion, his writing also conveys his passion for our personal relationship with Jesus that compels us to carry out his teaching here on earth. It is not surprising that Brian and I are finding common ground in Rauschenbusch’s writings about the kingdom of God. Brian and I are coming together because we are both striving to live and work in God’s kingdom on this earth, in this time, and in community with others.
And such alliances of Christians from different backgrounds are desperately needed. Unfortunately, as I look at the state of our world today, the problems that confronted my great-grandfather have a depressingly familiar ring. Repentance is again in order. After a century marked by social progress, we have regressed to levels of disparities between the richest and poorest members of American society not seen since to robber barons of the early 20th century. It is outrageous that in this time of wealth in America that many cannot afford healthcare and housing; that militarism and religion are being co-joined; that measures aimed at addressing the sinful history of racial injustice are being rolled back in the courts; that literal interpretation of biblical texts are being used to give women second-class citizenship and demonize gay and lesbian people; and that the mandates found in Genesis to care for creation are being ignored. And the church still bears a large part of the shame of our situation. Instead of being voices for God’s kingdom on earth, many Christians in America remain committed to a privatized, apocalyptic, otherworldly faith and forsaking the social commitments of Jesus.
The Gospel is both deeply personal and social. We are commanded to love God passionately and our neighbors compassionately. Like my great-grandfather, I don’t believe in a social gospel or an evangelical gospel. I believe in the Gospel of Jesus who taught us to pray: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as in heaven. Thanks be to God.
Paul B. Raushenbush is associate dean of religious life and of the chapel at Princeton University. Thursday at 7 p.m., Union Theological Seminary in New York will host a panel discussion in celebration of the 100th Anniversary Edition of Walter Rauschenbusch's seminal book "Christianity and the Social Crisis."
