Walter Rauschenbusch then and now

For theological liberals, the name of Walter Rauschenbusch is often reduced to a hashtag for “social gospel.” William Pitts’s carefully researched exploration of the richness and complexity of Rauschenbusch’s life, thought, and witness refuses any such simplistic reduction. It is worth a careful read, because Rauschenbusch is indeed the godfather of much of today’s theology that focuses on issues of justice.

Pitts identifies several conversions that marked Rauschenbusch’s journey from his German pietist childhood faith to an intellectually informed engagement with history and culture. As Rauschen­busch embraced historical criticism in his study of scripture and doctrine, he began to see that the claims of the gospel had to be radically reformulated in new social contexts.

His first assignment as a pastor was in a Baptist congregation at the edge of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. There Rauschenbusch ministered to German immigrants and came into daily contact with social ailments, including ignorance, poverty, bad hygiene, starvation, and intemperance. At the same time, he met social critics like Jacob Riis and advocates of Christian socialism like F. D. Maurice. These relationships led Rauschenbusch to rearticulate the gospel in terms of economic realities and the social structures that sustain those realities.