Walter Rauschenbusch
Encyclopedia
Walter Rauschenbusch was a Christian theologian and Baptist minister. He was a key figure in the Social Gospel
movement in the United States of America.
, to Augustus Rauschenbusch
, a German preacher who taught at the Rochester Theological Seminary. He was raised on the orthodox
Protestant doctrines of his time, including biblical literalism
and the substitutionary atonement
. Though he went through a youthful rebellious period, at age 17 he experienced a personal religious conversion which "influenced my soul down to its depths." Like the Prodigal Son, he wrote, "I came to my Father, and I began to pray for help and got it." But he later felt that this experience was incomplete, focused on repentance from personal sins but not from social sins. When he attended Rochester Theological Seminary, his early teachings were challenged. He learned of the Higher Criticism, which led him to later comment that his "inherited ideas about the inerrancy of the Bible became untenable." He also began to doubt the substitutionary atonement; in his words, "it was not taught by Jesus; it makes salvation dependent upon a trinitarian transaction that is remote from human experience; and it implies a concept of divine justice that is repugnant to human sensitivity." But rather than shaking his faith, these challenges reinforced his faith. He came to admire Congregationalist
Horace Bushnell
and Anglican Frederick W. Robertson.
style of preaching but by leading a Christlike life. Rauschenbusch did not view Jesus' death as an act of substitutionary atonement but in his words, he died "to substitute love for selfishness as the basis of human society." He wrote that "Christianity is in its nature revolutionary" and tried to remind society of that. He explained that the Kingdom of God "is not a matter of getting individuals to heaven, but of transforming the life on earth into the harmony of heaven."
In Rauschenbusch's early adulthood, mainline Protestant churches were largely allied with the social and political establishment, in effect supporting the domination by robber baron
s, income disparity, and the use of child labor
. Most church leaders did not see a connection between these issues and their ministries, so did nothing to address the suffering. But Rauschenbusch saw it as his duty as a minister and student of Christ to act with love by trying to improve social conditions.
In his Theology for the Social Gospel (1917), he wrote that for John the Baptist
, the baptism
was "not a ritual act of individual salvation but an act of dedication to a religious and social movement."
Concerning the social depth and breadth of Christ's atoning work, Rauschenbusch writes: "Jesus did not in any real sense bear the sin of some ancient Briton who beat up his wife in B. C. 56, or of some mountaineer in Tennessee who got drunk in A. D. 1917. But he did in a very real sense bear the weight of the public sins of organized society, and they in turn are causally connected with all private sins."
Rauschenbusch enumerates "six sins, all of a public nature, which combined to kill Jesus. He bore their crushing attack in his body and soul. He bore them, not by sympathy, but by direct experience. Insofar as the personal sins of men have contributed to the existence of these public sins, he came into collision with the totality of evil in mankind. It requires no legal fiction of imputation to explain that 'he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.' Solidarity explains it."
These six "social sins" which Jesus, according to Rauschenbusch, bore on the Cross:
"Religious bigotry, the combination of graft and political power, the corruption of justice, the mob spirit (being "the social group gone mad") and mob action, militarism, and class contempt-- "every student of history will recognize that these sum up constitutional forces in the Kingdom of Evil. Jesus bore these sins in no legal or artificial sense, but in their impact on his own body and soul. He had not contributed to them, as we have, and yet they were laid on him. They were not only the sins of Caiaphas, Pilate, or Judas, but the social sin of all mankind, to which all who ever lived have contributed, and under which all who ever lived have suffered."
. The group's charter declared that "the Spirit of God is moving men in our generation toward a better understanding of the idea of the Kingdom of God on earth," and that their intention was to reestablish this idea in the thought of the church, and to assist in its practical realization in the world." In a pamphlet, Rauschenbusch wrote: "Because the Kingdom of God has been dropped as the primary and comprehensive aim of Christianity, and personal salvation has been substituted for it, therefore men seek to save their own souls and are selfishly indifferent to the evangelization of the world."
movement was not a unified and well-focused movement, as it contained members who disagreed with the conclusions of others within the movement. Rauschenbusch stated that the movement needed “a theology to make it effective” and likewise, “theology needs the social gospel to vitalize it.” In A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917), Rauschenbusch takes up the task of creating “a systematic theology large enough to match [our social gospel] and vital enough to back it.” He believed that the social gospel would be “a permanent addition to our spiritual outlook and that its arrival constitutes a state in the development of the Christian religion,” and thus a systematic tool for using it was necessary.
In A Theology for the Social Gospel, Rauschenbusch states that the individualistic gospel has made sinfulness of the individual clear, but it has not shed light on institutionalized sinfulness: “It has not evoked faith in the will and power of God to redeem the permanent institutions of human society from their inherited guilt of oppression and extortion.” This ideology would be inherited by liberation theologians and civil rights advocates and leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.
The idea of the Kingdom of God is crucial to Rauschenbusch’s proposed theology of the social gospel. He states that the ideology and "doctrine of the Kingdom of God," of which Jesus Christ reportedly “always spoke” has been gradually replaced by that of the Church. This was done at first by the early church out of what appeared to be necessity, but Rauschenbusch calls Christians to return to the doctrine of the Kingdom of God. Of course, such a replacement has cost theology and Christians at large a great deal: the way we view Jesus and the synoptic gospels, the ethical principles of Jesus, and worship rituals have all been affected by this replacement. In promoting a return to the doctrine of the Kingdom of God, he clarified that the Kingdom of God: is not subject to the pitfalls of the Church; it can test and correct the Church; is a prophetic, future-focused ideology and a revolutionary, social and political force that understands all creation to be sacred; and it can help save the problematic, sinful social order.
The full text of A Theology for the Social Gospel is available here: http://www.archive.org/details/theologyforsoc00raus.
and Jacob Riis
with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA)
on July 2.
A stained glass window was given to the Andrews Street Baptist Church (known as the First German Baptist Church until 1918) in Rochester around 1929 by Mrs. Edmund Lyon. The building was vacant during the late 1960s and some of the windows were stolen, including part of the original Rauschenbusch window. A new congregation purchased the building and a stained glass expert repaired and re-created some of the windows; however, the upper portion of the Rauschenbusch window is substantially different from the original. A photograph of the original window appears in a booklet that was published for the centennial celebration of the church in 1951.
's writings on Faith Development. In addition, Rauschenbusch was deeply influenced by the writings of the secular Left, particularly themes concerning community, in favor of which he rejected orthodox Protestant individualism. In his treatment of "Supra-personal entities", Rauschenbusch listed four great supra-personal entities, which are to be read metaphorically as demonic powers (Rauschenbusch hints at this metaphor repeatedly). These evil supra-personal entities are nationalism, militarism, capitalism and individualism. According to Rauschenbusch, Christians must strive politically in their societies to replace these evils with the "good supra-personal" entities of internationalism, pacifism, socialism and collectivism. Accordingly, Rauschenbusch's formulation eliminated the historic Christian concern with salvation of one's soul and the subsequent avoidance of sin (for instance, Roman Catholicism listed the seven deadly sins: greed, lust, envy, wrath, pride, sloth and gluttony) and replaced these concepts with political-ideological commitments.
This shift dramatically altered the nature of Protestant theology in the United States, by making liberal Protestantism into a "political religion". Since Rauschenbusch saw America as essentially Christianized, this claim, along with his emphasis on sin as selfishness, led his disciples in the liberal churches to move directly to government intervention on behalf of Christian social policy. No longer were Christian "charity" and "generosity" to be encouraged, but rather, governmental assistance in the redistribution of wealth was the goal. The middle class conviction that they had justly earned their wealth was especially despised. Generosity was not respected; "confiscatory" taxes were in order to redress the social balance. There was some dissent. "Christian realists" such as Reinhold Niebuhr noted that the power to tax rested on force, and lethal force at that, so could not be seen as vehicle of "Christian love". But the Social Gospel advocates were not interested in expanding Christian love; they were interested in an equality of ends, and in putting an end to "the sin of selfishness". In this sense, the movement after Rauschenbusch essentially involved a "baptism of Marxism" into the liberal Protestant creed. Rauschenbusch's inability to appreciate the productivity of the Middle Class, and his contempt for their view that they deserved that for which they worked, is perfectly in line with Marx's hatred for the "bourgeoisie". The direct result of Rauschenbusch's new theology was to combine moral and political concerns.
The change from a religion of faith and reform to a religion of the political Left and coercive power politics ultimately led to the radical decline of the liberal Protestant churches themselves (the so-called "mainline" churches) after 1965. Today still in steep decline, the "mainline" Protestant churches continue as political religions, with many of them maintaining large, well-funded lobbying organizations for pacifist, socialist, welfare state and other political causes in Washington, D.C., at the same time that they are radically defunding overseas missions, and decrying the alleged "theocratic" aims of the "Christian Right". All of this dissimulation is owed to Rauschenbusch's good intentions and wide intellectual influence.
As a footnote, Union Theological Seminary
in New York, the education and training center for America's liberal religious elite for over a century and-a-half, in 2004 had to sell its vaunted Burke theological library—the largest and most extensive in North America—to Columbia University just to keep its doors open. The Burke Library today is fully integrated into the Columbia University Library system.
; and his grandson, Richard Rorty
.
Still today, social justice ministries sometimes take the name Rauschenbusch in honor of the theologian's life and work. Rauschenbusch Metro Ministries in New York (http://rmmnyc.org/) and Rauschenbusch Center for Spirit and Action in Seattle (http://www.rauschenbusch.org/) are two such examples.
In addition, he translated a number of hymns from English into German. Many of these were published in Evangeliums-Lieder 1 & 2, edited by Rauschenbusch and Ira Sankey. (1904. New York/Chicago. Bigelow & Main Co./John Church Co.)http://openlibrary.org/b/OL16908558M
Social Gospel
The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early 20th century United States and Canada...
movement in the United States of America.
Evolution of Thought
Rauschenbusch was born in Rochester, New YorkRochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
, to Augustus Rauschenbusch
Augustus Rauschenbusch
Augustus Rauschenbusch was a Baptist clergyman who worked mostly in the United States.-Biography:...
, a German preacher who taught at the Rochester Theological Seminary. He was raised on the orthodox
Orthodoxy
The word orthodox, from Greek orthos + doxa , is generally used to mean the adherence to accepted norms, more specifically to creeds, especially in religion...
Protestant doctrines of his time, including biblical literalism
Biblical literalism
Biblical literalism is the interpretation or translation of the explicit and primary sense of words in the Bible. A literal Biblical interpretation is associated with the fundamentalist and evangelical hermeneutical approach to Scripture, and is used almost exclusively by conservative Christians...
and the substitutionary atonement
Substitutionary atonement
Technically speaking, substitutionary atonement is the name given to a number of Christian models of the atonement that all regard Jesus as dying as a substitute for others, "instead of" them...
. Though he went through a youthful rebellious period, at age 17 he experienced a personal religious conversion which "influenced my soul down to its depths." Like the Prodigal Son, he wrote, "I came to my Father, and I began to pray for help and got it." But he later felt that this experience was incomplete, focused on repentance from personal sins but not from social sins. When he attended Rochester Theological Seminary, his early teachings were challenged. He learned of the Higher Criticism, which led him to later comment that his "inherited ideas about the inerrancy of the Bible became untenable." He also began to doubt the substitutionary atonement; in his words, "it was not taught by Jesus; it makes salvation dependent upon a trinitarian transaction that is remote from human experience; and it implies a concept of divine justice that is repugnant to human sensitivity." But rather than shaking his faith, these challenges reinforced his faith. He came to admire Congregationalist
Congregational church
Congregational churches are Protestant Christian churches practicing Congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs....
Horace Bushnell
Horace Bushnell
Horace Bushnell was an American Congregational clergyman and theologian.-Life:Bushnell was a Yankee born in the village of Bantam, township of Litchfield, Connecticut. He attended Yale College where he roomed with future magazinist Nathaniel Parker Willis. Willis credited Bushnell with teaching...
and Anglican Frederick W. Robertson.
View of Christianity
Rauschenbusch's view of Christianity was that its purpose was to spread a Kingdom of God, not through a fire and brimstoneFire and brimstone
Fire and brimstone is an idiomatic expression of signs of God's wrath in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. In the Bible, they often appear in reference to the fate of the unfaithful. "Brimstone," possibly the ancient name for sulfur, evokes the acrid odor of volcanic activity...
style of preaching but by leading a Christlike life. Rauschenbusch did not view Jesus' death as an act of substitutionary atonement but in his words, he died "to substitute love for selfishness as the basis of human society." He wrote that "Christianity is in its nature revolutionary" and tried to remind society of that. He explained that the Kingdom of God "is not a matter of getting individuals to heaven, but of transforming the life on earth into the harmony of heaven."
In Rauschenbusch's early adulthood, mainline Protestant churches were largely allied with the social and political establishment, in effect supporting the domination by robber baron
Robber baron (industrialist)
Robber baron is a pejorative term used for a powerful 19th century American businessman. By the 1890s the term was used to attack any businessman who used questionable practices to become wealthy...
s, income disparity, and the use of child labor
Child labor
Child labour refers to the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organizations and is illegal in many countries...
. Most church leaders did not see a connection between these issues and their ministries, so did nothing to address the suffering. But Rauschenbusch saw it as his duty as a minister and student of Christ to act with love by trying to improve social conditions.
Social Responsibility
In Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Rauschenbusch wrote that "Whoever uncouples the religious and the social life has not understood Jesus. Whoever sets any bounds for the reconstructive power of the religious life over the social relations and institutions of men, to that extent denies the faith of the Master." The significance of this work is that it spoke of the individual's responsibility toward society.In his Theology for the Social Gospel (1917), he wrote that for John the Baptist
John the Baptist
John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...
, the baptism
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
was "not a ritual act of individual salvation but an act of dedication to a religious and social movement."
Concerning the social depth and breadth of Christ's atoning work, Rauschenbusch writes: "Jesus did not in any real sense bear the sin of some ancient Briton who beat up his wife in B. C. 56, or of some mountaineer in Tennessee who got drunk in A. D. 1917. But he did in a very real sense bear the weight of the public sins of organized society, and they in turn are causally connected with all private sins."
Rauschenbusch enumerates "six sins, all of a public nature, which combined to kill Jesus. He bore their crushing attack in his body and soul. He bore them, not by sympathy, but by direct experience. Insofar as the personal sins of men have contributed to the existence of these public sins, he came into collision with the totality of evil in mankind. It requires no legal fiction of imputation to explain that 'he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.' Solidarity explains it."
These six "social sins" which Jesus, according to Rauschenbusch, bore on the Cross:
"Religious bigotry, the combination of graft and political power, the corruption of justice, the mob spirit (being "the social group gone mad") and mob action, militarism, and class contempt-- "every student of history will recognize that these sum up constitutional forces in the Kingdom of Evil. Jesus bore these sins in no legal or artificial sense, but in their impact on his own body and soul. He had not contributed to them, as we have, and yet they were laid on him. They were not only the sins of Caiaphas, Pilate, or Judas, but the social sin of all mankind, to which all who ever lived have contributed, and under which all who ever lived have suffered."
The Brotherhood of the Kingdom
In 1892, Rauschenbusch and some friends formed a group called the Brotherhood of the KingdomBrotherhood of the Kingdom
The Brotherhood of the Kingdom was a group of the leading thinkers and advocates of the Social Gospel, founded in 1892 by Walter Rauschenbusch and Leighton Williams...
. The group's charter declared that "the Spirit of God is moving men in our generation toward a better understanding of the idea of the Kingdom of God on earth," and that their intention was to reestablish this idea in the thought of the church, and to assist in its practical realization in the world." In a pamphlet, Rauschenbusch wrote: "Because the Kingdom of God has been dropped as the primary and comprehensive aim of Christianity, and personal salvation has been substituted for it, therefore men seek to save their own souls and are selfishly indifferent to the evangelization of the world."
A Theology for the Social Gospel
The social gospelSocial Gospel
The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early 20th century United States and Canada...
movement was not a unified and well-focused movement, as it contained members who disagreed with the conclusions of others within the movement. Rauschenbusch stated that the movement needed “a theology to make it effective” and likewise, “theology needs the social gospel to vitalize it.” In A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917), Rauschenbusch takes up the task of creating “a systematic theology large enough to match [our social gospel] and vital enough to back it.” He believed that the social gospel would be “a permanent addition to our spiritual outlook and that its arrival constitutes a state in the development of the Christian religion,” and thus a systematic tool for using it was necessary.
In A Theology for the Social Gospel, Rauschenbusch states that the individualistic gospel has made sinfulness of the individual clear, but it has not shed light on institutionalized sinfulness: “It has not evoked faith in the will and power of God to redeem the permanent institutions of human society from their inherited guilt of oppression and extortion.” This ideology would be inherited by liberation theologians and civil rights advocates and leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.
The idea of the Kingdom of God is crucial to Rauschenbusch’s proposed theology of the social gospel. He states that the ideology and "doctrine of the Kingdom of God," of which Jesus Christ reportedly “always spoke” has been gradually replaced by that of the Church. This was done at first by the early church out of what appeared to be necessity, but Rauschenbusch calls Christians to return to the doctrine of the Kingdom of God. Of course, such a replacement has cost theology and Christians at large a great deal: the way we view Jesus and the synoptic gospels, the ethical principles of Jesus, and worship rituals have all been affected by this replacement. In promoting a return to the doctrine of the Kingdom of God, he clarified that the Kingdom of God: is not subject to the pitfalls of the Church; it can test and correct the Church; is a prophetic, future-focused ideology and a revolutionary, social and political force that understands all creation to be sacred; and it can help save the problematic, sinful social order.
The full text of A Theology for the Social Gospel is available here: http://www.archive.org/details/theologyforsoc00raus.
Veneration
Rauschenbusch is honored together with Washington GladdenWashington Gladden
Washington Gladden was a leading American Congregational church pastor and early leader of the Social Gospel movement. He was a leading member of the Progressive Movement, serving for two years as a member of the Columbus, Ohio, City Council and campaigning against Boss Tweed as acting editor of...
and Jacob Riis
Jacob Riis
Jacob August Riis was a Danish American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific...
with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA)
Calendar of saints (Episcopal Church in the United States of America)
The veneration of saints in the Episcopal Church is a continuation of an ancient tradition from the early Church which honors important people of the Christian faith. The usage of the term "saint" is similar to Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Those in the Anglo-Catholic tradition may...
on July 2.
A stained glass window was given to the Andrews Street Baptist Church (known as the First German Baptist Church until 1918) in Rochester around 1929 by Mrs. Edmund Lyon. The building was vacant during the late 1960s and some of the windows were stolen, including part of the original Rauschenbusch window. A new congregation purchased the building and a stained glass expert repaired and re-created some of the windows; however, the upper portion of the Rauschenbusch window is substantially different from the original. A photograph of the original window appears in a booklet that was published for the centennial celebration of the church in 1951.
Critique
Although the Christian "Social Gospel"--i.e., saving society instead of souls, or in a more orthodox sense, saving souls by saving society—emerged in the late 1800s, Rauschenbusch became its principal advocate in the twentieth century. His motives were noble—the experience of bringing converts to Christ then watching them dragged back into a life of sin in New York's gutters. Yet his peculiar formulations of "sin is selfishness" and "Christianity is humanitarianism" really eliminated the profundity of the doctrine of sin and made the ethic of love something broad and extensive, not predicated on individual acts. This view is perpetuated in James FowlerJames W. Fowler
Dr. James W. Fowler III ) Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University, was director of both the Center for Research on Faith and Moral Development and the Center for Ethics until he retired in 2005...
's writings on Faith Development. In addition, Rauschenbusch was deeply influenced by the writings of the secular Left, particularly themes concerning community, in favor of which he rejected orthodox Protestant individualism. In his treatment of "Supra-personal entities", Rauschenbusch listed four great supra-personal entities, which are to be read metaphorically as demonic powers (Rauschenbusch hints at this metaphor repeatedly). These evil supra-personal entities are nationalism, militarism, capitalism and individualism. According to Rauschenbusch, Christians must strive politically in their societies to replace these evils with the "good supra-personal" entities of internationalism, pacifism, socialism and collectivism. Accordingly, Rauschenbusch's formulation eliminated the historic Christian concern with salvation of one's soul and the subsequent avoidance of sin (for instance, Roman Catholicism listed the seven deadly sins: greed, lust, envy, wrath, pride, sloth and gluttony) and replaced these concepts with political-ideological commitments.
This shift dramatically altered the nature of Protestant theology in the United States, by making liberal Protestantism into a "political religion". Since Rauschenbusch saw America as essentially Christianized, this claim, along with his emphasis on sin as selfishness, led his disciples in the liberal churches to move directly to government intervention on behalf of Christian social policy. No longer were Christian "charity" and "generosity" to be encouraged, but rather, governmental assistance in the redistribution of wealth was the goal. The middle class conviction that they had justly earned their wealth was especially despised. Generosity was not respected; "confiscatory" taxes were in order to redress the social balance. There was some dissent. "Christian realists" such as Reinhold Niebuhr noted that the power to tax rested on force, and lethal force at that, so could not be seen as vehicle of "Christian love". But the Social Gospel advocates were not interested in expanding Christian love; they were interested in an equality of ends, and in putting an end to "the sin of selfishness". In this sense, the movement after Rauschenbusch essentially involved a "baptism of Marxism" into the liberal Protestant creed. Rauschenbusch's inability to appreciate the productivity of the Middle Class, and his contempt for their view that they deserved that for which they worked, is perfectly in line with Marx's hatred for the "bourgeoisie". The direct result of Rauschenbusch's new theology was to combine moral and political concerns.
The change from a religion of faith and reform to a religion of the political Left and coercive power politics ultimately led to the radical decline of the liberal Protestant churches themselves (the so-called "mainline" churches) after 1965. Today still in steep decline, the "mainline" Protestant churches continue as political religions, with many of them maintaining large, well-funded lobbying organizations for pacifist, socialist, welfare state and other political causes in Washington, D.C., at the same time that they are radically defunding overseas missions, and decrying the alleged "theocratic" aims of the "Christian Right". All of this dissimulation is owed to Rauschenbusch's good intentions and wide intellectual influence.
As a footnote, Union Theological Seminary
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York is a preeminent independent graduate school of theology, located in Manhattan between Claremont Avenue and Broadway, 120th to 122nd Streets. The seminary was founded in 1836 under the Presbyterian Church, and is affiliated with nearby Columbia...
in New York, the education and training center for America's liberal religious elite for over a century and-a-half, in 2004 had to sell its vaunted Burke theological library—the largest and most extensive in North America—to Columbia University just to keep its doors open. The Burke Library today is fully integrated into the Columbia University Library system.
Influence
Rauschenbusch's work influenced, among others, Martin Luther King; Desmond TutuDesmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu is a South African activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid...
; and his grandson, Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...
.
Still today, social justice ministries sometimes take the name Rauschenbusch in honor of the theologian's life and work. Rauschenbusch Metro Ministries in New York (http://rmmnyc.org/) and Rauschenbusch Center for Spirit and Action in Seattle (http://www.rauschenbusch.org/) are two such examples.
Works
As a key intellectual leader of the social gospel movement, Rauschenbusch wrote several books, including:- Christianity and the Social Crisis. 1907. New York: Macmillan.
- Christianizing the Social Order. 1912. New York: Macmillan.
- Theology for the Social Gospel. 1917. New York: Abingdon Press.
- " Social Principles of Jesus". 1918. New York; The Association Press ("Los Principios Sociales de Jesús" Editorial "La Aurora" Buenos Aires 1947. (This work, considered a primer for those wanting to study the Biblical foundations for social gospel, was republished in a Special Edition in 2010 by WordStream Publishing
- Rauschenbusch search Archive.org
In addition, he translated a number of hymns from English into German. Many of these were published in Evangeliums-Lieder 1 & 2, edited by Rauschenbusch and Ira Sankey. (1904. New York/Chicago. Bigelow & Main Co./John Church Co.)http://openlibrary.org/b/OL16908558M