Christianity and the social crisis: Rauschenbusch's legacy after a century: in 2001, the plight of the working poor reached a wide audience through Barbara Ehrenreich's best seller, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. Ehrenreich wondered how anyone could survive on near minimum wage.

She worked as a waitress, house cleaner, and Wal-Mart salesperson to see whether she could live on the wages they offered. She found that the work was exhausting and that these jobs did not provide sufficient income to meet expenses. Ehrenreich concluded that it is, above all, the cost of rent that drives poor workers to the margins. They have no recourse but to take an additional job. They have no medical insurance. She observed that something is very wrong when a single person cannot support herself by the sweat of her brow. (1) On the other hand, the "owning class" has far too much, as she put it, "money, floor space, and stuff." (2) She concluded that the underlying problem is that the "megascale corporate order" is a "great blind profit-making machine." (3) Walter Rauschenbusch would have recognized this situation immediately and would have been dismayed to learn that the conditions and inequities he described a hundred years ago still plague the working poor in America.

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) was a professional church historian who is not known for writing church history. He was much more a shaper of a church history than a chronicler of it. He was a Baptist who is not remembered for promoting Baptist ideas or practices. His voice transcended denominational lines, for he called the church to responsibilities it had long ignored. Instead of creating an identity as a church historian or Baptist spokesman, Rauschenbusch derived enduring influence from his message of the ethical obligation of Christianity to address social ills. He addressed his message to the larger Christian community, not merely to Baptists. For his role in prodding the church to see and accept its responsibility to society, Rauschenbusch is often called a modern prophet. (4)

Rauschenbusch is remembered as the central figure in the American Social Gospel. In this article, I argue that the key to Rauschenbusch's ongoing influence today rests especially on his deeply held notion of justice. He articulated his vision of Christian social justice first in Christianity and the Social Crisis, which he finished exactly one hundred years ago. The book was published in 1907, and by 1908, it had made Rauschenbusch famous. Christianity and the Social Crisis was the religious best seller in the United States for the next three years. (5) It is arguably the most influential book produced by any writer in the Social Gospel movement. This article is a centennial celebration of one of the landmark books in American religious history and a tribute to a great Baptist Christian thinker.

The claim is often made that Rauschenbusch is one of the three or four most influential American theologians in the nation's history. Influence is a somewhat elusive notion, but it would involve at least an original way of thinking about Christian theology, communicated by a persuasive articulation of these ideas, and, further, the power of that idea to influence the thinking of subsequent generations. This article seeks to demonstrate that Rauschenbusch's work fulfills both of these criteria. I will first examine the shaping of Rauschenbusch's thought. Second, I will explore the argument of Christianity and the Social Crisis. Third, I will suggest something of Rauschenbusch's influence during the past one hundred years. The force and relevance of Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis and of his entire theological output today rests on the notion of justice; the usefulness of the book is his insistence that justice must be retrieved as a central responsibility of the church. Rauschenbusch's perspective shifted the theological focus from the individual to society, thereby articulating an important strand of Christian thought called "The Social Gospel."

The Shaping of Rauschenbusch's Thought

Rauschenbusch's life is well documented, and his best biographers have traced the key influences in his development. (6) His thought revolved around two poles-the individual and the social. For him, it would be wrong to neglect either of these two poles of the Christian experience. The tradition of Protestant revivalism focused on the individual. Rauschenbusch's starting point was his Baptist piety with its emphasis in individual conversion. He spoke often of religion and morality, urging readers to understand that the personal religious experience provided the foundation for moral action. (7) The other dimension of his thought focused on social institutions and structures. Here he was especially creative, and scholars have given careful attention to the evolution of social gospel ideas in Rauschenbusch's thought. (8)

During his formal education experiences at Rochester University and Rochester Theological Seminary, Rauschenbusch perceived significant tension in the classroom created by two contrasting approaches to truth. The church was experiencing intellectual challenges from new ideas, especially from the theory of evolution, and from critical methods of biblical interpretation. Rauschenbusch's university and seminary faculty reflected current tensions in their teaching. Whereas his Old Testament and theology professors were conservative, his science and New Testament professors embraced the more liberal "New Theology," encouraging students to think for themselves. Rauschenbusch was drawn to the more liberal approach; he allowed reason and experience to assume a place alongside scripture and tradition in shaping his theology. The outlook instilled by his education meant for Rauschenbusch that some traditional ideas might have to be abandoned or modified. Rauschenbusch drew from his formal training the central idea that the purpose of education is to pursue truth. His education provided an orientation of openness to new ideas. The new ideas of social Christianity, which he helped articulate, emerged after he had completed his formal education, but the essential step of opening his mind to the possibility of accepting new ideas had been established while he was a student. Approach to knowledge, rather than any specific content, may have been the most important contribution his formal education made toward shaping Rauschenbusch's young mind. (9)

Rauschenbusch began his career as a pastor. Following his seminary training, in 1886 he accepted the invitation to become pastor of the Second German Baptist Church in New York City, where he served until 1897. His early sermons reflected his view that his task was to save souls. However, in his role as pastor, Rauschenbusch soon encountered poverty first hand and wondered what could be done about the problem. He learned about possible solutions in the writings of contemporary socialist thinkers. Socialism, Winthrop Hudson asserted, was "his most momentous discovery." (10) Rauschenbusch wrote, "I owe my first awakening to the world of social problems to the agitation of Henry George in 1886, and wish here to record my lifelong debt to him." (11) George argued that poverty was not inevitable. Richard Ely also affected Rauschenbusch profoundly. In his Social Aspects of Christianity, Ely contended that Christianity as usually practiced "presented only a one-sided half gospel and forgot the Bible's passion for social righteousness." (12) This two-pronged Christianity would become the central theme of Christianity and the Social Crisis. Rauschenbusch also read F. D. Maurice, the leader of English Christian Socialism, who argued that life was meant to be lived on the basis of cooperation, not competition. (13)

Soon, Rauschenbusch began to articulate his own views in a small short-lived journal called For the Right (1889-1891). He focused on legislation needed to improve the lives of American workers. Thus, before he was thirty, Rauschenbusch was beginning to articulate his key idea of the social gospel:

   We differ from many Christian men and women in our insistence on
   good institutions. They believe that only if men are personally
   converted wrong and injustice will gradually disappear. It does
   not appear so to us.... We raise the charge of negligence and
   sloth against the church of God in suffering injustice to be
   incorporated in the very construction of society. (14)

Here Rauschenbusch clearly articulated the necessity, not the option, of good institutions. The intent and the thrust of his thought were to end injustice by changing the structure of society.

From March to December 1891, Rauschenbusch studied in Germany. There he wrote the manuscript of a book he called "Revolutionary Christianity" (1891), but he did not publish it. (15) Sixteen years later, a greatly revised version of this manuscript appeared as Christianity and the Social Crisis.

During this stay in Germany, Rauschenbusch was struck by current biblical and theological focus on the idea of the Kingdom of God. This biblical idea would become the central organizing theological idea for his reform proposals. He was convinced that it was Jesus' "leading conception," but that the church had seriously distorted its original meaning. What had gone wrong? First, Christianity interpreted the message of Jesus to be the promise of life after death, but Jesus' original prayer was for the kingdom to come on earth. Second, the church of his day preached individual salvation, but for Rauschenbusch a kingdom always implied a collective community of people, not an individual. Third, Christians had substituted the idea of the church for the kingdom. (16) The contemporary Protestant view of salvation as an individual event fulfilled in the future "has made the church comparatively indifferent to the spread of the spirit of Christ in the political, social, scientific and artistic life of humanity." (17) Rauschenbusch, therefore, strenuously argued that the church had retained only part of Jesus' message of the kingdom. It is strange, he argued, that half of Jesus' message has been lost. (18) He wanted to recover the lost message, and he articulated it in Christianity and the Social Crisis.

The Argument of Christianity and the Social Crisis

Rauschenbusch had produced his manuscript of "Revolutionary Christianity" in 1891. He began in the summer of 1905 to add new sections, and he finished writing the book in 1906. Anxious about the book, he called it "dangerous" and feared that it would generate a hostile response. He perhaps thought it might cost him his job, but he found the courage to publish, and it appeared in 1907. (19)

Rauschenbusch said he wrote this book to discharge a debt to the working people of New York City:

   I shared their life as well as I then knew and used up the early
   strength of my life in their service....  I have never ceased to
   feel that I owe help to the plain people who were my friends. If
   this book in some far-off way helps to ease the pressure that bears
   them down and increases the forces that bear them up, I shall meet
   the Master of my life with better confidence. (20)

The effectiveness of the book derived from its message and from the persuasive force of its presentation. Rauschenbusch made a proposal for a new social order and built arguments to convince church members that the effort of social reconstruction is their responsibility. Paul M. Minus, in Walter Rauschenbusch: American Reformer, asserted:

   It was a book of extraordinary power. The appeal resulted partly
   from the stylistic grace Rauschenbusch already had demonstrated
   hundreds of times: the compactness and clarity of his prose, the
   telling use of metaphor and wit, the rigorous pace of his argument.
   Even more, it came from the personal charisma that had endeared him
   to many and that was evident in chapter after chapter. (21)

Literary and rhetorical qualities certainly contributed to the book's success, but it was also essential that Rauschenbusch persuade his hearers that his central idea was true. Robert Cross suggested that "he was responding to a central dilemma in American cultural and intellectual life." (22) Rauschenbusch shouted that the contemporary church had become a servant to middle class culture and described what it needed to do in order to recover its identity and purpose. (23)

In his introduction to the book, Rauschenbusch began with an affirmation that there was a social crisis and that "religion can and must play a momentous part in this irrepressible conflict." (24) The crisis derived from the fact that the welfare of the masses is always at odds with the selfish force of the strong. (25) The American capitalist system had produced what he believed to be an unjust system. His goal was to create a new society in which the major institutions would more nearly approximate a just and fair distribution of goods. His audience was middle class, and he was asking them to aid a different class--the poorer working class. By its inaction, Rauschenbusch thought the church was guilty of perpetuating oppression.

Rauschenbusch made his case with several arguments. The first argument was biblical and historical. He sought to show that the message of the prophets, Jesus, and the early church had the correct vision (chapters 1-3), but the correct understanding of the faith was lost during the Middle Ages (chapter 4). The second argument appealed to self-interest. He demonstrated how church and society can both benefit by recovering a true understanding of Christianity (chapter 6). Finally, he addressed the specific nature of the social crisis and the corrective actions that could be taken to redress injustices suffered by the working class (chapters 5 and 7).

In his first chapter, Rauschenbusch set up a contrast between the message of the prophets and formal religion. The prophets called for living an ethical social life based on justice, whereas the established religion had created a religion based on offerings and other ceremonies. In his discussion of Jesus, Rauschenbusch wrote that whoever separated religion and the social life had not understood Jesus. (26) He then moved to the puzzle of why the church had "never undertaken the work of social reconstruction." (27) What happened, he believed, was that the church shifted its interpretation, in the second century, to an emphasis on immortality as the central feature of Christian teaching. (28) In contrast, the Kingdom of God that Jesus had preached stood for social justice on the earth for the entire community. The medieval church fell silent on issues of social ethics, (29) and this silence had lasted to Rauschenbusch's day.

Arguing that the church should be involved in the social movement for reasons of self-interest, Rauschenbusch concluded that the chronic poverty of the masses would eventually hurt the church. He pointed out that the church would "flourish best when people have income, security, leisure enough." (30) Rauschenbusch offered an arresting choice to the church: "When two moral principles are forced into practical antagonism in daily life, the question is which will be the stronger? If the church cannot Christianize commerce, commerce will commercialize the church." (31) How should the church respond to this situation? "The working class demands that the church support the justice of its cause." (32) But how has the church in fact responded? He judged that the church was failing to address the economic crisis; therefore "there is an increasing alienation between the working class and the church." (33) He concluded that "the crisis of society is also the crisis of the church and perhaps of our civilization through unjust wealth on one side and poverty on the other." (34)

Rauschenbusch offered an idealized picture of the older economic systems of the guilds and contrasted it with the economic class system introduced by the Industrial Revolution. His judgment was harsh: "It is hardly likely that any social revolution will cause more injustices, more physical suffering and more heartache than the Industrial Revolution by which capitalism rose to power." (35) He observed that "the moral forces of humanity failed to keep pace ... men learned to make wealth much faster than they learned to distribute it justly." (36) And he concluded that this is "the great sin of modern humanity." (37) For Rauschenbusch, injustice was the great problem.

Rauschenbusch's writings contained a litany of problems faced by the workers. The workingman and his family were only a few weeks from destitution; there was no pride in their work; to accept charity was a bitter experience; the system generated hatred between employees and employers; the workers faced high rents, expensive costs, and health risks; and the system left workers exhausted and discouraged. (38) Rauschenbusch's passion rose in this passage at the injustices suffered by American workers. His message struck the consciousness of his readers, and gave them new moral focus. Rauschenbusch's concluding chapter was "What to Do?" and his answer was that the church must work to end social misery.

Rauschenbusch's Legacies

Legacy suggests what is passed on to following generations. Rauschenbusch was creative, and his social perspective opened many new perspectives.

1. He caused the church to adopt a lasting concern for the cause of social justice. Many denominations in the twentieth century established divisions devoted primarily to issues of social ethics.

2. He thought one should learn from and work with non-church groups. During his own day, the Progressive political party adopted many of the labor goals of the workers. The federal government also abandoned laissez-faire economics and intervened to break up monopolies and regulate corporations.

3. Rauschenbusch was bold. His use of the terms "communism" and "socialism" automatically turned some critics against him. It took courage to use these terms to analyze the problems he perceived in American society. (39)

4. Rauschenbusch was willing to critique capitalism. He thought the economic system must be modified if the nation was ever to achieve justice for the ordinary worker. He was unwilling to call capitalism Christian but asserted that capitalism was based on competition whereas Christianity was based on cooperation.

5. Rauschenbusch provided a new basis for theological work. He believed that theology should reflect on the community rather than the individual.

6. He believed that the state could assist the workers. It should pass laws that protect the people and promote justice.

7. Rauschenbusch directed attention to the practice of Christianity. He observed that Christianity is more than doctrine. (40) Today, liberation theologians draw attention to the social dimension of Christianity by contrasting orthopraxy (right practice) with orthodoxy (right teaching).

8. Rauschenbusch was keenly aware of the power of religion to bring about change. Although the church of his day was individualistic and focused on heaven, a church with new vision could emerge to focus on reforming society in the here and now. Christianity, he declared, has a subversive nature. (41)

9. Rauschenbusch's education opened his mind to the possibility of innovative approaches to finding truth. Hence, the pastor began reading sociology, understood the Kingdom of God in a new way, and combined his insights from both sociology and Scripture to articulate a social gospel.

Rauschenbusch also left a legacy of ideas now considered negative, intolerant, or unjust.

1. From his youth in Germany, Rauschenbusch acquired a deep dislike for Roman Catholicism. Catholicism hardly received a fair treatment from him, and indeed he used it as an example of sacramental religion, not unlike the ceremonial religion opposed by the prophets.

2. Rauschenbusch accepted racial theories of his era, ranking groups of people and judging the Anglo-Saxon to be superior.

3. During the Spanish American War, his support for the American cause bordered on jingoism and a belief that God willed American success in the war. (42)

4. Scholars have been critical of Rauschenbusch's adopting a Victorian understanding of women based on separate spheres of influence.

5. Comparable critiques can be made regarding his failure to address racism toward African American citizens. Racism in the Social Gospel is currently being researched in the Rauschenbusch archives. (43)

6. Other critiques may be raised against Rauschenbusch. His own personal effort as a pastor is instructive. If he was unable to implement the Social Gospel in his own church, why should one expect the strategy to work elsewhere, then or now? Parishioners criticized his social Christianity, and he had to settle for services to the poor on the model of the institutional church rather than achieving systemic change. It is one thing to speak out for justice, but quite another to implement it. (44)

7. A related question is his close relationship with John D. Rockefeller. Not only did Rockefeller help fund Rauschenbusch's church and seminary; he also gave money to the Rauschenbusch family each Christmas.

8. Rauschenbusch has been charged with a kind of naive optimism if he believed that owners would freely make concessions for better wages, improved working conditions, better working hours, and so forth. In fact, however, Rauschenbusch said that the workers would have to fight for their rights and that the violence of strikes was inevitable to achieve workers' just demands.

These lists can easily be modified, but they suggest a creative, active mind that was addressing many problems and seeking solutions. They also, of course, show Rauschenbusch to be a man of his own age.

Rauschenbusch's influence has surely been felt for the past century. The host of Protestants who learned from Rauschenbusch and acknowledge his influence is truly impressive. The Federal Council of Churches organized in 1908, one year after the publication of Christianity and the Social Crisis. Rauschenbusch was asked to assist in drawing up guidelines for its social statements. The quest for peace and justice remains the core passion of the National and World Councils of Churches today.

In the generation that followed Rauschenbusch's writing, Harry Emerson Fosdick was perhaps the most influential minister in the country. Fosdick wrote the "Introduction" to A Rauschenbusch Reader, a collection prepared to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Christianity and the Social Crisis. Fosdick praised the book for its "stern attack on the social evils of that era and on the church's failure in dealing with them." That same year Reinhold Niebuhr also paid tribute to Rauschenbusch. He thought Rauschenbusch too optimistic in his hope for achieving the social order he envisioned and weak on the mechanics of establishing justice, but Niebuhr credited the Social Gospel movement with awakening in the church the sense of justice. (45)

Martin Luther King, Jr., dearly understood and accepted Rauschenbusch's insistence that vital Christianity must concern itself with social conditions. King wrote, "It has been my conviction ever since reading Rauschenbusch that any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that scar the soul is a spiritually moribund religion." (46)

Rauschenbusch has been featured in distinguished collections of primary sources. In 1966, Robert T. Hardy edited The Social Gospel in America, 1870-1920, and in 1984, Winthrop Hudson edited a volume on Rauschenbusch for the series "Sources of American Spirituality," edited by John Farina and others. (47) Paul M. Minus published Walter Rauschenbusch: American Reformer in 1988, and in 2004, Christopher Evans published The Kingdom is Always but Coming: A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch. (48) These superb biographies instruct and inspire as the authors communicate their enthusiasm and insights about one of America's most important religious leaders.

Social ethicists have especially been drawn to Rauschenbusch's thought. In 1992, Harlan Beckley published Passion for Justice: Retrieving the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch, John A. Ryan, and Reinhold Niebuhr. (49) Beckley's methodology sought to create comparison and evaluation of perspective on moral issues. He frequently favored Rauschenbusch over Niebuhr. Rauschenbusch's appeal to social ethicists currently remains strong. Anna M. Robbins and David Bryan True produced studies as recently as 2004 and 2005. (50) In a recent interview with Christian activist Henry Sloan Coffin, the question of the economy was raised, and his answer was that we need "not piecemeal charity, but justice." (51) The force of Rauschenbusch's insights remains convincing a century after Christianity and the Social Crisis. We have not resolved the economic problems he addressed. His proposed solutions may be naive, but much of his analysis which exposes injustice in the economic system seems to be on target.

Conclusion: Rauschenbusch and Justice

Baptists are especially fond of writing about their distinctives: soul competency, congregational polity, believer's baptism, and so forth. Does the list ever include justice? Have Baptists also missed the intent of Jesus' message? Could Baptists not learn from this Baptist pastor and prophet? Should we not try to think beyond Baptist "identity" lists if we are to address the world beyond Baptists?

What makes Rauschenbusch and his Christianity and the Social Crisis of enduring value for Christians today is the underlying quest for justice on which he built his understanding of Christianity. This, it seems to me, is the reason he deserves to be read a hundred years after the publication of Christianity and the Social Crisis. The story of the Good Samaritan is a constant reminder of Jesus' view of who is a neighbor and how the neighbor should be treated. Homelessness in America is a daily reminder that while the economy produces great wealth, it also still produces suffering; it is also a reminder that the church has not solved the problem, and in many cases has neglected to even attempt the task. Much suffering could be eliminated by proactive legislation. The nation claims "justice for all." This cherished language is often repeated, but is not in any sense a reality in American society.

In Christianity and the Social Crisis, Rauschenbusch asserted that the church has a moral obligation to work for justice. Rauschenbusch was not simply pointing out an injustice; he was saying that fighting injustice is a task of the church. The church must take action. Living in the Kingdom, according to Rauschenbusch, involved fighting injustice. The criterion for the new social order was justice. Since Rauschenbusch's time, it has been hard to ignore the responsibility of the church to actively seek justice. The term "justice" recurred throughout the book, and underlay his entire work. He wrote, "The ideal of justice and humanity which inspires devotion and self-sacrifice ... these are in truth religious." (52)

Justice is a moving target. Unfortunately, one cannot find a formula to create a just world. Each day people will seek their own advantage, to the injury and suffering of others. Efforts must be made to combat self-interest. Justice keeps one engaged. It does not let one rest. Rauschenbusch felt its urgency for the church; the urgency remains. Throughout their lives Christians must work for justice. This message is the great legacy of Christianity and the Social Crisis today. Rauschenbusch confidently affirmed that in the face of all obstacles to this goal, "the prophetic minds have the satisfaction of knowing that the world must come their way whether it will or not, because they are on the way to justice, and justice is on the way to God." (53)

(1.) Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York: Henry Holt, 2001), 199.

(2.) Ibid., 108.

(3.) Ibid., 179.

(4.) See William M. Ramsay, Four Modern Prophets (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1986), 1-20.

(5.) Paul M. Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch: American Reformer (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1988), 162.

(6.) See Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Christopher H. Evans, The Kingdom is Always but Coming: A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2004).

(7.) Winthrop Hudson, "Introduction," in Walter Rauschenbusch: Selected Writings, ed. Winthrop S. Hudson, (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 28.

(8.) Minus and Evans carefully examined how Rauschenbusch's mind developed. In addition, the editors of the best Rauschenbusch anthologies are at pains to select key documents and arrange them in chronological fashion with the intention of identifying decisive influences on his thought. See Robert T. Handy, ed., The Social Gospel in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), and Hudson, ed., Walter Rauschenbush.

(9.) "Letter from Rauschenbusch to Ford," in Hudson, Walter Rauschenbusch, 58.

(10.) Hudson, "Introduction," 35.

(11.) Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order (New York: Macmillan, 1912), 394; also see Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch, 62.

(12.) Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch, 63.

(13.) Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, edited by Robert D. Cross (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1964), 271; also see Evans, The Kingdom is Always but Coming, 31.

(14.) For the Right, August 1890, in Hudson, ed. Walter Rauschenbusch, 60.

(15.) "Revolutionary Christianity" is the most common designation for this manuscript, but Rauschenbusch's most recent biographer contends, on the basis of manuscript evidence, that Rauschenbusch used the more awkward title "Christianity Revolutionary." See Evans, The Kingdom is Always but Coming, 93, fn 39.

(16.) Walter Rauschenbusch, "A Conquering Idea," The Examiner, 31 July 1892, quoted in Hudson, Walter Rauschenbusch, 72.

(17.) Walter Rauschenbusch, "The Brotherhood of the Kingdom," Brotherhood Leaflet No. 4, Rauschenbusch Scrapbook in the Colgate Rochester Divinity School library, quoted in Hudson, 75.

(18.) Walter Rauschenbusch, "A Conquering Idea," The Examiner, July 13, 1892, quoted in Hudson, 73.

(19.) Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch, 158.

(20.) Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, XXV. Rauschenbusch's sermons on social questions frequently got him into trouble with his congregation. See Evans, The Kingdom is Always but Coming, 126.

(21.) Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch, 158-59.

(22.) Robert D. Cross, "Introduction," to Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, viii.

(23.) Ibid., ix.

(24.) Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, xxi-xxii.

(25.) Ibid., 1.

(26.) Ibid, 48.

(27.) Ibid 143.

(28.) Ibid 161.

(29.) Ibid 191.

(30.) Ibid 308.

(31.) Ibid 314.

(32.) Ibid 328.

(33.) Ibid 329.

(34.) Ibid 332.

(35.) Ibid 218.

(36.) Ibid.

(37.) Ibid.

(38.) Ibid., 234-43.

(39.) Ibid., 389.

(40.) Ibid., 104.

(41.) Ibid., 114.

(42.) See Evans, The Kingdom is Always but Coming, 139, for a discussion of this point.

(43.) Art Carnahans, "American Baptist Historical Society [Newsletter] May, 2006, 1.

(44.) Evans, The Kingdom is Always but Coming, 126.

(45.) Harry Emerson Fosdick, "Introduction," in A Rauschenbusch Reader: The Kingdom of God and the Social Gospel, ed. Benson I. Landis (New York: Harper, 1957), xiii, and Reinhold Niebuhr, "Walter Rauschenbusch in Historical Perspective [1957]" in Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, ed. Ronald H. Stone (New York: George Brazilier, 1968), 33-45, passim. The occasion for this essay was a retrospective fifty years after the publications of Christianity and the Social Crisis.

(46.) Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 73.

(47.) Handy, The Social Gospel in America, 1870 1920, and Hudson, Walter Rauschenbusch.

(48.) Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Evans, The Kingdom is Always but Coming.

(49.) Harlan Beckley, Passion for Justice: Retrieving the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch, John A. Ryan, and Reinhold Niebuhr (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992).

(50.) See Anna M. Robbins, Methods in the Madness: Diversity in Twentieth-Century Christian Social Ethics, (Carlisle, Paternoster, 2004), and David Bryan True, "Faithful Politics: The Tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr. Reinhold Niebuhr, and Walter Rauschenbusch" (Ph.D. diss., Union Theological Seminary, 2006).

(51.) Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, Public Broadcasting System, April 19, 2006.

(52.) Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, 319.

(53.) Ibid., 40-41.

Bill Pitts is professor of religion at Baylor University, Waco, Texas.