Walter Rauschenbusch was an American Protestant theologian, an American Baptist minister, and a leader of
the Social Gospel movement in the United States before World War I.
Actually as Brown himself admits, this «new key» in theology is very similar to
the social gospel movement instituted by Walter Rauschenbusch and other Protestant liberals.
In recent years I have experimented with different kinds of involvement in social issues — with limited success — and I have done some thinking about what form a new
social gospel movement might take.
Where one works in full - time employment and how one approaches that work is of crucial importance for the new
social gospel movement that I envision; volunteer work is not enough.
The theology of the new
social gospel movement will be as diverse as its members.
Cooperation is the law of the universe: this is the first uniting principle for
a social gospel movement.
Everyone in the new
social gospel movement should have the opportunity to belong to a support group that meets regularly.
We of the new
social gospel movement can draw on the insights and power of this tradition as we argue for our positions.
To describe the Divinity School faculty's perception of the problem in this way is to say little more than that it participated in
the Social Gospel movement which was gaining wide influence at the time.
-- we would have been treated to a tracing of the contours of «evangelical liberalism's» placement within liberalism, an account of the evolution of Fosdick's modernism from 19th - century evangelicalism, and an assessment of whether Fosdick belongs in the evangelical wing of
the social gospel movement along with his hero, Walter Rauschenbusch.
Many of the early leaders of
the social gospel movement were pastors whose concern for individual slum dwellers, the poor, the prisoners and the sick led them to attack the social sources of human misery and to understand the corporate character of human sin.
The editors never wavered in their fierce advocacy of
the social gospel movement and felt its weakening to be one of the war's great losses.
It is to the credit of
the social gospel movement in American liberal Christianity that the need of changing social structures has been persistently stressed, and however far it may be necessary to go beyond it to a deeper emphasis on human sin, this must never be lost sight of.
This was true in general of
the social gospel movement of the first half of the century, with the idea of a second coming or last judgment relegated to the Pentecostal sects.
In his thought there was none of the utopian thought or «evolutionary optimism» often attributed to liberal theology and
the social gospel movement by its critics.
But one of the great divisions in liberalism was that between organized labor and the churches that were the heirs of
the social gospel movement.
Their attempts to adhere, however inconsistently, to a religious tradition she vigorously faults as a failure of political engagement, negatively contrasting this contemporary men's movement with
the Social Gospel movement that arose early in the century.
Conceived during
the Social Gospel movement, Hull House became a haven for immigrants needing refuge, education, lessons in English, vocational training, exposure to the arts and literature.
With the emergence of new concern in our own century for the people caught in problems of urbanization, racial discrimination, industrialization, and the like, the churches moved first — through the so - called
social gospel movement — to correct the previous emphasis on soul - saving as dealing only with individual persons.
Sadly, the noble legacy of Christian progressivism and
the Social Gospel movement has devolved to a narrow set of priorities that has everything to do with upper - middle - class preoccupations and very little to do with the needs of the poor.
The religious form was the theology characterized by the American
Social Gospel movement, initiated by Walter Rauschenbusch at the beginning of this century and having its roots in the prevailing theology of Europe in the nineteenth century and in American «revivalism.»
As the changing socio - economic conditions of nineteenth - century urban, industrial America demanded of the church a reassessment of its understanding of people in society, it was
the Social Gospel movement which arose to take seriously the reality of corporate sin and the need for corporate response.
The greatest figure in
the social gospel movement itself, Walter Rauschenbusch, wrote many books before he undertook one entitled «theology.»
For example, both secular and religious idealism (messianic Marxism and the Protestant
social gospel movement) assumed that society would automatically improve through moral and pious benevolence.
The Social Gospel movement with its happy worldliness had lost its capacity for genuinely radical criticism.
The Social Gospel movement tried to change America's unjust social systems by convincing the men who controlled and managed the systems to live by the Sermon on the Mount.
the Church has been feeding and caring for the poor long before
the Social Gospel movement of the 1800s.
The pervasiveness of this emphasis can now be seen even in Christian social ethics, the field born out of
the Social Gospel movement and one which in the name of prophetic spirit and social analysis has been critical of Protestantism's tendency to focus on personal piety.
Rauschenbusch, like most in
the Social Gospel movement, believed in the free church.
Encompassing
the Social Gospel movement of the early twentieth century and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at the beginning of the twenty - first, this project has transcended the historical and theological division between Catholics and Protestants.
Almost forgotten in the last two decades of his life and completely forgotten today except by students of American religious history, Ward was a nationally prominent radical in the early twentieth - century tradition of Walter Rauschenbusch's
Social Gospel movement.
The biographer might just as accurately have characterized it as an outgrowth of the 19th - century
Social Gospel movement.
Not exact matches
His grandfather was Walter Rauschenbusch, the foremost champion of the Protestant «
social gospel»
movement, and it is to that creed, revised by Dewey to free it from an inconvenient God, that he would be faithful.
We believe that His
Gospel» as an essential foundation for any other
social or political
movement or philosophy» has the power to change us and change the world, so that we all may be the good, strong, capable, dignified, and faithful women that we aspire to be.
The argument is that the Chicago school arose in the context of the
social gospel, a
movement that had much in common with contemporary political theology and that, under the stimulus of political theology, this school can recover something of what it had lost as well as move forward in new ways.
Those who confuse liberation
movements with eternal salvation convert the
gospel into an ideological promotion of political and
social transformation.
If by «liberation» people mean that Christian thought and life are to be socially engaged, committed to those forms of systemic change necessary for the greater actualization of
social justice, and open to the dynamic movements of the Spirit among the people, then there is little doubt: the Social Gospel is America's indigenous form of liberation the
social justice, and open to the dynamic
movements of the Spirit among the people, then there is little doubt: the
Social Gospel is America's indigenous form of liberation the
Social Gospel is America's indigenous form of liberation theology.
Since the
gospel is always received and appropriated in a specific cultural form, and since the church is established and functions as a
social institution, the changes that are taking place in global societies have profound implications for churches (as profound, some have suggested, as our initial transition from a regional Jewish Jesus
movement into a global Gentile church).
The bad reasoning behind this thesis, which combines guilt by association with the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc (the ecumenical
movement became «liberal» because it was concerned for church union and
social demonstration of the
gospel), is part of the theological DDT in evangelical soil which inhibits the growth and maturing of the present awakening.
The truth is the
social gospel has become its own
gospel... leaving out Jesus and salvation and becoming a cynical secular
movement who believes the end justifies the means... including Obama's work as «community activist».
If anyone is familiar with current fundamental \ evangelic missiological thinking... one would equate it directly with the former «
social gospel»
movement.
Obama is a progressive Christian who blends the emotional fire of the African - American church, the ecumenical outlook of contemporary Protestantism, and the activism of the
Social Gospel, a late 19th - century
movement whose leaders faulted American churches for focusing too much on personal salvation while ignoring the conditions that led to pervasive poverty.
This retreat came as a reaction to the theological liberalism of the «
social gospel»
movement.
When many people think of Obama's religious experience in Chicago, though, they cite his exposure to the angry sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and «black liberation theology,» a
movement that emerged in the late 1960s and blended the
Social Gospel with the black power
movement.
Any difference that Jesus and the
gospel might contribute to
social analysis is unexplored, and the church draws down the last deposits of goodwill and credit from its 19th - century legacy of schools and
movements such as the YMCA.
The
movement that dominated the creative edge of church life and church thought was the
social gospel.
The labor
movement that might have shared his
Social Gospel vision — the Knights of Labor — died before he rose to prominence in socialist circles.
Though Herron failed in leadership and the
movement quietly disappeared into a broader stream by 1900, it did give birth to an attempt at a colony in Georgia that published a paper entitled the
Social Gospel.
Philosophically, liberation theologies are sometimes portrayed as more or less naive popular
movements drawing upon now outdated 19th century notions of divergent vintages: Marxist (Third World),
social gospel (First World), suffragette (Feminist), black nationalism (Black), agrarian pastoralism (Environmentalist), or romantic pacifism (Nuclear Pacifist).
To further compound the suppression of the public testimony, there is a strong
movement of the
social gospel going on in America which teaches that we must show the love of God in deed and not in word.