Walter Rauschenbusch: Socialism

Walter Rauschenbusch was United States Baptist theologian. Explore interesting quotes on socialism.
Walter Rauschenbusch: 166 quotes11 likes

“The Church owns property, needs income, employs men, works on human material, and banks on its moral prestige. Its present efficiency and future standing are bound up for weal or woe with the social welfare of the people and with the outcome of the present struggle.”

Walter Rauschenbusch

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Introduction, p.xiv

“A new factor enters the situation when we encounter the influence of ‘scientific socialism.’ It is true, the party platform declares that ‘religion is a private affair.’ The saving of souls is the only industry that socialism distinctly relegates to private enterprise.”

Walter Rauschenbusch

Source: Christianizing the Social Order (1912), p. 108

“It is this diffused spirit of Christianity rather than the conscious purpose of organized Christianity which has been the chief moral force in social changes. It has often taken its finest form in heretics and free-thinkers, and in non-Christian movements. The Church has often been indifferent or hostile to the effects which it had itself produced. The mother has refused to acknowledge her own children.”

Walter Rauschenbusch

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 150

“We who know personal religion by experience know that there is nothing on earth to compare with the moral force exerted by it. It has demonstrated its social efficiency in our own lives.”

Walter Rauschenbusch

Source: Christianizing the Social Order (1912), p. 103 http://books.google.com/books?id=f8z9hCMTGOwC&pg=PA103

“The greatest of all prophets was still one of the prophets, and that large interest in the national and social life which had been inseparable from the religion of the prophets was part of his life too. The presumption is that Jesus shared the fundamental religious purpose of the prophets.”

Walter Rauschenbusch

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.2 The Social Aims of Jesus, p. 53

“If, therefore, our personal religious life is likely to be sapped by our devotion to social work, it would be a calamity second to none. But is it really likely that this will happen? The great aim underlying to whole social movement is the creation of a free, just, and brotherly social order. This is the greatest moral task conceivable. Its accomplishment is the manifest will of God for this generation. Every Christian motive is calling us to do it. If it is left undone, millions of lives will be condemned to a deepening moral degradation and to spiritual starvation. Does it look probable that we will lose our contact with God if we plunge too deeply into this work? Does it stand to reason that we shall go astray from Jesus Christ if we engage in the unequal conflict with organized wrong? What kind of ‘spirituality’ is it which is likely to get hurt by being put to work for justice and our fellow-men?”

Walter Rauschenbusch

Source: Christianizing the Social Order (1912), p. 104

“Their protest against injustice and oppression, to the neglect of all other social evils, is almost monotonous.”

Walter Rauschenbusch

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.1 The Historical Roots of Christianity the Hebrew Prophets, p. 12-13
Context: There is no question on which side the sympathy of the prophets was enlisted. Their protest against injustice and oppression, to the neglect of all other social evils, is almost monotonous.

“It is only when social movements have receded into past history… that the Church with pride turns around to claim that it was she who abolished slavery, aroused the people to liberty, and emancipated woman.”

Walter Rauschenbusch

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 150

“The better we know Jesus, the more social do his thoughts and aims become.”

Walter Rauschenbusch

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.2 The Social Aims of Jesus, p. 46

“In general, the Church has often rendered valuable aid by joining the advanced public conscience of any period in its protest against some single intolerable evil, but it has accepted as inevitable the general social system under which the world was living at the time, and has not undertaken any thoroughgoing social reconstruction in accordance with Christian principles.”

Walter Rauschenbusch

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 149-150

“If this is indeed the alternative, we are in a tragic situation, compelled to choose between social righteousness and communion with God.”

Walter Rauschenbusch

Source: Christianizing the Social Order (1912), p. 103