Affirming the Social Gospel: In Appreciation of Walter Rauschenbusch

He was born 160 years ago on October 4, 1861, the first year of the Civil War, and died in 1918, a few months before the end of World War I, but Walter Rauschenbusch hated militarism and other societal problems that cause human suffering and the degradation of human life.

Acknowledgment of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel

In all three of my “theological” books, I wrote about Rauschenbusch. In Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020) I wrote that the Social Gospel was “the third factor [after Darwinism and biblical criticism] which helped instigate the fundamentalist movement.”

And I explained, “The most significant leader of the Social Gospel was the prominent Baptist historian Walter Rauschenbusch” (p. 30).

In The Limits of Liberalism (2010, 2020), one sub-section is “The Liberalism of Rauschenbusch” (pp. 31~35), and later I wrote that for many “the main religious appeal of liberalism is found in its ethical stance, which has often been shaped by the emphasis of Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel” (p. 109).

Then in #5 of Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018), I wrote about Rauschenbusch’s “strong emphasis on the idea that the kingdom of God is both here now and also coming in the future” (p. 36).

In his book Christianizing the Social Order (1912), Rauschenbusch used the phrase “the kingdom is always but coming,” and that became the title of the superb 2004 biography of Rauschenbusch by Christopher H. Evans.

Formation of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel

Walter Rauschenbusch was the son of German parents who had immigrated to New York. After graduating from Rochester Theological Seminary, from 1886 to 1897 he served as the pastor of the Second German Baptist Church, located in the slum section of New York City known as Hell’s Kitchen.

That was at the apex of the Gilded Age when there was great and growing inequality between the upper and lower classes. For example, at the time when so many lived in crowded, vermin-infested tenements in Hell’s Kitchen, rich industrialists lived in luxury on 5^th Avenue and Madison Avenue.

John D. Rockefeller’s NYC home was less than a mile from Second German Baptist Church, and J.P. Morgan as well as William K. Vanderbilt and his flamboyant wife Alva lived only 1.2 miles from Rauschenbusch’s church. Here is a picture of the Vanderbilt mansion, completed in 1882. 

Rauschenbusch said that he went to his new pastorate “to save souls in the ordinarily accepted religious sense.” But in the area where his church was located, unemployment, poverty, malnutrition, disease, and crime were rampant.

He came to understand that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount spoke more about how to live in the present rather than how to prepare for life after death. Further, he came to realize that Jesus’ key teaching about the Kingdom of God was also for the here and now, not just about the “sweet by and by.”

Affirmation of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel

Even though I have remained critical of some aspects of Rauschenbusch’s “liberal” theology, such as his being overly optimistic about the possibility of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth by human effort, through the years I have increasingly come to affirm his basic theological ideas.

Here are some of the most important emphases in Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel.

    * Jesus’ core teachings are found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5~7) and in his parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46).

    * The basis of Jesus’ teachings was his understanding of the Kingdom of God, which Rauschenbusch rightly understood as “always but coming.”

    * In addition to the reality and seriousness of “personal” sins, the pervasiveness and destructiveness of social sin and sinful social structures must be recognized and adamantly opposed.

The crux of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel is still sorely needed now as it was in the 1890s and in 1917 when he published his last book, A Theology for the Social Gospel.

Can we and will we affirm, accept, and implement that Gospel? It is truly good news for the multitude of people who are suffering deprivation, discrimination, and destructive social structures right now.

“The Return of the Prodigal Son”: A Tribute to Henri Nouwen

Henri Nouwen was an internationally renowned priest and writer. He died 25 years ago, on September 21, 1996. Fr. Nouwen authored 39 books, and his personal favorite was The Return of the Prodigal Son. I have read only a few of his books, but The Return is my favorite also. 

"The Prodigal Son" by Rembrandt

A Bit about Nouwen

Henri Nouwen was born in Holland in January 1932. He was ordained in 1957, and then after studying psychology at a Catholic university in Holland he moved to the U.S. in 1964 to study at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.

Nouwen went on to teach at the University of Notre Dame and at the divinity schools at both Yale and Harvard. But as an advocate of “downward mobility,” in the early 1980s he lived and worked with the poor in Peru, and then in 1985 he joined the first L’Arche community, which was in France.**

In 1986 Nouwen visited the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, and spent hours and hours looking at and meditating on Rembrandt’s 1669 painting titled “The Prodigal Son.” In the Prologue of his book, he describes that encounter with Rembrandt’s famous painting.

Also a Dutchman, Rembrandt died at age 63. Nouwen died at age 64, four years after his book The Return of the Prodigal Son was published in 1992.

A Bit about Jesus’ Parable

There are three main parts in Nouwen’s engrossing book: The Younger Son, The Elder Son, and The Father. Those of us who grew up in evangelical churches have heard most about the younger son: after all, he was the “prodigal” in the usual title of Jesus’ parable recorded in Luke 15:11~32.

Evangelistic sermons on that parable usually concluded with an “invitation” that sometimes included singing the hymn “Softly and Tenderly” with this refrain,

Come home, come home,
Ye who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

Jesus’ point in his parable, though, was about the elder son. Luke 15 begins, “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’” (vv. 1-2, NRSV).

So Jesus told the parable to liken the Pharisees and scribes to the elder son, whom the father also dearly loved.

The parable also is about the father, who sometimes (such as by Michael Denk, here), is referred to as the “prodigal father.”

Fr. Denk points out that prodigal can mean lavish and Jesus’ parable teaches that “all it takes is one step towards Him and The Prodigal Father will lavish you with His grace, tenderness, and unconditional love.”

The Point of Nouwen’s Book

Currently, one of the major criticisms of traditional Christianity by the younger generation is that it is too judgmental. So now, even more than thirty years ago when it was first written, Christians need to take to heart Nouwen’s main point: we need to be more like the compassionate father.

Nouwen puts considerable emphasis on the father’s hands in Rembrandt’s painting. The two hands on the kneeling younger son are different: one is a strong masculine hand but the other is a tender feminine hand. Nouwen declares that this depicts the “love of God who is Father as well as Mother.”

In his concluding chapter, Nouwen asserts, “Becoming like the heavenly Father is not just one important aspect of Jesus’ teaching, it is the very heart of his message”—and the key characteristic of the heavenly Father/Mother is not judgment, it is compassion.

Nouwen writes, “Looking at Rembrandt’s painting of the father, I can see three ways to a truly compassionate fatherhood: grief, forgiveness, and generosity.” And he concludes his book with these words:

As I look at my own aging hands, I know that they have been given to me to stretch out toward all who suffer, to rest upon the shoulders of all who come, and to offer the blessing that emerges from the immensity of God’s love.

May we all become more like the compassionate father—and like Henri Nouwen.

_____

** In January, I read Nouwen’s small book The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (2007). I noted, This was a small but quite profound book that could/should be read often.

Widely Divergent Christianity: Remembering John Shelby Spong and David Yonggi Cho

Last week, two renowned Christian clergymen died: John Shelby Spong on Sept. 12 at the age of 90 and David Yonggi Cho on Sept. 14 at age 85. These two men represented two widely divergent forms of Christianity—so different it is almost as if they were adherents of two different religions.

Spong’s Liberal Christianity

John Shelby Spong was born in North Carolina in June 1931. After graduating from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1955, he served as the rector of four Episcopal churches in North Carolina and Virginia from then until 1976.

He was consecrated the Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, in 1979 and held that prominent post until his retirement in 2000.

[Spong in 2006; photo by Scott Griesse]

Bishop Spong became a leader of liberal Christianity by authoring more than 30 books. Perhaps his most influential work was Why Christianity Must Change or Die (1998). His Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991) was also highly popular. 

Spong grew up in a fundamentalist milieu, but he became “fed up with fundamentalism” many years before I published my book by that title in 2007—and his anti-fundamentalist position propelled him to what I have termed the opposite extreme, which is also unsatisfactory to my way of thinking.

In my The Limits of Liberalism (2010, 2020), Spong is one of the Christian thinkers I criticize most for what I consider his too-far-to-the-left positions on numerous Christian doctrines.

I wasn’t as harsh in my criticism, though, as Russell Moore was last week. On 9/16 I received an email that contained the “Moore to the Point” newsletter from Christianity Today, Moore’s current employer. The subject line read, “Death of a heretic.” (Here is the link to that article.)

Whether you agree with Moore’s label for Spong or not, he is quite correct in saying that Spong dismissed “key doctrines of the historic Christian faith as outdated and retrograde.”

Cho's Evangelical Christianity

In February 1936 David Yonggi Cho (Chō Yong-gi, 趙 鏞基) was born into a Buddhist family who lived on the southeastern corner of the Korean peninsula. He became a Christian as a teenager while hospitalized for tuberculosis.

In 1958 Cho joined with his future mother-in-law to start a new Christian church in Seoul. There were only four or five who attended their first service, but by 1979 they had 100,000 members! The church was re-named Yoido Full Gospel Church (YFGC) in 1984, and it had 400,000 members by then. 

[Cho in 2013]

(The church’s membership seems to have peaked around 2007 with more than 800,000 members.) 

In July 1983, I was asked to accompany Seinan Gakuin University’s Glee Club’s concert tour to Korea. During our time there, we visited YFGC and a few of us were able to meet Pastor Cho. He was an impressive leader of a most impressive church, which is affiliated with the Assemblies of God.  

However, I have serious questions about some of Cho’s beliefs and emphases. He preached something quite close to the problematic “prosperity gospel,” and his statement that the terrible March 2011 earthquake/tsunami in Japan was “God’s warning” was not helpful.

To say the least, Cho’s strongly evangelical understanding of Christianity was decidedly different from Spong’s. In fact, there was such difference between the two, one might wonder if they were really preachers of the same religion.

Still Seeking the Radiant Center

In spite of the wide divergence in the theology of Bishop Spong and Pastor Cho, I still want to champion a Christianity that has a broad, inclusive radiant center.

While I can’t accept all of Spong’s or Cho’s ideas, they both have made important affirmations worthy of thoughtful consideration.

For example, Spong’s last book was titled simply Unbelievable (2018). He writes nearly 280 pages about what he thinks is unbelievable about traditional Christianity.

He ends, though, with a short, five-page Epilogue titled “My Mantra: This I Do Believe.” There he refers to God as the Source of Life, the Source of Love, and the Ground of Being (pp. 285-6).

Pastor Cho wouldn’t have used those words, but perhaps he was in basic agreement—and I certainly am.

_____

** My Jan. 15, 2019, blog post was titled “Two Christianities,” and it is closely related to this post without the references to Bishop Spong or Pastor Cho.

What Does It Mean to Be Called (by God)?

This article was conceived after I read Bill Leonard’s Aug. 18 opinion piece titled “Celebrating a new generation of ministers overtaken by ‘the call’.” His article was thought-provoking, and I am sharing here some of my reflections about what it means to be called, including my own sense of call. 

Leonard’s View about Being Called

Many of you know or know of, Bill Leonard. He was born in Texas in 1946, earned his Ph.D. at Boston University in 1975, taught at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1975 to 1992, and became the founding dean of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity in 1996.

During Bill’s sabbatical in 1988-89, he served as a visiting lecturer at Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka, Japan, where I had lived and taught since 1968. While I knew about him previously, it was a privilege to get to know him personally and to claim him as a friend ever since.

In his article, Bill says he can’t remember his first experience of “the call” from God, so his “call to ministry wasn’t some watershed moment.” But along the way, especially as a religion major in college, he concluded that some sort of “Christian vocation” was in his future.

Because of that “call,” he was ordained to “the gospel ministry” fifty years ago, and he has been faithful to that call and ordination up to the present, even though he was named Professor of Divinity Emeritus in 2018.

Protestant View of Being Called

Unlike the hierarchical difference in the Roman Catholic Church between religious and secular work, from Luther on there has been a broader, more egalitarian view of vocation (“calling”) among Protestants.

In 1978, I presented a paper titled “The Biblical Concept of the Laity” at an interdenominational missionary seminar in Japan (see here). In it, I cited the following statement from a 1977 Anglican conference in England:

Christianity is a one-caste religion: all Christians are equally called to minister to Christ in the world, and ministry must be seen as a calling for all, not a status for some.

Accordingly, my son, who is a lawyer, has spoken to his church about his sense of call to be a mediator and hearing officer. In spite of the financial impact, he has been faithful to that call for many years now.

So, a divine call can be more than to religious ministry. As Frederick Buechner wrote in Wishful Thinking (1973), 

My Experience of Being Called

In his article, Leonard cites Buechner’s “inestimable passage” from The Alphabet of Grace” (1970): “'I hear you are entering the ministry,’ the woman said . . . meaning no real harm. ‘Was it your own idea, or were you poorly advised?’”

In my case it definitely was neither, nor was it even because of any awareness of my “deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger.” It was because of an unexplainable and inexplicable “mystical” experience.

For me, though, I didn’t experience “the call” during a worship service with a high-powered preacher. My call came, indubitably, during the summer of 1952 while I was mowing hay on the farm where I grew up—and it was a “watershed moment.”

My sense of call that August day was definite enough that I soon went to my high school office and changed a couple of sophomore classes I had already signed up for. I replaced them with Speech and Typing.

But because I was so “shy,” I didn’t tell anyone about my “call” for nearly a year. So that is why I say that I was not ill-advised. And certainly, it wasn’t my own idea: to become a preacher/pastor was not something I felt capable of.

Because of his “call,” Bill Leonard continues to write and to speak publicly, even though he turned 75 this year. My son continues to follow his “call” in the legal profession. And now at age 83, I keep plugging away at what for many years now I have referred to as my 4-L Ministries (now mainly this blog).

One can retire from a job, but a “call” is for life. Thanks be to God!

Remembering 9/12

September 11, 2001, was what many have called “the day that changed America, ” and tomorrow, as you know, is the 20^th anniversary of those horrendous terrorist attacks. But I don’t remember 9/11/01, for I was living in Japan and didn’t know about the attacks until September 12. 

(A 9/12/01 photo by Frank Becerra Jr., The Journal News)

Speaking in Chapel on 9/12

While it was still Sept. 11 in Japan when the Twin Towers were hit and destroyed, it was after my bedtime and so it was only early the next morning that I heard that almost unbelievable news.

I got up early, as usual, with the intention of spending time on my final preparation for speaking at the regular Seinan Gakuin High School chapel service that morning. Upon hearing the horrible news from the U.S., though, I knew I would have to change my planned talk completely.

Even though I had been in Japan for many years, it still took a lot longer to prepare a talk/sermon in Japanese than in English—and there certainly wasn’t time that morning of 9/12 to make adequate preparation.

I haven’t been able to find the notes for my chapel talk that morning—and I might be embarrassed to see what I said, or didn’t say. But I did the best I could at the time.

After the chapel service was over, I chatted a few minutes with Manabe-sensei, the high school principal. I remember him saying that what he was most afraid of now were acts of revenge by the U.S.—and I agreed with him.

Seeking Revenge after 9/12

On 9/14, Pres. Bush vowed that the U.S. would take military action in retaliation for the terrorist attacks. Then on 9/18, he signed a congressional resolution authorizing the use of force against those responsible for the attacks.

Before a month had passed, on October 7 U.S. forces begin bombing the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Retaliation had begun—and Principle Manabe was right: the acts of revenge have been far, far worse than the horrible events of 9/11.

The total number of people killed in the attacks of 9/11/01 is given as 2,997. The total number of people killed in Afghanistan since 10/7/01 is said (here) to be over 240,000. Retaliation ended with roughly 80 times (!) the death toll from the 9/11 attacks.

Leaving Afghanistan in 8/2021

Just a few days more than 238 months after the U.S. began military actions against the “enemy” in Afghanistan, the U.S. withdrew all military service members, other USAmericans, and tens of thousands of Afghan “friends.”

This has widely been called a “defeat” for the U.S.—and Pres. Biden has been strongly criticized for the hectic withdrawal not only by Republicans but by many in his own Party.

The war in Afghanistan might have been considered a success if it had ended in 2002. The major goal had been reached. But the war didn’t end then. It dragged on for 19 more years, perhaps partly (or largely?) because of the military-industrial complex. Some people profited handsomely from the war.  

The bombing in Kabul on August 26 which killed 13 U.S. soldiers and more than 170 Afghans was tragic indeed. And the current danger facing the few USAmericans and many Afghan friends of the U.S. left in Afghanistan is certainly distressing.

But undoubtedly, many more U.S. military personnel and Afghans would be killed in the months/years ahead had the U.S. troops remained.

It is remarkable that there seems to be more outrage over the fewer than 200 who were killed in Afghanistan the last week in August this year than over the average of more than 1,000 a month for the last 238 months!

We do need to be concerned about the oppressed people, especially women—and Christians—in Afghanistan as well as in North Korea, Syria, and many more countries with harsh governments. But one thing is certain: war is not the answer to the problems in Afghanistan or any other country.  

_____

** Here are some of the helpful opinion pieces I read with profit and recommend to those who are interested in thinking more about this matter.

“Yes, the Kabul withdrawal is a disaster. But Biden made the right decision on Afghanistan” by Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart on 8/22.

This opinion piece by David Leonhardt in The New York Times on 8/25.

Biden Deserves Credit, Not Blame, for Afghanistan by David Rothkopf in The Atlantic, 8/30.

“The Tragedy at Buffalo”: Reflections on McKinley’s Assassination

William McKinley was the third U.S. President to be assassinated—in just 36 years (plus a few months). He was shot 120 years ago on September 6 and died eight days later. What was behind that tragic event?  

Pres. McKinley shot on 9/6/1901

The Making of Pres. McKinley

William McKinley, Jr., was born in Ohio in January 1843. When he was still 18, he enlisted as a private in the Civil War—and 36 years later became the last President to have fought in that horrendous war.

Mustered out of the army in 1865, McKinley was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives just eleven years later. After six terms in the House, he served as the Governor of Ohio for two two-year terms.

In the presidential election of 1896, Republican McKinley defeated Democrat / Populist William Jennings Bryan and became the 25^th POTUS. Four years later, he was re-elected by defeating Bryan for the second time with 51.6% of the popular vote, up slightly from 1896.

McKinley’s election was due, in large part, to the financial support he received from the wealthy industrialists of the country. Bryan was the “commoner,” who had the support of the working class but with limited resources. The moneyed class won the elections for McKinley.

In his classic bestselling book, A People’s History of the United States (1980; rev. ed., 2003), Howard Zinn wrote that in 1896 “the corporations and the press mobilized” for McKinley “in the first massive use of money in an election campaign” (p. 295).

McKinley’s Presidency

McKinley’s support by the wealthy paid good returns for them. Early in the second year of his presidency, the U.S. went to war with Spain.

Three years before McKinley’s re-election in 1900 with Theodore Roosevelt as the Vice-President, the latter wrote to a friend, “I should welcome any war, for I think this country needs one.” And, indeed, that very next year (1898) the Spanish-American War began, and Roosevelt was a hero in it.

John Jay, McKinley’s Secretary of State, called it "a splendid little war," partly because it propelled the United States into a world power—with world markets. Indeed, under McKinley’s presidency in 1898, the American Empire emerged.*

Zinn quotes the (in)famous Emma Goldman writing a few years later that “the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of the American capitalists” (p. 321).**

Indeed, the “military-industrial complex” was a reality far before Pres. Eisenhower used that term sixty years ago in January 1961.

Shortly after the brief war with Spain ended, the Philippine-American War started in February 1899 and was still in progress when McKinley was shot and killed.

McKinley’s Assassination

Leon Czolgosz was a Polish-American who, by the time he was 28 years old, believed, probably for good reason, that there was a great injustice in American society, an inequality that allowed the wealthy to enrich themselves by exploiting the poor.

Early in September 1901, Czolgosz traveled from Michigan to Buffalo, New York, where the President was attending the Pan-American Exposition (a World’s Fair). There he shot McKinley twice at point-blank range.

Czolgosz had clearly been influenced by the fiery, anarchist rhetoric of Goldman (1869~1940). But just as Nat Turner had misused the words of the Bible (see my 8/25 blog post), he misused the words of Goldman, who advocated dramatic social change, but not violence.

Even before McKinley died on Sept. 12, Goldman was arrested and charged with conspiracy. She denied any direct connection with the assassin and was released two weeks later. On Oct. 6 she wrote a powerful essay titled “The Tragedy at Buffalo.”

Goldman stated clearly, “I do not advocate violence,” but wrote in forceful opposition to “economic slavery, social superiority, inequality, exploitation, and war.” And she concluded that her heart went out to Czolgosz “in deep sympathy, and to all the victims of a system of inequality.”

At the end of October, Czolgosz was executed by electric chair—and Goldman continued advocating for the people Czolgosz cared about so deeply and sought to help in an extremely misguided manner.

_____

* “American Empire, 1898~2018,” my 1/15/18 blog post, elaborates this matter.

** Zinn wrote “Emma,” a play about Goldman that was first performed in 1977. I found Zinn’s play quite informative and of considerable interest.