Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century : The Classic That Woke up the Church

by Rauschenbusch, Walter

• ISBN13: 9780061497261
• ISBN10: 0061497266
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-01-14
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

The 100th Anniversary Edition of the Classic That Changed the American Church ForeverPublished at the beginning of the twentieth century, Christianity and the Social Crisis is the epoch-making book that dramatically expanded the church's vision of how it could transform the world. The 100th anniversary edition updates this classic with new essays by leading preachers and theologians.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xi
Introduction	p. xix
The Historical Roots of Christianity: The Hebrew Prophets	p. 1
Religion ethical and therefore social
Public and not private morality
The champions of the poor
The effect of the social interest on the religious life
The later religious individualism
The prophetic hope of national perfection
The "pessimism" of the prophets
Summary
Response: A Rhetorician for Righteousness
The Social Aims of Jesus	p. 39
The new social insight into the Gospel
Jesus not a social reformer
His relation to contemporary movements
The purpose of Jesus: the kingdom of God
The kingdom of God and the ethics of Jesus
Insistence on conduct and indifference to ritual
His teaching on wealth
The social affinities of Jesus
The revolutionary consciousness of Jesus
Response: A Response by an Evangelical
The Social Impetus of Primitive Christianity	p. 81
The limitations of our information
The hope of the coming of the Lord
The revolutionary character of the millennial hope
The political consciousness of Christians
The society-making force of primitive Christianity
The so-called communism at Jerusalem
The primitive churches as fraternal communities
The leaven of Christian democracy
The outcome
Response: Unless the Call Be Heard Again
Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?	p. 123
Impossibility of any social propaganda in the first centuries
Post-ponement to the Lord's coming
Hostility to the Empire and its civilization
The limitations of primitive Christianity and their perpetuation
The otherworldliness of Christianity
The ascetic tendency
Monasticism
Sacramentalism
The dogmatic interest
The churchliness of Christianity
Subservience to the State
The disappearance of church democracy
The lack of scientific comprehension of social development
The outcome of the discussion
The passing of these causes in modern life
Conclusion
Response: Repent. The Kingdom Is Here
The Present Crisis	p. 177
The industrial revolution
The land and the people
Work and wages
The morale of the workers
The physical decline of the people
The wedge of inequality
The crumbling of political democracy
The tainting of the moral atmosphere
The undermining of the family
The fall or the rise of Christian civilization
Response: Can These Dry Bones Live?
The Stake of the Church in the Social Movement	p. 235
The Church and its real estate
The Church and its income
The supply and spirit of the ministry
The Church and poverty
The Church and its human material
The hostile ethics of commercialism
Christian civilization and foreign missions
The forward call to the Church
Response: Sounding the Trumpet Today: Changing Lives and Redeeming the Soul of Society in the 21st Century
What to Do	p. 281
"No Thoroughfare"
Social repentance and faith
Social evangelization
The pulpit and the social question
The Christian conception of life and property
The creation of customs and institutions
Solidarity and communism
The upward movement of the working class
Summary of the argument
The new apostolate
Response: What to Do
Afterword: Buds That Never Opened	p. 347
Notes	p. 351
Contributors	p. 357
Index	p. 361
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century
The Classic That Woke Up the Church

Chapter One

The Historical Roots of Christianity

The Hebrew Prophets

It seems a long start to approach the most modern problems by talking of men who lived before Lycurgus and Solon gave laws to Sparta and Athens. What light can we get on the troubles of the great capitalistic republic of the West from men who tended sheep in Judea or meddled in the petty politics of the Semitic tribes?

History is never antiquated, because humanity is always fundamentally the same. It is always hungry for bread, sweaty with labor, struggling to wrest from nature and hostile men enough to feed its children. The welfare of the mass is always at odds with the selfish force of the strong. The exodus of the Roman plebeians and the Pennsylvania coal strike, the agrarian agitation of the Gracchi and the rising of the Russian peasants—it is all the same tragic human life. And in all history it would be hard to find any chapter so profoundly instructive, and dignified by such sublime passion and ability, as that in which the prophets took the leading part.

Moreover, the life and thought of the Old Testament prophets are more to us than classical illustrations and sidelights. They are an integral part of the thought-life of Christianity. From the beginning the Christian Church appropriated the Bible of Israel as its own book and thereby made the history of Israel part of the history of Christendom. That history lives in the heart of the Christian nations with a very real spiritual force. The average American knows more about David than about King Arthur, and more about the exodus from Egypt than about the emigration of the Puritans. Throughout the Christian centuries the historical material embodied in the Old Testament has been regarded as not merely instructive, but as authoritative. The social ideas drawn from it have been powerful factors in all attempts of Christianity to influence social and political life. Insofar as men have attempted to use the Old Testament as a code of model laws and institutions and have applied these to modern conditions, regardless of the historical connections, these attempts have left a trail of blunder and disaster. Insofar as they have caught the spirit that burned in the hearts of the prophets and breathed in gentle humanity through the Mosaic Law, the influence of the Old Testament has been one of the great permanent forces making for democracy and social justice. However our views of the Bible may change, every religious man will continue to recognize that to the elect minds of the Jewish people God gave so vivid a consciousness of the divine will that, in its main tendencies at least, their life and thought carries a permanent authority for all who wish to know the higher right of God. Their writings are like channel-buoys anchored by God, and we shall do well to heed them now that the roar of an angry surf is in our ears.

We shall confine this brief study of the Old Testament to the prophets, because they are the beating heart of the Old Testament. Modern study has shown that they were the real makers of the unique religious life of Israel. If all that proceeded from them, directly or indirectly, were eliminated from the Old Testament, there would be little left to appeal to the moral and religious judgment of the modern world. Moreover, a comprehension of the essential purpose and spirit of the prophets is necessary for a comprehension of the purpose and spirit of Jesus and of genuine Christianity. In Jesus and the primitive Church the prophetic spirit rose from the dead. To the ceremonial aspects of Jewish religion Jesus was either indifferent or hostile; the thought of the prophets was the spiritual food that he assimilated in his own process of growth. With them he linked his points of view, the convictions which he regarded as axiomatic. Their spirit was to him what the soil and climate of a country are to its flora. The real meaning of his life and the real direction of his purposes can be understood only in that historical connection.

Thus a study of the prophets is not only an interesting part in the history of social movements but it is indispensable for any full comprehension of the social influence exerted by historical Christianity, and for any true comprehension of the mind of Jesus Christ.

For the purposes of this book it is not necessary to follow the work of the prophets in their historical sequence. We shall simply try to lay bare those large and permanent characteristics which are common to that remarkable series of men and which bear on the question in hand.

Religion Ethical and Therefore Social

The fundamental conviction of the prophets, which distinguished them from the ordinary religious life of their day, was the conviction that God demands righteousness and demands nothing but righteousness.

Primitive religions consisted mainly in the worship of the powers of nature. Each tribe worshiped its local tribal god, who dwelt in some gloomy ravine or on some mountaintop and sent rain and fertility to his people when he was pleased, or drought and pestilence on crops and herds when he was offended. Like every other despot, the god had to be kept in good humor by valuable gifts and prayers, offered in the right places, in the right manner, and by the duly qualified persons. If the sacrifices were neglected, the god was sure to be angry and then had to be propitiated by redoubled offerings, incantations, and dances. There was always some connection between religion and morality. It was always understood that the tribal god had instituted the tribal customs and was displeased with any violation of them. But the essential thing in religion was not morality, but the ceremonial method of placating the god, securing his gifts, and ascertaining his wishes. He might even be pleased best by immoral actions, by the immolation of human victims, by the sacrifice of woman's chastity, or by the burning of the firstborn.

Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century
The Classic That Woke Up the Church. Copyright © by Walter Rauschenbusch. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Christianity and the Social Crisis: The Classic That Woke up the Church by Walter Rauschenbusch
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