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Walter Rauschenbusch

78 quotes

“Throughout the Middle Ages the sway of the Church over the moral and spiritual life of the people, her power to inspire and direct their enthusiasms and energies, her chance for molding their conceptions of life, were amazing and unparalleled by any other force.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Christianity was rising when the ancient world was breaking down. By the time the Church had gained sufficient power to exercise a controlling influence, the process of social decay, like the breakdown of a physical organism in a wasting disease, was beyond remedy.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Amid the general anarchy, against the coarse vice and brutality of the barbarians, herself harried by the rapacity of the nobles and weakened by the ignorance and barbarism of her own clergy, the Church did what she could, but a thorough social reconstruction was impossible. In modern life her power is broken by the prevalent doubt and apostasy, and the current of materialism and mammonism is now too great to be stemmed.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The influence of Christianity in taming selfishness and stimulating the sympathetic affections, in creating a resolute sense of duty, a stanch love of liberty and independence, an irrepressible hunger for justice and a belief in the rights of the poor, has been so subtle and penetrating that no one can possibly trace its effects. ...And yet human society has not been reconstituted in accordance with the principles of Jesus Christ.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are apt... to forget that the moral force of Christianity was usually only one factor in producing such a change as the abolition of slavery or piracy, and that over against the benign influences of the Church must be set the malign and divisive influences which she created by persecuting zeal, intellectual intolerance, or religious wars. In short, we must soberly face the fact that a good many deductions have to be made from the popular panegyrics, and that the Church has not accomplished all that is often claimed for her.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The social effects which are usually enumerated do not constitute a reconstruction of society on a Christian basis, but were mainly a suppression of some of the most glaring evils in the social system of the time.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most important effects of Christianity went out from it without the intention of the Church, or even against its will.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The position of woman has doubtless been elevated through the influence of Christianity, but... it is probably fair to say that most of the great Churches through their teaching and organization have exerted a conservative and retarding influence on the rise of woman to equality with man.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Christianity has been one of the most powerful causes of democracy, but the conscious influence of the Church has more widely been exerted against democracy than for it.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All social movements would gain immensely in enthusiasm, persuasiveness, and wisdom if the hearts of their advocates were cleansed and warmed by religious faith.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But will reënforcement work the other way, also? Religion strengthens the social spirit; will the social spirit strengthen personal religion? When a minister gets hot about child labor and wage slavery, is he not apt to get cold about prayer meetings and evangelistic efforts? When young women become interested in social work, do they not often lose their taste for the culture of the spiritual life and the peace of religious meditation?”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If this is indeed the alternative, we are in a tragic situation, compelled to choose between social righteousness and communion with God.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Personal religion has a supreme value for its own sake, not merely as a feeder of social morality, but as the highest unfolding of life itself, as the blossoming of our spiritual nature. Spiritual regeneration is the most important fact in any life history. A living experience of God is the crowning knowledge attainable to a human mind.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some of the anxiety about personal religion is due to a subtle lack of faith in religion. Men think it is a fragile thing that will break up and vanish when the customs and formulas which have hitherto encased and protected it are broken and cast aside. Most of us have known religion in one form, and we suppose it can have no other. But religion is the life of God in the soul of man, and is God really so fragile?”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Personal religion collapses with some individuals, because in their case it had long been growing hollow and thin. ... In reality there was little personal religion to lose, and that little would probably have been lost in some other way.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The socialism of continental Europe, taking it by and large, is actively hostile, not only to bad forms of organized religion, but to religion itself.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The words are part of the first chapter of Isaiah to which reference has been made. The prophet throughout the chapter deals with the national condition of the kingdom of Judah and its capital. ...he urges ...the abolition of social oppression and injustice as the only way of regaining God's favor for the nation. If they would vindicate the cause of the helpless and oppressed, then he would freely pardon; then their scarlet and crimson guilt would be washed away. The familiar text is followed by the very material promise of economic prosperity and the threat of continued war: "If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sympathy of the prophets, even of the most aristocratic among them, was entirely on the side of the poorer classes. ...The edge of their invectives was turned against the land-hunger of the landed aristocracy who "joined house to house and laid field to field," till a country of sturdy peasants was turned into a series of great estates; against the capitalistic ruthlessness that "sold the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes," thrusting the poor free-man into slavery to collect a trifling debt; against the venality of the judges who took bribes and had a double standard of law for the rich and the poor.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Christian movement began with John the Baptist. … in his recorded teaching to the people there is not a word about the customary ritual of religion, about increased Sabbath observance, about stricter washings and sacrifices, or the ordinary exercises of piety. He spoke only of repentance, of ceasing from wrongdoing. He hailed the professional exponents of religion who came to hear him, as a brood of snakes wriggling away from the flames of the judgment. ...The way to prepare for the Messianic era and to escape the wrath of the Messiah was to institute a brotherly life and to equalize social inequalities.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jesus accepted John as the forerunner of his own work. It was the popular movement created by John which brought Jesus out of the seclusion of Nazareth. He received John's baptism as the badge of the new Messianic hope and repentance. ...He drew his earliest and choicest disciples from the followers of John. When John was dead, some thought Jesus was John risen from the dead. He realized clearly the difference between the stern ascetic spirit of the Baptist and his own sunny trust and simple human love, but to the end of his life he championed John and dared the Pharisees to deny his divine mission. ...In the main he shared John's national and social hope. His aim too was the realization of the theocracy.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why has it [the Church] never done what it was sent to do? Others ...will say it has done so. Has it not lifted woman to equality and companionship with man, secured the sanctity and stability of marriage, changed parental despotism to parental service, and eliminated unnatural vice, the abandonment of children, blood revenge, and the robbery of the shipwrecked from the customs of Christian nations? Has it not abolished slavery, mitigated war, covered all lands with a network of charities to uplift the poor and the fallen, fostered the institutions of education, aided the progress of civil liberty and social justice, and diffused a softening tenderness throughout human life? It has done all that, and vastly more.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have to harmonize the two facts, that wealth is good and necessary, and that wealth is a danger to its possessor and to society. On the one hand property is indispensable to personal freedom, to all higher individuality, and to self-realization; the right to property is a corollary of the right to life; without property men are at the mercy of nature and in bondage to those who have property. On the other hand property is used as a means of collecting tribute and private taxes, as a club with which to extort unearned gain from laborers and consumers, and as the fundamental tool of oppression.”
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source