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Walter Rauschenbusch and Education for Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

John R. Aiken
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, State University College of New at Buffalo

Extract

While it is true that the social gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch is more than the religious strain of the progressive movement, there is no doubt that he sought a christianized social order, one in “harmony with the ethical convictions which we identify with Christ.” And he was much concerned with the Kingdom of God, the “growing perfection in the collective life of humanity, in our laws, in the customs of society, in the institutions for education, and of the administration of mercy.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1967

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References

1. Christianizing the Social Order (New York, 1912), 125, 332, 333, 335.Google Scholar

2. The Kingdom of God (Pamphlet, n.d.), 8; Christianizing the Social Order, 90.

3. Christianity and the Social Crisis (New York, 1907), 194.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., 377, 398, 413; The Standard, LXII (06 19, 1915), 13031305Google Scholar; Preceedings of the Baptist Congress, VII (12 1888), 2931.Google Scholar

5. Rauseheabusch scholars have been interested in other issues. See Robins, H. B. et al. , “Rauschenbusch Number,” Rochester Theological Bulletin, LXIX (11 1918)Google Scholar; Moehiman, Conrad, “Walter Rauschenbusch and His Interpreters,” Crozier Quarterly, XXIII (01 1946)Google Scholar; Hopkins, Charles, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism (New Haven, 1940)Google Scholar; Sharp, Dores R., Walter Rausohenbusch (New York, 1942)Google Scholar; Bodein, Vernon P., The Social Gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch and Its Relation to Religious Education (New Haven, 1944)Google Scholar; Landis, Benson Y., ed., A Rauschenbusch Reader: The Kingdcnn of God and the Social Gospel (New York, 1957)Google Scholar; May, Henry F., Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York, 1949Google Scholar; 1963 reprint); Hudson, Winthrop S., The Great Tradition of American Churches (New York, 1953)Google Scholar; Smucker, Donovan E., “The Origins of Walter Rauschenbusch's Social Ethics,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1957)Google Scholar; Smucker, , “The Rauschenbusch Story,” Foundations, II (01 1959)Google Scholar; Marney, Carlyle, “The Significance of Walter Rausehenbusch,” Foundations, II (01 1959)Google Scholar; Handy, Robert T., ed., The Social Gospel in America (New York, 1966)Google Scholar.

6. Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Bocial Gospel (New York, 1917), 60, 182.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., 66, 62, 63–64, 71, 71–72, 78, 61.

9. Ibid., 71–72; Bodein, , The Social Gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch, 115.Google Scholar

10. Rauschenbuseh, , Christianity and the Social Crisis, 400, 414, 401402, 45Google Scholar; idem, “The Influence of Historical Studies on Theology,” American Journal of Theology, XI (January 1907), 125–126; Smucker, “Origins of W. R.'s Social Ethics,” 177; Landis, , Rauschenbusch Reader, 19Google Scholar; Rauschenbusch Scrapbook III, 25Google Scholar (Baptist Historical Society, Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, Rochester, N. Y.); Rauschenbusch, , “The Ideals of Social Reformers,” American Journal of Sociology, II (09 1896), 202 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Rauschenbusch, , Christianity and the Social Crisis, 402403Google Scholar; in Christianiring the Social Order, 448, he points out that “labor is the most modern of all classes, the product of today, the creator of tomorrow, the bearer of destiny,” and on 449, “and if the banner of the Kingdom of God is to enter through the gate of the future, it will have to be carried by the tramping hosts of labor”; see also his Path of Labor (New York, 1918), 170, 177178.Google Scholar

12. “Commencement Day Address, 1902” (this is also labeled “Alumni Oration”), Dores R. Sharpe, Walter Rauschenbusch Collection, 20, 21, 22; hereafter cited as Rauschenbusch Collection (Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, Rochester, N. Y.); see also Rauschenbusch's Diary of his stay in Germany. For a fuller treatment of the German influence on Rauschenbusch see Miller, T. R., Walter Rauschenbusch: em Beitrag rur Begegnung des deutschen und des amerilcanischen Protestantismus (Leiden, 1957)Google Scholar. This racist element is evidenced elsewhere, Christianising the Social Order, 278; “The Rights of the Child in the Community,” Religious Education, X (06 1915), 219Google Scholar; The Standard, LXIV (10 21, 1916), 184185Google Scholar; The Standard, LXV (08 3, 1918), 14091410Google Scholar; Journal and Messenger (February 7, 1918), 7.

13. “Commencement Day Address,” 22, 25, 26; Labor Day Address, The Standard, LXIV (10 21, 1916), 184185.Google Scholar

14. “Commencement Day Address,” 2; for a different view see his “Christian Socialism,” A Dictionary of Religion and Ethics, Shailer Mathews and G. B. Smith, eds. (New York, 1921).Google Scholar

15. MeKelvey, Blake, Rochester, Quest for Quality (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), 145Google Scholar, hereafter cited as Rochester; “Commencement Day Address,” 9, 10; The Standard, LXIV (10 21, 1916), 184185Google Scholar. Many intellectuals of the period held racial theories, social and reform Darwinists alike, such as Fiske, John, Outines of Cosmic Philosophy (New York, 1874), II, 341, 263, 264Google Scholar; William Graham Sumner, “Equality,” Essays William Graham Sumner, Keller, Albert G. and Davie, Maurice R., eds. (New Haven, 1934), I, 422Google Scholar; “The Challenge of the Facts,” Essays of W. G. S., II, 95Google Scholar; Ward, Lester, Outlines of Sociology (New York, 1909), 179, 223Google Scholar; Ward, , Glimpses of the Cosmos (New York, 1913), III, 367.Google Scholar

16. “Commencement Day Address,” 25.

17. Christiarising the Social Order, 142 ff; Christianity and the Social Crisis, 398, 413–414; “The Rights of the Child in the Community,” 219; The Standard, LXII (06 19, 1915), 13031305.Google Scholar

18. “The Rights of the Child in the Community,” 224; Graham, William Sumner made a similar point in Folkways (Boston, 1906), 635Google Scholar, and in “Integrity of Education,” Essay of W. G. S., II, 37.Google Scholar

19. McKelvey, , Rochester, 7481Google Scholar; Weet, Herbert S., “The Development of Public Education in Rochester, 1900–1910,” Rochester Historical Society Publications, XVII (1939), 183, 188, 185, 187Google Scholar; The Fifty-Fifth Report of the Board of Education of the City of Rochester New York for the Years 1908, 1909, 1910 (Rochester, N. Y.), 6, hereafter cited as Report.

20. Report, 6, 7; Weet, “Development of Public Education in Rochester,” 205–209.

21. Smucker, Donovan E., “The Rausehenbuech Story,” Foundations, II (01 1959), 4Google Scholar; Mary E. Pressing to W. R., October 14, 1908, and Irma B. Speck to W. R., October 17, 1908, “Correspondence, 1901–1909,” Rauscheubusch Collection.

22. Weet, “Development of Public Education in Rochester,” 195, 203–206, 210 214–215.

23. Ibid., 203–204; McKelvey, , Rochester, 102, 103Google Scholar; Union and Advertiser, September 11, 1908, 9.

24. Union an Advertiser, November 13, 1908, 11; and November 14, 1908, 9.

25. Ibid.; “Rochester Public School Report,” Rauschenbusch Collection, 9, hereafter cited as “School Report”; Union and Advertiser, November 14, 1908, 9; “School Report,” 15, 24; Union and Advertiser, November 14, 1908, 9.

26. “School Report,” 30–31.

27. Ibid., 31–32. He was not alone in this attitude, “The Menace of Present Educational Methods,” Gunston's Magasine, XIX (0712 1900) 257, 258, 263.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., 32.

29. Proceedings of the Board of Education of the City of Rochester (December 7, 1908), 44.

30. For the Right, I, no. 2, 11, 1889Google Scholar; Ibid., passim; Ibid., no. 3, December, 1889; for Henry George's influence see Christiawising the Social Order, 394; Meyer, F. W. C., “Walter Rausehenbusch, Professor and Prophet,” The Standard (02 3, 1912), 662Google Scholar; Smucker, , “Origins of W. H.'s Social Ethics,” 248255.Google Scholar

31. For the Right, I, no. 11, 08, 1890.Google Scholar

32. “Minutes of the Brotherhood of the Kingdom,” JuIy 9, 1892, Rauschenbusch Collection.

33. Ibid., August 11, 1893, 4; for a different view of the Brotherhood see Hopkins, Charles H., “The Brotherhood of the Kingdom,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, VIII (1938), 138 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Mornay Williams to W. R., January 19, 1904, “Brotherhood of the Kingdom,” Rauschenbusch Collection.

35. “Minutes of the Brotherhood of the Kingdom,” 4; Rauschenbusch, Discipling versus Proselyting (Pamphlet, n.d.); Brotherhood of the Kingdom (Pamphlet, n.d.); and Wanted! A New Kind of Layman (Pamphlet, n.d.).

36. Rauschenbusch, New Apostolate, quoted in Sharpe, , Walter Bausch enbusch, 137.Google Scholar

37. For the Bight, I, no. 12, 09, 1890, 2Google Scholar; cf. also no. 4, January, 1890, 4.

38. If one accepts a definition of socialism as public ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods and the end of the profit system, then Rauschenbusch was no socialist. In a speech in Rochester, “Dogmatic and Practical Socialism” Rochester, Democrat and Chronicle (02 25, 1901)Google Scholar, he rejected Marxism and the labor theory of value, arguing in favor of gradualism. Elsewhere he pointed out, “In so far as profit is only another name for fair reward … it has a sound moral basis,” Christianizing the Social Order, 226, 224, 313. Again he spoke of socialism needing capitalism, traditionally mutually exclusive terms, 236, 450; at another place he accepted just “profit of the businessman,” 224. On 396, Christianity and the Social Crisis he writes that communism does not involve “a complete abolition of private property.”

39. Broom, Leonard and Seznick, Philip, Sociology (New York, 1963), 240244Google Scholar; Christianity and the Social Crisis, 413, his concept of stewnrdship has this potential. See also Michel, Robert, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchial Tendencies of Modern Democracy (Glencoe, Ill., 1949)Google Scholar; Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, trans. (New York, 1946), 196244Google Scholar; Merton, Robert K. and Rossi, Alice Kjtt, “Reference Group Theory and Social Mobility,” Status, Class, and Power, Reihard Bendix and Seymour Lipset, M., eds. (Glenco, Ill., 1966), 511513Google Scholar; Seymour M. Lipset, “Patterns, Ciass, and Democratic Policy,” Ibid., 169–171; Melvin M. Tumin. “Some Unapplauded Consequences of Social Mobility in A Mass Society,” No. 294, Bobbs-Merrill Reprint Series in the Social Sciences; Anonymous, “Why White Collar Workers Can't be Organized,” Harper'ss Magasine (August 1957), 44–50.

40. In Rauschenbusch's time there was much verifiable evidence to support the positive self-image and efficacy of this methodology; see Parker, Francis W., National Educatioiusl Association Proceedings (1895), 844846, 949Google Scholar; Curti, Merle, Social Ideas of American Educators (New York, 1959), 380, 385Google Scholar; Henry Barnard, Curti, Ibid., 150–151; Pestalozzi, Henry in de Guinips, B., Pestalozzi: His Life and Work (New York, 1892)Google Scholar; Hall, G. Stanley, “The Ideal School As Based on Child Study,” Forum, XXXII (09 19011902)Google Scholar; Herbart, Johann in Compayré, G., Herbart and Education by Instruction, trans., Findley, M. E. (New York, 1907)Google Scholar; Froebel, Frederick W. A., Education of Man, Jarvis, J., trans. (New York, 1886).Google Scholar

41. For a German's view of German education, Alexander, T., The Prussian Elementary School (New York, 1918), 537538Google Scholar, cited in Cole, Luella, History of Education (New York, 1962), 596–59Google Scholar. Rauschenbusch did have some reservations, publically, about German education, Christianizing the Social Order, 143.

42. Christianizing the Social Order, 174–175.

43. World Tarnorow, September 21, 1932; Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social and Political Thought, Kegley, Charles W. and Bretall, Robert W., eds. (New York, 1956), 6164.Google Scholar