Paul Raushenbush has been a in important part of the project which became An Evangelical Social Gospel? Paul encouraged me to write the book & gave me some extremely helpful guidance along the way. He has also given me many opportunities to write and opened doors for me that would never have been opened otherwise. I am a big believer that when people show us kindness, it says much more about who they are than who we are. Paul has shown himself to be an exceptionally kind man, and a true friend. Thanks Paul, for the excellent introduction to the book, and for being such a kind person. I am so very grateful!
Here’s an excerpt from the foreword Paul wrote:
“Last year I received an email from a young minister that contained the unlikely introduction: “I’m a pastor, a student at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, and a fan of Walter Rauschenbusch.” And so began my journey with Rev. Tim Suttle, whose remarkable book you hold in your hand.
Why was Tim’s introduction so unlikely? Not for itself alone, but because the more I learned about Mr. Suttle and his evangelical upbringing, his Christian rock fame, and his successful nondenominational Church plantings, the more I became aware that we were—supposedly—from two different “camps” in the theological divide that had separated Christians like Tim and me for a long time.
As the narrative goes, one hundred years ago (give or take a decade) American Protestants split into two oddly opposing factions with Mainline churches on one side and Evangelicals on the other. Common wisdom held that the mainline churches only cared about social justice and evangelicals only cared about individual salvation. Each side painted the other with increasingly broad and clumsy strokes, resulting in mutual suspicion and even adversarial relationships.
One of the figures who became associated with this parting of the ways was my great-grandfather, Walter Rauschenbusch. Walter was born into a Christian household and followed the family tradition of pursuing a seminary education and entering the ministry. In 1886, he took a church in the appropriately named “Hell’s Kitchen” of New York City…”
If you want to read the rest – you’ve got to buy the book!
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