Here I am announcing a new book discussion series: The Social Principles of Jesus by Walter Rauschenbusch. It was published in 1917. It is in the public domain, so it is available from any publishers. You can download it from Amazon for Kindle free (so it says). Or you can pay about $7 to purchase it from Amazon in hard copy.
I will launch the discussion with my own thoughts here about the Introduction and Part I: The Axiomatic Social Convictions of Jesus, Chapter I: The Value of Life. Each week I will comment on a chapter of the book. The chapters are relatively brief, so I may sometimes combine two. I will announce the next section to be read and discussed each time I post my thoughts about a chapter (or two chapters).
If you may want to comment on the book, you must download or buy it and read along with me/us. If you don’t read the book you will only be able to ask questions.
For those of you who do not know, Rauschenbusch was the leading theologian of the so-called Social Gospel Movement that was strong in America in the last decade of the nineteenth century and first couple decades of the twentieth century. He taught church history and theology at Rochester Baptist Theological Seminary where his father, a German immigrant, also taught. He was a prolific speaker, organizer, author and (at times) pastor.
Rauschenbusch was controversial and remains so because he advocated democratic socialism in books like Christianity and the Social Crisis, Christianizing the Social Order, and A Theology for the Social Gospel. But he also wrote a lengthy article entitled “Why I Am a Baptist” in which he strongly expressed the personal, experiential aspect of Baptist Christian faith.
I graduated from a branch (offshoot) of the seminary where he taught. It was then called North American Baptist Seminary and was located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. NABS began its existence as the German Department of Rochester Seminary in New York. Sometime in the 1940s the German Department went its own way, separate from the Rochester seminary, and settled in Sioux Falls because that city formed a center of German immigration and German Baptist life. Rauschenbusch’s framed picture hung on a wall in the seminary’s entry hallway.
Please get your copy of the book and read along with me. It will be my third time reading the book. And I used it as a textbook in my seminary ethics classes.
The series will begin on Monday, October 13.
*Note: If you choose to comment, make sure your comment is relatively brief (no more than 100 words), on topic, addressed to me, civil and respectful (not hostile or argumentative), and devoid of pictures or links.*
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