“What the world needs is a powerful sense of solidarity.” That is the final sentence of chapter 2 of The Social Principles of Jesus by Walter Rauschenbusch. Here I take up that chapter, titled The Solidarity of the Human Family.
If you have read the chapter, feel free to comment on it and/or on my thoughts here expressed. If not, feel free to ask a question. In any case, observe the rules stated below.
In this chapter, building on the first chapter (about the sanctify of every individual), the great theologian of the Social Gospel argues that Jesus was what I have here called an organic thinker—about society, about the social order, about humanity. He was clearly opposed to individualism. According to him, Jesus thought about humanity as an interdependent, organic whole of individuals and not about humanity as a collective of individuals without interdependence.
This vision led Rauschenbusch to embrace the ideals of the cooperative movement, the practice of establishing cooperative businesses rather than privately owned business or businesses owned by share-holders not involved in the business. He would applaud companies like Land-O-Lakes, REIT, and cooperative grocery stores.
One area where I demure from Rauschenbusch is his assumption that humans’ basic instinct is social. Apparently, he believed in the idea, common among Catholic theologians, that grace fulfills nature. Protestants typically believe that grace contradicts nature. In his final book A Theology for the Social Gospel Rauschenbusch developed the idea that original sin is a social disease; we catch it from our human models such as parents, siblings, friends, teachers, etc. We are not born with it. And its nature is selfishness.
It was on that point that theologian Reinhold Niebuhr most strongly disagreed with Rauschenbusch. Although Niebuhr agreed that original sin is not a disease inherited, like a biological “germ,” from parents, he argued that experience and revelation both witness that original sin, manifested primarily as pride, refusal of creatureliness, is universal among humans.
Rauschenbusch clearly believed that Jesus’s vision of human solidarity, when revealed and practiced, appeals to humans’ natural instincts, what Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature.” I’m not sure of that.
I do agree with Rauschenbusch, however, that Jesus showed us a better way than rank individualism which manifests primarily in competition rather than cooperation.
Imagine that Jesus was given a million dollars to found a business. What kind of business would he found? A competitive one owned by share-holders aimed primarily at garnering profit or a cooperative one owned by its employees and/or customers in which any profit went to lower prices and better wages but not designed to garner profit?
*Note: If you choose to comment, make sure you have read the chapter. If not, feel free to ask a question. In either case, make sure your comment or question 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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