Top 15 Walter Rauschenbusch Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

If this is indeed the alternative, we are in a tragic situation, compelled to choose between social righteousness and communion with God.

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?

All social movements would gain immensely in enthusiasm, persuasiveness, and wisdom if the hearts of their advocates were cleansed and warmed by religious faith.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.