Introduction to Walter Rauschenbusch`s Why I Am a Baptist
Foy Valentine
WaIter Rauschenbusch and Christian social ethics are forever linked.
Born in 1861 and living until 1918, he is best known as the author of such widely influential books as Christianity and the Social Crisis, Prayers of the Social Awakening, and The Social Principles of Jesus. After graduating from the Rochester Theological Seminary in 1886, he was ordained as a Baptist minister, the seventh in a direct line of ministers. After a pastorate among very poor German immigrants in New York City, he taught in the Rochester Theological Seminary.
A deeply religious man characterized by exemplary personal piety; he took his German Baptist convictions so seriously that he could not remain silent in the face of Northern industry`s harsh abuse of labor in general and shameless use of child labor in particular, unsanitary living conditions, wretched housing, and other festering social problems of the burgeoning industrial revolution that was coming then to America and especially to the Northeastern United States where he lived. Although he taught New Testament and church history at the Rochester Theological Seminary, he made his greatest mark in the area of Christian social concerns. As a theologian, a scholar, and a Baptist statesman, he was called on to speak and write on a wide variety of subjects.
In 1905 and 1906 he published in The Rochester Baptist Journal a series of five brief articles on "Why I Am a Baptist." When he was president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Baptist church historian, Sydnor Stealey, called this series "One of the best statements ever written on our distinctive principles." (A Baptist Treasury, p. 163. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1958) Dr. Stealey said he selected these short pieces by Rauschenbusch as "the very first choice" for his compilation of selected writings "to help the average reader discourse intelligently on `Why I Am A Baptist."`
Rauschenbusch`s material is now 90 years old. Today`s readers may therefore expect to wince at the male gender bias. The candidly critical treatment of some other denominations will be shocking to some. Still others will be aghast at the author`s tirade against creedalism which seems to be written expressly against defenders of the Baptist Faith and Message statement which Fundamentalists now use as a creed and to which they have now added the Chicago statement about inerraney. Different editors of Rauschenbusch`s material have scissored out various portions of the copy not to their liking. CHRISTIAN ETHICS TODAY presents here the material exactly as it was printed originally, however, in the hope that it will accomplish again today, nearly a century later, what the author hoped it would accomplish in his day. It is included here for three reasons:
- No other such a presentation is known to be currently available. (Edited versions have been printed but none of even these is now known to be in print).
- Everybody with a genuine interest in Christian ethics and any interest in the Baptist idea should know what so important a shaker and mover as Walter Rauschenbusch had to say about why he was a Baptist.
- Every Baptist with a pulse ought to have this document in his or her permanent files for frequent reference and spiritual edification. (Reprints from CHRISTIAN ETHICS TODAY, are available for $1, postage and handling included.)
