author
Walter Rauschenbusch
1861–1918
A Baptist pastor and theologian who helped shape the Social Gospel movement, he argued that Christian faith should confront poverty, injustice, and the human cost of industrial life. His writing joined moral urgency with a hopeful vision of social change.
1 Audiobook
The Social Principles of Jesus
by Walter Rauschenbusch
About the author
Born in Rochester, New York, in 1861, he was the son of German immigrants and spent part of his youth studying in Germany before returning to the United States for college and seminary. He later became a Baptist minister and served for years in New York City, where close contact with poverty in Hell’s Kitchen deeply shaped his thinking.
That experience helped make him one of the best-known voices of the Social Gospel movement. Rather than treating religion as only a private matter, he urged Christians to face social problems directly and connected the teachings of Jesus with labor conditions, inequality, and public justice.
He later taught at Rochester Theological Seminary and wrote influential books including Christianity and the Social Crisis. Though he died in 1918, his ideas continued to influence Protestant thought, religious activism, and later movements for social reform.