The Social Principles of JesusRauschenbusch, Walter
Religion
The Social Principles of Jesus
Rauschenbusch, Walter
Christian ethics; Christian sociology; Jesus Christ -- Teachings
If evil is socialized, salvation must be socialized. The organization of
the Christian Church is a recognition of the social factor in salvation.
It is not enough to have God, and Christ, and the Bible. A group is
needed, organized on Christian principles, and expressing the Christian
spirit, which will assimilate the individual and gradually make him over
into a citizen of the Kingdom of God. Salvation will rarely come to anyone
without the mediation of some individual or group which already has
salvation. It may be very small and simple. “Where two or three are
gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” That saying
recognizes that an additional force is given to religion by its embodiment
in a group of believers. Professor Royce has recently reasserted in modern
terms the old doctrine that “there is no salvation outside of the Church,”
calling the Church “the beloved community.” Of course the question is how
intensively Christian the Church can make its members. That will depend on
the question how Christian the Church itself is, and there’s the rub.
The Church is the permanent social factor in salvation. But it has cause
to realize that many social forces outside its immediate organization must
be used, if the entire community is to be christianized.
In the earliest centuries Christianity was practically limited to the life
within the Church. Being surrounded by a hostile social order, and
compelled to fence off its members, it created a little duplicate social
order within the churches where it sought to realize the distinctively
Christian social life. Its influence there was necessarily restricted
mainly to individual morality, family life, and neighborly intercourse,
and here it did fundamental work in raising the moral standards. On the
other hand, it failed to reorganize industry, property, and the State.
Even if Christians had had an intelligent social and political outlook,
any interference with the Roman Empire by the low-class adherents of a
forbidden religion was out of the question. When the Church was recognized
and favored under Constantine and his successors, it had lost its
democratic composition and spirit, and the persons who controlled it were
the same sort of men who controlled the State.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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