Rauschenbusch

Every six months I like to do a limited search for Walter Rauschenbusch to see if any new and interesting web sites turn up, not really. One that caught my eye was by Brian McClaren on Rauschenbusch. Unfortunately he doesn't really talk that much about Rauschenbusch, more about how conservative evangelicals viewed the social gospel as a liberal endeavor.

McClaren apparently has not read the material between King and Rauschenbusch. I view that time as the most creative and least credited of the social gospel.

While on this topic I have always been a little ticked off at the exclusive use, by a rather conservative portion of Christianity, of the term "evangelical." This is a term much broader, richer, deeper and life giving than one subbranch of modern day Protestantism. It is a term that social gospelers have always upheld and centered on. This is a term worth recovering and reclaiming for liberal Protestants, there used to be a great tradition of liberal evangelicalism. We need some theological archaeologists to dig up this tradition and redefine it in light of the current world.