A few quotes from 'a forgotten man'

"No man shares his life with God whose religion does not flow out, naturally and without effort, into all relations of his life and reconstructs everything that it touches. Whoever uncouples the religious and the social life has not understood Jesus. Whoever sets any bounds for the reconstructive power of the religious life over the social relations and institutions of men, to that extent denies the faith of the Master."

"Jesus did not in any real sense bear the sin of some ancient Briton who beat up his wife in B.C.56, or of some mountaineer in Tennessee who got drunk in A.D.1917. But he did in a very real sense bear the weight of the public sins of organized society, and they in turn are causally connected with all private sins."

There are: "six sins, all of a public nature, which combined to kill Jesus. He bore their crushing attack in his body and soul. He bore them, not by sympathy, but by direct experience. In so far as the personal sins of men have contributed to the existence of these public sins, he came into collision with the totality of evil in mankind. It requires no legal fiction of imputation to explain that 'he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.' Solidarity explains it."

"Religious bigotry, the combination of graft and political power, the corruption of justice, the mob spirit (being "the social group gone mad") and mob action, militarism, and class contempt-- "every student of history will recognize that these sum up constitutional forces in the Kingdom of Evil. Jesus bore these sins in no legal or artificial sense, but in their impact on his own body and soul. He had not contributed to them, as we have, and yet they were laid on him. They were not only the sins of Caiaphas, Pilate, or Judas, but the social sin of all mankind, to which all who ever lived have contributed, and under which all who ever lived have suffered."

These quotes come from Walter Rauschenbusch, whose book Christianity and the Social Crisis was so immensely popular in 1907 when it was published it sold more copies for three years than any other religious text but the Bible .

Rauschenbuschian has entered the language as an adjective: for a review of the centenary reprinting of his greatest book, click here.