Thursday, April 27, 2006
The Kingdom

Was studying earlier for a church history test I had today. Orthodoxy. Rationalism. Pietism. All that good stuff.

Read this:
The demoralization of society... ought to appeal most powerfully to the Church, for the Church is to be the incarnation of the Christ-spirit on earth, the organized conscience of Christendom. It should be swiftest to awaken to every undeserved suffering, bravest to speak against every wrong, and strongest to rally the moral forces of the community against everything that threatens the better life among men...


That's Walter Rauschenbusch from Christianity and the Social Crisis, 1907. Walt is one of the big voices of the Social Gospel movement in America just prior to the first World War.

I've been looking for a good unpacking of what the Kingdom of God means lately, and I think I like what I see in Rauschenbusch. He lists eight characteristics of the Kingdom. Here is what he says, out of context, so keep that in mind:
1. The Kingdom of God is divine in its origin, progress and consummation...

2. The Kingdom of God contains the teleology of the Christian religion...

3. Since God is in it, the Kingdom of God is always both present and future...

4. Even before Christ, men of God saw the Kingdom of God as the great end to which all divine leadings were pointing...

5. The Kingdom of God is humanity organized according to the will of God...

6. Since the Kingdom is the supreme end of God, it must be the purpose for which the Church exists...

7. Since the Kingdom is the supreme end, all problems of personal salvation must be reconsidered from the point of view of the Kingdom...

8. The Kingdom of God is not confined within the limits of the Church and its activities...


Perhaps we'd all do well to drop by our local book depository and peruse A Theology for the Social Gospel in its entirety.

posted by Peter at 10:59 PM
| | permalink |