Walter Rauschenbusch was born on October 4, 1861. At the age of seventeen, facing the problems of
growing out of boyhood into manhood, he implored in fervent prayers the help of God his heavenly
Father. He experienced a deep, tender and mysterious response from God which, he said,
influenced him to the depths of his soul. Soon after he decided to enter the ministry. He trained at the
University of Berlin and at the Theological Seminary at Rochester. After his training he offered
himself for foreign mission service. He was not, however, appointed as a missionary. He then
accepted the pastorate of the Second German Baptist Church of New York City. This small, poor
congregation was located in the part of town called "Hell's Kitchen." For eleven years
Rauschenbusch served this church 
located on the edge of New York's slums.
As he sought to serve his people he grappled first hand with such
problems as malnutrition, destitution, overcrowded tenements,
unemployment, sickness without proper medical care, the indignities of the
exploitation of the poor, and the crime breeding streets of the slums. He
labored to build playgrounds for children and to fight corruption in politics.
Whenever he uncovered injustices and social evil, his soul was fired with hot
indignation. During this ministry in the slums he gained profound insights
into social problems.
These eleven years gave him a radical new insight into the full meaning of
the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. From this time forward his life was
marked by a great social passion. In his day the great leaders of the church
said it was not the church's mission to abolish physical misery.
Rauschenbusch's insight did not come to him from the church. It came from
personal contact with poverty. He wrote, "when I saw how men toiled all
their life long, hard toilsome lives, and at the end had almost nothing to
show for it, how strong men begged for work and could not get it, how little
children died--oh, the children's funerals! They gripped my heart."
From his experiences the went to a deeper sturdy of the bible. In his
study he discovered a new viewpoint. He came to see there was no conflict
between the Gospel for the individual and the gospel big enough to redeem
a whole social system.
Dr. Rauschenbusch began to put his ideas into book. IN one respect he
was a man of his time. His book Christianity and the Social Crisis was
published in 1907. this was a time when Americans were having an uneasy
conscience about a number of social problems. President Theodore
Roosevelt was attacking "malefactors of great wealth." Christian leaders were
beginning to be upset by the injustice of sweatshops, the long hours of
forced labor for children in factories, and the spread of disease in crowded
slums. As social reform began to spread across the country Dr.
Rauschenbusch's book came as a powerful wind blowing away the church's
complacency.
When Jesus announced his ministry he read from Isaiah, "the spirit of the
Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good tidings to the
poor; he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of
sight of the blind, to set at liberty those that are oppressed, and to proclaim
the acceptable year of the Lord." Jesus came ministering to the physical and
the spiritual needs of those with whom he came in contact. We are called to
follow in his steps. Dr. Rauschenbusch is just one of a long line of Baptists
who saw the need to minister the whole gospel to the whole person.
In 1774, John Howard, a Baptist in London, brought a report on prison
conditions to the British Parliament. As a result of his work in making
known the conditions in prisons two bills were adopted to improve those
conditions. Prison reform has continued to be a concern of Baptists. So also
has ministry in prisons. Reaching out to those in prison.
One reason, as we have seen for the division of Baptists into North and
South was the Northern Baptist opposition to slavery. In the early 1800s
British Baptists refused to have fellowship with American Baptist groups
which approved of slavery. As we noted the split came when slaveowners
were not allowed to function freely in American Baptist mission societies
unless they repented of their practice of slavery. As often happens the
condemnation of sin did not lead to repentance but to discord. Sinners
seldom wish to be shown as sinners. We should also note that the
slaveowners went to great lengths to demonstrate that their activities were
scriptural and to prove that God designed inferiority into the Black race.
An important issue facing baptists has been war. Our denomination has
taken a position on each war our nation has entered in this century. In the
first World War, the Northern Baptist Convention joined the nation in
getting caught up in war fever. Americans viewed the war as a holy crusade
to "make the world safe for democracy." It was seen as "the war to end all
war." It was also the last war to receive our denomination's full support.
World War two received support because of the evil being fought. Still, the
convention was also concerned for fair treatment of conscientious objectors.
The Convention on declared, "war is not and cannot be made holy."
By the Korean and Vietnam wars the Convention took a position opposed
to war. Resolutions passed were concerned with fairness to both sides in
conflicts. The Convention came down on a search for justice rather than
victory. Each pronouncement of this type was bound to cause discussion.
The church was trying to speak to the Government rather than simply
accepting the official position of the state. It was seeking to be the church
rather than a recruiting agency for the government. 
Another important issue facing the church has been the civil rights
movement. This was, in many ways, an extension of the fight against slavery.
It was a Baptist minister who inspired much of the mass movement for
human rights in the las half of the twentieth century. That minister's name
was Martin Luther King Jr. In this struggle some churches refused to allow
people to enter the church, simply because of the color of their skin. Other
churches were bombed in a warning not to take a stand. Many who took a
stand were accused of being communists. My own pastor, who was strongly
anti communist, took a stand. He even, when he resigned from his
pastorate, took a position as the director of the city's civil rights commission.
Because of his stand we found flyers under of car windshields calling him a
communist. Even under that pressure, American Baptists remained involved.
American Baptist Churches sponsor childrens homes and retirement
homes. We still speak out on issues. We feed the hungry. American Baptist
work fro peace and justice, sponsor refugees, provide housing. We have
neighborhood action projects such as the united Christian centers in
Sacramento and the Southeast Asian Friendship ministries in Fresno where
people can have a place to go, can learn job skills, and receive many life
changing ministries.
Jesus said that at the last judgment he would say to the redeemed, "come,
oh blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you...for I was
hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a
stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick
and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me." He said that as we
do these things for the least of men, we do it for him. As American Baptists
we have been involved in just such ministries.