561 - Walter Rauschenbusch: Selected Writings

Walter Rauschenbusch: Selected Writings
By Winthrop S. Hudson
New York, Paulist, 1984. 252 pp, $14.95.

If this first volume in the series, "Sources of American Spirituality," is any indication, the project should be a huge success. With but a couple of minor historiographic errors, this collection of letters, fugitive writings, and artfully selected passages from major books conveys the social passion, ethical vigor, and human sensitivity of this great father of the "Social Gospel." The volume shows how much these were rooted in a biblically-based spirituality too much ignored by many who would emulate his socially prophetic witness as well as by the critics of socially active Christianity. The book is doubly valuable since all other books by Rauschenbusch are now out of print.

Max L. Stackhouse
Andover Newton Theological School
Newton, Mass.