331 - Passion for justice: Retrieving the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch

Passion for Justice: Retrieving the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch
By John A. Ryan and Reinhold Niebuhr
Harlan Beckley, Louisville, Westminster/John Knox, 1992.391 pp. $27.00.

Harlan Beckley, Chairman of the Religion Department at Washington & Lee, has brought together key texts on social justice from the leading Social Gospel theorist of the early twentieth century, the chief architect of the Roman Catholic programs on welfare and reform during the twenties and thirties, and the moving spirit of Christian realism, that drew heavily on the classic traditions of the Reformation.

The authors treated agree on many aspects of ethics and yet diverge at fascinating points. What is most interesting is how they used very different ways of arguing for their positions and how the way of arguing influenced the results. The differences of approach and the commonality of commitment to justice make this a useful volume for teaching about Christian social ethics in the period that formed the moral consensus for the New Deal.

Max L. Stackhouse
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, NJ.