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Walter Rauschenbusch and the Brotherhood of the Kingdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

C. Howard Hopkins
C. Howard Hopkins
Affiliation:
Mount Hermon School, Mount Hermon, Mass.
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Extract

The Brotherhood of the Kingdom was organized in December, 1892, by a small group of converts to the ideal of the kingdom of God on earth who, not unmindful of the examples of St. Francis and of the Society of Jesus, planned to reestablish the idea of the kingdom “in the thought of the church and to assist in its practical realization in the world.” The year 1892 had witnessed a rising crescendo of social turbulence and political unrest throughout America. In the midwest the populist revolt was growing, while industrial warfare had broken out in the violent Homestead strike at the Carnegie steel plants. Jacob Riis had opened wide the festering tenements of the great cities in his revelation of How the Other Half Lives, while in intellectual circles the younger economists were rebelling against the tenets of the Manchester school. William Jennings Bryan's campaign for free silver was only four years away, and the Spanish–American War but six years in the future. Into such an atmosphere of storm and stress was born the Brotherhood of the Kingdom, dedicated to the realization of a spiritual ideal in the social order.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 1938 , pp. 138 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1938

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References

1 Williams, Leighton, The Brotherhood of the Kingdom and its Work, Brotherhood Leaflet No. 10 (reprinted from the Proceedings of the Congress of Religions at Omaha, 10, 1897, 291–303) 1–2.Google Scholar This pamphlet is almost the sole source of information concerning the early years of the Brotherhood.Materials on the Brotherhood of the Kingdom are somewhat rare. With the exception of The Kingdom, for which see Note 2, below, the best collections known to the writer are those of the Yale University Library and of the Ambrose Swasey Library of the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, Rochester, New York. The New York Public Library and the American Baptist Historical Society of Chester, Pennsylvania, have many useful items.

2 Williams, op. cit., 3.

3 The writer is deeply indebted to Mrs. Leighton Williams of Marlborough, New York, for her generosity in making the Visitor's Book and other materials available to him, as well as for her interested co-operation and personal reminiscences concerning the membership and meetings of the Brotherhood—without both of which a complete picture would have been impossible.

4 This statement was frequently printed in Brotherhood literature, notably the Reports of the annual conferences.

5 Report of the fifth conference, etc. (1897), 36.

6 Rauschenbusch, Walter, Christianizing the Social Order (New York, 1912), 93.Google Scholar

7 For a contemporary statement of these ideas, see Gladden, Washington, Ruling Ideas of the Present Age (Boston and New York, 1895).Google Scholar

8 Rausehenbusch, op. cit., 90.

9 Rauschenbusch, , The Kingdom of God, Brotherhood Leaflet No. 4 (reprinted from the City Vigilant, 05, 1894) 4–5.Google Scholar

10 Samuel Zane Batten, “What is ‘The Kingdom of God’¶” Proceedings of the twelfth annual session of the Baptist Congress for the Discussion of Current Questions (Detroit, 11.13–15, 1894, New York, 1895), 122–133; quotation p. 126.

11 Peabody, Francis Greenwood, Jesus Christ and the Social Question (New York,1900), 96ff.Google Scholar

12 Mathews, Shailer, The Social Teaching of Jesus (New York, 1897)Google Scholar, chapter IX.

13 Batten, op. cit., 127.

14 Op. cit., 128.

15 Nathaniel Schmidt, “The Kingdom of God in Modern Life,” Report of the fifth conference, etc. (897), 6.

16 Williams, op. cit., 12.

17 Report of the third conference, etc. (1895), 8.

18 Batten, op. cit., pp. 129–130.

19 Walter Rauschenbusch, “The Ideals of Social Reformers,” Report of the third conference, etc. (1895), 26.

20 This statement was printed in The Kingdom for August-October, 1908 (pages unnumbered). The Kingdom was published at New Haven, Connecticut, by W. H. Gardner, a member of the Brotherhood, from August, 1907, irregularly until January, 1909. Broken files of the magazine are available in the New York Public Library and the American Baptist Historical Society collection at Chester, Pennsylvania.

21 Batten, op. cit., 132.

22 Quoted by Williams, op. cit., 14. The writer has been unable to locate a copy of the original essay, published as Brotherhood Leaflet No. 2.

23 “An Offer of the Brotherhood of the Kingdom—Rochester Chapter,” in The Rochester Baptist Monthly (Rochester, New York), XXI, 10, 1906, No. 1, p. 34.Google Scholar

24 Letter to the writer, February 28, 1936.

25 Williams, Leighton, The Reign of the New Humanity, Amity Tract No. 11. (n. p.,1907), 2.Google Scholar

26 Rauschenbusch, , Christianizing the Social Order, 94.Google Scholar