Moving into new places presents a unique challenge to imagine and re-imagine our past lives in relation to the present locations in which we find ourselves.
Walter Rauschenbusch, the late 19th-century and early 20th-century pastor, church historian and social gospel advocate, entered into a new place during the summer of 1886. Having split his time between Rochester, N.Y., and Germany for the entirety of his life up to that point, Rauschenbusch answered a call to serve as pastor of Second German Baptist Church at the age of 24.
Andrew Gardner
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Originally Second German Baptist Church sat on West 45th Street just outside Hell’s Kitchen in New York City’s Bowery district, but moved to West 43rd Street in 1889. This area was one of the poorest in New York City — even then the nation’s largest with three million residents. The approximately 125 working-class German immigrants who attended Second German Baptist Church called Rauschenbusch to become their pastor.
This new place in the midst of a bustling city was far different from anything Rauschenbusch had ever experienced before. The comforts of academic pursuit in Rochester and Germany were lost on many of these working-class immigrants.
During the first year of his ministry in New York, Rauschenbusch preached largely from his experience, emphasizing the orthodox understanding of the need for personal conversion. As life in Hell’s Kitchen washed over him during that first year, however, Rauschenbusch began to re-imagine himself and his theology within the context of that neighborhood.
Historian Christopher Evans has written, “The stark poverty that [Rauschenbusch] observed in his church and in his New York neighborhood had an indelible effect on both his theology and his personality.” At a young age, Rauschenbusch had become the chief religious guide for individuals plagued by a poverty that touched every part of their lives. Over time, he witnessed the sharp economic disparity between the rich and the poor that gripped his congregants and contributed to their poor living conditions and in some cases even their death.
By entering into a new place, Rauschenbusch had to face both the realities of his past life, achieving both college and seminary degrees, and his current life within poverty-stricken, working-class New York City. Recognizing how ill equipped his former life had left him to minister in his current location, Rauschenbusch began to re-imagine Christianity in light of the life he experienced in Hell’s Kitchen.
While new places can be understood literally as the moving from one physical location to another, the stream of time also forces us into new places. These new places require imagining and re-imagining.
For example, we might suggest our current understanding of the gospel is ill equipped to address a society engrossed in a culture of social media. We must take time to imagine and re-imagine a gospel that adequately addresses the needs of a society more willing to converse virtually than physically.
Perhaps our understanding of the gospel is ill equipped to address technological advances in modern warfare. We must take time to imagine and re-imagine a gospel that adequately addresses the ability turn enemies into set of coordinates.
Today, I find myself in a new place, a new place five blocks and 127 years removed from Rauschenbusch’s call to Second German Baptist Church. I am spending the summer at Metro Baptist Church to work with Rauschenbusch Metro Ministries, a context that will inevitably challenge my Virginian sensibilities. If, however, we believe that the gospel is for all people in all contexts, we must also believe that the gospel has answers specific to each person in each context, New York or Virginia. Discovering these answers requires us to use our imaginations to understand both our histories and our potential futures.
We must remember, however, that the task of discovering these answers through our imaginations is never fully complete. God brings us through time to new and interesting places. We will inevitably meet these new and interesting places with old ideas that require us to imagine these old ideas with new eyes. We must continually ask ourselves, “Where are our gospel answers inadequate for the world’s gospel questions?”
Andrew Gardner (abgardner@email.wm.edu), a student at Wake Forest University School of Divinity, is spending the summer working at Rauschenbusch Metro Ministries, a social advocacy group affiliated with Metro Baptist Church in New York City. From time to time he will be writing about his experience.