Religious Faith as Political Praxis: Walter Rauschenbusch, Incarnational Religion, and the Social Gospel Cultus

Abstract

The Social Gospel has been primarily framed through the critique articulated by Reinhold Niebuhr, which cast the movement as theologically utopian and politically naive. Defenders of the Social Gospel contend that the movement demonstrated the vital role of religion in providing moral resources for political action. Departing from the epistemic (or excarnational) model of religion underlying both these positions, I interpret Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch as providing an incarnational conception of religion that foregrounds the embodied dimensions of faith that are crucial in the constitution of political subjects. I argue that the Social Gospel situates Christian faith as political praxis so that piety is realized through democratic engagement and social transformation. This practice of faith is cultivated not simply by beliefs but by liturgical practices. The recovery of this framework reveals a heterodox tradition of Christian thought that resists the privatized vision of religion inherited from liberal secularism.