Abstract

A consideration of the four ways religion contributes distinctive insights to the enterprise of social reconstruction establishes a context for reassessing the achievement of Walter Rauschenbusch at the same time that it enables us to better appreciate both the commonalities and the tensions that characterize the relationship of Rauschenbusch and Reinhold Niebuhr. Both mount a powerful and original critical analysis of the politics of resentment, though this is obscured in the work of Niebuhr by the developing polemic of Christian realism and in the work of Rauschenbusch by a regrettable attempt to reconcile the prophetic tradition with belief in progress.