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| Rauschenbusch is the litmus test in the Social Gospel Movement. Reading denominational literature can easily disclose the Rauschenbusch agenda, the leadership, and the goals. He delivered the Social Gospel lectures at Yale Divinity School in 1917. |
I was offered a box of books at a small, worn out Lutheran university - Wittenberg in Ohio, once the home of Hamma Seminary. The librarian thought I could use them, because my doctoral dissertation was on the Social Gospel Movement and A. D. Mattson.
A major theme, even before the Great Depression, was using the Christian Church for changing the culture. Walther Rauschenbusch was the key figure, a litmus test about who was hugging up to Marxism.
Like Europe, America embraced rationalism to replace the divinity, miracles, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. To this day, the Good Samaritan is not portrayed as the Savior but as the social activist earnestly trying to make the road to Jericho safe. Very few realize who the Good Samaritan is, which is sad if not pathetic.
Following the European impulses, the American theological leaders - influenced by the big, ancient universities - embraced what they learned at German universities and other centers of learning as well. The "best" American professors impressed their seminary students with a much more "scientific" and socialistic understanding of the Bible.
Brief pause - the 1881 Revision of the King James Version of the New Testament was dishonestly corrupted by Westcott, Hort, and other polecats. The Greek text was corrupted and the big Bible societies joyously - with the help of Rome - manufactured their brand new baby.
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| This group of ELCA bishops claimed the Holy Spirit was "in the closet." They chanted "Let her out! Let her out!" to accomplish their nonsense with clever smirks and cloven tongues. |
The fermentation was slow but steady in its growth. The 1960s in America were loaded with traditional congregations ordered to revive the poor areas, change the Bibles used, alter the hymns, and ravage the liturgy. The Biblical and liturgical liberals slowly leveraged the women pastors, and the feminist pastors soon insisted on female bishops.
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| Rev Doctor Osage Professor Guy Erwin was rushed into the pastoral office, raised to the bishop's chair, and promoted to president of Gettysburg-Philadelphia's seminary. |
Professor Tonstad is a constructive theologian working at the intersection of Christian theology with feminist and queer theory. Her first book, God and Difference: The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude, was published by Routledge in 2016 and was named both as a best new book in ethics and a best new book in theology in Christian Century in the spring of 2017. Her second book, Queer Theology: Beyond Apologetics was published by Cascade in 2018 and translated into French in 2022. She joined the Yale Divinity School faculty in 2012. Her teaching interests include Christian theology, queer theory, philosophy of religion, and theological method. Professor Tonstad has made contributions to various journals, including Modern Theology, International Journal of Systematic Theology, and Theology & Sexuality. She is co-chair of the Theology and Religious Reflection unit of the American Academy of Religion. She is currently working on her third book, tentatively titled The Impossible Other: Theology, Queer Theory, and the Politics of Redemption.
