And concurrent with Tolstoy and Weiss and the Germans, American theologians were also getting in on the act. Among the more liberal strands of American theology, realized eschatology appeared to win the day. In the hands of Baptist German-American Walter Rauschenbusch, realized eschatology would result in the Social Gospel movement. The gospel, Rauschenbusch argued in the early years of the 1900s, has nothing to do with sinners in need of salvation, but instead has everything to do with the socially
Page 29