From the Social Gospel to the Civil Rights Movement:
The Antecedents of Martin Luther King’s Theology

This Sunday, January 19, at the 10:15 am Early Church service and again at 12:45 pm, after the Holy Eucharist service, Fr. Craig Townsend, St. Ann’s Associate for Faith Formation, will lead a discussion of the theological influence of Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist minister and the author of Christianity and the Social Crisis, whose work Dr. King became smitten with while studying at Crozer Seminary. Rauschenbusch became the leading exponent of what was known as the Social Gospel, and King cited him as a primary influence of his own theology. Standard histories of this movement, however, have left out the ways in which similar ideas were at work in the black churches during the same period, and shaped King’s thinking as well. Please join us for this revealing discussion of Martin Luther King’s faith formation.