While on a quest to understand our region's history I came upon a series of articles written by Walter Rauschenbusch about what it means to be a Baptist. I thought you might enjoy reading this series of articles - Alan Newton

THE ROCHESTER BAPTIST MONTHLY - November 1905

Why I am a Baptist BY PROFESSOR WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH

PRELUDE

Why am I a Baptist? Well, at the outset, because my father was one.

He was a Lutheran minister in Germany; he came to America, got into contact with the Baptists, found in their teachings the truths that he had been groping for and, under great loss of position and trouble of soul, became a Baptist. If he had remained a Lutheran minister in Germany, I should probably not be a Baptist minister in America. There is no use in denying that our family relations and the training of our childhood exert a very strong influence on all of us and determine our religious affiliations for us. In countries that have an" Established Church "it is considered a horrible and impious thing for anyone to leave the religion of his fathers, and even in our country, which is the paradise of religious liberty and individualism, only a minority of persons are so strongly swayed by individual convictions that they can break the soft and twining bonds of family love and family tradition. Most men are Catholics or Protestants or Jews, because their parents were Catholics or Protestants or Jews, and that's all there is of it. If the angels tonight should steal a hundred Baptist babies and replace them by Episcopalian babies, it is fair to assume that the babies which might have grown up to champion episcopacy and the apostolic succession and the Prayer Book, would learn to smile the smile of conscious superiority at those very things. There are some of us who have become Baptists from simple conviction, and have had to leave the denomination of their parents to follow where truth led them. But the majority of us were born in Baptist families, and I am one of that majority.

But that expresses only half of the truth. We are Americans because we were born so. But it is our duty and our right clearly and increasingly to understand what our country stands for and to adopt as our personal principles those ideals of democracy and equality on which our national life is founded. We are Americans by birth, but we must become Baptists by conviction. And no man is a true Baptist until his inherited tendency has been transformed into conscious purpose. In a big freight yard you can watch a locomotive distributing a freight train over the various sidings. It will bunt a car along and let it roll along by itself. The car moves, but it moves by the power of inertia. It has no living energy in it. By and by it will slow up and stop. No Baptist boy or girl ought to grow up to resemble that car. They must develop their own Baptist convictions and run under their own steam. They have inherited a great legacy of truth; let them learn what is already theirs; let them hold by the surer title of personal acquisition what is theirs by hereditary right.

I began by being a Baptist because my father was, but to-day I am a Baptist, because, with my convictions, I could not well be anything else. I now stand on my own feet and am ready to give an account of the faith I hold. It is a good thing to raise the question: "Why are you a Baptist?" I wish all our church members had to answer it clearly and fully. It is possible to be a Baptist on small grounds or on large grounds. Some man will say: "I am a Baptist because the Greek word baptizo means immerse. That is quite true, but that is a pretty small peg to hang your religious convictions on. A near-sighted child was taken to the Zoo and stood in front of the lion's cage. The lion's tail was hanging down through the bars. "But I thought the lion was different," said the child, "it looks like a yellow rope." So there are Baptists who have hitherto discovered only the tail-end of our Baptist ideals and convictions, and it is no wonder that they turn out as narrow as the tail they devoutly believe in. It is possible to play "Nearer, my God, to Thee" with one finger on a little reed-organ of four octaves. But it is very different music when the same melody is played with all the richness of full harmony. Little beliefs make little men. Many Baptists are cut on a small pattern because their convictions are so small.

The minds of men are widening today. There are large thoughts pouring and flooding all about us. And men who have grasped great ideas in one part of their life feel impatient with petty ideas in any other part of their life, especially in their religion. Only a large faith, built on generous, gigantic lines will win the thoughtful men and women of the future. I do believe that we Baptists have a magnificent body of truth - free, vital, honest, spiritual, and wholly in line with the noblest tendencies of our age. But we must realize its largeness and present it in all its out-of-door greatness and freshness, and not show people a few dried plants and stuffed animals as exponents of the Promised Land to which God has led us and to which we invite them.

In the next issue of the MONTHLY I shall try to set forth some of the convictions that have become dear to me personally. I can not guarantee that my ideas will measure up to the full Baptist stature. Indeed, the likelihood is all the other way. No one man is likely to see the whole, nor even to say the whole of what he sees. If I fall short, this is a free country, and anybody is at liberty to hoist the Baptist colors on a taller pole than mine.