Christianity and the Social Crisis: Rauschenbusch's Legacy After a Century: In 2001, the Plight of the Working Poor Reached a Wide Audience Through Barbara Ehrenreich's Best Seller, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. Ehrenreich Wondered How Anyone Could Survive on Near Minimum Wage (Biography‪)‬

She worked as a waitress, house cleaner, and Wal-Mart salesperson to see whether she could live on the wages they offered. She found that the work was exhausting and that these jobs did not provide sufficient income to meet expenses. Ehrenreich concluded that it is, above all, the cost of rent that drives poor workers to the margins. They have no recourse but to take an additional job. They have no medical insurance. She observed that something is very wrong when a single person cannot support herself by the sweat of her brow. (1) On the other hand, the "owning class" has far too much, as she put it, "money, floor space, and stuff." (2) She concluded that the underlying problem is that the "megascale corporate order" is a "great blind profit-making machine." (3) Walter Rauschenbusch would have recognized this situation immediately and would have been dismayed to learn that the conditions and inequities he described a hundred years ago still plague the working poor in America. Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) was a professional church historian who is not known for writing church history. He was much more a shaper of a church history than a chronicler of it. He was a Baptist who is not remembered for promoting Baptist ideas or practices. His voice transcended denominational lines, for he called the church to responsibilities it had long ignored. Instead of creating an identity as a church historian or Baptist spokesman, Rauschenbusch derived enduring influence from his message of the ethical obligation of Christianity to address social ills. He addressed his message to the larger Christian community, not merely to Baptists. For his role in prodding the church to see and accept its responsibility to society, Rauschenbusch is often called a modern prophet. (4)