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theological background that he learned and developed in his years of study was liberalism, especially Hegelianism. (A. E. Biedermann, who made a great impact on Ragaz, was a Swiss Hegelian theologian.) In 1890 Ragaz was ordained as a Reformed pastor and began his ministry in three villages in Canton Graubünden. During his parish work, his main concern was with the intensive study of the Bible and the theology of the priesthood of all believers, encouraging the laity to be more involved in parish life. Between 1893 and 1895 Ragaz served as a language and religion teacher in Chur in part for health reasons, and also in part due to his dissatisfaction with ministry. During this time he was in contact with the writings of Christian socialism, including Carlyle, Kingsley, and Robertson, and German authors such as Naumann.
In 1895 Ragaz returned to the pastorate as a senior pastor in Chur and remained there until 1902. Influenced by the writings of Kierkegaard and Ritschl, he was preoccupied with ethics. In Chur he met Clara Nadig and married her. She remained a supportive companion throughout his difficult life. His experience with social issues was later deepened when, in the pastorate in Chur, Ragaz came into contact with poverty and social problems such as bad housing, poor working conditions, broken families, prostitution, criminality, and alcoholism. Later he wrote about this experience, saying it was “the comprehensive solidarity of guilt.”.151 Involved in an educational program for workers and giving talks to worker’s groups, Ragaz was given Karl Marx’s Das Kapital as an expression of gratitude from the laborers’ association. In 1902 he received a call from the Münster Cathedral in Basel. During his pastorate in Basel, the kingdom of God became, for him, the central teaching of Christianity. Seeing the kingdom of God as a gift of God, Ragaz called for human participation in the coming of God’s kingdom. Wherever people work for justice, peace, and humanity, one will find the signs of God’s kingdom. The labor movement was one of the most important signs of God’s kingdom for Ragaz.
Ragaz later experienced the great bricklayers’ strike in 1903. Troops were called to intervene. In his sermon known as the “Bricklayers’ Strike Sermon,” Ragaz claimed that Christ was on the side of the oppressed. The social movement, which for him was associated with the “humanization of humans,” became a sign of the kingdom of God; therefore, Christians are asked to take part in the struggle for the oppressed: “So the social movement is in its deepest ground a realization of the idea which stands in the middle point of the gospel: Human beings as the children of God and the brotherhood of humans . . . Who understands it, sees, in spite of all wave and storm, the blowing and ruling of the creative Spirit of God.”152
Shortly after the “Bricklayers’ Strike Sermon,” Ragaz became acquainted with Pastor Hermann Kutter in Zurich. Together Ragaz and Kutter founded a religious-social movement to join in the struggle for the humanization of humanity, “in the drama of the humanizing of mankind, whose value we do not quite realize yet.”153 Interestingly enough, Herrmann’s concern for the working class echoed in the development of religious socialism. Herrmann’s concern for socialism—regardless of his individualist bent—was mediated by Oskar Holtzmann. The thesis of “the social movement as the unconscious bringer of divine will” came out ten years earlier than Kutter’s book Sie Müssen!, and six years earlier than Blumhardt’s entrance to the social democratic party.
Herrmann’s thesis reads: “The Christian church has to thank modern socialism that her horizon is expanded, her formation of thought is deepened, in short, her inner life is enriched.”154 It was delivered by Herrmann as an address to the Evangelical Social Congress in 1891. Ragaz accepted Holtzman’s reappropriation of Herrmann’s socialism as the legitimate child of the Reformation for his development of religious socialism.155 Kutter’s book Sie Müssen! also made a significant contribution to the task of theology, especially in Switzerland. In 1906 Ragaz delivered his address “The Gospel and the Current Social Struggle” (“Das Evangelium und der soziale Kampf der Gegenwart”) at a pastors’ conference in Basel. This is one of the fundamental documents through which Ragaz was able to deepen and actualize religious socialism in terms of his theology of God’s kingdom and to bring to the fore its social and political implications. As the second thesis reads, “The Kingdom of God is the central concept of the good news. Jesus teaches the worth of each child of God as well as the brotherhood of men under God. Jesus sees Mammon as the greatest enemy of man.”156
According to Ragaz, socialism in its basic goals provides “the direction that will lead us out of capitalism to the next higher level in historical development.”157 Ragaz’s intent in this regard was not to identify the teachings of Christ with socialism. Rather his “task is simply to determine which telos an economic order must have if it is to harmonize with the life-style required by the gospel.”158 When seen in light of the gospel, capitalism, the telos of which “centers on the increase of capital,” is condemned “as a means to greater profit.”159 However, in the midst of capitalist society, “the social movement reveals itself as the true way to God for our race.”160 The social movements such as the political organization, the labor union, and the cooperative “made workers members of a reputable community and brought them under the discipline of the community.”161 The better economic order, that corresponds to the gospel, is the socialistic one because the spirit of socialism is in complete economic solidarity. What Ragaz argued for is “a religious rebirth,” “a Spirit-guided community” and “a radical renewal of the spirit.”162
For Ragaz, social change and religious reform should complement each other rather than contradict each other: “Social change can topple capitalism and with it Mammonism . . . ; it can bring about a fairer distribution of the earth’s goods, but still not satisfy the souls of men; it can link people together socially but it will not unite them in the deepest sense.”163 As far as a deeper unity between the social struggle and spiritual movement is concerned, the telos of religious socialism is “an act in the drama of the humanizing of mankind.”164 In 1907 Ragaz accepted an invitation to address the World Congress of Free Christianity in Boston. While in North America, he was impressed by Walter Rauschenbusch and his Social Gospel. (Rauschenbusch’s book Christianity and the Social Crisis was later translated by Ragaz’s wife, Clara Nadin, into German.) In 1908 he accepted a call to professorship in systematic and practical theology at the University of Zurich. Here Emil Brunner, who later became a founder of dialectical theology, took a different direction than Ragaz. Emil Brunner remembered Ragaz when he stated, “that was a great time, when Ragaz came to Zurich. Then theology was interesting, not as a science, but a proclamation in our time, as encounter with historical reality, with the labor question, with the war issue.”165
In 1909 Ragaz first came into contact with Blumhardt of Bad Boll in Germany. Like Kutter and Barth, Ragaz was greatly influenced by him. Ragaz found in Blumhardt’s message of eschatological waiting for the kingdom of God an activist and social dimension. Seeing the sign of the coming kingdom in the socialism and labor movements, Blumhardt was deeply engaged in the social struggle from 1899 to 1906. Kutter saw the kingdom only as a movement out from God, whereas Ragaz stressed a task of human participation in the kingdom by distinguishing an absolute hope from a relative hope in the kingdom of God. For Ragaz, relative hope can be seen as a sign pointing to the kingdom and a summons for human