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 participation in the movement for social justice. Absolute hope, by contrast, is based on God’s action alone; absolute hope measures and judges relative hope.
Although greatly inspired by Kutter’s Sie Müssen!, Ragaz was uncomfortable with the social-ethical quietism present in Kutter. Kutter’s conviction was that the church must be first renewed before entering into the social struggle. Rather than restricting himself to the sphere of church, Ragaz was active in the labor movement by joining the Social Democrats. The difference between them led to a conflict within the religious-socialist movement in Switzerland. In contrast to Kutter’s von Gott her (out from God), Ragaz dialectically emphasized the direction zu Gott hin ( toward God) as the free effectiveness of human praxis, which is grounded on the direction von Gott her in a particular way. In Ragaz’s letter to Kutter (on May 9, 1907) we read: “The right of this ‘zu Gott hin’ I’d like to represent generally. It is one of the differences between you and me. The ‘von Gott her’ is certainly right principally and systematically. I also represent it, as far as I can truly represent it.”166
As Barth characterized the difference between them, “Leonhard Ragaz developed what Kutter meant to be a view of the current situation and an interpretation of the signs of the time.” For Ragaz, “the church must regard socialism as a preliminary manifestation of the kingdom of God . . . He made it a true system of ‘Religious Socialism.’”167 The systematic approach of Ragaz was, however, what Barth was hesitant to accept. In seeing the action of God in history, there is a tendency in Ragaz’s theology of history to ideologize the kingdom of God totally as socialism.168
In 1912 there occurred a general strike in Zurich in which Ragaz was active. Again in this matter Kutter broke with Ragaz and retreated from the religious-social movement. During his participation, Ragaz was shocked by the attack of the military upon workers. His later antimilitarist stance, associated with this experience, became a dominant factor for Ragaz’s development of the peace movement. In the same year the Peace Congress of the Socialist International was held at the Münster Cathedral in Basel. Ragaz spoke of God’s work in building up God’s kingdom with unchurched people. However, World War I became a great obstruction and setback for the religious-social movement. Proving the international element of socialism to be an illusion, workers in each country rallied to fight for their fatherlands. International Workers were not united in solidarity but instead came to fight and kill each other in the war. Unlike Kutter, who hoped for a German victory, Ragaz hoped for a German defeat. After 1913 Ragaz was active in the Swiss Social Democratic Party (SPS). During the war, various options were debated for the future of the Party. Lenin exercised a considerable influence among Swiss leftist socialists. Trotsky came to Switzerland, and Ragaz had a stimulating encounter with him, albeit in his anti-Bolshevist stance. Recalling their encounter Trotsky noted that “the Zurich professor Ragaz, a committed Christian, more a theologian with his education and profession” stood on the most extreme left wing of Swiss socialism. Ragaz represented the most radical fighting method against the war and was for the proletarian revolution.169
As Lenin began his socialist activity in Zurich, Bolshevism came into conflict with the religious-social movement. In his article “The Battle against Bolshevism” (“Sozialismus und Gewalt” [1919]), Ragaz saw Bolshevism as a betrayal of socialism. He argued that the socialists must fight against the perversion of socialism.170 Ragaz’s campaign against the entrance of Swiss Socialists into the Communist International was a well-known fact. In Zurich the leftist group of Münzenberg and his Jungburschen followed for years the religious-socialist direction that Ragaz had represented. Ragaz’s influence on the socialist youth organization had not ebbed, so that the socialist youth were impressed by Ragaz’s seriousness and his ethical demand. However, Münzenberg found himself more under the influence of Lenin than under the religious-socialist spirit. Münzenberg was critical of Ragaz’s demand to abandon violence, and charged that “he [Ragaz] preached salvation out of political oppression and exploitation through love.”171
In 1915 much had been discussed about the military and violence. Together with a women’s conference in Bern initiated by Clara Zetkin, the International Socialist Youth Conference during Easter of 1915 was regarded as a prelude to the meeting of the International workers’ movement in the Zimmerwald. Müntzenberg hoped that the Youth organization would make a contribution to the first International Youth organization after the betrayal and collapse of the Second International during the war. “The Youth organizations became in many countries leaders of the whole proletariat, and avant-garde in the fight against the imperialistic and social democratic betrayal.”172 At the International Youth conference in Bern, Münzenberg came into contact for the first time with Bolshevists. Lenin, who remained at his home in Bern, directed Bolshevists by phone behind the scenes. In this conference the Bolshevist thesis was
