October 4

Saint Francis, Walter Rauschenbusch, and the Coverdale Bible

Author

David Barnhart
October 04, 2025

“No to destruction! Let’s sow!” Bolivian mural condemning the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. 2008. Own photo.

Today marks the first publication of the Coverdale Bible, the first complete Bible printed in English, in 1535. Just a few days ago, we marked the Feast of Saint Jerome, who translated the Bible from Greek into Latin. 

Today is the birthday, in 1861, of Walter Rauschenbusch, an American Baptist pastor and theologian. In his book Christianity and the Social Crisis, he presented what became known as the social gospel. His teaching and preaching influenced many activist and progressive Christians who believe that their faith is not just about the world to come, but about life here and now as well. 

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Francis of Assisi, whose death we noted yesterday. On this day, many church communities hold a “Blessing of the Animals” as a reminder, in the Spirit of Saint Francis, that God’s salvation and love concerns the whole world—not just the human part of it. 

Reflection: 

In words that could have been written for our own time, more than a century later, Walter Rauschenbusch wrote: 

The vastness and the free sweep of our concentrated wealth on the one side, the independence, intelligence, moral vigor, and political power of the common people on the other side, promise a long-drawn grapple of contesting forces which may well make the heart of every American patriot sink within him.

…The Church, the organized expression of the religious life of the past, is one of the most potent institutions and forces in Western civilization. ...It cannot help throwing its immense weight on one side or the other. If it tries not to act, it thereby acts; and in any case its choice will be decisive for its own future.

…The Church owns property, needs income, employs men, works on human material, and banks on its moral prestige. Its present efficiency and future standing are bound up for weal or woe with the social welfare of the people and with the outcome of the present struggle.

and

The prophets were the heralds of the fundamental truth that religion and ethics are inseparable, and that ethical conduct is the supreme and sufficient religious act. If that principle had been fully adopted in our religious life, it would have turned the full force of the religious impulse into the creation of right moral conduct and would have made the unchecked growth and accumulation of injustice impossible.

Prayer:

Here are the words of “The Prayer of Saint Francis,” which was written by an anonymous author but expresses Franciscan theology: 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.