Emma Rauschenbusch-Clough

Emma Rauschenbusch was born in 1859 into a distinguished German-American family of theologians and missionaries. Her father, August Rauschenbusch, was a missionary and seminary professor, and her brother Walter Rauschenbusch would become famous as the leading figure of the Social Gospel movement in America.

Education

Emma received an exceptional education for a woman of her era. She attended Wellesley College and the Rochester Female Seminary before pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Berne in Switzerland, where she earned her Ph.D. Her dissertation, A Study of Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Woman (1898), demonstrated her early interest in social reform and women’s issues.

Life in India

In 1882, Emma arrived in Madras as a missionary with the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. She quickly learned Telugu and immersed herself in the culture of South India. Her work brought her into close contact with the Madigas, the leather-working Pariah caste who were among the most despised outcasts of Hindu society.

In 1894, she married Rev. John Everett Clough, the renowned “Apostle to the Telugus” who had witnessed the mass conversion of the Madigas at Ongole. Together they continued the mission work until their retirement in 1910.

Emma was elected a Member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, a rare honour for a woman at the time, recognizing her scholarly contributions to the understanding of Indian society and religion.

Major Works

• A Study of Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Woman (1898)
• While Sewing Sandals: Or, Tales of a Telugu Pariah Tribe (1899)
• Social Christianity in the Orient: The Story of a Man and a Mission (1914)

Legacy

While Sewing Sandals remains a remarkable ethnographic document, preserving the legends, religious practices, and oral traditions of the Madigas at a pivotal moment in their history. Written with deep respect for her subjects, Emma recorded the ancient Matangi cult, the reform movements among the outcastes, and the extraordinary mass movement toward Christianity that saw thousands baptized in single days.

Her work influenced her brother Walter’s thinking about the social dimensions of Christianity, contributing to the development of the Social Gospel movement that sought to apply Christian ethics to social problems.

Emma Rauschenbusch-Clough died in 1940, having witnessed the transformation of an oppressed community that she had chronicled with such care and sympathy.