Born to a farmer family in Tamins, Grisons, on 28 July 1868, Ragaz studied theology in Basel, Jena, and Berlin. In 1890, he was elected as minister in Flerden, Heinzenberg. In 1893, he moved to Chur, working as a teacher of language and religion, and from 1895 to 1902 as municipal minister. In 1902, Ragaz was elected as minister at the Basel Minster. In Basel, Ragaz came into contact with the labour movement. As construction workers went on strike in 1903, Ragaz delivered a sermon in the minster which came to be known as the "bricklayers' strike sermon", in which he said that "if institutional Christendom were to be cold and incomprehending towards the becoming of a new world, which after all emerged from the heart of the gospel, then the salt of the earth would have become putrid". In 1908, Ragaz was called to a professorship at the theological faculty of the University of Zurich. During the of 1918, he took sides with the workers, and as the authorities sent troops to protect the university buildings from the strikers, he protested. In 1921, he resigned as professor, stating that he could not continue to educate ministers for the bourgeois Swiss Reformed Church. He and his family moved to the proletarian Aussersihl district of Zurich. He remained involved with the labour movement, editing his journal Neue Wege, until his death in Zurich on 6 December 1945.
For Ragaz, the Early Church was based on a spirit of cooperation and collectivity. As a consequence, the socialist ideal of self-administered cooperatives owned by the workers themselves was a postulate directly derived from the gospel and the promise of justice in God's kingdom. Also as a consequence of his Christian beliefin justice and peace, Ragaz staunchly opposed the First World War, from a stance of active pacifism: he called for all religious socialists to unite in protesting the war. He taught that if capitalism resorted to force and violence, that was a true reflection of its nature, but that if socialism did the same, it was a treason to its ideals. Ragaz' main work is Die Bibel – eine Deutung, written during the Second World War and published in seven volumes in 1947–1950.
Works
Du sollst. Grundzüge einer sittlichen Weltanschauung, Waetzel, Freiburg im Breisgau 1904
Dein Reich komme. Predigten, Helbing & Lichtenhahn, Basel 1909
Religionsphilosophie, 2 vols., Zürich 1909
Die neue Schweiz. Ein Programm für Schweizer und solche, die es werden wollen,
Weltreich, Religion und Gottesherrschaft, 2 vols., Rotapfel, Zürich/Leipzig 1922
Der Kampf um das Reich Gottes in Blumhardt, Vater und Sohn – und weiter!, Rotapfel, Zürich/Leipzig 1922
Von Christus zu Marx – von Marx zu Christus. Ein Beitrag, Harder, Wernigerode 1929
Das Reich und die Nachfolge. Andachten, Herbert Lang, Bern 1937
Gedanken. Aus vierzig Jahren geistigen Kampfes, Herbert Lang, Bern 1938
Die Botschaft vom Reiche Gottes. Ein Katechismus für Erwachsene, Herbert Lang, Bern 1942
Die Gleichnisse Jesu, Herbert Lang, Bern 1944
Die Bergpredigt Jesu, Herbert Lang, Bern 1945
Die Geschichte der Sache Christi. Ein Versuch, Herbert Lang, Bern 1945
Die Bibel. Eine Deutung, 7 vols., Diana, Zürich 1947–50
Mein Weg. Eine Autobiographie, autobiography, 2 vols., Diana, Zürich 1952
Eingriffe ins Zeitgeschehen. Reich Gottes und Politik. Texte von 1900 bis 1945, eds. Ruedi Brassel and Willy Spieler, Exodus, Luzern 1995,
Leonhard Ragaz in seinen Briefen, eds. Christine Ragaz et al. :
