Word: niebuhr
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...lives strenuously at the seminary with his British-born wife, the former Ursula Keppel-Compton, and their two children, Christopher, 13, and Elizabeth, 9. Mrs. Niebuhr, a theologian in her own right, was the first woman to win a First in theology at Oxford. She has lectured on religion at Barnard College for six years. In summer, the Niebuhrs rusticate at Heath, Mass., near the Vermont line. There Niebuhr writes and rests, after his fashion, from the nervous pace at which he drives himself...
...Liberal. Most U.S. liberals think of Niebuhr as a solid socialist who has some obscure connection with Union Theological Seminary that does not interfere with his political work. Unlike most clergymen in politics, Dr. Niebuhr is a pragmatist. Says James Loeb, secretary of Americans for Democratic Action: "Most so-called liberals are idealists. They let their hearts run away with their heads...
...Niebuhr never does. For example, he has always been the leading liberal opponent of pacifism. In that period before we got into the war when pacifism was popular, he held out against it steadfastly." He is also an opponent of Marxism...
...Niebuhr's chief contribution to U.S. liberal thinking, his friends say, is keeping his fellow liberals on the path of the pos sible. "You don't get world government," he once said, "by drawing up a fine constitution. You get it through the process of history. You grow into it." The feelings of his fellow theologians are more mixed. Some criticize his failure to think and act in terms of the church or to generate ideas that would help to counteract modern irreligion and immorality. Others find his ideas of sin too grandiose, too remote from the common...
...there are few who do not respect his questing intelligence or the spiritual inspiration which has infused old ortho doxy with the tremor of new life. Most would agree with the words of the late Dr. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, when he met Reinhold Niebuhr for the first time: "At last I've met the troubler of my peace...