Word: niebuhr
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Before I leave the topic of the word, of language and of literature, I want to say something about the spoken word. The best speaker I heard in my life was Reinhold Niebuhr, the American theologian and philosopher. I first heard him at Friends' House, London, in July 1946. He spoke for an hour without notes, and he had us in the hollow of his hand. One of his themes was the potential goodness of individual man, and the potential wickedness of collective man. An individual man could become a saint, but collective man was a tough proposition. He broke...
Most -- perhaps all -- of the addresses at the seminar were remarkable. They evoked a rich diversity of emotions from those who heard them, laughter, joy, sorrow, admiration. But it was Niebuhr who evoked the most tremendous response at one moment of his address, and it happened in this manner. This particular incident is not recorded in Christian Idea of Education (Yale University Press, 1957), which was published as a record of the seminar, for the simple reason that it was spontaneous and unrehearsed, and did not form part of Niebuhr's script...
Each drew on individual expertise to address a broad range of the contemporary problems of what Hollis Professor of Divinity Richard R. Niebuhr, a participant, called "an age of impoverished abundance...
...admiration. A Mississippi black woman tells her daughter that people of every hue are a mixture of good and bad, and the good fights the bad in politics all the time. Coles is again deeply impressed: "Such a moral and theological analysis of political life is worthy of Reinhold Niebuhr...
Reagan is a man of certitudes. Not since Harry Truman, very possibly, has a President been so confident he was right. There are plentiful hazards in that, but also many assets for a democratic leader. Reagan would not have chosen as one of his favorite messages the Reinhold Niebuhr line that Carter used to quote: "The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world." Reagan is not a big ambiguity...