Word: niebuhrs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...help support his mother, he took his first and only parish, in a dingy district of Detroit. Niebuhr had intended to stay a couple of years. Instead, he stayed 13. His congregation on the first Sunday consisted of 18 souls. To eke out his salary ($50 a month), Niebuhr began writing, and out of necessity discovered his vocation...
...elaborator of somber paradoxes is something of a paradox himself. Hawk-nosed and saturnine, Reinhold Niebuhr is, nevertheless, a cheerful and gracious (though conversationally explosive) man. An intellectual's intellectual, he nevertheless lectures and preaches with the angular arm-swinging of a revivalist. An orthodox Protestant, he is one of the busiest of leftist working politicians-a member of the Liberal party. For his gloomy view of man and history does not inhibit hL belief that man should act for what he holds to be the highest good (always bearing in mind that sin will dog his action...
...Reinhold Niebuhr was born (1892) in Wright City, Mo., where his father, who emigrated from Germany when he was 17, was an Evangelical pastor. Young Niebuhr never intended to be anything else but a minister. Though he lacked any degree, he succeeded in 1913 in enrolling in Yale Divinity School (they were short of students, he explains). Two years later, in a burst of his usual energy, Niebuhr...
...have a horror of Ladies Aid," says Niebuhr. But he waded into the social problems of his parish and the city, presiding at labor forums, lecturing at Midwestern colleges. Sometimes he unburdened himself of remarks like: ''The lowliest peasant of the Dark Ages had more opportunity for self-expression than the highest-paid employee at the Ford factory." When, in 1928, Niebuhr became an associate professor at Union Theological Seminary, Detroit's automotive tycoons breathed a sigh of relief...
...Union his reception was cool. But soon his classes were among the most crowded in the seminary. He moved from class to class surrounded by disputatious students, who soon called him "Reinie." In 1939, Niebuhr became the fifth American* to be invited to deliver the Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh University. Niebuhr drew the biggest crowds in Gifford history, later published the lectures as The Nature and Destiny...