Word: niebuhrs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Into this comforting, wan world of theological thought came Reinhold Niebuhr, loosing the sobering wind of "Christian realism." Original sin stemming from Adam's fall was to be taken seriously but not literally, said Niebuhr. Man's great sin was willful pride, a universally "entrenched predatory self-interest" that exists in everyone, "benevolent or not." To ignore this basic reality-and man's need to struggle constantly against it-could only lead to moral and political confusion. The individual, Niebuhr contended, cannot excuse his immoral actions by "attributing them to the actions of others, even though there...
...Niebuhr's theology was often called an American version of Karl Earth's neo-orthodoxy, but Niebuhr was very much an American original. He himself criticized Barth for being too controlled by the Bible and so far above the social tumult that he fostered "eschatological irresponsibility." For the past four decades, Niebuhr has been preeminent in his field, the greatest Protestant theologian born in America since Jonathan Edwards. Last week Niebuhr died at 78 in Stockbridge, Mass., the same town where Edwards once lived in exile-banished for his too-demanding theology. The funeral was held...
Free Spirit. Niebuhr left behind him not only a heritage of theological realism but a career of political involvement almost unique in his profession. He insisted that man is the image of God not merely as a creature but as a morally responsible free spirit. Nevertheless, Niebuhr was not sanguine about the effectiveness of individual self-improvement; the acknowledgment of man's inevitable self-pride, he believed, should lead neither to despair nor to unproductive popular preachments about "positive thinking." The cross of Christ, he said, shows that "God's mercy must make itself known in history...
...third-place position in the crowded contest that, after a runoff, was finally won by Lester Maddox. Carter started preparations for the 1970 race immediately after that defeat. He took to poring over old Georgia budgets, and at the other extreme, stretching his mind on the likes of Reinhold Niebuhr and Dylan Thomas. Carter crisscrossed the state scores of times, delivering 1,800 speeches to small-town civic groups, schools and agriculture associations...
...rebellious position back to a formerly rejected one. Rather, it was the end-product of my study of various radical and dissenting movements in American history, and a rejection on my part of the kind of separatism and apocalypticism which has characterized many of them. The reading of Reinhold Niebuhr's The Irony of American History and his Moral Man and Immoral Society during the era of Kennedy nationalism was a significant ingredient to this assumption of active responsibility...