Word: niebuhrs
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...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...
...Niebuhr's fresh, demanding analysis brought theological ethics into the midst of the secular arena, influencing the pragmatic liberalism of many prominent Americans, including George Kennan, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and James Reston. Niebuhr was a prime mover in Americans for Democratic Action and New York's Liberal Party. His political biography reads like a history of the left in his time: socialist disillusionment with capitalism, then with Marxism; pacifism, later abandoned during the rise of American isolationism and European fascism in the 1930s; cold war strategy to counter Communist expansion, followed by apprehensions about U.S. power...
...Niebuhr was often a step ahead of history. In 1932, he advised Negroes to organize Gandhian campaigns of nonviolent coercion rather than count on white benevolence. He first protested military involvement in Viet Nam when John F. Kennedy was President...
...Niebuhr was a preacher's kid from Missouri who said that he got into Yale Divinity School because they were hard up for students; his degree was from Elmhurst (Ill.) College, a small, then unaccredited school run by his Lutheran denomination, the Evangelical Synod of North America, now part of the United Church of Christ. "I desired relevance rather than scholarship," he recalled and, rather than earn a doctorate, he plunged into an industrial parish in Detroit. His 13 years as pastor there honed his moral passion. After visiting a sick, unemployed Ford worker in 1927, he wrote bitterly...