Word: niebuhrs
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...Religion An admirable biography of Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the apostle of Christian Realism. Mormon problems in Israel...
...uncouth country bumpkin with decidedly dubious scholarly credentials," as Historian Richard Fox characterizes him, was the young Reinhold Niebuhr. Over the next four decades he was to become the nation's best-known theologian and political preacher, his Teutonic scowl etched on the face of 20th century American Protestantism...
Despite his stature, there has until now been no full-dress biography of Niebuhr, who died in 1971 at age 78. Fox, who teaches at Oregon's Reed College, fills the gap with Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography, to be issued next week by Pantheon (340 pages; $19.95). It is an admirable work, appreciative but not uncritical, enriched but not burdened by meticulous research. Though Niebuhr's ideas are skillfully woven into the story, Fox offers a life, not a theology text...
...immigrant clergyman, Niebuhr first won national notice, fresh out of Yale, as the pastor of Detroit's Bethel Evangelical Church between 1915 and 1928. He rebelled against the older clergy in his German Evangelical denomination, agitating for Americanization of the church and supporting U.S. entry into World War I against Germany. "I am getting to be a violent American patriot," he confessed to a friend...
...Niebuhr's strategy of reaching beyond the confines of Detroit's German community helped swell Bethel's membership sixfold in the years after the war. There was another lure: the pastor's preaching. He was, writes Fox, "the educated Protestant's Billy Sunday," who would "strut, gyrate, jerk, bend and quake." Bethel's growing prestige strengthened Niebuhr's hand when he took on Henry Ford, castigating the legendary automaker and other industrialists. He ended up a thoroughgoing Christian Socialist, evoking the biblical prophets and a bit of Marx as he thundered against the exploitation of labor...