Word: niebuhrs
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...Whittaker Chambers' concept of God becoming a new criterion for good Americanism ? God forbid! There's a peculiar tide running here. It includes such divergent figures as Niebuhr, Buckley (of Yale) and Billy Graham. It puts the Spirit of God and the mind of man in opposing camps. It implies that any effort to think through a man's problems on a rational basis is somehow ungodly, and very likely Red as well...
Chambers rose to be a senior editor of TIME. He wrote many TIME cover stories (e.g., on Marian Anderson, Arnold Toynbee and Reinhold Niebuhr), edited various departments (e.g., BOOKS, FOREIGN NEWS), and for LIFE wrote a notable series of articles on the development of Western Man (e.g., on the Middle Ages, Venice, and the Age of Enlightenment). Chambers thus sums up his years on this magazine: "My debt and gratitude to TIME cannot be measured. At a critical moment, TIME gave me back my life. It gave me my voice. It gave me sanctuary, professional respect, peace and time...
...giving Communism an opening by not living up to its own Christian faith. He has harangued statesmen about war & peace and young brides about their sex life. He has announced that he prays every morning for Joseph Stalin, and he has approvingly quoted a heretic (Protestant Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr) on the Catholic Hour. His influence as a preacher is incalculably great...
...Hidden Kinship. When the U.S., aroused to Communism's dangers, quickly took up the anti-Communist crusade of "good nations" against "bad nations," Niebuhr fears that it underestimated the attraction and the complication of the "utopian illusions" which Communism borrows from liberal society. The rise of Communism he compares to the rise of Islam and its challenge to Christian civilization in the Middle Ages. Communism, like Islam, has exploited many just and legitimate grievances against the society it found, and the fight against it is automatically complex and devious. It may be impossible to stamp...
Coping with Communism in this light demands great patience and moral staying power. Theologian Niebuhr is as worried as many Western Europeans that Americans do not possess those qualities in sufficient measure. Without faith, the classic U.S. idealist is the modern man who hovers between "subjection to the 'reason' which he can find in nature and the 'reason' he can impose on nature." He is now frustrated, fearful and impatient with his first experience of a great historical struggle which he cannot control. Warns Niebuhr: "There is no simple triumph over this spirit of fear...