Sidelines are on the one hand filled with athletes who have been injured in the battles of the arena, and on the other hand with spectators. My view of life since my stroke had to be informed by both connotations. I was dismissed from the battle, but I was also a spectator to engagements that had hitherto occupied me.
(ENTIRE BOOK) This volume is vintage Niebuhr in that it sounds a recurring chord in his work, that the Christian view of history passes through the sense of the tragic caused by human sinfulness to a hope which is "beyond tragedy" due to the power of God to overcome.
(ENTIRE BOOK) In this book Dr. Niebuhr seeks to interpret the problems of Christian ethics in the light of historic conceptions and the modern situation. Accepting the "law of love" as the basic criterion of Christian ethics, he draws a distinction between the absolute expression of this law given in the Christian gospel and the ideal of justice which must be regarded as one approximation of the law of love in a world in which life is set against life and perfect love always remains an impossible possibility. Dr. Niebuhr thus seeks to set all moral and social problems under the tension of a religious ideal, avoiding the moral complacency and the social utopianism of secular idealism and the sentimentality of liberal, as well as the enervating pessimism of orthodox, Christianity.
Religion without a constantly replenished force of penitence easily becomes a romance which brutal men use to hide the real sources of their actions from themselves and from others. That is why romantic religion is dangerous and that is why liberal religion is not now an effective agent of moral redemption in our contemporary society.
(ENTIRE BOOK) In this classic study, Niebuhr draws a sharp distinction between the moral and social behavior of individuals versus social groups -- national, racial, and economic. He shows how this distinction then requires political policies which a purely individualistic ethic will necessarily find embarrassing.
America is living in a completely secularized civilization which has lost the art of bringing its dominant motives under any kind of moral control.
The concern Niebuhr raised about the conflict between priestly and prophetic roles is never fully resolved in any given time. Niebuhr reminds us of the necessity of living in this world, in the tension between it and the "other world," inescapably related to the ethical and social problems of the time.
A personal and an intellectual biography of Reinhold Niebuhr in which the author has employed the research methods of an American historian to dig out and interpret the data: "At Union Seminary, where Niebuhr so often talked of ‘the irony of history,’ we remember him as an example of it."
Niebuhr’s lifelong prophetic commitment to exposing the sins of American imperialism prepares us for similar themes in the writings of those who view us from "the underside of history." His insistence that personal faith and politics go together prepares us to hear (from the very beginning) about a "spirituality of liberation."
The Serenity Prayer gives us a strong dose of the politicized Niebuhr, but it also splendidly conveys the hopeful, ironic, polemical, prophetic spirit of a great theologian who prayed from the heart and unfailingly asked himself, "What does the gospel ethic mean in this situation?"
(ENTIRE BOOK) The thesis of this volume grew out of Niebuhr’s conviction that democracy has a more compelling justification and requires a more realistic vindication than is given it by the liberal culture with which it has been associated in modern history. The author’s political philosophy is informed by the belief that a Christian view of human nature is more adequate for the development of a democratic society than either the optimism with which democracy has become historically associated, or the moral cynicism which inclines human communities to tyrannical political strategies.
Dr. Niebuhr analyses the nature of the Christian witness to justice and peace, in the context of post-WW II colonialism.
(ENTIRE BOOK) In spite of the hopes of our Puritan and Jeffersonian forefathers that America would be an "innocent nation," the United States has ironically become a very powerful nation in a great power struggle wherein "innocence" is impossible, and the virtue of a responsible use of power includes the risk of using the atomic bomb.
(ENTIRE BOOK) In this volume Professor Niebuhr explores the philosophical and theological relationship of the human self to itself, others and God, with particular reference to both Hellenic and Hebraic frames of reference in Western thought, and as seen in the evolution of communities.