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During a lifetime of active involvement in American political life, Reinhold Niebuhr did much good and a certain amount of mischief. Both the good and the mischief are traceable to the same source: his faith. For too long, Niebuhr has been misrepresented by the political theorists and the historians as a link in the pragmatic tradition. It is time we began to do Niebuhr the justice of taking him at his own evaluation - as a dogmatic Christian. The meaning of his own life, he believed, was in the keeping of God. And so, he believed, was the meaning of his nation's history. He believed that history was radically open to all possibilities of both good and evil until its end-and he could thus nonchalantly apply to America's collective destiny the dictum of St. Paul that he applied to his own: that, "whether we live, we live unto the Lord, and whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live therefore or die we are the Lord's.".

The author of this paper, a student, assistant, & personal friend of Reinhold Niebuhr, sketches his portrait both as a private & a public person. Particular emphasis is put upon Niebuhr's relationship with women-his mother, sister, wife, daughter, students & friends. References. Adapted from the source document.

"Was Reinhold Niebuhr Wrong About Socialism?" requires attention to several other questions: Was Niebuhr right about capitalism? Which socialism & which capitalism, when? & how do we properly assess Niebuhr on socialism well after convulsive economic changes he did not live to see? This paper gives special attention to Christian socialisms before & during Niebuhr's time, as well as the strong influence of Ernst Troeltsch in his response to these. The concluding section speculates about Niebuhr's possible stance toward the triumph of global capitalism. References. Adapted from the source document.

Reinhold niebuhr is perhaps the most influential exponent of a Protestant view of life in modern America. While American Protestants today seem to be shifting their attention from Niebuhr to Paul Tillich, this recent trend is still far from counterbalancing the dominant position held by Niebuhr from the early thirties well into the fifties. And even Tillich's influence is, in a sense, an extension of Niebuhr's, for it was Niebuhr who brought Tillich to this country from Germany in 1933. Also, the latter's ontology is, on the whole, perhaps more complementary than contradictory to the ethics of Niebuhr.

Reinhold Niebuhr's realistic theology & ethics provided a stark contrast to the optimistic Protestant liberalism of a previous generation. His success in reshaping the political theology of his contemporaries has led some recent critics to dismiss him as simply an echo of a cultural consensus which he in fact did much to create. The quite different realities of our time suggest, however, that we cannot be Niebuhrian realists simply by repeating his insights. Realism at the beginning of the 21st century has to shift its attention from the center of established moral & religious traditions to the growing edges where new institutions are being formed & new understandings of the human good are coming into focus. Such thinking runs the risk of what Niebuhr would call "utopianism," but a Christian realist in the 21st century will be someone who takes all of those possibilities seriously, in contrast to 20th-century realists who attempted to deal with the pace & unpredictability of change by returning all political questions to the management of the nation-state system. References. Adapted from the source document.