Reinhold Niebuhr 1892 – 1971
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 – 1971) was an American philosopher of the Contemporary era, associated with Christian Philosophy and Political Philosophy.
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American Reformed theologian and the principal exponent of Christian realism in twentieth-century social thought. After thirteen years as a parish minister in Detroit during the early industrial era, he taught for three decades at Union Theological Seminary in New York. His Moral Man and Immoral Society and the two-volume Nature and Destiny of Man developed an analysis of the deep ambiguity of all collective human action and the necessity of power for justice. The Serenity Prayer is widely attributed to him.
Reinhold Niebuhr was born in 1892 in Wright City, Missouri, the son of a German immigrant pastor of the German Evangelical Synod. He took his bachelor's degree at Elmhurst College, his theological training at Eden Seminary in St Louis, and his master's at Yale Divinity School in 1915. He served thirteen formative years as pastor of Bethel Evangelical Church in industrial Detroit, where his confrontation with the realities of Ford Motor Company labor turned him decisively against the social-gospel optimism of his youth.
From 1928 until his retirement he taught Christian ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and from his platform there shaped public Protestant thought for forty years. His major books are Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (1935), the two-volume Gifford Lectures The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941, 1943), Children of Light and Children of Darkness (1944), and The Irony of American History (1952). He was a co-founder of the journal Christianity and Crisis in 1941.
Niebuhr's Christian realism — sin is real, self-righteousness as much in the virtuous as in the wicked, and political and social goods always achieved through power and compromise — gave American liberalism its principal twentieth-century theological vocabulary. His Serenity Prayer became part of the language. After a series of strokes from 1952 he continued to write and teach until his death at Stockbridge, Massachusetts in June 1971.
Key facts
- Nationality
- American
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Christian Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Selected quotes
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“Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”
The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944) -
“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.”
p. 63 -
Attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr:
“Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; pure love without power is destroyed.”
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“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
One of the most commonly quoted forms. -
Attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr:
“The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.”
Reinhold Niebuhr by topic
Frequently asked about Reinhold Niebuhr
- When did Reinhold Niebuhr live?
- Reinhold Niebuhr was born in 1892 and died in 1971.
- Where was Reinhold Niebuhr from?
- Reinhold Niebuhr was an American philosopher of the Contemporary era.
- What philosophical movements is Reinhold Niebuhr associated with?
- Reinhold Niebuhr was associated with Christian Philosophy and Political Philosophy.
- What was Reinhold Niebuhr known for?
- Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American Reformed theologian and the principal exponent of Christian realism in twentieth-century social thought.
- How many quotes are attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr?
- There are 24 attributed quotations from Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1001Philosophers collection, organized by topic.