71 Facts About Reinhold Niebuhr

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years.

Reinhold Niebuhr battled with religious liberals over what he called their naive views of the contradictions of human nature and the optimism of the Social Gospel, and battled with religious conservatives over what he viewed as their naive view of scripture and their narrow definition of "true religion".

Reinhold Niebuhr's work has significantly influenced international relations theory, leading many scholars to move away from idealism and embrace realism.

Reinhold Niebuhr was one of the founders of both Americans for Democratic Action and the International Rescue Committee and spent time at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, while serving as a visiting professor at both Harvard and Princeton.

Reinhold Niebuhr was the brother of another prominent theologian, H Richard Niebuhr.

Reinhold Niebuhr was born on June 21,1892, in Wright City, Missouri, the son of German immigrants Gustav Reinhold Niebuhr and his wife, Lydia.

Reinhold Niebuhr's father was a German Evangelical pastor; his denomination was the American branch of the established Prussian Church Union in Germany.

The Reinhold Niebuhr family moved to Lincoln, Illinois, in 1902 when Gustav Reinhold Niebuhr became pastor of Lincoln's St John's German Evangelical Synod church.

Reinhold Niebuhr first served as pastor of a church when he served from April to September 1913 as interim minister of St John's following his father's death.

Reinhold Niebuhr attended Elmhurst College in Illinois and graduated in 1910.

Reinhold Niebuhr studied at Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves, Missouri, where, as he said, he was deeply influenced by Samuel D Press in "biblical and systematic subjects", and Yale Divinity School, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1914 and a Master of Arts degree the following year, with the thesis The Contribution of Christianity to the Doctrine of Immortality.

Reinhold Niebuhr said that Yale gave him intellectual liberation from the localism of his German-American upbringing.

Reinhold Niebuhr was a member of the Church of England and was educated at the University of Oxford in theology and history.

Reinhold Niebuhr met Niebuhr while studying for her master's degree at Union Theological Seminary.

Ursula Reinhold Niebuhr left evidence in her professional papers at the Library of Congress showing that she co-authored some of her husband's later writings.

Reinhold Niebuhr spoke out publicly against the Klan to his congregation, describing them as "one of the worst specific social phenomena which the religious pride of a people has ever developed".

Reinhold Niebuhr repeatedly stressed the need to be loyal to America, and won an audience in national magazines for his appeals to the German Americans to be patriotic.

Reinhold Niebuhr endeavored to work out a realistic approach to the moral danger posed by aggressive powers, which many idealists and pacifists failed to recognize.

Reinhold Niebuhr had moved to the left and was troubled by the demoralizing effects of industrialism on workers.

Reinhold Niebuhr became an outspoken critic of Henry Ford and allowed union organizers to use his pulpit to expound their message of workers' rights.

Reinhold Niebuhr attacked poor conditions created by the assembly lines and erratic employment practices.

The historian Ronald H Stone thinks that Niebuhr never talked to the assembly line workers but projected feelings onto them after discussions with Samuel Marquis.

In 1923, Reinhold Niebuhr visited Europe to meet with intellectuals and theologians.

Reinhold Niebuhr preached about the need to persuade Jews to convert to Christianity.

Reinhold Niebuhr captured his personal experiences in Detroit in his book Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic.

Reinhold Niebuhr continued to write and publish throughout his career, and served as editor of the magazine Christianity and Crisis from 1941 through 1966.

In 1928, Reinhold Niebuhr left Detroit to become Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Reinhold Niebuhr spent the rest of his career there, until retirement in 1960.

Reinhold Niebuhr was among the group of 51 prominent Americans who formed the International Relief Association that is today known as the International Rescue Committee.

Reinhold Niebuhr was a strong proponent of the "Jerusalem" religious tradition as a corrective to the secular "Athens" tradition insisted upon by Dewey.

Two years later, in a review of Dewey's book A Common Faith, Reinhold Niebuhr was calm and respectful towards Dewey's "religious footnote" on his then large body of educational and pragmatic philosophy.

Reinhold Niebuhr couched his ideas in Christ-centered principles such as the Great Commandment and the doctrine of original sin.

Reinhold Niebuhr was a debunker of hypocrisy and pretense and made the avoidance of self-righteous illusions the center of his thoughts.

Reinhold Niebuhr argued that to approach religion as the individualistic attempt to fulfill biblical commandments in a moralistic sense is not only an impossibility but a demonstration of man's original sin, which Reinhold Niebuhr interpreted as self-love.

Reinhold Niebuhr described their beliefs as a religion and a thin one at that.

Reinhold Niebuhr was the group's president until it transformed into the Americans for Democratic Action in 1947.

Reinhold Niebuhr began to distance himself from the pacifism of his more liberal colleagues and became a staunch advocate for the war.

Reinhold Niebuhr soon left the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a peace-oriented group of theologians and ministers, and became one of their harshest critics.

Reinhold Niebuhr is widely considered to have been its primary advocate.

Reinhold Niebuhr supported the Allies during the Second World War and argued for the engagement of the United States in the war.

Reinhold Niebuhr renounced his socialist connections and beliefs and resigned from the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Reinhold Niebuhr based his arguments on the Protestant beliefs that sin is part of the world, that justice must take precedence over love, and that pacifism is a symbolic portrayal of absolute love but cannot prevent sin.

Reinhold Niebuhr debated Charles Clayton Morrison, editor of The Christian Century magazine, about America's entry into World War II.

Morrison and his pacifistic followers maintained that America's role should be strictly neutral and part of a negotiated peace only, while Reinhold Niebuhr claimed himself to be a realist, who opposed the use of political power to attain moral ends.

Reinhold Niebuhr supported the reelection of President Franklin D Roosevelt in 1940 and published his own magazine, Christianity and Crisis.

In 1945 Reinhold Niebuhr charged that use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was "morally indefensible".

Reinhold Niebuhr persuaded me and many of my contemporaries that original sin provides a far stronger foundation for freedom and self-government than illusions about human perfectibility.

The contemporary liberal's fascination with Reinhold Niebuhr, I suggest, comes less from Reinhold Niebuhr's dark theory of human nature and more from his actual political pronouncements, from the fact that he is a shrewd, courageous, and right-minded man on many political questions.

In 1947, Reinhold Niebuhr helped found the liberal Americans for Democratic Action.

Reinhold Niebuhr's ideas influenced George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, Arthur M Schlesinger Jr.

Unlike most clergymen in politics, Dr Reinhold Niebuhr is a pragmatist.

Reinhold Niebuhr's views developed during his pastoral tenure in Detroit, which had become a place of immigration, migration, competition and development as a major industrial city.

Reinhold Niebuhr's preaching against the Klan, especially in relation to the 1925 mayoral election, gained him national attention.

Reinhold Niebuhr attributed the injustices of society to human pride and self-love and believed that this innate propensity for evil could not be controlled by humanity.

Reinhold Niebuhr warned against imposing changes that could result in violence.

Reinhold Niebuhr preached against the Klan and helped to influence its decline in political power in Detroit.

Reinhold Niebuhr kept us from being naive about the evil structures of society.

Two years later, Reinhold Niebuhr defended King's decision to speak out against the Vietnam War, calling him "one of the greatest religious leaders of our time".

Reinhold Niebuhr was an early critic of Christian antisemitism, including proselytism, and a persistent critic of Nazism and rising antisemitism in Germany throughout the 1930s.

Reinhold Niebuhr spoke out against "the un-Christlike attitude of Christians", and what he called "Jewish bigotry".

Reinhold Niebuhr's 1933 article in The Christian Century was an attempt to sound the alarm within the Christian community over Hitler's "cultural annihilation of the Jews".

Reinhold Niebuhr's solution to antisemitism was a combination of a Jewish homeland, greater tolerance, and assimilation in other countries.

In 1952, Reinhold Niebuhr published The Irony of American History, in which he interpreted the meaning of the United States' past.

Reinhold Niebuhr questioned whether a humane, "ironical" interpretation of American history was credible on its own merits, or only in the context of a Christian view of history.

Reinhold Niebuhr exerted a significant influence upon mainline Protestant clergy in the years immediately following World War II, much of it in concord with the neo-orthodox and the related movements.

In more recent years, Reinhold Niebuhr has enjoyed something of a renaissance in contemporary thought, although usually not in liberal Protestant theological circles.

President Barack Obama said that Reinhold Niebuhr was his "favourite philosopher" and "favorite theologian".

Reinhold Niebuhr's influence was at its peak during the first two decades of the Cold War.

Reinhold Niebuhr possessed a deep voice and large blue eyes.

Reinhold Niebuhr used his arms as though he were an orchestra conductor.

Reinhold Niebuhr talked rapidly and without notes; yet he was adroit at building logical climaxes and in communicating a sense of passionate involvement in what he was saying.