Immigration Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism, which was lately set forth in Matthew Schmitz’s “Immigration Idealism” (May), famously relegates Jesus’s social teaching to the realm of the ideal rather than the possible. Schmitz’s endorsement of this realism makes a mistake that . . . . Continue Reading »
Christianity lives in the tension between its apocalyptic vision of life and its creational mandate to occupy. The former pushes Christians to uproot and pull down the orders of society while the latter draws them back toward the earth and roots them in the orders of creation.
There are numerous defenders of President Obama’s prayer breakfast appeal for Christians to not “get on our high horse” about criticizing Islamic violence and to recall the Crusades, Inquisition and American racial segregation.
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As Robert Louis Wilken has noted on more than one occasion, Maximus the Confessor’s use of the phrase “blessed passion of love” evokes ideas that were important to Christian tradition. Continue Reading »
This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of Reinhold Niebuhr’s attempt to place the democratic experiment on more firm ground. His The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness represents Niebuhr’s effort to save democracy from itself. Continue Reading »
It is a pleasure to recommend to readers Father Edward Oakes’ masterful essay on original sin elsewhere in this issue. My own pleasure in reading it was augmented by the reflections, both personal and political, it triggered in me. It was the doctrine of original sin that made me, in my youth, an . . . . Continue Reading »
Of books and Dissertations about Reinhold Niebuhr, it seems, there is no end. Having committed one such dissertation myself a few years ago, I am in no position to complain. Of course the real truth is that dedicated Niebuhrians leap at any chance to return to the moral and intellectual universe of . . . . Continue Reading »
Besides being the quincentenary of Columbus’ voyage, 1992 has also been the centenary of the birth of the American churchman Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971). From the 1930s through the 1950s, Niebuhr was regarded by many as a kind of prophet, a public theologian who could explain modern discontents . . . . Continue Reading »
Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr: Letters of Reinhold and Ursula NiebuhrEdited by Ursula M. NiebuhrHarperCollins, 432 pages, $29.95 In a perverse way, we have Richard W. Fox to thank for this most interesting volume of letters of the late Reinhold Niebuhr and illustrious correspondents. . . . . Continue Reading »
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