1. A diverse movement, American neo-orthodoxy was defined by its criticism of liberalism, particularly liberalism's focus upon the immanence of God, its high estimation of human abilities, and its faith in historical progress. Neo-orthodox theologians placed a new emphasis upon the Bible, the transcendence of God, the nature of the church, and theology per se (as opposed to the focus of early-twentieth-century church leaders on other fields of knowledge such as sociology, philosophy, and psychology). See Ahlstrom, Sydney E., A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972), 932–48, 960–63Google Scholar; Voskuil, Dennis N., “From Liberalism to Neo-Orthodoxy” (Th.D. diss., Harvard Divinity School, 1974)Google Scholar; Hutchison, William R., The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (1976; reprint, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992), 288–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gilkey, Langdon, On Niebuhr: A Theological Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 26–28.Google Scholar

2. Most of Niebuhr's reflections on worship occurred in short essays published in Christian Century, Christianity and Crisis, and other journals. Eight of these are collected in Essays in Applied Christianity, ed. Robertson, D. B. (New York: Meridian Books, 1959) [hereafter EAC], 27–66.Google Scholar Robertson briefly discusses Niebuhr's writings on worship in his introduction (11–12, 15–18). Recent anthologies do not include essays on worship. See A Reinhold Niebuhr Reader: Selected Essays, Articles, and Book Reviews, ed. Brown, Charles C., (Philadelphia, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1992)Google Scholar; Reinhold Niebuhr: Theologian of Public Life, ed. Rasmussen, Larry L. (San Francisco, Calif.: Harper and Row, 1989)Google Scholar; The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, ed. Brown, Robert McAfee (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986).Google Scholar A few studies note his appreciation of liturgy, but none explore it in depth. See Marty, Martin E., “Public Theology and the American Experience, in The Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. Scott, Nathan A. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 21–22Google Scholar; Stone, Ronald H., Professor Reinhold Niebuhr: A Mentor to the Twentieth Century (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 178–79Google Scholar; Brown, Charles C., Niebuhr and His Age: Reinhold Niebuhr's Prophetic Role in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1992), 30, 64–65.Google Scholar The discussion in Fox, Richard Wightman, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 286–87, is brief, but insightful.Google Scholar

3. Niebuhr, Reinhold, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic (Chicago: Willett, Clark, and Colby, 1929), 52Google Scholar; “The Weakness of Common Worship in American Protestantism,” Christianity and Crisis (May 28, 1951)Google Scholar; reprinted in EAC, 62.

4. Vogt, Von Ogden, Art and Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1921)Google Scholar; Sperry, Willard L., Reality in Worship: A Study of Public Worship and Private Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1925)Google Scholar; Kilde, Jeanne Halgern, When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 197–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fox, William L., Willard L. Sperry: The Quandaries of a Liberal Protestant Mind, 1914–1939 (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 126–49Google Scholar; Bains, David Ralph, “The Liturgical Impulse in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Mainline Protestantism” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1999), 30–162Google Scholar; McNamara, Denis Robert, “Modern and Medieval: Church Design in the United States, 1920–1945” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 2000), esp. 78–98.Google Scholar

5. White, James F., “Protestant Public Worship in America: 1935–1995,” in Christian Worship in North America: A Retrospective: 1955–1995 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 1997), 115–33Google Scholar; published in an earlier form as “Public Worship in Protestantism,” in Altered Landscapes: Christianity in America, 1935–1985, ed. Lotz, David W., Shriver, Donald W. Jr., and Wilson, John F. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989), 106–24.Google Scholar See also Coffin, Henry Sloane, “Public Worship,” in The Church Through Half a Century: Essays in Honor of William Adams Brown, ed. Cavert, Samuel McCrea and Dusen, Henry Pitney Van (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1936), 185–206Google Scholar. White's article was written as a sequel to Coffin's.

6. Niebuhr, , “A Christmas Service in Retrospect,” Christian Century (January 4, 1933)Google Scholar; reprinted in EAC, 29–33; “The English Church: An American View,” The Spectator 157 (September 4, 1936): 373–74.Google Scholar

7. See Niebuhr, , Leaves, 60Google Scholar; “The English Church,” 373; “A Problem of Evangelical Christianity,” Christianity and Crisis (May 13, 1946); reprinted in EAC, 55; “The Weakness of Common Worship in American Protestantism,” in EAC, 58. For these denominations constituting mainline Protestantism, see Hutchison, , “Protestantism as Establishment,” in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900–1960, ed. Hutchison, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 4.Google Scholar

8. Coffin, , “Public Worship,” 185–90; Bains, 10–22.Google Scholar

9. Evangelische Agende (St. Louis, Mo.: Eden, 1889)Google Scholar; Evangelical Book of Worship, published by the German Evangelical Synod of North America (St. Louis, Mo.: Eden, 1916), 17–18.Google Scholar

10. The Anglican worship of Niebuhr's day was strongly influenced by the Ritualist movement of the nineteenth century. Holmes, David L., A Brief History of the Episcopal Church (Valley Forge, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1993), 93–106Google Scholar, summarizes American developments. Yates, Nigel, Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain: 1830–1910 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, provides a detailed discussion of the movement in England.

11. Hutchison, , “Protestantism as Establishment,” 3–18.Google Scholar

12. At their summer home in Heath, Massachusetts, they attended a Congregational Church. After the formation of the United Church of Christ in 1957, this church was part of Reinhold's own denomination. Ursula grew up in an observant Anglican household, memorizing the collects, epistles, and gospels of the Book of Common Prayer and treasuring trips to Sunday evensong at the cathedrals in Salisbury and Winchester. Niebuhr, Ursula M., ed., Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr: Letters of Reinhold and Ursula M. Niebuhr (San Francisco, Calif.: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 5–6, 11–12.Google Scholar In a work published after this essay was completed, the Niebuhrs' daughter described the family's churchgoing and her parents' contrasting views of worship. Sifton, Elisabeth, The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 33–36, 177–79, 183–91.Google Scholar

13. R. W. Fox, 4–14; Brown, C. C., Niebuhr and His Age, 9–16.Google Scholar

14. R. W. Fox, 29; Heim, Mark, “Prodigal Sons: D. C. Macintosh and the Brothers Niebuhr,” Journal of Religion 65 (07 1985): 337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a discussion of the thesis and its role in Niebuhr's theological development, see Hauerwas, Stanley, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology being the Gifford lectures Delivered at the University of St. Andrews in 2001 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2001), 96–105.Google Scholar

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16. Brown, C. C., Niebuhr and His Age, 21Google Scholar; Niebuhr, , Young Reinhold Niebuhr: His Early Writings, 1911–1931, ed. Chrystal, William G. (Saint Louis, Mo.: Eden, 1977), throughout.Google Scholar

17. Niebuhr's reconsideration of worship necessarily involved a reconsideration of his religious identity. His discussions of worship always involved the tension between his humble Midwestern German-American roots and the prominent position he achieved in the Trans-Atlantic Protestant establishment.

18. Niebuhr, , “Intellectual Autobiography,” in Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, ed. Kegley, Charles W. and Bretall, Robert W. (New York: Macmillan, 1956), 6Google Scholar; Niebuhr, , Leaves, 6.Google Scholar

19. Niebuhr, , “Intellectual Autobiography,” 6.Google Scholar

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21. Ibid. Evangelical Book of Worship, 146–51, 172–76. See Niebuhr, , Justice and Mercy, ed. Niebuhr, Ursula M. (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 125–26, for a later baptismal service by Niebuhr.Google Scholar

22. Niebuhr, , Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1937), 62, emphasis addedGoogle Scholar; R. W. Fox, 286. On the purpose of signs in sixteenth-century Protestant theologies see White, , The Sacraments in Protestant Practice and Faith (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1999), 17–23.Google Scholar

23. Niebuhr, , Leaves, 32.Google Scholar

24. For Protestants' distinction between objective and subjective worship, see Pratt, James Bissett, The Religious Consciousness: A Psychological Study (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 290–308Google Scholar; Sperry, , Reality in Worship, 251–76.Google Scholar

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26. Niebuhr, , “Protestantism in Germany,” Christian Century 40 (10 4, 1923): 1258.Google Scholar For his appreciation of Catholicism, see “Is Protestantism Self-Deceived?” Christian Century 41 (December 25, 1924): 1662.Google Scholar On the American Seminar, see R. W. Fox, 77–80, 82–85; Eddy, Sherwood, Eighty Adventurous Years: An Autobiography (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955), 128–34.Google Scholar

27. Niebuhr, , Leaves, 55–56.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., 55–57. On the Detroit church, see Brown, C. C., Niebuhr and His Age, 23.Google Scholar

29. Niebuhr, , “Berlin Notes: Impressions of an American in the German Capital,” The Evangelical Herald (September 18, 1924)Google Scholar; reprinted in Young Reinhold Niebuhr, 156. Niebuhr referred to a common interpretation of the Gothic arch. The pointed arch was seen as representing aspiration. It also made possible the towering vaults and mysterious shadows of the Gothic cathedral. Structurally, the arch was formed by the union of two parabolic arches, broken at their point of intersection. The combination of “broken” arches thus is the source of the unique power of the Gothic.

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31. Niebuhr, , Leaves, 60–61Google Scholar; Brown, C. C., Niebuhr and His Age, 23.Google Scholar

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36. Sperry, , Reality in Worship, 99–122Google Scholar; Vogt, 145–65, 203–13; Davies, Horton, Worship and Theology in England (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965), 5:134–50Google Scholar; Welch, Claude, Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), 2:41–44.Google Scholar

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38. Niebuhr, , The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1941), 1:131.Google Scholar For stages of worship, see Vogt, 145–65; Sperry, , Reality in Worship, 282Google Scholar; Brightman, Edgar Sheffield, Religious Values (New York: Abingdon, 1925), 179Google Scholar; Sclater, J. R. P., The Public Worship of God: Being the Lyman Beecher Lectures on Practical Theology at Yale, 1927 (New York: George H. Doran, 1927), 17–54Google Scholar; Seidenspinner, Clarence, Form and Freedom in Worship (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1941), 71Google Scholar; Heimsath, Charles H., Genius of Public Worship (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1944), 18–28.Google Scholar

39. Niebuhr, , “Religion and Poetry,” Theological Magazine of the Evangelical Synod of North America (07 1930)Google Scholar; reprinted in Young Reinhold Niebuhr, 220–22, 224–26.

40. Niebuhr, , “A Christmas Service in Retrospect,” Christian Century (01 4, 1933)Google Scholar; reprinted in EAC, 29–31; Discerning the Signs of the Times: Sermons for Today and Tomorrow (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1946), 157.Google Scholar

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43. Niebuhr, , “Beauty as a Substitute for Righteousness,” Christian Century 44 (09 29, 1927): 1133–34Google Scholar; “A Problem of Evangelical Christianity,” in EAC, 55.

44. R. W. Fox, 142–48.

45. Niebuhr, , “The English Church,” 373.Google Scholar The shift in Niebuhr's approach to worship is first signaled in “Sects and Churches,” Christian Century (July 3, 1935)Google Scholar; reprinted in EAC, 34–41.

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53. Niebuhr, , “Sunday Morning Debate,” in EAC, 43–44, 48.Google Scholar Some years later Niebuhr would find modernist churches that combined the aspiration he valued in Gothic with a theologically satisfying austerity. He praised the churches of Pietro Belluschi for combining “the virtues of Gothic with the simplicity of the New England meeting house.” Niebuhr, , “Tradition and Today's Ethos,” Architectural Record (December 1953): 117–18.Google Scholar

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60. Niebuhr, , “A Problem of Evangelical Christianity,” in EAC, 54.Google Scholar

61. Ibid., 53–56; McDowell, Rachel K., “A World at Peace to Observe Easter,” New York Times, 20 04 1946, 10.Google Scholar

62. Niebuhr, , Faith and History: A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of History (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1949), 238.Google Scholar

63. Niebuhr, , Justice and Mercy, 119–20.Google Scholar

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66. Ibid., 240–42. Niebuhr's reflections here appear to reflect the controversies within the ecumenical movement over the status of the nonsacramental Society of Friends.

67. Niebuhr, , “Religiosity and the Christian Faith,” Christianity and Crisis (01 24, 1955); reprinted in EAC, 63.Google Scholar

68. D. B. Robertson surveys these criticisms in the introduction to his collection of Niebuhr's essays that he assembled to counter this claim. Robertson, , “Introduction,” in EAC, 11–12Google Scholar. See also Landon, Harold R., ed., Reinhold Niebuhr: A Prophetic Voice in Our Time (Greenwich, Conn.: Seabury, 1962), 80–82Google Scholar; Granfield, Partrick, Theologians at Work (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 66Google Scholar; Marty, 16–17; Stone, , Professor Reinhold Niebuhr, 177; R. W. Fox, 285–86; Gilkey, 193–99; Hauerwas, 136–40.Google Scholar

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71. Miller, Francis P., “The Church as World Community” (1935), cited in Heather A. Warren, Theologians of a New World Order: Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian Realists, 1920–1948 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 70.Google Scholar See also Niebuhr, H. Richard, Pauck, Wilhelm, and Miller, Francis P., The Church Against the World (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1935).Google Scholar

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73. Edgar DeWitt Jones, president of the Federal Council of Churches, famously announced “we came to Oxford talking about our churches. We shall go home talking about the Church.” Leiper, Henry Smith, World Chaos or World Christianity: A Popular Interpretation of Oxford and Edinburgh, 1937 (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1937), 95Google Scholar. In keeping with Niebuhr's “Catholic heresy” article of the same year, Niebuhr's speech at Oxford was markedly free of this enthusiasm for the church. Niebuhr, “The Christian Church in a Secular Age”; reprinted in The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr, 79–92. For the role of Niebuhr and other Americans in the Oxford Conference, see Warren, 59–83; R. W. Fox, 178–80; C. C. Brown, 61–63; Bains, 136–46.

74. Van Dusen, , “The Meaning of Oxford,” World Christianity (second quarter 1937): 93–96.Google Scholar

75. R. W. Fox, 150, 171–74. See also Rice, Daniel F., Reinhold Niebuhr and John Dewey: An American Odyssey (Albany: State University of New York, 1993), 190, 324.Google Scholar

76. Niebuhr, , “Understanding England,” Nation 157 (08 14, 1943): 175.Google Scholar

77. Niebuhr, , “Christianity and Politics in Britain,” Christianity and Society (summer 1943)Google Scholar; reprinted in Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. Robertson, (Philadelphia, Penn.: Westminster, 1957), 82–83.Google Scholar

78. Niebuhr, , “Coronation Afterthoughts,” Christian Century 70 (07 1, 1953): 771.Google Scholar

79. Niebuhr, , “English and German Mentality,” Christendom 1 (1937): 476; R. W. Fox, 171–74.Google Scholar

80. Michel, Virgil, “The Liturgy the Basis of Social Regeneration,” Orate Fratres 9 (11 1935): 542Google Scholar; “Natural and Supernatural Society,” Orate Fratres 10 (April 1936): 244.Google ScholarPecklers, Keith F., The Unread Vision: The Liturgical Movement in the United States of America: 1926–1955 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 1998), 124–37Google Scholar; Chinnici, Joseph P., Living Stones: The History and Structure of Catholic Spiritual Life in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 178–85Google Scholar; Marx, Paul B., Virgil Michel and the Liturgical Movement (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 1957)Google Scholar; Hall, Jeremy, The Full Stature of Christ: The Ecclesiology of Virgil Michel OSB (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 1976)Google Scholar; Franklin, R. W. and Spaeth, Robert L., Virgil Michel: American Catholic (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 1988).Google Scholar

81. Hebert, A. G., Liturgy and Society (London: Faber and Faber, 1935)Google Scholar; Hebert, , ed., The Parish Communion (London: SPCK, 1937)Google Scholar; Davies, 38è41; Gray, Donald, Earth and Altar: The Evolution of the Parish Communion in the Church of England to 1945 (Norwich, U.K.: Canterbury Press Norwich, 1986).Google Scholar Contemporary American movements were not as strong. Noteworthy, however, was the work of William Palmer Ladd and the Associated Parishes in the Protestant Episcopal Church. See Ladd, William Palmer, Prayer Book Interleaves: Some Reflections on How the Book of Common Prayer Might be Made More Influential in Our English-Speaking World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1942)Google Scholar; Moriarty, Michael, “William Palmer Ladd and the Origins of the Episcopal Liturgical Movement,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 64 (09 1995): 438–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moriarty, , The Liturgical Revolution: Prayer Book Revision and Associated Parishes: A Generation of Change in the Episcopal Church (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1996).Google Scholar For one mainline Protestant voice sounding similar themes, see Brenner, Scott Francis, The Way of Worship: A Study in Ecumenical Recovery (New York: Macmillan, 1944).Google Scholar

82. Niebuhr, , undated prayers in Justice and Mercy, 118, 123.Google Scholar

83. Ibid., 47.

84. Niebuhr, , Beyond Tragedy, 297, 299.Google Scholar

85. Hollar, Barry Penn, “Reinhold Niebuhr: The United States as Church,” chapter 2, in On Being the Church in the United States: Contemporary Theological Critiques of Liberalism (New York: Peter Lang, 1994).Google Scholar

86. Niebuhr, , “The English Church,” 373.Google Scholar

87. Quoted in Niebuhr, “The Catholic Heresy,” in EAC, 210.

88. Niebuhr, “The Catholic Heresy,” in EAC, 211–12. On Michel, see Chinnici, 180–85. On the transcendence of the church in American neo-orthodoxy, see Warren, 68–70.

89. As Langdon Gilkey notes, the church's saving grace was that it did contain and proclaim a self-critical message of human sinfulness and divine judgment. This distin- guished it from secular institutions. Gilkey, 196–99.

90. Niebuhr, , “The English Church,” 373.Google Scholar

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92. Niebuhr, “The Weakness of Common Worship,” in EAC, 58. Niebuhr's essay appears to have been occasioned by the publication of Edwall, Pehr, Hayman, Eric, and Maxwell, William D., eds., Ways of Worship: The Report of a Theological Commission of Faith and Order (London: SCM Press, 1951)Google Scholar. The book contained few American contributions. This was due in large part, however, to the fact that the commission that produced the book was based in Europe.

93. White, , “Protestant Public Worship in America,” 116–21.Google Scholar

94. Niebuhr, , “Worship and the Social Conscience,” Radical Religion (winter 1937); reprinted in EAC, 49.Google Scholar

95. Niebuhr, , “The Weakness of Common Worship,” in EAC, 58–61.Google Scholar

96. Niebuhr, Reinhold, “Theologian and Churchman,” in This Ministry: The Contribution of Henry Shane Coffin, ed. Niebuhr, (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1945), 124–25.Google Scholar See Coffin, Henry Sloane, “The Next Interest in Religious Thought,” Methodist Quarterly Review 78 (07 1929): 355–71Google Scholar; Coffin, , The Public Worship of God: A Source Book (Philadelphia, Penn.: Westminster, 1946).Google Scholar For other assessments similar to Niebuhr's, see Sperry, , “The Language of Prayer,” Religion in Life 2 (summer 1933): 323–34Google Scholar; and Tittle, Ernest Fremont, A Book of Pastoral Prayer; with an Essay on the Pastoral Prayer (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1951).Google Scholar

Niebuhr's liturgical appreciation continued to develop in retirement along the paths established in his career. In a 1967 essay (published posthumously) he noted that as a “pew-worshiper” he had come to a deeper appreciation of how liturgy, even the Catholic Mass, expressed for many “the mystery that made sense out of life” better than the typical sermon-centered Protestant service. Niebuhr, , “A View of Life from the Sidelines,” Christian Century 101 (12 19–26, 1984): 1197.Google Scholar

97. Of the three major mainline liturgies published in the mid 1960s, The Book of Worship for Church and Home (Nashville, Tenn.: Methodist Publishing House, 1965)Google Scholar is perhaps closest to Niebuhr. United Church of Christ Commission on Worship, The Lord's Day Service with Explanatory Notes (Philadelphia, Penn.: United Church, 1964)Google Scholar; and the [Presbyterian] Joint Committee on Worship, Service for the Lord's Day and Lectionary for the Christian Year (Philadelphia, Penn.: Westminster, 1964)Google Scholar are more strongly focused on the Eucharist.

98. White, , “Protestant Public Worship in America,” 121–33Google Scholar; Fenwick, John R. K. and Spinks, Bryan D., Worship in Transition: The Liturgical Movement in the Twentieth Century (New York: Continuum, 1995)Google Scholar; Senn, Frank C., Christian Liturgy: Evangelical and Catholic (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1997), 632–67.Google Scholar