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THEN AS NOW, WHY NIEBUHR?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2014

K. HEALAN GASTON
K. HEALAN GASTON*
Affiliation:
Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University E-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

The literature on the life and legacy of the American Protestant thinker Reinhold Niebuhr has long been driven by questions about Niebuhr's continued relevance. Like other contributions to the recent “Niebuhr revival,” each of the three books under consideration here raises this question—John Patrick Diggins's Why Niebuhr Now? (2011) by offering a series of “sympathetic reflections” on Niebuhr's central claim that human beings are both creatures and creators of history (ix); Daniel F. Rice's edited volume Reinhold Niebuhr Revisited (2009) by inviting a cadre of top Niebuhr scholars to make the case for Niebuhr's relevance to a new generation; and Rice's own Reinhold Niebuhr and His Circle of Influence (2013) by contending that close attention to Niebuhr's formative relationships sheds light on his ongoing relevance.

Type
Review Essays
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , November 2014 , pp. 761 - 771
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 Other recent writings on Niebuhr have come from the pens of Carnahan, Kevin, Cone, James H., Cooper, Terry D., Crouter, Richard, Mark Thomas, Edwards, Finstuen, Andrew S., Halliwell, Martin, Harries, Richard, Hollinger, David A., Holder, R. Ward and Josephson, Peter B., Lemert, Charles C., Lovin, Robin W., Stone, Ronald H., Tjalve, Vibeke Schou, and the contributors to Harries, Richard and Platten, Stephen, eds., Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power (New York, 2010), among othersGoogle Scholar.

2 Gaston, K. Healan, “The Cold War Romance of Religious Authenticity: Will Herberg, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Rise of the New Right,” Journal of American History, 99/4 (March 2013), 1109–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gaston, “‘A Bad Kind of Magic’: The Niebuhr Brothers on ‘Utilitarian Christianity’ and the Defense of Democracy,” Harvard Theological Review, 107/1 (forthcoming, Jan. 2014), 1–30Google Scholar.

3 Douglas, Mark, Henson-Hasty, Elizabeth, et al., “Fifty Years of Reflection on Valerie Saiving,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 28/1 (Spring 2012), 75–131CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miles, Rebekah, “Uncredited: Was Ursula Niebuhr Reinhold's Coauthor?” Christian Century, 129/2 (25 Jan. 2012), 30–33Google Scholar.

4 Niebuhr, Ursula M., ed., Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr: Letters of Reinhold & Ursula M. Niebuhr (San Francisco, 1991), 306Google Scholar.

5 Sifton, Elizabeth, The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War (New York, 2003), 316Google Scholar.

6 Rice, Reinhold Niebuhr Revisited, 21–2.

7 Stephens, Randall, “Beyond the Niebuhrs: A Conversation with Robert Orsi on Recent Trends in American Religious History,” Historically Speaking, 7/6 (July/Aug. 2006), 8–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Finstuen, Andrew S., Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety (Chapel Hill, 2007Google Scholar); and Edwards, Mark Thomas, The Right of the Protestant Left: God's Totalitarianism (New York, 2012), 6–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Hollinger, David A., After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History (Princeton, 2013), 211, 218Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., 211.

11 Cornel West, “Foreword,” in Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (Louisville, KY, 2013), xiGoogle Scholar.