biography
pronunciation:
[neeboor]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1892–1971)
|
| biography:
| Protestant theologian, born in Wright City, Missouri, USA. The son of a clergyman and brother of theologian Helmut Richard Niebuhr, he was educated at Elmhurst College (Illinois), Eden Theological Seminary (Missouri), and the Yale Divinity School. Initially a theological liberal and an active Socialist, his experience as pastor of working-class Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit (1915–28) gradually turned his thinking in a rightward direction, towards what he called Christian realism. He questioned the adequacy of the Christian ‘gospel of love’ in a world of conflict, criminality, and totalitarianism; given human nature, the stern doctrines of sin and repentance were essential. By the end of World War 2 he had entirely shed his earlier Socialism, and he roundly condemned totalitarian Communism. Professor of Christian ethics (1928–60) and dean (1950–60) at Union Theological Seminary, he wrote Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), Faith and History (1949), Structures of Nations and Empires (1959), and many other books. In his later years he was America's best-known serious theologian, who managed to combine his sombre, almost existential philosophy with a concern for contemporary political and social issues. |
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