Niebuhr, Reinhold

(1893–1971)

   Theologian.

   Niebuhr was born in Missouri. He was the elder brother of Richard Niebuhr, another important theologian. From 1928 until 1960 he taught at the Union Theological Seminary, New York. Influenced by both barth and brunner, he was none the less critical of Barth’s lack of interest in society. As a young man he had served an evangelical congregation and had been a member of the American Socialist Party. Among his many books were Moral Man and Immoral Society, The Nature and Destiny of Man and Christian Realism and Political Problems. His aim was to propound a ‘vital prophetic Christianity’ and he famously taught that ‘Man has always been his most vexing problem. How shall he think of himself?’ He taught both the absolute sovereignty of God and the possibility of reforming human institutions. With his boundless energy, he exerted enormous influence on the religious and political thinking of educated Americans in the mid twentieth century.

   R.M. Brown (ed.), The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr (1986);

   K. Durkin, Reinhold Niebuhr (1989);

   G. Harland, The Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr (1960);

   N.A. Scott (ed.), The Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr (1975).