Publication Category: H. Richard Niebuhr

“Behind this posture of humble nonnormative objectivity, it will become clear to any careful reader that Niebuhr has so organized his presentation as to indicate a definite preference for ‘transformation.’. . . ‘Transformation’ takes into itself all the values of its predecessor types and corrects most of their shortcomings.” — John Howard Yoder (“How H. …

Continue reading “A Contested Classic: Critics Ask: Whose Christ? Which Culture?”

Exactly fifty years ago, in 1949, H. Richard Niebuhr delivered the lectures at Austin Seminary that became the book, Christ and Culture. 1 have long been an admirer of Niebuhr and, even though our theologies are rather different, throughout my career I have been influenced by his work, especially by Christ and Culture. I have …

Continue reading “Christianity and Cultures: Transforming Niebuhr’s Categories”

BOOK REVIEW: Theology, History, and Culture: Major Unpublished Writings, by H. Richard Niebuhr. Edited by William Stacy Johnson. Foreword by Richard R. Niebuhr Yale University Press, 236 pp., $30.00.   Wherever one turns in H. Richard Niebuhr’s writings, one finds that the center of gravity is his faithful inquiry into God and ourselves. “I believe …

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The Christ of faith, that is, the Christ who has been introduced into our personal histories by the faith of those who trust him and are loyal to him in his loyalty, is a specific individual figure. We meet him in the company of those who believe in him: not as an empty point on …

Continue reading “The Reconstruction of Faith”

1. The urgency of the question. 2. The meaning of Christian responsibility: responsibility to and for, the kinds of irresponsibility, the scope of responsibility, responsibility to God, universal responsibility. 3. Irresponsible religion: the worldly church, false prophecy and false priesthood, isolationism in the Church. 4. The Church as apostle, pastor and pioneer.   1. THE URGENCY …

Continue reading “The Responsibility of the Church for Society”