Reinhold Niebuhr was a twentieth-century American theologian who
was known for his commentary on public affairs. One of his most
influential ideas was the relating of his Christian faith to
realism rather than idealism in foreign affairs. His perspective
influenced many liberals and is enjoying a resurgence today; most
recently Barack Obama has acknowledged Niebuhr's importance to his
own thinking.
In this book, Kenneth Hamilton makes a claim that no other work
on Niebuhr has made--that Niebuhr's chief and abiding preoccupation
throughout his long career was the nature of humankind. Hamilton
engages in a close reading of Niebuhr's entire oeuvre through this
lens. He argues that this preoccupation remained consistent
throughout Niebuhr's writings, and that through his doctrine of
humankind one gets a full sense of Niebuhr the theologian. Hamilton
exposes not only the internal consistency of Niebuhr's project but
also its aporia. Although Niebuhr's influence perhaps peaked in the
mid-twentieth century, enthusiasm for his approach to religion and
politics has never waned from the North American public theology,
and this work remains relevant today.
Although Hamilton wrote this thesis in the mid-1960s it is
published here for the first time. Jane Barter Moulaison, in her
editorial gloss and introduction, demonstrates the abiding
significance of Hamilton's work to the study of Niebuhr by bringing
it into conversation with subsequent writings on Niebuhr,
particularly as he is re-appropriated by twenty-first-century
American theology.
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