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Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics

Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic | Moral Man and Immoral Society | The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness | The Irony of American History | writings on current events • prayers, sermons, and lectures More

Edited by Elisabeth Sifton

“The indispensable Library of America, the most useful publishing venture in American letters, has produced an edition of Niebuhr’s major works, annotated by Niebuhr’s daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, a highly regarded editor and publisher. It belongs in the library of every student of U.S. foreign policy.”—Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

Interviews Reinhold Niebuhr combined “tough-minded political realism with a sympathetic understanding of society’s injustices”
April 16, 2018

News Reinhold Niebuhr, Barack Obama, and the sense of a reality that “judges yet forgives”
February 11, 2016

From the 1920s through the 1960s, the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was among America’s most prominent public intellectuals. As a pastor, teacher, and writer, he bridged the divide between religion and politics with perspicacity, grace, and singular intelligence, whether writing about pacifism and “just war” theory, the problem of evil in history, or the crises of war, the Depression, and social conflict. His provocative essays, lectures, and sermons from before and during World War II, in the postwar years, and at the time of the Civil Rights Movement offered searching analyses of the forces shaping American life and politics. Their profound insights into the causes of economic inequality, the challenges of achieving social justice, and the risks of adventurism in the international sphere are as relevant today as they were when he composed them.

This volume, prepared with extensive notes and a chronology by the author’s daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, is the largest, most comprehensive edition of Niebuhr’s writings ever published. It brings together the books Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic (1929), his personal reflections on his experiences as a young pastor in Detroit as it was being transformed by the explosive growth of the auto industry; Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), a brilliant and tough-minded work that draws out the implications of Niebuhr’s view that while individuals can sometimes overcome the temptations of self-interest, larger groups never can; The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944), a passionate defense of democracy written during World War II; and the essential study that Andrew Bacevich has called “the most important book ever written on U.S. foreign policy”: The Irony of American History (1952), a consideration of American conduct in the early Cold War years that takes equal aim at Soviet communism and at the moral complacency of the United States in its newfound global ascendancy.

These four works are supplemented with essays, lectures, and sermons drawn from Niebuhr’s many other books, as well as prayers—among them the well-known Serenity Prayer. The volume also includes a chronologically arranged selection of his journalism about current events, many of the pieces appearing here in book form for the first time. “We are bound to go back to Niebuhr,” the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. once wrote, “because we cannot escape the dark heart of man and because we cannot permit an awareness of this darkness to inhibit action and abolish hope.”

Elisabeth Sifton, an editor and book publisher for forty years, is the author of The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics is kept in print by a gift from Peter H. & Joan M. Kaskell to the Guardians of American Letters Fund, made in memory of Joseph & Lilo Kaskell.
Table of Contents

Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic

Moral Man and Immoral Society

The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness

The Irony of American History

Writings on Current Events 1928–1967
Protestantism and Prohibition
The Opposition in Germany
Letter from the Emergency Committee for Strikers’ Relief
An Appeal
Pius XI and His Successor
Russia and Karl Marx
An End to Illusions
Fighting Chance for a Sick Society
New Allies, Old Issues
The Limits of Liberty
Jews After the War
The Race Problem
The Bombing of Germany
The Death of a Martyr
The Myth of World Government
The Sources of American Prestige
Why Ike is Popular
What Resources Can the Christian Church Offer to Meet the Crisis in Race Relations?
A Thorn in the Flesh
The Moral World of Foster Dulles
Goldwater vs. History
Telegram to Martin Luther King
Vietnam: Study in Ironies

Prayers
For Our Inheritance: A Thanksgiving Prayer
“O Lord, hear our prayers”
“Our Father, we welcome this new day”
“Almighty Father, who are the source”
“We give you thanks, O Lord”
“We pray to you this day”
“Look with mercy upon this company of your people”
“We pray, O Lord, for your children everywhere”
“We pray for all who have authority in the world”
“O God, the sovereign of nations”
“Almighty God, we bring our praise”
“Eternal God, creator and redeemer of men”
The Serenity Prayer

Sermons and Lectures on Faith and Belief
Optimism, Pessimism and Religious Faith—I
Optimism, Pessimism and Religious Faith—II
The Things That Are and the Things That Are Not
The Christian Church in a Secular Age
Excerpts from Discerning the Signs of the Times
Excerpts from Faith and History
Love and Law in Protestantism and Catholicism
Excerpts from The Self and the Dramas of History
Theology and Political Thought in the Western World
The Wheat and the Tares

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-375-0 962 pages

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N° 263 Library of America Series

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