American public life is gripped by a tumult that it has not experienced in at least half a century. Resentment, distrust, despair, fear, envy, and outrage are the passions of the day. Yet it was not long ago that political scientists and theologians could speak of a “Niebuhr renaissance” marked by an appreciation of moral paradox, ethical nuance, and a recognition of the irony of American history. American political leaders from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to George Bush and John McCain referenced Reinhold Niebuhr as an important influence on their political understandings. Columnists like David Brooks commented on the political condition of contemporary America, and scholars from Gary Dorrien and Daniel Rice to Richard Crouter developed academic accounts of Niebuhr’s political realism. From an insistence on political purity, to a wariness of international institutions and the claims of expertise, to a rejection of whole categories of public goods – it would be difficult to find a more significant shift from the principles that shaped statecraft and public policy during Niebuhr’s prime to those that are foundational in the age of Trump. Reinhold Niebuhr in Theory and Practice: Christian Realism and Democracy in America in the Twenty-First Century explains the collapse of the Niebuhrian renaissance in public life and the ascendance of the “children of light and the children of darkness” in the 2016 election. Our focus is Niebuhr himself and what the encounter between his own theology and his practical political experience might reveal in our contemporary situation. Niebuhr tells us that he does not offer precise policy prescriptions. But Niebuhr was a prolific author, and his works offer insights both into what realistic and Christian public policies would look like, and perhaps more importantly into how citizens should think for themselves about the political challenges of our times. Our aim, then, is to reassert the possibility of a distinctly Niebuhrian public intellectualism and a distinctly Niebuhrian political practice in the wake of the 2016 election.

This is the first book in international relations theory entirely devoted to the political thought of Reinhold Niebuhr. Focusing on the existential theology which lies at the basis of Reinhold Niebuhr’s theory of international politics, it highlights the ways in which Niebuhrian realism was not only profoundly theological, but also constituted a powerful existentialist reconfiguration of the Realist tradition going back to Saint Augustine. Guilherme Marques Pedro offers an innovative account of Reinhold Niebuhr’s eclectic thought, branching out into politics, ethics, history, society and religion and laying out a conceptual framework through which his work, as much as the realist tradition of international political thought as a whole, can be read. The book calls for the need to revisit classic thinkers within IR theory with an eye to their interdisciplinary background and as a way to remind ourselves of the issues that were at stake within the field as it was growing in autonomy and diversity – issues which remain, regardless of its disciplinary development, at the core of IR’s concerns. This book offers an important contribution to IR scholarship, revealing the great historical wealth, intellectual originality but also the limitations and paradoxes of one of the greatest American political thinkers of the twentieth century.

Reinhold Niebuhr was a theologian, writer, and public intellectual who influenced religious leaders and social activists in the United States over four crucial decades in the middle of the twentieth century. The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr traces the development of his work through those years and provides an introduction to the dialogue partners and intellectual adversaries whom he influenced and who shaped his own thinking. It deals with major topics in theology and ethics, providing systematic focus to Niebuhr's wide-ranging works that were directed to many different audiences. Later chapters examine Niebuhr's contributions to political thinking and policy making on issues including international relations, pacifism and the use of force, racial and economic justice, family life and gender equality, and environmental concerns. The concluding section examines Niebuhr's legacy and continuing influence.

The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, first published in 1944, is considered one of the most profound and relevant works by the influential theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and certainly the fullest statement of his political philosophy. Written and first read during the prolonged, tragic world war between totalitarian and democratic forces, Niebuhr’s book took up the timely question of how democracy as a political system could best be defended. Most proponents of democracy, Niebuhr claimed, were “children of light,” who had optimistic but naïve ideas about how society could be rid of evil and governed by enlightened reason. They needed, he believed, to absorb some of the wisdom and strength of the “children of darkness,” whose ruthless cynicism and corrupt, anti-democratic politics should otherwise be repudiated. He argued for a prudent, liberal understanding of human society that took the measure of every group’s self-interest and was chastened by a realistic understanding of the limits of power. It is in the foreword to this book that he wrote, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” This edition includes a new introduction by the theologian and Niebuhr scholar Gary Dorrien in which he elucidates the work’s significance and places it firmly into the arc of Niebuhr’s career.

Excerpt from Reinhold Niebuhr: Prophet From America In this he 15 a very untypical American, but very typical of prophetic Christianity. In his sociological thinking phe has anticipated a whole social development. He has kept one step ahead of history. That' 5 what makes him a prophetic, Christian revolutionary. But also it is what makes him difficult for so many good, uncomplicated souls to under stand. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

"The author provides an ethical framework for the "culture of encounter" that Pope Francis calls us to build"--

The 1954 Conference on Theory, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, featured a 'who's who' of scholars and practitioners debating what would become the foundations of international relations theory. Assembling his own team of experts, the editor revisits a seminal event in the discipline.