born June 21, 1892, Wright City, Mo., U.S.
died June 1, 1971, Stockbridge, Mass.
U.S. theologian.
The son of an evangelical minister, he studied at Eden Theological Seminary and Yale Divinity School. He was ordained in the Evangelical Synod of North America in 1915 and served as pastor of Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit, Mich., until 1928. His years in that industrial city made him a critic of capitalism and an advocate of socialism. From 1928 to 1960 he taught at New York's Union Theological Seminary. His influential writings, which forcefully criticized liberal Protestant thought and emphasized the persistence of evil in human nature and social institutions, include Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), The Nature and Destiny of Man , 2 vol. (1941–43), and The Self and the Dramas of History (1955).
Reinhold Niebuhr, 1963
By courtesy of the Rare Book Department, Union Theological Seminary Library, New York City