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Surprised by History |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Richard Quebedeaux |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 2/1/1986 |
| Size: 1,994 Words, 12,581 Characters |
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REINHOLD NIEBUHR: A BIOGRAPHY
Richard Wightman Fox
New York: Pantheon Books, 1985
340 pp., $19.95
Reinhold Niebuhr's appearance on the cover of Time magazine's twenty-fifth anniversary number on March 8, 1948, sealed his reputation as America's leading theologian. Though never a household word--like Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell in the present era--Niebuhr was for more than three decades a towering figure among American intellectuals and a major force in defining both theological and political liberalism.
Richard Fox is a young historian who teaches at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. His new biography of this complex and sometimes controversial thinker fits well into the current genre of critical biographies of Christian leaders such as Dorothy Day, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Martin Luther King, Jr., Oral Roberts, and Francis Cardinal Spellman. And it follows three other books that deal with both Reinhold Niebuhr's life and thought--all of which it surpasses in quality. June Bingham's Courage to Change: The Life and Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr (1961) was the first comparable study, and the only one of three to make extensive use of unpublished sources. But it is not documented and bears the marks of overenthusiasm ...
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...buhr's influence on the modern American intellect. But there is no doubt that he--no less than Augustine and Calvin--will be read and studied for a long, long time to come by Christians and others who, like Niebuhr himself, walk the tightrope between rationalism and faith, realism and idealism. Fox's biography will make that task, now and in the future, much easier and much more rewarding.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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