Reinhold Niebuhr
Theologian, ethicist, and political analyst, Reinhold Niebuhr was a towering figure of twentiethcentury religious thought. He is well known and is appreciated for many reasons among American theologians. Niebuhr had a very strong opinion and much to say when it came down to man and violence in regards to peace and war. Although he thought of himself as a preacher and social activist, the influence of his theological thought on the field of social ethics and on society made him a significant figure.
Reinhold Niebuhr was born in Wright City, Missouri, on June 21, 1892 as the son of Gustav and Lydia Niebuhr. His father, Gustav was an immigrant from Germany and became an ordained minister of the German Evangelical Synod after graduating from Eden Seminary at St. Louis, the training school for ministers of the Deutsche Evangelical Synod of North America. His mother was a daughter of German Evangelical Synod missionary, Edward Hosto. Gustav and Lydia had four children, Hulda, Walter, Reinhold, and Helmut Richard (who is as famous as Reinhold in theological circles). Thus Reinhold grew up in a religious atmosphere in his parents’ parish of St. John in Lincoln, Illinois. His father considered himself as an American and a liberal. It is not surprising that Reinhold aspired to have such liberal values and follow in his father’s footsteps to Eden Seminary in 1912.
With a strong impression from his father’s ministry, Reinhold, the favorite child of his father, decided to be a minister. By his decision, Reinhold studied in the Evangelical pro-seminar, Elmhurst College, near Chicago, which provided him with foundations of liberal arts and languages, from 1907 to 1910, and then he moved to Eden Seminary at St. Louis, following his father’s path. After graduating from Eden Seminary, he encountered a serious money problem because of his father’s sudden death in the spring of 1913. In the same year, Niebuhr became an ordained minister of the German Evangelical Synod. Then he attended Yale Divinity School with a scholarship and received a Bachelor of Divinity in 1914 and his final degree of Master of Arts from Yale University in 1915.
His professional life began with the ministry. In 1915, the mission board of his denomination sent him to Detroit as pastor where he served for thirteen years. The congregation numbered sixty-five when he arrived and grew to nearly seven hundred when he left. His witness of working class life in his ministry with American automobile industry laborers in Detroit gave him a critical view of capitalism and made him an advocator of socialism concerning social and economic reality.
Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian Realism has many components to it. Post World War I, he moved away from his usual liberal/pacifist way of thinking after seeing that the war was based on power control and economical concerns, and this was something he did not want to support. He wanted to follow a more proactive way of doing things instead of just waiting for something to happen. Liberal’s pacifist way of thinking utilizing non-intervention ways to deal with evil in the world was naive and could not be used anymore. By doing nothing would allow evil to continue to control everything. According to Niebuhr, humans in this world are self-glorifying, sinful in nature, and will never be equal to God, but should strive through God to be just and do what is moral.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born at noon on January 15, 1929 in Memphis, Tennessee to the Reverend Martin Luther King and Alberta Williams King. Martin Luther King Jr. spent the first twelve years in the Auburn Avenue home that his parents shared with his maternal grandparents, the Reverend Adam Daniel Williams and Jennie Celeste Williams. When Reverend Williams passed away in 1931, Martin Luther King Sr. became the new pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church and established himself as a major figure in both state and national Baptist groups. Martin Luther King Jr. later attended Atlanta’s Morehouse College from 1944 to 1948 during his undergraduate years. During this time, Morehouse College President Benjamin E. Mays had convinced Martin Luther King Jr. to accept his calling and to view Christianity as a “potential force for progressive social change. Martin Luther King Jr. was ordained during his last semester in Morehouse.” It was also around this time that Martin Luther King Jr. had begun his first steps towards political activism. In 1951, King Jr. began his doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University’s School of Theology. In 1953, Martin Luther King Jr. married Coretta Scott on June 18 in a ceremony that took place i...
Walter Rauschenbusch is widely regarded are a great American theological leader who is regarded as the founder of the social gospel movement in America, that transformed the church and the society in general . His main belief was that religion was not an individual activity or a phenomenon that affected only a single person. Instead, he believed that religion affected the entire society and therefore, the impetus for social reform and raising one’s voice against any sort of social evils or injustice should also come under the ambit of religion and church1. In this write-up an attempt is made to understand the religious philosophies of Walter Rauschenbusch and elaborate his principles of the social gospel movement. The Social Gospel movement also had a significant impact on the Protestant stream of thought prevalent in America .
There are many heroic individuals in history that have shown greatness during a time of suffering ,as well as remorse when greatness is needed, but one individual stood out to me above them all. He served as a hero among all he knew and all who knew him. This individual, Simon Wiesenthal, deserves praise for his dedication to his heroic work tracking and prosecuting Nazi war criminals that caused thousands of Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other victims of the Holocaust to suffer and perish.
Niebuhr, Reinhold (1892-1971), American Protestant theologian, whose social doctrines profoundly influenced American theological and political thought.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born on February 4th 1906, as a son of a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Berlin. Throughout his early life he was an outstanding student, and when he finally reached the age of 25 he became a lecturer in systematic theology at the University Berlin. Something that is very striking is that when Hitler came to power in 1933, Bonhoeffer became a leading spokesman for the Confessing Church, the center of Protestant resistance to the Nazis. He organized and for a shot amount of time he led the underground seminary of the Confessing Church. His book Life Together describes the life of the Christian community in that seminary, and his book The Cost Of Discipleship attacks what he calls "cheap grace," meaning that grace used as an excuse for moral laxity.
" The businessman, Oskar Schindler, demonstrated a powerful example of a man who was moved emotionally to step in and take action to save the lives of the Jewish people. His bravery still commands great respect today. His role shows the great significance of speaking up against injustice and choosing not to be silent.
Elie Wiesel had a very strong religion and always wanted to improve his faith but when the war came he began to lose all faith that he couldn't find anything to believe in anymore, because of all the horrible things that went on in the camps and the working
preached against abuses in the church and attempted to shift the focus of religious faith
"This is the Hour of Decision with Billy Graham, coming to you from Minneapolis Minnesota" Billy Graham, has preached to more than 210 million people through a live audience, more than anyone else in history. Not only that, but Mr. Graham has reached millions more through live televison, video and film. This has led Billy to be on the "Ten Most Admired Men in the World" from the Gallup Poll since 1955 a total of thirty-nine times. This includes thirty-two consecutive more than any other individual in the world, placing him as the most popular American for about forty years. This essay is going to talk about Graham's personal life, and what kind of family he grew up in and im also going to talk in detail about how he became an evangelist, because I feel it is very important yet interesting. His accomplishments in the fifties are uncomparable, so I will be including a considerable amount of information concerning that topic. Finally I will be talking about his personal achievements, books written, and how he has been a companion to some of the American Presidents. William Franklin Graham Jr. was born in Charlotte, North Carolina on November 17, 1918. Graham was raised on a dairy farm by William Franklin (deceased 1962) and Morrow Coffey Graham (deceased 1981). In 1943 he married his wife Ruth McCue Bell, and had four children Virginia 1945, Anne Morrow 1948, Ruth Bell 1950, William Franklin, Jr. 1952, and Nelson Edman 1958. At age eighty, he keeps fit by swimming, playing with is nineteen grand children, and from aerobic walking, in the mountains of North Carolina, where he currently lives. (Billy Graham Best Sellers, 1999) Billy Graham told Time Magazine in one article about his life before becoming a preacher. "I lived on a farm. The only difference was I had to get up early in the morning and go milk cows. When I came back from school that day, I had to milk those same cows. There were about twenty cows I had to milk. By hand. That was before they had those machines. I loved being a farmer. But God called me to this work that I'm in now. I knew it was God calling. I said, "Yes. I will follow what God wants me to do." And so I went to two or three schools to get education.
Jonathan Edwards was a man who could petrify any eighteenth century Puritan. He was born in East Windsor, Connecticut and was raised in a household with strict religious beliefs. In 1727 he began his preaching career as an assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, the pastor at the church at Northampton, Massachusetts. When his grandfather died two years later, Edwards became the pastor of the Church at Northampton and began preaching all over New England. He then emerged as one of the leaders of the Great Awakening with his determination to return to the orthodoxy of the Puritan faith. That is when he adopted his “fire and brimstone” emotional style of sermon. Although people often ran out of the church in hysterics, most stayed in the church captivated by his speeches. He had always purposely chose to address his congregation with a sermon, using all of the elements of an oratory. In Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards displays all elements of an oratory by appealing to emotions, including expressive and rhythmic language, addressing the needs and concerns of his audience, and inspiring others to take action.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a very great man. He did so much to help a race of people that he knew little about and that did nothing for him. He just did it because he knew it was the right thing. Also he did his best to over throw Hitler’s reign by joining different anti activist groups. Even though he did all this he still was a very educated man. He went to high-school and later went on to college. Later in his life he went back to that college to be a teacher there. He also did many other things like travel to the United States of America and become a Pasteur at a church in New York City.
had studied to become a minister before he left Harvard. He was a business man
"We could describe (Heinrich) Schliemann's excavations on the hill of Hissarlik and consider their results without speaking of Troy or even alluding to it," Georges Perrot wrote in 1891 in his Journal des Savants. "Even then, they would have added a whole new chapter to the history of civilization, the history of art" (qtd. in Duchêne 87). Heinrich Schliemann's life is the stuff fairy tales are made of. A poor, uneducated, and motherless boy rises through his hard work and parsimonious lifestyle to the heights of wealth (Burg 1,2). He travels the world and learns its languages ("Heinrich Schliemann"), takes a beautiful Greek bride, and together they unearth the treasures of Troy and the citadel of Agamemnon, thereby fulfilling the dream he has chased since childhood (Calder 18,19; Burg 8). Indeed, by presenting his life in romantic autobiographies as a series of adventures, starring Heinrich Schliemann as the epic hero (Duchêne 14), he ensured his status as a lasting folk hero and perennial bestseller (Calder 19).
8Erich Fromm was born in 1900 in Frankfurt, Germany. His father was a business man and, according to Erich, rather moody. His mother was frequently depressed. His childhood was not very happy.