Getting right with Niebuhr
by
Reinhold Niebuhr was a public intellectual and a theologian who still has a deep influence on both the right and the left.
Reinhold Niebuhr, via Union Theological Seminary archives
Americans are a pervasively religious people firmly opposed to the establishment of religion, and that paradoxical situation makes for endless confusion about the proper place of religion in the nation’s political order. Prominent in that confusion is the notion that the separation of church and state implicit in non-establishment further implies the separation of religion and public life. But the first proposition is a constitutional mandate affirmed by overwhelming national consensus, while the second is a denial of American p ...
