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Realism and Hope After Niebuhr

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2018

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Extract

I have already lived in three different theological climates, during three periods marked by quite different hopes and expectations for the future of humanity. I am not sure whether or not we are entering a fourth period, but the pattern of both commitments and hopes is less clear than it seemed to be in the recent past.

Before 1930 and back into the late nineteenth century there was the period of the Social Gospel, which was a great force in the churches and which reflected the secular expectations of progress that were general at the time. I was part of this movement myself and to a large extent shared its hopes, though I never believed that progress was inevitable or irreversible.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1972

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References

page 6 Note • The storm of criticism because of this action of the World Council of Churches is reflected in an article in the Readers Digest, “ Must Our Churches Finance Revolution?” by Clarence W. Hall. This and a companion article are answered by J. Irwin Miller in the April, 1972, issue of that publication.

page 7 Note • Professor Cone has expounded a black theology of liberation in two recent volumes: Black Theology and Black Power (Seabury, 1969) and Liberation—A Black Theology of Liberation (Lippincott, 1970).

page 10 Note • Niebuhr's reflections on the limits of democracy as a viable system are presented in a volume by Niebuhr and Paul E. Sigmund, The Democratic Experience (Praeger, 1969).