Reinhold Niebuhr and Non-Utopian Liberalism Beyond Illusion and Despair

Reinhold Niebuhr was not only the most important American Protestant theologian in the twentieth century but also one of the nation's most influential public intellectuals. The author of a great many books, articles, and essays, impressively wide-ranging in his interests, Niebuhr's writings defined the deepest concerns of entire generations of his fellow-citizens: "Moral Man and Immoral Society" (1932) for the decade of the depression; "The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness" (1944) for the Second World War; "The Irony of American History" (1952) for the Cold War. In a career which spanned the years from World War I to the war in Vietnam, from the era of Woodrow Wilson to that of Lyndon B. Johnson, Niebuhr was never a stranger to controversy. As late as 1966, he and his wife Ursula spoke out against continued escalation of the war in Vietnam, asserting that it would result in "physically ruining an unhappy nation in the process of 'saving' it." One of the many virtues of Ey

Eyal Naveh is Professor of History at Tel Aviv University.