Christ and conversion : H. Richard Niebuhr's thought between 1933 and 1937

Abstract

Helmut Richard Niebuhr is generally regarded as one of the most influential contemporary Protestant theologian in America. Partly because he wrote relatively little and partly because he shunned publicity, he did not succeed in attaining the stature of people like Karl Barth, Rudolph Bultmann, Emil Brunner in Europe and his brother, Reinhold Niebuhr, in America. Nevertheless, in his published writings and, especially, in his lectures at Yale Divinity School, where he taught from 1931 until his death in 1962, he showed that he could criticize in a strong yet pertinent way the thought of his contemporaries. Besides, he managed to develop original insights from which the present generation of American theologians are drawing fruitful inspiration.