One of the most fruitful sources of self-deception in the ministry is the proclamation of great ideals and principles without any clue to their relation to the controversial issues of the day.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Controversial Situations

Topic: Wisdom & Understanding

“One of the most fruitful sources of self-deception in the ministry is the proclamation of great ideals and principles without any clue to their relation to the controversial issues of the day…. I have myself too frequently avoided the specific application of general principles to controversial situations to be able to deny what really goes on in the mind of the preacher when he is doing this.”

Reinhold Niebuhr

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr, June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971) was an American theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Niebuhr was one of America's leading public intellectuals for several decades of the 20th century and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. A public theologian, he wrote and spoke frequently about the intersection of religion, politics, and public policy, with his most influential books including Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man, the second of which Modern Library ranked one of the top 20 nonfiction books of the twentieth century.

(1892-1971) Christianity
Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic

Niebuhr, Reinhold. Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic. New York: Living Age, 1957, pp. 218-19,

Reinhold Niebuhr