scholarly journals Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr.: Christian Realism, Pacifism, and the Beloved Community

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel G. Lang
Keyword(s):  
Martin Luther ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Christian Realism ◽  
Beloved Community ◽  
Martin Luther King

scholarly journals Reinhold Niebuhr During the Time of the White Compromise

2022 ◽  
pp. 95-115
Author(s):  
Marvin T. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Good Picture ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Christian Realism ◽  
White Families ◽  
Beloved Community ◽  
Martin Luther King

AbstractThe story of how the theological ethicist, Reinhold Niebuhr, dealt with race during the “white compromise” (from after Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement) gives us a good picture of what will work and not work in re-directing American Prosperity toward a sustainable future. In his early years, Niebuhr argued against the Ku Klux Klan in Detroit, and supported sharecropper cooperatives in Arkansas. He guided his later ethical analysis of national and international groups by what he called “Christian realism,” which assumed that groups had limited capacity for doing good. At the height of his national status, he wrote books as though American history was the same as white history. He suggested caution in applying the Brown v. Board of Education decision to white families and after the civil rights movement had disrupted the “white compromise,” Niebuhr moved somewhat closer to Martin Luther King Jr.’s view of the “beloved community.”

‘The Impossible Possibility of Love’: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Thought on Racial Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 175508822097900
Author(s):  
Liane Hartnett
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
North American ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
The North ◽  
Cornel West ◽  
Martin Luther King

Love has been long lauded for its salvific potential in U.S. anti-racist rhetoric. Yet, what does it mean to speak or act in love’s name to redress racism? Turning to the work of the North American public intellectual and theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), this essay explores his contribution to normative theory on love’s role in the work of racial justice. Niebuhr was a staunch supporter of civil rights, and many prominent figures of the movement such as James Cone, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., J. Deotis Roberts and Cornel West drew on his theology. Indeed, Niebuhr underscores love’s promise and perils in politics, and its potential to respond to racism via the work of critique, compassion, and coercion. Engaging with Niebuhr’s theology on love and justice, then, not only helps us recover a rich realist resource on racism, but also an ethic of realism as antiracism.

Search for the Beloved Community: The Thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr.

1975 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 228
Author(s):  
Duane Addison ◽  
Kenneth L. Smith ◽  
Ira G. Zepp
Keyword(s):  
Martin Luther ◽  
Beloved Community ◽  
Martin Luther King
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