Sentences with phrase «christian realism»

After Niebuhr's generation had passed, liberationists judged that the social gospel and Niebuhr's Christian realism were too middle class, white, male - dominated, nationalistic and socially privileged to be agents of liberation.

For the most articulate critique of Niebuhrian realism from the perspective of liberation theology, see Alves, Rubem, «Christian Realism: Ideology of the Establishment,» Christianity and Crisis, 1973, 33:173 - 176.

An excellent comparison of Niebuhrian realism and liberation theology is McCann, Dennis P., Christian Realism and Liberation Theology: Practical Theologies in Conflict (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1981).

Christian realism in the spirit of Paul Tillich or Reinhold Niebuhr is closer to the reality pole than the deconstructionist pole.

Christian realism, had it been heeded in the euphoric and frenzied climate of the 60s, might well have reminded liberals that there are limits to what can be achieved in the political sphere.

Reinhold Niebuhr, the great proponent of «Christian realism,» was right when he wrote, «It is a terrible heresy to suggest that, because the world is sinful, we have a right to construct a Machiavellian politics or a Darwinian sociology as normative for Christians.»

Though Niebuhr was consciously and insistently a man of the left, his Christian realism and anti-utopianism will, Jim concludes, «inescapably» push politics to the right.

But more important for our purposes, Christian realism provides proximate moral standards that are neither as lofty as «the law of love» nor as bitterly tragic as the struggle for power.

I take it that Christian realism accepts the fact and reality of the two realms but dedicates itself untiringly to an inquiry into political behavior at the boundary line separating the two.

Schools and fads have abounded, from neo-orthodoxy to neo-liberalism, from demythologization to the «God is dead» movement, from Christian realism to secular Christianity, from process thought to the various liberation movements.

To dislodge the power of collective self - interest requires a Christian realism that through political conflict serves to check group egoism.

This study of the contribution of Hebraic and early Christian realism to world literature in effect draws out the corollaries of the Incarnation for the aesthetic order.

In fact, it is the resurgence of the utopianism associated with the traditional laissez fare capitalism in the contemporary globalisation that we have to oppose as idolatrous in the name of Christian realism.

At the same time, the New Left (now the old New Left) in politics, persuaded by the rhetoric of its own simplistic radicalism which seemed to call for burning down or bringing down everything, concluded that Niebuhr's Christian realism was a sellout to the establishment.

The resources in his thought go beyond his response to any one period of history, and events since his retirement have not refuted the main outlines of his Christian realism.

The general tone of the Oxford conference was «Christian realism», although perhaps not enough attention was paid to the dangers of Hitler's Nazi Germany.

The particular channel he chose was a prophetic interpretation of Christian ethics (and thereby fastened the term «Christian realism» on the American scene).

Just like proponents of Just War or even Christian Realism, it may require that someone die for your convictions (as any convictions worth having may demand — pacifism, just war, and even basic recourse to self - defense are alike in this regard).

«The Prophetic Insight and Theoretical - Analytical Inadequacy of «Christian Realism.»»

Thus sin appears in a Reinhold Niebuhr boomlet as the note of Christian realism needed in social ethics; ignorance receives attention through «the epistemological privilege of the poor» or an action hermeneutics; death is addressed in the issue of nuclear winter.

We need to consider what kind of hope for the better world is implied in the viewpoint we have developed and show how we must hold this hope in strict balance with a Christian realism concerning the evil which is within us and about us.

2See Dan Rhoades, «The Prophetic Insight and Theoretical - Analytical Inadequacy of Christian Realism»,» Ethics, LXXV / 1, October, 1964.

There is a huge difference between Christian realism» which recognizes the limitations of human beings and their societies, while still working to elevate them» and worldly despair, which is the antithesis of Christian faith.

The Christian theologian, John Bennett, has powerfully stated this truth in his Christian Realism.24

Christian Realism and Political Problems (1953) was a book of essays on theological, ethical, and political themes that Niebuhr published during his illness.

Niebuhr's Christian realism thus avoided utopian illusions and the pessimism of historical determinism.

His life - style of «Christian realism» began to produce a new breed of church leader.

The result might be a Christian realism that could be genuinely transformed by listening, instead of waiting impatiently for the rest of the world to catch up with the Anglo - Americans.

He ends up not liking Niebuhr very much and not quite caring about the fate of Christian realism.

We again need such Christian realism.

Second, Christian realism means knowing clearly what one is doing.

As we have just seen, Christian realism leads to the conclusion that violence is natural and normal to man and society, that violence is a kind of necessity imposed on governors and governed, on rich and poor.

Back in the 1940's, when Reinhold Niebuhr started Christianity in Crisis to support the war against Nazism, he abandoned his earlier pacifism, and his earlier too - simply pious way of wishing evil away, and called for a new tough - minded Christian realism.

Thus Christian realism and Christian radicalism must refuse to accept false solutions and appeasing compromises.

Christian realism demands seeing the facts as they are and grasping them thoroughly, without evasion or illusion, without recoiling in fear or horror as it becomes evident what the result of some trend is likely to be.

Since successor generations must do something to keep themselves busy, many revisionist critiques of Christian realism have been produced.

Christian realism demands that a man understand exactly what he is doing, why he is doing it, and what the results of his doing will be.

More particularly, Christian realism about man teaches us that men need not only be inspired by high ideals in their time of need but also to be freed from bondage to idols.

Such romanticizing of life's possibilities runs roughshod over a necessary Christian realism.

By the 1940s, he was marginalized by the «Christian realism» of his colleague at New York's Union Theological Seminary, Reinhold Niebuhr.

Christian realism about human nature suggests that legally enforceable determinations of natural law should not be made in this way.

This grounds Christian realism about human progress.

In addition to Niebuhr, figures such as John Bennett, Francis P. Miller, Georgia Harkness, and Henry P. Van Dusen played major parts in the development of a «Christian realism» that also shaped the beginnings of the World Council of Churches and - she indicates but does not argue - continues, mutatis mutandis, to mark the efforts of groups such as the Christian Coalition today.

Not exact matches

He articulates an eschatological realism in line with the broad Christian tradition.

Cobb concludes that it is «the task of the Christian imagination to generate visions of what is actually possible that can give realism to efforts guided by the passion for justice» (PTPT 151).

If this realism scandalize Christians, it is because they make the great mistake of thinking what is natural is good and what is necessary is legitimate.

So I can state that what is most lacking in this regard among my brother Christians is neither good will nor charity, neither concern for justice nor dedication, neither enthusiasm nor willingness to make sacrifices — none of these; what is lacking is realism.

Realism is the necessary basis for Christian thinking on society.

I'm not going to define good and evil according to humans, since that would kill moral realism, and most Christians (most people, in fact) would not be willing to let that happen.

Rather, in the name of realism, they held that «human thought is dynamic, not static; that it is a movement, not a position; that Christian theology grows with the growth of life and changes when life presents it with new and unanticipated positions.»