Conduits of Faith: Reinhold Niebuhr's Liturgical Thought

Abstract

The mid twentieth century was an important period of theological and liturgical change for mainline Protestants. Theologically, the optimistic liberalism of the turn of the century came under sharp critique from a variety of theologians who sought to give greater attention tc the historic Christian doctrines. Liturgically, the practices of evangelicalism were compared to historic models of Christian worship and found wanting. No American was more prominent in the theological critique than Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971). After rising to national prominence as a preacher and essayist while serving as a pastor ir Detroit, Michigan, he joined the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1928 and gained an international reputation as a social ethicist, preacher, and advocate of a theological perspective known variously as “Christian realism” or “neo-orthodoxy.” It is less well known that as part of his theological program Niebuhr advocated liturgical reform. From his days in Detroit when he confessed devoting an entire fall “to a development of our worship services” to the height of his career when he warned that “a church without adequate conduits of traditional liturgy” is “without the waters of life,” Niebuhr was vitally concerned with “the weakness of common worship in American Protestantism.”