Reinhold Niebuhr and His Circle of Influence

Abstract

This reverent, detailed, and highly focused book illuminates Reinhold Niebuhr's relationship with seven prominent contemporaries. Largely on the basis of private correspondence, Daniel F. Rice sets before us the great theologian's back-and-forth interaction with John Dewey, Felix Frankfurter, George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Norman Thomas, and Paul Tillich. While conscientious in identifying and seeking to clarify Niebuhr's disagreements with these distinguished friends, Rice's priority throughout is to vindicate Niebuhr's standing as a national sage by showing how extensively he influenced important contemporaries. Rice establishes beyond doubt the personal indebtedness to Niebuhr felt especially by Frankfurter, Kennan, Morgenthau, and Schlesinger, although the special pleading that diminishes this book is exemplified by Rice's repeated efforts to reinstate as legitimate an often-quoted statement of Kennan's that Kennan himself denied he ever uttered: Niebuhr was “the father of us all.” There is no credible evidence that Kennan ascribed to his entire generation the measure of personal indebtedness that Kennan acknowledged on his own behalf.