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CONTRIBUTE ¦ Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic / The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses

Your tax-deductible contribution of $110 or more, entitles you to both Reinhold Niebuhr's Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic and The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, edited by Robert McAfee Brown. Get a glimpse into the complex and evolving thought of one of America's theologians of the 20th century as he formulates his ideas as a young pastor in Detroit to an older man with the gift of years and experience.

CONTRIBUTE ¦ Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic

Your tax-deductible contribution of $65 or more, entitles you to Reinhold Niebuhr's Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, a compilation of entries from his diary as a pastor in the economic and social ferment of early 20th century Detroit. As Niebuhr writes in the preface to his 1956 edition:

The notes are not primarily a social document. As the self-revelations of a young parson they freely express the then typical notions of liberal Protestantism before the whole liberal world view was challenged by world events.

CONTRIBUTE ¦ The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses

Your tax-deductible contribution of $65 or more, entitles you to The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, edited by Robert McAfee Brown. Included in this compilation is a personally revealing essay, "A View of Life from the Sidelines" written in 1967 and never published in his lifetime. In this essay, Niebuhr reflects with humility and irony on his personal relationship to the sentiments of the "Serenity Prayer" that became so famous:

Many friendly and inquiring correspondents asked for the original inspiration of the prayer, whether I was really its author, or whether it had been Francis of Assisi, or even an admiral who had used it in a shipboard worship service. I received about two such letters a week, and every answer to an inquiring correspondent embarrassed me because I knew that my present state of anxiety defied the petition of this prayer. I confessed my embarrassment to our family physician, who had a sense of humor touched with gentle cynicism. "Don't worry," he said, "Doctors and preachers are not expected to practice what they preach." I had to be content with this minimal consolation.