A number of weeks ago NLinStPaul posted a diary on Reinhold Niebuhr and his influence in the Obama administration. In the discussion of that diary I suggested that Niebuhr's work is difficult to summarize. NLinStPaul concurred and a little further down I suggested a Niebuhr Book Club similar to plf515's very successful efforts in "Let's Read A Book Together" on Saturdays. Hosting such a series was beyond our ability to commit, so NLinStPaul, dirkster42, and I have pooled our resources to deliver a weekly series beginning Thursday January 7th.
Here are some details to give you advance notice. The discussion will convene between 7:30 and 8:00 pm East Coast Time. We will be starting with Moral Man and Immoral Society. This work was originally published in 1932, but it has been lately republished and should be widely available. I think Obama's own declared interest in Niebuhr's ideas might have had something to do with some significant renewed interest. You can easily find older versions in used book stores.
We will cover one chapter per week stating with the Introduction. Beginning this Thursday (Jan 7) I will post the schedule and some biographical information on Reinhold Niebuhr and explanations for some of the context that occurs in the Introduction. The actual discussion of the Introduction will be on January 14th, and the diary of that day will contain some contextual information on Chapter 1 for the following week.
We are very exited about this upcoming effort and we hope many of you will find this discussion of value. The need for an involved discussion comes from the difficulty in simply summarizing or categorizing Niebuhr's work. We anticipate the group's ability to provide some great insight, and we all hope to discover more in the text than we would experience reading on our own. Moreover, I think the staying power of Niebuhr's ideas after so many decades is a testament to the quality of his thought.
I should point out as well, however, that we do not expect this to be a Niebuhr worship session. I am sure that significant aspects of his work did not necessarily pan out. The important thing, as with all such writers, is to find what is valuable and what informs us of the depths of the human condition and to help us understand the moral imperatives of our current moment.
We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible. Thanks in advance.