From his aerie in Switzerland, hawk-eyed Karl Barth, 72, Europe's most prestigious Protestant theologian, peers coolly at the Christian West. Last week U.S. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, 66, glared right back. In the Christian Century, Niebuhr sharply answered Barth's latest anti-West pronouncement—a 45-page pamphlet addressed to an anonymous pastor in East Germany who had asked for spiritual guidance.
Barth began by spraying a plague on "the forces and powers" of both East and West, but the plague on the West soon took precedence. "If there is such a thing as hostility toward Christ," Barth said, "it does not exist in the Communist East...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
