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On Humor. "Humor is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer. . . . The intimate relation between humor and faith is derived from the fact that both deal with the incongruities of our existence.. . . Laughter is ... not only the vestibule of the temple of confession but the no-man's-land between cynicism and contrition."
Intense, eager Theologian Niebuhr seems as paradoxical as his analysis of Christian doctrine. Noted as he is among churchmen for his neo-orthodox theology, he is almost as well known among intellectual liberals for his unorthodox politics. His writing is knotty, intellectual and forbidding; in speaking he has such a hard time keeping up with his racing mind that his words are accompanied by furious arm-flailings and face-twistings that sometimes make him look—though never sound —like an oldtime, fire-and-brimstone revivalist.
Niebuhr's preoccupation with sin moved the late William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, to give him a gentle theological ribbing after a student conference at Swanwick where Niebuhr spoke:
'At Swanwick, when Niebuhr had quit it. Said a young man: "At last I have hit it. Since I cannot do right, I must find out tonight The best sin to commit—and commit it."
The son of a German-born Evangelical minister in Wright City, Mo., Reinie Niebuhr wanted to be a theologian from the time he was a small boy. Eventually he took his Bachelor of Divinity degree and his Master's at Vale and started his career with a $50-a-month pastorate in Detroit, his one & only parish. Since 1928 he has been in Manhattan, at Union, where he teaches ethics and philosophy and religion. A high point of Niebuhr's theological recognition came in 1939, when he was invited to deliver the esteemed Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh.* The lectures, published later as the two-volume Nature & Destiny of Man (TIME, March 24,1941), form the substance of Niebuhr's neo-orthodox theology.
*An honor that has fallen to only four other Americans: Philosophers William James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey and William Ernest Hocking.