Kiri Erb

“When economic power desires to be left alone it uses the philosophy of laissez faire to discourage political restraint upon economic freedom. When it wants to make use of the police power of the state to subdue rebellions and discontent in the ranks of its helots, it justifies the use of political coercion and the resulting suppression of liberties by insisting that peace is more precious than freedom and that its only desire is social peace.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics

“If a minister wants to be a man among men he need only to stop creating devotion to abstract ideals which every one accepts in theory and denies in practice, and to agonize about their validity and practicability in the social issues which he and others face in our present civilization.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics (LOA #263): Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic / Moral Man and Immoral Society / The Children ... History

“1924 A revival meeting seems never to get under my skin. Perhaps I am too fish-blooded to enjoy them. But I object not so much to the emotionalism as to the lack of intellectual honesty of the average revival preacher. I do not mean to imply that the evangelists are necessarily consciously dishonest. They just don’t know enough about life and history to present the problem of the Christian life in its full meaning. They are always assuming that nothing but an emotional commitment to Christ is needed to save the soul from its sin and chaos. They seem never to realize how many of the miseries of mankind are due not to malice but to misdirected zeal and unbalanced virtue. They never help the people who corrupt family love by making the family a selfish unit in society or those who brutalize industry by excessive devotion to the prudential virtues.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic: A Library of America eBook Classic

“God is revealed in the book of nature for God is its author.”
― Sadhu Sundar Singh, Sadhu Sundar Singh