The American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) was a major figure in the "Neo-Orthodox" movement in Protestant theology, which reoriented the entire thrust of theological and biblical studies from the 1920s on.

Reinhold Niebuhr was born in Wright City, Mo., on June 21, 1892, the son of an immigrant German Evangelical and Reformed minister who served as pastor to German-American communities in small towns. Early deciding to enter the ministry, Niebuhr studied at Elmhurst College and Eden Theological Seminary and then spent 2 years at Yale Divinity School. After receiving his master of arts degree from Yale in 1915, he left the academic world to take his first and only pastorate—a small mission church in Detroit, where he remained until 1928.

At the time Niebuhr arrived there, the automobile industry was just beginning its rapid expansion, and Detroit was developing into one of America's major cities. Many of the employees of the...