Niebuhr Material Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christ and Culture. New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1951.

The author of Christ and Culture Richard Niebuhr is today largely remembered as one-half a famous pair of siblings. Reinhold was the more famous of the two Niebuhr brothers, but both Niebuhrs redefined Protestant theology for the 20th century. While his brother Reinhold described himself as a devout Lutheran, Richard Niebuhr was "more inclined toward Augustinian, Calvinistic approaches to the realm of theological and ethical discourse" like Kierkegaard and even the postmodern literary philosopher Roland Barth (Swatos 2008).

Richard Niebuhr, like his older brother, grew up in Missouri, graduated from Elmhurst College (1912) and Eden Theological Seminary (1915), Washington University (M.A., 1917), and Yale University Divinity School (B.D., 1923; Ph.D., 1924). Niebuhr was an ordained minister in the Evangelical and Reformed Church (1916) and worked as a pastor. Also called the more philosophical of the two brothers, most of Richard Niebuhr's life was spent teaching. "Niebuhr taught (1919-1922 and 1927-1931) at Eden Theological Seminary and served as President of Elmhurst College (1924-1927). In 1931, he joined the faculty of Yale Divinity School and, in 1954, was named Sterling Professor of Theology and Christian Ethics at Yale, a post he held until his death" (Swatos 2008).

Christ and Culture was seen to come as a critical juncture in Niebuhr's corpus of writings. His first book was entitled The Social Sources of Denominationalism (1929). This book put forth Niebuhr's belief in the vital role that the church could and must play in creating a more equitable society. Niebuhr's second book, The Kingdom of God in America was a history of different strains of American Protestant thought, and focused on Christian thought as removed from the course of human history. These two different perspectives were seen as existing in a state of "tension in the Niebuhrian corpus between material and ideational factors" (Swatos 2008). But...

Niebuhr's definitional approach to his subject is inclusive rather than exclusive. Like each of the gospels show different facets of the persona of Jesus, likewise different answers to the problem of Christ and culture are necessary to fully encompass such a complex phenomenon. In fact, Niebuhr claims it would be a usurpation of Christ to claim that someone had found a single answer to what values Christ encompasses.
Niebuhr's definition of Christ is complex, embracing both Christ's status as the Son of God and also His role as mediating figure between heaven and earth. Culture, which Niebuhr uses synonymous with the 'world,' is innately artificial, while Christ is natural. Culture is the lens with which we impose our human-focused values on eternal substances. Because of the imperfect nature of humanity, theological answers that attempt to encompass the nature of Christ will always be partial, but by identifying and classifying these different answers, and examining the relative strengths and weaknesses of each type, a more perfect understanding of the relationship of Christ and culture can be established. There is no single Christian answer, but many.

This potential negativity of the world provides the first definition of Christ and His relationship to culture, the idea that Christ stands against culture. Although Niebuhr finds this view admirable to some degree, he also warns that Christ encouraged his followers to pay taxes, and render unto Caesar what was Caesar's. Also, he believes such a view is overly idealistic. No human being is truly outside of culture,…