ABSTRACT
Neo-orthodoxy, associated with Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), was a much more sophisticatedly expressed dissent from liberal religious pieties than fundamentalism. Niebuhr's refusal to abandon critical and historical methods led fundamentalists to conclude that neo-orthodoxy was irredeemably contaminated by modernism. He aimed to restate Biblical Christianity, giving the weight to human sinfulness which he believed the liberals had not, so that believers were enabled to deal with modern life. In this passage he grappled with the paradox that the religious ethic required the pursuit of the pure spirit of disinterestedness but, in the world, such a spirit was inevitably compromised. Concretely, the nearest it was possible to come to it was to embrace the interests of the underprivileged. Thus in the 1930s Niebuhr allied himself with the political Left, a position from which he retreated after World War II.
