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Leaves from the Note Book of a Tamed Cynic
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Dieser Artikel gilt, aufgrund seiner Grösse, beim Versand als 2 Artikel!
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eaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic REINHOLD NIEBUHR WILI. ETT, CLARK e COLBY CHICAGO 440 SOTJTH DBABBOBN SSCBBBT NEW YOBK 200 FIFTH A, vsmt7B 19 9 Copyright 1929 by REINHOLD NIEBUHR Manufactured in The U. 8. A. by The Plimpton Press Norwood, Mass.-LaPorte, Ind. PRINTINGS First Printing June, 1929 Second Printing August, 1929 To my friends and former coworkers In Bethel Evangelical Church Detroit, Michigan Preface and Apology ost of the reflections recorded in these pages were prompted by experiences of a local Christian pastorate. Some are derived from wider contacts with the churches and colleges of the country. For the sake of giving a better due to the meaning of a few of them, it may be necessary to say that they have as their background a pastorate in an industrial community in which the natural growth of the city made the expansion of a small church into a congregation of considerable size, in a period of thirteen years, inevitable. By the time these lines reach the reader the author will have exchanged his pastoral activities for academic pursuits. It must be confessed in all candor that some of the notes, particularly the later ones, were writ ten after it seemed fairly certain that they would reach the eye of the public in some form or other. It was therefore psychologically difficult to main tain the type of honesty which characterizes the self-revelations of a private diary. The reader must consequently be warned though such a warning may be superfluous to discount the un conscious insincerities which no amount of self Preface and Apology H H X discipline can eliminate from words which are meant for the public. The notes which have been chosen for publi cation have beenpicked to illustrate the typical problems of a modern minister in an industrial and urban community and what seem to be more or less typical reactions of a young minister to such prob lems. Nothing new or startling was attempted in the pastorate out of which these reflections grew. If there is any justification for their publication, it must lie in the light they may throw upon the prob lems of the modern church and ministry rather than upon any possible solutions of these problems. The book is published with an uneasy con science, the author half hoping that the publishers would make short shrift of his indiscretions by throttling the book. Some of the notes are really too inane to deserve inclusion in any published work, and they can be justified only as a back ground for those notes which deal critically with the problems of the modern ministry. The latter are unfortunately, in many instances, too imperti nent to be in good taste, and I lacked the grace to rob them of their impertinence without destroying whatever critical value they might possess. I can only emphasize in extenuation of the spirit which prompted them, what is confessed in some of the Preface and Apology r r r criticisms, namely, that the author is not uncon scious of what the critical reader will himself di vine, a tendency to be most critical of that in other men to which he is most tempted himself. The modern ministry is in no easy position for it is committed to the espousal of ideals pro fessionally, at that which are in direct conflict with the dominant interests and prejudices of con temporary civilization. This conflict is nowhere more apparent than in America, where neither an cient sanctities nor new socialinsights tend to qualify, as they do in Europe, the heedless eco nomic forces of an industrial era. Inevitably a compromise must be made, or is made, between the rigor of the ideal and the neces sities of the day. That has always been the case, but the resulting compromises are more obvious to an astute observer in our own day than in other generations... |
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