This is an assessment of the work of a 20th-century public theologian. Reinhold Niebuhr's ability to make sense of international politics, racial tension, labour unrest, and cultural transformations gained him a wide audience, but his responsiveness to changing times was grounded in a consistent theology. Today, Christian realism remains an important way to understand politics and society in theological terms, but the enduring themes of Niebuhr's work must also be related to new generations of thinkers in theology, politics, law, and philosophy. Robin W. Lovin traces its key themes so as to identify the political, moral and theological realisms on which Niebuhr's persuasive and subtle depiction of human nature rests. In that context, a complex, dialectical, Niebuhrian approach can still claim to appear as an alternative to the oversimplified accounts of politics and justice that have dominated recent decades.
