Consensus reality is that which is generally agreed to be reality, based on a consensus view.
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Niebuhr was one of America's leading public intellectuals for several decades of the 20th century and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. A public theologian, he wrote and spoke frequently about the intersection of religion, politics, and public policy, with his most influential books including Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man. The latter is ranked number 18 of the top 100 non-fiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library. Andrew Bacevich labelled Niebuhr's book The Irony of American History "the most important book ever written on U.S. foreign policy." The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described Niebuhr as "the most influential American theologian of the 20th century" and Time posthumously called Niebuhr "the greatest Protestant theologian in America since Jonathan Edwards."
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (UTS) is a private ecumenical Christian liberal seminary in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, affiliated with neighboring Columbia University. Since 1928, the seminary has served as Columbia's constituent faculty of theology. In 1964, UTS also established an affiliation with the neighboring Jewish Theological Seminary of America. UTS confers the following degrees: Master of Divinity (MDiv), Master of Divinity & Social Work dual degree (MDSW), Master of Arts in Religion (MAR), Master of Arts in Social Justice (MASJ), Master of Sacred Theology (STM), and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).
Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion, government, and service. It also caters to students from other Harvard schools that are interested in the former field. HDS is among a small group of university-based, non-denominational divinity schools in the United States.
Borden Parker Bowne was an American Christian philosopher, Methodist minister and theologian. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times.
Liberal Christianity, also known as Liberal Theology and historically as Christian Modernism, is a movement that interprets Christian teaching by taking into consideration modern knowledge, science and ethics. It emphasizes the importance of reason and experience over doctrinal authority. Liberal Christians view their theology as an alternative to both atheistic rationalism and theologies based on traditional interpretations of external authority, such as the Bible or sacred tradition.
Georgia Elma Harkness (1891–1974) was an American Methodist theologian and philosopher. Harkness has been described as one of the first significant American female theologians and was important in the movement to legalize the ordination of women in American Methodism.
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) was an American theologian and Baptist pastor who taught at the Rochester Theological Seminary. Rauschenbusch was a key figure in the Social Gospel and single tax movements that flourished in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was also the maternal grandfather of the influential philosopher Richard Rorty and the great-grandfather of Paul Raushenbush.
Christian realism is a political theology in the Christian tradition. It is built on three biblical presumptions: the sinfulness of humanity, the freedom of humanity, and the validity and seriousness of the Great Commandment. The key political concepts of Christian realism are balance of power and political responsibility. This political-theological perspective is most closely associated with the work of the 20th-century American theologian and public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr argued that the Kingdom of God cannot be realized on earth because of the innately corrupt tendencies of society. Due to the injustices that arise among people, we must be willing to compromise the ideal of Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Niebuhr argued that human perfectibility was an illusion, highlighting the sinfulness of humanity at a time when the world was confronted by labor disputes and race riots in industrial hubs like Detroit, Michigan where he pastored, the horrors of the Second World War, the Communist and Fascist totalitarian regimes, and the Holocaust. Christian realism was in part a reaction to the 20th-century Social Gospel movement. Numerous American political figures have been influenced by Christian realism, among them Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jimmy Carter.
Walter George Muelder (1907–2004) was an American social ethicist, public theologian, ecumenist, and Methodist minister. He studied under Edgar S. Brightman at Boston University and began his teaching career at Berea College and the University of Southern California. He served as Dean of Boston University School of Theology from 1945 to 1972, and was known as the "Red Dean" because of his socialist and pacifist leanings.
David P. Gushee, born on June 17, 1962, in Frankfurt, Germany, is a Christian ethicist, pastor, author, professor, and public intellectual. Growing up, Gushee attended and completed his college years at College of William and Mary in 1984.After college, he received his Ph.D. in Christian ethics from Union Theological Seminary in 1993. Among the titles listed, Gushee has shown hard work and dedication in different parts of his job and was awarded for his achievements. Gushee is most known for his activism in climate change, Torture, LGBT inclusion, and Post-evangelicalism.
Lynda Serene Jones is the President and Johnston Family Professor for Religion and Democracy at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. She was formerly the Titus Street Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and chair of gender, woman, and sexuality studies at Yale University.
The Old School–New School controversy was a schism of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America which took place in 1837 and lasted for over 20 years. The Old School, led by Charles Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary, was more conservative theologically and did not support the revival movement. It called for traditional Calvinist orthodoxy as outlined in the Westminster standards.
Katie Geneva Cannon was an American Christian theologian and ethicist associated with womanist theology and black theology. In 1974 she became the first African-American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church (USA).
Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas is an American author and educator. She is associate professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt Divinity School and the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Floyd-Thomas is a Womanist Christian social ethicist whose research interests include Womanist thought, Black Church Studies, liberation theology and ethics, critical race theory, critical pedagogy and postcolonial studies.
Richard Lints is the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary's Hamilton Campus. He is also the Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Theology at Gordon-Conwell and is an author. Lints has been with Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary since 1986.
Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics is a 1932 book by Reinhold Niebuhr, an American Protestant theologian at Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in New York City. The thesis of the book is that people are more likely to sin as members of groups than as individuals. Niebuhr wrote the book in a single summer. He drew the book's contents from his experiences as a pastor in Detroit, Michigan prior to his professorship at UTS. The book attacks liberalism, both secular and religious, and is particularly critical of John Dewey and the Social Gospel. Moral Man and Immoral Society generated much controversy and raised Niebuhr's public profile significantly. Initial reception of the book by liberal Christian critics was negative, but its reputation soon improved as the rise of fascism throughout the 1930s was seen as having been predicted in the book. Soon after the book's publication, Paul Lehmann gave a copy to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who read it and was impressed by the book's thesis but disliked the book's critique of pacifism. The book eventually gained significant readership among American Jews because, after a period of considerable anti-theological sentiment among Jews in the United States, many Jews began to return to the study of theology and, having no Jewish works of theology to read, turned to Protestant theological works.
Willie James Jennings is an American theologian, known for his contributions on liberation theologies, cultural identities, and theological anthropology. He is currently an associate professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale University.
Emilie Maureen Townes is an American Christian social ethicist and theologian. She is currently Dean and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School. Townes was the first African-American woman to be elected president of the American Academy of Religion in 2008 and served as president of the Society for the Study of Black Religion from 2012–2016.
Beverly Jean Wildung Harrison (1932–2012) was an American Presbyterian feminist theologian whose work was foundational for the field of feminist Christian ethics. She taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York City for 32 years.
