Gustav Niebuhr Quotes & Sayings

Authentic religion teaches one to imagine the other
to consider another's vulnerability and humanity. The beginning of ethics is this trancendent imagination' (Ingrid Mattson). The message, she said, to be expounded by preacher and politician alike is that all human beings possess a God-given dignity. — Gustav Niebuhr

I will be a better Catholic, not if I can refute every shade of Protestantism, but if I can affirm the truth in it and still go further. So, too, with the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists, etc. This does not mean syncretism, indifferentism, the vapid and careless friendliness that accepts everything by thinking of nothing. There is much that one cannot 'affirm' and 'accept,' but first one must say 'yes' where one really can. If I affirm myself as a Catholic merely by denying all that is Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc., in the end I will find there is not much left for me to affirm as a Catholic; and certainly no breath of the Spirit with which to affirm it. — Gustav Niebuhr

The wars around the globe into which religion is woven
violence that over the past two decades has sent many tens of thousands of men, women, and children to terrible deaths in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, India, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the United States
deeply threaten what we have of a human society. Denouncing religion itself is futile. And such simple reactions badly miss the point. It is among the religious believers that the work must be done, within that overwhelming majority who would find common ground in being human and not wanting destruction, if only because their traditions are about so much more. Those traditions contain life-giving possibilities, even if the worst demagogues would try to twist dogma so hard as to wring poison from it. — Gustav Niebuhr

There can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. — Gustav Niebuhr

If you are mindful, you can eat the bread and the bread represents the whole cosmos ... You set the table, you lay the food in the presence of God. Mindfulness is the awareness that shines on every act in every moment. — Gustav Niebuhr