“Here I have been preaching for thirteen years, and crying, ‘Woe unto you if all men speak well of you,’ and yet I leave without a serious controversy in the whole thirteen years.”[33] This indicates that he did not engage the race issue—the greatest moral problem in American history—in any practical way. During most of Niebuhr’s life, lynching was the most brutal manifestation of white supremacy, and he said and did very little about it. Should we be surprised, then, that other white theologians, ministers, and churches followed suit?
