Prophets take risks and speak out in righteous indignation against society’s treatment of the poor, even risking their lives, as we see in the martyrdom of Jesus and Martin King. Niebuhr took no risks for blacks. On the one hand, “Courage is the primary test of prophesy,” Niebuhr said. “There is no national community today in which the genuine word of God does not place the prophet in peril.” But, on the other hand, Niebuhr acknowledged his prophetic limits in Leaves, especially appropriate regarding his views on race: “I am a coward myself . . . and find it tremendously difficult to run
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