“All religions have an element of ethical universalism in them,” Niebuhr wrote later in a column for the Detroit Times, which in my view exposes the hypocrisy of his inaction at Bethel. “If this element does not operate to mitigate racial antagonisms there is something the matter with the interpretation of religion. If religious idealism does not help us to live together decently with members of other races and groups, it is not producing the kind of social imagination without which religion becomes a sounding brass and a tinkling symbol.”
