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Does civilization need religion?

Chapter 1: DOES CIVILIZATION NEED RELIGION?
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About This Book

This work analyzes religion's role in modern society, arguing that faith both defends human personality against the impersonal forces of science and industrial civilization and suffers decline from secularization and internal maladjustment. It outlines religion's social resources—ethical formation, communal solidarity, and transcendent meaning—while diagnosing its conservative limits and difficulties in addressing complex collective ethics. The author examines the tensions and compromises between religious claims and modern life, the ethical impotence produced by social complexity, and possible ways religion might transcend and transform secular institutions. The conclusion proposes a philosophical basis for an ethical religion that renews moral authority without reverting to rigid orthodoxy.

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Title: Does civilization need religion?

A study in the social resources and limitations of religion in modern life

Author: Reinhold Niebuhr

Release date: October 13, 2025 [eBook #77050]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927

Credits: Sean/IB@DP

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOES CIVILIZATION NEED RELIGION? ***

DOES CIVILIZATION
NEED RELIGION?

A Study in the Social Resources
and Limitations of Religion
in Modern Life


BY
REINHOLD NIEBUHR


NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1927
All rights reserved


Copyright, 1927,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped.
Published December, 1927.


SET UP BY BROWN BROTHERS, LINOTYPERS
Printed in the United States of America by
THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK


TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER

WHO TAUGHT ME THAT THE CRITICAL
FACULTY CAN BE UNITED WITH A
REVERENT SPIRIT


and

TO MY MOTHER

WHO FOR TWELVE YEARS HAS SHARED
WITH ME THE WORK OF A
CHRISTIAN PASTORATE