Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) was born in Missouri to an immigrant German couple. His father was a minister in the State Church of Prussia, itself a shotgun marriage between Lutheran and Reformed denominations in that country (in Reinhold’s lifetime, it would merge first with the German Reformed Church in the United States, and finally the Congregationalists, to form the current United Church of Christ).
The young Niebuhr graduated from Yale Divinity School and followed his father into the church’s clergy. He was ordained in 1915, being sent to a small congregation in Detroit.
