A Sermon on Isaiah 58:9-14 and Galatians 5:13-15 by Chris Henry at Shallowford Presbyterian Church, November 4, 2012: "...So, remembering Reinhold Niebuhr calls the church back to its God-given prophetic task in the community and in the world. When people are suffering in our nation and around the world, the church is called to respond. When injustice and hatred deny to some the abundant life God offers to all, the demands of the gospel compel us to speak and to act. Niebuhr was right: the church must never shrink from its call to be the body of Christ beyond the walls of the sanctuary. But there is a difference between Niebuhr’s Christian Realism and the idealistic activism of the Social Gospel movement that he finally dismissed. The difference is Niebuhr’s emphatic insistence on humility and his awareness of the ubiquity of sin. If we were able to ask Reinhold Niebuhr which aspect of the current political climate most exasperated him, my guess would be this: the self-righteousness of all sides..."