Obama, Niebuhr, and Tillich

Over the last month we have had a guest speaker (Professor Andrew Finstuen) for the adult Sunday school at our church. The focus of his three classes were Reinhold Nieburh, Paul Tillich and Billy Graham. I am a little embarrassed to post publicly that I really had no knowledge of Tillich or Niebuhr, but I certainly left the series wanting to learn more about them. Now that I am more familiar with them, I have been seeing their names everywhere. One was an article in our local paper about The Serenity Prayer and whether or not it was authored by Niebuhr. The article concluded it had. Who knew?! Most recently, I came across an article (The Tragedy of Hope - The Daily Dish- by Andrew Sullivan) shared on Facebook by a friend about Obama that quoted Niebuhr at length and mentioned Tillich. I struggle with being moral and ethical everyday and I found it oddly comforting to see that the President shares these same struggles.