(Ginia Bellafante) 'HORIZON' God is in the curriculum in Rinde Eckert's lively portrait of a theologian, an homage to the "Christian realism" of Reinhold Niebuhr.

Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to neo-orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world, and developed the theo-philosophical perspective known as Christian realism.

There is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism.

The pedagogy of the school is presented in the form of a return to the Christian realism, inspired by scouting founded by Robert Baden-Powell.

He cast an intellectual spell on my generation; though his Christian realism passed out of fashion in the hippie 60's and 70's and yuppie 70's and 80's, it is enjoying a revival in the disenchanted 90's.

His evolving notion of "Christian realism" shaped the outlook of Depression-era radicals, World War II interventionists, anti-Communist cold warriors and early civil rights militants.

Christian realism inspired no hymns and built no lasting institutions.

What he called "Christian realism" held sway through World War II and the first dozen years of the cold war, only to give way again to antimilitary sentiments during the Vietnam War.

At this gathering, it officially embraced socialism which affirmed the line of "Christian realism" and declared itself "a Socialist party without any limitations" (Otto Nuschke).

Christian realism challenged all forms of utopianism by stressing the sinfulness inescapable in human endeavors, even the most high-minded.