Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics is a 1932 book by
Reinhold Niebuhr, a
Protestant theologian at
Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in
New York City, New York, United States. The thesis of the book is that people are likelier to
sin as members of groups than as individuals. Niebuhr wrote the book in a single summer. He drew the book's contents from his experiences as a pastor in
Detroit, Michigan prior to his professorship at UTS. The book attacks
liberalism, both
secular and
religious, and is particularly critical of
John Dewey and the
Social Gospel.
Moral Man and Immoral Society generated much controversy and raised Niebuhr's public profile significantly. Initial reception of the book by
liberal Christian critics was negative, but its reputation soon improved as the rise of
fascism throughout the 1930s was seen as having been predicted in the book. Soon after the book's publication,
Paul Lehmann gave a copy to
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who read it and was impressed by the book's thesis but disliked the book's critique of
pacifism. The book eventually gained significant readership among
American Jews because, after a period of considerable anti-theological sentiment among Jews in the United States, many Jews began to return to the study of theology and, having no Jewish works of theology to read, turned to Protestant theological works.