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Reinhold Niebuhr (1892—1971) was the leading Neo-Orthodox theologian in the United States and the premier American public theologian of the Cold War era from 1945 to his death. Niebuhr was the archetypal American intellectual of the Cold War era. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s, he explored how the sin of pride created evil in the world. He attacked utopianianism and useless for dealing with reality, His Christian pessimism continued after 1945 and led him to support US efforts to confront Soviet communism around the world.

Niebuhr's perspective had a great impact on many liberals, who came to support a "realist" foreign policy. He is a favorite thinker of both Jimmy Carter and Barack Hussein Obama.^[1].

Niebuhr did battle with the liberals over what he called their naïve views of sin and the optimism of the social gospel. He did battle with the conservatives over what he viewed as their naïve view of Scripture and their narrow definition of "true religion." He was a leader of liberal intellectuals and supported many liberal causes, but his ideas were often too orthodox for secular liberals, while his view that the Bible could not be taken literally was too liberal for the Fundamentalists. Thus he was too secular for many of the religious and too religious for the secular, but just right for those who appreciated the irony of history.

Career

Niebuhr grew up in Lincoln, Illinois, where his father Gustav was a pastor in a German-speaking Evangelical congregation.^[2] His brother H. Richard Niebuhr became a famous historian of religion, and another brother Hulda Niebuhr became a divinity professor in Chicago. He attended Elmhurst College, Eden Theological Seminary and Yale Divinity School, noting that Yale gave him intellectual liberation. Ordained in the Evangelical Synod of North America (1915), he served as pastor of the Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit, until 1928, when he became professor of Christian ethics and the philosophy of religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York City until his retirement in 1960.

World War I

As America entered the World War in 1917, Niebuhr was recently ordained in the German Evangelical Synod of North America and had just become pastor of a congregation in Detroit. He preached the Social Gospel. During the war he repeatedly stressed the need to be loyal to the nation of one's birth or adoption. Theologically, however, he went beyond the issue of national loyalty as he endeavored to fashion a realistic ethical perspective of patriotism and pacifism. He endeavored to work out a realistic approach to the moral danger posed by aggressive powers which many idealists and pacifists failed to recognize. During the war he also served his denomination as Executive Secretary of the War Welfare Commission while maintaining his pastorate in Detroit. A pacifist at heart, he saw compromise as a necessity and was willing to support war in order to find peace - compromising for the sake of righteousness.^[3]

As a pastor in industrial Detroit (1915-1928), he took stands against the brutalization and insecurity of auto workers and attacked the appeal of the Ku Klux Klan to Protestants. He collaborated with the nascent labor unions and abandoned the Social Gospel for a form of socialism in the 1920s; by 1932 he had dropped the Marxism and socialism.

Theology

In the 1930s Niebuhr worked out many of his ideas about sin and grace, love and justice, faith and reason, realism and idealism, and the irony and tragedy of history, which established his leadership of the neo-orthodox movement in theology.

Inflienced strongly by Karl Barth and other dialectical theologians of Europe He began to emphasize the Bible as a human record of divine self-revelation; it offered for Niebuhr a critical but redemptive reorientation of the understanding of man's nature and destiny.

Niebuhr couched his ideas in Christ-centered principles such as the Great Commandment and the doctrine of original sin.

He major contribution was his view of sin as a social event--as pride--with selfish self-centeredness as the root of evil. The sin of pride was appareant not just in criminals, but more dangerously in people who felt good about their deeds. The human tendency to corrupt the good was the great insight he saw manifested in governments, business, democracies, utopian societies, and churches. This position is laid out profoundly in one of his most influential books, Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932). He was a debunker of hypocrisy and pretense and made the avoidance of self-righteous illusions the center of his thoughts. Niebuhr argued that to approach religion as the individualistic attempt to fulfill biblical commandments in a moralistic sense is not only an impossibility but also a demonstration of man's original sin, which Niebuhr interpreted as self-love. Through self-love man becomes focused on his own goodness and leaps to the false conclusion--which he calls the "Promethean illusion"-- that he can achieve goodness on his own. Thus man mistakes his partial ability to transcend himself for the ability to prove his absolute authority over his own life and world. Constantly frustrated by natural limitations, man develops a lust for power which destroys him and his whole world. History is the record of these crises and judgments which man brings on himself; it is also proof that God does not allow man to overstep his possibilities.

In radical contrast to the Promethean illusion, God reveals himself in history, especially personified in Jesus Christ, as sacrificial love which overcomes the human temptation to self-deification and makes possible constructive human history.

History

In The Irony of American History (1952) Niebuhr questioned whether a humane, "ironical" interpretation of American history was credible on its own merits, or only in the context of a Christian view of history. Niebuhr's concept of irony referred to situations in which "the consequences of an act are diametrically opposed to the original intention," and "the fundamental cause of the disparity lies in the actor himself, and his original purpose." His reading of American history based on this notion, though from the Christian perspective, is so rooted in historical events that readers who do not share his religious views can be led to the same conclusion.^[4]

Niebuhr's great foe was idealism. American idealism, he believed, comes in two forms: the idealism of the antiwar noninterventionists, who are embarrassed by power, and the idealism of pro-war imperialists, who disguise power as virtue. He said the non-interventionists, without mentioning Harry Emerson Fosdick by name, seek to preserve the purity of their souls, either by denouncing military actions or by demanding that every action taken be unequivocally virtuous. They exaggerate the sins committed by their own country, excuse the malevolence of its enemies, and, as later polemicists have put it, inevitably blame America first. This is all just a pious way of refusing to face real problems, Niebuhr argued.

World Affairs

Niebuhr supported the Allies during World War II and argued for the engagement of the United States in the war. As a writer popular in the secular as well as religious arena and a professor at the Union Theological Seminary he was very influential both in the United States and abroad. While many clergy proclaimed themselves pacifists because of their World War I experiences, Niebuhr declared a victory by Germany and Japan would threaten Christianity. He renounced his socialist connections and beliefs and resigned from the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. He based his arguments on the Protestant beliefs that sin is part of the world, that justice must take precedence over love, and that pacifism is a symbolic portrayal of absolute love but cannot prevent sin. Although they did not portray him favorably, Niebuhr's exchanges with his opponents on the issue helped him mature intellectually.^[5] Niebuhr debated Charles Clayton Morrison, editor of The Christian Century magazine about America's entry into World War II. Morrison and his pacifistic followers maintained that America's role should be strictly neutral and part of a negotiated peace only, while Niebuhr claimed himself to be a realist, who opposed the use of political power to attain moral ends. Morrison and his followers strongly supported the movement to outlaw war that began after World War I and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. The pact was severely challenged by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and in 1932, with his publication of Moral Man and Immoral Society, Niebuhr broke ranks with The Christian Century and supported interventionism and power politics, culminating in his support of the reelection of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 and the publication of his own magazine, Christianity and Crisis.^[6] In 1945, however, Niebuhr charged that use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was "morally indefensible."

Niebuhr's defense of Roosevelt made him popular among liberals, as historian Morton White noted:

The contemporary liberal's fascination with Niebuhr, I suggest, comes less from Niebuhr's dark theory of human nature and more from his actual political pronouncements, from the fact that he is a shrewd, courageous, and right-minded man on many political questions. Those who applaud his politics are too liable to turn then to his theory of human nature and praise it as the philosophical instrument of Niebuhr's political agreement with themselves. But very few of those whom I have called "atheists for Niebuhr" follow this inverted logic to its conclusion: they don't move from praise of Niebuhr's theory of human nature to praise of its theological ground. We may admire them for drawing the line somewhere, but certainly not for their consistency.^[7]}}

Race

Niebuhr's thought on racial justice developed slowly after he abandoned socialism. Niebuhr attributed the injustices of society to human pride and self love and believed that this innate propensity for evil could not be controlled by humanity. However, he felt that a representative democracy could improve society's ills. Like Edmund Burke, Niebuhr endorsed natural evolution over imposed change and emphasized experience over theory. Niebuhr's Burkean ideology, however, often conflicted with his liberal principles, particularly regarding his perspective on racial justice. Though vehemently opposed to racial inequality, Niebuhr adopted an extremely conservative position on segregation. Yet while most liberals endorsed integration after World War II, Niebuhr remained focused on achieving equal opportunity and warned against imposing changes that could result in violence. The violence that followed peaceful demonstrations in the 1960s forced Niebuhr to reverse his position against imposed equality and witnessing the problem of the Northern ghettos later caused him to doubt that equality was attainable.^[8]

Magnum Opus

His two volume work The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (1941) is considered to be his Magnum Opus.

Niebuhr against anti-Catholicism

During the Detroit mayoral election of 1925, Niebuhr's sermon "We fair-minded Protestants cannot deny" appeared on the front pages of both the Detroit Times and the Free Press. This sermon urged listeners to vote against the Protestant mayoral candidate Charles Bowles, who was being openly endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. The other candidate, who won by a narrow thirty thousand votes, was the Catholic incumbent John W. Smith. Niebuhr preached.^[9]

Niebuhr and Judaism

Niebuhr made many bold assertions regarding Judaism. As a young pastor in Detroit, he favored conversion of Jews to Christianity, scolding the status quo of evangelical Christians who then by and large ignored them. He did so by speaking out against "the unchristlike attitude of Christians" and what he then saw as his fellow Christian's "Jewish bigotry." ^[10] His 1933 article in the Christian Century was an attempt to sound the alarm within the Christian community over Hitler's "cultural annihilation of the Jews."^[11] Eventually his theology evolved to the point where he was the first prominent Christian theologian to argue it was inappropriate for Christians to seek to convert Jews to their faith.^[12]

As a preacher, writer, leader, and advisor to political figures, Niebuhr consistently and unambiguously supported Zionism and Israel. Unlike most Christian Zionists, he never discussed it from a theological perspective. The solution to anti-Semitism he propounded was a combination of a Jewish homeland, greater tolerance, and further assimilation in other countries. Indeed his maximalist approach to the Palestinian question went beyond the Zionist position. As early as 1942, he advocated the total expulsion of Arabs from Palestine and their resettlement in other Arabic countries. His extreme position may relate to his religious conviction that life on earth is never perfect, to his outrage over the Holocaust, or to the example of Germans being forcibly removed from Eastern Europe after World War II. ^[13]

Niebuhr and Communism

After Stalin signed a pact with Hitler in August 1939), Niebuhr severed his past ties with any fellow-traveler organization having any known Communist leanings. In the 1950s his position became so anti-communist that he believed McCarthy was a force of evil not so much for disrespecting civil liberties as for being ineffective in rooting out Communists and their sympathizers.^[14] He thought the Rosenbergs should be executed, stating "Traitors are never ordinary criminals and the Rosenbergs are quite obviously fiercely loyal Communists....Stealing atomic secrets is an unprecedented crime".^[15].

His renunciation of liberal theology

In the April 26, 1939 issues of The Christian Century, Niebuhr published "Ten Years That Shook My World" (pages 542-546). Its first paragraph confesses that he has now rejected nearly all his earlier liberal views.^[16]

This is a literary declaration of war against his own book Does Civilization need Religion? (1927, Macmillan).

Niebuhr and Dewey

Reinhold Niebuhr has been described as an intellectual opponent of John Dewey. Both men were professional polemicists. Their ideas often clashed despite both men holding sway over the same realms of liberal intellectual schools of thought. Niebuhr was a strong proponent of the Jerusalem religious tradition as a corrective to the secular tradition of Athens. Dewey was a strong proponent of Athens. ^[17] In the book Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) a still intellectually young^[18] Niebuhr heavily criticized Dewey's philosophy. Two years later in a review of Dewey's book A Common Faith (1934), Niebuhr was surprisingly calm and respectful towards Dewey's "religious footnote" on his then large body of educational and pragmatic philosophy.^[19]

Influence upon Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the "Letter from Birmingham Jail" Martin Luther King wrote "Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals." (cf. Reinhold Niebuhr. Moral Man and Immoral Society. Scribner's, 1932.) This example shows that King valued Niebuhr's social and ethical ideals; another can be found in a letter from the Christianity and Crisis editor Wayne H. Cowan wherein it is stated that King attributed his own non-violent posture more to the influence of Niebuhr and Paul Tillich than to the example of Gandhi.^[20]

"The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world"

Jimmy Carter^[21] liked to quote Niebuhr's statement that "The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world". Time magazine explicitly stated that President Ronald Reagan, unlike Carter, ^[22] would not use such a phrase.

Serenity Prayer

Niebuhr popularized the famous prayer used by Alcoholics Anonymous. Niebuhr's daughter Elisabeth Sifton wrote a book The Serenity Prayer (2003) about the prayer and suggests her father wrote it, though he borrowed it from others.

Further reading

• Beckley, Harlan. Passion for Justice: Retrieving the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch, John A. Ryan, and Reinhold Niebuhr. (1992). 391 pp.
• Brooks, David. "A Man on a Gray Horse: The Mid-Century Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr May Have Gotten a Lot of Things Wrong-But We Could Use a Thinker like Him Today," The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 290, September 2002 online edition, sees Niebuhr as a conservative
• Brown, Charles C. Niebuhr and His Age: Reinhold Niebuhr's Prophetic Role in the Twentieth Century. (1992). 317 pp.
• Craig, Campbell. "The New Meaning of Modern War in the Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr." Journal of the History of Ideas" 1992 53(4): 687-701 in JSTOR
• Doenecke, Justus D. "Reinhold Niebuhr and his Critics: The Interventionist Controversy in World War II." Anglican and Episcopal History 1995 64(4): 459-481. 0896-8039, by a leading conservative historian
• Fox, Richard Wightman. Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography. (1985). 325 pp. the standard scholarly biography; a well-researched, fair, and engaging treatment of Niebuhr's theological and political work that emphasizes his skill in working with Scripture and in interpreting human nature and the human condition.
• Harland, Gordon. The Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr (1960) online edition
• Novak, Michael. "Father of Neoconservatives: Nowadays, the Truest Disciples of the Liberal Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr Are Conservatives," National Review, Vol. 44, May 11, 1992 online edition, sees Niebuhr as a conservative
• Rice, Daniel F. Reinhold Niebuhr and John Dewey: An American Odyssey. (1993). 358 pp.
• Rosenthal, Joel H. Righteous Realists: Political Realism, Responsible Power, and American Culture in the Nuclear Age. (1991). 191 pp. Compares Niebuhr with Hans J. Morgenthau, Walter Lippmann, George F. Kennan, and Dean Acheson
• Smith, David L. A Handbook of Contemporary Theology (1992), ch 2. a Fundamentalist view of Niebuhr
• Warren, Heather A. Theologians of a New World Order: Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian Realists, 1920-1948. (1997). 199 pp.

• online books on Niebuhr

Primary sources

• Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses ed. by Robert McAffee Brown (1986). 264 pp.
• Niebuhr, Reinhold. Reinhold Niebuhr on Politics: His Political Philosophy and Its Application to Our Age as Expressed in His Writings ed. by Harry R. Davis and Robert C. Good. (1960) online edition

References

External links

19 images of Niebuhr from Life Magazine (1948-1959)

• "The Definitive Reinhold Niebuhr", Richard N. Ostling, Time magazine Jan. 20, 1986
• Reinhold Niebuhr : prophet from America
• The Public Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr