A Primer on Reinhold Niebuhr

I've read a lot of Reinhold Niebuhr over the years, especially in seminary and doctoral studies, but also more recently on my own.  He deserves to be better known, and I think Obama may accomplish that.

Niebuhr was a pastor in what would now be called the United Church of Christ (UCC), which is Obama's former denomination in Chicago.  He started out pastoring in an urban parish in Detroit, but soon found out that he didn't care for that line of work, given his temperament.  He was a born intellectual, writer, and teacher, and so that what's he did for many years at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.  (My father-in-the-ministry, Bruce Stearns, went to Union after WWII and had Niebuhr as one of his seminary professors.)

Niebuhr began his intellectual journey, as I remember it, leaning toward the liberal pacifism of the post-WWI years.  But in the thirties, he moved toward Marxism as did so many, and in the process began to accept the need for revolutionary change in capitalist societies, including the possible use of armed force and violence.  From there, it was a relatively easy move to the anti-Nazi, pro-war stance of the liberal American interventionists in the late thirites and early forties.  Niebuhr became a forceful advocate for going to war against the Nazis, and as a moral theologian, developed the ethical position known as moral realism, in order to morally justify the use of violence in war, much as Obama did in his Nobel speech.

In the Cold War era in America and Europe, moral realism was dominant in Protestantism, along with its theological twin, called 'neo-orthodoxy'.  This position began to break down during the Vietnam War, when various kinds of political, moral, and theological radicalism began to develop.  Niebuhr died in the late 60's, so that he was unable to defend his position himself, though he had plenty of disciples who tried to do it for him.  Anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-imperial, anti-American radicalism became much more popular in the 70s and early 80s.

With the Reagan era of the 80s, a neo-realism began to recover its ground, particularly among the new neo-conservatives such as Richard Neuhaus and Michael Novak, and the evangelical movement as well.  They recovered much of Niebuhr's basic moral logic, and used it to justify all the foreign policy initiatives of the Republican administrations, such as the two Iraq wars, the wars and invasions of Central and South America, and our enormous military buildup.

Niebuhr's thought is actually very nuanced and intellectually sophisticated (such as in his Gifford lectures The Nature and Destiny of Man), but unfortunately, he has often been used in ways that he probably wouldn't approve of.  Political leaders quoting Niebuhr often do so in such a way as to 'get God on their side', so to speak, to gain the moral highground for their wars, something that would have horrified him, I believe. 

For example, Niebuhr did not 'praise America' without qualification.  He knew that we were as subject to mistakes and sins as any nation and that we had to be extremely humble in what we did, otherwise we would just be deceiving ourselves about our own failings and sins.  (George Kennan, for example, was a moral realist policy wonk in the State Department during the Cold War who actually took seriously this notion of national humility, and it changed him and his thinking, away from a strong Cold War mentality and toward a much more humble foreign policy.) 

Yet you do not find that kind of humility about America and our foreign policy among most neo-conservatives.  They are among the most arrogant and self-righteous people when it comes to waging war around the world (Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer come to mind, for some reason.)  They think America can do no wrong.  Truth be told, they think anyone who criticizes America foreign policy is pretty much a traitor.  (To criticize the Iraq invasion before it took place, as I and others did, was practically heresy to them, demonstrating a serious lack of patriotism.  We thought it was very patriotic, on the other hand.)

Based on my reading of the Speech, I would urge President Obama to be very careful in his use of Niebuhr's moral thinking, especially if he is using it to try and justify our wars.  America can be and has been very wrong in its approach to the rest of the world.  It is very hard to be both commander-in-chief and moral prophet.