Establishment Radical: Assessing the Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr's Reflections on the End of an Era

This article argues that Reinhold Niebuhr's most politically radical work, Reflections at the End of an Era (1934) is more determinative of his subsequent political theology than Niebuhr scholarship has acknowledged. In particular, the doctrine of grace and view of history that Niebuhr here developed continued to shape his mature thought, infusing his work with a politically unsettling quality that Niebuhr scholarship routinely overlooks in favor of depicting him as the “establishment theologian.” This article maintains that reclaiming the legacy of Reflections will enable future reception of Niebuhr to recover the radical dimension to his thought.     

Being Wrong and Being Right: A Response to Larry Rasmussen and Robin Lovin

Abstract

Larry Rasmussen and Robin Lovin have offered compelling perspectives on Reinhold Niebuhr's legacy, asking whether he was wrong or right on the economy, and whether Stanley Hauerwas's analysis of Niebuhr's work is wrong or right. In this reply, Scott Paeth argues that Niebuhr was a complex theological thinker and social critic, and is best understood as a "pragmatic idealist" who was willing to change strategies in response to changing circumstances. He was also quintessentially a public theologian who, contrary to the arguments of Stanley Hauerwas, was a vociferous critic of his social context rather than an assimilated spokesperson for it. Finally, Paeth offers some suggestions about what Reinhold Niebuhr's legacy might mean in light of the American election of 2004.     

Reinhold Niebuhr and the US War on Terror: A Response to Dr Gilkey

Abstract

Building upon Langdon Gilkey's reflection on Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society, this article examines Niebuhr's enduring contribution in relation to two pressing international concerns: religious terrorism and the US War on Terror. As these two issues are characterized by their suppression of reason, I argue that Niebuhr's critical understanding of reason, a human rational capacity to consider interests other than one's own, offers an important resource in rectifying the disorder created by the two issues. Despite his stringent critique of a liberal idealistic view of reason, Niebuhr refused to completely deny the value of reason; although reason is always tainted by sin, it is not entirely ineffectual. This critical notion of reason is a necessary antidote to the unilateralism of the Bush administration and religious fundamentalism which altogether reject a dialogical, reflective value of reason. In an increasingly interdependent global society, a critical use of reason is indispensable for the achievement of global peace and justice.     

“The Pull of Love”: Mutual Love as Democratic Virtue in Niebuhrian Political Theology

Although Reinhold Niebuhr's account of democracy aims to protect marginalized communities by restraining sin through the diffusion of power, the conceptions of sin and love that inform his political theology have anti-democratic consequences for members of these communities. I address this inconsistency by revisiting his under-developed idea of mutual love and clarifying his account of sin. Mutual love occupies crucial terrain between agape and justice for Niebuhr, and therefore enables moral agents to achieve democratic goals. Given the nature and importance of mutual love, I clarify Niebuhr's account of sin by making his position on “self-love” more moderate than it often appears.     

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and the Theological Origins of Secular International Politics

Abstract

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in Reinhold Niebuhr's scholarship. Many scholars have drawn upon Niebuhr's work in the run up to World War II when drawing analogies to the contemporary struggle with Islamic radicalism. This article explores Niebuhr's writings on Communism in the run up to Vietnam as another possible source for analogies to the current struggle. It concludes with an analysis of contemporary Islamic radicalism using the categories of Niebuhr's analysis. While neither period in Niebuhr's work provides a perfect analogy to the present, there are significant insights to be drawn from this later period in Niebuhr's writing.     

Society and Politics in the Early Niebuhr

Abstract

This address was delivered at the inaugural meeting of the Reinhold Niebuhr Society. The theological and ethical contributions of the early Niebuhr from his book, Moral Man and Immoral Society, are summarized and then contrasted with adjustments that Niebuhr would make in his thinking in light of the rise of National Socialism and the events of World War II. Then the author turns to contemporary times, reading Niebuhr as a guide to the present situation's moral complexities.     

Reinhold Niebuhr: Impact and Implications

Abstract

Reinhold Niebuhr's realistic theology and ethics provided a stark contrast to the optimistic Protestant liberalism of a previous generation. His success in reshaping the political theology of his contemporaries has led some recent critics to dismiss him as simply an echo of a cultural consensus which he in fact did much to create. The quite different realities of our time suggest, however, that we cannot be Niebuhrian realists simply by repeating his insights. Realism at the beginning of the 21st century has to shift its attention from the center of established moral and religious traditions to the growing edges where new institutions are being formed and new understandings of the human good are coming into focus. Such thinking runs the risk of what Niebuhr would call "utopianism," but a Christian realist in the 21st century will be someone who takes all of those possibilities seriously, in contrast to 20th-century realists who attempted to deal with the pace and unpredictability of change by returning all political questions to the management of the nation-state system.     

Reinhold Niebuhr and Richard John Neuhaus on Religion and Democracy in the United States

Abstract

Richard John Neuhaus, like Reinhold Niebuhr before him, understood the vital civic role that religion plays in democratic society. As pastors and public intellectuals, both men were committed to public or civil forms of religion that, at their best, could inform, inspire, or chasten American political thought and action. There are crucial differences, nevertheless–between Niebhur’s and Neuhaus’s historical contexts, theological outlooks, political positions, and attitudes toward the American project–that help to explain their distinctive legacies and different receptions within the academy. However much Neuhaus admired Niebuhr, these differences suggest why Neuhaus was not the Reinhold Niebuhr of his day.     

A Russian Version of Christian Realism: Spiritual Wisdom and Politics in the Thought of S. L. Frank (1877–1950)

Christian realism is a concept normally associated with the US theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr. However, Niebuhr was not alone in warning Christians of the dangers of utopianism and trying to promote a religiously inspired political realism; thinkers from a number of countries had similar aspirations. In this context, the Russian philosopher Semyon Liudvigovich Frank (1877–1950) deserves particular attention. A Marxist in his youth, Frank became disillusioned with revolutionary ideas before and after the 1905 revolution, and was drawn away from politics to philosophy. However, he remained interested in political questions, both while he was in Russia and after he was forced into exile in 1922. This found expression in the 1940s in a form of Christian realism. Frank rejected the doctrine ‘the end justifies the means.’ But he was a gradualist in his approach to social change, believing that politicians needed to have a pragmatic attitude of mind. A distinctive feature of Frank's approach was the connection he made between spiritual inwardness on the one hand and effective decision-making on the other, although he also saw spirituality as arising in a social context. Ultimately, there was a mystical dimension to Frank's Christian realism that was absent in Niebuhr's doctrine.     

Cool nothing: Dom Sylvester Houédard’s coexistentialist concrete poetics

ABSTRACT

This article concerns the concrete poetics of Dom Sylvester Houédard, which I define using a term from his 1963 article ‘Concrete Poetry & Ian Hamilton Finlay’, ‘coexistentialist’. Houédard's concrete poetry has sometimes been criticized for an anachronistic avant-garde quality, because of its non-semantic use of written language, and its associated air of intermedia experiment. But the term ‘coexistentialist’ has various connotations which allow us to interpret Houédard's work as highly responsive to its cultural moment, and to the unique theological tradition from which it emerged. These connotations include: the relationship between early and mid-twentieth-century modern art and literature; existentialist philosophy, especially the writing of Jean-Paul Sartre; Marshall McLuhan's theories on modern communication and ecumenical dialogue within the Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council. After presenting an outline of Houédard's poetics related to these themes, I analyse some of his concrete poems or ‘typestracts’, produced between 1967 and 1972.     

The Contribution of Reinhold Niebuhr's ‘Moral Ambiguity’ to Contemporary Discussions on the Morality of Intervention and the Use of Force in a Post-Cold War World

Abstract

The post-Cold War world poses challenges to traditional principles guiding the ethics of the use of force. Military intervention and the current war on terror are two phenomena that challenge just war criteria such as just cause, right authority, and reasonable hope for success. The just war tradition is helpful but needs to be expanded and re-thought to address the pressing issues of our time. This paper suggests Reinhold Niebuhr's category of ‘moral ambiguity’ as a contribution to the discussion. His application of moral ambiguity to his situation during World War II and the Cold War witnesses to the depth that such a category can add to current international circumstances fraught with moral complexity. Though it too requires critique, contemporary discussions on military intervention reflect many of Niebuhr's evaluations of the ambiguity in the use of force as different global actors seek humane alternatives to provide relief to intense human suffering.     

Responsibility Ethics and Postliberalism: Rereading H. Richard Niebuhr's The Meaning of Revelation

Abstract

Postliberals have hailed H. Richard Niebuhr's The Meaning of Revelation as a harbinger of narrative theology. A careful reading of Niebuhr's argument, however, suggests a theological ethic that is at once attentive to the narrative formation of agency and yet distinct from postliberalism because of its attention to the divine object of Christians' stories. Niebuhr's theocentrism yields a view of narrative as opened from the inside because it requires appropriation of what he calls "external" narratives in order to do justice to the sovereignty of God. The result is a theological ethic which is sharply critical of modern conceptions of agency and yet continually sifted by contemporary insights and experience.     

Julian of Vézelay,a Twelfth-Century Critic of his Monastery's Worldly Success

Abstract

This article analyses the sermons of the Benedictine monk Julian (c. 1080 – 1165) from the small Burgundian monastery of Vézelay in the context of the other contemporary sources issuing from this monastery. It argues that Julian was a reformer who criticized his monastery for an unhealthy attachment to its newfound wealth and neglect of proper monastic practice. The themes in his preaching may further be reflected in some of the capitals of the cathedral Sainte-Madeleine at Vézelay. More broadly, his sermons provide a striking illustration of one monastery's struggle to come to terms with an influx of money in the twelfth century.     

A Nation with the Church’s Soul

Abstract

This essay considers Barack Obama’s invocation of Reinhold Niebuhr to oppose the Iraq War and Richard John Neuhaus’s support for the war. I argue that although Niebuhr and Neuhaus might have disagreed over the Iraq War, there is a more substantive agreement between the two figures over the role, or lack thereof, of the church in the public square. I argue that a weak ecclesiology in both impedes the Church’s ability to be a prophetic voice in the face of injustice.     

Jacob Vernet and ‘The Religious Enlightenment’: ‘Rational Calvinism’, the Pastors of Geneva and the French philosophes

Summary

In this article I react to dismissive remarks made about my Jacob Vernet, Geneva and the philosophes (1994) in a recent book by David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment (2008). Vernet, a distinguished Genevan pastor and theologian, who fell foul of d'Alembert, Voltaire and Rousseau, is one of six figures studied by Sorkin, who claims that the religious dimension of the Enlightenment has been much underestimated and that the philosophes were considerably less significant than has usually been thought. Reacting to the accusation that my treatment of Vernet's theology was superficial and unreliable, I reconsider the latter's major theological works (including his Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne, Instruction chrétienne, and Pièces fugitives sur l'eucharistie) in an attempt to validate my previous interpretation, and illustrate that Vernet refused to acknowledge ideas that he had actually published. The second part of the article draws more general conclusions, pointing out spectacular errors in Sorkin's depiction of eighteenth-century Geneva and arguing that he has a clear agenda, which, in my opinion, is wrong-headed, easy to refute and—above all—often based on gratuitous accusations and statements lacking any evidence.     

Pride,Sensuality and Han: Revisiting Sin from the Underside

Abstract

This paper critically reconsiders the earliest feminist critiques of Reinhold Niebuhr's doctrine of sin and sketches out succeeding developments in feminist understandings of human sin and alienation. Borrowing the concept of "han" from Korean minjung theologians to name the experience of broken-heartedness/being sinned against that the feminist literature highlights, it argues that han can be a precondition (along with anxiety) for human sin. Finally, it asks whether there is room in Niebuhr's system for an understanding of han as a precondition for sin, and concludes that there is.     

President Obama,the Bible,and Political Rhetoric

Abstract

How has President Obama made use of the Bible in his political rhetoric, especially as it relates to public policy debates? This article addresses Obama's religious origins, his work as a community organizer in Chicago, his coming to Christian faith under the leadership of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the development of his understanding regarding the relationship between faith and politics. In particular President Obama has emphasized the notion that we are all our brothers' and sisters' keepers. He also stresses the present generation of black Americans as "the Joshua Generation." The article considers President Obama's hermeneutics, as well as the important context of the black church for his own use of Scripture. The lenses of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr are also addressed as they relate to Obama's use of Scripture in political rhetoric.     

Interrogating Neoconservative Religion

Abstract

Richard John Neuhaus had a stronger basis than most neoconservatives for claiming a theological kinship with Reinhold Niebuhr, but Niebuhr was not a neoconservative or a culture warrior, and Niebuhr did not claim a moral consensus for his concept of “biblical religion.”     

Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A cultural history

This article examines Ernest Belfort Bax's interpretation of the French Revolution and traces the impact that his idea of the Revolution had on his philosophy and his political thought. The first section considers Bax's understanding of the Revolution in the context of his theory of history and analyses his conception of the Revolution's legacy, drawing particularly on his portraits of Robespierre, Marat and Babeuf. The second section shows how the lessons Bax drew from this history shaped his socialist republicanism and discusses his support for Jacobin methods of revolutionary change. The third section of the article looks at the ways in which Bax's reading of revolutionary history affected his internationalism and shows how his ‘anti-patriotism’ led him to support the Anglo-French campaign in 1914. I argue that the Bax's understanding of the French Revolution gave body to his philosophy and greatly influenced his understanding of the socialist struggle. Bax believed that socialists had history on their side, but was so emboldened by the idea of the Revolution that he was led to advance a view of socialist change that undermined the historic values that socialism was supposed to enshrine.     

French Eighteenth-Century Materialists and Natural Law

Summary

This article looks at the discussions of natural law by the eighteenth-century French materialists Julien Offray de La Mettre, Denis Diderot, Paul Thiry d'Holbach and Claude-Adrien Helvétius. It is particularly concerned with their discussion of moral values and their attempt to find a materialistic basis for them as part of their rejection of religion. The discussion brings out the différences between them and analyses their dialogues on this question, including the other materialists' rejection of La Mettrie's amoralism, which threatened to undermine their attempt to found a natural law taught by experience and based on human nature. Particular attention is paid to Diderot's many writings which grapple with the subject, beginning with his Encyclopédie article droit naturel, probably written in 1754. He discussed the question in many of his later writings, including in his annotations on the works of Helvétius, who based natural law on the general interest. These writings reveal a tension between Diderot's emphasis on the search for individual happiness and the interests of society as he, together with d'Holbach, attempted to provide a natural basis for morality and government from which to criticise existing institutions.