Reinhold Niebuhr and the Interwar Period

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

I. Early Life

• A. Born in Missouri, son of Gustav and Lydia

• 1. Father was German immigrant and German Evangelical pastor in Prussian Church

Union (now part of UCC)

• 2. Following his father's death in 1913, Niebuhr became a pastor serving in the interim

• B. Schooling

• 1. Studied at Elmhurst (graduated 1910) in Illinois and Eden Theological Seminary in

Missouri

• a) Both Niebuhrs learned from Samuel D. Press (Eden) the "Barthian before

Barth;" studied under Harnack in Berlin; German Evangelical pastor

• (1) "Samuel Press was pietistic and orthodox without being sentimental or liter-al. And his theology was grounded biblically. Reinhold Niebuhr was struck by Press's ability "to hold to an almost absolutely even keel while there were all kinds of variations to the right and to the left of him." (At the time Niebuhr spoke he had "come back pretty much to the center" where Press had always stood.)"¹

• 2. B. Div and M. A at Yale Divinity School (graduated 1914)

• 3. Brother: H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962) > Professor at Yale Divinity School >

Christ and Culture (1951)

• a) The Responsible Self > unfinished because of death > advocates human agents as

"in response" (God, culture, community) partially in contrast to his brothers notion of responsibility

II. Public Stage

• A. Detroit

• 1. Ordained in 1915 by German Evangelical Synod and sent to Detroit Church

• 2. Parishoners

• a) largely automobile industry workers

• b) Immigrants from South (black and white) and Europe (Jewish) > social tensions

and rise of KKK — Niebuhr preaches against

• 3. Preaches "Social Gospel"

• a) Brought ideas stretching mid 19th to 20th century > second coming brought

about by absence of social evils in humankind | Post-millennialism/pre-millennialism (Romans 20)

• b) Progressivism, New Deal, MLK, AFL > Labor Forward, Great Society, Libera-tion Theology

• c) Washington Gladden

• (1) PA > NY > MA > OH

• (2) Congregational Pastor, progression, unionizer, opposer of racial segregation

• d) Walter Rauschenbusch

• (1) Hell's Kitchen

• (2) "[Gospel of individual salvation] has not evoked faith in the will and power

of God to redeem the permanent institutions of human society from their inherited guilt of oppression and extortion."²

• e) Jane Addams – Settlement movement (Hull House in Chicago) > Rich and poor

together

• f) Niebuhr rejects liberal optimism on the basis of poor conditions of factory work-ers > criticism of Ford and capitalism

• B. Skepticism of German-Americans during WW1 for dual loyalties influenced Niebuhr to

stress German-American patriotism

III. New York

• A. Becomes Professor of Practical Theology at Union Theological Seminary (1928-1960)

• 1. Mentors Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

• a) anti-Nazi dissident > founds Confessing church > The Cost of Discipleship

• (1937) > Gestapo arrest 1943 > imprisoned, transfered to concentation camp >

tried for plot to assassinate Hitler > hung April 9, 1945

• B. Influences: neo-Orthodoxy > transcendence of God > original sin > dialecticism > crisis

• 1. "... About midway in my ministry which extends roughly from the peace of Ver-sailles [1919] to the peace of Munich [1938], measured in terms of Western history, I underwent a fairly complete conversion of thought which involved rejection of almost all the liberal theological ideals and ideas with which I ventured forth in

• 1915. I wrote a book [Does Civilization Need Religion?], my first, in 1927 which ...

contains almost all the theological windmills against which today I tilt my sword. These windmills must have tumbled shortly thereafter for every succeeding volume expresses a more and more explicit revolt against what is usually known as liberal culture."³

• a) Karl Barth (1886-1968) > Swiss Reformed theologian, Confessing church in

Germany > rejected "liberal" theology as based in "natural" theology (i.e. Thomas, Schleiemacher, Hegel > advocating reliance on the revelation of God because of the influence of sin > dialectic Truth as God is both grace and justice

• (1) "To be sincere, our thought must share in the tension of human life, in its

criss-cross lines, and in its kaleidoscopic movements. And life is neither simple, nor straightforward, nor obvious. Things are simple and straightforward and obvious only when they are detached from their context and then treated superficially. The reality to which life bears witness must be disclosed in the deep things of all observable phenomena, in their whole context–and in their krisis. Only dialectical human thinking can fulfill its purpose and search out the depth and context and reality of life: only dialectical thought can lead to genuine reflection upon its meaning and make sense of it. For when our thought moves onwards direct and unbroken, when it is comprehensive, it is quite certain that we are not thinking about life; we are not thinking, that is to say, about the krisis in which human life is in fact being lived. It is not so much ‘complicated’ thinking which is doctrinaire, but that much-praised ‘simplicity.’ Men think ‘simply’ when they pretend to know what they do not know. The straight-moving thought which we so earnestly desire is not genuine thought at all. Genuine thinking is always strange to the world and unsympathetic."⁴

• C. Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932)

• 1. People are more likely to sin as members of groups then individuals > polemicised:

pacifisim, liberalism, Dewey and Social Gospel

• D. Member of the Socialist Party of America (1930s) > dislikes die-hard Marxists are

naively religious

• E. Organizes Fellowship of Socialist Christians (1930s?)

• a) Not communist, but acknowledges Marxian social philosophy

• b) Paul Tillich (1886-1965) > German Lutheran > existentialist Theologian who

wrote widely > meaning through ontology > God as the "ground of being"

• F. International Relief Association (1933) (IRA; now International Rescue Committee,

IRC)

• a) Among founding members were Einstein > Aid relief for Germans under Nazi

regime

• G. Serenity Prayer? (1937)

• 1. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change

the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.

Do you see Neibuhr's change of heart as inconsistent (whether it be philosophically, theological-ly, spiritually, conscientiously) or was he confronted with truly new "information" that forced

him to alter his existing framework?

Internationalism, Utopianism and Realism:

Pacifism as utopianism contrasted with Voegelin's "don't immanentize the eschaton?" How is

"post-millenialism," idealism, utopianism embraced, but built on differently by pacifists and the

Nazi's?⁵

How is the pre-WW2 discussion of "disarmament" related or not related to the pre-WW1 discus-sion of "preparedness?"⁶

Christian's accepted "intervention" because the imperialism of Nazi Germany and Japan ap-peared to be a direct threat. And yet, if it is a "direct threat" what is its relationship to "interven-tionism?" How have ambiguities in this relationship been reflexively reified in a Global World?

Balch said after the war "in an international world, all war would be civil war."⁷ Did they think

this way then? Do we?⁸

Does "Christian realism" paint a picture of the state as an agent that is inherently "isolationist"

rather than "internationalist?"

Christianity and Religion:

Niebuhr is charged with importing sometimes British (the implication being Anglican) and Euro-pean ideas of the relationship between the Church and society/state.⁹ This is in part why Neo-or-thodoxy played an important role in transforming Niebuhr's thinking. How do the historical, geo-graphical, and/or post-feudal conditions of Europe measure up to the conditions surrounding the

development of the Church/Christianity in the New World regarding the question of the relation-ship between the Church and society? Private and public? Is it surprising that Americans in a

globalizing world, would be inclined to draw on European considerations of the subject?¹⁰

What is the relationship between a personal religious conviction of pacifism following the exam-ple of Jesus as a spiritual teacher, and the assignment of the same conscious spiritual sentiment to

the actions of the state. Is this relationship tenable? If it is tenable, does that legitimize the impe-tence of organizations like the Moral Majority? If it is not tenable, then on what other founda-tions can one extrapolate what are typically "matters of consciences" or "morality" to the state as

an agent? Can the state be seen as an "agent" which is subject to the same notions of "religious or

spiritual consciousness/morality" that we may apply to ourselves as human agents?¹¹

Does the notion that "man is good," (which Neibuhr says is embraced by the "heretical Christian

pacifist) come from scriptures? Historic Religion? Reformation Christianity? Renaissance? En-lightenment? How are the "original sin" and "evil" ideas both embraced but build on in different

ways by both sides?¹²

Pacifism, Resistance and Violence

Neibuhr writes: "It is obvious that the distinction between violent and non-violent resistance is

not an absolute distinction." Do you agree? Following Childress, what role does "absolutes" play

in delimiting various perspectives on resistance?¹³

Childress writes: "Being labeled in the abstract as neither a virtue nor a vice, trust seems to be

ehtically neutral." Do you agree? Are there situations where there is a moral (categorical) imper-ative to trust, or to distrust? Does moral agency preclude trust? Or does trust preclude moral

agency?¹⁴