Thirty-six years after his death, Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr seems more alive than ever. Perhaps not since President Jimmy Carter acknowledged Niebuhr’s influence in his 1976 campaign has the name been on so many people’s lips.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama told New York Times columnist David Brooks that Niebuhr is “one of my favorite philosophers.” Brooks himself quotes Niebuhr consistently, describing him as a thinker we could use today “to police our excesses” in foreign policy.
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne’s forthcoming book takes note of the current longing for a new Niebuhr to inspire religious liberals, while GOP hopeful John McCain, in his volume, “Hard Call,” wonders what the critic of pacifism during World War II would say today about Iraq. As political theorist William Galston put it recently: “After a period of neglect, Reinhold Niebuhr is the man of the hour.”
Niebuhr is widely regarded as one of the most significant Christian intellectuals of the 20th century. Born in 1892 in Missouri to German parents, Niebuhr was ordained in the German Evangelical Church (later part of the United Church of Christ) and taught for more than three decades at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He was a founder of the liberal anticommunist lobbying group Americans for Democratic Action, and in 1948, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
I hope the comments will focus on Niehbur here and not getting sidetracked on presidential candidates.
No one who has so far failed to read Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History should again pass GO without remedying that situation.
A footnote: Niebuhr may be enjoying a resurgence right now, but this isn’t the first one he’s enjoyed since his heyday in the 1930s to the 1960s. He was again very big in the 1980s, and many will remember that and the biographies and scholarly attention paid to him then, as well as the controversies and debates about his meaning and influence.
Also to be commended is the work of his brother, H. Richard Niebuhr, even more of a theologian’s theologian than his Reinhold. And, frankly, much of Reinie’s style is dull, rushed, and not much fun to read (I’m thinking more of Nature and Destiny of Man than of Irony). But HRN’s style is always beautiful and well crafted. HRN’s Radical Monotheism and Western Culture might be a good place to start.
Both brothers, btw, were huge fans of Abraham Lincoln, whose approach to Providence might be valuable not only for our current politicians to make more of but also for our current TEC leaders to take to heart.
I’ve not read Reinhold in any systematic way, but I highly recommend “The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.”
Niebuhr was a member of Norman Thomas’ Socialist Party and represents a political view of Christianity which dovetails with any current ‘ progressive’, ‘socialist’, or member of the democrat party such as Jimmy Carter or Barak Obama. Whereas he claimed to like the views of Lincoln, Lincoln was politically to the right of Niebuhr.