Reinhold Niebuhr And Contemporary Politics

When Barack Obama praised the writings of philosopher theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the run up to the 2008 US Presidential Elections, he joined a long line of top politicians who closely engaged with Niebuhr's ideas, including Tony Benn, Jimmy Carter, Martin Luther King Jr. and Dennis Healey. Beginning with his early ministry amongst industrial workers in early twentieth century Detroit, Niebuhr displayed a passionate commitment to social justice that infused his life's work. Rigorously championing 'Christian Realism' he sought a practically orientated intellectual engagement with the political challenges of his day. His ideas on International Relations have also helped to shape debate amongst leading academic thinkers and policy makers. In both Christian and secular contexts he continues to attract new readers today. In this timely re-evaluation both critics and disciples of Niebuhr's work reflect on his notable contribution to Christian social ethics, the Christian doctrine of humanity, and the engagement of Christian thought with contemporary politics. The authors bring a wide range of expertise from both sides of the Atlantic, indicating how a re-evaluation of Niebuhr's thought can help inform contemporary debates on Christian social ethics and other wider theological issues.

William Temple, late Archbishop of Canterbury, on meeting Reinhold Niebuhr for the first time, commented, At last I've met the troubler of my peace. Of him John Baillie, the distinguished theologian, also remarked, Intellectually, Niebuhr is head and shoulders, he is legs and ankles above any other American. The full range of Niebuhr's political thought -- in his own writing -- is here made available in one convenient volume. Using materials from sixteen of his books and some one hundred and seventy of his articles, the editors, Harry R. Davis and Robert C. Good, have brilliantly succeeded in linking together the various selections so that they form a logical whole. The volume begins with Niebuhr's examination of the contemporary crisis and his analysis of the false solutions offered by the liberal creed and by communist doctrine. The ground thus cleared, Niebuhr erects his own system of political thought. In the final section of the book, Niebuhr deals with problems of the day in the light of his central beliefs and insights. As an advisory committee the editors enjoyed the assistance of Charles Burton Marshall (Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research), Hans J. Morgenthau (Chicago), E. E. Schattschneider Jr. (Harvard), and Arnold Wolfers (Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research). Niebuhr himself read and approved the contents.

A primer on the current "Niebuhr revival" of the political left and right, this book traces the significance of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought for secular as well as deeply Christian minds. Placed in the context of religious and cultural history, Niebuhr's theological views deepen and challenge contemporary expertise on issues of war, peace, economic, and personal security. While rejecting cynical pessimism and naive optimism, Niebuhr's Christian realism reinvigorates age-old teachings of the Bible, St. Paul, Augustine, and Kierkegaard. His thought enriches present-day debates between science and religion and between atheists, agnostics, and believers. To live with Niebuhr's legacy is to combine critical acumen with humble self-awareness. It is to pursue a larger common good - for him, God-given - that is shared among individuals, nations, and the world community.

American public life is gripped by a tumult that it has not experienced in at least half a century. Resentment, distrust, despair, fear, envy, and outrage are the passions of the day. Yet it was not long ago that political scientists and theologians could speak of a “Niebuhr renaissance” marked by an appreciation of moral paradox, ethical nuance, and a recognition of the irony of American history. American political leaders from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to George Bush and John McCain referenced Reinhold Niebuhr as an important influence on their political understandings. Columnists like David Brooks commented on the political condition of contemporary America, and scholars from Gary Dorrien and Daniel Rice to Richard Crouter developed academic accounts of Niebuhr’s political realism. From an insistence on political purity, to a wariness of international institutions and the claims of expertise, to a rejection of whole categories of public goods – it would be difficult to find a more significant shift from the principles that shaped statecraft and public policy during Niebuhr’s prime to those that are foundational in the age of Trump. Reinhold Niebuhr in Theory and Practice: Christian Realism and Democracy in America in the Twenty-First Century explains the collapse of the Niebuhrian renaissance in public life and the ascendance of the “children of light and the children of darkness” in the 2016 election. Our focus is Niebuhr himself and what the encounter between his own theology and his practical political experience might reveal in our contemporary situation. Niebuhr tells us that he does not offer precise policy prescriptions. But Niebuhr was a prolific author, and his works offer insights both into what realistic and Christian public policies would look like, and perhaps more importantly into how citizens should think for themselves about the political challenges of our times. Our aim, then, is to reassert the possibility of a distinctly Niebuhrian public intellectualism and a distinctly Niebuhrian political practice in the wake of the 2016 election.

A new and penetrating assessment of the work of the twentieth century's best known public theologian.

This volume aims to reconstruct and debate a contemporary Christian realist framework, while also applying such a perspective to the issues of contemporary politics such as the Bush Doctrine, the laws of war, democracy and democratization, U.S. participation in international institutions, and apocalyptic terrorism.

A definitive collection of the theologian and public intellectual who was the conscience of the American Century. “One of my favorite philosophers,” remarked Barack Obama about the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) in 2007. President Obama is but one of the many American political leaders—including Jimmy Carter and Martin Luther King Jr.—to be influenced by Niebuhr’s writings. Throughout the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, Niebuhr was one of the most prominent public voices of his time, probing with singular style the question of how to act morally in a fallen world. This Library of America volume, prepared by Niebuhr’s daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, collects four indispensable books: Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic (1929), Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944), and The Irony of American History (1952), along with a selection of essays, sermons, lectures, prayers, including his world-famous Serenity Prayer, and writings on current events—Prohibition, the Allied bombing of Germany, apartheid in South Africa, the Vietnam War—many of which are collected here for the first time.