The Theological Vision Of Reinhold Niebuhr S The Irony Of American History

Reinhold Niebuhr remains a reference point in an ongoing national conversation about America's role in the world. Commentators with divergent political and religious views draw upon his 1951 work, The Irony of American History. In this book Scott R. Erwin brings an appreciation of Niebuhr's theological vision to aid understanding of Irony.

“[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away . . . the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.”—President Barack Obama Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr’s masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr’s wisdom will cause readers to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace. “The supreme American theologian of the twentieth century.”—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., New York Times “Niebuhr is important for the left today precisely because he warned about America’s tendency—including the left’s tendency—to do bad things in the name of idealism. His thought offers a much better understanding of where the Bush administration went wrong in Iraq.”—Kevin Mattson, The Good Society “Irony provides the master key to understanding the myths and delusions that underpin American statecraft. . . . The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, from the Introduction

This book presents the argument that the growth in the use of Niebuhrian irony in American historical writing is an indication of the developing maturation of American historical consciousness. This book asserts a secular, comprehensive, ironic interpretation of the American past that has never been presented.

In 2007 then-presidential-candidate Barack Obama called Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 1971) his "favorite philosopher." Reinhold Niebuhr Revisited offers fresh and creative ways of looking at this influential American theologian s views on religion, politics, and culture through the eyes of diverse respected scholars.

This book intends to analyze Reinhold Niebuhr's understanding of the state in his Christian Realism. Although his overall notion was thoroughly analyzed in different disciplines and respects, this specific focus can be diagnosed as a lacuna. The task of this book is to develop a hypothesis in terms of under what political, social, organizational or intellectual context Niebuhr made use of what definition of the state. When did he support the extension of state power (e. g. in war times, during economic crisis) and when did he criticize tendencies toward autocratic structures inside Western style democracies?