More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
April 2 - April 20, 2022
The logic of the Social Gospel presumed that a clear-eyed and courageous group of Christians could use rational suasion and moral authority to awaken the nation’s social conscience.
Whereas Reinhold saw relentless human effort as key to transformation, West notes that H. Richard saw transformation as the “by-product of the quest for spiritual maturation” — a quest that requires punctuating the drive to constant, frenetic activity with stillness, surrender, and contemplation. Only then can you “connect the formation of your soul vertically with a power bigger than you.”
There are rare individuals who treat strangers with the same empathy and consideration that they do their close friends, but they are the shining exceptions. The vast majority of people behave morally toward those within their immediate networks, but self-interestedly toward those outside of their networks.
The Social Gospel, according to Niebuhr’s reading, presumed that implementing the ethical precepts of Jesus in society was a straightforward process. This presumption ignored, however, that while the ethics of Jesus are governed by the law of love, the political realm is governed by the law of power. Achieving justice in the political realm required using coercive measures that made it impossible for humans to manifest the law of love in an unsullied way. Social ethics required discerning how best to approximate the law of love in an arena that understands only power. Moral man had to be
...more
Christian realism,
A concept of faith without ethics is an empty concept.”
In Reflections, Niebuhr had taught his readers to see sin and grace, divine judgment and divine mercy at work in history. In Interpretation he encouraged his readers to see these theological categories at work in their inner lives and daily interactions. In tandem, these books presented Niebuhr’s vision for how God’s relationship with humanity plays out both in the inner life of individuals and in the arena of human relations.
Ultrarealism presumes that self-interest is the chief criterion that should shape political behavior.
Christian realists agree that self-interest is an overwhelmingly powerful determinant of human behavior, but they do not think this implies that self-interest should dictate our political decision making. While considerations of self-interest supply a valuable starting point for political analysis, final decisions should take into account certain ideals of love and justice. Consequently, the Christian realist approach to political issues often differs substantially from the ultrarealist approach.
For the Christian realist, the overwhelming tendency among human beings to act in their perceived self-interest is one but not the only effect of sin. Sin also distorts how human beings perceive themselves in relation to others. This introduces a gap between what people perceive to be in their interest and what is actually in their interest, thereby hampering their ability to gauge self-interest accurately. Human beings are driven by self-interest, but are bad at determining what their self-interest is.
If we consistently seek to serve only our interest, Christian realists argue, our faulty perceptions will cause us to spiral into ever-deeper political dysfunction. Only by aiming for the ideals of love and justice can we begin to address the problems that the distance between perception and reality introduces into our political life.
Christian realism asserts that we most effectively mitigate the destructive element in our politics, not through the relentless pursuit of self-interest, but by moving beyond self-interest through pursuing the theologically rich ideals of faith, hope, and love.
the four freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
As a Christian ethicist, he did not shy away from making moral judgments: by deploying the bomb, “we sinned grievously against the law of God and against the people of Japan,” he wrote in 1946.17
Christian realism is designed to cultivate an uneasy conscience. Highlighting both the moral stakes and the moral ambiguities of a given issue staves off the self-righteousness of artificial moral clarity on the one hand and the cynicism of Realpolitik on the other.
Gallup poll in 1945 found that a quarter of prospective voters would support an anti-Jewish candidate for Congress.
“One cannot speak of God simply by speaking of man in a loud voice.”
Barth asserted: “We ought to give up, even on our first day of deliberations, every thought that the care of the church, the care of the world, is our care. Burdened with this thought we should straighten out nothing; we should only increase disorder in church and world still more. For this is the root of all human disorder: the dreadful, godless, ridiculous opinion that man is the Atlas who is destined to bear the dome of heaven upon his shoulders.”
Niebuhr continued, we must not stop there: “We cannot derive from our ultimate faith an irresponsible attitude to this perplexing situation in which we stand. We must work while it is day. And we will work the more diligently if we are not harassed by fears of the perils of the night, since we worship a Lord who is Lord of both day and night, having conquered darkness, night, and death in the Cross and the Resurrection.”
For Niebuhr the good news of the Christian message was that Jesus’s death and resurrection inaugurated God’s triumph over evil, which would be completed at the final judgment. In the meantime, the task of followers of Jesus was to become participants in the process of God’s unfolding work of redemption, finding the strength to face present evils without despair in their hope that history would be redeemed.
The conference served to clarify the two thinkers’ differences rather than to resolve them. The lines they drew in their debate continue to shape contemporary discussions over issues at the intersection of faith and politics: To what extent should churches weigh in on political issues? How should they leverage their moral authority? Where does this moral authority come from? Are religious institutions supposed to provide a haven from a broken world, or are they supposed to supply a platform for engaging the world?
It presupposed that people could be sorted into one of two camps: God-fearing, freedom-loving patriots, or godless enemies of freedom. But can we divide humanity along such stark black-and-white categories? What about people who profess belief in God but don’t go to church, or churchgoers who struggle with doubt? Does either fit squarely in the “godly” camp? What about war heroes who happen to be agnostic — does their lack of religion negate their patriotism? Or people of faith who oppose the American way on religious grounds — do their criticisms of country invalidate their status as “godly”?
How ironic then, Niebuhr observed, that a nation that asserted its innocence so emphatically developed and deployed the atomic bomb: “Thus an ‘innocent’ nation finally arrives at the ironic climax of its history. It finds itself the custodian of the ultimate weapon which perfectly embodies and symbolizes the ambiguity of physical warfare” (492). The “shining city upon a hill” ushered in the age of nuclear warfare.
The same technological prowess that made the 1950s’ standard of living possible also made nuclear annihilation possible. Nuclear energy powered homes and bombs alike.
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense of any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness”
For Niebuhr, the only one who “knows where the trajectory of history is headed is God” — a fact that we Americans have routinely forgotten in our zeal for projecting our values across the globe.
“We do not know the architectural proportions of Bethel,” Niebuhr noted. “But we do know that it is, metaphorically, the description of the East Room of the White House, which President Nixon has turned into a kind of sanctuary.” By bringing Graham to the White House, Nixon had not only violated the principle of separation of church and state enshrined in the Bill of Rights; he had also created a convenient way of co-opting the religious authority of those he invited to speak. “It is wonderful,” Niebuhr wrote acidly, “what a simple White House invitation will do to dull the critical faculties,
...more
The natural law tradition has roots extending back to ancient Greece. It presupposes that the universe has a moral structure that human beings are wired to comprehend. Specifically Christian variants of natural law maintain that, while sin marred the ability of human beings to behave according to these precepts, their God-given capacity to perceive right and wrong remains largely intact.
Communism worshiped a false god, but democracy-loving Americans were also vulnerable to idolatry. When we claimed to enact the will of God through our politics, we engaged in a no less egregious form of idol worship.
The fact that all human societies have notions of justice attests to the reality of sin; yet the fact that we are able to refine and improve our justice systems — that we can advance the cause of justice — points to the enduring power of love. Indeed, if we stopped striving after an ideal of love, the social gains achieved through justice would evaporate. Justice reminds us of the impossibility of perfect love, but it depends on our continued striving for the love ideal. In Niebuhr’s words, justice “is something less than love. Yet it cannot exist without love and remain justice.”
For Niebuhr, the kingdom of God is the state of perfect harmony among human beings.
That which gives our lives deeper meaning is that which we worship. If we do not worship God — if we do not seek and find our purpose in relationship with our Creator — we seek meaning in an endless array of other things. Political causes, charismatic people, or even one’s own ego could become an object of worship.
Wherever the social impulse meets the urge to worship, a cult can form.
“My personal attitude toward atheists is the same attitude that I have toward Christians, and would be governed by a very orthodox text: ‘By their fruits shall ye know them.’”
“One of the things that Niebuhr says is look; we need to understand that there is no Christian system of politics or economics. It’s not a matter of choosing one or the other and then deciding it’s the Christian system. The Christian attitude towards every system of politics and economics is to ask what kind of justice is it going to produce in this immediate situation and to be prepared to choose the solution that offers us the best approximation of justice.”
People of faith should always try to nudge the particular social order in which they find themselves toward greater justice. And they must be willing to resist attempts to obscure injustice through appeals to religious sentiment.
“When you change your mind in public and if you’re a public figure and public intellectual, your friends hate you and your enemies hate you more. You would think if you said, ‘I was wrong, I actually agree with these people,’ [former opponents] would welcome you with open arms. But that’s not the way the world works. They sense weakness in you and they pounce. And so when someone would break ranks or change sides, often you’re alienating everyone all at once.”
moral integrity requires the courage to change.
