Is Obama Niebuhrian?

Theologians tend to find it interesting when political figures invoke the name of some theologian. That is why many ears perked up when Obama claimed to have read and been influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr. Perhaps this is surprising to many of us because theologians don’t seem to serve a particularly important function in contemporary politics–unless, of course, you’re willing to count Rick Warren or Dobson among the theologians. Of course, political speeches often invoke names and it is not at all unusual to allude to some famous and universally well-regarded religious figure. Indeed, a lot of energy goes into finding the right theo-religio-rhetoric to employ in a political speech. But, it seems to me that it is more rare to find a political figure actually invoking the name of an academic theologian. I suppose this says much about the place of academic theology in U.S. politics and the place of academic theology in popular culture in general. Back in the day it seems like folks like Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr were not only respected scholars, but they were something like rockstars at a popular level and among the political and cultural elite. We simply don’t have a Tillich or a Niebuhr today.

There has been some commentary on Obama’s relationship to Niebuhr. One particularly bad one on Speaking of Faith featuring David Brooks a conservative columnist for The New York Times, E.J. Dionne a liberal columnist at The Washington Post, and an invocation by the neoconservative theologian Jean Bethke Elshtain. So, it came as a bit of a relief to see this wonderful post on Niebuhr and Obama by the always brilliant and balanced Gary Dorrien at The Immanent Frame. In this post Dorrien distinguishes between the many competing Niebuhrs–the liberal, moderate, conservative, radical, and even neoconservative interpretations of Niebuhr–in order to situate Obama’s alleged Niebuhrianism. Against the neoconservative (mis)appropriation of Niebuhr, Dorrien rightly states, “If the neocons had absorbed even half of Niebuhr’s realism, we might have been spared the very bad idea of invading Iraq.” In Dorrien’s assessment, “the key to Niebuhr, and to Obama’s interest in him, is the idea of combining a realistic understanding of politics and human nature with a religiously inspired idealism.” For Obama, according to Dorrien, Niebuhr symbolizes the “possibility of a progressive realism that defends America’s interests more prudently and advances the cause of social justice.” Both figures “blend liberal internationalist and realist motifs, contending that multilateral cooperation is compatible with the power-seeking clash of nations. The case for a strong international community has a realistic basis, that the benefits of cooperation outweigh the costs and risks of not working together. All parties are better off when the most powerful nations agree not to do everything that is in their power and nations work together to create new forms of collective security.”

I think this is entirely correct. Now I am no Niebuhrian–in fact, rarely do I agree with Niebuhr, especially when it comes to politics. But I think Dorrien is correct on this and indeed such a politics strikes me as a much better way forward than the last eight years. In seems that in Dorrien’s perspective Obama actually knows his Niebuhr quite well and to at least some extent is faithful to Niebuhr. If only our politicians would take seriously the opinion of Time Magazine and read a little more of “America’s Best Theologian.”

Reinventing Mennonite identity: on accommodating to Reinhold Niebuhr

In a recently published collection of lectures entitled Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution, John Howard Yoder observes the oddity that the major Mennonite identity crisis of the twentieth century is the consequence of accommodation to a professor of applied Christianity at Union Theological Seminary.  The professor, of course, is one of the major American Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr. With the rise of Hitler, the liberal pacifist movement, so prominent after World War I, almost completely collapsed not least due to the stinging critiques launched by Niebuhr. If the threat of the Hitler regime pushed the liberal pacifist ethic to its limit, Niebuhr’s theological critique was just enough to push the movement over the edge. The remaining pacifists in America, found primarily now in the historic peace churches, were also forced to respond to the Niebuhrian challenge, but from a different angle. Niebuhr’s criticism of liberal pacifism questioned both the scriptural basis and the effectiveness of their position. According to Niebuhr, the Jesus of the New Testament teaches nonresistance as opposed to the type of strategic active nonviolence advocated by liberal pacifists. The problem with liberal pacifism, in Niebuhr’s view, is that it attempts to ground its absolutist position in an erroneous interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. Strategic active nonviolence is to be commended as a (sometimes) effective method of social change, but it is a form of coercion, a form of power that Jesus expressly rejects. Thus, liberal pacifists have no basis to attack non-pacifists. Pacifists of the Mennonite variety, however, in their simple obedience to Jesus’ teachings on nonresistance are at least biblically consistent, despite their social and political irrelevance. Niebuhr believed that Mennonites fulfill a particularly important vocation of the Christian church. By their social and political “withdrawal” Mennonites helpfully serve to remind the rest of the Christian church of the lofty ideals of Jesus. Yet, no matter how commendable, such an ethic of nonresistance can never serve as the basis of a Christian ethic that seeks to be responsible in the messy world of politics.

Niebuhr’s back-handed compliment to Mennonites in his critique against liberal pacifism helped to create a division in Mennonite theology along the lines of a dichotomy between withdrawal and responsibility. In response to the criticisms of Niebuhr many Mennonites felt compelled to distinguish themselves from the liberal pacifist position by accepting the role of pacifism as an apolitical socially irrelevant vocation that Niebuhr had created and commended. Yoder observes a strikingly similarity in the responses of the conservative Mennonite biblical scholar John R. Mumaw and the liberal Mennonite Donovan Smucker to the challenge of Niebuhr. In order to section themselves off from Niebuhr’s critique of liberal pacifism, both thinkers chose to accept the role given to them by Niebuhr: to become more fully that nonresistant sectarian withdrawing enclave of Niebuhr’s imagination, in the name of renouncing the type of pacifism that is concerned with effectiveness and responsibility. Yoder observes that more than anything Niebuhr’s impact served to reinforce “a Mennonite tendency to dualistic analysis…that says we cannot do anything in the wider world—because we want to be different from those pacifists who are naïve about the possibilities of the good” (297).  Such a position, however, did not stem from the history of  Mennonite faith, but was rather learned from Mennonite “accommodation to Reinhold Niebuhr.” In short, such a position was invented by “accepting the backhanded compliment that Niebuhr gave us when he said we are consistent but irrelevant” (298).

The Godlessness of Reinhold Niebuhr

In reaction to the optimism of the Social Gospelers and the liberal Protestantism of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr attempted to recover the traditional Christian doctrine of original sin. In Niebuhr’s view, the optimistic humanism of the so-called Social Gospel was wrongheaded because it didn’t account for the fallibility and utter fallenness of humanity. So, Niebuhr came up with a robust notion of original sin to counter balance thinkers like Walter Rauschenbausch. I think Niebuhr actually got this right, but he failed to see that the real problem with the Social Gospel movement and liberal Protestant optimism was not primarily in their loss of the doctrine of original sin, rather it was in their loss of the doctrine of God. As far as I can tell, Niebuhr didn’t really see this because Niebuhr didn’t really believe in God. So, with Niebuhr you have this robust doctrine of original sin but without any real doctrine of God or eschatology that would play into the Christian life. Effectively, you get the “impossible ethic of Jesus,” a dreadful pessimism about the Christian life, and a strange but guarded optimism in America.