Reinhold Niebuhr was a widely known public intellectual in 20th Century America. He was a theologian who spent the bulk of his career as a professor at a seminary in Manhattan, NY. Did you know they had those there? Seems unexpected. Anyway, he had some fascinating ideas, including something called “Christian Realism.” I’m not sure whether he coined that term, but it was a powerful set of ideas that influenced leadership in the US during the middle of the last century.
Christian Realism is (or was, I don’t know if anybody still operates in that tradition) based on three ideas.
- People are real shits, so just deal with that and don’t expect them to get any better. The more orthodox Christian Realist formulation invokes sinfulness in the long Christian tradition of that idea, but I find that “people are real shits” pretty much sums it up.
- Even if you believe there’s a deity watching everything, which I think is also part of the Christian tradition, you can’t expect the world, or people, to be made any better by godly intervention, because people (remember, the real shits) are free to do whatever they bloody well want.
- Even given all that, though, when the founder of Christianity pointed out that you should love your neighbor as yourself, he as serious as a heart attack, so take it seriously.
As I understand it, that’s about it. Christian Realists work for social justice and all that entails, but they don’t expect tremendous, world-changing results. They’re realists, which to a lot of folks who self-apply that label means “don’t expect very much.”
The whole thing sounds pretty iffy to me, but nevertheless Niebuhr wrote some things that are well worth reading. He wrote a lot about ethics, and Moral Man and Immoral Society is a pretty clear presentation of what conservatism used to be in this country. On the other hand, he was a leader of the Socialist Party in the 1930s and helped found the progressive group Americans for Democratic Action in the 1940s. At the same time he became a staunch anti-communist and supporter of the Cold War. And yet…he campaigned against the Vietnam War.
My point is that it’s pretty hard to pin him down, and that alone would make him interesting, even without his books, which include The Irony of American History. In that book, he wrote:
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in 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.”
