The Niebuhr Society

Vindicating Democracy

Slacktivist, a blogger who is best known for his incredibly extended review of the Left Behind series of novels (brief recap: They're horrible), invokes Niebuhr in response to majoritarian arguments made by religious leaders last week in response to the Obama administration's announcement that they would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court:

I would also point MacArthur toward good old Reinhold Niebuhr, the great 20th-century theologian of human nature, and particularly to The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of its Traditional Defense. There, as throughout all of his thinking, the central idea for Niebuhr is sinful human nature.

The basic idea for Niebuhr is that people are sinful and therefore not to be trusted with unchecked power. Talk of "theocracy" won't do for anyone who accepts this Pauline/Augustinian/Calvinist/Niebuhrian view of human nature. Every theocracy will be run by sinful, prideful, fallible, corruptible humans and sinful, prideful, fallible and corruptible humans cannot be trusted with the power to speak or act on behalf of God. Give a sinful human that kind of unchecked power and you've created a monster. For Niebuhr, unchecked power was an invitation to evil.

Given that belief, and his view of human nature, Niebuhr concludes that something like Madisonian democracy -- government of the people, by the people and for the people, restrained by a bill of rights and with a built-in system of checks and balances -- is the best form of government.

Reinhold Niebuhr in Hell

At the blog Religiousleftlaw.com Clark West makes the following provocative statment, responding to aspects of Niebuhr's theology:

A theology born out of hell? It may be even less obvious than the Niebuhrian recovery of original sin,  but it is my own sense  that  just such a politics of spirituality  is needed in our day, when hell on earth is all too real for so many, and thus where people of faith most need to abide- in solidarity and in fighting, hopeful love. And hell born by the merciful heart of love may prove to be far more hospitable a place to wrestle with God than any orthodox or neo-orthodox dream of heaven has ever imagined. Certainly no one has ever been turned away from approaching and even entering through hell's gates! And oddly enough, as the great Algerian writer Hélène Cixous noted after time spent in a Cambodian refugee camp, this 'hospitality of hell' may be the very ground of a new political hope for those on the left and for those left behind.

Read the whole post at the link above.

"The Niebuhrian Moment, Then and Now: Religion, Democracy, and Political Realism"

Princeton University's University Center for Human Values is sponsoring an event next week entitled "The Niebuhrian Moment, Then and Now: religion, democracy, and political realism". This event is described on their website thusly:

The Project in the History of Political Thought of the University Center for Human Values will hold a half-day symposium reflecting on the thought of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and its appropriation across a range of disciplines and in American public life over the last eighty years. The political implications of Niebuhr's account of sin as pride or self-love unfolded in the course of his lifetime, paralleling and challenging major turning points in American history involving domestic social change and varying forms of armed intervention abroad. Niebuhr's non-sentimental view of democracy and his 'Christian realist' perspective on international relations constitute a controversial legacy for political debate today, having been cited by both Obama and McCain in the 2008 election and contended over by David Brooks and Arthur Schlesinger. With this gathering, we explore the meaning of a figure and school of thought dominant in shaping the American ethical landscape of the twentieth century, and its disputed relevance for the twenty-first.

For more information and a schedule, click the link above.

Non-Violence, Religion and Politics: King, Gandhi, and Niebuhr -- MLK Day at St. Olaf College

St. Olaf College recently sponsored a Martin Luther King Day event relating to the theme of nonviolence in the work of King, Gandhi, and Reinhold Niebuhr. You can watch the entire panel here.

New Niebuhr Related Article

Niebuhr Society board member Scott Paeth has recently published an article on the contemporary relevance of Reinhold Niebuhr in the online journal Politics and Culture. "The Need for an Augustinian Left" appears in the December issue of the Journal.