Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (popularly remembered as “Reine”) remains one of America’s leading theologians and ethicists. He deserves a note on this anniversary of his first notable volume, Moral Man and Immoral Society, just re-published by Westminster John Knox Press.
His book deserves another look.
Niebuhr (1892-1971) was born in Wright City, Mo., to Gustav and Lydia Hosto Niebuhr. Gustav was a minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, highly intelligent and pious. Their daughter Hulda taught at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, Ill., and their son Richard became a professor at Yale University Divinity School.
Reinhold graduated from Elmhurst College (Illinois), Eden Theological Seminary (St. Louis, Mo.) and Yale University (M.A. 1915). He was ordained a minister in the German Evangelical Synod of North America in 1913. He accepted a call to pastor a church in Detroit, Mich., where he remained for 13 years and during which time he emerged as a national figure. He cut his “eyeteeth” fighting Henry Ford, he once commented; he fought for better housing, job security, insurance, and retirement benefits for an exhausted assembly line workforce. Active in the labor movement, he joined the Socialist Party and Socialist Christians in the 1920s, influenced by Marxism. By 1928, he sat at the chair of Christian ethics at Union Theological Seminary, New York.
In Moral Man and Immoral Society, Niebuhr introduces readers to a pilgrimage through the thoughts of Augustine, Origen, Epitetus, Plutarch, Calvin, Luther, Jonathan Edwards, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, John Woolman, Walt Whitman, Nietzsche, Schleiermacher, Tolstoy, Troeltsch, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Thorstein Veblen, Unamuno, and others. What a host of references!
He begins his study of “man and society” with observations on the “Art of Living Together.” Human society will “never escape the problem of the equitable distribution of physical and cultural goods, which provide for the preservation and fulfillment of human life.” Our lives have been marred by envy, pride, greed, jealousy, bigotry, envy, coercion in which the “will to live” becomes the “will to power” — the “Scylla of despotism” becomes the “Charybdis of anarchy” (page 21-22). Niebuhr next takes on the rational and religious resources championed by rationalists and idealists. He was not completely satisfied with the average liberal Protestant belief that the Kingdom of God was right around the corner, but he did not give up on a new and just society. Reason would check selfish impulses of laissez faire and the collective ego. With regard to religious resources, Niebuhr did believe that the Kingdom of God offered hope. Confession of the sin of self-will opens a way out of hopelessness to a subjection to God’s will and the fresh hope in the Kingdom. He wrote that religious faith should leaven the idea of justice with the ideal of love and prevent the political-ethical ideal from becoming merely political — sinking into hopelessness.
Niebuhr’s views on patriotism are found in his chapter on “The Morality of Nations.”
Patriotism is a form of piety, he said. Loyalty to the nation is inspired by awe and reverence to the state and may inspire “patriotic altruism” but also “imperial aggrandizement.” He writes: “A society of nations has not really proved itself until it is able to grant justice to those who have been worsted in battle without requiring them to engage in new wars to redress their wrongs.” (p. 111). He warned of European and American imperialism and also conflicts within these nations.
To explore these dangers, the author turns to the attitudes of “privileged” and “proletarian” classes within nations and across national boundaries. People of privilege were owners and controllers of the means of production and, Niebuhr suggests, are subject to “self-deception and hypocrisy.” They tend to believe that special interest equals the common good. He discusses proletarians through the example of Karl Marx.
Marx tapped into the “vehement energy” of the workers to move them toward egalitarianism, but had no political program. Niebuhr agrees with James Madison who said: “All men with power should be distrusted” (p. 164). Further chapters explore how revolutionary and political forces differ in seeking justice for all.
Niebuhr’s book concludes with attention to the preservation of moral values in politics, the individual, and society. He notes:
In the task of that redemption the most effective agents will be the men who have substituted some new illusions for the abandoned ones. The most important of these illusions is that the collective life of mankind can achieve perfect justice. It is a very valuable illusion for the moment; for justice cannot be approximated if the hope of its perfect realization does not generate a sublime madness in the soul. Nothing but such madness will do battle with malignant power and “spiritual wickedness in high places.” The illusion is dangerous because it encourages terrible fanaticisms. It must therefore be brought under the control of reason. One can only hope that reason will not destroy it before its work is done (page 276-7).
Reinhold Niebuhr still influences us. He continued a productive career, lecturing and writing, including his Gifford Lecture, The Nature and Destiny of Man published in 1941, the same year he edited the first issue of Christianity and Crisis, which informed and motivated us for 25 years. He also helped found Americans for Democratic Action, which shaped leaders such as author Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and George Kennan, diplomat. Not too long ago, historian Martin Marty turned up 173,000 references to Niebuhr in the past few years. The references keep coming.
*Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, A Study in Ethics and Politics. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 1932, 2007.
James H. Smylie is professor emeritus of church history at Union Seminary-PSCE in Richmond, Va.
