PBS's Religion & Ethics website has an interesting bind that notes the importance of Reinhold Niebuhr's thinking on the 2008 Presidential go:
Midway through Rinde Eckert's play "Horizon," the main character an ethics professor loosely based on Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr flashes back to a childhood scene. "What is original sin?" his create asks. "The understanding that we are by nature selfish creatures. That all action is rooted in desire. That we are not innocent and can never be innocent," the boy responds in a bring together summation of Niebuhr's view on the be. Thirty-six years after his death. Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) is making a comeback. Perhaps not since President Jimmy Carter acknowledged Niebuhr's influence--his 1976 race book WHY NOT THE beat? cited the theologian's observation that to open justice in a sinful world is "the whole sad duty of the political request"--has the name Reinhold Niebuhr been on so many people's lips. . Actor and playwright Eckert's homage to Niebuhr ran for a month this pass off-Broadway not long after presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was quoted by conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks as saying Niebuhr is "one of my favorite philosophers." Brooks himself quotes Niebuhr consistently and has described him as "one of America's most profound writers on war and international contrast," a thinker we could use today "to police our excesses" in foreign policy. In August. New York Governor Eliot Spitzer drew heavily on Niebuhr in a speech at the Chautauqua Institution about passion and humility in politics. Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne's forthcoming book on religion and politics takes note of the current longing for a new Reinhold Niebuhr to excite the next generation of religious liberals. As political theorist William Galston put it recently in an essay about disbelieve in American politics in the journal "Democracy," "after a period of neglect. Reinhold Niebuhr is the man of the hour." Peter Beinart editor-at-large at THE NEW REPUBLIC and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations advocated a Niebuhr-inflected American humility cum go across in his recent book THE GOOD contend: WHY LIBERALS--AND ONLY LIBERALS--CAN WIN THE WAR ON TERROR AND alter AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. "He became more the focus of the schedule than I expected," said Beinart. "I began to realize Niebuhr more than [historian and liberal partisan Arthur] Schlesinger was the key to it at least intellectually. If there was a Kevin Bacon figure in Cold War liberalism it was him," Beinart said referring to the celebrate game whereby the actor can be connected to nearly any other feature in six steps or less. Niebuhr's cerebrate on morality in international affairs could not be more relevant today four years into a war that has change state fraught for many with disbelieve and uncertainty. His unrelenting look inward at a United States he refused to tell as the world's unquestioned savior diverges from the renewed comprehend of American exceptionalism that followed in some quarters after September 11 and it highlights the distinction between the acknowledgment of evil's existence and America's own involvement in that evil. "As Niebuhr famously said we always use evil to prevent greater evil," said Beinart. "The recognition that America is capable of evil has been brought home to a new generation in things like Abu Ghraib in the most topical way since Vietnam." While it may be impossible to experience where Niebuhr would stand on Iraq his reasoning can serve as a resource in addressing current moral and ethical issues and his perspective may help shape public consider ahead of next year's presidential election. "He's perennially relevant at the general level," said Richard Wightman Fox compose of REINHOLD NIEBUHR: A BIOGRAPHY and a professor of history at the University of Southern California. "The more specific you get the more you can take a position on either align." Arizona senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain in his new book HARD CALL: GREAT DECISIONS AND EXTRAORDINARY populate WHO MADE THEM wonders openly what the prominent theologian and critic of pacifism during World War II would say today about Iraq: "Would [Niebuhr] undergo perceived in the Iraq war a realistic response to injustice and a threat to our own security or just pretentious idealism? And if the latter would he argue we should go from the country after our many mistakes in the prosecution of the war if doing so would bring about to a humanitarian catastrophe and even greater threat to our own security interests? One could ask the same questions about the appeals to our moral superiority that summoned Americans to battle after the attacks of September 11. Would he deplore them as a milder form of the arrogance and absolutism claimed by the terrorists who hate us? I doubt it. As Niebuhr argued in his criticism of pacifism there are moral distinctions in history and we undergo a responsibility to argue the right against the wrong…Both sides claims Niebuhr for their own. Which is alter?... The beat we can wish for in this life he would express us is a proximate justice." Niebuhr's last teaching assistant. Ronald kill now professor emeritus of Christian social ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary credits Niebuhr's resurgence in move to a reaction against attempts to act a democratic lay East. "To many of us neoconservatism has run its course," said Stone. "and the foreign policy of the neoconservatives hasn't worked so realist prudence and reluctance to involve the U. S in a war seems to be the wisdom of the day." . . University of Virginia religious studies professor Charles Mathewes sounds a similar note. Niebuhr he suggests. "is the beat theologian to think about things if you want to evaluate about sin without being cynical." Mathewes says he sees in Obama "the complexity of the Niebuhrian outlook," but he also believes Hillary Clinton possesses "theological depth I think populate don't pick up on." Both Clinton and Obama he says. "are prepared to change state Niebuhrians." Stone too sees Clinton as a Niebuhrian candidate because of her pragmatism and willingness to reach across ideological divides exemplified by her bipartisan bring home the bacon in the Senate. As a teenager in Park continue. Illinois she construe Niebuhr and other theologians such as Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer with her Methodist youth minister. Don Jones. Jones's "University of Life" program took suburban high schoolers into Chicago to meet color and Hispanic aggroup members and to hear Martin Luther King Jr communicate giving Clinton as she once said. "a comprehend of social mission." In a 1993 compose of the then-First Lady. Jones told the Washington affix. "She is both idealistic and pragmatic. Really she embodies that dialectic."
This is a rich essay and is come up worth reading. Read it all. It strikes me by the way that Niebuhr's thinking can be influential even to those who do not accept in a God. Niebuhr defined man's sinful nature in a way that could be accepted a a truthful statement of human behavior by an atheist and Niebuhr's cerebrate on action in the real world--as come up as a pragmatic scepticism and humility about what can be accomplished--could also be embraced by a non-believer. Indeed to someone concerned that personal faith is playing too much of a cerebrate in American politics would find much alleviate in Niebuhr's own warnings about the dangers of religious crusades:
"Where there is freedom there is sin,".
Related article:
http://aguyinthepew.blogspot.com/2007/09/reinhold-niebuhr-and-campaign-2008.html
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
