For this month I may have picked one of the most interesting biographical subjects to personally explore and think about. Perhaps I picked Reinhold Niebuhr because he is considered the most profound American theologian of the 20th century, yet again maybe it's because he referred to himself as an individual only interested in "applied Christianity" as opposed to being a theologian. One thing for sure he certainly understood irony and paradox.
Niebuhr, of German ancestry, was born in 1892 in Missouri, the son of an evangelical minister, a mother who, herself, was a minister's daughter and with a brother who became a significant theologian in his own right. His career in religion, politics and social action was as profound as anybody's could be. Many people know him as the author of the serenity prayer. He was founder, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, Walter Reuther and Arthur Schlesinger of American's for Democratic Action. He ran for the U.S. Senate as a Socialist. He was an unintended historian.
Here are the things that studying him made me ponder ...
Niebuhr saw a vast gulf between the moral individual and the morality of groups of humans. All humans, to him, had both creative and destructive impulses, a regard for both self and "others". Social groups were less able to control their tendency to curb a sense of selfishness. They had a tendency to use a sort of moral superiority as a reason to defend their actions, no matter what the consequences of those actions on others would be. He saw America's transcendence to becoming the most powerful nation in the world as a breeding ground to defend our "actions" to feel morally superior to others. He became, at least to me, the first proponent of situationalism, in both political affairs and religion. Orthodoxy in religion could not work, in his estimation, as the true complexity of a global world took root in the 1950's. As a result, he wrote extensively about the limitation of "reason" to continue as the dominant organizing premise for society. He did not go to "the other end-point" either. He saw liberal Christian theology (vs. orthodoxy) as ill prepared for the future as it relied on man's rational capacity to make moral transcendence. This "function" between individual and group behavior coupled with the inadequacies of the spectrum of orthodox vs. liberal theology was also overlaid upon political life. Niebuhr may have said it best this way ... "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."
As stated earlier, Niebuhr was a leading indicator to the role that paradox had come to play in the dawn of the 21st century. In the past 7 years he has been "claimed" by both the neo-liberal and the neo-conservative movements to defend their respective views on going to war in Iraq.
He originally believed in passivist behavior but eventually came to believe that social structure necessitated "coercion" to sustain itself. He has been considered both a defender and a critic of idealism.
Niebuhr's greatest personal source of inspiration (at least in my eyes) was Abraham Lincoln ... which may be why or at least one reason why, I've "bumped in to him" in my reading lately, Lincoln having so many recent books published about him. Lincoln, like Niebuhr, envisioned the bible as a metaphor. What was really important, to both of them, was the recognition of a wisdom that we could only move closer to in our lifetime, not entirely comprehend.
In Lincoln's second inaugural, four plus years into the Civil War he wrote ...
"Both warring halves of the union read the same bible and pray to the same god. Each invokes God's aid against the other. Let us judge not that we not be judged. Let us fight on with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right. But, let us never forget the almighty has his own purposes."
This seemed like a good time to ask you to investigate your own personal faith dimension, at least as to the same degree as you challenge your own belief constructs. Remember, they are not the same things.
W2
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