The Future of Christian Realism: International Conflict, Political Decay, and the Crisis of Democracy (Faith and Politics: Political Theology in a New Key) 9781666923995, 9781666924015, 9781666924008, 1666923990

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The Future of Christian Realism

FAITH AND POLITICS: POLITICAL THEOLOGY IN A NEW KEY Series Editor: Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame “Political Theology” is a theme which straddles two major areas of inquiry: political philosophy and theology, or differently phrased: the realms of secular politics and the sacred. The relation is marked by difference, sometimes by tension or conflict. During the past century, such conflict reached a boiling point when the Nazi regime sought to coopt or integrate the Christian population. In opposition to this attempt, a “Confessing Church” was formed which, under the leadership of Karl Barth, issued the Barmen Declaration (May 31, 1934) which insisted on the independence of faith from political power structures while, at the same time, guarding against the pure “privatization” of faith. In our time, it is important to remember this precedent because there are strong tendencies to push religion into similar dilemmas. This series will launch new investigations into the relations between faith and politics on a broad ecumenical and global level. Its guiding question will be, “to what extent do different theologians or different political theologies make possible the prospect of a divinely sanctioned ‘kingdom’ of peace and justice?” Recent Titles The Future of Christian Realism: International Conflict, Political Decay, and the Crisis of Democracy, Edited by Dallas Gingles, Joshua Mauldin, and Rebekah L. Miles Islamic Political Theology, Edited by Massimo Campanini and Marco Di Donato Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theology, and Political Resistance, Edited by Lori Brandt Hale & W. David Hall The Legacy of the Barmen Declaration: Politics and the Kingdom, By Fred Dallmayr

The Future of Christian Realism International Conflict, Political Decay, and the Crisis of Democracy Edited by Dallas Gingles, Joshua Mauldin, and Rebekah L. Miles

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

‌‌‌‌‌‌Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN 9781666923995 (cloth) | ISBN 9781666924015 (paperback) | ISBN 9781666924008 (epub) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

to our teacher Robin W. Lovin and to our children, Katherine, Anna, Abby, Graham, Silas, Owen, Alexander, and Charles

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments Dallas Gingles, Joshua Mauldin, and Rebekah Miles

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Introduction: Realism in an Age of Global Dysfunction Eric Gregory

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SECTION ONE: THEOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL POINTS OF DEPARTURE

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Chapter One: The Christian Socialist Difference: Moral Realism, Robin Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Democratic Socialism Gary Dorrien Chapter Two: The Future of Theological Realism Gerald McKenny Chapter Three: Christian Realism and Doctrine Douglas F. Ottati Chapter Four: The Future of Moral Realism William Schweiker Chapter Five: Law and Christian Realism Elisabeth Rain Kincaid



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SECTION TWO: CHRISTIAN REALISM AND POLITICAL REALITIES

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Chapter Six: Christian Realism and International Law William P. George



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Contents

Chapter Seven: Christian Realism and International Relations Kevin Carnahan



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Chapter Eight: Environmental Ethics and Christian Realism: Reckoning with and Hope Beyond an Era of Witting Ecological Ruin 135 Frederick V. Simmons Chapter Nine: The Children of Light in the Twenty-First Century: Global Conflict, Democracy, and the Politics of Despair Joshua Mauldin Chapter Ten: Economics and the Future of Christian Realism Nathan I. C. McLellan

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Chapter Eleven: Institutions and the Future of Christian Realism Dallas Gingles



Chapter Twelve: Christian Realism and Race in the United States Peter Paris

SECTION THREE: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIAN REALISM

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Chapter Seventeen: A Gospel That Opens Up Free Spaces: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Insights into Understanding Church and State in Russia Today John P. Burgess Chapter Eighteen: Christian Realism in the United Kingdom Nigel Biggar

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Chapter Fourteen: The Chinese Dream of Prosperity: Historical Roots, Ironies, and Challenges Luping Huang

Chapter Sixteen: Christian Realism in the African Context Simeon O. Ilesanmi

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Chapter Thirteen: Fostering the Impossible in a World Marked by Sin: Bringing the New Christian Realism into Conversation with the Opioid Crisis Todd Whitmore

Chapter Fifteen: Christian Realism in Japan Yoshibumi Takahashi

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Contents

Chapter Nineteen: American Exceptionalism, Christian Realism, and the New Realities Rebekah L. Miles Conclusion: Christian Realism in a Polarized Society Robin W. Lovin Index



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About the Contributors



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In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. (Acts 2:17)

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Preface and Acknowledgments Dallas Gingles, Joshua Mauldin, and Rebekah Miles

“Christian realism is a reminder of our limits and an affirmation of our hope.” So begins Robin W. Lovin’s 2008 book, Christian Realism and the New Realities. Christian realists dwell in the tension between these poles, seeking to remain mindful of our limitations while never losing sight of hope for a better world. That hope is especially important in considering the future of Christian realism, which is the topic of this book. The future of humanity has become a source of fear and anxiety. After decades of technological and social progress, many no longer believe that the lives of our children and grandchildren will be better than our own. Rising economic inequality, pandemic disease, climate change, and the threat of nuclear war place a large question mark on the human future. This book seeks to address these concerns, remaining within that tension of limitation and hope, always seeking a balance in light of the temptation to give in to the twin dangers of utopian idealism and cynical despair. This volume is organized into three sections. Section 1 focuses on “Theological and Ethical Points of Departure,” examining the fundamental moral and theological topics that frame the discussion. Section 2 turns to politics and society, touching on a range of important issues such as racial justice, international law, economics, international relations, climate change, the opioid crisis in the United States, and the role of institutions. Section 3 provides global perspectives, looking at the relevance of Christian realism in a number of countries and continents, including Africa, China, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the United States. The point here is not to include a discussion of every location on the globe, which would be impossible, but to illustrate the relevance of Christian realism across a range of global contexts. The diverse perspectives in this volume spring from the diverse contexts and institutional locations of the authors themselves. The common task to xiii

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which these authors have devoted themselves is undergirded by both an interest in the ongoing relevance of Christian realism and a scholarly connection to Robin W. Lovin, to whom the volume is dedicated. In addition to being a leading scholar of Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian realism, Robin is an eminent teacher and mentor. His impact on the field, on the contributors to this book, certainly on its editors, and on many others throughout the world can hardly be overstated. As is his fashion, Robin provides a characteristically lucid conclusion to this volume. We are grateful for the many people and institutions who have made this book possible. Southern Methodist University has been an institutional home for all three of us, and continues to be for Rebekah and Dallas. During the writing of this book, we have been supported by two different Deans of Perkins School of Theology, William Lawrence and Craig Hill. The professors and students of SMU’s Graduate Program in Religious Studies have helped to shape our thought and support our work. We are especially grateful to PhD student Shandon Klein, who served as a research assistant for this project, helping in the final months with editing and formatting. The SMU ethics faculty members, including Charles Curran, D. Stephen Long, Hugo Magallanes, Theodore Walker, and the university-wide ethics colloquy, constitute one of the strongest intellectual communities dedicated to critical reflection on the moral life. We express our thanks to all of them. This intellectual community is sustained at the university level by the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility, which supported this volume. We express our deepest thanks to the Maguire Center and to its director, Rita Kirk. Initial drafts of many of the chapters in this volume were first presented at several panels during annual meetings of the Niebuhr Society at the American Academy of Religion. We are grateful to both of these groups for their support. We also thank those at Lexington Press who have worked with us through this process, including series editor Fred Dallmayr as well as Trevor Crowell, Michael Hals, and Megan White. If SMU is one institutional home, others include the Center of Theological Inquiry and the University of Chicago. Several of the authors in this volume have immediate connections to CTI, which fosters a distinctive environment that combines intellectual friendship and collaboration with theological productivity and precision. The University of Chicago has been for many years a central hub of Christian ethics. The voices of James Gustafson and Jean Bethke Elshtain echo through many of these chapters, reminding us of their legacy as well as their absence. Others we would like to thank include William Storrar, Oleg Makariev, Zhibin Xie, Shin Chiba, and Brian Byrd. These have been homes of various sorts for all of us. But they are not our homes. It remains, then, to say thanks to those who make up our real earthly

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homes, our families who wrap us in bonds of affection that gracefully remind us of our limits while filling us with hope for a home in a world of limitless affection. We give special thanks to our spouses, Yan Wang, Rebecca Gingles, and Len Delony, for their steadfast love and support. We offer this volume with a modest realist hope for the future. We thank Robin Lovin and our other coauthors for working to imagine a better world. We dedicate this book to Robin and, in keeping with Robin’s commitment to imagine and work toward a better future, we also dedicate it to our children, Katherine, Anna, Abby, Graham, Silas, Alexander, and Charles.

Introduction Realism in an Age of Global Dysfunction Eric Gregory

Discussions of the future, especially in academic circles, often are dogged by anxious concerns about relevance in a changing world. Appeals to previous thinkers or intellectual traditions occasionally are framed in this way, hoping to transcend mere historicizing or a narrow circle of devotees. Today, of course, we are awash in calls for another Niebuhr and a revived public theology that might speak to the challenges of our global context. They are named by this volume in terms of conflict, decay, and crisis. These are doubt important topics, and bringing to bear the resources of Christian realism is more than nostalgic gatekeeping. Indeed, some of us, inspired by the work of Robin Lovin, who never simply repeats Niebuhr’s insights, have tried to reconstruct Niebuhrian themes in conversation with contemporary liberalism, animated by concern not just for the limits of politics but also its possibilities. This reconstruction involves tending to the relevant developments since the end of the Cold War, and can require radically reframing the terms on which someone like Niebuhr understood theology, ethics, and politics, even as we find ourselves still in dialogue with him. However uncomfortable sophisticated scholars might be with popular invocations of Christian realism, I suspect many of us indulge in the relevancy game when justifying our inclusion of Niebuhr on a syllabus, or to speak for myself, carry within us our favorite Niebuhr passages about the fallen human condition, tutored by biblical and Augustinian commitments, to be brought out just at the right time when confronting sweaty Pelagians, be they undergraduates or distinguished colleagues. xvii

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Yet, the fact that “we are not Reinhold Niebuhr’s contemporaries” is a consistent refrain of Lovin’s welcome capacity to dislodge Christian realist temptations, even ones that by my lights Niebuhr rhetorically gave into when assuming the voice of a Stoic sage or biblical prophet bearing witness to the folly of humanity armed with eternal verities about sin, group egoism, and power.1 Niebuhr seemed to feel no need to reconcile these claims with his historicist aversion to essentialism. Of course, one lesson I also have learned from Robin Lovin, however we judge the relative developments in Niebuhr’s thought, is not to freeze Niebuhr in one particular historical or theological context. Niebuhr, we might say, was also never simply Niebuhr’s contemporary. Like James O’Donnell says of Augustine, Niebuhr was lucky he never had to read anything like Niebuhr. His essayistic style resisted precise definitions, detailed histories, or complex typologies. So you can do many things with Niebuhr and his realism. As a preface to this volume on the Future of Christian Realism I want to make three points, the first two historical and political, the third more theological. Lovin has done more than most in coming to terms with our new realities, ones in which, say, the classic idiom of nation-states and balance-of-power language seems obsolete given globalization and its discontents. He also has liberated those of us brought up with one version of Niebuhr’s status quo cautious realism of the powerful (often framed by Niebuhr’s critics) with a more expansive and imaginative realism that, as he once put it, explores “all of the variations on human nature and historical contingency.”2 The essays in this volume, ranging from hermeneutics and law to race and economic justice, speak to these variations with specificity. Specificity invites readers to be realistic about realism. Niebuhr’s sometimes dour pessimism was qualified by a Calvinist sense of the malleability of our arrangements and human responsibility for them. His praise for James Madison and Abraham Lincoln reflect this qualification, even if he also said surprisingly little about faith-based activism or the relevance of the liturgical practices of the church for the associational life of democracy (important themes in contemporary political theology). Another hallmark of Lovin’s contributions to Christian realism is his insistence that realism (in its theological, moral, and political modes) encompasses more than Niebuhr and his immediate followers. It includes the Social Gospel and American Catholic social ethics, under the banner of the real activity of God in history, the relevance of the social sciences, and the salience of political involvement. Pluralism will no doubt continue to mark the ecumenical future of Christian realism in a secular age where many of the dangerous social dynamics that Niebuhr identified have only accelerated. But a discussion of that future might today begin with a more backward-looking gaze, especially since it is a past that disturbingly no longer seems so distant or so past. And here I

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mean a more distant past than the Hauerwas-Niebuhr or love-justice debates that structured much of Christian ethics over the past several decades. When serious historians like Christopher Browning note, as he did in the October 2018 issue of The New York Review of Books, the troubling similarities between the current situation in the United States to the interwar period and the rise of fascism in Europe, I am tempted to suggest we should reread our mid-twentieth-century old Left Niebuhr and tell that old story in defense of constitutional democracy, checks and balances, independent countervailing powers, and the postwar international system yet again, all mixed with a suitably updated account of relative justice, human tragedy, and Christian hope. Browning describes a toxic mix of isolationist foreign policy, congressional deadlock, tariff wars, growing economic inequality, “free enterprise run amok,” restrictionist immigration policy aimed at ethnic purity, and rising authoritarianism with feckless conservative opposition, not to mention refugee crises, tribalism, and Russian and Chinese meddling. If books like How Democracies Die and How Democracy Ends are today’s bestsellers, is the future of Christian realism, depressingly, the past of Christian realism? Are we now in a situation more akin to the 1930s than the 1990s and 2000s that witnessed a remarkable explosion of democracies? Is our best hope to shore up those imperfect institutions that once seemed ripe for radical transformation and return to the kind of Christian political thought Niebuhr practiced rather than the theory-laden abstractions characteristic of much of contemporary political theology waiting for the nightmare to end? Even as my evangelical tradition spins out of control, is it possible that the mainline Protestant institutions so central to Niebuhr’s impact within and beyond the church might yet be reimagined? To be sure, the religious culture and social democracy that made Niebuhr possible have changed, and Browning notes important political differences, notably the extent to which today’s autocrats operate within democratic institutions rather than overtly boast totalitarianism. They are illiberal democrats, or legal autocrats, operating less by way of massive human rights violations and overt discrimination (though to be sure, there are those) and more by formally legal ways of bringing key institutions under political control, through court packing, gerrymandering, neutralizing a free press, and crony capitalism. Of course, a good Niebuhrian might appreciate these ironies, and have things to say about them. But does the past of Christian realism have a future for thinking about how best to address these conditions with practical wisdom? Is our future that past script with new players? Niebuhr would likely say no, but perhaps we should entertain the question, cognizant that historical analogies both obscure and clarify.

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One striking disanalogy for my second point is the relative absence of substantial ideas of progress among our contemporaries. Ideas of moral progress were central to liberalism from the Enlightenment, ready fodder for the realist. But they seem to have vanished, even become a dirty word. Not even my heavily moralized Princeton undergraduates believe the arc of the universe bends toward justice anymore. They are committed to solving problems, but there is no point of reference for utopian hopes. Reading Niebuhr sometimes occasions a mere yawn from them, not the discomfiting shock its realist yet hopeful theological convictions may have once solicited. Of course, we know the explanations: the horrors of the twentieth century, ethical relativism, structural racism, or the abuse of notions of progress by colonial powers and state socialist atrocities. What is the future of Christian realism without utopians to unmask, perhaps even among the religious left? There are progressives, and the response to our current political moment as regression implicitly reveals a notion of progress at work. But their procedural and technocratic notions are more humble than the revolutionary dreams of freedom in Marx or Kant (and maybe Jesus). They hope for democratization, expanding the circle of inclusion, minimizing domination, and responding to suffering. What is the future of Christian realism if we are all realists now? Robin Lovin has argued that Christian realism might best serve the children of the light by reminding them of the “motive power of moral and religious ideals.”3 Does Christian realism have anything new to say about moral progress and social change, and how it happens, how we get from here to there? Is it a matter of ideals and motivations, or something else, like improved implementation and enabling material conditions (which themselves impact the development of moral sentiments)? My final point is connected to this last observation. I am interested in Niebuhr’s internationalism as an alternative to both nationalism and cosmopolitanism. It seems the axis of politics is no longer left and right determined by the class structure of advanced industrial society, or at least, this divide is overridden with nationalist and cosmopolitan tensions. Cosmopolitan aspiration can be seen by the Christian realist as yet another moralized illusion of the children of the light. Niebuhr challenged various proposals for a global political integration as idealistic and insensitive to the prior need for a shared communal identity. His pessimism about the global future of democracy was rooted in a belief that “the triumph of nationhood and democracy over the divisive factors of language, tribal loyalties, and a multiplicity of religions will probably require a century of development.”4 But he also thought some form of world community, compatible with economic interdependence and a global financial system, was the compelling demand of his day. He was sympathetic to the idea of democracy beyond the nation-state, not unlike some proponents of what we call global justice. Here, a cosmopolitan impulse

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tempered his realism as both a standard of democratic approximation and an ultimate hope for a peaceful world community liberated from the paradox of the human condition. In fact, I think there is a roughly Kantian structure to his thought at odds with his reputation (though, in part, to speak anachronistically, this is because I also read Kant as more Niebuhrian than his reputation sometimes allows). Like Kant, Niebuhr dwells on “the dream of perpetual peace and the brotherhood for human society.”5 Earthly politics for the Christian realist is a compromised and diminished peace east of Eden. It is an odd version of realism which holds we are not political animals by nature. There is, strictly speaking, no Christian politics, even if realists like Niebuhr believed that a healthy democracy and sense of justice required the leaven of religion. We now know more than we did before, thanks largely to the work of scholars in this volume, how and why Niebuhr indulged in the rhetoric of American exceptionalism and messianic responsibility, even if they are conceptually denied by his theology that would divide political history from saving history. No doubt, these issues bear on criticisms leveled against Christian realism by liberationists and Hauerwasians alike. But a question I have for the future of Christian realism is whether or not it might have anything to say, theologically and biblically, about the status of nations, something that has slipped away from theological consciousness for fear of religious nationalism. I note renewed interest in Niebuhr’s Christian Zionism, often portrayed as a geopolitical judgment made in the shadow of the Holocaust, even if it would result in injustice to the Arabs of Palestine. But he also could speak about Israel and the United States as “yoked together in a providential task”; here, Niebuhr’s God is no Kantian divinity or regulative principle.6 Christian realists are often accused of letting anthropology do all their theological work. Some Niebuhrians have rightly resisted this charge, suggesting Niebuhr’s Christology and theology of history support a tacit yet overarching ecclesiology that is said to be missing in Christian realism. Given our political moment that questions a liberal international order, and the pressing salience of efforts to challenge an Israel-forgetting theology, we might ask whether the future of Christian realism might have something to do with rethinking the church’s relation to the eschatological mystery of Israel and the nations. But what would that look like? Thoughtful reflections on these sorts of questions, and many others, are to be found in the diverse essays in this welcome volume. Ecclesiastes tells us that no one knows the future, sponsoring a humility that is said to be a hallmark of Christian realism. Yet humility should not paralyze judgment, let alone action. It is appropriate for that tradition to imagine its future, and in so doing, honor its past for our fragile present without being determined by it.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Goldman, Samuel. God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Lovin, Robin W. Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Lovin, Robin W. “Reinhold Niebuhr: Impact and Implications.” Political Theology 6, no. 4 (2005). Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932. Niebuhr, Reinhold, and Paul Sigmund. The Democratic Experience: Past and Prospects. New York: Praeger, 1969.

NOTES 1. Robin W. Lovin, “Reinhold Niebuhr: Impact and Implications,” Political Theology 6, no. 4 (2005): 459–72, 459. 2. Lovin, “Impact and Implications,” 469. 3. Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 232. 4. Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Sigmund, The Democratic Experience: Past and Prospects (New York: Praeger, 1969), 25. 5. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932), 21. 6. Samuel Goldman, God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 134.

SECTION ONE

Theological and Ethical Points of Departure

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Chapter One

The Christian Socialist Difference Moral Realism, Robin Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Democratic Socialism Gary Dorrien

This volume is dedicated to Robin Lovin and it bears his mark, not just because many of the contributors are his former students but also because Robin, more than anyone, has shaped the contemporary discussion of Christian realism and especially its future. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any serious examination of the future of Christian realism that did not engage Robin Lovin and his work. I have known Robin since 1974, when he was a doctoral student at Harvard studying under Preston Williams and I was an autodidactic bumpkin from semirural mid-Michigan. Robin bantered with ease about Aristotle, moral theory, the history of Christian ethics, John Rawls, Methodist scuttlebutt, and legal theory. He lit up when he talked about H. L. A. Hart, Lon Fuller, and what Rawls took from Hart. One night he explained to me that Hart separated law from morality, contending that different types of norms combine to form the structure of a legal system, Fuller rejected Hart’s legal positivism, espousing a secular version of natural law, and Rawls elaborated Hart’s principle of fair play, which somehow refurbished Kantian liberalism. I definitely lost the thread somewhere, but it was fascinating. Back then, Robin was not a Niebuhr guy. Reinhold Niebuhr was just one of the people in his wheelhouse, and he hadn’t read much of Niebuhr before Williams told him he should. To the extent that the early Robin had a Christian ethical canon, it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John Courtney Murray. Bonhoeffer caught Robin before he enrolled at Harvard; then Robin studied what Murray said about religious freedom, the US experiment in it, and religious pluralism. Robin made an important contribution to what 3

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became the Murray renaissance of the mid-1980s. Like David Hollenbach, he argued that Murray was a highly astute, relevant, and sometimes problematic public philosopher and he was not a public theologian, because his position rested on philosophical arguments. By the time that the Murray renaissance occurred, Robin was well into his career at Chicago, and he was known for other things. I had three clues about Robin’s turn toward Niebuhr, aside from the influence of Williams. The first was related to the rise of neoconservatism in the mid-1970s. The neocons said it was possible to win a nuclear war and that the United States should try to achieve the nuclear superiority that serves this objective. I walked Robin through the argument, he got red in the face, and said, “It’s so ridiculous. This has nothing to do with Reinhold Niebuhr.” Two things struck me. I had never seen Robin agitated, and, apparently, he had feelings about Niebuhr. Later that year, when we talked about Black theology and James Cone, Robin said that Cone helped him appreciate Niebuhr, especially Moral Man and Immoral Society. The third clue was that much of the discussion about Murray and public theology referenced Niebuhr, which Robin took up. But his first book, published in 1984, barely mentioned Niebuhr. A year after he graduated from Harvard, Robin won the ethics job at Chicago. I will never forget the thrill I felt that a friend of mine was teaching at the University of Chicago. It felt like he went from 0 to 90 overnight. In his first class at Chicago, Robin was a little nervous, the lecture seemed to go pretty well, and he was starting to relax when someone asked him how to reconcile what he had said with Kant’s Third Critique. Robin had two thoughts as he felt the panic surging through him. One, he had not read Kant’s Third Critique in many years. Two, is this what Chicago is going to be like? He taught a course at Chicago titled Theological Ethics Between the Wars. The wars were the world wars, and the course focused on Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Bonhoeffer. This course became Robin’s first book, Christian Faith and Public Choices, which made a case for a theologically driven approach to Christian ethics. He said that before you can decide whether an abortion law is anti-family or a school board policy violates parental rights, you have to have some idea of what the family is supposed to be in God’s creation and how that family relates to schools, states, churches, and other institutions that are part of the world we are given. Christian ethicists need to be theologians who address specific problems without losing sight of the larger questions. Brunner came out better than Barth, Bonhoeffer came out best of all, and nobody provided what Robin said we really need—a new Christian realism that speaks to our time. He said there were two main sources for that: Roman Catholic moral realism and Niebuhrian Christian

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realism. He said it with only two pages remaining in the book, so it was clear where he was heading.1 In 1986, while Robin was finding his signature argument and I was still a solidarity organizer and Episcopal pastor, he told me he was thinking a lot about Niebuhr’s theological method, because Niebuhr had more of a method than people say. I told him I thought this argument would make a splash. Most people who wrote about Niebuhr said he had no method or his method was dispositional. Dennis McCann, in 1980, compared liberation theology unfavorably with Niebuhr’s realism, but said that Niebuhr’s method was mostly dispositional. Niebuhr employed the principles of liberty, order, and equality as middle axioms, but did not provide adequate criteria for distinguishing between just and unjust uses of power. Karen Lebacqz, in 1986, basically shared McCann’s rendering of Niebuhr, though not his rejection of liberation theology.2 Robin pushed back against this way of construing Niebuhr’s approach. Carefully, painstakingly, for nearly ten years he assembled his argument that Niebuhr had a method, it was dialectical, and it connected Niebuhr’s famous political realism to his unheralded implicit moral and theological realism. As a political realist Niebuhr’s method was dialectical in that he defined his concepts by stating what they excluded, and he took positions by specifying what he rejected—usually with polemical zeal. Morally, Niebuhr was a realist because he believed in the reality of moral truths that are independent of our ideas and are not merely expressions of our emotions or attitudes. His version of moral realism was an ethical naturalism that made judgments about the natural properties of good and bad persons, situations, and actions, which made Niebuhr’s ethic much closer to natural law reasoning than he acknowledged. Robin highlighted Niebuhr’s emphasis on human nature and the character of the human creature embedded in the natural order, as well as Niebuhr’s emphasis on the freedom of the human spirit. Theologically Niebuhr was a realist because he said that theological claims have cognitive content, they can be true or false, and the true claims accurately represent a reality independent of the concepts, theories, and evidence that we hold about it. The book version of this argument came out in 1995; it was titled Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism; and it is the most important book written on Niebuhr in the past thirty years. Like Robin, the book is judicious, finely reasoned, and deeply ethical. He started writing it at Chicago, working with research assistants Bill French, Christine Hinze, Todd Whitmore, and Dan Malotky, and he kept writing it at Drew, working with Gary Matthews. They went on to productive careers, trained by one of the great teachers. Robin was at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology when the book finally came out, and he had company in how he read Niebuhr, most notably Harlan Beckley, whose important book Passion for Justice was published in 1992.3

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What I most deeply appreciate about Robin’s work is his sheer persistent refusal to separate religion from public life and his willingness to pursue this work beyond the Niebuhrian frame, applying Christian realism to what he calls “the new realities.” Niebuhr was unapologetically political, and so is Robin. Niebuhr underwrote the New Deal merger of political liberalism and centralized state power, and Robin began his career just as the Niebuhrian merger fell apart. The later Niebuhr, upon letting go of his semi-Marxian version of democratic socialism, went back to the defining Progressive idea that US democracy would survive only if it was reconciled with concentrated power. To defend democratic gains from concentrated economic power, the Progressives called for a consolidation of countervailing political power. The United States had to become more of a nation in its institutions and politics, changing what democracy and liberalism were in this country. The New Deal consummated this strategy, effectively uniting liberalism and the national idea. The historic US democracy of small towns and civic republicanism gave way to the welfare state democracy of nationalized liberalism. To Niebuhr, this outcome was so fundamental that he didn’t bother to call it Progressivism, since he spent so much time attacking the moral idealism of Progressives. Niebuhrian realism reflected the political outcome of Niebuhr’s time and defended it in Niebuhr’s neo-Augustinian language of sin, human limitations, power politics, and divine transcendence.4 Robin thinks with and through and beyond Niebuhr. He argues that political commitment in our time is no longer confined to the sphere of law and government. The responsibilities of everyday living are a form of politics not detached from religion—as Niebuhr might have said had he absorbed Bonhoeffer as deeply as Robin has. Moreover, the frame for ethics arising from the decisions of individuals must be global. How we understand what Christian realism is in our time hinges on what we believe is happening and what has recently ended. In 2008, when Robin published his book Christian Realism and the New Realities, he offered a fourfold account of contemporary Christian realism, rendering this category very generously. The Christian witness model of Stanley Hauerwas was number one; the anti-utopian model of Jean Bethke Elshtain and other conservative Niebuhrians was number two; the counter-apocalyptic model of Catherine Keller, which is selective in accepting only liberationist forms of apocalyptic thinking, was number three; and the pluralist model variously espoused by Max Stackhouse, Dennis McCann, William Schweiker, and David Hollenbach was number four.5 Robin is decidedly in the pluralist camp, and closest to Hollenbach’s version of it, but not in a way that stacks the deck against the alternatives as he sees them. There is no clean, clear, done-with-that solution to the Niebuhrian problem of how the liberal rights of liberal political theory and the Christian

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language of sacred human dignity and ethical responsibility should be reconciled. The more specific that liberal theory becomes about persons and what their dignity requires, the more it turns into a comprehensive understanding of the human good, which contradicts what liberal theory claims about itself. On the other hand, the very concept of sacred individual personhood is a Christian idea, and Christian ethics makes universal claims about how persons should be treated under any system of government. Like Hollenbach and other moral theologians who take up this work, Robin is a practitioner of intellectual solidarity—taking up concrete social and political problems in secular terms and keeping explicitly theological claims to a minimum when they are not essential to arriving at practical agreement. Human rights is an idea riddled with problems, which multiply as soon as theology enters the picture. Yet human rights is like the idea of the common good. We never get it right, but we have to keep working at it, from many sides at once, and theologians need to be in the discussion. John Courtney Murray and Alasdair MacIntyre were overly fond of the word “incommensurable.” Robin has spent his entire career chipping away at the zone of incommensurability. He is so modest in describing how liberal theory and Christian ethics might come together that it’s possible to miss that he offers a personal example of how to do it. Robin has a working canon: Rawls on political liberalism and overlapping consensus, Hollenbach on an expansive common good, William Galston on the communitarian critique of Rawls, Michael Perry on the transition from human dignity to human rights, Bonhoeffer on Christian ethical responsibility, and Niebuhr on many things, but especially, the crucial roles of Christianity and secular liberalism in creating modern liberal democracy. Robin and I have never dwelt on our differences, because he has the gift of friendship, he is charitable and generous, and I deeply appreciate his Niebuhrian emphasis on “unapologetic politics.” Christian realism, as Robin construes it, tries to responsibly engage society. It brings its unapologetic account of human dignity into the public sphere, trying to influence the shape of social life. Those responsible for law and government respond to this account. But democratic government also has its own integrity, which it rightly asserts. To the extent that government carries out a theological claim, it does so according to its own norms in its own language. The Christian community, meanwhile, rejects the demand for apology, speaking in its own way for its own reasons. I am not convinced that Niebuhr was always true to this understanding of Christian realism, because it’s hard to get a theology of the church out of Niebuhr. But I am convinced that Robin Lovin has been unfailingly true to it. My work is theological and philosophical on one side and political and social ethical on the other side. These seemingly disparate disciplinary tracks fit together because both sides of my work are steeped in the secular and

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religious traditions of democratic socialism. I believe that political theology needs a better genealogy than the Carl Schmitt story it usually tells. It has an incomparably better one in the long-standing and still ongoing religious socialist tradition that seeks to democratize economic power, abolish anti-Black racism, and extinguish all other sites of oppression. I do not believe that the four models outlined by Robin are better at describing or confronting “the realities” than the stream of Christian socialism that combined socialist, radical democratic, and neo-abolitionist commitments. There is a caveat to register in saying this, as my perspective is very close to that of Catherine Keller. My differences with Keller cut to two things—(1) post-Hegelianism versus neo-Whiteheadianism, and (2) the fact that I have extensively historicized religious and secular democratic socialism. This is not the place to get into that. But I can state concisely why Christian socialism matters to me: Christian socialism, at its best, has long struggled against every form of domination and oppression, and is the historical wellspring of liberation theology. I hold in mind primarily the left wing of the Black social gospel tradition, but also the neo-abolitionist tradition of Christian socialism that crossed the color line. Niebuhr drew upon it, improved how it talked about power and sin, and fell woefully short of it in other ways.6 Niebuhr changed his politics in every decade of his career, so his legacy—not just his theory—is pluralistic. He began his career as a pro-war interventionist during World War I, converted to social gospel pacifism in the early 1920s, embraced Norman Thomas socialism in the late 1920s, dropped pacifism for Marxist reasons in the early 1930s, resigned from the Socialist Party in May 1940 as a protest against its neutralism in World War II, dropped socialism in 1946, joined the Democratic Party establishment in 1947, mythologized the Cold War in the late 1940s and early 1950s, reconsidered the Cold War in the late 1950s, and stunned many Niebuhrians in the mid-1960s by opposing the Vietnam War. He became a socialist and began his teaching career at Union at the same time, in 1928, teaching in a field that had no history or basis apart from the social gospel movement. The social gospel invented social ethics. The founders of the white social gospel emphasized economic justice and social ideals, and the founders of the Black social gospel focused on anti-Black oppression and terrorism. Both of these traditions had a reformist mainstream and a socialist left flank, with standout socialist leaders: George Herron, Albion Tourgée, George Gates, Vida Scudder, W. D. P. Bliss, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Harry Ward in the white churches, and Reverdy Ransom, George W. Woodbey, George Slater, Robert Bagnall, Mordecai Johnson, and Benjamin E. Mays in the Black churches. Some of these figures espoused a progressive-socialist version of social contract liberalism, construing power as an exchangeable thing to be managed by good politics. Others were influenced more deeply by Marxism,

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construing power as a quantified, bought, owned, given, exchanged, or stolen commodity. In both cases, social gospel radicals contended that economic justice is the precondition of individual opportunity. Debates over pacifism were not field dividing during the heyday of the social gospel; the politically liberal and radical wings of the social gospel both had numerous pacifists and non-pacifists. The dividing issue pitted liberal idealists, who spurned class analysis and did not want to talk about power, against social gospel radicals, who fixed precisely on democratizing power.7 Social gospel radicals did not say that middle-class idealism could transform society. Rauschenbusch insisted that idealists alone had never achieved any social justice cause. He said exactly what historian E. P. Thompson famously said fifty years later—that class “happens” when socially awakened workers “make” it. Class is made when exploited people feel and articulate their interests in distinction from other classes, and justice is made when they fight for their rights. Niebuhr brilliantly skewered the idealism and sentimentality of mainstream social gospel theologians, and he knew very well that the social gospel had advocates who were not squishy, moralistic, optimistic, and averse to power politics. When pressed on the question, he pointed to Rauschenbusch. But when Niebuhr wrote about the social gospel, he opted for ridicule. Social gospel liberals were stupid, he said. Moral Man and Immoral Society said it scathingly in 1932. Politics is about struggling for power. Human groups never willingly subordinate their interests to the interests of others. Liberal denials of this truism are stupid. Liberal idealists failed to recognize the brutal character of human groups and the resistance of all groups to moral suasion. Secular liberals such as John Dewey appealed to reason; Christian liberals appealed to reason and love; both were maddeningly stupid.8 Niebuhr headed in this direction in the late 1920s, when Norman Thomas scaled the ranks of the Socialist Party on his way to becoming the party’s presidential candidate in 1932. Thomas was a product of social gospel socialism, converted to it by Rauschenbusch’s books. To Niebuhr, becoming a socialist signified that he was moving beyond the liberal idealism and pacifism of the 1920s social gospel mainstream. If a Presbyterian pastor like Thomas could become a Socialist Party leader, Niebuhr could join the party. He and Thomas were friends and allies throughout the 1930s. But Thomas was a socialist on the basis of the radical democratic, anti-racist, anti-militarist, and anti-imperialist values that he absorbed from the social gospel, not because he believed that Marx was right about the falling rate of profit or the necessity of a proletarian revolution. Thomas could not fathom why Niebuhr expended so much effort attacking ethical idealism. To Thomas, the best thing about democratic socialism was the constellation of ethical values it brought into struggles for justice. Meanwhile Niebuhr moved to the political left and the

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theological right, as he put it. Marx’s rejection of ethical idealism grounded both moves, at first, until the later Niebuhr replaced Marx with Augustine.9 If politics is about struggling for power and radical politics is about struggling for a just redistribution of power, religion aids the struggle for justice only if it takes a realistic attitude toward power, interest, and evil. Niebuhr said the New Deal was pathetic and stupid—as pitiful in its own way as liberal Christianity. Marx’s theory of the falling rate of profit grounded Niebuhr’s certainty in this area. The problem was the system itself, he argued, not a correctable flaw in it or even the greed of capitalists. Capitalist productivity inevitably outraced the system’s ability to sustain a growing middle class of consumers. Sooner or later the system stopped being able to squeeze growing profits from the economy. Thus, it was disintegrating, just as Marx predicted, albeit later than he expected. Liberalism and capitalism were finished. Niebuhr insisted that no amount of reformist tinkering would stop the world historical drift toward fascism. The ravages of capitalism would never be removed by moral effort, political reformism, or even the verdict that capitalism was destroying modern civilization. The only way to avert a fascist takeover of the entire Western world was for the West to embrace radical state socialism. Niebuhr brushed past the problems that his own penetrating analysis of ruling group egotism should have suggested about his collectivist solution. From the beginning he perceived that the Achilles heel of Marxism was its utopian fantasy of a revolutionary order that abolished the state and any need of a state. Marx deceived himself about the role of the state in any conceivable socialist or communist society. Niebuhr sought to be more realistic than that, taking for granted that serious socialism is centralized government collectivism. All the early socialist traditions centering on producer cooperatives, cooperative syndicates, and union guilds were utopian fantasies. Niebuhr said there were only two options: History would move forward to radical state socialism or backward to a barbaric capitalism. There was no third way. The New Deal was a grab-bag of Band-Aids, and Keynesian deficit spending was the worst part of the New Deal, ruining any chance of an economic recovery. John Maynard Keynes urged the British Labour Party coalition government of Ramsay MacDonald to break the downward spiral of the Depression with massive government spending. MacDonald’s cabinet argued about it constantly, divided, could not get to yes, and perished. A similar scenario played out in Germany, with catastrophic consequences. In both cases the finance ministers were prominent socialists—Philip Snowden and Rudolf Hilferding. Niebuhr agreed with them that as long as capitalism existed, the responsible policy was to maintain a balanced budget. Keynes’s call for stimulus spending was absurd, and the United States was no place to try it.10

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Wrongly, Niebuhr equated socialization with nationalization and rejected production for profit. Wrongly, he claimed that state planners could replicate the pricing decisions of markets. Wrongly, he wanted government planners to organize an economy not linked by markets. Wrongly, he claimed that Keynesian macroeconomic tools only worsened the problem. Fatefully, “socialism” meant some blend of Marxian and Fabian state socialism to Niebuhr, so when he subsequently decided that people in the United States would never choose it, he dropped the whole business as a fixation of the 1930s. There was an ample tradition of Christian socialism in Britain, the United States, and Continental Europe that contradicted Niebuhr’s fundamental assumptions. It gave highest place to democratic socialist values, advocated mixed forms of worker, community, and state ownership, and insisted that markets cannot be abolished in a free society. Its theologians included Scott Holland in England, Leonhard Ragaz in Switzerland, and Rauschenbusch in the United States. The strongest anti-imperialists in England were Christian socialists such as Holland, Charles Marson, Stewart Headlam, Conrad Noel, and Charles Gore. They loathed the imperial gore and patriotic racism they were taught in school. They insisted that no commitment to a syndical, social democratic, Marxian, Fabian, Social Union, or other ideology trumped the ethical values they took from Christian socialism. They fought for the ethical difference in the socialist movement whenever it arose.11 Nineteenth-century British socialists did not call themselves democratic socialists, even though most of them were, because democracy was not controversial or divisive in British socialism. Democracy was controversial in Continental Marxism, where Marxists contended that existing democracy was a bourgeois fraud and real democracy would emerge only from a proletarian revolution, after which there would be no need of a state. For a socialist to lionize democracy as the best road to socialism was ridiculous. Democracy would come by making the state irrelevant, as Marxists believed, or by smashing the state, as anarchists believed. Democratic socialists refused to subordinate democracy and its reform causes to a catastrophe vision of deliverance or the demands of a left-wing dictatorship. They said socialists had to be resolutely democratic and liberal on their way to achieving socialism, and not merely on tactical grounds. Eduard Bernstein made the classic case for this position in 1899 in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). He rocked the SPD by doing so, which sealed the break between its orthodox Marxist wing and its democratic socialist wing. Democratic socialism was and is a vision of democratic self-determination in every sphere of society, emphasizing the values of equality, freedom, and community. It is notoriously difficult to reconcile Marxism with liberal rights to democracy and freedom, and more difficult to reconcile Marxism with economic markets. Christian

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socialism had a better record than Marxism on both counts, but Niebuhr wasn’t interested when it mattered. Richard W. Fox gets Niebuhr doubly wrong concerning the period when Niebuhr began to pull back from Marxism. Fox says that in the mid-1930s Niebuhr abandoned his secular political activism and concluded that democratic socialism was a lost cause throughout Europe. But this was the period in which Niebuhr helped to drive the Old Guard out of the Socialist Party, cheered for his Labour Party friends in England, and filled Radical Religion with articles on secular and socialist politics conveying his radical socialist viewpoint. The Old Guard was vehemently anti-communist, repulsed by the dictatorship in Russia. Old Guard socialists said communists were not merely socialists who went astray; communism was the enemy of socialism, a perversion of the real thing. The Socialists bitterly contested whether they should work in united fronts with Stalinists, sectarian Leninists, Trotskyites, or communists of any kind. Young recruits to the party gravitated to its pro-communist wing, calling for united fronts with communists. Thomas and Niebuhr curried favor with the young militants. Niebuhr assured Thomas the party would flourish if it drove out the Old Guard. The fatal problem of the Socialist Party, he contended, was the existence of its grumpy conservative wing that clung to the AFL unions, scrupulously obeyed the law, and railed against communism. Niebuhr said that only a spiritually corrupted socialism would have an Old Guard.12 The rival factions slugged it out at the 1936 convention in Cleveland. The Old Guard walked out, taking with it the financial base of the party: the garment unions, the Forward, the New Leader, radio station WEVD, the Rand School, several summer camps, and the party’s municipal political machines in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Reading, Pennsylvania. Niebuhr enthused that now the party was sure to revive. That was wildly off the mark. Niebuhr and the left-socialists harmed the party by stereotyping the Old Guard as a grumpy machine club that clung to its union perches, excessively criticized communism, and stifled the youth. The Old Guard was not monolithic in its ideology or even its grumpiness. Its foremost leaders, Louis Waldman and James Oneal, were principled democrats who argued that socialists should fight for decentralized worker self-determination, not the salvation of a centralized state. The Old Guard leaders were more right than wrong about anti-communism. They remembered vividly what it felt like to be destroyed in 1919 by the meteor of world communism. They rightly refused to join the Communist International and rightly thwarted communists from controlling the unions. They overreacted in the 1930s against a surge of youthful Leninism because they had seen an earlier version destroy their party in a few months.13

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Moreover, Niebuhr did not believe that democratic socialism was a lost cause throughout Europe. He treasured Labour Party socialism and did not believe it was exhausted or shattered or any such thing. He identified with the Labour Party of Stafford Cripps, R. H. Tawney, and Clement Attlee. He wanted the United States to found a Labour-like coalition party uniting radical intellectuals, unionists, farmers, socialists, and independents. Had Niebuhr been an English citizen like his wife Ursula Keppel-Compton Niebuhr, he would have supported Labour. As it was, he had very deep feelings about the urgent necessity of aiding England. Niebuhr struggled to write the Gifford Lectures, wanting very much to prove that he was a theologian, not merely a social critic. He swore off political speaking while trying to torture the lectures out of his head and research. His first round of Gifford Lectures, in April 1939, delivered ten lectures on human nature, all in Niebuhr’s inimitable whirling, pacing, gesticulating, rapid-fire, extemporaneous style. Many said they couldn’t follow his train of thought or even begin to track it, yet they kept returning to hear him. Hitler and Stalin signed their nonaggression pact the following August, and on September 1, Hitler invaded Poland. Niebuhr said the Nazi-Soviet pact shocked him and the war did not. For years he had cautioned left-wing comrades that Soviet ideology camouflaged the lion of Russian nationalism; Stalin, he judged, was a consummate realist and nationalist. Niebuhr did not swing up and down about Stalin like his Socialist friends. He respected Stalin without revering him and was not crushed, like Thomas, by the prison camps and purges. Niebuhr annoyed Trotskyites by opining that Russia was better off under Stalin than it would have been under Trotsky; Stalin was a Great Power statesman and Trotsky was a fanatic. Yet for all of Niebuhr’s realpolitik respect for Stalin and refusal to judge him by an ethical yardstick, the Nazi-Soviet pact stunned him. In one stroke Stalin obliterated years of united leftism and freed Hitler to invade Poland. Niebuhr struggled to convey his revulsion, admitting he never dreamed that Stalin’s cynical cunning would extend this far. Cripps, a super-lawyer and Christian socialist, told Niebuhr he was abandoning his law practice to help the Labour Party salvage something from the destruction the war would bring. Niebuhr was deeply moved. He commended Cripps to Christian Century readers, almost saying what he meant: He aspired to be like Cripps.14 If Cripps could shut down his law practice as a trivial irrelevance, why should Niebuhr rattle on about human destiny? This question haunted him during his second round of Gifford Lectures in October 1939. German planes bombed a naval base a few miles from Niebuhr’s lectures. Niebuhr developed the biblical realism he found in Augustine and outlined in the spring lectures, which he set against the classical thought of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.

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He warned that modern alternatives to Christianity would not save Europe from descending into fascist barbarism. Only Christianity had the moral and intellectual resources to fend off modern cynicism, nihilism, militarism, and will-to-power. Many of us who love Niebuhr hold some conscious or unconscious idea of when he was at his best. I believe he was at his best in the early 1940s, when he entreated Americans to join the fight against fascism, founded the Union for Democratic Action (UDA), developed his mature theological position, founded Christianity & Crisis (C&C), and argued that political democracy cannot survive without economic democracy. Niebuhr quit the Socialist Party in May 1940 because it refused to see the difference between 1917 and 1940. Thomas had joined the Socialist Party in 1917 and was stuck in the memory of its brave opposition to World War I. That memory froze him in place until Pearl Harbor. Niebuhr founded a replacement for the Socialist Party (the UDA) and a replacement for the Christian Century (C&C). The UDA was his pride and joy. It was a pro-interventionist coalition of politicians, trade unionists, activists, and intellectuals drawn mostly from the “silent split” of the Socialist Party. Niebuhr was still determined to pull off the dream of a labor-farmer-socialist-progressive party. There had to be an alternative to the Democratic Party, and former Socialist Party socialists were the key to pulling it off. He loved the work, conducting fundraising tours for the UDA. Niebuhr told audiences that socialism would have to come through some other vehicle than the Socialist Party. He enjoyed his friendships with UDA socialists and left-liberals more than he cared for seminary theologians, though naturally his favorites were the few who straddled both worlds.15 The book version of Niebuhr’s Gifford Lectures, The Nature and Destiny of Man, developed in volume 2 a vintage Niebuhr dialectic on “The Kingdom of God and the Struggle for Justice.” He argued that the struggle for justice is even more revealing of the possibilities and limits of human powers than the quest for truth. The relationship of the kingdom of God to history is inescapably paradoxical. History moves toward the realization of the kingdom, yet every occasion of its realization falls under divine judgment. This argument was the seed of Niebuhr’s mature political philosophy, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, published in 1944.16 Children of Light derided modern US liberals as spiritual cousins of John Locke, Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine, and G. W. F. Hegel. All were children of light who believed that the conflict between self-interest and the general interest could be resolved. All were unbearably stupid on this account. Locke’s social contract, Smith’s harmonizing invisible hand, and Rousseau’s general will needed only minimal restraints on human egotism, because Locke, Smith, and Rousseau had immense confidence in reason and/or nature. Hegel believed that his philosophy synthesized the

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national and universal interests. Niebuhr swept Marxists and Catholics into the same indictment, lumped with “other stupid children of light.” Marxists, contrary to the Catholic charge of cynicism, were so sentimental they believed no state would be necessary after the proletarian revolution. Catholics, meanwhile, described feudalism as a Christian civilization.17 All manner of modern liberals, democrats, Marxists, and Catholics defended democracy badly against children of darkness, who were wise and strong in their cynicism. Niebuhr said the children of darkness understood self-interest terribly well and were not constrained by a moral law. Hobbes and Machiavelli formulated theory for them, exemplifying the toxic corruption of realism lacking a moral dimension. Luther was a child of darkness for railing against reason and morality, providing Lutheran cover for state absolutists and anti-democrats. The epitome of toxic darkness, Nazi barbarism, plunged Europe into total war, shredding the classic liberal picture of a benign, individualistic society. Niebuhr derided the liberal idea that democracy fulfills an ideal that people deserve on account of their moral worth. The children of darkness understood that will-to-power drives politics and history. Niebuhr still believed that political democracy needed to grow into economic democracy to attain social justice and protect democracy itself. Political democracy lacking socialized major enterprises led to the capitalist class owning the political system. Economic democracy was needed to break the overweening greed and will-to-power of the capitalist class: “Since economic power, as every other form of social power, is a defensive force when possessed in moderation and a temptation to injustice when it is great enough to give the agent power over others, it would seem that its widest and most equitable distribution would make for the highest degree of justice.”18 “It would seem” was a retreat, however. Niebuhr still believed in economic democracy as an ideal, even that it was essential to social justice. But he no longer believed it was possible in his country, unlike what his Labour Party friends were about to do. Sticking with socialism on ethical grounds made no sense to Niebuhr because Marx was right about ethical socialism—it was useless idealism at best. In the 1930s Niebuhr was consumed with one principle of justice, equality. Now he believed that freedom and order are equally important. In the past he took for granted that believing in a common humanity compelled him to work for a just world order. Now he was chastened by Augustine’s caution that language and ethnicity, which bind communities on one level, are powerfully divisive at higher levels. Augustine, admittedly, was excessively realistic, lacking a basis for distinguishing between government and slavery. Both were forms of rule over human beings by human beings. Christian realism had to do better, Niebuhr said, defending liberal democracy without enshrining any ideology as an object of faith.19

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In the late 1940s he drifted into the mainstream of the Democratic Party, in the company of friends and former socialist comrades. In 1947 the Fellowship of Socialist Christians changed its name to Frontier Fellowship. The same year, Niebuhr folded the UDA into a new organization, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), an advocacy group in the center-left of the Democratic Party. Other ADA founders included Eleanor Roosevelt, Hubert Humphrey, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Niebuhr repented of blasting the New Deal, bonding with establishment liberals who identified unequivocally with it. The Old Leftists that came with Niebuhr into the ADA were valuable to it because they were veterans of the battles to expel communists from the trade unions and Socialist Party. The best anti-communists were socialists or former socialists, because they hated communism for ruining something they prized, and they knew how communists subverted democratic organizations. They were the experts on thwarting communism. Some of them scaled the ranks of the U.S. State Department and other government agencies, where they kept in touch with Niebuhr, who focused on how the United States should responsibly run its empire. The later Niebuhr had very little to say about economic justice. Frontier Fellowship changed its name in 1951 to Christian Action and reduced its economic plank to a platitude, advocating “a high and stable level of economic activity, avoiding inflation and depression.” Niebuhrian realism, being realistic by its lights, did not say there were structural economic injustices in US society. Niebuhr said the US triumvirate of corporations, government, and unions took care of the economic justice problem, “setting organized power against organized power.”20 I have the same regret about Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. Both invoked the Marxian rejection of ethical idealism as an excuse to opt out of solidarity movements and bask in the applause of the American empire. Imposing Marxian standards on Christian socialism gave Niebuhr an excuse to drop Christian socialism and Tillich an excuse to do nothing for it after he became an American. Both theologians defended the American empire whenever it had an interest at stake in the two-thirds world, and both were scathing in ridiculing ethical socialists who battled for “lost” causes. Both believed that Western Europe and North America comprised a superior civilization. Niebuhr described racism as a vile form of the sin of pride and he prattled about “advanced” and “backward” cultures, somehow never construing cultural racism as racism. The figures that pulled the ecumenical movement into global solidarity struggles for social justice and de-colonization were the scorned “idealists” who never accepted Niebuhr’s framework: Mordecai Johnson, Benjamin E. Mays, Howard Thurman, Pauli Murray, Miles Horton, Walter Muelder, Martin Luther King Jr., S. Paul Schilling, Vincent Harding. It’s the left wing of the Black social gospel and white social gospel traditions. Those who stuck with social gospel radicalism did not believe that their

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willingness to kill for the United States was a litmus test of their political seriousness. Neither did they believe that struggles for justice were optional depending on their success. Quitting the struggle was not an option for them, and thus not considered. I have argued that Christian realism would have a better legacy had Niebuhr stuck with the UDA and his politics of that period. As it was he became more and more like the ADA Cold War liberals who pulled him into the Democratic Party, until he simply became one of them. Yet moving from UDA socialism to the Democratic Party mainstream was the smoothest transition he ever made. All of Niebuhr’s other changes involved an emotional drama of some kind. The one by which he joined the Democratic establishment was sleek and unruffled by comparison. Afterward he never took an ethical position that conflicted with a US national interest. Realism was a bulwark against doing so, or even raising the possibility of it. The social gospel tried to moralize the public square, but Niebuhr said that politics is a struggle for power driven by interest and will-to-power. The social gospel taught that a cooperative commonwealth is achievable; Niebuhr said the very idea of a good society ideal must be given up. He got the first thing right and the second thing wrong, which left social ethicists ever since to struggle with both sides of his legacy. Without a vision of a just society that transcends the prevailing order, ethics and politics remain captive to the dominant order, restricted to marginal reforms. The borders of possibility remain untested. BIBLIOGRAPHY Barshop, Irving. Irving Barshop to Reinhold Niebuhr, May 22, 1940. Reinhold Niebuhr Papers, Library of Congress, Washington DC. Beckley, Harlan. Passion for Justice: Retrieving the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch, John A. Ryan, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992. Christian Action. “Christian Action Statement of Purpose.” Christianity and Crisis 11 (October 1, 1951): 126–27. Dorrien, Gary. American Democratic Socialism: History, Politics, Religion, and Theory. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021. ———. Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. ———. The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015. ———. Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

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———. In a Post-Hegelian Spirit: Philosophical Theology as Idealistic Discontent. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2020. ———. Soul in Society: The Making and Renewal of Social Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. ———. Social Democracy in the Making: Political and Religious Roots of European Socialism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Fox, Richard W. Reinhold Niebuhr. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Hollenbach, David. The Global Face of Public Faith: Politics, Human Rights, and Christian Ethics. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003. Keller, Catherine. Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. ———. Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Engagement. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Lebacqz, Karen. Six Theories of Justice. Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1986. Lovin, Robin W. Christian Faith and Public Choices: The Social Ethics of Barth, Brunner, and Bonhoeffer. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984. ———. Christian Realism and the New Realities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ———. Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. McCann, Dennis P. Christian Realism and Liberation Theology: Practical Theologies in Creative Conflict. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1980. Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. New York: Scribner’s, 1944. ———. Christian Realism and Political Problems. New York: Scribner’s, 1953. ———. The Irony of American History. New York: Scribner’s, 1952. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man, 2 vols. New York: Scribner’s, 1941, 1943. ———. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics. New York: Scribner’s, 1932. ———. Reflections on the End of an Era. New York: Scribner’s, 1934. ———. “The Anomaly of European Socialism.” Yale Review 42 (December 1952). ———. “The Blindness of Liberalism.” Radical Religion 1 (Autumn 1936). ———. “The Conflict in the Socialist Party.” Radical Religion 1 (Winter 1936). ———. “An End to Illusions.” Nation (June 29, 1940). ———. “Frontier Fellowship.” Christianity and Society 13 (Autumn 1948). ———. “The Idea of Progress and Socialism.” Radical Religion 1 (Spring 1936). ———. “Leaves from the Notebook of a War-Bound American.” Christian Century (November 15, 1939). ———. “The Organization of the Liberal Movement.” Christianity and Society 12 (Spring 1947). ———. “Plutocracy and World Responsibilities,” Christianity and Society 14 (Autumn 1949). ———. “To Prevent the Triumph of an Intolerable Tyranny,” Christian Century 57 (December 18, 1940).

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———. Reinhold Niebuhr to Irving Barshop, May 24, 1940, Reinhold Niebuhr Papers, Library of Congress, Washington DC. ———. “Religion and Marxism.” Modern Monthly 8 (February 1935). ———. “The Revolutionary Moment.” American Socialist Quarterly (June 1935). ———. “Roosevelt’s Merry-Go-Round.” Radical Religion 3 (Spring 1938).

NOTES 1. Robin W. Lovin, Christian Faith and Public Choices: The Social Ethics of Barth, Brunner, and Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984). 2. Dennis P. McCann, Christian Realism and Liberation Theology: Practical Theologies in Creative Conflict (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1980); Karen Lebacqz, Six Theories of Justice (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1986). 3. Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Harlan Beckley, Passion for Justice: Retrieving the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch, John A. Ryan, and Reinhold Niebuhr (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992). 4. Gary Dorrien, Soul in Society: The Making and Renewal of Social Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 143–61. 5. Robin W. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Catherine Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996); David Hollenbach, The Global Face of Public Faith: Politics, Human Rights, and Christian Ethics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003). 6. Gary Dorrien, In a Post-Hegelian Spirit: Philosophical Theology as Idealistic Discontent (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2020); Catherine Keller, Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Engagement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 7. Gary Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011); Dorrien, The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015); Dorrien, Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018). 8. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Scribners, 1932); Niebuhr, Reflections on the End of an Era (New York: Scribners, 1934); Niebuhr, “Religion and Marxism,” Modern Monthly 8 (February 1935), 714; Niebuhr, “The Blindness of Liberalism,” Radical Religion 1 (Autumn 1936), 4; Niebuhr, “The Idea of Progress and Socialism,” Radical Religion 1 (Spring 1936), 28; Niebuhr, “Roosevelt’s Merry-Go-Round,” Radical Religion 3 (Spring 1938), 4. 9. Gary Dorrien, American Democratic Socialism: History, Politics, Religion, and Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021). 10. Gary Dorrien, Social Democracy in the Making: Political and Religious Roots of European Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 208–12, 371–75.

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11. Dorrien, Social Democracy in the Making, 27–113. 12. Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Revolutionary Moment,” American Socialist Quarterly (June 1935), 9; Richard W. Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 193. 13. Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Conflict in the Socialist Party,” Radical Religion 1 (Winter 1936), 1. 14. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Leaves from the Notebook of a War-Bound American,” Christian Century (November 15, 1939), 1406. 15. Irving Barshop to Reinhold Niebuhr, May 22, 1940, Reinhold Niebuhr Papers, Library of Congress, Washington DC; Niebuhr to Barshop, May 24, 1940; Niebuhr, “An End to Illusions,” Nation (June 29, 1940), 778; Niebuhr, “To Prevent the Triumph of an Intolerable Tyranny,” Christian Century 57 (December 18, 1940), 1579. 16. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, 2 vols. (New York: Scribner’s, 1941, 1943), II: 244–86. 17. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Scribner’s, 1944), “other stupid,” 32. 18. Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 113–14. 19. Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York: Scribner’s, 1953), 127. 20. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Plutocracy and World Responsibilities,” Christianity and Society 14 (Autumn 1949), 7–8; Niebuhr, “Frontier Fellowship,” Christianity and Society 13 (Autumn 1948), 4; Niebuhr, “The Organization of the Liberal Movement,” Christianity and Society 12 (Spring 1947), 8–10; Christian Action, “Christian Action Statement of Purpose,” Christianity and Crisis 11 (October 1, 1951), “a high,” 126. Written by Niebuhr and others; Niebuhr, “The Anomaly of European Socialism,” Yale Review 42 (December 1952), 166–67; Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Scribners, 1952), “setting,” 101.

Chapter Two

The Future of Theological Realism Gerald McKenny

According to Robin Lovin, Christian realism combines three kinds of realism: political, moral, and theological. Theological realism takes its starting point in the conflicts of interests or goods which, for Christian realists, inevitably characterize political life. It holds that, notwithstanding the inevitable conflicts among the interests of persons or the goods that demand their commitment, there is an ultimate unity of interests or goods that transcends those conflicts. While the conflict of interests or goods is never fully overcome in any historical moment, it is nevertheless not final. The genuine interests or goods of persons are ultimately in harmony, and the reality of their ultimate unity has implications for how we approach conflicts in the present.1 Theological realism holds that God is the ground of the unity of interests or goods. “Our confidence [in the ultimate unity of interests or goods] rests in God.”2 As we will see, Lovin provides two different accounts of the ground of the unity of interests or goods: one that identifies it with God’s valuation of all those whose interests they are, and another that identifies it with an eschatological state of affairs that God brings about and that is proleptically present in Jesus Christ. Both accounts, however, agree that God is the ground of unity, which is therefore transcendent and not constituted by historical factors or forces. But in what sense is the unity of interests or goods real? As Lovin characterizes it, theological realism is realist in two senses. First, while it denies that the unity of interests or goods is attainable in history, it also denies that it is a mere ideal that expresses a need for something that historical experience itself does not provide. Whether it subsists in God’s valuation of all persons whose interests they are or in an eschatological state of affairs that God brings about, the unity of interests or goods impinges on political choices made in history as something that is real. And unlike the mere projection of a felt need, it thwarts our expectations and makes demands of us. Second, the 21

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unity of interests or goods is real in the sense that it is independent of our ideas about it. Theological realism distinguishes between our beliefs or ideas about the unity of interests or goods in God and the reality of that unity just as moral realism distinguishes between moral beliefs and the realities to which they refer.3 Our ideas about that unity are therefore fallible, just as our ideas about moral norms are. The same theological realism that urges confidence in the reality of the ultimate unity of interests or goods thus demands humility with regard to what we think or say about that unity. Its reality is in God or God’s activity, not in our ideas of it. The claim that there is an ultimate unity of interests or goods plays important roles in the Christian realist account of politics. Insofar as it impinges on choices made in history in spite of remaining unrealized in history, it contributes to analyses of political situations. Those analyses proceed in the confidence that the interests or goods at stake are ultimately in harmony, so that reducing politics to mere prudential calculations, as other realists often do, is in fact unrealistic. But its major role has to do with the answer it gives to the question of the meaning of politics.4 As a stance toward politics, Christian realism counsels us to temper our expectations of what politics can do. It insists that conflicts of interests and goods are endemic to political life and cannot be fully or finally resolved by political (or any other human) means, and it warns us that attempts to overcome this limit by conforming political life to a conception of the unity of interests or goods is likely to be catastrophic for the very persons whose interests and goods they are. Any final or total resolution of conflict that human beings envision will inevitably be distorted, prioritizing the interests and goods of some people at the expense of those of others. For people who look to politics for the pursuit of human perfectibility, the realization of total emancipation, or the achievement of recognition, this Christian realist account of politics is deflationary. Even the notion that the stuff of political life consists of ordinary interests and goods rather than more high-minded ideals of justice, equality, or emancipation seems to deprive politics of its true human significance. For Christian realists themselves, however, this account is based on the theological conviction that political life exhibits the possibilities and limitations of human beings who are created in the image of God yet are also fallen.5 However, even as it tempers our expectations, Christian realism avoids giving occasion for despair or cynicism. If its account of political life focuses on ordinary interests and goods rather than on higher human ambitions or more deeply rooted human desires and concedes the inevitability of conflicts among these interests or goods, its affirmation of the reality of the ultimate unity of interests or goods also offers grounds for finding political life meaningful in spite of its limitations. It assures us that our efforts at provisional resolutions of conflicts or orderings of diverse goods are not futile but are

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rather approximations of an ultimate unity that is real even if unrealized in history. Conceptions of the ultimate unity of interests or goods afford us, however imperfectly, glimpses of the ultimate character of reality, which is not corrupted by the distortions of the fall and which grounds a realistic hope that political life is always susceptible to a closer approximation to the ultimate unity than has been heretofore realized. While the inevitable frustration of attempts to realize this unity in history argues against political theories and systems that attempt to conform institutions and arrangements to it, the susceptibility of politics to closer approximations of it ensures that political life can be more than the cynical assertion of self-interest. I mentioned that Christian realism as Lovin presents it comes in two versions. One version, indebted chiefly to Reinhold Niebuhr, views politics as the negotiation and resolution of conflicting interests. The theological realism of this version has to do with moral obligation. In many political situations persons or groups may be obligated to sacrifice their interests to achieve a morally acceptable compromise. What makes such an obligation meaningful is the conviction that outcomes in which some interests are met and others not is not final, that interests which are never fully reconciled in history are ultimately in harmony. The other version of Christian realism is also indebted to Niebuhr but is more influenced by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It views politics in broadly neo-Aristotelian terms as the establishment and maintenance of conditions for human flourishing. Human flourishing on this view is realized in the diverse contexts in which persons create and maintain the goods that constitute their flourishing. Bonhoeffer’s term for these contexts is “mandates,” which he identifies as family, work, government, and church, and to which Lovin adds culture. The theological realism of this version has to do with the ultimate unity of the goods amid the complexity of modern social life, in which multiple and nonoverlapping contexts seem to pull us in many directions, generating a need for integration of the goods we create and maintain in these diverse contexts. In both cases theological realism shows how social and political life is meaningful in spite of our historical experience of unresolved conflicts of interests or unreconciled demands of competing goods. Because theological realism is central to Christian realism, the future of the latter depends heavily on the continuing viability of the former. If Christian realism is to have a future, theological realism must be viable in its own terms and in light of the “newer realities” that are now emerging in the political world that Christian realism addresses. In the first two sections below, I reconstruct the two versions of theological realism as I find them in Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism and Christian Realism and the New Realities, respectively, with a view to the question of the viability of theological realism in its own terms (that is, as Lovin characterizes it). In the third section, I consider the future of each version of theological realism in light of what I

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take to be the newer realities that any plausible version of Christian realism today would have to successfully address. THEOLOGICAL REALISM: VERSION ONE Christian realism is based on a particular form of political realism. This particular form is realistic in the sense that, following H. Richard Niebuhr, it focuses on “what is going on.” It analyzes social and political institutions and arrangements not by measuring them against norms or principles that prescribe an ideal order of justice or the human good, but by describing the various factors that are operative in concrete social and political situations; likewise, it understands the exercise of political responsibility as attending to those factors and not as the endeavor to bring institutions and arrangements into conformity to ideals or abstract principles. But what are the relevant factors that must be considered? Political realism has typically focused on the interests of individuals and groups in political situations, and this is how Lovin presents it in Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. On this view, what is going on are conflicts among the various interests that are in play in situations of common life, and politics has to do with the negotiation and resolution of these conflicts. As an analysis of politics, Christian realism describes the interests and their points of conflict and considers the prospects for resolving the conflicts. From this perspective, political analysis that measures situations of conflicting interests against ideals of justice, equality, and other moral values is problematic. For one thing, such ideals are abstractions that get in the way of understanding what is going on. But more importantly, the forces at play in political situations are not amenable to a simple imposition of ideals on them. Appeals to ideals will therefore not resolve actual conflicts of interests and will foreclose consideration of resolutions that might have been achieved. At the same time, however, political realism acknowledges the necessity of ideals to an adequate analysis of political situations. For one thing, people do not check their ideals at the door when they enter political situations. The interests at play in a situation may include, along with self-interest and power, an interest in seeing a norm prevail or an ideal realized. Such norms or ideals should be considered as part of what is going on and among the factors that determine what resolutions are and are not attainable, though they should not be treated as standards to which resolutions must be made to conform.6 But political realism goes further. It recognizes that achievable resolutions to conflicts are always incomplete, requiring the sacrifice of some interests and leaving others only partially met. At this point, theological realism becomes relevant. The ideal of an ultimate unity or harmony of interests

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stands in judgment on incomplete and partial resolutions, preventing us from becoming morally satisfied with them or complacent in the face of the interests they leave unsatisfied. For Christian realists, no political analysis is adequate unless it takes account of the judgment of this ideal on the limited and partial resolutions of conflict that are attainable in any political situation. For theological realism, however, the unity of interests by which a resolution to a conflict of interests is judged is not merely an ideal but is real. Its reality is significant in the first place because it stands in judgment also on our conceptions of it. As noted above, our ideas of it are therefore fallible, and their fallibility invalidates attempts to go beyond asserting the judgment of that unity on political situations to attempting to conform political situations to them. Theological realism is therefore crucial to the Christian realist analysis of politics. However, it is especially crucial to the question of the meaningfulness of politics on the political realist account. This question arises in the context of moral obligations. Morally acceptable resolutions to conflicts of interest may require political actors to sacrifice some of their interests, perhaps even quite vital ones. “Moral resolutions of conflict are possible because moral obligations override particular interests.”7 Why sacrifice my interests if the interests of others that prevail due to my sacrifice are no more than this? If politics is a domain in which persons seek to advance their interests, then obligations to sacrifice their interests strike at the very reason why they enter political situations in the first place. Why would a person who thinks of herself, politically speaking, in terms of her interests heed an obligation to sacrifice them? Obligations to disregard one’s own interests make little sense if interests are merely contingent assertions of selves. They are meaningful only if “we suppose that the resolutions to conflict that [they] impose are not themselves in conflict, but bespeak an ultimate unity,” that is, if interests are not finally opposed to one another or merely coincidentally convergent but are in harmony.8 An obligation to disregard one’s interests for the sake of a morally acceptable compromise issues from an ultimate harmony of interests which are not merely contingent assertions in conflict with one another. However, Christian realism denies that this harmony will be realized in historical experience. But if there is no assurance that what is sacrificed will be restored or recouped in a more comprehensive interest in history, how is an obligation to sacrifice one’s interests meaningful? And if it is not, how can politics avoid being no more than a ceaseless conflict of self-interested parties? Might morally obligatory sacrifices of one’s own interests be meaningful simply by virtue of the greater approximation of justice they aim to bring about? Perhaps, but the actual achievements of justice are an unstable ground of meaning. Whether the moral universe is ultimately a coherent one is a pressing question precisely because these achievements are so tenuous

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and uncertain. They leave us wondering: Will the interests of some people always be realized at the expenses of those of other people? Or is it reasonable to hope that sacrifices of interests are somehow in the service of an ultimate harmony of interests? These are important questions not only or even primarily because they are about the ultimate unity of those interests themselves but because they are about an ultimate unity or harmony among the persons whose interests they are. Are some persons ultimately denied fulfillment? More fundamentally, are human beings with their conflicting interests ultimately at odds with one another, or are they ultimately united with one another in “a harmony of life with life which conforms to the unity and love of the divine nature itself”?9 The Christian realist answer is that the unity or harmony of interests is real, so that the sacrifice of interests which one may be obligated to perform is not the final truth about those interests or the persons whose interests they are. But in exactly what sense is that unity or harmony real? Lovin’s first answer to this question invokes Reinhold Niebuhr’s commendation of myth as the form of language that is suited to refer to a condition, like the unity of interests, that is not realized in historical experience but impinges on it.10 Myth depicts such a condition as an “ideal which cannot possibly be met in ordinary experience [but] nonetheless shape[s] daily moral choices by . . . pulling the choices in a certain direction.”11 However, myth does not do the work that theological realism intends to do. An ideal that cannot be met in experience but impinges on it need not be real in any significant sense. It may amount to no more than a regulative ideal, which governs an activity (in this case, governing the activity of moral choices by pulling them in a certain direction) but has no reality. As an ideal, it is not met with in our experience; as regulative, it impinges on our experience. But it entails only that the interests which conflict in historical experience can in principle be harmonized with one another. It does not entail that their harmony is real. Theological realism requires more than a harmony of interests in principle. It requires that the unity of interests be real even if it is not realized in history, and that our provisional resolutions to disagreements, even when sacrifices of interests are morally demanded, relate to a unity that ultimately is real. Only if the unity is real, and is not merely a regulative ideal, is it the case that “any understanding of these disagreements that presents them as ultimate conflicts is false.”12 Lovin’s second attempt to depict the reality of the unity of interests is superior in this regard. It draws on H. Richard Niebuhr’s notion of radical monotheism.13 According to radical monotheism, the persons who have values (that is, interests), which means all persons, are themselves valued by God. The unity or harmony of interests subsists in God’s valuation of all human beings with their diverse interests.14 On this account, it is clear that the unity of interests is real. It is real for God, or more precisely, in God’s valuation of

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human persons. It is also clear why obligations to sacrifice one’s interests to achieve a morally acceptable compromise are meaningful. Because it holds that all valuing subjects are valued by God, “radical monotheism requires that we construe our values and aims in such a way that their realization could be consistent with the values and aims of all other persons.”15 It is in the consciousness that legitimate interests are those that are compatible with the interests of all others that one’s sacrifice of one’s own interests for a morally acceptable compromise is a meaningful act. Because the harmony of life with life is real in God’s valuation of all valuing subjects, to seek harmony among conflicting interests is in conformity to reality while pressing one’s own interests in opposition to those of others is not. This radical monotheist move rightly focuses on persons and not just their interests. “The moral truth on which our obligations ultimately rest is the value that all things have in relationship to God and the unity of lives and aims that is possible for all persons in relation to this center of value.” It is in this sense that there is an ultimate “harmony of life with life which conforms to the unity and love of the divine nature itself.”16 However, the radical monotheist move has a shortcoming. It proposes that a real unity of interests subsists in God’s valuation of all persons with their interests. But if this claim is to ground an obligation to suspend one’s prudential pursuit of one’s own interests, it must explain why one should adopt this divine standpoint as one’s own. Radical monotheism explains how the unity of interests is a reality for God, but it provides no assurance that it is also a reality for the persons whom God values. It does not promise that God actualizes God’s valuation of all valuers in such a way that the valuers themselves participate in it. It offers no reason, then, why we should adopt God’s valuation by sacrificing our interests in light of God’s valuation of all valuers. Why should the valuation of a radically transcendent God matter to us, and why should we endorse it in our own action? A solution to this problem might begin by considering politics not as a domain in which persons press their interests but as one in which they join together in forms of activity to realize human goods, and by thinking of the unity of those goods not only as a reality for God but also as one in which human persons participate. This solution is proposed by the second version of theological realism, to which I now turn. THEOLOGICAL REALISM: VERSION TWO The second of Lovin’s two versions of Christian realism begins with an observation about life in modern societies. These societies generate a variety of largely unrelated contexts in which individuals create and maintain goods. In Lovin’s words, “we take responsibility for a multiplicity of goods . . .

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[which] require different forms of social organization to create and maintain them.”17 In contrast to premodern societies, family, work, government, culture, and church operate independently of each other, and the demands they make often conflict with one another, making it difficult for those who participate in them to integrate the disparate goods they offer in a coherent way of life. With this differentiation of social institutions, politics is no longer able to fulfill its classical ambition of coordinating the diverse goods of human life.18 Yet human flourishing depends on somehow finding a unity among these diverse goods that pull us in different directions. “Can we identify a way of relating to the goods we seek in various contexts that unites them all in what we would recognize as a good life?”19 An affirmative answer is far from obvious. Our everyday experience does not support an expectation of finding unity among the distinct and competing goods. The conflicting claims these goods make “on our time, our care, and the resources at our disposal provide all the evidence we need that they cannot easily be arranged into a single system.”20 What is going on according to this version of Christian realism is not the interests at play in political situations but the creation and maintenance of goods in everyday contexts. In continuity with the focus on interests in the first version, the focus on goods in this version involves a rejection of the assumption that social and political life can be organized around a single ideal of the human good or an ideal ordering of human goods. Rather, the concern is with the demands made by goods in multiple contexts, the conflicts among these demands, and the limited role of politics in resolving those conflicts. In place of an Aristotelian ordering of society to the pursuit of goods, liberal democratic politics, in a liberal Augustinian vein, establishes minimal conditions of peace and order under which individuals may conduct their own Aristotelian pursuits of the good.21 Yet liberal democratic politics confronts an unsolvable problem that is partly of its own making.22 Because it establishes and maintains conditions under which people may freely choose how they are to pursue these diverse goods, it causes the need to unify the goods it makes available for choice. But because it leaves to each individual the task of integration, it is incapable of meeting the need it causes. Can theological realism account for a unity of the good that liberal democracy is unable to provide? In its confidence in the ultimate unity of the good in spite of the diversity and conflict of goods in our experience, theological realism in this second version opposes the influential claim, articulated by Isaiah Berlin and developed by William Galston, that human goods are irreducibly plural.23 According to value pluralism, the conflict of goods in our experience reflects the nature of moral reality. The human good being irreducibly plural, conflicts among goods are endemic to the moral universe we live in and are not

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finally resolvable. That liberal democratic politics accommodates this intractable feature of moral reality by not attempting to impose a unity of goods but rather leaving individuals free to integrate them however they will is, for value pluralists, its great advantage. Theological realism agrees with value pluralism that our experience is of unresolved conflicts among goods, but it denies that the human good is irreducibly plural. Yet rather than securing the meaning of moral obligation and the sacrifices it may require, as in the first version, the second version of theological realism affirms the unity of the good as the object of hope that the irreducible plurality and conflicts of goods are not the final word about them or about the moral universe we live in. In contrast to the earlier version, the unity of the good according to this version of theological realism is not a mere regulative ideal, nor is it real only in God’s valuation. Rather, it is a state of affairs that God actually brings about, albeit not in history itself, but eschatologically.24 This version is therefore realist in a more robust sense than was the first version. That the unity of the good is an eschatological reality means, first, that it is God’s activity, not ours, that unites the disparate goods of human life, and second, that the state of affairs in which their unity is attained does not come about in history but at the end of history, even as it impinges on the present. Two implications of the eschatological reality of the unity of the good are similar to the implications of the reality of the good according to moral realism. First, because it is eschatological in this sense, the unity of the good lies beyond all ideologies (including theological systems) that claim to articulate it and all programs that promise to realize it. Second, insofar as the reality of the unity of the good lies beyond historical experience, our attempts to conceptualize it will always fall short and our attempts to implement it will always betray it. Theological realism therefore agrees with value pluralism that the historical experience of individuals and groups is one of an irreducible plurality of goods, conflicts among which are not fully resolvable. Moreover, it shares the suspicion of liberal democracy toward all political programs that promise to unify the goods in historical experience. More positively, the eschatological character of the unity of the good according to theological realism leaves human beings free to attend fully to making responsible choices among the disparate goods in the present in the knowledge that their choices cannot unify the diverse and often competing goods among which they choose and that they are not responsible for unifying them.25 However, to say that the unity of the good is eschatological is to say more than this. The eschatology theological realism affirms is Christological. The ultimate unity of the good is present in Jesus Christ, and that means that its eschatological realization is proleptically present in history even if it is not realized in history. “Jesus Christ is the presence of God within history and not only beyond it.”26 The unity of the good in him is both beyond history

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and in history. But what does it mean to say that the unity of the good is present in Jesus Christ? It cannot mean that we look to the Gospels as a model for our own attempts to unify goods. The differentiation of family, work, government, culture, and church was not Jesus’ circumstance, and the task of integrating the variegated goods made available in these contexts was not his mission. Bonhoeffer stresses instead that in Jesus Christ the world is reconciled to God.27 God’s presence in Christ takes the form of judgment and redemption of the world.28 That the world is reconciled to God does not, then, imply that the unity of the good can now be realized in historical experience. But it does fulfill the two roles of theological realism: it judges partial resolutions of conflicts of goods in light of their reconciliation in Christ (judgment), and it secures the meaning of politics with a proleptic anticipation of the eschatological realization of the unity of the good in him (redemption). To say that the unity of the good is present in Jesus Christ is also to say that its eschatological realization is present in a human person in history, and is not simply deferred to a state of affairs beyond history, much less relegated to an abstract ordering of goods based on a rational principle or intuition. It is also to say that other human beings share in the presence of the unity of the good in Christ insofar as they are in Christ, as they are for Bonhoeffer, whether or not they are aware of it. Human beings exist in the image of God as that image takes form in history in the person of Jesus Christ.29 The unity of the good may therefore be said to be present in history in the sense that the good is unified in the person of Jesus Christ and in other persons insofar as they exist in Christ. Theological realism in this second version is thus a form of personalism. Liberal democratic politics is also personalist insofar as it leaves the integration of goods up to individual persons under its principles of consent and freedom to choose. But insofar as the claim about the unity of the good in the person is a claim about persons in Christ, theological realism does not simply leave the task of unifying the good to individuals—a task which, on liberal democracy’s own account, is never fulfilled. For theological realism, the unity of the good is present in Christ the Reconciler, and therefore in individuals insofar as they are in Christ. The reality of the unity of the good in Christ is present in history and is therefore not merely a task for individuals to undertake. The question of the ultimate unity of the good is therefore a question about our treatment of persons in history.30 The unity of the good impinges on political life in the form of two principles drawn from personalism. The first is a principle of non-subordination of persons to the goods they help to create in the various contexts in which goods are created and maintained. These goods are for persons, and not vice versa. The second is a principle of participation of each person in all of these contexts.31 The unity of goods in the person does not solve in history the problem of unifying the diverse and competing goods,

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but it rules out a premature unity that would be attained by isolating oneself from some of those contexts and thereby avoiding conflicts involving them. With these two principles, theological realism sets meaningful limits on the efforts of individuals and institutions to unify goods without violating liberal democratic principles that leave these efforts to individuals. The second version of theological realism is superior to the first on two counts. First, its move from the transcendent God of H. Richard Niebuhr’s radical monotheism to the incarnate God of Bonhoeffer’s Christ becoming real in the world is not only a gain in theological adequacy; it also shows how the unity of the good is real for us (namely, because we are in Christ), and not only for God. In part, the unity is real for us insofar as it is an actual state of affairs and not just a fact about divine valuation. But if it were only an eschatological reality, then in spite of it being an actual state of affairs it would not be present in history and its relation to our choices in history would be functionally the same as that of the first version: it would impinge on history without being part of it. But insofar as the unity of the good is present in Christ, theological realism can speak of its presence in history and thus as something that is real for all human persons insofar as they are in Christ. Second, the newer version enables us to understand the ultimate unity of interests or goods as a genuinely common good. The first version depicts persons as entering into political life by asserting their interests. Here, the common good is at most a compatibility of everyone’s interests with those of all others. But mere compatibility is not genuine commonality, which obtains when what is good for one is good for the whole, and vice versa. The second version understands persons as engaging in political life by creating and maintaining goods by their participation in the contexts or mandates. Because these contexts are social in nature, the creation and maintenance of goods is also social. The goods themselves do not precede their social contexts, as interests do, but rather emerge within them. They are therefore genuinely common, even as they benefit individuals. THEOLOGICAL REALISM AND THE NEWER REALITIES The first version of theological realism reflects a period in which global peace depended on compromises among powerful nation-states that asserted their national interests on the global stage while domestic stability depended on compromises between competing interests (most prominently those of labor and capital) in large-scale industrial societies. Both global peace and domestic stability were threatened by commitments to ideals that did not allow for compromise and were in some cases backed by unchecked power. Christian realism as a clearly identifiable approach to politics took form during this

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period, whose characteristic problems it not only responded to but helped to identify. Lovin’s Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism demonstrated that this version of Christian realism, which in Niebuhr’s own writings relied heavily on keen observation and skillful rhetoric, was susceptible of a clear and rigorous conceptual formulation. The second version of theological realism reflects a period in which the compatibility of commitments to conceptions of the good with democratic norms was in question. To many people, political discourse seems vacuous if conceptions about how the goods of life are to be ordered are excluded from it. Yet the experience of life in modern societies is one of disparate and conflicting goods with no agreement on how they should be ordered. Liberal democratic norms respond to the diversity of goods and disagreement over their proper ordering by leaving it to individuals to integrate the goods on their own terms, yet these same norms seem to empty political life of the concern about the human good that constitutes much of our life in common and motivates us to participate in politics in the first place. Lovin’s Christian Realism and the New Realities demonstrated that Christian realism was not irretrievably bound up with the circumstances of the twentieth century in which it emerged but could insightfully address these “new realities” of politics in the post-industrial, post–Cold War era. This achievement was significant, as it suggested that Christian realism is not a momentary but a permanent, or at least a persistent, Christian approach to politics: not a novel construct but a genuine strand of Christian tradition. Today, of course, there are yet “newer realities.” What are they, and can Christian realism understand and address them in a compelling way? While the realities that concerned Christian realism in its formative stage had to do with conflicting interests and the threat of uncompromising ideals, and the new realities of its second stage had to do with democratic norms and the diversity of goods, the newer realities of the present have to do with identity, information technology, and digitization. Identity comes into play as historically marginalized groups seek recognition and redress of historical (and continuing) wrongs and historically privileged groups feel threatened at the prospect of a diminished place in their societies. Meanwhile, the control of information by technology companies and the emergence of a digital commons have weakened the liberal democratic state while radically transforming political discourse and undermining longstanding democratic norms and procedures. Identities are a more potent force in politics today than are the ideals that exerted such influence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and were the concern of Christian realism in its period of greatest influence, while globalization and the digital commons pose the question of the viability of liberal democracy in very different ways than the first period covered by Lovin’s work posed it.

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These newer realities challenge both versions of Christian realism. The first version assumes that the claims of individuals and groups can be made to operate in political life as interests, which (in contrast to ideals, especially when they become ideologies) are in principle susceptible of negotiation in conflicts with the interests of other individuals and groups. On this view, political life is imperiled when, as in the decades when Christian realism took shape, claims by individuals and groups operate in political life not as interests but as ideals that demand the conformity of institutions and arrangements to them. Christian realism offered a plausible account of how politics could be carried out as an engagement of conflicting interests resulting in partial resolutions rather than as material to be shaped by ideals, yet without rendering political activity meaningless in the face of unresolved conflict. Theological realism, with its ultimate unity of interests that transcends yet impinges on historical experience, was crucial to that account, as it warded off the despair and cynicism that also imperil political life and pose the risk of a return to ideals in reaction to them. Assertions of identities present a twofold challenge to the first version of Christian realism. First, it is unclear that Christian realism can treat identities as it treated ideals. Democratic principles, as the first version of Christian realism understands them, require people to consider their ideals as interests that are in principle resolvable by negotiation with those whose interests conflict with them. But identities are less amenable to compromise than ideals. Precisely because they constitute the very selfhood of the persons whose identities they are, to compromise them is to betray oneself. Second, however, the need to neutralize identities or reduce them to negotiable interests is less pressing than was the need to do that with ideals. Demands for recognition by marginalized groups or redress for the wrongs they have suffered are contextual in a way that universal claims for liberté, égalite, fraternité were not. Christian realism in its first version was designed to respond to the threat of comprehensive ideals such as these and their offshoots, backed by absolute power in totalitarian regimes. But identities are not comprehensive in this sense, and therefore they do not lay claim to the whole of human life in large-scale societies in the way that universal ideals did. To be sure, they are volatile and dangerous, as we see in places where aggrieved majority groups have voted authoritarian leaders into office. But they require a different analysis than the lexicon of ideals and interests makes available, and the theological realism that emerges from that analysis will have to focus on something other than the ultimate unity of conflicting interests. The newer realities pose two challenges to the second version of Christian realism, both of which involve the conception of politics as the search for the good in the various contexts. Politics for Lovin is not confined to government but is the search for the human good in all these contexts.32 Government is

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one context, along with family, work, culture, and church, in which people create and maintain goods and struggle to integrate the demands made by them.33 The first challenge concerns this notion of government as one context among several in which all persons participate. This notion expresses the opposition of Christian realism to an overarching state that asserts power over the search for the good in all the other contexts. But it seems inadequate in the face of two newer realities which the second version could not have anticipated. Lovin’s new realities included the globalization of economies and the concomitant decline of the power of nation-states. But they did not include the power over human lives that is in the hands of huge technology companies that control vast amounts of information or the emergence of the digital commons that has steadily undermined the structures and mechanisms of government. The regulative or coordinating function of government is both necessary and fragile today, and a conception of government that goes beyond the justifiable reaction of Christian realism to an all-powerful state yet without reinstating that state is a high priority for Christian realism. The second challenge concerns the priority of the contexts for political life. The problem of politics for the second version was not the threat of an ideological imposition on society of one ideal of the good but the need to manage the diversity of goods while leaving persons free to disagree over their proper ordering. The solution for Lovin was the contexts themselves, in which the disagreements occur within common structures shaped by common purposes.34 But this solution presupposes that people will prioritize their participation in the contexts themselves over their particular views of what those contexts are or should be. Today, however, many people on the political left and right do not see themselves as participants in the shared contexts of family and culture with people who radically disagree with them over what family or culture should be. “Progressive” and “conservative” do not name disagreements within shared contexts so much as they name identities that preclude any genuine sharing of contexts. Rather than seeing themselves as participants in contexts marked by common structures and shared purposes, people increasingly see themselves as progressives or conservatives who share an approach to the various human goods in opposition to the other approach. The diversity of goods is increasingly integrated not by shared contexts but by progressive or conservative identities. The future will tell whether these identities will be backed by an authoritarian state, the power of information technology companies, or the volatility of the digital commons. But for now, the confidence that the contexts in liberal democratic societies provide a provisional unity of the good which theological realism may affirm as penultimate to the ultimate unity of the good has become questionable. Among Christian theories of politics, Christian realism is perhaps uniquely vulnerable to changing circumstances. An approach to politics that begins

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not with an ideal of justice or the good which may be applied to changing circumstances but with a consideration of what is going on must always prove its relevance to new circumstances. At a time when the relevance of Christian realism was widely questioned, Robin Lovin accomplished this task in the face of the new realities of the post-industrial, post–Cold War period. His readers look forward to seeing him do the same in the face of the newer realities of identity, globalized information, and the digital commons.35 BIBLIOGRAPHY Lovin, Robin W. Christian Realism and the New Realities. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ———. Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

NOTES 1. Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 36. 2. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 38. 3. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 53–54. 4. Robin W. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1–2. 5. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 1. 6. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 8, 10–11. 7. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 57. 8. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 26. 9. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 24. 10. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 22–23, 62–63. 11. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 26–27. 12. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 28. 13. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 65. 14. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 66–67. 15. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 66. 16. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 67–68. 17. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 186. 18. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 12, 40–41. 19. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 183. 20. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 186. 21. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 13. 22. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 62, 183. 23. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 79, 185.

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24. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 188, 191–92. 25. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 108, 195–96. 26. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 203. 27. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 198. 28. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 11. 29. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 214, 215. 30. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 213–14. 31. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 214. 32. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 13, 15. 33. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 76. 34. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 111–12. 35. This chapter is written in appreciation of Robin Lovin as my teacher, mentor, and friend; in admiration of the combination of academic rigor and moral sensibility he has brought to the field of Christian ethics over the course of his distinguished career; and in gratitude for the many ways he has supported my own career.

Chapter Three

Christian Realism and Doctrine Douglas F. Ottati

Doctrine, an archaic English word for teaching or instruction, comes from the Latin doctrina. Most often, it refers to the teachings of religious communities associated with the formation of people in a faithful manner of living, though it also may refer to political principles or even basic government policies. For my purposes here this broad range of meanings—from catechesis to political philosophy—is genuinely helpful. I shall argue, with the help of some of Robin W. Lovin’s writings, that a viable and politically relevant Christian realism for our place and time depends upon articulating a more or less comprehensive Christian doctrine. I will also suggest what I take to be a promising doctrinal outline. My approach will be somewhat heterodox, since I interpret Lovin’s thinking rather freely, suggest occasional additions, and then articulate my own theology. But I begin, as Lovin also does, with Reinhold Niebuhr. NIEBUHR ON DEMOCRACY, LOVIN ON CHRISTIAN REALISM Fascism, totalitarianism, economic depression, and World War II—Niebuhr’s Christian realism engages a time of crisis, especially for democratic politics. He thinks, in fact, that the totalitarian “children of darkness” understand some things about human anxieties, interests, and desires that Enlightenment advocates of democracy, or “the children of light,” generally do not. Consider, then, his pithy statement in 1944, really almost a thesis, as he anticipates a new international order following the war: “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”1 37

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For Niebuhr, who returned again and again to the importance of advancing tolerable harmonies of justice, we need to know something about human beings in order to understand democracy’s prospects adequately. What are we to make of creatures capable of justice but inclined toward injustice? What shall we say about the political institutions appropriate to them? Humans, according to Niebuhr, are endowed with self-transcending freedom and imagination. They have the capacity to envision circumstances other than their own and also to identify moral norms and ideals that transcend their isolated interests and preferences. They are good creatures and capable moral agents who are able to enter into political processes that do not reduce merely to exertions of power. Even so, and as he observes with some frequency, Niebuhr also thinks the failures of liberal political theory are due largely to the fact that it has no equivalent to the doctrine of sin. Liberal political theory lacks a sense for the persistent flaw and corruption of persons and communities, and is therefore unable now (in 1944) to vindicate the idea of democracy in an effective manner. For Niebuhr, key points to understand about democracy are that it enfranchises capable moral agents as participants but also checks and balances their corrupted interests and preferences, thereby furnishing a polity able to support continued adjustments and approximations of justice in the midst of the vitalities and conflicts of history. All of which is to say that his basic case for the appropriateness of democracy and how best to vindicate it entails, among other things, going back to his Christian doctrinal drawing board and retrieving some rather fundamental theological ideas, a task that continues to occupy Niebuhr through his masterwork on The Nature and Destiny of Man. This suggests why Lovin claims that “Christian realism” actually consists of three interconnected realisms.2 Political realism, he says, recognizes limits to purely moral solutions and calls for attention to the many realities that shape social, political, and economic conflicts, including the persistent currents of self-interest that resist moral norms. At the same time, Lovin notes, Niebuhr insists that moral norms and ideas also are real and that it is a mistake to adopt a version of political realism that treats ideals and values as irrelevant to political choices.3 This is so because persons and communities really do apprehend and affirm moral ideas, and, with some frequency they also estimate the legitimacy of political solutions, regimes, and policies at least partly in moral terms. Agencies and powers therefore ignore the practical political significance of their perceived moral legitimacy at their peril.4 Moral realism, says Lovin, holds that the appropriateness of our moral ideas and norms depends on their conformity to assessments of the world and human beings. That is, what we know about humans counts for and against our moral ideas, and these ideas—for example, that human community requires a modicum of fairness and the avoidance of torture and

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indiscriminate killing—persist. Christian realism recognizes this; it is a form of ethical naturalism, which believes that life is to be lived in accord with human nature, its freedom of spirit and its limits.5 Finally, says Lovin, theological realism means that statements about the will of God can be true or false in the sense that they convey cognitive content needed to complete an account of human morality. Good theology presents—however mythically, fragmentarily, and symbolically—a sense for the divine loving will, generosity of spirit, and self-sacrifice. And, this has crucial effects on the moral situation of human life and our prospects for social harmony.6 So Lovin insists, as does Niebuhr, that Christian realism, its political analyses, and its estimates of human possibilities and limits, requires a theology. NEW REALITIES In Christian Realism and the New Realities, Lovin claims that a current Christian realism needs to engage changed social structures, as well as shifting movements in politics and in thought. He argues further that, if Christian realism engages these new realities, it may come to develop the political relevance of a Christian vision in ways Niebuhr did not.7 And, indeed, he makes this same constructive point at the close of his short introduction to Niebuhr’s thinking: “The question for the future is whether we can now create a hopeful, pluralistic Christian realism that will bring prophetic faith to bear in a new way on the very different realities that shape the world today. If we do that, we will not always say exactly what Reinhold Niebuhr said.”8 Start with the question of hope and the prospects for positive political change. In his presidential address for the Society of Christian Ethics (2000), “Christian Realism: Its Legacy and its Future,” Lovin notes the complaint of some African American, feminist, and Latin American Christians that Christian realism “failed them politically.”9 Especially during the mid-twentieth century, says Lovin, the realists’ focus on ambiguities, limitations, and balances of power supported an unsatisfying gradualism that also seems unrealistic in the light of the successes of the Civil Rights movement, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the “velvet revolution,” and Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. Events subsequent to Lovin’s address, e.g., the rise of Putin’s Russia, the resurgence of populisms, ethnocentrisms, and white supremacy, the emergence of Afro-pessimism, a trend toward authoritarian stances by some once-revolutionary leaders in Latin America, and the persistence of authoritarian rule in a more prosperous (and capitalist) China, surely remind us that the realists’ concerns were not entirely ill conceived. Nevertheless, Lovin’s judgment holds that, as the twentieth century unfolded,

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many Christian realists became too thoroughly aligned with centers of power to appreciate the grounds for hope among the oppressed.10 Consider next a new pluralism. Historic traditions, both religious and otherwise, which once furnished some modern societies, such as the United States, with unifying ideas of a good life and a good society, now no longer do so. This is partly because these societies now harbor a variety of particular religious and cultural traditions, and thus no single tradition reigns. But that is not all. Lovin notes too that, under modern conditions, people continue to pursue important goods, such as material wealth, justice, piety, and intimate relationships of care, in basic social contexts or arenas, such as economics, politics, religion, and family. Only now, these basic contexts, the practices or disciplines they require, and the goods they promise have become more highly differentiated.11 Lovin says that oppressive social orders, e.g., apartheid, deny persons and groups full participation in one or more of these contexts and the goods that they enable, e.g., politics and the just resolutions of conflicts and the fair distribution of opportunities. But the heightened differentiation of our activities and pursuits, or what we may call the social pluralism of the different settings in which we live and move, can also lead to additional distortions. For example, especially in the absence of an overarching picture of the good to balance and integrate the differentiated contexts of modern life, one or another context and the specific good it furnishes, e.g., career and economic gain, may come to define persons entirely and reductively, thus skewing their participation in other contexts and goods, e.g., family and the pursuit of intimate care and support. Again, persons operating in multiple contexts may become badly fragmented, or perhaps even torn, so that they live at crossed purposes, now pursuing economic gain, now familial security, now higher education and the arts, now politics, but with little sense of how these different contexts and values fit together into a coherent and a good life. One thing people need under these circumstances, then, is a sense for the integrity of life. They need proposals about a good life and a good society that balance, respect, and link the plural values that they pursue in different contexts by means of diverse disciplines, skills, and lines of activity. But liberal democracies, with their reliance on procedural rules of fairness and comparatively thin theories of the good, do not provide these. Moreover, especially in pluralist settings where no particular tradition and its idea of the good furnish a general cultural backdrop and where commercial capitalist economic patterns predominate, liberal societies often do little more than suggest that individuals choose their own private understandings of the good life much as consumers select products in a supermarket. Liberal politics, in fact, sometimes also tries to remove from the public square any and all traditions that make particular or “thick” proposals about the good, and, frequently

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enough, the ethos of commercial capitalism fills the void by insisting that a good life is simply one that maximizes individual economic gain.12 A consequence is that, as they move between the different arenas of modern life and their patterned activities, many people experience a vague existential or spiritual uneasiness. On the one hand, they feel driven to succeed, and, on the other, they feel unanchored or adrift. Another consequence is the emergence of what Lovin calls “the politics of values.”13 Voters in pluralist liberal democracies want a politician to do more than simply indicate which policies she or he supports, and so, many come to distrust elites who seem only to have mastered the technical disciplines and modes of reflection required to formulate and enact specific policies. They want something more; they also want to know how a given politician views the good life and a good society, or how she envisions life in its coherence. They are interested to know this, says Lovin, not because they will support only a politician who sees and/or lives life precisely as they do, but because they want to be reassured that she has some sense of how plural contexts, pursuits, and values may be balanced in a good life.14 At the very least, voters want to be reassured that a given politician will refrain from actions and policies that undercut or damage the particular, sometimes more traditional and local, but often also fragile ways in which they themselves try to balance and integrate plural values and activities. Here, I think we may link Lovin’s analysis with elements of a view suggested recently by New York Times columnist David Brooks. Globalized democratic capitalism provokes a backlash partly because, with its insistence that individuals make choices guided by their economic interests alone and its tendency to define persons by the disciplines and skills needed to pursue these interests within large interconnected markets and commercial structures, it is overly cosmopolitan and spiritually thin. Disparities of income and wealth accelerate, and at the same time many people also feel as if they are being ripped away from their more local, traditional, and religious cultures.15 One may make substantially the same point more radically. Under the pressures of a globalized commercial capitalism, liberal democracies that try to sanitize the public square of specific traditions and their understandings of the good allow a culture idolatrously to elevate “the Market” into the ultimate center of meaning and value. Now, the worth of all other lines of human activity, e.g., education, art, and government, and of the goods they pursue becomes a function of their contributions to “the Market.” That is, a kind of totalitarianism emerges as commercial capitalism elevates a new hegemon or idol. “The Market” not only is king; as some, including Harvey Cox, have argued, it is God.16 Human life becomes badly misoriented and skewed, disparities of wealth accelerate, and existential or spiritual unease intensifies as

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people are dislodged from richer and more complex understandings of a good life and a good society. Cox elaborates, “I am beginning to think that for all the religions of the world, however they may differ from one another, the religion of The Market has become the most formidable rival.” Traditional religions view nature as a divine creation in which humans are stewards, but “The Market” holds (as I would say, anyway) that nature is raw material for the production of wealth. Again, for “The Market,” human beings are what they buy and sell in any way they choose. “Older religions,” says Cox, “encourage archaic attachments to particular places,” but for The Market, which strongly prefers “radical individualism and instant mobility” because “it needs to shift people” wherever “production requires them,” “all places are interchangeable.” In short, “The Market prefers a homogenized world culture with as few particularities as possible. It longs to ‘make the rough places smooth.’”17 Quite importantly, I think, Lovin indicates that religion can play this same role. Business insists that the market can most efficiently allocate resources to provide the largest sum of the goods we all seek, so that we should all agree, whatever our system of law or our individual preferences, to live by the judgments of the market. Religion counters that it has a way of life that transcends differences and moral uncertainty, so that we should all agree, whatever our political theory or our individual preferences, to live by the judgments of God. Both Islamic and Western religious movements, usually characterized as “fundamentalist,” insist that neither the laws of secular governments nor market forces and the desires they create should touch the lives of the faithful. Economic theorists and corporate leaders insist that neither government nor religion should interfere with freedom, meaning especially the freedom of people to desire what the market has to sell and the freedom of the market to sell it.18

Do some theologies that are not fundamentalist also fail to respect socially differentiated contexts of responsibility? Consider Jose Miguez Bonino’s rather direct move from religious ideas about love and the kingdom to a strategic alliance with Marxism against the “definitely anti-Christian” ethos of capitalism.19 Or again, Miguel de la Torre works from a biblical “paradigm of land ownership” where “property serves the livelihood of all in the community” and possessions are shared. This “inclusive claim on property,” he says, accords with the shared life of the Trinity, differs from “our modern form of land ownership,” and critiques capitalism.20 Valpy Fitzgerald, who writes on the economics of liberation theology, recognizes similarities between “a biblical world of peasant farming” and conditions in some Latin American countries, but favors a “welfare economics”—including investments in a range of social services—that has positive

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long run returns due to increased productivity.21 He notes, too, the serious, even fatal consequences (especially in Nicaragua) of moving directly to “general denunciations of capitalism” without attending to “issues of economic development theory,” such as “the balance between industry and agriculture, the best way to finance social expenditures . . . and incentives for private producers.”22 The strong implication, I think, is that some liberation theologies allow biblical and theological images of God’s will to displace a more fine-grained consideration of the market almost entirely. Moreover, one wonders whether a failure to respect relatively independent economic practices that produce wealth may, under certain circumstances, give way to authoritarian political attempts to impose religiously and/or philosophically based ideas of the good society. In any case, the point I wish to underscore here is that a Christian realism influenced by Lovin’s work clearly will take a different tack. It will emphasize struggles for fairer and more just societies that enable all persons and groups to pursue needed human goods, and it will recognize that justice as fair opportunity to participate in the differentiated contexts that procure these goods is easily convertible, if need be, into talk about rights. It will articulate a definite theology, but recognize, too, at least in a society such as our own, that there is also no wishing away the new pluralism in favor of older religious establishments, even were it desirable to do so. This is why I think that, instead of returning to older establishments or affirming a shallow secularism, contemporary Christian realists who are informed by Lovin’s reflections should articulate an unapologetic Christian theology that promotes justice, critiques overoptimism, explores grounds for hope, recognizes plural traditions and values or goods, insists on the dignity and elusive integrity of the person before God, and furnishes a distinctive portrait of the good life and a good society amid the tensions and ambiguities of the twenty-first century. They should not stand idly by as liberal democratic capitalism runs its spiritually thin, often morally and socially problematic course. But they should also appreciate the accomplishments of liberal democracy when it comes to participation, balances of power, and justice as fairness. Christian realists who follow Lovin’s lead will conceive of politics in a classical and broad sense that reflects not only on the powers of nation-states, but also on how we may organize our lives together in ways that make human goods possible. It is against this broader background, in fact, that they will advocate and support positive social and political changes. Moreover, as pluralists, they will recognize that the varied goods pursued in differentiated contexts of modern life should not be subordinated to the hegemony of any single context.23 They also will recognize that other traditions may make unapologetic statements and proposals regarding a good life and a good

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society, and that Christians can learn not only from them but also from the practices and ideas generated as persons pursue differentiated political, social, and economic goods. They will recognize, too, that there is important work to be done when it comes to identifying significant agreements, commonalities, and overlapping ideas among various traditions and distinctive portraits of a good life and a good society. But they can do these things only if they also articulate the specific stance and point of view supported by their particular religious tradition. And so, for a politically concerned Christian realist the formulation of a distinctly Christian theological vision remains indispensable. VALUES POLITICS, IDEALISM, AND CYNICISM This last point, in fact, is what I am going to elaborate: the ability of a contemporary Christian realism dynamically to engage present realities depends significantly on the recognition that its basic elements fit with and are informed by an overall Christian doctrinal vision. But, before I turn to theology proper let me make an additional observation. Particularly but not only in the United States, the contemporary situation seems especially perilous for democratic politics and deliberations. Ponder some features of recent public debates—from how to respond to climate change and environmental degradation to how nations should handle the challenges of mass migrations. Side A says that Side B has concocted “fake news”; in reply B accuses A of hewing to a “false narrative.” In short, each side insists the other can’t see straight (and perhaps also engages in outright duplicity) largely because it is committed to the wrong values. This amounts to a new idealism, or to the shared assumption that ideas and ideals are almost entirely decisive. That is, other than fundamental values and ideals, little else counts for and against the way opposing sides see things. Parties to public debates easily discount the empirical studies, analyses of situations, and observations proffered by those with whom they disagree because they simply assume all studies, analyses, and observations to be incorrigibly biased. Moreover, even less appears to count for and against the fundamental values and ideals, which many people regard merely as subjective preferences. The new idealism gives way to a new relativism, and then also a new cynicism. Perilous consequences follow for democratic polities that try to “foster a free exchange of opinions” in the hope that we may “learn things we didn’t know before,” and even occasionally “change our minds”—a process that allows for “self-correction.”24 Indeed, a feature of the new relativism and its attendant cynicism is the belief that differences and conflicts finally are resolved only by the power of persons and groups to advance their own

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partial cultural, economic, and political interests. (Power may corrupt, but finally it also reigns virtually unchallenged and supreme.) Another, related feature: especially in the face of multiple partisan media outlets as well as proliferating, idiosyncratic, and often intentionally deceptive social media, many conclude that reliable information is unavailable. No source is to be believed. Skepticism skyrockets—a development which might be a step toward health, were it not overtaken almost immediately by partisan favoritism, e.g., “My side alone sees things truly,” as well as a heightened degree of alienation that moves some to conclude we are living amid almost endless conspiracies. Little wonder that many citizens just quit paying attention.25 Thus, somewhat unexpectedly and in conjunction with modern electronic communications, the rise of values politics appears to have furnished an especially volatile circumstance for democratic deliberation. Those who are able to identify the fundamental values, fears, and resentments of specific and like-minded communities or groups can manipulate public opinion without fear of having seriously to engage the alternative views, arguments, and opinions offered by other voices. And, if democratic politics are to operate creditably, this too needs to be addressed by one’s theological vision. THEOLOGY We are ready now to turn to doctrine, though I cannot develop here a comprehensive Christian schema from the key sources. That remains the task of a systematic theology.26 Instead, my aim is to outline briefly some basic doctrines and suggest how they support a vibrant Christian realism capable of addressing our pluralist, sometimes darkly cynical age. The specific doctrinal vision I have in mind is much like the one Niebuhr deploys, and it has strong roots in Reformed Christianity, or the Protestant tradition associated with John Calvin, Puritans, and others. Begin with creation. The Creator is the great Bestower of existence and life in relation to whom all creatures and persons are good and have inalienable worth. Another idea, and one that Niebuhr himself often stressed is that God creates and governs the world but also is distinguished from it.27 Divine purposes therefore are not interconnected with and mediated in and through religious institutions and activities alone. The deity’s command, lure, tendency, or trajectory meets us in, with, and through all dimensions of world and all contexts of human responsibility. It cannot be identified only with religion or any other single context of responsibility and the good therein pursued, e.g., economics and the production of wealth. To this insistence, we should add a salient point made by the Dutch prime minister and theologian, Abraham

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Kuyper: God’s single and universal governance takes place by means of relatively independent spheres, such as politics, religion, and scholarship, which are structured by appropriate and relatively independent institutions, such as government, the church, and the university. Thus, when one of these institutions tries to determine or control the others, in effect, it usurps God’s sovereignty.28 So, humans are good, distinctively capable, but also limited creatures. They 1) apprehend moral values and ideals that extend beyond their isolated preferences and interests, 2) exercise considerable powers of understanding and agency as they live and move amid the many agencies, forces, and interrelations of nature and history, and 3) neither anticipate nor control all relevant outcomes. Accordingly, there is no line of human endeavor entirely unable to pursue some good(s), none that is completely impotent with respect to the many agencies, forces, and interrelations, but also none without the risk of unanticipated and unintended consequences. This is true of everything from starting a business and launching a political movement to planting a field and raising a child. Again, as inherently social creatures under God, people participate in a variety of institutions and lines of responsibility. Then, too, as H. Richard Niebuhr also emphasized, the perspectives of all persons and communities remain particular, limited, and incomplete; though we are able to know and apprehend realities, every human gaze (no matter the situation, value, or reality it discerns) is always a conditioned view from somewhere.29 Turn next to sin. Endemic corruption is radical and universal. Persons and communities harbor inordinate wants and desires for wealth, power, etc., they hold disproportionate interests in their isolated welfares, and they regularly pursue specific goods and interests at the expense of others. They also idolatrously elevate their own communities and causes into objects of ultimate meaning and trust even as they devalue others. Indeed, cultures and communities routinely deny their creaturely and historical limitations by erecting pretentious towers of the spirit for which they claim unconditioned and transcendent validity.30 The corrupted interests, pretensions, and confidences of persons and communities often skew the ways they see things, their lines of practical reasoning, and their interpretative portraits of situations calling for moral involvements.31 Moreover, skewed images, practices, and commitments become inscribed in social structures that, in turn, form subsequent generations in misshapen ways.32 This elaborates the protean human fault Niebuhr finds unacknowledged in optimistic liberal political theory. With these things in mind we note some important connections with elements of Christian realism. Though their viewpoints are particular and limited, and though their practical visions and lines of reasoning frequently are skewed, persons and communities remain good creatures capable of knowing important things about the world and their situations in it and of apprehending

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moral values that transcend their own isolated interests and ends. (It is, in fact, practically necessary for limited agents to procure at least some reliable knowledge of their circumstances, possibilities, and limits if they are to pursue successfully any aims at all, which is why no extant community can always be wrong about everything.) We therefore need not and ought not conclude that the knowledge of others is entirely fake or that all of their apprehensions of moral values are always false. A Christian doctrinal frame does, of course, give us good reason to be critical of the views and claims put forward by others—to wit that, when it comes to practical reasoning, there is no such thing as a universal and entirely neutral view. But this also means that we have every reason to be self-critical. We have reason to suspect our own limitations and biases and to recognize the possibility that our own views may be corrected by considering what others may see more clearly. We have reason, on the one hand, to stand against relativist cynicism, and, on the other, to stand against every pretension to an impartial apprehension of universal truth. In sum, with respect to human knowledge both of situations and values, the doctrines of creation and sin encourage us to be critical realists who recognize human limitations and corruptions but nevertheless enter into conversations and democratic deliberations with others in the hope of pressing on toward truth. Now consider salient features of the doctrine of redemption. Many of these cluster around Jesus Christ, his ministry, the message of the kingdom, and his death and resurrection. In this event, Christians encounter the merciful redeemer who refuses to give up on chronically corrupted and skewed creatures. They see that the deity continues to find something to love in creatures, even in wayward sinners, and that people therefore are accepted, recognized as worthy in existence.33 They see that we are reconciled by the grace of God to participate in a community of those who recognize their faults (and are therefore able to bear faults in others without vindictiveness because the fault in themselves is known34), a community of those who look to the interests of others, respect and care for the poor and the vulnerable, and even love enemies. Redemption means that, by grace, misoriented persons and communities can be restrained, redirected, and renewed. One aspect of this process, this divine refusal to abandon persons to misdirection, is judgment, or the dynamic whereby destructive consequences for others and ourselves of our misguided actions and failures to act, e.g., the costs to us and to other creatures of practices that degrade Earth’s environment, may push us toward regret and repentance. The idea of calling or vocation points to yet another feature of life caught up and redirected in the sanctifying power of Christ and the Spirit. The basic point here, particularly in its Reformed Protestant guise, is that persons participate in diverse lines of responsibility as mothers, lawyers, teachers, citizens, and what-have-you. As

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the Puritan, Richard Baxter, maintains, through these lines of activity and the goods they procure, e.g., parenting and nurturing children, medicine and “the saving of men’s lives and health,” persons serve others as well as the broader cause of God’s reign.35 A further feature of the doctrine of redemption is hope for the kingdom come, the desire of nations in which discord ceases, the poor are blessed, and sufferings end. Here, we encounter an eschatological image of the good society where (integrated and healed) persons are respected and loved, a society of love that represents the completion of the gracious divine tendency, and that pushes beyond our corrupted and fragmentated attempts at justice and care.36 Sometimes, we discern its traces here and now, though the kingdom’s completion remains future and not yet—a fulfillment beyond our grasp and experience.37 If we return to elements of a contemporary Christian realism, the relevance of these doctrines becomes plain. A major theological point—especially in light of the trajectory toward redemption, the governance of the God of grace indicates that, within the spiral of mundane actions, events, structures, and interdependencies, persons and groups can be changed, things can be different, and there are reasons to hope. In the midst of fragmented and troubled histories, those who stand before the God who delivers and redeems know that no human power controls history, and they look for instances of opportunity, grace, and renewal. This is one reason why the gradualism of some earlier realists is indeed troubling; a realism supported by a more robust theology has more than gradualism to offer. Again, the idea of calling or vocation thematizes the deity’s will and purposes for persons and communities not only via explicitly religious institutions but also in and through other institutions and areas of life. It accords with claims for differentiated contexts of responsibility and their specific practices and goods. The eschatological image of the coming kingdom, in turn, supports an aspirational notion of the good society that is always both partially present and not yet arrived. It encourages the realistic and inherently critical notion that all historical arrangements fall short of the entirely good, just, and loving society, but it also furnishes a basis for hopeful strivings after justice, improvements. and reforms. The understanding of deity that lies behind and beneath this doctrinal schema is that God the Creator, Judge, and Redeemer is immanent in and intertwined with world, but also transcends the world. We see in the motifs of creation—governance and redemption—kingdom a dialectic that looks for divine will and our responsibilities in every aspect of life, but that also refuses simply to equate God’s will and judgment with the specific practices and goods pursued in the differentiated religious sphere or in any other. That is, when combined with a negative theology, which insists that God and God’s will are never entirely comprehended or grasped, a well-placed and nuanced

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idea of God’s universal presence and governance stands as an alternative to the pretensions of every totalitarianism, whether of commercial capitalism, reactionary fundamentalism, or what have you. A PRACTICAL STANCE AND ITS DOCTRINAL BASES Christian realism, as I have interpreted it here, may be described as a practical stance, a disposition to live responsibly before God in every aspect and dimension of life, more so than a set of strictly defined ethical principles. It neither overlooks nor minimizes the ambiguities and the fragmentariness of historical life, and in its best contemporary forms, it also looks for traces of grace and the kingdom in the varied mundane contexts in which we live and move. Moreover, it is a theological view from someplace rather than a universal principle or an affirmation of the salvific powers of universal reason, and it depends largely on an unapologetic and comprehensive doctrine that emerges in a particular tradition. Call it a Christian realism in a Reformed and Protestant key that articulates a broad vision of human possibilities and limits. What, then, does this version of Christian realism add to the more usual moral inventories of persons and communities? The answer is a knowledge of the God of grace that can be variously stated as the love and mercy of God the Creator, Judge, and Redeemer, or as reconciliation, renewal, and the coming kingdom. Within this doctrinal framework, that is the one thing needful if we are to estimate accurately both the depths of our fault and the heights of our possibility. It is a disclosure of the further knowledge that human morality genuinely needs. BIBLIOGRAPHY Baxter, Richard. The Christian Directory. Vol. 1 of The Practical Works of Richard Baxter. Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1990. Bonino, Jose Miguez. Christians and Marxists: The Mutual Challenge to Revolution. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976. Brooks, David. “The Revolt Against Populism,” New York Times, Nov. 21, 2019. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles, edited by John T. McNeill. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960. Cone, James. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2013.  Cox, Harvey. The Market as God. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. de la Torre, Miguel. Doing Christian Ethics from the Margins, 2nd revised and expanded edition. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2014. Dionne, E. J. “Impeachment and the Art of Persuasion,” Washington Post, Dec. 8. 2019.

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Edwards, Jonathan. “Charity and Its Fruits.” In Ethical Writings, edited by Paul Ramsey, vol. 8 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Fitzgerald, Valpy. “The Economics of Liberation Theology.” In The Cambridge Guide to Liberation Theology. Edited by Christopher Rowland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Gustafson, James M. Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective. Vol. 1, Theology and Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Hollenbach, David. The Common Good and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Kuyper, Abraham. Lectures on Calvinism. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008. Lovin, Robin W. Christian Realism and the New Realities. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ———. “Christian Realism: A Legacy and Its Future.” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, 20 (2000): 3–18. ———. Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Luhmann, Niklas. The Differentiation of Society, translated by Stephen Holmes and Charles Larmore. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Niebuhr, Reinhold. Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937. ———. An Interpretation of Christian Ethics. New York: Seabury, 1979. ———. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. ———. “Plans for World Reorganization.” Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr. Edited by D. B. Robertson. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992. Ottati, Douglas F. A Theology for the Twenty-First Century. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020. ———. Hopeful Realism: Reclaiming the Poetry of Theology. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1999. ———. “Introduction,” in H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation. Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.  ———. Reforming Protestantism: Christian Commitment in Today’s World. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995. Rauschenbusch, Walter. A Theology for the Social Gospel. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology, with a new introduction. Boston: Beacon, 1993. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. The Christian Faith. Translated by H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1928. Stackhouse, Max L. Public Theology and Political Economy: Christian Stewardship in Modern Society. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

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———. “Public Theology and Political Economy in a Globalizing Era,” Studies in Christian Ethics 14 (2001) Tavernise, Sabrina, and Aidan Gardner, “‘No One Believes Anything’: Voters Worn Out by a Fog of Political News,” New York Times. Nov. 18, 2019.

NOTES 1. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Foreword to the First Edition,” The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), xiii. 2. Robin W. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 5–11. 3. Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995, 10–11. 4. “Plans for World Reorganization,” published originally in Christianity and Crisis in 1942 and reprinted in Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. D. B. Robertson (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992), 210. 5. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 15–18. 6. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 20–28. 7. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 15–18. 8. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 69. 9. Robin W. Lovin, “Christian Realism: A Legacy and Its Future,” in The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, vol. 20, p. 11. See also James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2013), 38–43.  10. “Christian Realism: A Legacy and Its Future,” 13–14. 11. Lovin, in Christian Realism and the New Realities, 99–106, makes these points with the help of the sociologist Niklas Luhmann, author of The Differentiation of Society, trans. Stephen Holmes and Charles Larmore (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), and theologians, such as Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 12. Corrosive effects of commercial capitalism may not predominate everywhere. For example, it appears that historic Lutheran tradition as well as comparatively unified ethnic histories combine to furnish Scandinavian social democracies with a more or less coherent background understanding of the good life and a good society that mitigates reductive commercial ideas. 13. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 84–88. 14. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 88. 15. See David Brooks, “The Revolt Against Populism,” New York Times, Nov. 21, 2019. 16. Harvey Cox, The Market as God (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). 17. Harvey Cox, The Market as God, 19–21. 18. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 164–65.

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19. Jose Miguez Bonino, Christians and Marxists: The Mutual Challenge to Revolution (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 110–15. 20. Miguel de la Torre, Doing Christian Ethics from the Margins, second revised and expanded edition (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2014), 321. 21. Valpy Fitzgerald, “The Economics of Liberation Theology,” in The Cambridge Guide to Liberation Theology. Ed. Christopher Rowland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 228. 22. Fitzgerald, “The Economics of Liberation Theology,” 218–19, 225. 23. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 150. 24. E. J. Dionne, “Impeachment and the Art of Persuasion,” Washington Post, Dec. 8. 2019. 25. Sabrina Tavernise and Aidan Gardner, “‘No One Believes Anything’: Voters Worn Out by a Fog of Political News,” New York Times, Nov. 18, 2019. 26. See Douglas F. Ottati, A Theology for the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020) for a full elaboration of the systematic theology that I outline very briefly here. 27. Reinhold Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), 7–10; Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 18. 28. Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008), 77–79, 85, 92. 29. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation, “Introduction” by Douglas F. Ottati (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), xiii–xiv, xxviii, 1–22. 30. Reinhold Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy, 26–46. 31. James M. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective vol. 1, Theology and Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 293–306. 32. See, for example, Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, trans. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1928), #71, 288; Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 59–61, 81; Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology, with a new introduction (Boston: Beacon, 1993), 174–83. 33. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 2.16.2–4. 34. Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, 137. 35. Richard Baxter, The Christian Directory, Vol. 1 of The Practical Works of Richard Baxter (Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1990), 444–45. See also Douglas F. Ottati, Reforming Protestantism: Christian Commitment in Today’s World (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 122–35. 36. Jonathan Edwards, “Charity and Its Fruits,” in Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, vol. 8 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 370, 374. 37. Douglas F. Ottati, Hopeful Realism: Reclaiming the Poetry of Theology (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1999), 108–10.

Chapter Four

The Future of Moral Realism William Schweiker

“Moral Realism” as written about by moral theorists is one of those topics that quickly sends students packing and scholars drawing lines in the sand. Unless one is a moral relativist coasting on the whims of opportunity and license, it seems obvious to most people that there are moral facts and moral truths. Gas chambers in concentration camps are wrong both as a matter of fact and a matter of moral truth. It does not matter where or when they are built or used; they are wrong everywhere and always. Yet when scholars get their hands on the matter, our common sense certainties seem to melt into the air. Skeptics might think that the melting serves theory mongering. How else to legitimate the work of moral theorists than to shore up our convictions or to undo them? But that cannot be the whole story, I judge. Accordingly, I begin these reflections clarifying why “moral realism” is something people of good will and moral concern should think about and what is at stake in dubbing oneself a realist, or, for that matter, an anti-realist in ethics. While most theologians and philosophers working in ethics do not consider this point, I will argue that the topic of moral realism has more to do with time than is usually imagined. Typically, the fact of time is acknowledged with respect to realists’ interests in and concern for history as a theater of human conduct, capacities, and limitations, individually and collectively. But the reach of time into the human being itself is not often considered, at least in my opinion. Therefore, I have taken the title assigned to me, “The Future of Moral Realism,” as an instance of an objective and subjective genitive: moral realism’s future and the future’s moral reality. As my inquiry proceeds, it will traverse three interlocking planes or levels of reflection. The planes are distinctions within reflection rather than separate topics. The planes are reflection about (1) feelings that saturate human action with respect to the possibility of realizing some future, (2) reflection on the relation of time 53

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and human meaning, and (3) the forms of discourse, symbolic or not, with which to articulate the meaning of the future for moral responsibility. These three planes of reflection, it must be noted, will weave their way through the argument to follow. However, before addressing those matters, I must clarify briefly the ethical stance of moral realism and also hermeneutical realism. Let me begin by clarifying the challenges nestled into the reading of my essay’s title and the direction of my reflections. REALISM AND TIME Why draw attention to the connection between realism and time? One reason to do so is doggedly practical. The most pressing global questions of our age are about the possibility of the existence and flourishing of future generations and also a sustainable planetary environment. Given the gravity of these challenges, that is, that the human future will fail because the environment will become unlivable, we need to avoid a naive optimism about peoples’ capacities to meet these challenges by simple and morally undemanding means, say, technological means. Similarily, we must avoid a slide into despair and cynicism that cripples action to address these challenges. We must, it would seem, articulate a moral vision for the reality of the future and the demand that reality places upon the peoples of this planet. No longer is it ethically or religiously tenable to just construe the future as a space of unlimited human possibilities, or as a final terminus in death, or even a heavenly reward for the elect. Those accounts of the future’s reality, rife as they are in the history of the world, are now morally dangerous and conceptually underdetermined. In a word, we need a robust and honest realism about the challenges we face and the means that can and should be taken to meet them. For Christians this question reopens the ancient debate about the use of non-Christian sources within Christian theological and ethical reflection. Granting the limits of space in this essay, I now note my judgment on that question and then move to substantive matters. As a moral realist of a sort, I hold that moral truth is open to every human being and that wherever moral truth is found it should be acknowledged as such. This is to believe along with Mr. John Wesley and others that the human mind and soul are not so fallen or sinful that we cannot grasp any moral truth. Fallen we are, to be sure, and our grasp on moral truth is, admittedly, tentative and confused. We desperately need the wisdom of revelation, tradition, and experience to enable and to deepen our reasoned grasp of truth. But we are not, cognitively speaking, utterly fallen. The human problem is not knowledge, but the capacity to will and pursue the good, wherever found. This point

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about moral reason is affirmed, in different ways, by natural law thinkers, theologians of culture, and moral realists of various stripes. If some grasp of moral truth is in principle a human possibility, then the Christian moral realist confronts a mighty task. Since moral truth is related in some way to our existence and to reality, then the question of the meaning of that existence and reality and the claims to truth for that meaning have to be debated. In this light, I think the major challenge is the clash between Stoic-like thought about cosmic resignation versus Christian beliefs in cosmic redemption as the context for the moral life.1 It makes a difference, morally and religiously, if we should resign ourselves to the natural end of things, whether it is cold crunch or hot death, or if some case can be made that moral truths endure and are part of the structure of things. I will make this point later by contrasting ideas about authenticity in being toward death, seen in the Stoics and Martin Heidegger, and ideas about perfection drawn from John Wesley and Immanuel Kant. This contrast requires, I believe, rethinking what Christians mean by the future in order to avoid a naive response to or blatant denial of the gravity of our situation. And that challenge brings us to types of moral realism. TYPES OF MORAL REALISM: BASIC, INTERNAL, STRONG Moral realism, in its basic form, holds that there are moral facts and that moral statements and judgments can be true or false. That seems to accord with common sense. As Iris Murdoch once put it, “The ordinary person does not, unless corrupted by philosophy, belive that he creates values by his choices. He thinks that some things really are better than others and that he is capable of getting it wrong.”2 But, of course, stated in that way, the shouting begins among theorists. What kind of “values” are these? Are they like natural facts, say, the rain falling on my office window as I peck out these words on my laptop? That would seem odd. I cannot see justice like I see the water dripping on my window. Maybe moral facts are what G. E. Moore famously called nonnatural facts and so we intuit them rather than using our normal kinds of sense perception.3 But what do we mean by an intuition? And is there a special kind of moral intuition and even a human faculty called a moral sense as John Wesley and others called it? If there are nonnatural facts, how do they relate to other properties that are at least morally relevant? Do these nonnatural moral facts like health or goodness supervene or ingress on other properties (like bodies) or are they somehow intrinsic within those properties waiting to be discovered? If they are intrinsic, then, good heavens, why is it that we cannot “see” them like the raindrops on my window? If they

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supervene, then how so: under their own power, within human action, or by divine command?4 How do we know we are not just conjuring up intrinsic or supervenient natural or nonnatural moral facts? The human imagination is, after all, a wild and wily thing, especially in the grip of the ego and sin. Now, the question noted above about the imagination and intuition leads to a sticky question about truth. What kind of “truth” is involved in moral truth of a realist kind? Insofar as moral facts exist and moral truths are not the makings of the imagination alone, then another option for realists would be to claim that moral truth pertains to how we—that is, some community of language users—speak about moral matters. What one means by “the good” is a product of a community’s discourse about the good agreeing that natural languages are not at the whim of the speaker’s imagining. We are enabled to inhabit a moral world but also constrained by the natural languages we speak, moral and nonmoral. Just as I cannot decide, as an English speaker, to insist on calling a tree something else, say, an elephant, and expect to be understood, so too with moral words, like love, joy, or murder. On this account, I am socialized into a discourse that constrains and supports my judgments and enables communication and understanding within a linguistic community.5 That outlook we can call internal realism since it is internal to the use of a natural language. However, it is not what strong realists mean by truth. The reason is that many moral realists insist that moral realities exist independent of our thought and discourse. The strong realist hopes to clarify and fortify basic realism so that it does not slide unwittingly into a form of social constructivism that is the strong realist’s worry about internal realism. Strong realism claims, then, that moral statements are true in virtue of their agreement or correspondence with moral facts or realities. As Robin Lovin notes, “the moral realist ties the moral meaning to a reality that exists beyond the subjective feelings of those who use moral terms and beyond the system of language in which they discuss moral judgments with others.”6 While I agree with Lovin about the kind of truth important to moral realism, I am not clear about how he thinks we come to know or understand that truth. Intuitionists might be right about the insight into moral facts, but that suggests that moral intuitions do not require interpretations and that somehow we can escape the ubiquity of language in human understanding. So, the problem seems to be that moral knowledge is strung between, on the one side, perception or intuition responsive to ostensive moral facts of one kind or another, and, on the other side, moral truth and understanding as the domain of the meaning of moral facts for actual conduct. Put differently, we seem hamstringed between internal realism that makes sense of how we inhabit an understandable and communicable moral world, and strong realism about moral truth not being a construction of the language we use

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to understand and speak about such truth. We will see that this problem is important for understanding the use of “myth” in forms of Christian realism. HERMENEUTICAL REALISM I have briefly isolated three forms of moral realism: basic, internal, and strong. Internal and strong realism try to answer questions left open in basic moral realism. However, in order to avoid the seeming aporia, that is, the puzzlement that one seemingly needs to affirm the contradictory positions of internal and strong realism, we need a way through or around it, or some way to make our perplexity productive. Rather than arguing that this aporia negates the validity of any form of realism as simply confused or that we can find some dialectical resolution of it in a higher synthesis, I suggest another pathway of thinking. Considering the resources of hermeneutics becomes important for moral theory. Hermeneutical theory is concerned with meaning and understanding through language use and across historical, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. We can briefly itemize two concerns important for thinking about the moral meaning of the future. First, “meaning,” as the object of human understanding, is any conjunction of “import,” or value, and “significance.” That is to say, for something to have “meaning” in any rich sense of the term, it must matter to someone, be of value or import to her, him or them, and it must be articulable within a system of significance, paradigmatically, a natural language.7 If something has significance, say, the term Baum in German, but no import or value to me, then it is not “meaningful” in a hermeneutical sense. Understanding the term as “significant” within a language game does not entail any transformation of myself nor does it open new possibilities for my life. Conversely, something may have profound value or import for someone and yet escape articulation, say, forms of trauma or cultural devastation or one’s anticipated death. Understanding the meaning of some text, event, thing, or person requires the interpretive act to relate import and significance, value and articulation. This hermeneutical perspective is a kind of realism because import is never reducible to its articulation and, further, human import is not some isolated feeling but is keyed to what is valued in some social environment. It is this fact about import that opens the need and task of endless acts of interpretation. As beings who value things and act upon what has importance for us, we are, come what may, endlessly making new meanings, trying to connect import and significance. In other words, humans create forms of significance in order to discover and articulate import, that is, what is of value and what they care about, but significance never captures the import without possible

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ambiguity or distortion and thereby demands interpretation. What is more, the labor of interpretation is not something that takes place inside an individual’s head or the “transcendental ego”; it is always embedded within intersubjective acts of communication precisely because it must find articulation in some system or scheme of significance. Those with whom we communicate—alive or dead; past, present, or future—are not the sole creation of the interpreter even if we may be deluded in thinking that they are. Human beings struggle to understand rightly the meaning of something. That is part of the quest for truth. And in this light, to be human is to be an interpreter of meanings. We are hermeneutical creatures, come what may. There is a second basic concern of hermeneutical reflection, one also rich in its implications for understanding our humanity. In every act of communication some boundary is being crossed: between me and another speaker; between an ancient text and our current horizon of understanding; between one language and another. The interpreter must cross each of these boundaries, and others as well, carrying over some claim to meaning.8 Put otherwise, the act of interpretation aimed at the understanding of meanings entails the act of translation, in the deepest sense of the word. It is a movement between domains of import and significance, domains we can call “worlds.”9 If that movement cannot be made, then understanding is thwarted; if the movement is possible, then the work begins of understanding through interpretation. One might even think of this by analogy to the fourth dimension in theoretical physics. Visualized as a tesseract, the idea is that there may well be a dimension that we cannot perceive given the normal limitation of human perceptions to three dimensions. Might there be worlds—say, a world of moral truth—not perceptible by ordinary means but in fact intuited, grasped in a non-inferential way? What then is the insight into our humanity? Simply this: insofar as understanding the meaning of something entails grasping its import in some form of significance for our lives, then a future of possibility is the condition of understanding. That is, insofar as something has import or value for people and hence becomes a task or aim to realize or fulfill it, that value must, per definition, open a possibility for life. Understanding the meaning of something entails the possibility that one will seek to realize it and thus embeds possibility, and a future, into the heart of human striving. That would be the case even if one interprets an ancient text, say, a parable by Jesus or Sophocles’s Antigone, in order to open new understanding of the complexity of human existence. The endless human effort to be, our will to life, is, we can say, provided with possible futures from within the act of interpretation. As Paul Ricoeur has noted, this means that there are two horizons of human time: death and eternity.10 Death is that future which (as far as we know) is a possibility that

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oddly opens nothing new for human action but simply concludes it; eternity is, as a fourth dimension, an imagined or intuited horizon of infinite possibilities, including accounts of endless peace or the reign of God. In both case the future is “real” as a factual terminus (death), a so-called “limit-to” experience, or an anticipated space/time for possible action, a “limit of” experience.11 It is crucial to see, ethically speaking, how different those limits are for the orientation of life. It makes a difference, in other words, with respect to our will to life, our most profoundly held import or value, how the meaning of the future is construed. The orientation to death, as Martin Heidegger and many others have argued, is focused on the authenticity of one’s existence. I am authentically myself with respect to my own most possibility, that is, my death which I alone can undergo.12 The focus on eternity, as interestingly Immanuel Kant along with Wesley argue, opens and sustains the belief in the moral perfectibility of human life.13 The imagined idea of eternity opens the possibility not of a simple terminus to life but the free striving for the highest good. I return below to this insight about authenticity and perfection with respect to different understandings of the moral, temporal dimensions of human life. Given that meanings of the future’s reality are disclosed in the act of interpretation, it is fitting, I contend, to speak of “hermeneutical realism,” and in two senses.14 First, it is hermeneutical in that we are concerned not simply with an intuition of the good or even “oughtness,” but also with the moral meanings that saturate human experience. Again, human beings have created natural languages in order to discover and communicate something about the world, including the moral world. We are always interpreters, and all the more so in moral matters. That is also important given the incredible advances in theories about time and dimensions among physicists. Even those theories demand interpretation as well as application if they are to orient thought and action. Second, what is sought is not a language system in itself, but meaningful reality against the horizons of death and eternity, or, ethically put, authenticity and perfection. Language, then, must help tutor our intuitive powers through the creation of meanings so that we can grasp what, to the untutored mind, is vague or imperceptible. This was, in my judgment, the insight of the eighteenth-century moral sense theorists and also Mr. Wesley. He argued that there is a basic level of faith stated in Hebrews 11: 1–3 (NRSV): Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

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In other words, the basic level of faith is the understanding of what is not perceptible but is real and that undergirds human hope. It is, we can say, the religious apprehension of the possibility of hope ingredient in the will to live and so too perfection, leaving open, for the moment, what is meant by “perfection.” Saving faith, in John Wesley’s account, is the certain conviction of God’s love for and forgiveness of oneself. And note that faith, as a form of understanding, is a form of assurance and conviction mediated by the Word of God. In terms of morals, humans are created with knowledge of the moral law and with freedom of choice and action. Even in the condition of sin, God graciously reveals the moral law. “It is the heart of God disclosed to man.”15 This revealed law is reinscribed in the heart of the creature. The moral life is thereby the struggle to perfect and enact the law that defines our being, captured most pointedly as the love of God and the love of neighbor. Thus, through the labor of interpretation we can refine our powers of moral intuition so that the tutored “conscience” can rightly be called the virtue of virtues.16 At the level of moral judgment, hermeneutical realism is a kind of informed intuitionism. As noted, every claim within moral realism is and can be disputed. As a moral theory, realism entails metaphysical claims about moral facts and their place in the structure of reality, epistemological matters about moral knowing, theories of truth, and also difficult issues in the philosophy of language. Given limitation of space and my abilities, I turn now to ask about the moral meaning and reality of the future and so broach, hermeneutically, the theme of a metaphysics of morals. THE MORAL REALITY OF THE FUTURE The idea of a metaphysics of morals would seem to be a relic of the past in our so-called post-metaphysical age.17 Of course, everything depends on one’s definition of metaphysics. In my case, I mean a general picture of the structure of lived reality used to make sense of and orient life. The focus on “lived reality” is crucial since it indicates that the concern is with the dynamics of human life within realities that support and limit human conduct and made articulate in cultural and religious resources. Thus far we have seen how, humanly speaking, the future can sustain two related but distinct orientations to the will to live, what I have called authenticity and perfection. The focus on structures of lived reality means metaphysics, as a general picture of reality is also an inquiry into the meaning of our being in the world. Reinhold Niebuhr, patron saint of Christian realism, rightly insisted that human beings need some account of how reality holds together, a metaphysics

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or orienting myth, in order to orient their lives. That holding together of reality, if it is to be of any practical import, concerns the realities that actually sustain and limit human life not only in general but much more in particulars. People seek some coherence in their lives even if complete unity and so strict metaphysical coherence escapes us. Further, Niebuhr was wise enough, in my judgment, to grant that claims about the meaning of reality for us rely on forms of discourse and thought different from empirical claims, the supposedly a priori logical framework, or the details of physics. Specifically, one needs to draw on myths or imaginative pictures in order to articulate the meaning of reality for us insofar as no human being can actually ascend to a view from nowhere. In terms used above, we are engaged in the exercise of hermeneutical realism in order to show the connection between myth and realism, a connection often missed by critics. One interprets imaginative constructs, like myths or utopian conditions, from some tradition, Christian in my case and Niebuhr’s as well, in order to discover something about the structure of lived reality. It must, nevertheless, demonstrate its validity by engaging other outlooks, like Stoicism or Heideggerian resoluteness toward death, in order to establish its cognitive gain over rival accounts. In thinking about the future—or the distant past—the hermeneutic gambit is even more pressing. Common sense believes that the future will be, it will exist, in one way or another, but how it might be at large and in the details escapes the human mind. The future is, on most accounts, the unknown and the unknowable open to probabilities at best. Human time is fraught with risk. Popular among some thinkers already noted, this means that human beings are “thrown projects”: we come into some world and yet also project a future, even our death. As Heidegger argued, the meaning of our being, our existence, is always out in front of us, as it were, so that there is a priority in life to the future that bears death. Yet, it is not at all clear what the meaning of the future will be, assuming it will be. In fact, the realities of our time, like global climate change, challenge our assumption that the future, at least of human life, will exist. The early Heidegger again: we are always being-toward-death, toward nihility. If that is indeed the case, it is not clear what moral responsibility we could have toward future life. If past actions might evoke moral feelings of pride or repentance, and the present can provoke senses of deep perplexity about how to orient life, the future often is sensed in feelings of dread in the face of death or an apocalyptic judgment, apathy and cynicism when viewed as endless repetitive cycle, or anticipation and hope in beliefs about heavenly realm and rewards. Indeed, for a long time and in many traditions (Christian and others), it was thought that without the threat of punishment, even eternal damnation, or heavenly reward, people would not abide by their moral values and duties. In order to stave off moral despair or skepticism even Kant was led to postulate the

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ideas of God as omniscient and omnipotent judge as well as immortality to work out one’s perfection. In other words, the uncertainty of any actual existing future has often been used to bolster adherence to moral obligations and values.18 We have uncovered this idea even within the act of interpretation itself insofar as meanings that are understood open new possibilities for our will to live. The profound insight in ancient myths, I intimated above by noting Paul’s words in Hebrews, is that human time finds its moral unity in the way in which, when viewed disinterestedly, past action, present experience, and future consequence become fused at a felt and cognitive level.19 We sense and intuit continuity and yet discontinuity. Further, within the structure of human action, our acts presuppose and yet help to realize a determined future as a terminus (death) or openness (eternity). Not surprisingly, the world’s civilizations promulgate myths of origins, i.e., cosmogonic myths, which have profound moral meanings.20 Whether creation is from the will of God, or arises, as in Buddhism, from desire through dependent generation, or comes about in some war of the gods, how the beginning of reality is conceived leads to specific moral outlooks. So, Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe, in different ways, that human beings have irreducible worth as creatures of God. Buddhists seek to relieve suffering consistent with their cosmogonic beliefs. Heroic cultures valorize strength and bravery. Cultures that conceive of reality as eternal valorize, as Aristotle and Plato did, what is eternal over what is changing and subject to decay. The same point is true about myths or ideas of the future. While Karl Marx dreamed of a utopian communist future, when the value of labor was not alienated from the worker and class divisions were no more, other pictures of the future are found around the world and throughout history. Ideas about Karma or myths of Eternal Return no less than ideas about Big Crunch or Cold Death (as physicists and cosmologists name them) provide different ways of orienting life. For its part, Christian eschatology has taken on many meanings in history—there is no “orthodox” eschatology—but, in general, it is about cosmic salvation and judgment. In terms I have already used, the future, eschatologically understood, is open to and sustaining of a perfection in love. Yet, eschatological thinking has at times prompted Christians to use whatever means possible to save the “soul” of heathens and overcome the evils of this world. Much contemporary eschatology, contrariwise, pictures universal salvation. That type of eschatology can ground a profound hope and also elicit ardent struggle for liberation of the oppressed. There are those, as well, who see the church as God’s kingdom realized in time and therefore the task of Christians as sustaining a way of life beyond the evil and violence of the “world.”21

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For Reinhold Niebuhr and many realists, Christian eschatology has a limiting function for politics in that it criticizes any claim to end human tragedy within history. As Lovin notes, “The full reality of God’s activity in history transcends any ideological system that reduces history to orderly principles of action of which we are the primary agents.”22 We cannot and will not bring about the kingdom of God in history despite the dreams and hopes of some peoples’ ideologies or theologies. In other words, realism demands that we attend to both the possibilities and the limitations that structure lived reality. A focus just on possibilities easily leads to a Pollyannaish view of life or a prideful belief that we are in control of life; a focus on limitations too easily stunts human aspiration and breeds cynicism or despair. A Christian realistic metaphysics of morals must, accordingly, probe the meaning of the limitations and possibilities writ into the structure of lived reality. It will do so by deploying Christian symbols, myths, and ideas in order to probe and articulate lived reality. Hopefully, I have now made a case for a realistic interpretation of the future, and, specifically, for the claim that on different but related planes of reflection the future is entangled with claims about the human experience of time. Along the way, I have tried, with Wesley’s help, to intimate a form of moral intuitionism even as one’s grasp of moral truth must be tutored by the resources of moral and religious communities and the work of interpretation. And this means that moral truths are real but their meaning is mediated through resources constructed to orient human life. This is, we can now say, the tactic of hermeneutical realism to render productive, rather than destructive, the aporia of strong and internal realism. And by beginning with the structures of lived reality we are now able to say, metaphysically, that the future has moral standing even if it is suspended between nothingness and the claim of life to its continuance and even perfection. In that light, we can now ask about the future of moral responsibility. THE FUTURE OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY As noted before, the moral context of contemporary life is marked by two monumental challenges that are specifically keyed to the future, namely, our obligations, if any, to future generations of human and nonhuman animals and to the global environmental challenge. The challenge for a realistic ethics of responsibility is to determine, first, what limits to human power rightly claim moral respect, and which possibilities ought to be enhanced and to what end. This first challenge demands that a realistic account of responsibility will engage all relevant means properly to identify limits and possibilities, thereby interrelating ethical reflection with a host of other disciplines and outlooks.

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Engaging these more practical issues is obviously beyond the scope of this essay. The second challenge is to show how the structure of action obligates people to respect and enhance the integrity of future life, that is, to ensure the conditions of possibility of future generations within a sustainable environment. The challenge is to articulate the obligation that the future places for the responsible use of power, insofar as “responsibility” is a discourse about the morality of power. In fact, I have actually been making a realistic argument on three planes of reflection with respect to the structure of lived reality. How is that the case? Recall, that one plane of reflection focused on the feelings of the structure of lived reality. That is, the range of feelings that saturate human actions and relations are keyed to the possibility of realizing some future, emblematically, either in authenticity or perfection. The sense of perplexity involved in present decisions, a perplexity that is manifest even in the aporia of realism and constructivism, entails, I suggest, the obligation that the entire range of feelings be open to future generations so that they too might be able to inhabit a robust moral world. We ought not will a nonmoral future since that is to deny the conditions of a possible existing human future. Hans Jonas, the Jewish philosopher, put this claim somewhat differently when he argued that we have an obligation that responsibility remain on the earth.23 I am making the point with respect to the moral feelings that saturate and motivate human conduct. The second plane of reflection turned on the connection between time and meaning. That is, time, ontologically understood, is the meaning of being, as Heidegger noted. Heidegger isolates the way in which human life is individuated with respect to an authentic being toward death as one’s own most possibility versus falling into the inauthentic life of “Das Mann,” a simple member of a crowd. His outlook, we should note, is a modern rendition of the Stoic account of life. The Stoic seeks self-sufficiency and faces death as the last possibility for mastery, even in suicide. What Heidegger seemingly failed to recognize is that this entails the demand to realize a future with and for others. Authenticity for him is a relation of the self to itself. Yet, insofar as to act is to bring about some determinate state of affairs amid the uncertainty of the future’s existence and the perplexity of the present, then, in conjunction with our first plane of reflection, that future ought to sustain a moral world. This further means that any morally right and ethically good future extends beyond human life to include all living things. While humans are the agents of responsibility, the scope of responsibility extends beyond human existence. Our authenticity must always be a moral authenticity. It is here where the sense of perfectibility arises; that is, one can and ought to help realize a future in which oneself and others are in fact responsible for justice in social life and the flourishing of the integrity of life. Kant would call this the “Kingdom of Ends”; Wesley and others would speak of the Reign

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of God. Both thinkers would hold that the end for which we ought to strive is the highest good as the unity of happiness and virtue. Wesley went so far, contrary to most Christian realists, to claim that it is possible in this world to experience that perfection in love of God and neighbor.24 What this means is that by divine grace the future can ingress into the present as both a calling and an empowerment to action and not remain just the realm of possibility or, with Kant, a regulative ideal. Finally, we noted, on the third intersecting plane of reflection, that human beings need some “metaphysical” account of lived reality in order to orient their lives. If the argument of this inquiry is correct, then a Christian account, cosmogonic and eschatological, seen through the hermeneutical lens of responsibility for the future addresses some basic concerns. First, Christian faith in the reign of God articulates how the structure of reality seen in the light of the future makes a claim on human beings in the feeling of our lives as agents. We are claimed, as it were, to labor for the kingdom of God and therefore for a future that can sustain the integrity of life, and in which future generations will also be called to responsibility. Yet this feeling of a calling, the claim of the future integrity of life, is not, as for Stoics ancient and modern, simply the demand of authentic existence. It is, much more, to be empowered by the divine in order to live dedicated to the perfection of love and justice among forms of life and among generations. Stated otherwise, the moral agent, Christianly understood, is not defined in terms of one’s self-relation, but much more in relation to others, the future, and God. At its most daring, a Christian metaphysics of morals enables one to tutor moral perception such that life in time is not suspended in an amoral reality seeking to be authentic, but that the structures of lived reality disclose a good that invigorates a commitment to responsibility for the future. This daring possibility must, like all moral outlooks, remain a project to be undertaken in the quest for its truth rather than a matter of dogmatic or a priori certainty. CONCLUSION The argument presented above has meant to show that a form of hermeneutical realism working on interlocking planes of reflection can render productive, rather than destructive, the aporia of strong and internal realism insofar as each makes some claim on us. In doing so, the deepest insight is that within the structures of lived reality that limit and sustain action is a call of the future on our powers and our responsibility. Insofar as that is the case, the future of responsibility is a condemnation of the deadly and irresponsible use of power in our age that thwarts the hope for future generations and lays waste to the earth by denying limits and depleting what sustains life. It is, one must say,

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the judgment of God. And yet, with the eyes tutored by the symbols and narratives that articulate the meaning of the worth of life, those same structures of lived reality disclose the working of God in ways that respect and enhance the integrity of life. From that perspective, the future of responsibility is to labor for the reign of God that is the possibility of present action. This is to couple the quest for authenticity in the face of death with the hope of perfecting life and the highest good. And yet, as Wesley knew, within the hurly-burly of the responsible life one has only an assurance of the truth of faith. In this mortal frame, utter certainty escapes us. We live by faith. BIBLIOGRAPHY Gamwell, Franklin I. The Divine Good: Modern Moral Theory and the Necessity of God, 1st ed. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1990. Habermas, Jürgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1998. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. New York: Harper, 1962. Hauerwas, Stanley. Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between. Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1988. Jonas, Hans. The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Jung, Kevin. Christian Ethics and Commonsense Morality: An Intuitionist Account. London: Routledge, 2014. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason, edited by Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Revised edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Lovin, Robin W. Christian Realism and the New Realities. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Lovin, Robin W., and Frank Reynolds. Cosmogony and Ethical Order: New Studies in Comparative Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Moore, G. E. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge, 2001. Nietzsche, Friedrich. ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’ and Other Writings: Revised Student Edition, edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson, translated by Carol Diethe. 2nd edition. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Ricoeur, Paul. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976. ———. “Ethics and Human Capability: A Response.” In Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought, edited by J. Wall, W. Schweiker, and D. Hall. New York: Routledge, 2002. Schweiker, William. Mimetic Reflections: A Study in Hermeneutics, Theology and Ethics. New York: Fordham University Press, 1990.

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———. Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics: In the Time of Many Worlds. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004.  ———. “Criminal Justice and Responsible Mercy.” In Doing Justice to Mercy: Religion, Law, and Criminal Justice by Jonathan Rothchild, Matthew Myer Boulton, and Kevin Jung. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. ———. “And a Second is Like It: Christian Faith and the Claim of the Other.” Quarterly Review 20, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 233–47. Sundman, Per. The Just Manager–A Good Manager? Societas Ethica Jahresbericht/ Annual 40 (2003): 146–62. Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be, 2nd edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Tracy, David. The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism. New York: Crossroad, 1981. Wesley, John. A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. London: Epworth Press, 1976. ———. “The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law.” In John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology, edited by A. Outler and R. Heitzenrater. Nashville: Abingdon, 1991. Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972.

NOTES 1. On this see Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 2. Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge, 2001), 95. Sadly, in our post-truth culture this claim might need to be reexamined! 3. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 4. See Kevin Jung, Christian Ethics and Commonsense Morality: An Intuitionist Account (London: Routledge, 2014). 5. See Per Sundman, The Just Manager—A Good Manager? Societas Ethica Jahresbericht/Annual 40 (2003): 146–62. 6. Robin W. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 8. In Lovin’s book Christian Realism and the New Realities, one can discern a Methodist concern for the flourishing of life creeping into the often austere and power focused outlook of Niebuhrian Christian realism. One might even glimpse in this essay some Wesleyan concerns about perfection and happiness as I ponder the future of moral realism. 7. In the philosophy of language there are analogous distinctions: pragmatics, or how use and context relate meaning; semiotics, or a system of signs; and, semantics, matters of meaning as such. The point in hermeneutics is that the object of understanding is “meaning,” and this differs from but is related to sense “perceptions” or rational “conceptions.” On this see Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976) and

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William Schweiker, Mimetic Reflections: A Study in Hermeneutics, Theology and Ethics (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990). 8. “ Hermeneutics” is taken from the Greek god Hermes, the messenger and trickster between gods and humans. 9. William Schweiker, Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics: In the Time of Many Worlds (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004).  10. For a statement of this point see Paul Ricoeur, “Ethics and Human Capability: A Response” in Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought, eds. J. Wall, W. Schweiker, and D. Hall (New York: Routledge, 2002), 279–90. 11. David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981). 12. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Harper, 1962) and Tillich, The Courage to Be. 13. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, ed. by Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, Revised edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) and John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (London: Epworth Press, 1976). 14. Schweiker, Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics. 15. John Wesley, “The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law” in John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology, ed. A. Outler and R. Heitzenrater (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991), 259. 16. It has become popular over the last decades to argue that narratives or stories are better than “theory” in refining our moral sensibilities. On my account, it is not narratives or stories as such that refine conscience, but their interpretation, that is, the labor of figuring out what they mean and show about human life and conduct. I suspect that this is what the advocates of “narrative ethics” have meant all long. It is certainly what Aristotle argued in his Poetics. I have referred to conscience as the “virtue of virtues” in various publications. 17. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has been insistent on this point. See his The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1998). For an attempted refutation of the critique of metaphysics within process thought, see Franklin I. Gamwell, The Divine Good: Modern Moral Theory and the Necessity of God, 1st ed. (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1990). 18. Perhaps the most astute critique of this idea is Friedrich Nietzsche in his ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’ and Other Writings: Revised Student Edition, ed. by Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans. by Carol Diethe, 2 edition (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 19. That is to say, we could, if space and time allowed, explore how, for instance, grief over past action can infuse the moral meaning of the future or the present even as immoral desires might tinge our experience of the past. This is the felt and cognitive meaning of religious ideas of an eternal present or an omniscient judge, a god or God. I cannot explore these matters in this essay. 20. Robin W. Lovin and Frank Reynolds, Cosmogony and Ethical Order: New Studies in Comparative Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). Lovin’s

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turn here and elsewhere is to ethical naturalism, a turn I also make, but this is a topic for another essay. 21. See John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972) and Stanley Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between (Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1988). 22. Lovin, Christian Realism, 198–99. Emphasis mine. 23. Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). 24. I find the claims of Niebuhr and others to be overstated ethically, theologically, and even biblically. See William Schweiker, “Criminal Justice and Responsible Mercy,” 181–205 in Jonathan Rothchild, Matthew Myer Boulton, and Kevin Jung, Doing Justice to Mercy: Religion, Law, and Criminal Justice (University of Virginia Press, 2012) and also “And a Second is Like It: Christian Faith and the Claim of the Other,” Quarterly Review 20, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 233–47.

Chapter Five

Law and Christian Realism Elisabeth Rain Kincaid

What is the role of law in the “post-truth” era of US politics? Is there a possibility that law can promote justice rather than being simply a tool of oppression or repression to be used by whomever is in power to maintain their power? Is there any epistemologically accessible moral grounding to legal interpretation? On a popular level, the understanding of law as only an arbitrary and confining set of rules used to seize or maintain power has permeated much of our cultural discourse. This approach can be discerned in the rejection and questioning of basic constitutional norms and even the province of the Constitution itself, which comprise popular legal discourse in some extremes of the left and the right. If rules are all that the law is, then rules should yield to claims of justice, an individual group’s perceptions of injustice, or simply the will of the massed populist movement. The migration of news and political debate to the internet and social media have deepened this estrangement and division on a popular level, creating echo chambers and silos making it impossible to comprehend other people’s vision or understanding of the law. Social media has, in the words of Yale psychologist Molly Crocket, been the gasoline poured on the fire of “moral outrage,” deepening the social divide which the discourse of moral outrage creates between the sheep and the goats and the righteous and the damned.1 Even the meaning of words has become contested. As Robin Lovin writes: We are so polarized that any terms we might use to begin a discussion of shared goals are already the property of one side or the other. Freedom, responsibility, rights, duties, choice, and even life itself have acquired connotations that identify the politics of those who use the words.2

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Looking beyond extreme critiques of radicals on the left and the right, anxiety that opposing schools of legal theory might share this turn to nihilism emerges in even more mainstream theoretical debates regarding interpretation. For example, Emily Bazelon and Professor Eric Posner (one of the theorists of the “New Legal Realism”)3 opposed Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court on the grounds that his purported textualism was not actually motivated by philosophical convictions but rather served as a smoke-screen pretext to justify anti-regulatory, business-friendly judicial opinions.4 On the other extreme, in Reading Law, Antonin Scalia and Brian Garner make the opposite argument: it is only a strict textualist approach to legal interpretation which protects against the remaking of the law in the judge’s own moral image. This claim that strict textualism is the most just mode of interpretation is based on a fundamental skepticism about whether any epistemologically accessible guide for just legal interpretation exists apart from the strict text.5 For the Christian realist, this concern about finding a stable epistemological grounding for legal interpretation is neither surprising nor new. In City of God, for example, St. Augustine presents an understanding of legal interpretation that takes into full account the limits of human knowledge and judgment. In fact, he even argues that these limits may justify even the just judge permitting the torture of the innocent who serve as witnesses to the crimes of other men if this is demanded by the law.6 However, even with this chastened view of human capacity to discern the good, an awareness of the consistent presence of the tragic in human history, and a rejection of idealist philosophies which believe that the fullness of justice can be achieved before the eschaton, the Christian realist does not succumb to a total nihilism regarding the possibility of at least some justice in legal decisions. Augustine himself argues that even in his decision to torture the innocent, the wise judge is acting out of a conviction that the law both contains and can achieve some sort of justice. In this chapter, I will argue that Christian realism, understood broadly, can offer a more robust understanding of how to recover some culturally shared consensus regarding law’s meaning and interpretation than is currently on offer in the cultural buffet of the day. I begin by considering the rules/principles framework presented by the secular legal philosopher, Ronald Dworkin, who offers a compelling, but incomplete, theory as to how legal interpretation can be grounded in a shared concept of justice, not simply a nihilist imposition of power. I then consider the work of two Christian theologians—both of whom in different ways offer “realist” approaches to just legal interpretation. First, I argue that Niebuhrian realism presents compelling resources to critique flawed systems of legal interpretation and legal nihilism, although it falls short of offering a constructive solution. Secondly, I argue that a different type of Christian realism—the Thomistic moral realism developed by

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John Courtney Murray—provides a constructive guide to an epistemological grounding for judicial legal interpretation.7 DWORKIN’S THEORIES OF RULES AND PRINCIPLES In his analysis of contemporary jurisprudence, Ronald Dworkin rejects two different strands of legal thought. First, he rejects the claims of those, such as the legal realists, who define “the concepts of ‘legal obligation’ and ‘the law’ [as] myths, invented and sustained by lawyers for a dismal mix of conscious and subconscious motives.”8 In other words, these theorists believe that “We would do better to flush away the puzzles and the concepts altogether, and pursue our important social objectives without this excess baggage.”9 In addition, he also rejects those who adhere to a more textualist approach to legal interpretation. These theorists, he writes, “think that when we speak of ‘the law’ we mean a set of timeless rules stocked in some conceptual warehouse awaiting discovery by judges, and that when we speak of legal obligation, we mean the invisible chains that these mysterious rules somehow drape among us.”10 In summary, the danger posed to law by legal realists is that law is always viewed as simply replicating some form of popular consensus, separate from abstract concepts of the just and the good. On the other hand, the textualists present such a rigorous understanding of legal interpretation that law’s meaning and application can end up as a fossilized remnant of times past, incapable of responding to changing circumstances in order to advance justice. In response, Dworkin argues that law should be understood as comprised of both rules and principles. Rules, according to Dworkin, are the statutes, regulations, and judicial decisions which make up the visible apparatus of the legal system. They are the concrete artifacts to which a person can point when they say law. However, as Dworkin’s exploration into the judicial decision-making process in hard cases reveals, equally important principles lie beyond and ground these rules. The principles peep out in the “hard cases” in which the rules become inadequate. Principles for Dworkin are not a covert attempt to interject some type of popular control over judicial decisionmaking. They are not simply what 51 percent of the population of any jurisdiction believes should be the case at any one time or “what everyone says.” Rather, these principles are the foundational “moral principles that underlie the community’s institutions and laws.”11 In other words, they are the result of a tradition of ongoing communal moral discernment. For example, in the seminal “hard case” of Riggs v. Palmer, the court prioritized the principle that “nobody should prosper from his wrong” over the statute stating that court must respect the will of the testator and denied the estate to the grandson who

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murdered his grandfather to secure his estate. Whereas some theorists, including some legal positivists, might argue that this was simply an instance of the judge, acting out of total discretion, creating new rules, Dworkin argues that in this case we can see the process of the judicial discernment of principles behind the law shifting the shape of the rules.12 According to Dworkin, rules and principles develop in a complementary and dialogical fashion, and it is only when they are considered together that the legal theorists grasp an appropriately holistic view of any functioning legal system. For example, at first glance the principle that one should not profit from one’s wrong action, elucidated in Riggs v Palmer, appears to be in conflict with the legal rule of adverse possession, the rule that a person who visibly or notoriously occupies another person’s property for a continuous specified length of time will eventually gain title to that property. Rather, Dworkin argues, we should see the length of time and the stringency of the conditions of adverse possession statutes as a reflection of the high priority placed on the principle and a sign of the attempts to reflect the other principles, such as a priority being placed on land being used which motivate a legal system as well.13 The rules, for Dworkin, help illuminate the principles that comprise the law without constituting their totality and should be understood as appropriately adaptable due to changing circumstances and in order to come more visibly into conformity with justice. Even the respect for the rules, articulated in one form in the principle of stare decisis, is actually the incarnation of the principle.14 The changes within the law reflect changing emphasis and understanding of the principles. Judges may overturn a line of cases because they believe that a better way has been developed to achieve a principle more clearly or bring several principles better into harmony. Thus, the morality of the law is always a morality of aspiration. This is not a morality conforming necessarily to a liberal narrative of inevitable historical progress but rather an acknowledgement that, even when mistaken, good judges aim toward a greater good, and must have real conviction in that greater good to overcome the normative goods of predictability and clarity which justify the principle of stare decisis. However, while Dworkin’s theory of law as comprised of rules and principles is a helpful antidote to other currents of legal theory, it fails to offer either an ultimate grounding of the principles or an explanation of how to understand the stability of the principles in an extremely pluralistic society characterized by mass cultural degradation of respect for law’s authority. If Dworkin is correct that the principles undergirding legal rules are drawn from some common cultural perception, what happens to the rule of law in a culture which is becoming rapidly more divided? Is there any way to recover the principles to ground the law and give the rules their fullness and meaning? More importantly, the rules/principles distinction taken alone

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provides no guidance as to how to restore a system in which it appears as if this degradation of principles as a stable commitment is becoming more and more widespread. Is there any escape from the nihilistic, nominalist spiral in which laws are viewed as rules to be gotten around rather than a lens through which to discern important moral convictions? If Dworkin’s claim is right that the principles are truly this flimsy, then it seems impossible to realistically envision any reclaiming of principles undergirding our understanding of law across political divides without actual revolution and reestablishment of a legal system. NIEBUHRIAN CHRISTIAN REALISM Niebuhrian Christian realism is one obvious choice to provide theological insights into this discussion. Over the last fifty years, Christian realism has proved a rich resource for dialogue and inspiration between the often-separate universes of legal theory and theology. While Christian realism (as opposed to various more sectarian theologies) has served as a dialogue partner for analysis of First Amendment–related questions of church and state, the work of Reinhold Niebuhr and other Christian realists has also been retrieved in other areas of legal thought.15 For example, law professor Thomas Berg has argued that a Niebuhrian recognition of moral complexity, marked by both a robust moral sense and a thoroughgoing moral humility provides a model for religious citizens to appropriately introduce conversations about ultimate moral issues and the discussion of church/state relations into the public square.16 Brett McDonnall has presented Niebuhr’s Christian realism as a helpful tool in analysis of corporate governance structures. Niebuhr’s awareness of the dangers of power, whomever holds it, introduces a skepticism about the ability of greed alone to serve as a constraint on corporate overreach, contrary to claims of various capitalists and neo-capitalists.17 In challenging this particular school of legal interpretation, and its concomitant negation of the actual authority of the rule of law, Niebuhr’s Christian realism is able to offer a critique of strict textualism. Niebuhr would undoubtedly find the claims that the service of justice is best instantiated in the text of the law as morally problematic. In this approach, he would undoubtedly view the danger which he argued that the Hebrew prophets challenged: that the “the nation pretends to be God” and falls into the original sin of pride.18 This prioritization of the rule of the people also ignores the reality of the coercion present in all government actions—hiding it underneath the veneer of justification based on the democratic process.19 In addition, Niebuhr would argue, this approach lacks the humility to realize how easy it is for people to remain in self-imposed ignorance of “the corruption of self-interest in all

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ideal achievements and pretensions of human culture.”20 Even the supposed protection of strict textualist adherence fails to provide a bulwark against the creeping onslaught of self-serving self-interest. However, Niebuhr’s theory of legal interpretation fails to provide a compelling alternative. Like Dworkin, Niebuhr also uses language of rules and principles. Niebuhr does acknowledge that civil laws must be informed by valid “principles of justice, rationally conceived.”21 These principles include equality and liberty. Highlighting Niebuhr’s theme of the relationship between justice and love, they point “towards love as the final norm of justice; for equal justice is the approximation of brotherhood under the conditions of sin.”22 However, while the principles are valid and exist, they are always tainted in their actualization by “special interest and historical passion.”23 Niebuhr therefore presents his theory of law as the mean between the “relativists” who reject the possibility of any access to the epistemic norms of justice and the “rationalists and optimists who imagine it possible to arrive at completely valid principles.”24 However, in Niebuhr’s description of law, this taint goes so deep that it appears impossible to recover any meaningful access to justice which can overcome the epistemic skepticism behind textualism. This lack is due to the fact that “There is no universal reason in history, and no impartial perspective upon the whole field of vital interests. . . . Even the comparatively impartial view of the whole of a society, as expressed particularly in the carefully guarded objectivity of its judicial institutions, participates in the contingent character of all human viewpoints.”25 Not even scripture provides a solid grounding. The ethical teachings of Jesus always present an “unattainable ideal.” They provide “an absolute standard by which to judge both personal and social righteousness.”26 However, they cannot serve as “the basis for a social ethic that deals responsibly with a growing society. . . . I think we are in error when we try to draw from the teachings of Jesus any warrant for the social policies which we find necessary to attain to any modicum of justice.”27 Niebuhr therefore describes laws as simply a temporal accommodation resulting from “the capacity of communities to synthesize divergent approaches to a common problem.”28 Legal interpretation can never actually instantiate a standard of justice but is, at its best, a lukewarm compromise between divergent constituencies. For example, historical understandings of justice are always deeply impacted by the power balance within each community, exemplified by the impact which economic power has upon modern society. For example, while Niebuhr argues that division of power provided some resistance, it has not been sufficient to actually eliminate or even restrain economic injustice.29 Laws are simply accommodations, always “introduced by the contingent and finite character of rational estimates of rights and interests and by the taint of passion and self-interest upon calculations of the

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rights of others.”30 The best law can achieve is to attempt to chart a precarious path between “twin evils, tyranny and anarchy, [which] represent the Scylla and Charybdis between which the frail bark of social justice must sail.”31 This means that laws are always “compromises between the rational moral ideals of what ought to be and the possibilities of the situation.”32 In the end, Niebuhr is limited by the very convictions which make his critique so powerful. While the textualist reliance on the text alone is always fallible, Niebuhr’s realism cannot offer any epistemological substitute. JOHN COURTNEY MURRAY In the rest of this essay, I will turn to the work of John Courtney Murray to provide an integrated version of Niebuhr’s critique and an appropriation of Dworkin’s framework for legal interpretation grounded in a compelling description of true epistemic access to standards of justice for legal interpretation. I am not alone in seeing Murray as an important conversation partner to address these issues. For example, Robin Lovin recently argued that Murray should be retrieved as an important interlocutor for contemporary political difficulties in the United States.33 Most importantly, he argues that Murray’s emphasis on the need for a fundamental “reconsideration of the ‘American proposition’ provides a crucial foundation for current political theology.”34 Where Lovin develops Murray’s thought to provide insight into the current issues regarding the role of religion in the public square, I will focus on how Murray’s conception of the American proposition can be valuable to providing a theologically grounded, morally realist alternative to Scalia’s textualist interpretation. Murray is not naive regarding the challenges of legal interpretation. In fact, he shares the concerns of Scalia, the legal realists, and Niebuhr regarding the potentially corruptive influences of political and cultural forces. Murray is presciently aware of the damages which economic forces can pose by leading to a crumbling of a common discourse, especially the disruptive nature of the power of multi-national corporations whose managers “in effect direct the activities of the economic-political system.”35 He warns that even though this power may not be readily apparent, it is in fact “omnipresent in American society. No institution—certainly not government or the university, and not even the Church—is immune from the touch of it, nor is any family or individual.”36 Corporations have been able to exert this level of control of political, communal, and family discourse because of a vacuum created by the shattering of shared notions of the common good in our society. Rather than seeing ourselves engaged in the common endeavor of life of the polis, we have retreated to separate bulwarks, claiming that “my insight is mine alone

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and cannot be shared by another.”37 This claiming of our own experience and the impossibility of finding any unity of truth destroys the possibility of any governing moral claims being broadly and immediately accepted. Rather, all claims are now “granted an equality of freedom with any other opinion,” which means that no communal presentation of the common good can find any possibility of true common consensus.38 The result of this denial of any points of commonality has resulted in “a decay of political intelligence, a loss of confidence in the power of reason to fix the purposes of political life and to direct the energies of freedom in such a way as to impose a due measure of human control upon the forces of history, upon the automatism of technology, and upon the hurrying pace of events.”39 In short, this is exactly what characterizes Niebuhr’s concern about the status of the law. The result is that we have gone beyond disagreement about the higher-level goods and aims of a society and in addition have lost the ability to even come up with a tool which adjudicates among our differences and provides the direction to broad basic goods. In Dworkin’s terms—we no longer have access to the principles or if we do have access, they have lost their appeal and what holds them together. Unlike Niebuhr, Murray does not argue that these challenges are inevitably inherent in any form of government. Rather, Murray diagnoses two culturally contingent sources for this failure. First, the realities of a pluralist society inevitably make it difficult to arrive at “some manner of consensus [which] must support the order of law to which the whole community and all its groups are commonly subject. This consensus must include, in addition to other agreements, an agreement on certain rules which regulate the relations of the divergent groups among one another and their common relation to the order of law.”40 However, Murray diagnoses a problem even more fundamental than pluralism. Even within apparently homogenous communities, our political DNA has made us creatures who are incapable of imagining connection. Our imagination fails us, and even our ability to communicate our own imaginary. Rather than seeing our own experiences as contributing to a greater understanding of the common good, our individual experiences cut off our ability to even communicate with one another. “The fact today is not simply that we hold different views but that we have become different types of men, with different styles of interior life. We are therefore uneasy in one another’s presence. We are not, in fact, present to one another at all; we are absent from one another. That is, I am not transparent to the other, nor he to me; our mutual experience is that of an opaqueness. And this reciprocal opaqueness is the root of the hostility that is overcome only with an effort, if at all.”41 Our current political divide underscores the coherence of Murray’s analysis. Core convictions regarding understandings of liberty, rights, economics, and the common good seem impossible to translate across cultural,

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religious, and socioeconomic divides, leaving us a nation apparently locked into irresolvable division on foundational moral principles. Murray does not simply diagnose a decline narrative in the modern moment but sees this thread of individualism—this imaginative separation from a common commitment to principles guiding a common life—running throughout political life in the United States. In contemporary US political discourse, he diagnoses echoes of the “old morality” of certain strands of Protestant theology. This was originally expressed in a voluntarist reading of scripture, a focus on individual intention as opposed to communal acts, and individual discernment of the individual questions of conscience, while also demanding that all society ascribe to “Christian perfection as a social standard.”42 Rather than offering any thick notion of a truly common good, the older civic morality “did not go beyond the false notion that society is simply the sum of individuals living in it, that public morality is no more than the sum of private moralities.”43 It had no room to consider either politics or institutions or to distinguish between morals and laws, and private sins and public crimes.44 In short, it was an old puritanism which had not been extinguished—one which arises on both sides of our contemporary political and legal divides. Americans continue to ask the same questions about the relationship between individual and collective morals and public life and private life which Murray traces back to Roger Williams and his identification of life in the colonies as the “garden” and the “wilderness.”45 Having just argued that we have lost the ability to talk about common goods, how can Murray claim that there are fundamental instincts which can direct people toward shared common goods? Is there a way to ground the principles which Dworkin identifies? Murray’s solution is a theological anthropology which holds together his political realism with a deep moral and epistemological realism. Like Dworkin, he believes that there are still some apprehensions of common goods which can be recovered within a community. He argues that, “the permeability of reality, especially moral reality, to intelligence is limited, as human intelligence itself is limited. But the limitations do not destroy the capacity of intelligence [to grasp certain basic moral facts],” although with varied levels of certainty.46 Whereas for Niebuhr, justice can never be fully grasped by love, Murray provides a careful description as to how different parts of the political community, engaged together in different forms of interpretive activity, can ensure that laws are applied according to a limited true justice. Murray follows Aquinas in arguing that human intelligence is able “to grasp the ethical a priori, the first principle of the moral conscience.”47 In Aquinas’s terms, this is simply the basic principle that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.”48 The ethical a priori, however, is not sufficient to determine the norms governing communal human life.

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Secondly, “after some elementary experience of the basic situation of human life, and upon some simple reflection on the meanings of terms” individuals can begin to understand what good and evil may mean in very ordinary and basic situations in their own lives.49 However, this knowledge, although applicable through practical reason, leaves much of the moral life undetermined. The final step, looking beyond these basic life situations is derived through greater exposure to the “experience of reality unfold [ing] in the unfolding of the various relationships and situations that are the reality of human life.”50 At this third level, it is possible to articulate and find obliging “a set of natural law principles that are derivative.”51 It is this third level of engagement and reflection which eventually contributes to the development of law and provides the epistemological grounding for moral realist claims regarding judicial interpretation. However, developing this third level of knowledge into a legal code and then engaging in legal interpretation of that code requires three levels of refinement. First, like a strict textualist, Murray is concerned to acknowledge and protect the expression of the will of the people as articulated through their elected representatives in shaping law. Law must be understood as more than a static textual artifact or judicial fiat. Rather, it is an articulation of the will of the people placed as a hedge to protect the fragile human community against the chaos and oppression which arises when tyrants gain control—whether political or economic tyrants. However, his view of law is not a blind populist prioritization of the will of the people. Rather, it is based on a realistic perception of the ordinary human community, which should be neither overidealized nor totally rejected based on a Hobbesian pessimism. Murray offers a realistic assessment of the condition of the community: “the community, as the jurist knew, is neither a choir of angels nor a pack of wolves. It is simply the human community which, in proportion as it is civilized, strives to maintain itself in some margin of safe distance from the chaos of barbarians.”52 Law therefore begins as the articulation of popular consensus, grounded in a developing perception and understanding of a natural human instinct toward certain basic goods. Contra textualists, Murray argues that the expression of the will of the people alone is not sufficient to secure justice. While experience and “brute fact” provide the raw data for deliberation, they alone are not sufficient to “elaborate themselves into the controlling rule of public conduct.”53 This is because the natural orientation toward the common good existing in every individual is always partial and subject to personal and cultural mistakes. These popular instantiations of the good must be funneled through the mediation of the wise, who can approach these questions with “knowledge, experience, reflection, and dispassionateness of judgment.”54 Murray does not define the wise specifically, but this term can easily be understood to include judges, politicians,

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and experts in every field necessary for human flourishing. The wise are all those able to bring together dialogically their understanding of human relations and institutions to discern the needs of that specific context and what justice requires. For example, “Little reflection on experience is needed to know the principle of justice ‘suum cuique.’ But an extensive scientific analysis of the functioning of economic cooperation is needed to know what a just settlement of a wage-dispute might be.”55 The wise do not only include those who have cultivated specialized knowledge, but those who are wise because of their love and understanding of the good. Being wise “implies a love of truth, and developed instinct for the right and good that are of the ‘heart’ in the Hebrew sense of the word.”56 The wise do not determine the substance of the law, but rather give form to the civil law by bringing “to consciousness the moral principles of community life which otherwise would not or perhaps could not be grasped by the individual.”57 The result of this development is a better articulation of the principles which Dworkin also describes: the “particular principles which represent the requirements of rational human nature in more complex human relationships and amid institutional developments that accompany the progress of civilization.”58 Their moral judgment looks beyond simply objective goods to consider the demands of “circumstances” and “the historical moment.”59 They also must look beyond the discernment of the good in individual circumstances to consider how the good should be articulated generally: “like law, the consensus covers what happens un in pluribus. In most cases. . . .”60 Murray is never naive as to how much this double process of discernment can achieve. Like Augustine, there is no expectation that the earthly city can direct people toward heavenly good. Rather, what the law should strive to achieve is to be part of: “an apparatus of state that embodies both reason and force in a measure that is at least decently conformable with what man has learned, by rational reflection and historical experience, to be necessary and useful to strengthen his striving towards the life of civility. . . . The traditional ethic, which asserts the doctrine of the rule of reason in public affairs, does not expect that man’s historical success in installing reason in its rightful role will be much more than marginal. But the margin makes the difference.”61 It is in this that he differs most crucially from Niebuhr: the margin makes the difference. At first this requirement might appear to suggest that Murray is simply prioritizing the power of the elite over the will of the people. Instead, he sees the voice of the wise as an important check or filter, but not a sublimation. This filtering and articulation of the wise avoids the danger of populism or the voice of the mob: it serves the common good without being common. In Dworkin’s terms, the discernment of the wise turns the principles discerned

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by the people into the rules which govern the people. This approach, rather than concentrating rule of law in the elite alone, which is the concern from both sides of the political spectrum in the contemporary United States, actually provides a model of rule of law which is radically open to contextual change and new voices, but also stable rather than stagnant. It is not simply a cultural artifact of an ancient agreement within which all aspects of a changing and developing society must be subsumed. Rather, this dual funneling by the people and the wise provides a basic storehouse of common principles which Murray argues can fund some similar ability to talk about the common good as well as rules and statutes on the books. The people do not drop out simply because the wise have refined and articulated their discernments. Rather “good laws are obeyed by the generality because they are good laws; they merit and receive the consent of the community, as valid legal expressions of the community’s own convictions as to what is just or unjust, good or evil. In the absence of this consent, law either withers away or becomes tyrannical.”62 Thus, the rule of law becomes an agreed upon process for guiding interactions, a communal endeavor to which everybody subscribes out of shared convictions about at least some basic communal goods. The rules do not trump the principles but are guided and developed out of them. The power of the elites is checked by this requirement of reception. Law is not simply contained in the rule books, but rather becomes “a moral experience that is public.”63 The discernment of the wise is confirmed because what they have discerned makes sense to those who articulated the principles, who now “grasp the reasonableness of the conclusions reached by the wise, even though they are incapable of the ‘careful inquiry’ that led the wise to these conclusions.”64 But what of the role of judges? Should they simply assume that the dialogue between the people and the wise has produced laws which are sufficiently just and confine themselves to the simple exegesis of the statute in the textualist mode? Absolutely not. Crucially, the translations of the principles into rules does not negate the authority of the principles themselves. While rules express the instantiation of the principles in specific times and circumstances, the principles also continue to be ascertained within a culture, providing a broad framework of a legal tradition which guides the judge’s engagements with the laws. Murray singles out key principles which have developed to provide this scaffolding in the western legal tradition, including the acknowledgement that law should protect the freedom of citizens: from the arbitrary despotism of uncontrolled power; from the threat or fact of injustice to his person or his property; from dispossession of his human and civil rights; from the degradation that ensues upon social inequalities destructive of his personal significance and worth; from the oppressive evils of an inequitable

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distribution of wealth; from the multiple rapacities that seem to lurk in the human enterprise of commerce and trade; from the disruption of life by the irrational forces of passion, caprice and chance that militate against the ‘life of expectability’ to use Sir Ernest Barker’s phrase for the high human good that is guaranteed by the rule of law.65

This development over time of the principles also provides an adaptability of the law to historical changes. While certain core elements of human nature and human experiences remain stable across time, the reality and changes of history always open up new possibilities and approaches. “[History] evokes situations that never happened before. It calls into being relations that had not existed. It involves human life in an increasing multitude of institutions of all kinds which proliferate in response to new human needs and desires, as well as in consequence of the creative possibilities that are inexhaustibly resident in human freedom.”66 The ways in which we engage with each other, creating new ways and practices of communication in which we are shaped by the new institutions which shape us do mean that “the nature of man changes in history for better or for worse; at the same time that the fundamental structure of human nature, and the essential destinies of the human person, remain untouched and intact.”67 The principles endure, therefore, but the questions brought to them always change. With each change the question remains: “what is man or society to do here and now, in order that personal or social action may fulfill the human inclination to act according to reason. . . . In the case of the new problems, however, which are created by the changing structures of human social living, and which concern the appraisals of morals, the answers may contain new specification of old principles.”68 It is precisely this adaption of old principles to fit new situations which provides the role of the judge. This reasoning within a tradition, in dialogue with multiple discernments and instantiations of the common good and the just, provides a solid epistemological grounding for judicial decisions which take seriously the rules, the principles, and individual discernment. While arguing that certain principles can be accessed for legal interpretation, Murray is also aware of the dangers of private moral judgment substituting for these basic principles of just interpretation. Thus, the discernment of the judges is a careful balancing act in acknowledging exactly what type of information this natural reason permits us to accept. Laws can only govern the external acts related to basic and “public order of human society,” not the “entire order of human conduct, personal and social . . . even to motivations and interior acts.”69 Law cannot transform the heart, but can only coerce “a minimal amount of moral action.”70 Laws can only go so far and do so much—it is this limit which naturally falls on judges, not the limit of discerning some form of the good.

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While law has been used in US society to fulfill justice, we always have to remember that at times the substitution of private morality for law has “results [which], when not disastrous, have been dubious.”71 Under Murray’s theory, the limit on judges is that they are not to seek to regulate the whole of morality, not that they must avoid all morality. The best corrective to judicial overreach is not to tell judges to stay away from the good, but to always remember that their actions are required to “enforce only what is minimally acceptable, and in this sense socially necessary. Beyond this, society must look to other institutions for the elevation and maintenance of its moral standards.”72 For example, in considering the question of censorship of pornography, Murray called for a focus on the fundamental principles of the common good rather than a reactive focus on the problematic content. A wise judge, Murray argues, will see that the fundamental principle that the freedom of the press is crucial for civil freedom may restrain the desire to restrain the publication of indecent material.73 Arriving at this decision requires an appraisal of the demands of the common good and the general orientation of the community, rather than an immediate moral reaction. Here, in the legal public sphere (rather than the ecclesial sphere) our fundamental communal orientation has been toward prioritizing the principle of the free exchange of ideas through the freedom of the press above censorship of private sexual morality.74 In this situation, at least in his own time, a prioritization of free press made more sense than a prohibition of obscenity. Therefore, in the intersection between the communal discernment of basic goods and the limitations of law, Murray provides a hopeful horizon for legal reflection. While new historical challenges and institutions will always arise, the enduring principles can always be retrieved, even if they are understood and articulated in new ways by new or revised rules. These rules both ensure basic order and protect against chaos, but also leave freedom not just for license, but freedom for the good. They provide the scaffolding and structure through which citizens may grow in virtue and deepen their understanding of the good which they naturally pursue. Murray never conflates Augustine’s earthly city and heavenly city, and his Christian realism means that he understands that new challenges will always arise to civic virtue and order. However, the new challenges may in the end not overthrow the law, but strengthen and revive it. In conclusion, Christian realism offers resources for critique and construction toward the restoration of shared principles of legal interpretation called for by Dworkin. In the thoughtful critiques of Reinhold Niebuhr, we encounter the outlines of the path through which the frail ship of the law can be steered between the tyranny of a never-changing textualist interpretation and the anarchy which associates the only foundational principles of law with “realist” market and social forces. In the work of Murray, we encounter the

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suggestions for the restoration of social structures which can make the principles both intelligible and achievable. BIBLIOGRAPHY Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, edited by R. W. Dyson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.  Bazelon, Emily, and Eric Posner. “Who Is Brett Kavanaugh?” New York Times, Sept. 3, 2018. https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2018​/09​/03​/opinion​/who​-is​-brett​-kavanaugh​ .html. Berg, Thomas. “John Courtney Murray and Reinhold Niebuhr: Natural Law and Christian Realism.” Journal of Catholic Social Thought 4, no. 1 (2007): 3–28. ———. “Church-State Relations and the Social Ethics of Reinhold Niebuhr.” North Carolina Law Review 73, no. 4 (April 1995). Cadeddu, Francesca. “John Courtney Murray.” In The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr, edited by Robin Lovin and Joshua Mauldin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Crocket, M. J. “Moral Outrage in the Digital Age.” Nature Human Behaviour  1 (2017): 769–71. Dworkin, Ronald. “The Model of Rules.” In Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. ———. “The Model of Rules II.” In Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. Hawley, Cody. “Reinhold Niebuhr’s Rhetorical Legacy: Democratic Community and Religious Freedom.” In The Rhetoric of Religious Freedom in the United States, edited by Eric C. Miller. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. Lovin, Robin. “Moral Church, Immoral Society.” Christian Century, February 21, 2019. Retrieved on June 15, 2022. https:​//​www​.christiancentury​.org​/article​/critical​ -essay​/moral​-church​-amoral​-society. ———. “Religious Freedom and Public Argument: John Courtney Murray on the American Proposition.” Loyola University Chicago Law Journal 50, no. 1 (Fall 2018): 24–44. McDonnell, Brett H. “Between Sin and Redemption: Duty, Purpose, and Regulation in Religious Corporations.” Washington and Lee Law Review 74, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 1043–88. Murray, John Courtney. “Creeds at War.” In We Hold These Truths. Lanham, M: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988. ———. “The Doctrine is Dead.” In We Hold These Truths. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988. ———. “The Origins and Authority of Public Consensus.” In We Hold These Truths. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988. ———. “Should There Be a Law?” In We Hold These Truths. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988.

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Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944. ———. Love and Justice: Selections for the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, edited by D. B. Robertson. Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1957. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man, 2 vols. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. Scalia, Antonin, and Bryan Garner. Reading Law. St. Paul, MN: West Group, 2011. Sunstein, Cass R., and Thomas J. Miles. “The New Legal Realism.” University of Chicago Public Law & Legal Theory Working Paper No. 191, 2007. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benziger Bros., 1948.

NOTES 1. M. J. Crocket, “Moral Outrage in the Digital Age,” Nature Human Behaviour 1 (2017): 769–71. 2. Robin Lovin, “Moral Church, Immoral Society,” Christian Century (February 21, 2019), retrieved on June 15, 2022, https:​//​www​.christiancentury​.org​/article​/critical​-essay​/moral​-church​-amoral​-society. 3. See Cass R. Sunstein and Thomas J. Miles, “The New Legal Realism,” (University of Chicago Public Law & Legal Theory Working Paper No. 191, 2007). 4. Emily Bazelon and Eric Posner, “Who is Brett Kavanaugh?,” New York Times, Sept. 3, 2018. https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2018​/09​/03​/opinion​/who​-is​-brett​-kavanaugh​ .html. 5. Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner, Reading Law (St. Paul, MN: West Group, 2011), 16. 6. Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans. Ed. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), xix.6.  7. The combination of these two theologians as representing different approaches to Christian realism may seem somewhat counterintuitive. Despite being two of the most prominent public theologians of the last century, their work is often viewed as developing completely separately due to denominationally different schools of discourse. However, their work intersected through their time spent as consultants at the Center for the Study of the Democratic Institutions. For further innovative analysis of the archival records of their work for this program, see Francesca Cadeddu, “John Courtney Murray” in The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. Robin Lovin and Joshua Mauldin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). For another comparison of natural law theory in Murray and Niebuhr, see Thomas Berg, “John Courtney Murray and Reinhold Niebuhr: Natural Law and Christian Realism,” Journal of Catholic Social Thought 4, no. 1 (2007): 3–28. Berg also identifies a number of the same similarities in Niebuhr and Murray’s thought, drawing substantively on the work of Robin Lovin. However, he sees the similarities as tracking even more closely than I argue they do.

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8. Ronald Dworkin, “The Model of Rules,” in Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 15. 9. Dworkin, “The Model of Rules,” 15. 10. Dworkin, “The Model of Rules,” 15. 11. Ronald Dworkin, “The Model of Rules II,” in Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 79. 12. Dworkin, “The Model of Rules I,” 23. 13. Dworkin, “The Model of Rules II,” 77. 14. Dworkin, “The Model of Rules II,” 78. 15. See, e.g. Cody Hawley, “Reinhold Niebuhr’s Rhetorical Legacy: Democratic Community and Religious Freedom,” in The Rhetoric of Religious Freedom in the United States, ed. by Eric C. Miller (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018): 15–34. 16. Thomas C. Berg, “Church-State Relations and the Social Ethics of Reinhold Niebuhr,” North Carolina Law Review 73, no. 4 (April 1995): 1567–1640. 17. Brett H. McDonnell, “Between Sin and Redemption: Duty, Purpose, and Regulation in Religious Corporations,” Washington and Lee Law Review 74, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 1043–88. 18. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. I (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996): 212, 214–15. 19. Reinhold Niebuhr, Love and Justice: Selections for the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. by D. B. Robertson (Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1957), 36. 20. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944), 15. 21. Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II, 254. 22. Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II, 254. 23. Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II, 256. 24. Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II 256. 25. Reinhold Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II, 252. 26. Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 33. 27. Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 33. 28. Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II, 249. 29. Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II, 262–63. 30. Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II, 252. 31. Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II, 258. 32. Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II, 257. 33. Robin W. Lovin, “Religious Freedom and Public Argument: John Courtney Murray on the American Proposition,” Loyola University Chicago Law Journal 50, no. 1 (Fall 2018): 24–44. 34. Lovin, “Religious Freedom and Public Argument,” 26. 35. John Courtney Murray, SJ, “The Origins and Authority of Public Consensus,” in We Hold These Truths (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988), 100. 36. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 100. 37. John Courtney Murray, SJ, “Creeds at War,” in We Hold These Truths (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988), 129.

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38. Murray, “Creeds at War,” 129. 39. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 119. 40. John Courtney Murray, SJ, “Should There Be a Law?,” in We Hold These Truths (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988), 168. 41. John Courtney Murray, SJ, “Creeds at War,” in We Hold These Truths (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988), 130. 42. John Courtney Murray, SJ, “The Doctrine is Dead,” in We Hold These Truths (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1988), 277. 43. Murray, “The Doctrine is Dead,” 277. 44. Murray, “The Doctrine is Dead,” 277. 45. Murray, “The Doctrine is Dead,” 279. 46. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 109. 47. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 109. 48. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, (Benziger Bros. 1948), I–II Q. 94, a 2. 49. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 110. 50. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 110. 51. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 110. 52. Murray, “The Doctrine is Dead,” 289. 53. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 119. 54. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 119. 55. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 119. 56. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 116. In this emphasis on the importance of discernment according to the heart, Murray echoes important themes of Ignatian discernment. 57. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 112. 58. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 110–11. 59. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 119. 60. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 118. 61. Murray, “The Doctrine is Dead,” 289. 62. Murray, “Should There Be a Law?,” 167. 63. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 120. 64. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 121. 65. “Should There Be a Law?,” 155. 66. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 113. 67. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 113. 68. Murray, “The Origins and Authority,” 113. 69. Murray, “Should There Be a Law?,” 166. 70. Murray, “Should There Be a Law?,” 166. 71. Murray, “Should There Be a Law?,” 156. 72. Murray, “Should There Be a Law?,” 156. 73. Murray, “Should There Be a Law?,” 16. 74. Murray, “Should There Be a Law?,” 16.

SECTION TWO

Christian Realism and Political Realities

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Christian Realism and International Law William P. George

The January 2, 2020, US drone strike that targeted and killed the Iranian military leader General Qasem Soleimani raised important questions about the rule of law, in this case international law. The Trump administration’s initial explanation for the killing (“assassination,” according to some reports) was that it was meant to protect US forces and others from “imminent threats,” an explanation that might render the attack legally justifiable.1 But this rationale soon became problematic in terms of fact (were there really “imminent threats”?), interpretation (what does “imminent” mean anyway, and according to whom?), and actual intent (was the real reason something else?). President Trump, joined by Attorney General William Barr, later declared that whether attacks were imminent was irrelevant.2 Soleimani was a bad man who did bad things, deserved what he got, and should have been taken out years ago. In other words, international law is not always relevant or can be overridden with relative ease. Then, in the possible escalation following the attack, the question arose of targeting cultural heritage sites, another violation of international law.3 The fact that US military leaders balked at this prospect, which Trump then walked back, indicates the sort of gap in attitudes toward international law that can, and in fact do, exist in the United States and elsewhere around the world. Can Christian realism speak to the promise and limits of international law in a troubled and politically fractured world? Can it shed light on political differences, such as those evident in the US-Iran conflict, and, in the process, help to realize any potential for a more just and peaceful world that international law might offer? My answer is a hesitant “Yes.” The hesitation stems in part from the tensive, often paradoxical nature of Christian realism 91

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itself, a tension that precludes giving a quick and resounding “Yes” or “No” to such things as international law, in the abstract and perhaps even more so in the concrete. But hesitancy to affirm or deny without qualification stems also from the complexities involved. Perhaps Christian realism can be briefly defined, but as Robin W. Lovin has shown in his two excellent volumes on the topic, this tradition is in fact quite nuanced, multidimensional, and open to development as it encounters “new realities.”4 And then there is international law. Stephen C. Neff concludes a recent historical study by observing that there is really “no such thing as a history of international law as a single unitary thing” since “conceptions of what international law is have changed so much over time.”5 If Neff’s history does not leave one convinced of international law’s complexity and changing nature, the reader might consider that Andrea Bianchi discusses in considerable depth no less than thirteen distinct, if sometimes related, ways in which mostly recent scholars and practitioners have thought about international law.6 So, not only have conceptions of international law changed over time; those conceptions seem even today to be in flux. There are limits, then, to what I can say here about Christian realism and international law as we look to the future. The best I can do, perhaps, is to speak in overly broad terms about Christian realism, trusting other contributors to this volume to add nuance and depth. Nor can I do justice to the subtleties of international law. Still, I can offer at least some of the concreteness or historical context that Christian realism demands. Thus, after preliminary remarks about Christian realism, I will offer two distinct and I believe fruitful points of engagement with international law—one, a “case,” the other, a leading practitioner in the field. So, first I will show how Christian realism, especially as espoused by Reinhold Niebuhr, might elucidate, descriptively and normatively, a monumental event in international law, namely the emergence in the 1970s and 1980s of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), with implications for the present and future. Then, I will put Christian realism in all-too-brief conversation with Martti Koskenniemi, one of the most highly regarded, but also controversial, practitioners and scholars of international law today. In his numerous writings, Koskenniemi is arguably grappling with many of the same sorts of tensions, paradoxes, and complexities with which Niebuhr and others are contending, seeking a way to live with hope and a sense of direction in the midst of ambiguity and even contradiction—or, with what the Christian tradition might call “sin.” As with Christian realism, for this Finnish international lawyer, politics is integral to that search.

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PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON CHRISTIAN REALISM Christian realism, in part because its very point is to do justice both to the real and to the Christian calling, eschews reduction to any one theme or norm. So here, I simply recall not one but several overlapping “basics” or “marks” of Christian realism7 that inform—or, as importantly, possibly emerge from— our discussion of the Law of the Sea and of Koskenniemi. So, we note: (1) the Christian realist’s emphasis on sin and its effects on virtually all aspects of human activity, and at all levels of that activity (individual, family, local community, nation, international relations);8 (2) the twofold, sinful attempt to escape what it means to be human—pride, or overreaching, on the one hand, and sensuality, a denial in practice of self-transcendence, on the other;9 (3) a commitment to democracy, with its dual emphasis on freedom and equality, but a commitment informed by realism rather than a rosy liberal optimism that sees limited need for borders or coercion or exercise of power of various kinds, as well as for checks on and balances of that power;10 (4) selfsacrificial love as the Christian norm, but a norm that cannot be fully attained in history;11 (5) a deep commitment to just norms and just institutions that approximate the norm of love but also contradict it;12 (6) politics, including geo-politics, as a fundamental, if not the fundamental, arena for Christian commitment;13 (7) the truth about human nature and destiny that Christianity offers, but a truth best expressed in “myth,” such as the biblical account of creation;14 (8) the Christian realist’s experience of ongoing tensions, dialectics, paradoxes and ironies that cannot be fully resolved, if at all, in history; (9) an ongoing refusal to capitulate either to the cynical “pure” realism practiced by “the children of darkness,” on the one hand, or to the idealism of naive “children of light,” on the other;15 and (10) the notion of “impossiblepossibility” as a way of expressing how Christian realism approaches the world and its challenges.16 To these marks of Christian realism, I would add three others, perhaps less obvious. First, Christian realism, while often identified with the thought and action of Reinhold Niebuhr, both predates and goes beyond Niebuhr. As Lovin points out, not only does the Christian realism of Niebuhr have its forerunners,17 but it also has affinities beyond Protestantism, for instance, as Lovin also notes, with the Catholic social thought of John Courtney Murray.18 Second, Christian realism is open, or should be open, to ongoing development and critique, for instance from the side of feminists who argue that Niebuhr’s worry about pride or overreaching was a more fitting message for men than for women, for whom egoism and overreaching is not the primary temptation they face.19 Third, needed development of Christian realism can come not only by looking inward, for instance, to other self-identified

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Christian realists or even to the wider Christian tradition, but also from looking increasingly outward—not only to other religious traditions but also the engagement of a largely secular international law, where, for instance, feminists have also made their voices heard but have, in the process, encountered complexity, ironies, and contradictions familiar to Christian realism.20 In short, Christian realists have much to gain by fuller engagement of international law. International lawyers can benefit from this engagement as well. CHRISTIAN REALISM AND THE LAW OF THE SEA In November 2019, the CBS program 60 Minutes produced a segment with this online lead-in: “Why the U.S. is missing out on the race to mine trillions of dollars worth of metals from the ocean floor. Rare earth elements and metals used in cell phones, supercomputers and more are sitting on the ocean floor, ready to be mined by multiple countries. So why is the U.S. on the sidelines?”21 The upshot of this story was that several countries are poised to begin deep seabed mining in the Clarion Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean. But the United States is not among them because it is not a party to UNCLOS (opened for signing in 1982 and in effect since 1994), under which deep-sea mining claims are adjudicated and mining operations are carried out. That is one part of the story. Another part is the question of ecological threats posed by the mining, supposedly more than offset by the fact that the vast resources to be recovered, such as cobalt that could be used in electric car batteries, would speed the transition to clean energy. Within two days of airing, the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, a grouping of some eighty organizations and institutions, issued a response. DSCC, devoted to protection of the deep sea from deep trawling and other destructive activities, including seabed mining, wrote to the producers to express their “disappointment and concern over the [segment’s] reporting bias and errors, and to correct some of the most egregious misconceptions purveyed. The production,” DSCC claimed, “departed from the usual high standards of 60 Minutes, completely lacked balance, and could even be mistaken for a DeepGreen [mining company] promotional piece.”22 The United States, DSCC argues, is not excluded from the mining since at least one US company has found a way around the convention and its rules. And the ecological threats due to seabed mining are arguably more dire than the 60 Minutes piece would have viewers believe. Economics, ecology, new technology, international law, possibly biased narrative, and more, rise to the surface in this twenty-minute TV report and DSCC’s response. Christian realism can, and should, weigh in on this story. To understand better why and how requires at least a brief foray into the

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backstory—how did we embark on this seagoing journey of commerce, ecology, law, and conflict?23 The history of sea law is long and complex.24 Suffice it to say that, for several centuries, governance of the seas, such as it was, revolved around two principles of customary law. Coastal nations would have jurisdiction over a narrow sector of ocean space, the distance of which was determined by the “cannon shot rule.”25 Beyond that, there was “freedom of the seas,” where nations and private entities were free to travel, trade, and exploit resources as long as, in good Lockean fashion, they left as much “and as good . . . for others.”26 Fast forward to the middle of the twentieth century, when it became increasingly clear that there were anomalies (to borrow from Thomas Kuhn) that the reigning legal paradigm could not handle: (1) new technologies (e.g., sonar and refrigeration) resulted in overfishing as well as international conflict when one nation’s now longer-range fishing fleets encroached on the traditional fishing grounds of other nations; (2) increasing evidence that the living resources of the sea are not inexhaustible; (3) the emergence of new nations unwilling simply to abide by laws made by others; (4) President Truman’s post–World War II declaration that the United States had jurisdiction over its continental shelf, countered by other coastal nations’ extensive claims (extending up to three hundred or four hundred miles), even in the absence of a continental shelf, thus leaving unsettled questions of jurisdiction, for instance the right of passage through straits—of great interest to naval powers such as the United States and the USSR; (5) increasing environmental threats from ocean dumping, including of chemical, biological, and nuclear wastes; (6) the possibility that the ocean floor might be a site for nuclear weaponry; and (7), with special emphasis for present purposes, the prospect of recovering vast deposits of metals such as manganese, copper, and cobalt lying on the ocean floor—with all the questions of mining rights such prospects provoked. The move toward a new sea law was jump-started by a lengthy address in November 1967 to the UN General Assembly by Arvid Pardo of Malta. While there is a great deal of content to Pardo’s fact-based and rhetorically rich address, covering such matters as security, ocean resources—including minerals on the ocean floor—and the environment, here I emphasize Pardo’s starting point for a human turning point. “The dark oceans,” Pardo said, were the womb of life. From the protecting oceans, life emerged. We still bear in our bodies—in our blood, in the salty bitterness of our tears—the marks of this remote past. Retracing the earth, man is now returning to the ocean depths. His penetration of the deep could mark the beginning of the end of man, and indeed for life as we know it on this earth: it could also be a unique opportunity

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to lay solid foundations for a peaceful and increasingly prosperous future for all nations.27

So, while sea law may have its origins well over a thousand years ago (the seventh-century Rhodian codes are often cited), the sea itself and humanity’s relationship to those waters are much older than that—a point to which I will return. Pardo’s speech galvanized the United Nations to begin work on a new ocean regime to finish the work started, or not even begun, by two earlier UN sponsored conferences (UNCLOS I and II) convened to formulate a new sea law. Now, a Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) would stretch over several years (1973 to 1982) and become one of the most extensive and complex negotiation processes in history. Little of that complexity can be captured here. But to provide openings for engagement from the side of Christian realism, I will highlight key points. First, the movement toward a new sea law was from the start a political process. As a leading international lawyer, contemporaneous to UNCLOS’s emergence puts it, “The character, shape, and content of international law— as of national law—are determined by prevailing political forces within the political system, as refracted through the way law is made.”28 This was surely the case with UNCLOS. Second, the range of issues to be covered by the law was both extensive and interrelated, and so the emergent treaty was negotiated as “a package.” This recognition of interconnectedness of issues (security, environment, trade, living and nonliving resources, geography, etc.) during the negotiations and today, especially with climate change factored in, cannot be overstressed. Third—and this gets us closest to our topic—Pardo argued that the ocean floor and seabed beyond national jurisdiction should be declared the “common heritage of mankind,” a relatively new concept or principle in international law that had been applied, for instance, to the moon and its resources29 and, years earlier, to the sorts of cultural artifacts threatened by the US-Iran crisis with which we began. In 1970, this concept became a guiding principle for the negotiations. The precise implications of the principle (for example, with regard to technology transfers to even the mining playing field) were to be worked out through negotiation, but it did have certain initial agreed-upon meanings: (1) that the area so designated could not be appropriated by any state; (2) that its resources were to be rationally managed; (3) that the area was to be used for peaceful purposes only; and, (4) significantly, that it was to benefit “mankind as a whole,” with special regard for less developed nations.30 Also associated with the principle was a concern for future generations, another point that cannot be overstressed. Put in briefest terms, if the seabed, say, in the Clarion

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Clipperton Zone, and the vast wealth lying there is to be mined, according to this principle, everyone, living or yet to be born, is to gain. This principle not only guided the negotiations; it also brought sharp opposition from some, and disappointment for others. So, while Pardo had envisioned that this principle might govern all of the ocean floor beyond national jurisdiction, in the end it was applied only to “the Area,” that is, the seabed beyond not only national jurisdiction but also Exclusive Economic Zones (roughly two hundred miles) under the limited jurisdiction of coastal states. These developments were to the deep disappointment of Pardo, who lamented as the Convention was emerging that “All that’s left of the ‘common heritage of mankind’ is a few fish and a little seaweed.”31 Or, as one writer put it, “A funny thing happened to common heritage on the way to the law of the sea.”32 But even with this shrinkage of the applicable area, some found unacceptable the notion of a vast portion of ocean space to be governed not only by this principle, but also by an International Seabed Authority established by the emergent law. More generally, the notion that some socialist-sounding, bureaucratic-leaning version of a New International Economic Order, rather than free enterprise, would prevail was too much for some, especially the United States at a crucial juncture, to bear. And so, just as the negotiations were coming to a close, the Reagan Administration, fearing among other things weakening of national sovereignty and a threat to free enterprise, pulled back from the negotiations and declined to sign the treaty. Even though the part of UNCLOS dealing with seabed mining was reopened for negotiation, with the United States eventually signing, the United States has yet to ratify the treaty despite several attempts. While many have urged ratification, the convention has also has its detractors who fear international security threats and entanglements of various kinds. These detractors sometimes refer to the convention as the Law of the Sea Treaty, or LOST.33 Obviously, this is but the barest summary of what stands behind the fact that, as the 60 Minutes segment explained, the United States is supposedly excluded from the deep seabed mining about to begin. But oversimplification notwithstanding, it is possible to suggest ways in which the Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr can elucidate matters that, in his day, he never addressed. In brief, I would submit that Niebuhr would likely regard the common heritage concept as an “impossible possibility.”34 That is, he chided idealists in his day not for desiring a world community of peace and justice, but for believing that such a world could come about almost by fiat—perhaps through the drafting of a constitution for the world.35 So, conceivably Niebuhr would view visionaries such as Pardo as right to see that the common heritage principle—and all that it implies about human equality, justice (especially for the poorer nations), and care for the ocean depths—is indeed “necessary.”

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And the capacity of the human spirit to transcend history, reason, and even oneself makes such a community “possible.” But for Niebuhr, the vital side of human life and the drag of sin stands in the way of achieving genuine community beyond a relatively small sphere and thus renders global community “impossible.” Consonant with the paradoxical character of human nature, world or global community might fittingly be called humankind’s “final possibility and impossibility.”36 Given the world as it is, with its power relations of various kinds, with its Cold War (at the time), with its powerful economic actors, the negotiated law might in fact be a “constitution for the oceans” (as it in fact was called), but it would predictably fall short of the sort of constitution for the world called for by naive children of light. But if Christian realism counsels against prideful or naive overreaching, it does not let go of truths that it cannot fully grasp—theological realism, let us call it.37 So, one might argue that the “myth” of creation, as discussed by Niebuhr,38 can ground the deeper truth discernable in the notion of common heritage. That is, if the earth, or a part thereof, is affirmed in law as humanity’s common heritage, then one could ask: what—or who—hands it down to humankind? Not past generations, surely, for, as Pardo understood, the oceans did not start with them. Not nature, surely, for whence comes the natural world? And if humankind as a whole is to benefit from this heritage, then how can that “whole” be apprehended if not from a transcendent point of view, such as that which the myth of creation offers? In short, Christian realism would affirm, on theological grounds, the common heritage principle—even if, for good reason, it does not immediately jump to conclusions about applications of that principle in the world as it is, with its politics, its power relations, its sin. Surely, much more can and should be said about the manner in which Christian realists can speak to, and, in various ways, participate in, a major event in international law such as the Law of the Sea. I have said nothing for instance about the various spheres of jurisdiction and decision-making between the local and the global that international law must consider.39 But I want to close this section by emphasizing the future. If we stay with the notion of common heritage, one could argue that this principle is more crucial than ever, even if, on Niebuhrian grounds, it is at best an approximation of love—life in harmony with life—as the guiding norm. For, as Pope Francis has stressed, the oceans and much beyond are our common home, a threatened home for which, along with the most vulnerable among us, we must care.40 Arguably, UNCLOS, imperfect as it is, moves us in the direction of Francis’ vision, which demands “ecological conversion” (pars. 4, 216–22) and a turn away from the “technocratic paradigm” (par. 106) that has the world in thrall. A decade after UNCLOS was open for signing, a prominent international lawyer, Philip Allott, found in the convention the seeds of a shift

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in legal paradigms: no longer simply the mare liberum (free sea) of Grotius and others, or the mare clausum (closed sea) controlled by this powerful nation or that, but mare nostrum (our sea), not in the sense of possession but rather of participation, for the whole of humanity is but a part of a yet larger whole.41 Christian realists might agree with the direction in which Allott believes UNCLOS is pointing: a more holistic, just, and even “communtarian”42 law of the sea, a law made not by the powerful few but by the many, and for the good of all. But since direction is not arrival, they might not share his optimism about when, or even whether, this “new law of the sea,” this “impossible possibility,” might become a full historical reality. Since we are looking to the future, we might also look up to the heavens, where we encounter similar questions about who should have the right to retrieve and benefit from “trillions worth of metals,” this time not on the ocean floor but on asteroids speeding through space.43 Questions such as “Whose asteroids are these, anyway?” arise there, just as they emerged with reference to the ocean floor. International lawyers are working on these questions in ways that cannot be pursued here. I note simply that, to meet these questions, one space law expert, Roncevert Ganon Almond, looks to UNCLOS for guidance, and rightly so, for space law and sea law are related in various ways.44 Almond explains that “as technology can propel us beyond the boundaries of our earthly domain, we cannot escape our human nature and the attendant consequences. However, the international community can learn from and improve upon our history by anticipating the coming legal and geopolitical debates in outer space.”45 Whether international law, and especially UNCLOS, which, Almond argues, has helped to resolve or lessen conflict in the South China Sea, can now help us to meet all space-related legal problems, I am not prepared to say. Rather, of interest here is Almond’s claim that, as we look toward space, “we cannot escape our human nature and the attendant consequences,” including conflict of various kinds. But just what he means by “our human nature” is open to question. As we know, this is a topic on which Niebuhr wrote a great deal. If we now turn to a remarkable scholar and practitioner of international law, perhaps we can gain further insight into “our human nature” and what Christian realism might have in common, or not, with international law. ENGAGING MARTTI KOSKENNIEMI If turning attention to UNCLOS is one way to test and possibly advance the relationship of Christian realism to international law, engaging one of its major scholars and practitioners is another. Andrea Bianchi observes that

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Martti Koskenniemi’s “contribution to the field has been enormous,” and thus he devotes a full chapter to him in International Law Theories—even though he entitles that chapter “The Helsinki School” in order to maintain consistency in not naming individual figures in chapter headings, and even though Koskenniemi claims not to be constructing some grand theory.46 By engaging Koskenniemi, those espousing Christian realism may better understand themselves and their calling. We might start with the fact that Koskenniemi is often identified with the critical legal studies movement as applied to international law.47 This movement has been rather pessimistic when it comes international law, especially due to its unexamined power relations that favor some and marginalize others. If, for Niebuhr, “Man’s story is not a success story” (the famous Time magazine cover), so Koskenniemi might say that international law is not a resounding success story either. Thus, it needs to be critiqued, disrupted, shown for what it is—for instance, a tool for colonialism and for empire.48 But, like Niebuhr, Koskenniemi is not content with deconstructing or disrupting. If he is expert at deconstruction, his intent is not the destruction of international law. He wants to build, too. In his doctoral dissertation that in 1989 became From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of Legal Argument,49 hailed as one of the most important texts in international law in a half-century (and reissued in 2005 with an important new epilogue), Koskenniemi exposed the indeterminacy not only of international legal norms, but also of legal argument itself. That is, the practice of international law seems ever to oscillate between apology—a manipulation of norms for the sake of self-interest—and utopia—the invocation of vague, idealistic, moralistic norms. Since norms and even the structure of legal argument are of themselves indeterminate, the determinations—that is, the international legal decisions—must be, in fact, political. International law has, then, a dialectical and paradoxical‌‌‌‌ character, as practicing lawyers find themselves caught between “commitment” and “cynicism.” That is, those entering the field commit themselves to international law with its sweeping agendas, its grand multilateral treaties, its high rhetoric—“linked with Grotian humanism, Kantian cosmopolitanism and Wilson’s institutionalist faith”50—only to find that international law falls way short of these aims and ideals in practice, rendering cynicism an ever-present option. For the practitioner, “no middle position is available” between a-rational, sentimental attachment to the tradition and “suspicion that it’s ‘just politics’ after all, a doubt that [Koskenniemi] calls ‘cynicism.’”51 Commitment works “against all odds,” is against one’s own immediate interests, and is distant from both “truth” and “faith.” Otherwise, international law would collapse into “science or theology.”52 It all comes down to decision, one that

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“is not arbitrary, however, but reflects the rituals of the tradition of liberal cosmopolitanism.”53 But this sort of liberalism does not stand up in practice. Koskenniemi gives a number of ways in which international law, and thus liberal cosmopolitanism, finally brings disillusionment, such as the failures of the International Criminal Court and the ineffectiveness of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (the most widely subscribed to human rights treaty, with virtually everyone but the United States on board). Especially pertinent to our discussion he asks: Can one still be enthusiastic about a Common Heritage of Mankind after the redistributory goals of the III UN Convention on the Law of the Sea were watered down in the 1994 Implementation Agreement, concluded under the grandiose banner of the “securing the universality of the Convention,” but in fact underwriting the demands of the developed West to create a cost-effective and market-oriented platform for private enterprise in the deep seabed?54

Koskenniemi’s rhetorical question might well be directed to the ghost of Arvid Pardo (d. 1999), the Father of the Law of the Sea, disappointed with the watering down of the common heritage principle so dear to him. Koskenniemi also chafes against that “way of thinking” (Bianchi) about international law called “constitutionalism”55—just as Niebuhr scoffed at those who thought that a post–World War II world could be reconstructed as if by fiat with a “constitution for the world.” Given his doubts about the common heritage principle, Koskenniemi would probably question those who, with great optimism, called the convention a “constitution for the oceans.”56 Not unlike Niebuhr, then, Koskenniemi finds international law caught between the Scylla of a naive liberal cosmopolitanism and the Charybdis of self-interested states with no concern whatsoever for a good beyond their own. And Koskenniemi’s concerns about fine-sounding but highly problematic “universals” go beyond the Law of the Sea. So, for instance, he is less than enthusiastic about such legal concepts as jus cogens (a supposedly universal peremptory norm) or erga omnes (the notion that certain illegal actions are against the international community as a whole).57 I don’t know that Koskenniemi has ever read Niebuhr, but there are some very Niebuhrian-sounding terms found in his writings: “paradox,” for one, and “impossible but necessary,” for another.58 If Niebuhr is situating himself and Christian realism between “the children of darkness” and naive “children of light,” Koskenniemi seems to be similarly situating himself and international law between the poles of crass self-interest of states and other international actors, on the one hand, and moralistic and supposedly universal norms and values, on the other. To what extent the thought of the two is truly

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congruent, I am not prepared to say. But let me suggest a few points of contact that might be explored. First, our move from the Law of the Sea to Koskenniemi turned on a space law expert’s vague reference to “human nature.” Now, Niebuhr says a great deal about human nature, especially as affected by “sin.” If this means pride and overreaching, then one can find affinities in the thought of Koskenniemi, who finds in international relations all sorts of overreaching and power grabs, often under the guise of a supposed universalism that, in fact, serves only the few. Here, one might also find connections between Niebuhr’s wariness of a “natural law” that is in fact derivative of a particular culture or time period,59 and Koskenniemi’s own remarks on international law’s early turn to a natural law that was, in fact, truncated by a Hobbesian, self-preservationist view of human nature.60 But humanity’s sinful escape from anxiety-producing finitude can, for Niebuhr, also take the route of sensuality, which, as Robin Lovin has shown, can mean—going beyond Niebuhr—a tendency to settle for the safe way, a life without risk or questioning, a life of escapism.61 Even the hardworking “publish or perish” scholar, playing diligently by all the rules, may with his or her caution be caught in a sensual rut. Now, it seems that sensuality, defined in these larger terms, is something Koskenniemi resists, both personally and with reference to his profession. After the publication of From Apology to Utopia, he seems to have “progressed in his writing without ever appearing constrained by any of the frontiers that often limit academic thought.”62 He also shuns identification with any one school of, or approach to, international law. But perhaps more to the point is his sharp critique of the practice of international law that is in fact a narrow, unimaginative managerialism, designed to protect the interests of client-states.63 This raises the question of how Koskenniemi manages to steer between inflated principles, rules, and practices of international law, on the one hand, and, a descent into a Hobbesian or Machiavellian world of nation-states, on the other. The first thing to stress is that, no less than Niebuhr, he does not eschew politics—as if international law were totally above it. On the contrary, he showed in From Apology to Utopia and elsewhere that the decisions, the choices, regarding international law that advocates and judges and even academics make are inevitably political. But neither is law reduced to politics. Rather, the kind of law that Koskenniemi has it mind frames politics. Law provides a language, or, a kind of formalism, that enables dialogue and decision that are necessarily political. Put in language familiar to Christian theology, one might say that, for Koskenniemi, law is in politics but not of politics. But it would be a mistake to think that Koskenniemi is touting some sort of grand theory or ever greater abstraction that holds everything together. On the contrary, for Koskenniemi, the proper understanding of international

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law is to be found in history, in the actual practice of international law, as his increasing attention to history in The Gentle Civilizer of Nations64 and more recent work, would show. But if Koskenniemi is committed not to politics but to a certain kind of politics,65 and if he delves ever more deeply into history, especially the history of human agents who engage in international law, one wonders if there is for him something akin to that which, for Niebuhr, exists in its fullness beyond history and yet guides efforts toward justice that always fall short—something like self-sacrificial love. This seems possible. For Koskenniemi, the guide, the animator, the ultimate goal cannot be “ethics,” for he is troubled by international law’s turn to ethics—at least ethics understood as decisionism.66 It cannot be liberal mantras about global community, for these usually evaporate in the course of negotiations (as was the case of the Law of the Sea), or in fact serve as camouflage for the interests not of “humanity as a whole” (language of “common heritage” in the LOS), but of the powerful few. It cannot be religion, it would seem, since Koskenniemi is “agnostic” even on values, including, it would appear, transcendent values.67 Yet, even as he exposes law’s indeterminacy, its oscillation between apology and utopia, he appears at least to be looking for something transcendent to stabilize even as it animates, for he believes that “international law exists as a promise of justice.”68 So, for instance, he seeks to clarify his thinking on the legality of using or threatening to use nuclear weapons in any and all circumstances by turning to the story of Abraham, asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, even citing Kierkegaard.69 And keeping in mind Niebuhr’s commitment to myth, Koskenniemi notes, without derision, the myth-creating character of international law.70 More than Niebuhr, Koskenniemi also finds in language philosophy promising ways to say what international law is really all about.71 Yet, on a crucial question brought to the International Court of Justice, he agrees with the ICJ’s silence. In the ICJ’s advisory opinion about nuclear weapons and the taking of life, he applauds the court’s judgment of non liquet: the law does not say.72 He sides with the court on this point even though he himself appears to take very seriously the suffering and death of the innocent, revealed most pointedly and poignantly, perhaps, in his criticism of international law for doing so little to aid starving children. If I understand him correctly, he believes that the grounds for knowing that killing the innocent is wrong will be found not in the law or in the ICJ, as in some sort of god, but rather in oneself. So, his agnosticism notwithstanding—or maybe true to it—perhaps Koskenniemi’s thoughts about international law and its judgments have a tacit, silent connection to another sort of judgment, such as that found in Matthew 25 and what is said there about care for the “least,” even if, with

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Christian realism, application of that judgment cannot bypass the parable, the “myth” if you will, of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:36–43). Compared to love in its fullness, international law will be ever an approximation of love and the promise of justice at best. Maybe this explains why, in one essay, Koskenniemi writes not only about human rights and politics, but also about love.73 CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ABOUT FUTURE CHALLENGES Perhaps what I have said is enough simply to urge further conversation between Christian realism and international law. But if the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, now set closer than ever to midnight,74 is any indication, the context for that conversation will be as challenging as it is urgent. Not only do a possible nuclear exchange, climate change, and the warming and rising oceans—among other things—pose threats to the very planet itself, but, as the Bulletin has been saying for some time, the “new abnormal” of a widespread assault on facticity and the notion of truth makes “big problems” increasingly hard to address. These truly global challenges are further compounded by the reemergence of nationalism, of tribalism, of the “exit” tendencies that make multilateralism and international cooperation increasingly tenuous propositions. Given these challenges, I suggest a few topics of conversation—and action—on which, together, Christian realists and international lawyers might focus their energies. First, in the shadow of the Doomsday Clock, Christian realists might return to their roots in Saint Augustine, for whom time was a matter both of great importance and of great obscurity. In our time, and in the times ahead, we should also recall Augustine’s commitment to truth; lying, for him, was a very serious moral failing. Another Augustinian theme to ponder is the notion of sin as contraction, a turning in on self, or group, or party, or nation—with blinders to keep us from seeing what, and who, lies beyond. As someone like Koskenniemi would attest, there are plenty of blinders to be found in, and removed from, the practice of international law as well. Second, a strength of both Christian realism and the sort of international law espoused by Koskenniemi is attention to history, to context, to what visionaries see is needed today and tomorrow (the “possible,” the “necessary”), even if it cannot be achieved immediately or fully in history (the “impossible”). But here is where development of both Christian realism and international law may be required. For Christian realism as for international law, the “historical context” with which we are dealing today is not just “the last war or the last depression,” as political scientists sometimes say. Recall

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Avid Pardo’s words over fifty years ago: “The dark oceans were the womb of life. We still bear in our bodies—in our blood, in the salty bitterness of our tears—the marks of this remote past.” This is the sort of history to which Christian realism and international law must also be attuned. And if the relevant past is very long, the time we have for effective action to heal a wounded planet is not. Third, one might ask: could this broader and longer historical view lead to a reconsideration of the natural law about which both Christian realism and international law have, quite rightly in my view, had their doubts? Might it be that climate change and related challenges are urging a return to natural law, but a law that clearly puts human nature within a larger, finally cosmic whole? It is, I believe, a proposition worthy of serious consideration. Finally, with a view to the future, I hardly need emphasize that the sort of mutual engagement of Christian realism and international law that is needed must go far beyond what I have even intimated here. After all, the Law of the Sea is not the whole of international law, and Koskenniemi, who, I want to stress, is subject to criticisms passed over here,75 is certainly not the only international lawyer, living or dead, with important things to say. Grace-aided efforts to cast an ever wider net of engagement, one that reaches beyond the relevant scholarly sources to the depths of the sea, to the vastness of space, and to the least among us—including other species as well as future generations—will leave us more likely to approximate the guiding norm of love, even as we rely on the mercy of God to untangle, in God’s own time, the ironies and contradictions of the human condition and the human prospect. BIBLIOGRAPHY Allott, Philip. “Mare Nostrum: A New International Law of the Sea.” The American Journal of International Law, 86 no. 4 (October 1992): 764–87. Almond, Roncervert Ganon. “Building a Durable Legal Framework in Space: The Extraterrestrial Impact of the South China Sea Dispute.” Yale Journal of International Law, October 24, 2017. http:​//​www​.yjil​.yale​.edu​/building​-a​ -durable​-legal​-framework​-in​-space​-the​-extraterrestrial​-impact​-of​-the​-south​-china​ -sea​-dispute​/. Anghie, Antony. Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law. New York: Cambridge Press, 2004. Bianchi, Andrea. International Law Theories: An Inquiry into Different Ways of Thinking. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. ———. “Critical Legal Studies and the New Stream.” In International Law Theories: An Inquiry into Different Ways of Thinking. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. ———. “Feminism.” In International Law Theories: An Inquiry into Different Ways of Thinking. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

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———. “The Helsinki School.” In International Law Theories: An Inquiry into Different Ways of Thinking. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Cummings, William. “‘Red Herring’: Trump, Barr say killing of Soleimeni was justified, whether or not threat was imminent.” USA Today, January 14, 2020. https:​//​www​.usatoday​.com​/story​/news​/politics​/2020​/01​/14​/trump​-administration​ -justifications​-soleimani​-killing​/4463875002​/. Danzig, Aaron. “A Funny Thing Happened to the Common Heritage on the Way to the UNCLOS.” San Diego Law Review 12 (1975): 655–64. “Declaration of Principles Governing the Seabed and the Ocean Floor.” United Nations General Assembly, 1933rd plenary meeting, Resolution 2749 (XXV), December 1970, Official Records of the General Assembly, Twenty-fifth Session, Supplement No. 28. New York: United Nations, 1971. Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. “DSCC’s Response to 60 Minute’s Segment on Deep Seabed Mining.” Last modified November 19, 2019. http:​//​www​ .savethehighseas​.org​/2019​/11​/19​/dsccs​-response​-to​-the​-60​-minutes​-segment​-on​ -deep​-seabed​-mining​/. “Destruction of cultural heritage is an attack on people and their fundamental rights— UN expert.” UN News October 27, 2016. https:​//​news​.un​.org​/en​/story​/2016​/10​ /543912​-destruction​-cultural​-heritage​-attack​-people​-and​-their​-fundamental​-rights​ -un. Francis. “Encyclical Letter Laudato si’ of the Holy Father Francis on Care for Our Common Home," May 24, 2015. Vatican Website. http:​//​www​.vatican​.va​/content​/ francesco​/en​/encyclicals​/documents​/papa​-francesco​_20150524​_enciclica​-laudato​ -si​.html. George, William P. “Asteroid Mining: Ethics for Aliens or for Us?” In Mining Morality: Prospecting for Ethics in a Wounded World. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019. ———. “Reinhold Niebuhr: ‘Common Heritage’ as an ‘Impossible Possibility.” In “Envisioning Global Community: The Theological Character of the Common Heritage Concept in the Law of the Sea,” 145–98. PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1990. ———. “Seabed Mining: From Insight to International Law.” In Mining Morality: Prospecting for Ethics in a Wounded World. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/ Fortress Academic, 2019. Goldstein, Valerie Saving. “The Human Situation: A Feminine View.” The Journal of Religion 40, no. 2 (April 1960): 100–12. Henkin, Louis. How Nations Behave: Law and Foreign Policy, 2nd edition. Published for the Council on Foreign Relations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Jasper, William F. “LOST: Law of the Sea Treaty.” New American. February 18, 2009. https:​//​www​.thenewamerican​.com​/usnews​/politics​/item​/2526​-UNCLOSt​-law​-of​ -the​-sea​-treaty. Jouannet, Emmanuelle. “Koskenniemi: A Critical Introduction.” In The Politics of International Law, edited by Martti Koskenniemi. Oxford: Hart Publishing Company, 2011.

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Juda, Lawrence. International Law and Ocean Management: The Evolution of Ocean Governance, Ocean Management Policy Series. London: Routledge, 1996. Kent, H. S. K. “The Historical Origins of the Three-Mile Limit.” American Journal of International Law 48, no. 4 (October 1956): 537–53. Koh, T. B. “A Constitution for the Oceans.” In The Law of the Sea: United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, with Index and Final Act of the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. New York: United Nations, 1983. Koskenniemi, Martti. From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument. Reissued with new epilogue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ———. The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ———. “Between Commitment and Cynicism: Outline for a Theory of International Law as Practice.” In The Politics of International Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing Company, 2011. , ———. “Faith, Identity, and the Killing of the Innocent: International Lawyers and Nuclear Weapons.” In The Politics of International Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing Company, 2011. ———. “Human Rights, Politics and Love.” In The Politics of International Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing Company, 2011. ———. “Miserable Comforters: International Relations as New Natural Law.” In The Politics of International Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing Company, 2011. ———. “‘The Lady Doth Protest Too Much’: Kosovo, and the Turn to Ethics in International Law.” In The Politics of International Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing Company, 2011. ———. “The Politics of International Law—20 Years Later.” In The Politics of International Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing Company, 2011. ———. “What is International Law For?” In The Politics of International Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing Company, 2011. “Law of the Sea and UN Conventions.” Pence Law Library Guides. American University College of Law, Pence Law Library. http:​//​wcl​.american​.libguides​.com​ /c​.php​?g​=563260​&p​=3877818. Lovin, Robin W. Christian Realism and the New Realities. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ———. Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Mecklin, John, ed. “It is 100 Seconds to Midnight.” 2020 Doomsday Clock Statement. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. (January 2022). https:​//​thebulletin​.org​/doomsday​ -clock​/current​-time​/. Miles, Rebekah. The Bonds of Freedom: Feminist Theology and Christian Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Neff, Stephen C. Justice among Nations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.

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Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946. ———. An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, 2nd printing. New York: The Seabury Press, 1935; 1963. ———. “The Illusion of World Government.” Foreign Affairs 27 (April 1949): 379–88. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man, 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941; 1943. Official Record. United Nations General Assembly, Twenty-second Session, First Committee, 1515th meeting, November 1, 1967. Pardo, Arvid. “An Opportunity Lost.” In UNCLOS: U.S. Policy Dilemma, edited by H. Oxam, David D. Caron, and Charles L. Buderi. San Francisco: ICS Press, 1983. “Pompeo reasserts that Soleimani posed imminent threat, but won’t define ‘imminent.’” CNN, January 10, 2020. https:​//​www​.cnn​.com​/2020​/01​/10​/politics​/mike​ -pompeo​-qasem​-soleimani​-imminent​-threat​/index​.html​/. Post, Alexandra Merle. Deepsea Mining and the Law of the Sea. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Press, 1983. United Nations Environment Programme. “Regional Sea Programmes.” https:​//​www​ .unenvironment​.org​/explore​-topics​/oceans​-seas​/what​-we​-do​/working​-regional​ -seas​/regional​-seas​-programmes. United Nations Office for Outer Spacec Affairs. United Nations Treaties and Principles on Outer Space, Related General Assembly Resolutions and Other Documents. http:​//​www​.unoosa​.org​/pdf​/publications​/ST​_SPACE​_061Rev01E​.pdf. Witaker, Bill. “Why the U.S. is Missing Out on the Race to Mine Trillions of Dollars Worth of Metals from the Ocean Floor.” CBS 60 Minutes, November 17, 2019. https:​//​www​.cbsnews​.com​/news​/rare​-earth​-elements​-u​-s​-on​-sidelines​-in​-race​-for​ -metals​-sitting​-on​-ocean​-floor​-60​-minutes​-60​-minutes​-2019–11–17​/.

NOTES 1. “Pompeo reasserts that Soleimani posed imminent threat, but won’t define ‘imminent,’” CNN, January 10, 2020, https:​//​www​.cnn​.com​/2020​/01​/10​/politics​/mike​ -pompeo​-qasem​-soleimani​-imminent​-threat​/index​.html​/. 2. William Cummings, “‘Red Herring’: Trump, Barr say Killing of Soleimeni was Justified, Whether or Not Threat Was Imminent,” USA Today, January 14, 2020, https:​//​www​.usatoday​.com​/story​/news​/politics​/2020​/01​/14​/trump​-administration​ -justifications​-soleimani​-killing​/4463875002​/. 3. “Destruction of Cultural Heritage is an Attack on People and their Fundamental Rights—UN Expert,” UN News, October 27, 2016, https:​//​news​.un​.org​/en​/story​/2016​ /10​/543912​-destruction​-cultural​-heritage​-attack​-people​-and​-their​-fundamental​-rights​ -un.

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4. Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Christian Realism and the New Realities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 5. Stephen C. Neff, Justice among Nations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 481. 6. Andrea Bianchi, International Law Theories: An Inquiry into Different Ways of Thinking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 7. No attempt is made here to cite the full extent of sources for each of these “marks.” 8. See, for instance, “Sin” in the indexes to Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. I: Human Nature (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941; 1963) (hereafter, Human Nature); and Vol. II: Human Destiny (1943; 1964) (hereafter, Human Destiny). 9. Niebuhr, Human Nature and Niebuhr, Human Destiny. 10. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946). 11. Niebuhr, Human Nature, 131–35; Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 196–99 12. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 191–234. 13. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 158–90. 14. Niebuhr, Human Nature, 131–35. 15. Niebuhr, Children of Light. 16. Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, 2d printing (New York: The Seabury Press, 1935; 1963), 71 ff. 17. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 1–2. 18. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 127, 138, 185. 19. Valerie Saving Goldstein, “The Human Situation: A Feminine View,” The Journal of Religion 40/2 (April 1960): 100–12. See also Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 148; and Rebekah L. Miles, The Bonds of Freedom: Feminist Theology and Christian Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 20. See Bianchi, “Feminism,” International Theories, 183–204. 21. Bill Witaker, “Why the U.S. is Missing Out on the Race to Mine Trillions of Dollars Worth of Metals from the Ocean Floor,” 60 Minutes, November 17, 2019, https:​//​www​.cbsnews​.com​/news​/rare​-earth​-elements​-u​-s​-on​-sidelines​-in​-race​-for​ -metals​-sitting​-on​-ocean​-floor​-60​-minutes​-60​-minutes​-2019–11–17​/. 22. Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, “DSCC’s Response to 60 Minute’s Segment on Deep Seabed Mining,” November 19, 2019, http:​//​www​.savethehighseas​.org​/2019​ /11​/19​/dsccs​-response​-to​-the​-60​-minutes​-segment​-on​-deep​-seabed​-mining​/. 23. I have discussed some of what follows in more detail in William P. George, “Seabed Mining: From Insight to International Law,” chapter 5 of Mining Morality: Prospecting for Ethics in a Wounded World (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019), 145–85. 24. Lawrence Juda, International Law and Ocean Management: The Evolution of Ocean Governance, Ocean Management Policy Series (London: Routledge, 1996).

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25. H. S. K. Kent, “The Historical Origins of the Three-Mile Limit,” The American Journal of International Law 48/4 (October, 1956): 537–53. 26. On the connection between Hugo Grotius’s freedom of the seas doctrine and Locke’s view of property and government, see Alexandra Merle Post, Deepsea Mining and the Law of the Sea (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Press, 1983), 93. 27. Official Record, United Nations General Assembly, Twenty-second Session, First Committee, 1515th meeting, 1 November 1967. 28. Louis Henkin, How Nations Behave: Law and Foreign Policy, 2nd ed., Published for the Council on Foreign Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 32 and, more generally, 39–99. 29. See United Nations Treaties and Principles on Outer Space, 31, http:​//​www​.unoosa​.org​/pdf​/publications​/ST​_SPACE​_061Rev01E​.pdf. 30. “Declaration of Principles Governing the Seabed and the Ocean Floor,” United Nations General Assembly, 1933rd plenary meeting, Resolution 2749 (XXV), December 1970, Official Records of the General Assembly, Twenty-fifth Session, Supplement No. 28 (New York: United Nations, 1971). 31. See “Law of the Sea and UN Conventions,” Pence Law Library Guides, American University College of Law, Pence Law Library, http:​//​wcl​.american​.libguides​.com ​/c​.php​?g​=563260​&p​=3877818. 32. Aaron Danzig, “A Funny Thing Happened to the Common Heritage on the Way to the UNCLOS,” San Diego Law Review 12 (1975): 655–64. See also Arvid Pardo, “An Opportunity Lost,” in UNCLOS: U.S. Policy Dilemma, ed. H. Oxam, David D. Caron, and Charles L. Buderi (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1983). 33. See, e.g., William F. Jasper, “LOST: Law of the Sea Treaty,” New American, February 18, 2009, https:​//​www​.thenewamerican​.com​/usnews​/politics​/item​/2526​ -UNCLOSt​-law​-of​-the​-sea​-treaty. 34. I have argued this point at length in William P. George, “Envisioning Global Community: The Theological Character of the Common Heritage Concept in the Law of the Sea,” Chapter 4, “Reinhold Niebuhr: ‘Common Heritage’ as an ‘Impossible Possibility,” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1990), 145–98. 35. See, e.g., Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Illusion of World Government,” Foreign Affairs 27 (April 1949): 379–88. 36. Niebuhr, Children of Light, 189. 37. On theological realism, see Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 18–28. 38. Niebuhr, Human Nature, 131–36. 39. Consider, for instance, the UN-sponsored regional approach to ocean environment. See Regional Seas Programmes of the United Nations Environment Program, https:​//​www​.unenvironment​.org​/explore​-topics​/oceans​-seas​/what​-we​-do​/working​ -regional​-seas​/regional​-seas​-programmes. 40. Francis, Laudato si’ (Vatican City: Vatican Press, 2015). http:​//​www​.vatican​ .va​/content​/francesco​/en​/encyclicals​/documents​/papa​-francesco​_20150524​_enciclica​ -laudato​-si​.html. See especially paragraphs 24, 37, 40, 41, and 174. 41. Philip Allott, “Mare Nostrum: A New International Law of the Sea,” American Journal of International Law 86/4 (October 1992): 764–87. 42. Allott, “Mare Nostrum,” 784–85.

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43. See George, “Asteroid Mining: Ethics for Aliens or for Us?” Mining Morality, 225–63. 44. George, Mining Morality, 246–53. 45. Roncervert Ganon Almond, “Building a Durable Legal Framework in Space: The Extraterrestrial Impact of the South China Sea Dispute,” Yale Journal of International Law, October 24, 2017, http:​//​www​.yjil​.yale​.edu​/building​-a​-durable​-legal​ -framework​-in​-space​-the​-extraterrestrial​-impact​-of​-the​-south​-china​-sea​-dispute​/. 46. Emmanuelle Jouannet, “Koskenniemi: A Critical Introduction,” in Martti Koskenniemi, The Politics of International Law (Oxford: Hart Publishing Company, 2011) (hereafter, PIL), 1. 47. On this movement, see Bianchi, “Critical Legal Studies and the New Stream,” International Law Theories, 135–62. 48. See Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (New York: Cambridge Press, 2004). 49. Martti Koskenniemi, From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument, Reissued with new epilogue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 50. Koskenniemi, “Between Commitment and Cynicism: Outline for a Theory of International Law as Practice,” in The Politics of International Law, 271. 51. Koskenniemi, The Politics of International Law, 272. 52. Koskenniemi, The Politics of International Law, 274–75. 53. Koskenniemi, The Politics of International Law, 276. 54. Koskenniemi, The Politics of International Law, 276. 55. Koskenniemi, The Politics of International law, 272–74 56. “A Constitution for the Oceans,” remarks by T. B. Koh of Singapore, President of UNCLOS III, in The Law of the Sea: United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, with Index and Final Act of the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (New York: United Nations, 1983), xxxiii–xxxvii. 57. Koskenniemi, “Human Rights, Politics and Love, in The Politics of International Law, 165. 58. Koskenniemi, “Human Rights, Politics and Love,” in The Politics of International Law, 153. 59. Niebuhr, Human Nature, 278–98. 60. Koskenniemi, “Miserable Comforters: International Relations as New Natural Law,” in The Politics of International Law, 307–30. 61. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 144–47. 62. Jouannet, “Koskeniemi,” 2. 63. Koskenniemi, “The Politics of International Law—20 years later,” in The Politics of International Law, 71–74; Bianchi, Theories of International Law, 172–74. 64. Kosokenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 65. Bianchi, “The Helsinki School,” International Theories, 167. 66. Koskenniemi, “‘The Lady Doth Protest Too Much’: Kosovo, and the Turn to Ethics in International Law,” in The Politics of International Law, 112–30, especially 124–25.

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67. On “the morality of [Koskenniemi] the agnostic,” see Bianchi, “The Helsinki School,” 174–79. 68. Koskenniemi, “What is International Law For?” in The Politics of International Law, 266. 69. “Faith, Identity, and the Killing of the Innocent: International Lawyers and Nuclear Weapons,” in PIL, 215–18. 70. Bianchi, “The Helsinki School,” 164. 71. Jouannet, “Koskenniemi,” 8–10. 72. Koskenniemi, “Faith, Identity, and the Killing of the Innocent,” in The Politics of International Law. 73. Koskenniemi, “Human Rights, Politics and Love,” in The Politics of International Law, 153–68. 74. “It is 100 Seconds to Midnight,” 2020 Doomsday Clock Statement, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, https:​//​thebulletin​.org​/doomsday​-clock​/current​-time​/. 75. For a review of such criticisms see Jouannet, “Koskenniemi,” 22–27.

Chapter Seven

Christian Realism and International Relations Kevin Carnahan

Following the sack of Rome in 410, Augustine wrote De Civitate Dei in part to explain not only why God would allow such a travesty to happen, but also how it could be a reflection of God’s providence in the world.1 This was a hard sell because, in the minds of so many ancients, Roman order was inseparable from the divine order. Augustine’s approach was to deflate claims about human politics in general. God’s order transcended the human political order of the empire and stood in judgment over the pretensions of this imperial order. Rome was yet another flawed human project, useful for shoring up the conditions for relatively just human life in its time but destined for eventual judgment and dissolution.2 In advocating a deflationary analysis of politics, Augustine came close to the position known today in international relations theory as realism. In the classical world, this approach to the analysis of politics could be summarized in Thucydides’s quip that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”3 In short, politics is about relative power, not moral justification. This kind of analysis eventually developed into a school that found politics to be explicable simply in terms of power balances between different political agents. The study of politics, on this account, is the science of the Hobbesean state of nature. In a world where all participants seek their own advantage, agents are only limited by their ability to take advantage of their own situation in relation to others. There may be “better” or “worse” decisions in terms of taking full advantage of resources, but “good” and “evil” never enter the picture. Morality is superfluous to political analysis. The Augustinian approach comes close to this kind of analysis, but it has never been entirely comfortable within its frame. Christian realism shares a 113

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belief that political agents, especially collective political agents, are driven primarily by their perceived interests rather than adherence to abstract moral standards, and that the analysis of relative power is a powerful tool for political prognostication. But Christian realism maintains this within a broader picture of a world shot through with divine purpose and judgment. As Robin Lovin argues, Christian realism entails both a theological realism and a moral realism in addition to its political realism.4 The values of societies are relativized, but not eliminated. There can be relatively better or worse political structures and peoples, even if such relative judgments are always partially obscure to those living within these societies. And there is providential meaning available in some political events, even if it is most frequently a divine judgment against human pretensions. This was the tradition inherited by Reinhold Niebuhr in the twentieth century. It is his analysis that still stands as the gold standard in Christian realism, and it had a particular shape. Niebuhr’s approach was to tell the story of political actors, paying close attention to their pretensions and their relative values. He sought to contextualize international relations within the broader narrative of God’s politics, which transcended, but was always relevant to human politics. Using this framework, Niebuhr supported US action in World War II, opposed US overreach in the Vietnam War, and provided commentary on everything in between. This chapter follows in this tradition of narration but focuses on a period which Niebuhr never knew: the period after the Cold War. Here are the outlines of the story I want to tell: For most of the last thirty years, from the fall of the Soviet Union to the middle of the Obama administration, American policy has been formed against the backdrop assumptions of a secular eschatology: a naive faith in the inevitable expansion of Western liberalism across the globe. Against the narrative of a Western “victory” in the Cold War, this made sense. If the two alternatives were Western liberalism and communism, and communism had fallen, liberalism must take its perpetual place in ascendency. The remaining need for military force appeared to concern micro-conflict, with small, “rogue” regimes that invaded neighboring states, violated humanitarian law, supported terrorism, or developed weapons of mass destruction. There were certainly significant differences among the foreign policies of this period. While most administrations located US leadership within a set of multilateral relations, the George W. Bush administration broke from tradition with his neoconservative unilateralism. This aggravated the rise of nationalism and significantly weakened the standing of the United States in the world. But all of these administrations played out their foreign policies against the assumption that the world was moving inevitably in the direction of liberalization; all had background beliefs tied to a narrative that located the

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West as the winner in the last overarching battle in international relations, that between communism and liberalism. Unfortunately, the world of human beings is never so simple. As the Christian realist would predict, when humans resolve conflict within a framework they have constructed, they don’t live harmoniously. They reimagine the frameworks within which conflict occurs. There is a deep idolatry in the US tendency to project US victory in the Cold War as definitive of history. God always judges such pretensions. The collapse of a bipolar world does not leave one remaining superpower. As Robin Lovin writes, take “superpower opposition away, and the system of opposing blocs devolves into multiple states, each pursuing its own interests.”5 The emerging international order that we see today is one marked dominantly by nationalism rather than liberal internationalism. The leaders of the United States were late in processing and responding to this shift in global order, so late that the new nationalism had arrived in force within the United States before the United States was able to respond to it as a global development. Now the United States must learn how to manage nationalism at home while finding its place in a world where Chinese power seeks to overthrow Western dominance, and where Russia is happy to play the spoiler with a goal of creating a system of regional powers, where they are the power in their region. FAITH IN THE LIBERAL ESCHATON Given the current retrenchment of liberal internationalism, it is easy to forget that only three decades ago many believed that liberalism had attained a historically definitive victory over all alternatives.6 Francis Fukuyama could write that humanity had witnessed “the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”7 Few today would embrace this view as straightforwardly as Fukuyama. Different administrations afterward thought of themselves as driven by realism to various extents. But from this point until the middle of the Obama administration, the foreign policies of each administration reflect the enduring legacy of faith in the liberal eschaton. In 1990 the United States publicly articulated a justification for military response to Saddam Hussein’s annexation of Kuwait with appeal to traditional just-war standards, signaling an embrace of a law-governed international society. In his speech “Toward a New World Order,” George H. W. Bush channeled his inner Woodrow Wilson, claiming that in that moment he saw a “new world . . . struggling to be born. A world quite different from the one we’ve known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the

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jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.”8 The apocalyptic, indeed biblical, tone in Bush’s speech is enough to trigger any Christian realist. Talk of the birth pangs of the world ought to be reserved for the discussion of the coming Kingdom of God, and the “new world” will be marked by a divine, not a human political order. But there were several realist tendencies that tempered the idealism Bush expressed. One was the commitment of the United States to multilateralism. While US hegemony was taken for granted, the United States was not pictured as projecting unilateral power across the globe. Paradigmatically, operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield in Iraq featured US leadership of a coalition of thirty-five nations. The Bush administration also pursued relatively limited aims in the war, ending hostilities after liberating Kuwait rather than pushing on for the ouster of Saddam Hussein. As Bush and Brent Scowcroft later noted, they were restrained in part by their multilateralism. Continued hostilities would have broken the alliance they were leading. They also respected more generally the limits of US power and the costs of further military action and the potential aftermath.9 This general trajectory was continued under the Clinton administration. Again, political realities created limitations on US power. In the last fifty years, Democratic administrations have been less comfortable with the use of force than Republican alternatives. Because of the rise of anti-militarism and anti-imperialism in the US left, spurred among baby boomers by their experiences during the Vietnam War, many on the left are embarrassed by or antagonistic to the role of the United States as a global hegemon. This effect is compounded in an era of rising partisan tensions by the fact that Republicans, who are more comfortable with projecting military power, will often criticize any action by a Democratic president.10 The foreign policy of the Clinton administration was left to try to reconcile its deep ambivalence about military power with the reality that the United States de facto was the most powerful nation in the world and was leading much of the globe. The result was a continuation of Bush’s multilateral, liberal internationalism, but with an added dose of squeamishness. Yet still, the United States found itself repeatedly active in that most idealistic of military endeavors: humanitarian interventions. This worked out poorly in Somalia, where the United States was leading a UN mission. In terms of body count, US military forces got the better of the Somali forces that opposed them in October 1993. But with the loss of nineteen soldiers, the battle played as a catastrophe to the US audience.11 Within days Clinton ordered the end of all offensive use of force by US troops in Somalia, and within six months the United States would announce a complete withdrawal of forces.

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This was not an end to US liberal internationalism, but it set another limit on what the United States was willing to commit to this role. “Boots on the ground” came to mark the line the Clinton administration would not cross. Thus, projecting US power required uses of force that led to fewer US military casualties and were less visible to the public. In this we can see forces that would eventually lead to the widespread use of private military contractors (functional mercenaries), a new emphasis on clandestine activity, and the rapid expansion of drone warfare. These are subjects which deserve their own treatment, and which I will unfortunately not be able to further develop in this chapter. These concerns also contributed to the US refusal to intervene in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.12 It is ironic that even with Clinton’s heightened ambivalence about the power of the United States, the most successful remaining use of that power played a role in spurring the rise of one of the anti-liberal thorns in the side of the United States today: Russian nationalism. The collapse of the Soviet Union often left chaos in its wake. This was certainly the case in the dissolution of Yugoslavia, where insecurity and regional power grabs led to civil war and ethnic cleansing. Serbian nationalists slowly took control of the central governing structures of Yugoslavia and pursued the development of a Serbian national state. Following the multilateralist playbook, the United States led a set of NATO air (no “boots on the ground”) operations to restrain Serbian military movements and then to force peace agreements recognizing nonSerbian autonomy for some regions. Russia strongly objected to this. They stood with the Serbs, their closest ethnic and civilizational counterparts in the region. The result was a stark reminder of what it meant no longer to be a superpower. Russian objections were sidelined and ignored. Russian nationalists were shaken. Perhaps none more than the head of Russia’s National Security Council at the time: Vladimir Putin. To the west, the Yugoslav wars were putting to sleep the last vestiges of the Soviet Union in anticipation of the continued spread of liberal democracy through the Russian heartland. For Russian nationalists it was a wake-up call that would culminate years later in Putin’s rise to authoritarian power. With optimism about the future and a roaring US economy, the United States did not see the storm clouds in the distance. Indeed, US policy at the time favored expanding membership in liberal international institutions to countries to liberalize those countries. In 1998, at Clinton’s prompting, Russia was added to a meeting of the globe’s “industrialized nations,” turning the G7 into the G8. This despite Russia not having reached standards of liberalization that were normally expected for participation.13 In 2000, only a decade after Tiananmen Square, Clinton pushed for normalizing US trade with China and extending an offer of membership in the World Trade Organization to China.

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He cast his argument explicitly in terms of expanding liberalization: “By joining the WTO, China is not simply agreeing to import more of our products, it is agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values, economic freedom. When individuals have the power not just to dream, but to realize their dreams, they will demand a greater say.”14 This was all part of creating a world like the one Woodrow Wilson imagined: “a world full of free markets, free elections, and free people working together.”15 THE UNILATERAL TURN The optimism of the decade after the end of the Cold War is today almost laughable. Leaders underestimated the ways that globalization and free trade would destabilize society. They did not understand the significance of ever-increasing economic inequality even in the middle of an expanding economy. They failed to appreciate the ways that the potential for violence was being democratized, empowering non-state actors. They didn’t detect the irony that liberalization and democratization of media was creating space for anti-liberal forces to gather and organize. They failed to grasp the ways in which losing a common enemy in the Cold War had undermined the basis for political unity in the United States and the West. And they were another decade out from realizing that the liberal world they thought they were moving toward was already imploding around them.16 Given these failures, it is remarkable that in retrospect the leaders of this decade did so much better than the leaders of the next administration. The shift in US foreign policy under the George W. Bush administration was radical. Bush had brought on board some figures from his father’s administration. But more significant were the members he sidelined and who he listened to instead. James Baker and Brent Scowcroft were out. The neoconservatives were in. Unfortunately, the shift eliminated the tendencies that had set limits on the first Bush’s liberal internationalism. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, neoconservatism was more of a sociological category than an ideological one. Neocons like Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby had diverse political philosophies, but were bound together by their institutional connections to one another and to right-wing Israeli leaders, and by their conviction that the United States was powerful enough militarily to address almost any international problem with the use of force.17 It can be argued whether the views they represented leaned more toward US imperialism or liberal internationalism. Whatever the conclusion, the background assumptions in their policy decisions reflect an ongoing faith in the inevitability of expanding liberalism. First, the United States was taken by the neoconservatives to be the moral leader in the world, and they

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assumed that moral superiority entailed a liberal politics. Some neoconservatives were far more consistent liberal internationalists than their predecessors in the sense that they rejected the cooperation with (or even toleration of) anti-liberal regimes in the world. This is part of what led some to reject multilateralism and ideas of global government that always required compromise with less “moral” actors. Second, one can see the eschatological dimension of their liberalism in the enemies they chose. They believed that the primary threats to the US/liberal ordering of the world were relatively small, rogue regimes. Those who were resisting US/liberal power were odd outliers. This is related to the third way in which we can see the eschatological liberalism in neoconservatism. They believed that the United States could overpower these rogue anti-liberal regimes without paying significant costs. They did not believe that the projection of US power would give rise to significant pushback from alternative centers of power, and they assumed that the territories of rogue regimes could be democratized and liberalized with relatively little effort and time invested if only their “bad guy” dictators were removed. They started out with a list of rogue nations, focusing especially on Iraq and Iran. All they needed was a pretext to sell war. The attacks on September 11, 2001, were used by neoconservatives to justify battles against continually broader categories of enemies, first Al-Qaeda, then the Taliban, then terrorism, regimes that harbored or failed to control terrorists, and ultimately any anti-liberal regime possessing weapons of mass destruction. The focus was always on figuring out how to craft a category that would fit the rogue regimes that the neoconservatives already wanted to fight. Illustrative of this trend was the naming of the “Axis of Evil”: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Not only were the “members” of the axis unrelated or opposed to one another (thus lacking any axis), none were related to September 11th, and North Korea appears to have been added at the last minute.18 The most concrete legacies of the Bush administration’s foreign policy emerged from the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Military action in Afghanistan was probably a foregone conclusion the moment the first plane struck on September 11th, and significant military action was justified by any reasonable standard of just war. This said, the war that was waged has been far less than a just affair, even in the relative terms possible in massive human conflict. Following a remarkably successful initial military invasion, a combination of ineptitude and inattention plagued US efforts in the country, squandering initial warm will and massive military advantage.19 To whatever extent the Afghanistan war was tragic, the Iraq war was farce. In terms of its outcomes, it is the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the United States. Again, in Iraq, the United States proved that its military was an unparalleled strike force with no ability to keep peace after it had struck. This overreach in US foreign policy laid the groundwork for the

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collapse of the status quo order in the Middle East that had been in place for decades. With Iraq in shambles, Iran emerged as the dominant power in the region. In the power vacuum created by the collapse of Iraq, the world witnessed the growth first of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, then the Islamic State. At a time when the United States needed to be paying attention to the rise of Russian and Chinese power, it created for itself a set of problems that would prevent it from looking away from the Middle East for the foreseeable future. But if the United States was not paying enough attention to Russia and China, they were certainly paying attention to the United States. Iraq was a test of unilateralism. With a fig-leaf “coalition of the willing,” the United States could not even convince all the members of NATO to give it cover. Despite being almost alone, the United States destroyed Iraq’s armed forces in a matter of weeks. The message for much of the world was clear. Whether or not you like it, you live in a world where the United States can do as it likes. The United States did not need to be able to convince others of the justness of its cause. The United States had enough military power to make such concerns irrelevant. This was, of course, the message that many neoconservatives had intended to send. They imagined that it would send enemies running. They lacked the realism to anticipate that it would lead many to question whether a US-led world was a world they wanted, and prompt others to bulk up their military or develop alternative strategies for competing with the United States for the future.20 Later in the Bush administration, with the Iraq War clearly in his sights, Vladimir Putin railed against the dangers of a “unipolar” world developed around US power. Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force—military force. . . . It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this— no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.21

The Chinese had been shocked by the technological advances in weaponry and strategy on display in the first Gulf war.22 The second Iraq war only solidified the lesson. They needed to modernize their military.23 A SWIFTLY TILTING POWER BALANCE The period from 2007 to 2008 witnessed a quiet revolution in global power. The 2008 election of Barack Obama was celebrated by the world as a turn away from the Bush years. So great was the expectation for this new administration that Obama would be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, seemingly just

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for being elected. But, significant as the shift in US administrations might be, changes in Russia and China would have the greatest impact for the future. For Russia, 2007 is the year that it explicitly turned away from liberalizing reform to Russian nationalism. While there is no one efficient cause of this shift, Mitchell Ornstein points to an event that very few in the West paid much attention to as a kind of straw that broke the camel’s back.24 It was in that year that a UN representative proposed splitting Kosovo off from Serbia to finally end the ethnic strife between the two. For many in the West, this was just wrapping up old business. But for Russia, it was pouring salt in a wound. And it was part of what Russian nationalists saw as a continued effort to erode the world in which they lived. Russian history is filled with cycles of liberal reform giving rise to various levels of anarchy, which are then met with centralizing authoritarian periods. This pattern extends back through the czarist days. And Russia’s current nationalist turn certainly draws energy from the image of Russia’s imperial history. On the one hand, it draws on the bruised national pride of Russia, which is pictured as the seat of Moscow, “the third Rome” after Constantinople and Rome itself. In this picture, Russia is the protector of true Western civilization, embodied in the Russian Orthodox Church, and contrasted with the libertine perversions of European and US society. Think here of Russia’s strong official opposition to the expansion of gay rights and problems with radical feminism. Further, the Russian economy, while certainly no longer communist, has not really westernized. Rather it has reverted to a kind of patronage economy, where power is centralized with the government and local oligarchs. In comparison to more (relatively) law-governed Western models, the economy is focused on and protects key figures in the society. To the eye of the westerner, this appears more feudal than modern, more like corruption than a free market. The expansion of liberalism after the Cold War could always be seen as a threat to this conception of Russia. Russia was transformed from the center of the world to yet another satellite to be absorbed into the orbit of the United States. The patronage economy was always under pressure as expanding bureaucratic regulation from the West threatened to destroy established order. And after the Cold War, Western culture was expanding. By the first decade of the 2000s NATO was looking at expanding membership to Georgia and the Ukraine. Russia was looking at losing its buffer states and its role as a regional power. So it is that in 2007 Putin made his speech against US unilateralism and called for the rethinking of the “architecture of global security.” Putin’s new “multipolar” world would be one with regional leaders in economics and politics, and he assumed that Russia would be the leader in its region. In 2008, Russia launched the Russo-Georgian war, occupying a pro-Russia region in

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Georgia. In 2014, Russia deployed troops to the Ukraine, annexing Crimea and fueling ongoing conflict in Donbas. The shift in China during this time was more subtle, but ultimately even more significant. While it retains the term “communist” for its ruling party, China turned away from ideological communism under Deng Xiaoping in the late 1980s. The result was not a westernized economy, but rather what many have called a form of state capitalism. While Chinese nationalism was built into the system, it took decades for it to surface in an aggressive way, perhaps on purpose. Deng’s now famous advice was: “Hide your strength, bide your time.”25 In 2007 Xi Jinpeng, a relatively unknown quantity outside China, was appointed to the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China and emerged as the likely successor to Hu Jintao, the paramount leader of the party and the state. Hu was a bureaucrat who pursued Chinese growth through a set of policies referred to as “China’s peaceful rise.” The goal was simultaneously to develop China into a global economic powerhouse while countering an image of China as a threat to global order. Under these policies China’s economy rapidly modernized, building ties throughout the developing world and pirating massive amounts of intellectual property through industrial espionage from the developed world. Xi Jinpeng was widely expected to follow in Hu’s footsteps. He, however, had other plans. Under his rule, power in China has become more centralized, Chinese diplomacy and economics have become more aggressive, and the culture has become more explicitly nationalistic. This doesn’t mean that Xi has abandoned the vision of China’s power as primarily economic. China’s “Belt and Road” initiative invests massively in infrastructure all across Eurasia with the goal of making China an indispensable trading partner for everyone from England to Australia. And China’s economy has continued to expand at a massive pace, with growth rates that dwarf those in the Western world. China’s ability to produce goods and build infrastructure is unparalleled. In terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) China is already the world’s largest economy.26 But in Xi’s administration, China has abandoned the emphasis on “peace” in its continued rise. Under Xi, China has adopted what has come to be called “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy.27 The phrase is taken from a Chinese blockbuster with a plot akin to that of Rambo, including all the nationalist themes. While this approach refers to a more assertive diplomatic stance, it also marks a style that people in the United States might associate more with the nationalism of Donald Trump. For example, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian responded to Trump’s complaints about China’s handling of COVID-19 (and Trump’s racist use of the phrase “China Virus”) by tweeting that “It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.”28

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China has also become more aggressive with its economic power. Here China has broken new ground in the area of “geoeconomics,” the use of economic coercion to achieve the goals of statecraft.29 In 2010, China banned the export of rare metals to Japan to bring pressure for the return of Chinese fishermen detained by its island neighbor. In 2011 it halted the import of salmon from Norway to protest the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a Chinese dissident. In 2012 it delayed the import of bananas from the Philippines to bring leverage to resolve a dispute in the South China Sea. With the vast size of China’s economy, many states have no real options when China flexes its economic muscle. Nor has China shied away from expanding its military power. Disputes over the South China Sea have become an opportunity for China to exhibit its military power, at times leading to conflict directly with the United States. THE EMERGING REALIZATION For the Obama administration, these challenges could not have arisen at a worse time. Taking over from the Bush administration, Obama felt the need to publicly step back US aggression, unilateralism, and militarism. This was in part in reaction to his domestic audience, as the anti-imperial left and libertarian right in the United States had come to overlap significantly in their opposition to US interventions around the world. It was also for his international audience, who desired a world in which the greatest military power did not act like an Old West gunslinger in a lawless town. The Obama administration’s efforts were symbolized in the creation of a literal “reset button” which was to be pressed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a photo op in Geneva. The symbolism was that the United States and Russia were to return to the good old days before the second Bush administration; the days when Russia appeared to be growing more liberal and more friendly to the West. This may be a fair representation of what the Obama administration wanted, as its foreign policy for the most part attempted to return to the tradition laid out by George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, envisioning the United States as leading a multilateral consensus in a liberalizing world. The Iran nuclear deal is an example of where this view was deployed and worked relatively well. But there were problems. Again, the story of the “Reset Button” provides useful symbolism. When Hillary Clinton presented the button, the word “reset” was misspelled in Russian, rendering it as the word “overload.”30 This was much more along the lines of what Russia had planned for the United States than “reset.” In 2009 a group of Central and East European leaders, including Váaclav Havel and Lech Wałęsa, wrote an open letter to the Obama

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administration warning them about what they saw. “Russia,” they wrote “is back as a revisionist power pursuing a 19th century agenda with 21st century tactics and methods.”31 Mitchell Orenstein argues that this warning refers both to a new set of Russian goals and a unique set of means of achieving them. Russia’s goals, beyond dominating its own region, were to aggravate social tensions in the European Union and United States to fracture and destabilize these established powers. The means Russia would use were the components of what Orenstein calls the “hybrid war.” In places this looked very much like the old Cold War. In the Middle East, Russia used US investment in the region against the United States. Backing the ruthless dictator Bashar al-Assad, Russia supported what amounted to a proxy war against the United States in Syria. Tied as it was to interests in the Middle East and bound to try to avoid an escalating humanitarian crisis, the United States spent years attempting to nail down a coherent policy on Syria with extremely little to show for any of its efforts. If proxy wars were to distract the West, other strategies would be more direct, even while easily deniable. Russia deployed covert action, funded extremist parties in Europe and the United States, and launched propaganda and disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks. All were intended weaken the dominant Western powers. One should not overestimate Russia’s effectiveness in these areas. There were a set of unique preconditions and internal fault lines that made many Western powers ripe for internecine strife. This said, it is hard not to marvel at the extent to which Russia’s hopes and dreams would be realized by the end of the Obama administration and with the rise of Brexit. And there is no doubt that Russia contributed to this realization. In part because it was trying to deal with the recoil from the George W. Bush administration, in part because it was focused on the Middle East, and in part because of the continuing narrative of inevitably expanding liberalism, the Obama administration didn’t process Russia’s turn away from the West for several years.32 And it found itself flatfooted and unable to deal with Russia’s manipulation of the 2016 presidential election when Russia both explicitly and surreptitiously worked to get Donald Trump elected president of the United States.33 Similarly, the Obama administration came late to the party in recognizing the rising power of China. In 2011 the Obama administration announced its “pivot to Asia,” a strategy to refocus the nation on developments around and in China. But again, it found itself hampered in this movement by continued crises in the Middle East. According to Graham Allison’s analysis published in 2017: “Measured in attention span of the president, time spent at National Security Council principals’ and deputies’ meetings, face time with leaders of

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the region, sorties flown, hours of ships on station, and dollars allocated, the pivot is hard to find.”34 This said, toward the end of the Obama administration there were moves that signaled an emerging realization in Obama’s foreign policy that the world was not conforming to the eschatological liberalism that had formed the backdrop to so much of the policy of the last half century. In 2014, the United States along with other G8 members voted to revoke Russia’s membership. And there was progress in a pivot to deal with China in the planned creation of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement between the United States and several China-adjacent allies that would have strengthened ties with the United States and weakened China’s relative trading position.35 THE WOLF AT THE DOOR By the time the United States realized that liberalism was threatened around the world, the threat had arrived on the doorstep of the United States. And soon it resided within the White House. With the help of Russia, Donald Trump deployed nationalist, racist, sexist, and xenophobic rhetoric to spur his rise to the White House. Pursuing an “America First” approach to international affairs, Trump’s actions undercut almost everything the United States had achieved on the international stage in the last hundred years. His administration eventually withdrew from the TPP,36 the Paris Climate Accords, the Iran nuclear deal, the UN Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization, and the Treaty on Open Skies. Whereas the Obama administration had aimed to moderate China’s growth through the development of multilateral trade relations with China’s neighbors, Trump abandoned those relations in favor of aggressive (and at times racist) rhetoric and direct economic trade war with China. This allowed his policy to line up with his nationalist rhetoric. The result was largely predictable. Global growth was slowed, US growth was slowed even more. China has thus far been left aggravated but mostly unfazed.37 The Trump administration’s Russia policy suffered from multiple personality disorder. Having been aided by Russia in the election, Trump’s rhetoric toward Russia was almost sycophantic. He flatly lied about Russia’s efforts to undermine the US presidential election and repeatedly represented Russia as a misunderstood potential ally. Trump delighted in deriding NATO allies, and eventually moved to withdraw troops from Germany as punishment for what Trump said was German freeloading. These moves reflect Russia’s long-term goals in weakening the trans-Atlantic alliances of NATO and the United States. Even after it came to light that Russians had been offering

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bounties on US servicemen in Afghanistan, Trump suggested that Russia should be added back into the G7. At the same time, in response to continued Russian aggression, Trump’s administration was continually forced to expand economic sanctions against Russia and expel Russian diplomats. The tensions here are likely a product of conflicts between Trump and more consistent US nationalists in his administration.38 In any case, it seems that the policies have been generally ineffective as Russia continues its hybrid war against the United States unabated. In short, while the Trump administration was shaped by the new nationalism, its isolationist tendencies and its inability to develop and execute coherent and effective policies made it a horrible starting point for dealing with the new nationalism. Trump managed to diminish the international prestige of the United States without achieving any major goals. And he left the United States in a spot uniquely ill-suited for the future. TO WHERE FROM HERE? In several senses, these are truly dark days for the United States and “the West” (to the extent that there is still such a thing). Two days after Joe Biden was elected President of the United States, China announced a ban on Australian copper, coal, timber, sugar, wine, and lobster; this was more than a $6 billion hit to Australia’s export business with its largest trading partner. The next week China publicized a fourteen-point list of grievances. These included “unfriendly” reporting on China in the Australian media, and Australia’s choices to pass laws against Chinese interference in Australian politics, to publicize Chinese cyberattacks against Australia, to accept the 2016 South China Sea tribunal, and to condemn Chinese concentration camps and crackdowns in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. According to the list, Australia was siding “with the United States’ anti-China campaign.” The list concluded with an ultimatum: “China is angry. If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy.”39 Biden has thus far worked to maintain a strong defense against expanding Chinese power. Trump’s aggressive trade policies have largely been left in place. The somewhat ham-fisted US takeover of a French contract to supply submarines to Australia signals an effort to develop an anti-China coalition with states in China’s neighborhood. And Biden has been out in front of almost everyone, including Republicans and his own administration, in suggesting that the United States would provide direct military support to Taiwan in the case of a Chinese invasion. In December 2020, a month before Biden was inaugurated, it was revealed that Russian government hackers had successfully compromised many US

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agencies including the Treasury and Commerce Departments. While the goal was probably relatively traditional espionage, the hackers were uniquely aggressive. Even when detected, they continued to fight for control of the networks they had infiltrated.40 Under the Biden administration, the poorly executed US withdrawal from Afghanistan was a public relations disaster. It fit all too well with Republican critiques of Democrats concerning the use of force, and revealed why, despite the high costs, previous administrations had avoided taking this step. Biden has not, to the present, recovered from the downturn in his image following the debacle. All this said, it was probably a necessary step in extricating the United States from its overlong focus on the Middle East, allowing it to shift attention more directly to China and Russia. In some ways, this happened just in time given Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Here overreach on Russia’s part has opened an opportunity for the West. After the early humiliation of Russian forces, Russia will doubtless emerge with tempered imperial pretensions. At the same time, Russia’s naked use of force has undone a significant amount of the divisions in the West that Russia had fomented in the previous few decades. The Biden administration now must attempt to maintain and strengthen these relations with other Western powers while simultaneously weakening Russia and avoiding a forever proxy war in eastern Ukraine. While responding to pressure from both China and Russia, Biden is also required to craft a foreign policy that threads several needles for his domestic audience. He has generally attempted to follow Trump’s populist, nationalistic rhetoric in aiming for a foreign policy that serves the US middle class.41 Yet, at the same time, he is working to undo most of Trump’s unilateralism, reaffirming ties to allies, international institutions, and agreements like the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Climate Accords. He also has to figure out how on the one hand to satisfy the anti-interventionist tendencies that have emerged from the overlap of the anti-imperial and libertarian movements in the United States, and on the other hand how to fulfill the international responsibilities of the United States, especially in the light of the fact that the United States is still in part defined internationally by its possession of the most advanced and effective military on the planet. There are no easy roads for Biden and other near-future administrations. Big questions loom. How much pressure can and should the United States put on Russia? Will sanctions have any effect, or must the United States push in other ways? Since Russia has pressed its hybrid war against the United States, should the United States respond in kind? Or should it push even further, in supporting sparking proxy wars that threaten Russia’s power within its own region? Should the United States contest China’s rise as a globe-dominating economy? Will China’s growth fade with time, or has it

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become an unstoppable force that cannot be effectively restrained? Should the United States accept the role of the new Britain, attempting to fade away as a hegemonic power while minimizing its losses at home?42 Or should the United States take the present moment as an opportunity to participate in building a new international power center out of the remains of Western liberalism, connecting with nations with similar politics and cultures to ride out the new nationalism while defending liberal international order to the extent that it exists?43 My own preference would be for a policy that follows something like the last suggestion: a policy that tempers expansionist liberalism by both more aggressively controlling for the chaos and inequality spurred by globalizing markets and by adopting a view of the world that recognizes that the spread of liberalism is not inevitable and that pushing its expansion can lead to ironic and undesirable consequences. This kind of a strategy can only work if the United States finds ways to reinvigorate old alliances and invest in international institutions like NATO andthe TPP to control for geoeconomic pressure from China. This would be a tough sell at home, but necessary. This is all to say that I believe that the United States, the West, and liberalism, deeply flawed as they are, still have resources that can make the world relatively better. I say this recognizing that it may only be true depending on the shape of the current administration, and that the United States itself is dangerously close to abandoning exactly those resources that it has to offer to the world. In some ways the world has changed significantly from the Cold War era. The expansion of geoeconomics and “cyberwarfare” means that there are new areas short of true war in which nations can contend. This opens up new possibilities for escalation to military conflict, but also a context in which there are outlets for tensions that might be resolved diplomatically without engaging in direct violence. When looking at historical analogues it is important to note the ways in which China and the Soviet Union differ. Unlike the Soviet Union, with its aspirations to head a global communist bloc, China is more classically imperialistic. It is not interested in evangelizing other nations to join an ideology with it. It is interested in being recognized for its unique superiority over all others.44 Similarly, Russia aims not at establishing a global ideology, but at dominating its region. If the United States is able to find a way to coexist with China and Russia, a multipolar world might be a boon rather than a threat to international order. Unfortunately, the “if” in the last sentence carries most of the weight. China does not aim to live in a multipolar world. It aims to live in a world where its superiority is recognized. Russia does aim to create a multipolar world, but it believes that to bring this about it must undermine Western powers. To the extent that the United States participates in resistance against

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China’s continued growth as a global imperialist power, and to the extent that it pushes back against Russia’s “hybrid” and proxy attacks, it risks war. But there is no other option short of abandoning the values that the United States and the West wish to embody and defend. Within history, there is no life without conflict. This is the context in which all international relations takes place. Conflict will never fade from human life short of the coming of the Kingdom. But the choices that we make can influence the shape of conflicts. With wisdom, the United States and the West may be able to weather the storm of the new nationalism. But wisdom is sparce and even weathering the storm does not mean reaching perpetually cloudless days. In the midst of the buffeting, Christian realists must continue to do their best to discern the context in which these conflicts occur, maintain their belief that these conflicts are meaningful even in their relativity, and rest their faith in a peace and justice which transcend all we are able to achieve now. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ahmed, Muhammad Idree. The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Allison, Graham. Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. Applebaum, Anne. “North Korea: Threat or Menace?” Slate, February 12, 2002. https:​//​slate​.com​/news​-and​-politics​/2002​/02​/north​-korea​-threat​-or​-menace​.html. Atkinson, Rick. “Night of a Thousand Casualties.” Washington Post, January 31, 1994. https:​//​www​.washingtonpost​.com​/archive​/politics​/1994​/01​/31​/night​-of​-a​ -thousand​-casualties​/1f0c97b1​-1605–46e5​-9466​-ba3599120c25. Austin, Henry, and Alexander Smith. “Coronavirus: Chinese official suggests U.S. Army to blame for outbreak.” NBC News, March 13, 2020. https:​//​www​.nbcnews​ .com​/news​/world​/coronavirus​-chinese​-official​-suggests​-u​-s​-army​-blame​-outbreak​ -n1157826. Blackwell, Robert, and Jennifer Harris. War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017. Bradner, Eric. “Clinton’s TPP controversy: What you need to know.” CNN Politics, July 27, 2019. https:​//​www​.cnn​.com​/2016​/07​/27​/politics​/tpp​-what​-you​-need​-to​ -know​/index​.html​. Bush, George H. W. “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit.” George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. https:​//​bush41library​.tamu​.edu​/archives​/public​-papers​/2217. Bush, George H. W., and Brent Scowcroft. A World Transformed. New York: Vintage Books, 1999. Carnahan, Kevin. From Presumption to Prudence in Just-War Reasoning. London: Routledge, 2017.

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Davis, Bob. “When the World Opened the Gates of China.” Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2018. https:​//​www​.wsj​.com​/articles​/when​-the​-world​-opened​-the​-gates​-of​-china​ -1532701482. Diamond, Larry. Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency. Penguin Press, 2019. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992. ———. “The End of History?” The National Interest 16 (1989): 3–18. Globalsecurity.org. “Deng Xiaoping’s ‘24-Character Strategy.” Last modified December 28, 2013. https:​//​www​.globalsecurity​.org​/military​/world​/china​/24​ -character​.htm. Greer, Tanner. “Biden’s First Foreign-Policy Crisis Is Already Here.” Foreign Policy, December 10, 2020. https:​//​foreignpolicy​.com​/2020​/12​/10​/biden​-china​-australia​ -threats​-first​-foreign​-policy​-crisis. “The Group of 8 (G8) Industrialized Nations” Council on Foreign Relations (March 13, 2014). https:​//​www​.cfr​.org​/backgrounder​/group​-eight​-g8​-industrialized​ -nations. Hass, Ryan, and Abraham Denmark. “More pain than gain: How the US-China trade war hurt America.” Brookings, August 7, 2020. https:​//​www​.brookings​.edu​/blog​ /order​-from​-chaos​/2020​/08​/07​/more​-pain​-than​-gain​-how​-the​-us​-china​-trade​-war​ -hurt​-america. Ikenberry, John. A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crisis of International Order. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. Joffe, Ellis. “China: Learning from Iraq.” New York Times, April 14, 2003. https:​//​ www​.nytimes​.com​/2003​/04​/14​/opinion​/IHT​-china​-learning​-from​-iraq​.html. Jones, Seth. In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Kelly, Caroline. “Bolton: ‘I have enough scars’ from bringing up Russia-related intelligence with Trump.” CNN Politics, (July 2, 2020). https:​//​www​.cnn​.com​/2020​/07​ /02​/politics​/bolton​-scars​-russia​-trump​-cnntv​/index​.html. Labott, Elise. “Biden Puts a Kinder, Gentler Spin on ‘America First.’” Foreign Policy, February 5, 2021. https:​//​foreignpolicy​.com​/2021​/02​/05​/biden​-foreign​ -policy​-speech​-america​-first. Lovin, Robin. Christian Realism and the New Realities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ———.. Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Markus, R. A. Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. McCoy, Alfred. In the Shadows of the American Century. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017. Mearsheimer, John J. “Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq war: realism versus neo-conservatism.” Open Democracy, May 18, 2005. https:​//​www​.opendemocracy​ .net​/en​/morgenthau​_2522jsp.

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Nakashima, Ellen, and Craig Timberg. “Russian Government Hackers Are Behind a Broad Espionage Campaign that Has Compromised U.S. Agencies, including Treasury and Commerce.” Washington Post, December 14, 2020. https:​//​ www​.washingtonpost​.com​/national​-security​/russian​-government​-spies​-are​-behind​ -a​-broad​-hacking​-campaign​-that​-has​-breached​-us​-agencies​-and​-a​-top​-cyber​-firm​ /2020​/12​/13​/d5a53b88​-3d7d​-11eb​-9453​-fc36ba051781​_story​.html. Nussle, Suzanne. “The State of the Union: Win Friends, Influence Nations.” Christian Science Monitor, January 23, 2003. https:​//​www​.csmonitor​.com​/2003​/0123​/p09s01​ -coop​.html. Ornstein, Mitchell. The Lands in Between: Russia vs. the West and the New Politics of Hybrid War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Power, Samantha. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Putin, Vladimir. “Putin’s Prepared Remarks at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy.” Washington Post, February 12, 2007. http:​//​www​.washingtonpost​ .com​/wp​-dyn​/content​/article​/2007​/02​/12​/AR2007021200555​.html. Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War, translated by Richard Crawley. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1910. U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Russian Active Measures Campaign and interference in the 2016 U.S. Election. 116th Cong., 2d sess., 2020, S. Rep. 116–290. https:​//​www​.intelligence​.senate​.gov​/publications​/report​-select​ -committee​-intelligence​-united​-states​-senate​-russian​-active​-measures. Walt, Stephen. “This Isn’t Realpolitik. This Is Amateur Hour.” Foreign Policy, May 3, 2017. https:​//​foreignpolicy​.com​/2017​/05​/03​/this​-isnt​-realpolitik​-this​-is​-amateur​ -hour​/. Walters, Riley. “A Major Threat to Our Economy—Trump’s Trade War with China Is Neither Good nor Easy to Win.” Heritage Foundation, October 1, 2019. https:​//​ www​.heritage​.org​/trade​/commentary​/major​-threat​-our​-economy​-trumps​-trade​-war​ -china​-neither​-good​-nor​-easy​-win. Zhu, Zhiqun. “Interpreting China’s ‘Wolf-Warrior Diplomacy.’” The Diplomat, May 15, 2020. https:​//​thediplomat​.com​/2020​/05​/interpreting​-chinas​-wolf​-warrior​ -diplomacy. Zygar, Mikhail. All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin. New York: Public Affairs. 2016.

NOTES 1. Thanks to Richard Bradley, Robert Carnahan, and the editors of this volume for their comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. 2. R. A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 3. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. Richard Crawley (New York, E. P. Dutton. 1910), 5.89.

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4. Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 5. Robin Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 163. 6. John Ikenberry, A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crisis of International Order (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020). 7. Francis Fukuyama. “The End of History?” The National Interest (16), Summer 1989, 3–18. See also Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 8. George H. W. Bush, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit,” George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, https:​//​bush41library​.tamu​.edu​/archives​/public​-papers​/2217. 9. George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 482–88. 10. Kevin Carnahan, From Presumption to Prudence in Just-War Reasoning (London: Routledge, 2017), 163–65. 11. Rick Atkinson, “Night of a Thousand Casualties” The Washington Post, January 31, 1994. Available at: https:​//​www​.washingtonpost​.com​/archive​/politics​/1994​/01​ /31​/night​-of​-a​-thousand​-casualties​/1f0c97b1​-1605–46e5​-9466​-ba3599120c25. 12. Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 329–90. 13. “The Group of 8 (G8) Industrialized Nations,” Council on Foreign Relations (March 13, 2014). Available online at: https:​//​www​.cfr​.org​/backgrounder​/group​-eight​ -g8​-industrialized​-nations. 14. Quoted in Bob Davis, “When the World Opened the Gates of China,” Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2018. Available online at: https:​//​www​.wsj​.com​/articles​/when​ -the​-world​-opened​-the​-gates​-of​-china​-1532701482. 15. Davis, “When the World Opened.” 16. Larry Diamond, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency (New York: Penguin Press, 2019). 17. Muhammad Idree Ahmed, The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014). 18. Suzanne Nussle, “The State of the Union: Win Friends, Influence Nations,” Christian Science Monitor, January 23, 2003. Available online at: https:​ //​ www​ .csmonitor​.com​/2003​/0123​/p09s01​-coop​.html, and Anne Applebaum, “North Korea: Threat or Menace?” Slate, February 12, 2002. Available online at: https:​//​slate​.com​/ news​-and​-politics​/2002​/02​/north​-korea​-threat​-or​-menace​.html. 19. See Seth Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010) and Alfred McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017), chapters 2–3. 20. John J Mearsheimer, “Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq war: realism versus neo-conservatism,” Open Democracy, May 18, 2005. Available online at: https:​//​ www​.opendemocracy​.net​/en​/morgenthau​_2522jsp. 21. Vladimir Putin, “Putin’s Prepared Remarks at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy,” Washington Post, February 12, 2007. Available online at: http:​

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//​www​.washingtonpost​.com​/wp​-dyn​/content​/article​/2007​/02​/12​/AR2007021200555​ .html. 22. Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), 129. 23. Ellis Joffe, “China: Learning from Iraq.” New York Times, April 14, 2003. Available online at: https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2003​/04​/14​/opinion​/IHT​-china​ -learning​-from​-iraq​.html. 24. Mitchell Ornstein, The Lands in Between: Russia vs. the West and the New Politics of Hybrid War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). 25. Globalsecurity.org, “Deng Xiaoping’s ‘24-Character Strategy.’” Available online at: https:​//​www​.globalsecurity​.org​/military​/world​/china​/24​-character​.htm. 26. Allison, Destined for War, 9–10. 27. Zhiqun Zhu, “Interpreting China’s ‘Wolf-Warrior Diplomacy,’” The Diplomat, May 15, 2020. Available online at: https:​//​thediplomat​.com​/2020​/05​/interpreting​ -chinas​-wolf​-warrior​-diplomacy. 28. Henry Austin and Alexander Smith, “Coronavirus: Chinese official suggests U.S. Army to blame for outbreak,” NBC News, March 13, 2020. Available online at: https:​//​www​.nbcnews​.com​/news​/world​/coronavirus​-chinese​-official​-suggests​-u​-s​ -army​-blame​-outbreak​-n1157826. 29. Robert Blackwell and Jennifer Harris, War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2017). 30. Mikhail Zygar, All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin (New York: Public Affairs. 2016), 173. 31. Quoted in Orstein, The Lands in Between, 8. 32. Ornstein, The Lands in Between, 54–79. 33. U.S. Senate Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Russian Active Measures Campaign and interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, 116th Cong., 2d sess., 2020, S. Rep. 116–290, https:​//​www​.intelligence​.senate​.gov​/publications​/report​-select​ -committee​-intelligence​-united​-states​-senate​-russian​-active​-measures. 34. Allison, Destined for War, 8. 35. Stephen Walt, “This Isn’t Realpolitik. This Is Amateur Hour,” Foreign Policy (May 3, 2017). Available online at: https:​//​foreignpolicy​.com​/2017​/05​/03​/this​-isnt​ -realpolitik​-this​-is​-amateur​-hour. 36. Eric Bradner, “Clinton’s TPP controversy: What you need to know,” CNN Politics, July 27, 2019. Available online at: https:​//​www​.cnn​.com​/2 Eric 016/07/27/ politics/tpp-what-you-need-to-know/index.html. Indicating the foul mood of the electorate toward free trade, Hillary Clinton officially opposed the TPP as a candidate. However, she would likely have found a way to support it once in office. 37. Ryan Hass and Abraham Denmark, “More pain than gain: How the US-China trade war hurt America,” Brookings, August 7, 2020. Available online at: https:​ //​www​.brookings​.edu​/blog​/order​-from​-chaos​/2020​/08​/07​/more​-pain​-than​-gain​-how​ -the​-us​-china​-trade​-war​-hurt​-america​/, and Riley Walters, “A Major Threat to Our Economy—Trump’s Trade War With China Is Neither Good nor Easy to Win,” Heritage Foundation, October 1, 2019. Available online at: https:​//​www​.heritage​.org​

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/trade​/commentary​/major​-threat​-our​-economy​-trumps​-trade​-war​-china​-neither​-good​ -nor​-easy​-win. 38. Caroline Kelly, “Bolton: ‘I have enough scars’ from bringing up Russia-related intelligence with Trump,” CNN Politics, July 2, 2020. Available online at: https:​//​ www​.cnn​.com​/2020​/07​/02​/politics​/bolton​-scars​-russia​-trump​-cnntv​/index​.html. 39. Tanner Greer, “Biden’s First Foreign-Policy Crisis Is Already Here,” Foreign Policy, December 10, 2020, available at: https:​//​foreignpolicy​.com​/2020​/12​/10​/biden​ -china​-australia​-threats​-first​-foreign​-policy​-crisis. 40. Ellen Nakashima and Craig Timberg, “Russian government hackers are behind a broad espionage campaign that has compromised U.S. agencies, including Treasury and Commerce,” Washington Post, December 14, 2020. Available online at: https:​//​ www​.washingtonpost​.com​/national​-security​/russian​-government​-spies​-are​-behind​-a​ -broad​-hacking​-campaign​-that​-has​-breached​-us​-agencies​-and​-a​-top​-cyber​-firm​/2020​ /12​/13​/d5a53b88​-3d7d​-11eb​-9453​-fc36ba051781​_story​.html. 41. Elise Labott, “Biden Puts a Kinder, Gentler Spin on ‘America First,’” Foreign Policy, February 5, 2021. Available online at: https:​//​foreignpolicy​.com​/2021​/02​/05​/ biden​-foreign​-policy​-speech​-america​-first. 42. Allison, Destined for War. 43. John Ikenberry, A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crisis of International Order (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020). 44. Allison, Destined for War.

Chapter Eight

Environmental Ethics and Christian Realism Reckoning with and Hope Beyond an Era of Witting Ecological Ruin Frederick V. Simmons

Realism—Christian or otherwise—is no longer needed to discern looming environmental calamity. Copious documentation of catastrophic loss and baleful trends, identification of positive feedback loops and possible tipping points, and now decades of largely inadequate response disclose not only the extent of the damage and the virtual ineluctability of further devastation but also that widespread awareness of this environmental destruction has not prompted the contemporary global order to curtail or redress it. Some continue to sound the alarm and adumbrate solutions, convinced that greater emphasis on the gravity of the peril coupled with more appealing remedies for it may yet summon sufficient action to avert extensive ecological collapse.1 Others, sobered by the scale, character, and apparent intractability of the predicament, have recently concluded that the global order has squandered its opportunity to avoid environmental disaster and pivoted to pondering what this means.2 Christian realism constitutes an alternative, neither confident that the global order can surmount its environmental plight nor resigned to the final desolation of human and other life.3 Instead, Christian realism combines the environmental activists’ belief in the possibility of a desirable human future with the environmental pessimists’ conviction that human beings are now unable to attain it by integrating “Biblical anthropology,” Augustinian commitment to original sin, politically realist skepticism about social groups’ sustained self-transcendence, and Niebuhrian eschatology. This conjunction 135

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allows Christian realism to confront the severity of the environmental crisis and the global order’s knowing failure to forestall it without fostering despair, thereby dispelling the denial, distraction, enervation, desperation, and naivete that exacerbate this failure even as they emerge to cope with it. Accordingly, I anticipate that Christian realism will have an ever-greater role to play in Christian environmental ethics, and in this chapter I explain further how and why it may do so. RECKONING WITH AN ERA OF WITTING ECOLOGICAL RUIN: CHRISTIAN REALISM AS A DISTINCTIVE ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC Born of rebellion against imperial monarchy, US federal democracy was structured to limit governmental power and protect individual rights and liberties. Such arrangements proved resourceful in opposing fascism, national socialism, and communism. But they have been less capable of responding effectively to cumulative and intensifying environmental degradation fueled by transnational capitalism, burgeoning human population, and growing dissonance between quotidian Western life and the global common good—particularly of future generations.4 Christian realism may seem in comparable straits. Although incipient expressions of Christian realism antedate the world-engulfing conflicts with twentieth-century totalitarianism, the movement’s ability to illumine and frame judicious responses to these era-defining events and rivalries brought Christian realism to its fullest expression and prominence.5 Consequently, just as American governmental arrangements have struggled to meet post–Cold War political and social challenges, Christian realism could appear similarly ill-suited to engage extant and imminent environmental exigencies.6 Yet Christian realism is not best understood as a set of determinate ethical and political prescriptions that address some arrangements and difficulties more adroitly and others less so.7 Rather, Christian realism is a dynamic, dialectical perspective that attempts to reconcile salient and otherwise evidently contrary aspects of human experience by conjoining anthropological affirmations central to Christianity and political realism, and embedding these affirmations in a framework of basic Christian beliefs about God’s relationship to human beings and the world.8 What is more, the anthropological affirmations and theological beliefs that anchor Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism can be combined with insights from his contemporary exponents to yield a distinctive environmental ethic that is especially pertinent to prevailing environmental problems.

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Christian Realist Ethics Niebuhr’s Christian realism rests on a symbolic and mythical rendering of a relatively Lutheran Augustinianism.9 Accordingly, Niebuhr takes Christianity to affirm love as the law of human nature, and he interprets this love as wholly self-transcending, even self-sacrificial.10 By contrast, Niebuhr’s realism refers to a form of political realism, namely, “the disposition to take all factors in a social and political situation, which offer resistance to established norms, into account, particularly the factors of self-interest and power.”11 Further, among these recalcitrant factors, Niebuhr’s political realism is especially attentive to self-interest because Niebuhr regards it as such a potent and persistent human proclivity.12 Thus, the specific sorts of Christianity and realism that Niebuhr unites so intensify these perspectives’ potential discrepancy that his Christian realism may seem an oxymoron betraying basic anthropological inconsistency.13 However, manifesting its relatively Lutheran Augustinianism, Niebuhr’s Christian realism relies upon pivotal distinctions to reconcile apparently contradictory yet broadly attested assertions, affording a comparatively comprehensive and thereby more realistic position than more delimited, plainly consistent alternatives.14 For example, the title of Niebuhr’s first book on social ethics—Moral Man and Immoral Society—suggests that although human individuals are capable of selfless love, human groups are confined to self-seeking. While such a distinction would harmonize Niebuhr’s Christian and realist commitments, Niebuhr thought it overdrawn both ways.15 Consequently, Niebuhr instead secured the coherence of his Christian realism by pairing a descriptive form of political realism with a normative interpretation of his Christian anthropology.16 Niebuhr’s realist insistence on human beings’ inveterate self-interest therefore concerns human behavior while his Christian claim that wholly self-transcending love is the law of human nature refers to human fulfillment.17 Moreover, given his relatively Lutheran Augustinianism, Niebuhr did not consider his realist insistence on human beings’ inveterate self-interest foreign to Christianity. It was simply a recognition of original sin.18 Admittedly, the contrast between the content of Niebuhr’s realist and Christian anthropological affirmations meant that human behavior is largely self-defeating. Yet Niebuhr thought this regrettable conclusion corroborated his position, since he believed such self-defeat—and the inveteracy of self-seeking—were both broadly attested.19 Further, assuming self-seeking’s self-defeat was broadly attested, Niebuhr maintained that the link between human fulfillment and self-transcendence effectively was as well. In fact, this interplay is more subtle and Christian love more capacious than Niebuhr appreciated—at least until his final writings.20 Still, the scope and complexity of common human

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experience compel a consistent Christian realism to issue its apparently divergent anthropological assertions and to follow Niebuhr in underscoring the disparity between the historical and normative dimensions of human life.21 At the same time, Christian realism’s dynamic, dialectical integration of these apparently divergent anthropological assertions is context sensitive, so that shifting historical circumstances lead it to emphasize different aspects of its complex conjunction of contrasting claims. For instance, while social gospel optimism and liberal pacifism spurred Niebuhr to stress the obduracy of social groups’ selfishness in the 1930s, three decades thereafter Cold War conformity and middle-class complacency prompted him to insist “that a realist conception of human nature should be made the servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.”22 After all, to keep its complex conjunction of contrasting claims appropriately balanced, Christian realism must continually counter one-sided alternatives by foregrounding the opposing, neglected assertion.23 Consequently, as these one-sided alternatives change over time, Christian realism correspondingly adjusts its emphasis.24 Christian Realist Environmental Ethics Besides combining a particular, disparate array of anthropological, ethical, political, and theological beliefs in a distinctive way, then, Niebuhr’s Christian realism also responds to history’s vicissitudes in a specific manner. Hence, although Niebuhr himself did not address environmental concerns, a Christian realist environmental ethic may fruitfully draw from the version of Christian realism he developed both substantively and formally.25 Substantively, such an ethic profitably starts by embracing Niebuhr’s mature emphasis on social groups’ responsibility to realize more of their moral potential and promote the common good. Further, by affirming Niebuhr’s earlier accent on social groups’ resistance to moral suasion and preoccupation with self-aggrandizement, such an ethic pursues these constructive social-moral goals somewhat distinctively. To begin, unlike leading environmental ethicists and eco-theologians, a Christian realist environmental ethic does not extol moral or religious conversion as environmentally decisive.26 Of course, with its insistence that love is the law of human nature and as an expression of Christian theological convictions, a Christian realist environmental ethic considers morality and religion integral to enduring environmental protection and restoration.27 It also affirms that morality and religion are perennially poised to contribute ever more to redressing environmental problems.28 Nonetheless, following classical Christian realism, a contemporary Christian realist environmental

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ethic expects moral and religious reforms and revivals to remain insufficient to achieve significant social-ethical goals—environmental or otherwise.29 Accordingly, while not neglecting moral or theological reflection and exhortation, such an ethic concentrates elsewhere. Reliance upon reason and enlightened self-interest might appear a relatively objective and pragmatic alternative to moral entreaty or religious renewal, and many prominent environmentalists favor it.30 Given Christian realism’s aspiration to take all relevant factors into account and thus to marshal rationally persuasive arguments, a Christian realist environmental ethic likewise seeks to harness reason’s power to advance environmental protection.31 Moreover, with its stress on the tenacity of self-interest in social groups, such an ethic also affirms the importance of leading groups to interpret their self-interests more inclusively.32 Yet rather than prioritize adducing additional scientific data, improving environmental education, or demonstrating the link between ecological health and societal sustainability, a Christian realist environmental ethic embraces classical Christian realism’s circumspection about reason’s capacity to remedy social problems directly.33 Thus, although a Christian realist environmental ethic aims to forge cogent arguments and expand social groups’ awareness of what ultimately serves them, here again these approaches are not its primary focus. Finally, when business or governmental leaders address environmental concerns, they frequently commend greater prosperity as paramount in resolving them. Since Christian realism is particularly alert to power, and commerce is so powerful in a neoliberal global order, a contemporary Christian realist environmental ethic concurs that economic considerations are pivotal.34 Further, because it is a facet of a more comprehensive Christian ethics that enjoins love of neighbors, a Christian realist environmental ethic complements the general Christian imperative to alleviate material need and increase access to economic opportunity.35 All the same, a Christian realist environmental ethic heeds Niebuhr’s premonition that “we [Americans] have thus far sought to solve all our problems by the expansion of our economy. This expansion cannot go on forever and ultimately we must face some vexatious issues of social justice.”36 What is more, such an ethic joins many others in denying an environmental Kuznets curve.37 Hence, while a Christian realist environmental ethic accepts the crucial environmental significance of prevailing economic activity and affirms the moral importance of certain forms of economic growth, it regards much of that activity and likely growth principal catalysts of environmental destruction, not protection.38 A contemporary Christian realist environmental ethic therefore emphasizes the economy yet does not address it directly. Instead, recognizing the unavoidable transition from economics to justice that Niebuhr foresaw, a Christian realist environmental ethic concentrates on politics. In itself, this

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is hardly novel. Environmental ethicists now often argue that politics is critical to overall environmental protection and restoration, and politics has been heralded for decades as necessary to avert or arrest the destruction of vulnerable environmental commons.39 However, following contemporary Christian realism more broadly, a Christian realist environmental ethic embraces an unusually expansive understanding of politics, which leads it to interpret the role of politics in environmental ethics rather unconventionally. Contemporary Christian realism retrieves an Aristotelian conception of politics as collective “deliberation about how we organize our life together to make human goods possible.”40 So construed, politics is not simply governance and law but equally includes civil society, the economy, and ethics, as well as cultural, medical, educational, and religious institutions.41 Robin Lovin accordingly refers to the view of politics at the core of such contemporary Christian realism as “Pluralist Realism” and contends that these nongovernmental settings are where most people make their main political contributions.42 In concentrating on politics, then, a Christian realist environmental ethic does not only prize voting for green candidates, lobbying for environmental legislation, and participating in electoral campaigns. It also advocates prioritizing environmental considerations in the daily deliberations about and pursuit of human goods that suffuse commercial, family, cultural, educational, scientific, religious, social, philanthropic, and recreational life. These myriad spheres embraced by this comprehensive conception of politics explain why a Christian realist environmental ethic encompasses ethics, religion, reason, enlightened self-interest, and economics. That these spheres are embraced by this conception of politics likewise explains why such an ethic does not focus on any of them in their own right, as I will detail momentarily. For now, however, it is enough to note that concentrating on politics conceived in this comprehensive manner allows a Christian realist environmental ethic to extend Christian realism’s conjunctive response to persistent social problems to current ecological concerns.43 This conjunctive response, in turn, signals that a Christian realist environmental ethic draws from Christian realism not just substantively—by accepting its comprehensive conception of politics—but formally as well— by engaging politics with Christian realism’s distinctive aim and method. Specifically, Christian realism engages politics more to foster pluralistic deliberation about how people may better cooperate to respect, promote, and enjoy human goods than to champion one approach to that deliberation— whether ethical, religious, scientific, economic, or governmental—by marginalizing the others.44 Christian realism pursues this political aim because it regards such deliberation integral to realizing human goods, both as an essential means by which people discern and value these goods, and as itself a principal human good constitutive of flourishing human communities.45

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Consequently, a Christian realist environmental ethic does not aspire to implement a particular political platform or install a suite of predetermined environmental policy solutions.46 Instead, it concentrates on politics so as to cultivate broad-based conversation about environmental values and vulnerabilities, and to participate in myriad pragmatic responses to them.47 A Christian realist environmental ethic also adopts Christian realism’s characteristic political method, which as previously noted seeks to maintain a supple, dynamic balance between Christian realism’s seemingly contrary claims by accenting the aspects of this realism’s discordant conjunction that comparatively one-sided alternatives to it obscure. Since these alternatives vary over time, Christian realist environmental ethics—like Christian realism generally—is more a practice of innovative and compensatory responses to such relatively simple and so unrealistic programs than a repository of prior judicious pronouncements to be repeated as circumstances require. In particular, amid a neoliberal milieu, a Christian realist environmental ethic does not reissue Niebuhr’s admonitions against governments’ constructive social ambitions; it advocates that governments exercise greater environmentally oriented influence on the economy.48 Indeed, given its comprehensive conception of politics, a contemporary Christian realist environmental ethic strives to establish such increased parity between governmental and economic power by incorporating moral, religious, educational, and scientific insights into the enhanced environmentally oriented economic incentives and regulations for which it calls. Animated by moral and theological zeal, and infused with new scientific knowledge, a Christian realist environmental ethic therefore endeavors to stimulate government and civil society to redirect the economy toward worthier social and environmental purposes. The irony could hardly be lost on Christian realists. For as characterized thus far, such an ethic seems less an environmental extension of Christian realism than an environmental expansion of the social gospel—the very Christian social ethic against which Christian realism defined itself. And even when fully developed, given its central intention to bend an unduly autonomous economic system into better service of basic Christian social-moral goals, a Christian realist environmental ethic retains a key affinity with the social gospel. Nevertheless, important differences between these ethics remain. I identify two here and focus on a third in the second part of this chapter. First, while a Christian realist environmental ethic espouses contemporary Christian realism’s capacious conception of politics, it also retains classical Christian realism’s insistence that power is intrinsic to politics and must be used coercively to achieve political ends like governance and greater justice.49 Classical Christian realism regards coercion politically necessary because it interprets politics as pertaining to human social groups; these groups

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as inveterately self-interested; such self-interest as ineluctably generating inexorable conflicts; and thus these conflicts as amenable merely to containment by force, preferably through equilibrating power across the contending groups in order to avoid tyranny.50 This analysis of coercion’s role in human social life is why a Christian realist environmental ethic does not concentrate on morality, religion, reason, science, or the economy in their own right but instead incorporates them all as aspects of politics. And it is why such politics is not simply another name for moral and religious revival, rational and scientific suasion, and technological innovation and economic expansion, or even the integrated sum of the deliberations across these domains about how people may organize themselves to respect, promote, and enjoy human goods. In addition to all of this, a Christian realist environmental ethic pursues its constructive social goals by seeking to enlist governmental and other forms of coercion to balance the power of various human groups and spheres of human activity, in particular to constrain and deflect increasingly hegemonic economic power toward more environmental and humanitarian outcomes. Accordingly, insofar as the social gospel attempted to attain such estimable results by forging structurally loving relationships rather than fashioning superior institutional restraints on sin, a Christian realist environmental ethic features a fundamentally different and comparatively comprehensive methodology.51 Second, given its greater emphasis on sin, a Christian realist environmental ethic does not only use more diverse means than the social gospel. It aspires to less lofty ends. For one thing, coercion is better at securing compliance with negative than positive duties.52 As a result, a Christian realist environmental ethic concentrates on reducing ruin more than realizing constructive potentials. Further, as various non-state actors become increasingly ascendant, in many instances a contemporary Christian realist environmental ethic “may now have to ask whether the modern state is powerful enough” to reduce environmental ruin materially.53 Due to the distribution of environmental burdens, such an ethic is no more sanguine about powerful states’ readiness to redress onerous environmental problems, since those likely to suffer most from environmental devastation—future generations—are inherently incapable of exerting pressure in their own defense and so are utterly reliant on the self-restraint of the living.54 Yet the living with the greatest interest in environmental restraint—marginalized human beings and the overwhelming majority of nonhuman organisms, who currently suffer most from this devastation—are by definition least enfranchised and cannot straightforwardly accrue the influence Christian realism regards necessary to impose that restraint. Finally, Christian realism doubts that the international political power required to force dominant states and industries to decrease their environmental damage sufficiently to avoid extensive additional ecological

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destruction is forthcoming and warns that such power would inevitably constitute its own danger were it to emerge.55 Consequently, while the social gospel sought to participate in greater realization of God’s kingdom, a Christian realist environmental ethic strives to slow its desecration. In keeping with classical Christian realism, a Christian realist environmental ethic does not dismiss the significance of such negative contributions. On the contrary, it extends Niebuhr’s insistence that “we are responsible for making choices between greater and lesser evils” and his judgment that “the fate of civilizations may depend upon these choices” beyond Niebuhr’s focus on the conflict between tyranny and democracy to decisions about energy sources, land uses, industrial techniques, agricultural practices, invasive species, and pollution controls.56 Similarly, with its sensitivity to human finitude and sin and correlative wariness of tendencies to underestimate both human ignorance and corruptibility and natural systems’ complexity and stochasticity, a Christian realist environmental ethic maintains that efforts to retard damage often yield better outcomes than attempts to achieve constructive environmental agendas, especially as these agendas become more ambitious.57 Yet despite this commitment to the importance and increasing preferability of concentrating on mitigating loss, a Christian realist environmental ethic must acknowledge that even with a comparatively comprehensive conception of politics emphasizing power and coercion, it does not offer a plan to restore the natural world or provide all human beings with a sustainable and dignified relationship to the environment. HOPE BEYOND AN ERA OF WITTING ECOLOGICAL RUIN: CHRISTIAN REALISM AS A DISTINCTIVE ACCOUNT OF SALVATION HISTORY Given the intractability of the environmental crisis, such meager aspirations may be sensible. Given the gravity of the crisis, however, they seem ethically and theologically insufficient—especially for a faith that proclaims good news. Yet Christian realism furnishes more than a distinctive social ethic. It also features a distinctive conception of Christian hope and that hope’s relationship to history.58 Specifically, just as Christian realism rejects social ethics that primarily rely on moral and religious appeal, rational extension of self-interest and additional information, or economic expansion and technological innovation, it repudiates the modern confidence that historical progress will ultimately realize human hope.59 And just as Christian realism’s alternative social ethic is integral to Christian realist environmental ethics, its alternative understanding of Christian hope’s connection to historical ethical achievement is as well. For if Christian realism’s social ethic renders its

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environmental ethic realistic, its account of salvation history articulates the gospel and keeps both of these ethics Christian.60 Hope in History Before developing the distinctive features of Christian realist salvation history, however, it is crucial to Christian realist environmental ethics to delineate an element of this history that is more common. Like many Christian eschatologies, Christian realism considers multiple Christian hopes partially realized and realizable in history, and Niebuhr insisted on the importance of both historical and supra-historical hopes throughout his authorship.61 In addition, I have observed that Niebuhr increasingly emphasized the possibilities for realizing Christian hopes in history as his milieu became less utopian.62 Contemporary Christian realism upholds and expands this mature Niebuhrian emphasis, and identifies its comprehensive conception of politics as central to the greater prospects for historical realizations of Christian hopes that it affirms.63 And indeed, several constructive political, social, and technological developments over the last fifty years attest that hope for partial historical realization of some basic Christian moral commitments is not unrealistic.64 As the ecological calamity intensifies, Christian realism’s increasing emphasis on and estimate of the hopes that may be partially realized in history are critical for its environmental ethics because without them, realistic assessment of extant environmental devastation and evidently ineluctable impending destruction could be so demoralizing that such ethics would undermine pursuit of mitigating possibilities that less realistic ethics might lead people to achieve.65 By contrast, judiciously extending contemporary Christian realism’s greater prioritization and sense of historical possibilities to environmental matters propels Christian realist environmental ethics to engage in more progressive politics that may prove these greater hopes to be realistic.66 After all, the environmental catastrophe is not simply a function of impersonal forces. It is also a consequence of human activity and belief. A truly realistic environmental ethic must therefore attend to the opportunities for ecological preservation and restoration as assiduously as it identifies the lasting and looming ecological damage.67 For example, while it now seems unrealistic to hope that reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will be sufficiently swift and sweeping to keep this century’s global warming “well below 2 degrees Celsius,” contemporary Christian realism’s broader perception of historical possibilities prompts it to support efforts to develop durable, scalable, affordable, and benign greenhouse gas removal capabilities, a strategy that more fatalistic perspectives regard unreasonable.68 Since reducing emissions is environmentally preferable to removing them, and removal alone would almost certainly be

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too slow and limited to prevent disastrous global warming and ocean acidification, a Christian realist environmental ethic advocates for such reduction. Yet because those bound to suffer most from these emissions are presently so much less powerful than those who benefit from them, a contemporary Christian realist environmental ethic does not focus exclusively on reducing greenhouse gas emissions but vigorously pursues their removal as well. Thus, just as classical Christian realism’s muted expectations for groups’ moral performance may prudently direct Christian realism’s environmental prescriptions, contemporary Christian realism’s stress on historically realizable hopes may prevent these prescriptions from inadvertently impeding attenuating initiatives. Christian realism bestows no special expertise in assessing the probability of such salutary technological invention.69 On the contrary, with their appreciation for irony, Christian realists characteristically confine themselves to the more general forecasts that their concentration on perennial constraints and possibilities provides.70 Yet even if massive greenhouse gas removal were soon feasible, vast environmental destruction has already occurred and much more appears effectively inevitable. Far worse awaits if that removal is delayed or ultimately elusive. Hence, although contemporary Christian realism’s heightened emphasis upon and broader conception of historically realizable hopes are vital to its environmental ethics, the distinctive features of Christian realism’s interpretation of its hopes’ relationship to history are more significant still. Hope Beyond History While greater human cooperation with God may provide earnest and perhaps even increasing historical realizations of Christian hopes in some respects, classical Christian realism holds that these hopes are fully actualized by God alone beyond history.71 And although contemporary Christian realism has accentuated and enlarged the hopes that classical Christian realism regarded historically realizable, it remains committed to this classical Christian realist conviction.72 Maintaining that God finally fulfills Christian hopes beyond history rather than through it is distinctive.73 And this conviction enables Christian realism to sustain hope despite the dismal environmental outlook, which renders its environmental ethics especially valuable in an era of witting and worsening ecological ruin for several reasons.74 First, sustaining hope amid escalating environmental pessimism is crucial because it averts a debilitating despondency that would forfeit opportunities to mitigate ecological damage or make ecological gains and instead inspires efforts to seize them.75 Second, sustaining hope discredits resort to irresponsible risks, immoral expedients, or frantic fanaticisms that desperation might otherwise

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seem to justify given imminent disaster.76 Third, Christian realism’s particular way of sustaining hope amid escalating environmental pessimism is critical for its environmental ethics because reliance upon God’s independent initiative beyond history dispels ingenuous idealism that would overreach not from desperation but overestimation of historical possibilities.77 And yet, although Christian realism’s distinctive interpretation of salvation history harbors these considerable advantages for environmental ethics, it may ultimately appear to undercut them, since faith in God’s independent action beyond history could seem to condone complacency or even negligence rather than spur the responsible environmental redress that has become so imperative. Contemporary Christian realism’s previously mentioned emphasis on the possibilities for partially realizing Christian hopes in history is consequently indispensable to its environmental ethics in this connection too, for awareness of the potential to lessen the present predicament or improve prevailing conditions is reason enough to pursue such ameliorative possibilities now. What is more, that Christian realism awaits God’s full realization of Christian hopes beyond history should not diminish but intensify human beings’ historical initiatives, for it implies that God will not wholly resolve environmental problems in the meantime. Finally, corresponding to Christian realism’s insistence that human beings are obligated to respect and promote created goods, Christian realist eschatology involves judgment as well as hope and hence does not annul but upholds human accountability for preserving and restoring the environment.78 Accordingly, instead of sponsoring environmental indolence or disregard, Christian realist salvation history underscores the promise, prudence, and duty of diligently pursuing ecological protection and rehabilitation. Nevertheless, the Christian realist stress on eschatological judgment that counters environmental indifference might equally seem to strip Christian realism of the ultimate hope that renders its environmental ethics so valuable in an era of witting ecological ruin, for that very ruin manifests how egregiously human beings have failed to fulfill their moral obligations and thus how radical that judgment must be. But Christian realist eschatology portends more than God’s judgment. It also affirms God’s mercy.79 And it avers that God’s mercy transforms God’s judgment into reconciliation with God.80 As a result, Christian realist eschatology sustains ultimate Christian hope even as it undergirds the significance of human beings’ historical responsibilities. In addition to keeping its eschatology hopeful, Christian realism’s conception of the final relationship between God’s judgment and God’s mercy also specifies the nature of Christian realist hope more completely and thereby delineates Christian realist understandings of its hope’s relationship to history and ethics in greater detail. Christian realism’s proleptic eschatology, and the compound of judgment and mercy integral to its ultimate hope, collectively

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yield what Douglas Ottati calls hopeful realism. Trusting that God will save in the end and that some hopes are realizable now, yet likewise convinced that some hopes are presently unattainable, that others will go unrealized or be fragmentarily fulfilled, and that God’s justice ineluctably punishes culpable human failure, such hopeful realism is neither optimism nor pessimism but their complex conjunction.81 Robert McAfee Brown clarifies this conjunction still further, noting that just as Christian realist eschatology is not simply a composite of God’s judgment and mercy but the claim that God’s mercy overcomes and completes God’s judgment, Christian realist hope is not simply the combination of optimism and pessimism but their ordered reconciliation in “pessimistic optimism.”82 As Brown explains, “the substantive word is optimist and the modifier is pessimistic, not the other way around . . . the pessimism, if pervasive, is provisional; and the optimism, if not omnipresent, is ultimate.”83 Or, as Niebuhr put it slightly less succinctly, “an adequate religion is always an ultimate optimism which has entertained all the facts which lead to pessimism . . . [so] that historic religion has a note of provisional pessimism in its optimism.”84 Either way, given its faith in God’s eschatological assimilation, rectification, and transcendence of all that opposes God, Christian realism’s ultimate hope does not merely accept or negate pessimism.85 That hope sublates it.86 This fuller statement of Christian realism’s ultimate hope illuminates Christian realism’s interpretation of salvation history generally. For it has become clear that Christian realist eschatology is fundamentally the Christian realist understanding of the Atonement. And, as Niebuhr repeatedly insisted, by hoping for the Atonement’s full actualization beyond history: the twofold emphasis upon the obligation to fulfill the possibilities of life and upon the limitations and corruptions in all historic realizations, implies that history is a meaningful process but is incapable of fulfilling itself and therefore points beyond itself to the judgment and mercy of God for its fulfillment. The Christian doctrine of the Atonement, with its paradoxical conception of the relation of the divine mercy to the divine wrath is therefore the final key to this historical interpretation. The wrath and the judgment of God are symbolic of the seriousness of history. The distinctions between good and evil are important and have ultimate significance. The realization of the good must be taken seriously . . . On the other hand the mercy of God, which strangely fulfills and yet contradicts the divine judgment, points to the incompleteness of all historic goods, the corruption of evil in all historic achievements and the incompleteness of every historic system of meaning without the eternal mercy which knows how to destroy and transmute evil by taking it into itself.87

This Christian realist interpretation of history, in turn, discloses Christian realism’s conception of hope’s relationship to ethics since ethical

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achievement—even in Christian realism’s comparatively comprehensive sense of politics—cannot be the means to realize Christian realist hope completely. Rather, as I have noted, it is Christian realism’s complex, proleptic eschatology and ultimate hope in God’s mercy and fulfillment of God’s kingdom beyond history that inform, impel, sustain, and chasten Christian realist ethical aspiration and attainment.88 Indeed, according to Niebuhr, such eschatological hope and its corresponding understanding of history are necessary for responsible ethics.89 Thus, although it has been subsequent in my exposition, Christian realist hope does not follow from actualizing Christian realist ethics. Christian realist hope makes partial actualizations of Christian realist ethics possible.90 This is another respect in which Christian realism differs from the social gospel—not just on the scope of the hopes Christian realism deems historically realizable and the expedients it considers necessary to realize them, as discussed in the first part of this chapter, but also concerning the relationship between Christian ethics and Christian hopes.91 Specifically, while the social gospel—and now most major Protestant political theologies—root Christian hopes in realizing their ethics and regard God’s empowerment to do so Christianity’s fundamental good news, Christian realism grounds its ethics in Christian hopes and claims God’s forgiveness of humanity’s persistent ethical failure as the gospel’s foundation.92 Of course, like so many other aspects of Christian realism, its soteriology is complex.93 And just as Christian realism maintains that its soteriological emphasis on God’s forgiveness enables people to build on that foundation by responding to God’s love with their own, I have argued that Christian realism’s compound, proleptic hope facilitates partial fulfillment of its environmental ethics.94 Accordingly, here again Christian realism approximates the social gospel, this time by envisioning God’s grace as affording and assisting people to actualize new and better historical possibilities. Nevertheless, Christian realism interprets the role of ethics in salvation history distinctively—not as cooperation with God to realize the eschaton in and through history as the social gospel instructs but as faithful, historical response to God’s realization of the eschaton beyond history on humanity’s behalf.95 This difference makes a difference for environmental ethics, since it allows such ethics to concentrate on decreasing the damage rather than nurturing improvement. And this is an asset amid witting ecological ruin, for it frees Christian realist ethics from the despair, desperation, and denial that otherwise accompany the obligation to participate in actualizing Christianity’s ultimate hopes given such devastation and diminishing historical possibilities. What is more, mitigating the destruction and adapting to its aftermath are the most responsible environmental remedies available assuming virtually inevitable environmental decline. Like its distinctive conception of Christian

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ethics and Christian hope, then, Christian realism’s distinctive conception of the relationship between the two has become a crucial resource for Christian environmental ethics, and the current and escalating ecological catastrophe is yet another reality that reveals the contemporary and future relevance of Christian realism.96 BIBLIOGRAPHY Bacevich, Andrew. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. New York: Holt, 2009. Bennett, John C. Christian Realism. New York: Scribner, 1941. Bretherton, Luke. Christianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful Witness. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Callicott, J. Baird. “Environmental Philosophy Is Environmental Activism: The Most Radical and Effective Kind,” in Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Callicott, J. Baird. “Philosophy,” in Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology, ed. Willis Jenkins, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. Pope Francis. Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. Washington DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2015. Gardiner, Stephen. A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. ———. “The Real Tragedy of the Commons,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 30, no. 4 (Autumn 2001): 387–416. Gilkey, Langdon. On Niebuhr: A Theological Study. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001. Grinspoon, David. Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016. Grossman, Gene, and Alan Krueger. “Environmental Impacts of a North American Free Trade Agreement,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 3914. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1991. Hall, Cheryl. “What Will It Mean to be Green? Envisioning Positive Possibilities without Dismissing Loss,” Ethics, Policy, and Environment 16, no. 2 (2013): 125–41. Hamilton, Clive. Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change. New York: Earth Scan, 2010. Hardin, Garrett. “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162, no. 3859 (December 13, 1968): 1243–48. Harries, Richard, and Stephen Platten, Eds. Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Horton, Walter Marshall. Realistic Theology. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1934. Jenkins, Willis. The Future of Ethics: Sustainability, Social Justice, and Religious Creativity. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013.

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———. “Stewards of Irony: Planetary Stewardship, Climate Engineering, and Religious Ethics,” in Theological and Ethical Perspectives on Climate Engineering: Calming the Storm, ed. Forrest Clingerman and Kevin O’Brien. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016. Johnson, Baylor. “Ethical Obligations in a Tragedy of the Commons,” Environmental Values 12, no. 3 (2003): 271–87. Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014. Lovin, Robin W. Christian Realism and the New Realities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ———. Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. “Christian Realism: A Legacy and Its Future,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 20 (2000): 3–18. ———. “Christian Realism for the Twenty-First Century,” Journal of Religious Ethics 37, no. 4 (December 2009): 669–82. ———. “Hope, Virtue, and Politics in Reinhold Niebuhr’s works,” in Paradoxical Virtue: Reinhold Niebuhr and the Virtue Tradition, ed. Kevin Carnahan and David True. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. ———. “Reinhold Niebuhr in Contemporary Scholarship” Journal of Religious Ethics 31, no. 3 (December 2003). ———. “Theology, Ethics and Culture,” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. David Ford. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Lovin, Robin, and Joshua Mauldin, Eds. The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Macintosh, D. C., ed., Religious Realism. New York: Macmillan, 1931. McFague, Sallie. Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001. Niebuhr, Reinhold. An Interpretation of Christian Ethics. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2013. ———. Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937. ———. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960. ———. Christianity and Power Politics. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940. ———. Christian Realism and Political Problems. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953. ———. Does Civilization Need Religion? A Study in the Social Resources and Limitations of Religion in Modern Life. New York: Macmillan, 1927. ———. Faith and History: A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949. ———. The Irony of American History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952.

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———. Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. D. B. Robertson. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957. ———. Man’s Nature and His Communities: Essays on the Dynamics and Enigmas of Man’s Personal and Social Existence. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965. ———. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man: Human Nature. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man: Human Destiny. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943. ———. Reflections on the End of an Era. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934. ———. The Structure of Nations and Empires: A Study of Recurring Patterns and Problems of the Political Order in Relation to the Unique Problems of the Nuclear Age. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959. Ottati, Douglas. Hopeful Realism: Reclaiming the Poetry of Theology. Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1999. Scranton, Roy. Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2015. Shinn, Roger. “Realism, Radicalism, and Eschatology in Reinhold Niebuhr: A Reassessment.” Journal of Religion 54, no. 4 (October 1974): 409–23. Simmons, Frederick V. “Christianity and Eudaimonia, Luck and Eudaimonism,” Journal of Religious Ethics 47, no. 1 (March 2019): 43–67. ———. “Reconsidering Contemporary Christian Departures from Augustine’s Conception of Salvation History and Human Agency,” in On the Apocalyptic and Human Agency: Conversations with Augustine of Hippo and Martin Luther, ed. Kirsi Stjerna and Deanna Thompson. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. Simmons, Frederick V. “How Theological Is Political Theology? The Case of Twentieth Century American Protestantism.” Political Theology 19, no. 8 (September 2018): 681–88. Simmons, Frederick V., ed. Love and Christian Ethics: Tradition, Theory, and Society. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016. Stern, David. “The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve.” World Development 32, no. 8 (August 2004): 1419–39. Stone, Ronald. Realism and Hope. Washington DC: University Press of America, 1977. Ward, Keith. “Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian Hope,” in Reinhold Niebuhr and the Issues of Our Times, ed. Richard Harries. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986. Wündisch, Joachim. “Green Votes not Green Virtues: Effective Utilitarian Responses to Climate Change,” Utilitas 26, no. 2 (June 2014): 192–205.

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NOTES 1. For example, Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014); David Grinspoon, Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016). 2. For example, Clive Hamilton, Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change (New York: Earth Scan, 2010); Roy Scranton, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2015). 3. Compare Keith Ward, “Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian Hope,” in Reinhold Niebuhr and the Issues of Our Times, ed. Richard Harries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 84. 4. See Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Holt, 2009). 5. In addition to Reinhold Niebuhr, see D. C. Macintosh, ed., Religious Realism (New York: Macmillan, 1931); Walter Marshall Horton, Realistic Theology (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1934); and John C. Bennett, Christian Realism (New York: Scribner, 1941). Concerning antecedents to this twentieth-century American Christian realism, Niebuhr often identified the apostle Paul, Augustine, Luther, and Kierkegaard. See for example, Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: Human Nature (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941), 44 n.4, 170–71, 182 n.2, 263; Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and History: A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 122–23; Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), 119–46; Reinhold Niebuhr, Essays in Applied Christianity, ed. D. B. Robertson (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), 125; and Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and Politics: A Commentary on Religious, Social and Political Thought in a Technological Age, ed. Ronald Stone (New York: George Braziller, 1968), 169–70. 6. See Ronald Stone, Realism and Hope (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1977), 142; Ward, “Niebuhr and Christian Hope,” 85; and Robin W. Lovin, “Christian Realism: A Legacy and Its Future,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 20 (2000): 12. 7. Compare Ward, “Niebuhr and Christian Hope,” 86; Roger Shinn, “Realism, Radicalism, and Eschatology in Reinhold Niebuhr: A Reassessment,” Journal of Religion 54.4 (October 1974): 423. 8. See Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 196–97; Shinn, “Realism, Radicalism, and Eschatology,” 412, 421; and Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 2–3. 9. See Reinhold Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), 1–24; Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 197–99. Niebuhr delineated his relatively Lutheran Augustinianism, preferring Luther’s agape to Augustine’s caritas but rejecting both of their political ethics—and particularly Luther’s—in Beyond Tragedy, 120–21; Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: Human Destiny (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943), 186–98; Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems,

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127, 137–46; and Reinhold Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and His Communities: Essays on the Dynamics and Enigmas of Man’s Personal and Social Existence (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965), 42–46. 10. For example, Niebuhr, Human Nature, 287; Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 140; see also Frederick V. Simmons, “Reconsidering Contemporary Christian Departures from Augustine’s Conception of Salvation History and Human Agency,” in On the Apocalyptic and Human Agency: Conversations with Augustine of Hippo and Martin Luther, ed. Kirsi Stjerna and Deanna Thompson (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 103–6; Frederick V. Simmons, “Love,” in The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. Robin Lovin and Joshua Mauldin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 263–80. 11. Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 119; Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 4. Compare Horton, Realistic Theology, 38. 12. For example, Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932); Niebuhr, Human Nature, 186–203, 208–19, 228. 13. See Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 84; compare Robin W. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 49. 14. See Reinhold Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940), 177–202; Niebuhr, Human Nature; Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 1–14, 102, 175–203; Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and Communities, 15–27; and Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 30, 45–46; compare Stone, Realism and Hope, 107. 15. Niebuhr, Human Nature, 208–19; Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and Communities, 22. 16. Contrariwise, Niebuhr’s Christian realism denies prescriptive realism and that sustained human adherence to the law of love is a simple historical possibility. 17. See Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2013), 60; Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 198, 214–15; Niebuhr, Human Nature, 293; Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 50–51, 68, 244–47; Reinhold Niebuhr, Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. D. B. Robertson (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957), 153; and Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 136, 145, 155. 18. Niebuhr, Human Nature, 241–64; Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 302–3; and Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and Communities, 23–24. 19. For example, Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 7–8; Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and Communities, 24. 20. Niebuhr occasionally argued that self-seeking’s self-defeat showed wholly self-transcending love to be the law of human nature (e.g. Christian Ethics, 53; Faith and History, 171, 173–79; and Man’s Nature and Communities, 106–9, 117). However, this failure does not establish the possibility of human fulfillment. And it only indicates that prevalent forms of self-seeking are unsuccessful, not that no form of self-seeking could succeed. The latter was Augustine’s argument and thus Niebuhr explicitly rejected Augustine’s conception of love even as he retained Augustine’s insistence that love is the law of human nature, (e.g. Christian Realism and Political Problems, 138–42; Man’s Nature and Communities, 42–43), here again evincing his

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distinctively Lutheran Augustinianism (see Simmons, “Reconsidering Contemporary Christian Departures,” 103–5; Frederick V. Simmons, “Eudaimonism and Christian Love,” in Love and Christian Ethics: Tradition, Theory, and Society, ed. Frederick V. Simmons [Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016], 191–92; and Simmons, “Love”). Yet the love Augustine regarded constitutive of human fulfillment was of God as an end in Godself. Accordingly, Augustine implicitly denied both Niebuhr’s default opposition between self-seeking and self-transcendence, and Niebuhr’s consequent belief that self-fulfillment must be inadvertent (e.g. Augustine, On the Morals of the Catholic Church, 8.13–30.64; Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, 1.3.3–1.5.5, 1.22.20–1.40.44; Augustine, City of God, 5. Preface, 14.28; Augustine, Sermon 368; Reinhold Niebuhr, Reflections on the End of an Era [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934], 211; and Niebuhr, Christian Ethics, 53). Conversely, by the end of his authorship, Niebuhr preferred to interpret the love that is the law of human nature as self-giving (e.g. Man’s Nature and Communities, 106–9) rather than self-sacrificial (e.g. Christian Ethics, 53; Faith and History, 171, 173–79), thereby deemphasizing its heedlessness of self. Contemporary Christian realists may therefore draw on Augustine and Niebuhr while also departing from both to claim that the love that is the law of human nature is open to self-transcendence. For a fuller account of such love, see Simmons, “Eudaimonism and Christian Love,” 195–96; Frederick V. Simmons, “Christianity and Eudaimonia, Luck and Eudaimonism,” Journal of Religious Ethics 47, no. 1 (March 2019): 57–58; and Frederick V. Simmons, “Introduction: A Conjunctive Approach to Christian Love,” in Love and Christian Ethics, 3, 13. 21. For example, Niebuhr, Christian Ethics, 65; Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 6, 143, 185. 22. For example, Moral Man and Immoral Society and Man’s Nature and Communities, 24–25, respectively. 23. For example, Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 171, 174; also see Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 156–57. 24. For example, Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 127, 177; Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 148; and Robin W. Lovin, “Theology, Ethics and Culture,” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. David Ford (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 86. 25. Regarding Niebuhr’s theological inattention to the environment, see Langdon Gilkey, On Niebuhr: A Theological Study (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 145–46, 170 #2, 240; Alda Balthrop-Lewis, “Nature and Environment,” in Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr, 485–89. 26. See J. Baird Callicott, “Environmental Philosophy Is Environmental Activism: The Most Radical and Effective Kind,” in Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 27–43, italics original; Sallie McFague, Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001). However, contrast Callicott, “Philosophy,” in Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology, ed. Willis Jenkins, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 364–73.

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27. Compare Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 84; Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 114–15; and Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 28–40. I elaborate on Christian realist theology’s vital role in Christian realist environmental ethics in the second part of this chapter. 28. Compare Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 84–85, 156, 206–7; Niebuhr, Faith and History, 199–200, 230; Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 53–54; Reinhold Niebuhr, The Structure of Nations and Empires: A Study of Recurring Patterns and Problems of the Political Order in Relation to the Unique Problems of the Nuclear Age (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959), 193; and Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 117. This affirmation departs from Niebuhr’s earlier assertion that there are definite limits to such moral and religious contributions to social-ethical achievements; see for example Moral Man and Immoral Society, 72–73. 29. For example, Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, xi-xv, 51–82; Niebuhr, End of an Era, 39–48; Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 80–82; Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and Communities, 117–25; and Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 157; see also Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 5; Lovin, “Christian Realism: Legacy and Future,” 6. By classical Christian realism, I denote Christian realism as Reinhold Niebuhr and his generation delineated it; contrast Lovin, who categorizes Niebuhr as a contemporary Christian realist (Robin Lovin, An Introduction to Christian Ethics: Goals, Duties, and Virtues [Nashville: Abingdon, 2011], 137. 30. For instance, Klein, This Changes Everything; Grinspoon, Earth in Human Hands. 31. Compare Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 26–34. 32. For example, Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and Communities, 74–82. 33. For example, Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, xvi, 25, 34–35, 44, 85, 106–7; Niebuhr, End of an Era, 29–35; Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy, 124–26; Niebuhr, Human Nature, 106–22; and Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and Communities, 93. 34. For example, Reinhold Niebuhr, Does Civilization Need Religion? A Study in the Social Resources and Limitations of Religion in Modern Life (New York: Macmillan, 1927), 226; Niebuhr, End of an Era, 235; and Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 72. 35. Compare Pope Francis, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home (Washington DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2015), especially §137-§162, §189-§196, §203-§206. 36. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 29; see also Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy, 108; Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 159, 162. 37. Concerning the curve—roughly the notion that economic development initially increases environmental degradation but beyond a per capita income threshold decreases it—see Gene Grossman and Alan Krueger, “Environmental Impacts of a North American Free Trade Agreement,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 3914 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1991). Criticisms of the curve include David Stern, “The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve,” World Development 32, no. 8 (August 2004): 1419–39; Stephen Gardiner, “The Real Tragedy of the Commons,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 30, no. 4 (Autumn 2001): 410, 416; and Cheryl Hall, “What Will It Mean to be

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Green? Envisioning Positive Possibilities without Dismissing Loss,” Ethics, Policy, and Environment 16, no. 2 (2013): 127. 38. Compare Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 14–15; Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 144. 39. For example, Joachim Wündisch, “Green Votes not Green Virtues: Effective Utilitarian Responses to Climate Change,” Utilitas 26, no. 2 (June 2014): 192–205; Baylor Johnson, “Ethical Obligations in a Tragedy of the Commons,” Environmental Values 12, no. 3 (2003): 271–87; and Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162, no. 3859 (December 13, 1968): 1243–48, respectively. 40. Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities, 13. Michael Lamb roots prominent contemporary Augustinians’ similarly capacious conception of politics directly in Augustine and his “participationist ontology” (“Between Presumption and Despair: Augustine's Hope for the Commonwealth,” American Political Science Review 112, no. 4 [2018]: 1036–49); see also Eric Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 87–89. 41. Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities; see also Ian Markham, “Distinguishing Hope from Utopian Aspiration,” in Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power, ed. Richard Harries and Stephen Platten (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 136, 140. 42. Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities, 38 and 133, 136, and 144, respectively. 43. For example, Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 21; Niebuhr, End of an Era, 229–30, 248; and Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and Communities, 105. 44. See Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities, 23. 45. See Lovin, “Christian Realism: Legacy and Future,” 13; Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities, 42, 136–37. 46. Compare Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 153; Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 56, 105, 123, 137, 156–57; and Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities, 106. 47. Concerning Christian realism’s generally pragmatic approach to politics, see Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960); Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 55–66, 113–14, 123–28, 136, 177; and Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 157. Concerning Christian realism’s overall interpretation of social ethics in terms of responsibility, see Niebuhr, Christian Ethics, xxxii; Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 101; Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 55–56, 166, 169; Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities, 108; and Lovin, Introduction to Christian Ethics, 228–29. Willis Jenkins’s The Future of Ethics: Sustainability, Social Justice, and Religious Creativity (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013) exemplifies a Christian environmental ethic structured by these Christian realist political objectives. 48. Compare Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 176, 230. 49. For example, Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, xv, xxiii, 3, 6; Niebuhr, End of an Era, 107, 109; Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 1–32, 78, 102, 104; Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 29–40; and Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 136.

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50. For example, Niebuhr, End of an Era, 243; Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 1–32; and Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 265. 51. For example, Niebuhr, Christian Ethics, xxxi–xxxii; Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 34–35; Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 103, 127; Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 42–43; Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 92; and Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities, 66. 52. Compare Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 195. 53. Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities, 174, italics original, see also 17, 175. 54. Hardin’s prescription of “mutual coercion mutually agreed upon” (“Tragedy of the Commons,” 1247) is therefore unavailing when actions’ environmentally detrimental consequences are considerably delayed, leading Gardiner to contend that climate change is “The Real Tragedy of the Commons” because it can only be averted by self-regulation of the powerful on behalf of the vulnerable. Stephen Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 441. 55. Compare Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 111–12; Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 16–20, and Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 24; Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 284–85; Niebuhr, Irony of American History, 135; and Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 57–58, respectively. 56. Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 56; see also Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, x–xi, 17; Niebuhr, Human Nature, 219–27; Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 227, 270; and Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 149. 57. Compare Willis Jenkins, “Stewards of Irony: Planetary Stewardship, Climate Engineering, and Religious Ethics,” in Theological and Ethical Perspectives on Climate Engineering: Calming the Storm, ed. Forrest Clingerman and Kevin O’Brien (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), 154–55; see Shinn, “Realism, Radicalism, and Eschatology,” 414. 58. See Lovin, “Christian Realism: Legacy and Future,” 14; Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities, 83 and Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 155; Ward, “Niebuhr and Christian Hope,” 82, respectively. 59. For example, Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 185; Niebuhr, Faith and History, viii. 60. Compare Shinn, “Realism, Radicalism, and Eschatology,” 415. 61. Concerning the historical realizability of Christian hopes, see Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 317; Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 29, 46; Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities, 43; and Robin W. Lovin, “Hope, Virtue, and Politics in Reinhold Niebuhr’s works,” in Paradoxical Virtue: Reinhold Niebuhr and the Virtue Tradition, ed. Kevin Carnahan and David True (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 40. Regarding Niebuhr’s lifelong commitment to the importance of historical and supra-historical hopes, see Moral Man and Immoral Society, 24–25; End of an Era, 221; Beyond Tragedy, 105–6, 286; and Human Nature, 183; Human Destiny, 85, 192, 205–6; Children of Light and Darkness, 44, 48–50; Faith and History, 136, 214, 233; Applied Christianity, 148; and Gilkey, Niebuhr, 210–11. 62. For example, Faith and History, 215; Man’s Nature and Communities, 24–25.

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63. See Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 157, 232–34, 247–48; Lovin, “Christian Realism: Legacy and Future,” 14; Robin W. Lovin, “Reinhold Niebuhr in Historical Perspective,” in Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics, 9, 12, 16; and Stone, Realism and Hope, 5, 8, 127–28, 140–41, 184, 199–200. 64. See Lovin, “Christian Realism: Legacy and Future,” 14; Robin W. Lovin, “Christian Realism for the Twenty-First Century,” Journal of Religious Ethics 37, no. 4 (December 2009): 675; and Lovin, “Niebuhr in Historical Perspective,” 9, 11. 65. See Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 87–88; Anatol Lieven, “Realism and Progress: Niebuhr’s Thought and Contemporary Challenges,” in Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics, 172. 66. Compare Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 24–25, 81. 67. Compare Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 89. 68. The 2016 Paris Climate Agreement established this threshold for twenty-first century global warming above preindustrial levels. 69. See Lovin, Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 244; Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities, 16. 70. For example, Niebuhr, Irony of American History. 71. For example, Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 82; Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy, 305–6 (although compare 280–81); Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 20–21; Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 205–6, 211, 290–95, 319; and Niebuhr, Faith and History, 134–36, 213, 231–33, 235, 243. 72. See Robin W. Lovin, “Reinhold Niebuhr in Contemporary Scholarship,” Journal of Religious Ethics 31, no. 3 (December 2003): 501; Lovin, Christian Realism and New Realities, 189–90; and Gilkey, Niebuhr, 174 #6. 73. Niebuhr explicitly distinguishes Christian realism’s “radical Christian understanding of the persistence of sin in the [historical] life of man” from not only “liberal Christianity,” Calvinism, and Catholicism but also Augustine and Luther, whom he otherwise identifies as Christian realists (Faith and Politics, 130–31). In particular, according to Niebuhr, until God eschatologically consummates creation even those whom God saves continue to sin and so partially defy God’s kingdom in history. Christian realism thus distinctively maintains that God alone wholly actualizes Christian hopes beyond history without thereby “declar[ing] political questions to be irrelevant to the gospel,” as Niebuhr interprets Barthianism to assert (Applied Christianity, 165, see also 151, 164–65, 168–76, 340). 74. Compare Ward, “Niebuhr and Christian Hope,” 81–82. 75. Compare Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 198–99; Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 320–21; Niebuhr, Faith and History, 233–34; and Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, viii, 115. 76. See Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 89, 330; Lovin, “Hope, Virtue, and Politics,” 42. Contrast Michael Walzer’s alternative account of appropriate response to such dire straits, apparently elicited by his different understanding of hope’s relationship to history (Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations [New York: Basic Books, 1977], 251–68). 77. For example, Niebuhr, Christian Ethics, xxxii; Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 189.

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78. Compare Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 321; Niebuhr, Faith and History, 212–13, 234, 237–38; Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 332–33, 340–41; Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 111, 115–18; Lovin, “Christian Realism and New Realities,” 49, 189; Lovin, “Christian Realism for the Twenty-First Century,” 671; Lovin, “Hope, Virtue, and Politics,” 41–42; Gilkey, Niebuhr, 151, 192, 210; Stone, Realism and Hope, 123, 199; and Shinn, “Realism, Radicalism, and Eschatology,” 422. 79. For example, Niebuhr, Human Nature, 142; Niebuhr, Irony of American History, 63–64; Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 184; Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 281; Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 171; Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 137; and Reinhold Niebuhr, The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, ed. Robert McAfee Brown (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 28–29. 80. For example, Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 21; Niebuhr, Human Nature, 144; and Niebuhr, Essential Niebuhr, 29–30. 81. Douglas Ottati, Hopeful Realism: Reclaiming the Poetry of Theology (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1999), 3, 34, 97; compare Dane Scott, “The Temptations of Climate Engineering,” in Perspectives on Climate Engineering, 43, 51, 55; Luke Bretherton, Christianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilities of Faithful Witness (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 83, 85; and Stone, Realism and Hope, 2–3, 199–200. 82. Robert McAfee Brown, “Introduction,” in Essential Niebuhr, xi. 83. Brown, “Introduction,” xiii and xii, respectively, italics original. See also Ward, “Niebuhr and Christian Hope,” 86. 84. Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 182 and 195, respectively; see also Niebuhr, End of an Era, 202–4. However, compare Niebuhr, Does Civilization Need Religion, 235; Niebuhr, End of an Era, 213; and Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy, 115, 131. 85. Compare Niebuhr, Does Civilization Need Religion, 112; Niebuhr, End of an Era, 111. 86. Compare Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 184; Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 175. 87. Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 211–12; see also Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy, 20–21; Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 213–14; Niebuhr, Human Nature, 148; Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 68–70; Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 184–86; Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 49; Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 117; Niebuhr, Essential Niebuhr, 29–30; and Gilkey, Niebuhr, 188. 88. See Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 29–30; Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 101, 174, 332, 341; and Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 117–18, 131. 89. Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 89–90. 90. For example, Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 88. Christian realism accordingly aligns with Immanuel Kant’s conviction that human moral performance depends on faith in God’s action beyond history (Critique of Pure Reason A 800 / B 828-A 818 / B 846, A 828 / B 856; Critique of Practical Reason, 125, 129, 142–43 [this and all subsequent page numbers from Kant’s work refer to Kants gesammelte Schriften {Berlin: Königlich Preußiche Akademie der Wissenschaften}]). However, where Kant follows Augustine’s emphasis on God’s eschatological correlation of happiness

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to righteousness (Critique of Practical Reason, 129), Niebuhr follows Luther’s concentration on God’s eschatological forgiveness. Additionally, while Kant begins with ethics—the fact of reason that human beings are under moral law (Critique of Pure Reason, A 807 / B 835; Critique of Practical Reason, 46)—a claim about human nature—that human beings are creatures of need and so perforce concerned about their own happiness (Critique of Practical Reason, 61)—and a claim about the world—that human moral achievement cannot correlate happiness to righteousness in history (Critique of Practical Reason, 114)—to secure eschatological hope, arguing that faith in the human soul’s immortality (Critique of Practical Reason, 122) and God’s eschatological apportioning of happiness to righteousness (Critique of Practical Reason, 124, 129) is warranted because necessary for human moral perseverance, Niebuhr begins with eschatological hope—the truth of the Atonement as apprehended by faith—and observes that those who lack or misunderstand it inevitably err ethically (compare Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 144–45, 147; Shinn, “Realism, Radicalism, and Eschatology,” 415; and Simmons, “Love,” 276–77; however contrast Niebuhr, Does Civilization Need Religion, 6–7, 14, 17). 91. See Frederick V. Simmons, “How Theological Is Political Theology? The Case of Twentieth Century American Protestantism,” Political Theology 19, no. 8 (September 2018): 681–88; Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 179. 92. For example, Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 2–3, 18, 210–11; Niebuhr, Human Nature, 142, 145; Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 59; Niebuhr, Irony of American History, 63; Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 124, 128, 131, 133, 136, 336; Niebuhr, Man’s Nature and Communities, 41; and Niebuhr, Faith and Politics, 129. 93. See Simmons, “Love,” especially 266–69, 276–77. 94. For example, Niebuhr, Human Nature, 56–58; Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 98–126; Niebuhr, Faith and History, 171, 233–34; Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 182; and Niebuhr, Essential Niebuhr, 29–30. 95. See Niebuhr, Faith and History, 238–39; Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 323–26. 96. Compare Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, 211–12; Niebuhr, Human Destiny, 206–7; Niebuhr, Faith and History, 101; Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 188; and Niebuhr, Applied Christianity, 329.

Chapter Nine

The Children of Light in the Twenty-First Century Global Conflict, Democracy, and the Politics of Despair Joshua Mauldin

At a historical moment when democracy is under considerable threat from external adversaries and internal decay, there is much to gain from revisiting Reinhold Niebuhr’s defense of democracy. That defense is articulated most explicitly in his book The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.1 Especially relevant for the contemporary global situation is the way Niebuhr subtly juxtaposes a justification for democracy as the most adequate form of government alongside a trenchant analysis of why the democratic “children of light” are prone not only to overestimating their own virtue but also, paradoxically, to underestimating the external threats posed by the autocratic and illiberal “children of darkness.” The children of light are characterized by their naive “stupidity,” but that stupidity has changed considerably since Niebuhr’s time. The purpose of this chapter will be to update Niebuhr’s analysis for what Robin W. Lovin has called “the new realities” of our time.2 Today’s children of light, as we will see, are strangely more pessimistic than the optimistic children of light in Niebuhr’s day, while nonetheless managing to continue to overestimate their own virtue. The children of light fail to reckon with the vulnerability of democracy in the face of rising authoritarian powers abroad, who have risen to hegemony through exploiting globalized systems of trade that the children of light assumed would mark the “End of History” and the final victory of democracy.3 Alongside these external threats there has emerged a kind of internal political decay, whereby the democratic 161

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children of light have lost confidence in the moral legitimacy of democracy itself. Unable to defend democracy against its rivals, the democratic children of light allow the illiberal “children of darkness” to foment discord within democratic nations while increasing their share of power in the international arena. The outcome is a global situation in which the democratic children of light are no longer willing or able to defend their way of life, leaving democracy vulnerable to dire challenges both within and without. Where Niebuhr could diagnose the political problems of his time by highlighting the cynicism of the children of darkness and the stupidity of the children of light, our own political problems revolve around our assumption that politics, and even history itself, is inevitably tragic. We think justice is required but is impossible. Having relinquished the kind of ironic posture Niebuhr championed, we have settled into a tragic position in which we uphold the worst aspects of both the children of light and the children of darkness. In other words, and as this chapter will explain, we have become both cynical and stupid. Published in 1944, Children of Light marks Niebuhr’s turn toward a moderate defense of democracy and away from the Marxist-inflected catastrophism of Moral Man and Immoral Society and its follow-up, Reflections on the End of an Era. The publication of Children of Light followed on the heels of the international acclaim Niebuhr received for his two-volume magnum opus, The Nature and Destiny of Man, based on his 1939 Gifford Lectures. While theological claims are rather sparse in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, the theology of Nature and Destiny is the unstated background of the political philosophy the book defends. Written at the height of Niebuhr’s powers, Children of Light is among the clearest and most concise of his writings. As the subtitle of Children of Light indicates, the book is a “vindication of democracy and a critique of its traditional defense.” What did Niebuhr take to be the “traditional defense”? It is an account that remains surprisingly prevalent up to the present day. Put simply, it is a moral defense of democracy, as opposed to a political defense. A moral defense of democracy centers on claims like “democracy is required because human beings have a right to determine the nature of their government.” Niebuhr’s view is less aspirational. It might even appear downright cynical. It is based in any case on a clear-eyed, realist understanding of human nature, and thus of the form of government appropriate to that nature. That nature, as Niebuhr had previously elaborated in The Nature and Destiny of Man, is marked by the finitude that is a natural limitation for all creatures as well as by our human capacity for self-transcendence.4 Sin is the inevitable if not necessary result of this dual nature, as anxiety about our finitude leads us in our pride to imagine ways to overcome it. Herein lies the root

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of all human social conflict and violence, and on this basis an entire political philosophy can be built. If there was one thing Thomas Hobbes was right about, it was that societies require some minimal level of order. Without a stable order enforced by coercion, people will take advantage of one another, the strong will prey on the weak, and social chaos will proliferate unchecked. One strand in the history of Western political thought acknowledges this reality and concludes that the only response is a strong state to establish a bulwark against the sinful nature of humanity. The picture of the government as the “Sword” in Luther’s political thought is one that Hobbes further develops into a full-fledged political philosophy. Niebuhr agrees with the importance of the sword, but with the important qualification that this vision fails to acknowledge the evil tendency that also exists in those who hold power. Human sinfulness produces the need for a strong government to establish order, but how can we protect ourselves from the sinfulness of those who rule over us? As Niebuhr writes, “the first task of a community is to subdue chaos and create order; but the second task is equally important and must be implicated in the first. That task is to prevent the power, by which initial unity is achieved, from becoming tyrannical.”5 It would be nice if we could trust that those who rule over us will be consistently virtuous and wise, but the fact that that is now a laugh line suggests otherwise. In a democratic structure with checks and balances and rule of law, those who govern are held accountable to the people, and thus their power is held in check by the very people they are called to serve. Democracy is thus validated not because people deserve it but rather because it represents the best way to maintain a stable government without sliding into tyranny. As Niebuhr pithily and famously puts the point, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”6 WHO ARE THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT AND WHO ARE THE CHILDREN OF DARKNESS? So much for Niebuhr’s argument for democracy. Alongside this argument, however, Niebuhr juxtaposes an analysis of global politics that draws a distinction between the “children of light” and the “children of darkness.” It is this section that is particularly relevant for the contemporary global context. For Niebuhr, the children of light are characterized by stupidity, while the children of darkness are characterized by cynicism. The children of light err by failing to recognize the element of self-interest that is present in all human action, including their own. The children of darkness recognize the reality of

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self-interest but fail to acknowledge any higher law above self-interest. Both the children of light and the children of darkness fail to fully acknowledge the reality of human nature, which is characterized both by a finitude which makes self-interest unavoidable as well as a capacity for self-transcendence, which allows human beings to imagine ever-wider circles of concern that transcend self-interest. The optimistic framework of modern culture assumed that all human strife is grounded in the basic animal survival impulse. Niebuhr contends that this survival impulse in human beings is “spiritualized,” branching out into the opposing interests of the “will to power” on the one hand and a natural impulse toward self-giving on the other. The optimism of modern culture led the children of light to believe that if only they provided what everyone needed to survive all social strife would disappear. The children of darkness know this is wrong because human society is characterized by a politics of recognition. Human life is determined not only by the desire to survive but also by other goals that are more zero-sum and not so easily harmonized: prestige, honor, power. The children of darkness emphasize this will to power but fail to recognize the other aspect of human nature, which Niebuhr summarizes under the biblical adage, “He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”7 For it is finally in giving of self that the human being finds fulfillment. The children of light are characterized by possessing a laudable goal. They at least believe themselves to be acting in the world for the good of the whole. Their error is one of self-deception. They are unaware of the extent to which their actions are intermixed with self-interest. For Niebuhr, the actions of the children of light are thus ironic. They do not understand what they do. The children of darkness are not so self-deceived. They recognize their own interest and seek it alone as their end. Anyone who opposes their interest is an enemy to be destroyed. The question remains relevant today: who are more dangerous—those who believe with certainty that they are acting in the service of ideals or those who acknowledge that they act purely in their own self-interest? Perhaps we are inclined to prefer the former, who at least intend, in some part of their psyche, to pursue the good. But a quick perusal of the history books reveals many cases in which those who believed themselves to be pursuing the good end up causing horrendous suffering. As Niebuhr observed, “Some of the greatest perils to democracy arise from the fanaticism of moral idealists who are not conscious of the corruption of self-interest in their professed ideals.”8 What is the responsible citizen to do? The question is not as simple as it might seem. Niebuhr doesn’t recommend that given the pervasiveness of self-interest we should give up our moral ideals and throw in our lot with the children of darkness. Instead, we are called to undertake a delicate balancing

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act, maintaining awareness of self-interest alongside recognition of the human capacity to transcend self-interest. What is more, we cannot realize our true nature and telos as human beings apart from the capacity for transcendence. We must remain aware of the reality of self-interest without giving this self-interest moral justification. We must seek to transcend self-interest in order to attain moral ends, believing this is possible, but not thinking it is easy, lest we be characterized by the “stupidity” that is the temptation of the children of light. It is a challenging task, where the danger of self-deception is ever present. RELEVANCE TO CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL POLITICS What are we to make of Niebuhr’s framework, given the global and domestic challenges faced by the United States in this third decade of the twenty-first? Niebuhr thought the United States was paradigmatic of the children of light, pursuing what it saw as the highest good on the world stage while largely unaware of the self-interest and self-deception that characterized its activity. Niebuhr tended to see communism, including in its Soviet form, as another version of the children of light. While Stalinism was beginning to look to many like the children of darkness, Niebuhr was focused on the way in which Soviet Communism exemplified the tendency of the children of light to commit evils in the service of their utopian ideals. In contrast to both the United States as well as the Soviet Union, Nazism was the paradigmatic example of the children of darkness, a political movement that sought no higher end beyond the self-interest of a people. For Niebuhr, then, there are three basic options: two extremes and implicitly a via media which he endorses. The two extremes are represented by the children of light and the children of darkness. The children of light recognize the human capacity for self-transcendence over self-interest but wrongly assume that this is a simple achievement. They fail to recognize the persistence of self-interest in all human endeavors. The children of darkness abandon all transcendent ideals and justify their actions entirely in terms of self-interest. Their world is a war of each against all, and they aim to come out on top. Niebuhr implicitly endorses a third position, which maintains the commitment to transcendent ideals without giving in to the stupidity and self-deception of those who fail to recognize the incorrigible power of self-interest. In between the children of light and the children of darkness stands Niebuhr’s own position, which upholds the idealism of the one and the realistic wisdom of the other without falling into the traps of either extreme. There is a fourth option which Niebuhr did not imagine, but which has come to have considerable purchase in public life in the twenty-first-century

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United States. This is a view which recognizes self-interest in all human activity, even to the point of not being able to transcend such self-interest for any moral ideal, but which stops short of providing any moral or political justification of this self-interest. It is a tragic position, in which self-interested power relations signify a reality that can never be transcended, but which also can never be rationalized or justified as anything other than an inevitable evil. Justice is required but is impossible. If the children of darkness opt for a kind of Nietzschean valorization of self that overcomes the moral language of good and evil, this fourth tragic option acknowledges that self-interest irredeemably permeates all human action while nonetheless futilely decrying this reality. Another way to put the point is that we have become a strange amalgam of the children of light and the children of darkness. Our picture of US society is that of the children of darkness, of a long history of injustice, brutality, and domination in which the strong prey on the weak and all moral language is but a veneer covering the power relations which determine everything. All social structures can be reduced to self-interest and power, with one exception. We hold out as an exception our own ability to stand above the fray and denounce as unjust the society around us. When describing society, we are the children of darkness; when thinking of ourselves, we revert to the children of light. We wear the trappings of the prophetic social critic, even as our social philosophy has undermined the idea that there can be prophetic critics at all. We each make an exception for ourselves, which is in many ways the quintessential move of the naive children of light. We have become more Niebuhrian than Niebuhr was. In Children of Light, Niebuhr contended that democracy’s “internal peril lies in the conflict of various schools and classes of idealists, who profess different ideals but exhibit a common conviction that their own ideals are perfect.”9 In a later book, The Irony of American History, Niebuhr further contrasted the naive and idealistic self-understanding of people in the United States with the morally ambiguous practice of US social life.10 The United States was able to function with a naive self-understanding only because this understanding was leavened by the more realistic pragmatism of actual practice. Niebuhr’s way of depicting how people in the United States understand themselves rings less true when applied to US society today. Many US intellectuals today view their country as an irredeemable agent of rampant injustice and evil, beginning with the founding of the nation and continuing to the present day. This negative understanding of US social life is in many ways in tension with the actual practice of US public life, which, even at its most acrimonious, continues to exemplify norms of freedom, political participation, and enterprise that continue to attract immigrants from around the world who in coming to this country effectively vote with their feet. The United States is hardly perfect,

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but depending on the standard of comparison it can look pretty good in practice. What we see now is thus the mirror image of what Niebuhr saw then. He saw a US ideology of naive self-deception paired with more pragmatic and realist social practices. Today we have a more realistic and even cynical perception of US history and ideals that is paired with a social practice that is much more commendable than the story we tell ourselves about the character of public life in the United States. In a strange way there are both left-wing and right-wing criticisms of the United States as the children of light. This helps explain why the United States has recently retreated from the world stage under both Democratic and Republican presidents, particularly under President Obama and President Trump, a retreat that continued with President Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Even where the reasons for the retreat differed, the results were the same. Both left and right have in many ways been disabused of the naivete of the children of light. The left sees the way in which the United States has pretended to serve the good in the international sphere while in fact serving itself. In retreating from the world stage we hope to extricate ourselves from morally fraught situations, removing the temptation to serve ourselves by acting as the police force on the international stage. We retreat in order to wash our hands of a difficult situation and thus remain the children of light. The question arises, however, of who will enter the breach. The right-wing retreat has a different motivation even if the action is similar. For Donald Trump, the idea of “America First” was both a recognition of self-interest as well as a justification for grounding all action in the self-interest of the country. The United States would no longer intervene for the good of the whole but only when its own interests were at stake in a very clear way. Trump’s political opponents howled at this blatant attempt to give up pursuing the higher good, even as many on the left assumed that any action the United States took on the international stage would be nothing more than an imperialistic power grab anyway. But perhaps in this way the left were closer to Niebuhr’s position. For the idea that anything United States does on the world stage is an evil form of imperialism is not quite the same as actually justifying every such action in terms of self-interest. The problem, however, is that if we are unwilling to recognize the human capacity to transcend selfinterest, the move to actually justifying everything in terms of self-interest is a very small step indeed. This raises the question of whether the fourth option highlighted above is a stable one, or if it inevitably gives way to the children of darkness. Any number of global issues today require international cooperation. The COVID-19 pandemic provides an immediate example, as does climate change and the reemerging danger of a nuclear war that would make these other problems seem like child’s play. We are in a kind of prisoner’s dilemma,

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where the belief that other powers will fail to cooperate decreases the motivation to act in ways that benefit the interests of the world as a whole. There is still space for the United States to lead, but there are countervailing forces in US politics making that leadership difficult. Niebuhr’s thought can help us navigate this difficult terrain. For while we need an adequate conception of self-interest, we must not be led astray by a kind of power reductionism. Eventually the line between self-criticism and “America First” becomes too fine for most people to tell the difference. As Niebuhr put it, “Clearly it has become necessary for the children of light to borrow some of the wisdom of the children of darkness; and yet be careful not to borrow too much.”11 Niebuhrian realism requires that we acknowledge the power of self-interest without giving a moral justification to self-interest. Niebuhr criticized US politics and foreign policy for oscillating between “moods of complete irresponsibility” and moods of “cynicism.” “In the one mood it would disavow the responsibilities of power because it fears its corruptions. In the other mood it displays an adolescent pride of power and a cynical disregard of its responsibilities.”12 Moral responsibility instead requires that we acknowledge the human capacity to transcend self-interest without succumbing to wishful thinking and self-deception. Holding these in tension is the challenge before us. The temptation to acquiesce to what Richard Rorty called a politics of “spectatorship” is strong.13 If we assume that evil motives are ever present and inescapable, and it is “power” all the way down, such that all we can do is critique and lament this fact, we are nearly all the way to justifying self-interest as the only norm for action. Acknowledging that self-interest is unavoidable is itself only half the battle. One cannot merely point to self-interest and the lust for power as total and merely inveigh against it. That is a position that Niebuhr did not exactly see but which has become common; indeed, it seems to have largely replaced the “stupidity” of the children of light. Awareness of the power of self-interest must instead be paired with awareness of the human capacity to transcend self-interest in the pursuit of moral ideals. Threading that needle is difficult indeed. One wonders whether we have the moral and political resources even to try. Niebuhr thought of the United States as the children of light. The question must be asked: are we still the children of light? Niebuhr assumed we were, but perhaps our character has since changed. As president, Donald Trump championed a vision of the United States which in some ways resembles that of leftist critics of US failings. On a number of occasions when authoritarian regimes abroad would do something horrendous, Trump would say something like “are we any better?” Trump’s goal was—and, alas, is—to convince the United States to give in to being the children of darkness. That is, Trump calls on the United States to give up even the pretense of acting for reasons

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other than self-interest; to act entirely in our own interests and to let the rest of the world fend for itself. Under the conditions of democracy, it will be up to the people of the United States whether they want to go down that path. But the rest of the world has some choices to make, too. Even on a pragmatic, realistic level of analysis, Trump’s isolationist project cannot succeed in the long term. The United States can successfully stand up to the threats of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea only if it stands alongside partners such as the UK, Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and others. Without such a united front, the overall security situation of the world, which is already deteriorating, will grow increasingly dire indeed. Here is where the rest of the world has a role to play, as well. Non-Americans in Europe and elsewhere have occasionally grumbled about the US-led order, but the reaction to Putin’s unjustified attack on Ukraine has led to a renewed sense of the importance of that order. As one commentator has put the point, a non-US-led world is not a Swedish-led world. In the absence of a rulesbased order, the “jungle grows back,” and arguably already has.14 China is rising to ever new heights of global power, while stoking levels of jingoistic nationalism that should shock everyone, and a hegemonic China will bring Russia and quickly nuclearizing powers like Iran and North Korea with them. The halcyon days of the 1990s and early 2000s, when we could envisage globalization and the internet breaking down national borders and leading the entire world to become like one big Belgium, have vanished. The people of the United States have important choices to make, but so does the rest of the world. The people of the United States might be tired of leading, and the rest of the world might no longer want us to. But if we don’t, who will? Niebuhr’s prediction from 1944 remains true today: We may live for quite a long time in a period of history in which a potential world community, failing to become actual, will give rise to global, rather than limited, conditions of international anarchy and in which the technics of civilization will be used to aggravate the fury of conflict.15

BIBLIOGRAPHY Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992. Kagan, Robert. The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World. New York: Knopf, 2018. Lovin, Robin W. Christian Realism and the New Realities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

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Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Is Traditional Defense. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. ———. The Irony of American History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man. 2 vols. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. Rorty, Richard. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.

NOTES 1. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) [originally published in 1944]. 2. Robin W. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 3. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 4. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man. 2 vols. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996) [originally published in 1941 and 1943]. 5. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 178. 6. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, xxxii. 7. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 19. 8. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 151. 9. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 152. 10. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) [originally published in 1952]. 11. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 176. 12. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 185. 13. Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). 14. See Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World (New York: Knopf, 2018). 15. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 162.

Chapter Ten

Economics and the Future of Christian Realism Nathan I. C. McLellan

In the chapter on Christian realism in his book Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition, Gary Dorrien notes that despite Niebuhr’s critique of the naivete and idealism of the social gospel, Niebuhr “never doubted the social gospel assumption that Christians had a social mission to secure the just ordering of the world,” albeit that now this mission was undertaken with heavy doses of “irony, paradox, and, especially, crisis.”1 For Niebuhr that mission meant, inter alia, addressing economic affairs and concerns. Thus, throughout Niebuhr’s life we see him engaging with and dialoguing with others over a variety of economic issues with a view to fostering a more just economic order (as integral to fostering a more just world, more generally). For Christian realism to have a vibrant future, it is critical that there are those among its adherents who, following in the footsteps of Niebuhr, are adept at addressing economic affairs and concerns. Indeed, given the domestic and especially global economic forces that permeate and shape much of our existence, it is hard to imagine a future for Christian realism unless there are some within this ethical tradition who have developed the skill and flair to comment on economic issues with a view to fostering a more just economic order. Rather than engage with a range of economic issues to demonstrate how Christian realism might contribute to fostering a more just economic order, this chapter does something more general: it argues that Christian realism is well-placed to make a contribution because there are particular features of this ethical tradition that make it amenable to engagement with the discipline of economics (and to other disciplines more generally), while also 171

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recognizing that moral argument plays a necessary role in the shaping of economic institutions and policies and, therefore, there is an important place for ethics in contributing to discourse on human flourishing. In other words, Christian realism should readily see that the disciplines of economics and ethics are both needed to promote a more just social order. Moreover, this chapter also argues that a robust theological realism is also necessary to animate and sustain the pursuit of a more just economic order. To aid the development of these points, I draw on Robin Lovin’s schema in Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism—and developed further in Christian Realism and the New Realities—that Christian realism comprises three distinct, but connected, realisms: political, moral, and theological.2 In what follows, this chapter discusses the discipline of economics in relation to political realism and moral realism, and then theological realism in relation to the economic order, with a view to helping Christian realism to promote a more just economic order. ECONOMICS MEETS POLITICAL REALISM Lovin writes of the political realist’s quest to understand “the multiplicity of forces that drive the decisions that people actually make in the realm of political choice.”3 That quest arises from the political realist’s commitment to shaping the direction that society might take. If the political realist wants to understand the varied forces that shape human decision-making, in order to influence the direction of the social order, she will be willing to engage with other intellectual disciplines that seek to understand these various forces. Indeed, she will be eager to discover what other intellectual disciplines might offer in her quest to understand the forces that influence society. Given a Christian realist’s commitment to political realism he will, therefore, be open to what other disciplines might contribute to his understanding of the forces that shape society. And, although a Christian realist is committed to moral realism and, therefore, the place of moral discussion in shaping the direction of society, because of his political realism he will recognize that “we should not rely on moral argument alone to decide on political action, nor should we overestimate the power of moral suasion to determine events.”4 For this reason, the Christian realist aims to take seriously the concerns, orientating questions, methods, and deliverances of other disciplines, and to dialogue critically with them from the vantage point of ethics, without subsuming them to ethics per se. There is, in other words, a need to dialogue critically with other disciplines in order to understand the forces at work in society, recognizing that moral argument alone is not the only force that shapes humans’ decisions and actions.

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When it comes to understanding the forces shaping economies, the discipline of economics is indispensable. The discipline of modern economics (as it is now framed) seeks to understand how humans allocate the resources at their disposal within a state of scarcity. The term scarcity here is a technical one that describes a state in which the demand for resources to achieve various ends is greater than the available supply of those same resources. It does not—in the way it is being used here—simply describe a situation where there are insufficient goods, such as food and clothing, to meet basic human needs. Rather, it is describing a more general state, in which humans and human communities are required to choose where to allocate limited resources—because the demand for these resources is greater than their available supply—to realize particular ends and not others. So, for example, politicians need to choose how much tax revenue to allocate to environmental protection initiatives, poverty alleviation programs, defense spending, and so on. There are inherent trade-offs in making these allocations: more funding for environmental initiatives means less funding available for poverty alleviation programs, defense spending, and so on. There are, in other words, opportunity costs inherent to allocation decisions in a state of scarcity. Deciding to allocate resources to realize one end means foregoing opportunities to realize other ends. The state of scarcity, in other words, is describing particular aspects of the finitude of the world. Human nature and the constitution of the world require that humans make decisions about which goods to realize with limited resources. As embodied beings, humans face certain limits and require certain goods for their survival and flourishing. For humans and human communities across a nexus of goods, the state of scarcity means they are not able to realize all the goods they desire; therefore, they must decide what goods they want. It is one of the achievements of modern economics to clarify the state of scarcity in which humans find themselves, to highlight the importance of this for resource allocation, and to develop and refine the tools to enable the study of resource allocation under conditions of scarcity, thereby giving rise to the focus that economics has on allocative efficiency. In this direction, Lionel Robbins’s Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science is pivotal in zeroing in on scarcity as central for the discipline of economics. In this work, Robbins famously defines economics as “the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.”5 In delineating the scope of economics to the study of the allocation of resources under scarcity, Robbins wants economics to become both “a guide to reality” and “a basis for political practice.”6 In this way, Robbins holds that economics has an important contribution to make in helping humans and human communities to flourish, and that its distinct contribution is to highlight that the realization of goods that contribute to human

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flourishing takes place under conditions of scarcity. For this reason, economics develops and refines tools that facilitate the study of scarce resource allocation. In so doing, economics promotes efficiency for the sake of other goods that contribute to human flourishing. Peter Boettke highlights that the foregoing understanding of economics “places parameters around people’s utopias.”7 He writes: The world is a rather tricky place, and utopia is not a viable option. In fact, perhaps, the most important role that economics plays is in providing negative knowledge. By examining the logic of means-ends efficiency economics places parameters around people’s utopias. Wishing it so, in short, cannot make it so. . . . Scarce resources must be allocated among competing ends in a way that minimizes waste by directing resources to their most effective use.8

In her quest, then, to understand the multiplicity of forces that shape society, the Christian realist will likely find an amenable dialogue partner with the economist who, like her, recognizes that humans face various limitations when working towards a more just society—in this case, resource scarcity. In sum, because of her commitment to political realism, the Christian realist will be ready to learn from the discipline of economics in the quest to understand the forces that shape society. Indeed, there will be a respect for the concerns, questions, methods, and deliverances of economics, such that the Christian realist will not try to subsume economics to another discipline. One of the reasons for the paucity of actual interdisciplinary dialogue between theological ethics and economics has been the penchant of Christian theologians and ethicists to subsume it to another discourse. Take, for example, the work of the liberation theologian Jung Mo Sung, in which he treats economics as a religious discourse.9 Although the aim here is to facilitate the dialogue with economics and issues relating to the economy, it tends to distort and blunt the deliverances of economics, because the scope and structure of economics is not set up on these lines. One of the unique things Christian realism can bring to this discussion is a willingness to engage with economics on its own terms (as it has done, say, with political philosophy and feminist thought). At the same time, the Christian realist will recognize that economics only provides a partial perspective on the forces that shape political choice and action, and therefore there is a need to engage with other disciplines as well, including the discipline of ethics. Moreover, because the framing of economics as the study of human resource allocation under conditions of scarcity relates to the familiar themes in Christian realism of finitude and limits, the Christian realist will likely find in the economist an amenable dialogue partner.

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ECONOMICS MEETS MORAL REALISM The discipline of economics per se is not concerned with ethical argument; rather, the economist qua economist is trying to understand how humans allocate resources under conditions of scarcity. Here, the economist is trying to understand the “forces that drive the decisions that people actually make.”10 However, whenever the economist proffers policy advice some form of moral argument is in play (even if the economist is not aware of it). If left to his own devices—and, in particular, in the absence of any engagement with the discipline of ethics—the economist will evaluate everything against the norm of allocative efficiency, seen best in the call to promote economic growth. Allocative efficiency is something that should be valued, given that we find ourselves in a state of scarcity. As the Christian socialist R. H. Tawney once wrote, “Economic efficiency is a necessary element in the life of any sane and vigorous society, and only the incorrigible sentimentalist will depreciate its significance.”11 However, as he went on to write, “But to convert efficiency from an instrument into a primary object is to destroy efficiency.”12 It is has become commonplace to highlight the ascendancy of economic efficiency in our political discourse—and the problems associated with it. Although economics has certainly played its part in efficiency’s ascendancy, it is not entirely culpable for the result. If Lionel Robbins urged economists to focus on the study of the allocation of scarce resources, it was ultimately so that the deliverances of economics could be related to the deliverances of ethics to help shape economic institutions and policies, thereby contributing to a better world. Robbins imagined a situation in which there was a robust and vibrant engagement between what he described as “objective analysis” (coming from economics) and “applications involving value judgements” (which would come from the discipline of ethics).13 For this to take place, there is a need for economists who are conversant with the discipline of ethics and who have thought about how normative principles might shape economic institutions and policies under conditions of scarcity. There is also a need for ethicists who are conversant with the discipline of economics to think about how the deliverances of economics might feed into ethical discourse about the shape of economic institutions and policies. Ideally, it requires these economists and ethicists to be in dialogue.14 Again, Christian realism is well placed to further what is being advocated here. The commitment to political realism means the Christian realist is open to the deliverances of economics. Moreover, the commitment to moral realism—that is, the claim that “moral statements make claims about what is the case, independently of our ideas about what is the case and of the evidence we marshal to support those ideas”—including how that relates to the ordering of

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economies, means that the Christian realist wants to bring moral arguments to bear in influencing the direction of society.15 Although the Christian realist recognizes that one cannot “rely on moral argument alone to decide political action,” she also recognizes the need for moral argument to create a more just society.16 Both the disciplines of economics and ethics, then, are integral to the ongoing development of a Christian realism that addresses the ongoing and new economic realities that societies face, with their associated threats, challenges, and opportunities. To illustrate the potential of this sort of engagement and dialogue, consider Thomas Piketty’s work Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Much of this work presents data on capital accumulation and how this relates to the evolution of other important economic aggregates such as output, income, and wages. Piketty then seeks to explain why it is that capital accumulation, relative to other economic aggregates, varies in different time periods. In so doing, Piketty is fulfilling the role of the economist in explaining the forces that drive human decision-making, in this case specifically what drives capital accumulation relative to other economic aggregates in different time periods. Yet, it is also clear that Piketty undertakes this analysis because, ultimately, he wants to understand the evolution of capital in order to inform the development of economic institutions and policies that contribute to a better world. He is not content to just understand trends in capital accumulation, but also to outline policy that can contribute to a better situation. For this reason, Piketty writes: I am interested in contributing, however modestly, to the debate about the best way to organize society and the most appropriate institutions and policies to achieve a just social order. Furthermore, I would like to see justice achieved effectively and efficiently under the rule of law, which should apply equally to all and derive from universally understood statutes subject to democratic debate.17

Moreover, Piketty recognizes that this work cannot be undertaken by economists alone, thus he implores that “social scientists in other disciplines should not leave the study of economic facts to economists and not flee in horror the minute a number rears its head, or content themselves with saying that every statistic is a social construct, which of course is true but insufficient.”18 Here, then, is an opportunity for a Christian realist who is concerned with and interested in how economies contribute to a more just social order to engage with an economist who is also concerned with the social order and is calling for dialogue between practitioners of different disciplines. To be more specific, one of the new economic realities that Piketty discusses at length in Capital in the Twenty-First Century is that several

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high-income economies have entered a period in which the rate of return of capital is greater than the overall rate of economic growth (which is a departure from what many developed economies experienced in the first half of the twentieth century). This is something that exercises Piketty throughout Capital in the Twenty-First Century. He writes: When the rate of return on capital significantly exceeds the growth rate of the economy (as it did through much of history until the nineteenth century and as is likely to be the case again in the twenty-first century), then it logically follows that inherited wealth grows faster than output and income. People with inherited wealth need save only a portion of their income from capital to see that capital grow more quickly than the economy as a whole. Under such conditions, it is almost inevitable that inherited wealth will dominate wealth amassed from a lifetime’s labor by a wide margin, and the concentration of capital will attain extremely high levels—levels potentially incompatible with the meritocratic values and principles of social justice fundamental to modern democratic societies.19

On this issue, a Christian realist could make several important and helpful contributions. For example, she could further develop the ethical evaluation of wealth inequality, drawing out when wealth inequality has arisen from action that can receive approbation and when it has not. She could undertake this ethical evaluation at the level of persons, households, and generations, showing when there are points of convergence at the different units of analysis, but also when trade-offs exist. Moreover, she could highlight how different normative concepts (e.g., distributism) could be used to evaluate and support some of Piketty’s policy prescriptions. Indeed, it seems there are several fruitful avenues of engagement that could be explored. THE ECONOMIC ORDER MEETS THEOLOGICAL REALISM There are strong currents of determinism and despair present in the various streams of contemporary discourse about modern economies and economic life—unless, of course, one believes that the current economic order is relatively just and there is little that needs to be done or can be done to improve it.20 To give one such instance, Patrick Deneen, in Why Liberalism Failed, writes about contemporary economic life in the presence of globalization that: Nothing can finally be done, for globalization is an inevitable process, unstoppable by any individual or nation. Whatever one thinks of economic integration, standardization, and homogenization, it is pointless to entertain thoughts of

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alternatives. . . . The economic system that simultaneously is both liberalism’s handmaiden and its engine, like a Frankenstein monster, takes on a life of its own, and its process and logic can no longer be controlled by the people purportedly enjoying the greatest freedom in history. The wages of freedom are bondage to economic inevitability.21

At best, all that one can work for is to encourage small pockets of resistance to the onslaught of the global forces that shape modern economies and economic life. Christian realism is not immune to this sort of determinism and despair. Indeed, Lovin notes that “a realist view of human nature and social structure is an antidote to complacency, which cuts the nerve of action with a sentimental affirmation of things as they are, but that same realism always threatens to lead to despair by presenting obstacles that make change seem impossible.”22 The example that is often cited to illustrate this point is Niebuhr’s outlook and response to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. On this point, the first thing to note is that the situation is not as dire as commentators like Deneen might suggest. While not wanting to deny the pervasiveness and strength of the forces of globalization and the detrimental effects they have on economic life—alongside, of course, the beneficial effects—persons, communities, and societies are not completely powerless. Governments, for example, do have the capacity to manage the forces of globalization and to influence the evolution of social and economic outcomes that their citizens experience, evidenced by the fact that social and economic outcomes do vary considerably across countries.23 Families, businesses, unions, community organizations, churches, and so on also have the ability to influence and ameliorate the forces of globalization. Moreover, Christian realism should be a “hopeful Christian realism.”24 This hope arises from the Christian realist’s commitment to theological realism— and in particular from two sources. First, although Christian realism is aware of and attends to the limits and sinfulness of human nature, a “hopeful realism recognizes that imagination and creativity are part of human nature.”25 In other words, when thinking about creating a more just economic order, a realistic account of human nature must not only recognize limitation and sin, but the capacity of humans to transcend—with determination, imagination, and creativity—the current institutions and policies, by removing those that detract from human flourishing, by finding ways to improve those that need reform, and by setting up those that will add to a more just economic order—a process that will continue, given that any changes in institutional and policy settings will come with a new set of opportunities and problems. Second, a hopeful Christian realism needs to recognize that God is also an agent who is active in the world in the pursuit of justice and righteousness.

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If theological realism is the recognition that claims about God have “cognitive content” and “are not simply expressions of emotions or acts of personal commitment,” there are varieties of Christian realism that claim that God is active in the world in a variety of modes—calling, guiding, promising, delivering, judging, and so on—seeking to achieve God’s purposes for the world.26 Niebuhr himself was wary about any talk of the kingdom of God as a present reality in the world. Thus, Dorrien notes: Near the end of his life, Niebuhr warned Wolfhart Pannenberg and Richard John Neuhaus to steer clear of the kingdom of God. The social gospelers had proved that the kingdom idea was a loser, he urged. Any appeal to the biblical idea of the kingdom as an inbreaking spiritual and historical reality was bound to produce disasters. . . . Niebuhr declared that if it were up to him, he would tear the kingdom of God out of the Bible and Christian doctrine.27

Contrary to Niebuhr, in the face of working for a more just economic order, it is necessary to have a lively sense of the kingdom of God as an “inbreaking spiritual and historical reality” in which God is an active agent in the world, as long as this understanding of the kingdom of God emphasizes the “already” but “not yet” aspects of its inauguration. A theological realism, then, that views God at work in the world can sustain persons and communities in the pursuit of a more just economic order through the removal, renewal, reform, and creation of economic institutions and policies, even given the pervasiveness and strength of global economic forces, some of which are to the detriment to human flourishing. CONCLUSION This chapter has argued that Christian realism is needed and is well placed to engage with and dialogue on economic issues that can contribute to a more just economic order and, therefore, a better world. Drawing on the schema that Christian realism comprises three distinct but related realisms—political, moral, and theological—this chapter has outlined how commitment to these three realisms enables Christian realism to contribute to contemporary discourse on economic issues and concerns. First, a commitment to political realism means that a Christian realist is open to the insights that the discipline of economics can offer in helping her to understand the forces that shape economies and economic life. Second, a commitment to moral realism means that the Christian realist desires to bring moral arguments to bear in the shaping of economic institutions and policies (albeit that the Christian realist recognizes that moral argument, while necessary, is not sufficient to

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shape economic institutions and policies). Finally, a commitment to theological realism means that a Christian realist is a hopeful realist because of her beliefs in the creative and imaginative aspect of human nature and of God as an agent at work in the world. This sustains the Christian realist who is seeking a more just society, especially at this time in the face of strong and pervasive global economic forces. BIBLIOGRAPHY Boettke, Peter J. “Is Economics a Moral Science? A Response to Ricardo F. Crespo.” Journal of Markets and Morality 1, no. 2 (1998): 212–19. Deneen, Patrick J. Why Liberalism Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. Dorrien, Gary J. Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Fox, Richard W. Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography. New York: Pantheon, 1985. Friedman, Thomas L. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. Lovin, Robin W. Christian Realism and the New Realities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ———. Reinhold Niebuhr. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007. ———. Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. McLellan, Nathan I. C. “Christian Political Economy and Economic Science: A Pathway for Interdisciplinary Dialogue.” PhD diss., Southern Methodist University, 2018. https:​//​scholar​.smu​.edu​/religious​_studies​_etds​/5. Ottati, Douglas F. Hopeful Realism: Reclaiming the Poetry of Theology. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1999. Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. Robbins, Lionel. “Economics and Political Economy.” American Economic Review 71, no. 2 (1981): 1–10. ———. An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science. 2nd Edition. London: Macmillian, 1935. Stackhouse, John G. Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Sung, Jung Mo. The Subject, Capitalism, and Religion: Horizons of Hope in Complex Societies. New York: Springer, 2011. ———. Desire, Market and Religion. London: SCM Press, 2007. Tawney, R. H. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. London: Pelican, 1938.

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NOTES 1. Gary J. Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition (Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 226. 2. Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Robin W. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 3. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 4. 4. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 4–5. 5. Lionel Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, 2nd edition (London: Macmillian, 1935), 16. 6. Robbins, vii. 7. Peter J. Boettke, “Is Economics a Moral Science? A Response to Ricardo F. Crespo,” Journal of Markets and Morality 1, no. 2 (1998): 215. Emphasis original. 8. Boettke, 215. 9. Jung Mo Sung, Desire, Market and Religion (London: SCM Press, 2007); Jung Mo Sung, The Subject, Capitalism, and Religion: Horizons of Hope in Complex Societies (New York: Springer, 2011). 10. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 4. 11. R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London: Pelican, 1938), 277. 12. Tawney, 277. 13. Lionel Robbins, “Economics and Political Economy,” American Economic Review 71, no. 2 (1981): 7. For Robbins, the bringing together of these sets of analyses would take place in the discipline of political economy, as the article above outlines. 14. For an elaboration of how this interdisciplinary dialogue might be housed and structured from a Christian standpoint, see Nathan I. C. McLellan, “Christian Political Economy and Economic Science: A Pathway for Interdisciplinary Dialogue,” (PhD diss., Southern Methodist University, 2018). https:​//​scholar​.smu​.edu​/religious​_studies​ _etds​/5. 15. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 12. 16. Lovin, 4. 17. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 31. 18. Piketty, 575. 19. Piketty, 26. 20. For an example of the latter, see Thomas L. Friedman’s, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). 21. Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 10–11. 22. Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), 64. Emphasis added. 23. Gary Dorrien made this point over ten years ago and it still is true: “Governments still play a role in managing globalization and shaping socioeconomic

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outcomes. Free trade agreements usually contain clauses dealing with human rights, labor rights, and ecological standards. Industrialized nations have contentious disputes over immigration policy and the control of labor flows. Government policies on technology and foreign direct investment have immense impacts on the kind of economy that a nation develops.” Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making, 684. 24. Lovin uses this phrase in Reinhold Niebuhr (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), 66, drawing on Douglas F. Ottati, Hopeful Realism: Reclaiming the Poetry of Theology (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1999). 25. Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007), 66. 26. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 20. For an example of the kind of theological realism that I am suggesting within the tradition of Christian realism, see John G. Stackhouse, Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011). 27. Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making, 677.

Chapter Eleven

Institutions and the Future of Christian Realism Dallas Gingles

In Christian Realism and the New Realities, Robin Lovin uses the words “institution,” “institutions,” and “institutional” 131 times.1 There are other important terms in New Realities—e.g., “contexts”—that also connote “institution.” One of the most striking features of Lovin’s emphasis on institutions in this volume is how little direct relation it has to the work of Reinhold Niebuhr. Rather than Niebuhr, Lovin draws primarily upon Dietrich Bonhoeffer and, to a slightly lesser degree, a handful of more contemporary liberal political theorists. This is, on the one hand, intentional. As Lovin puts it in the opening lines of the preface: More than a decade ago, I wrote a book called Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. The distinction between the man and the method was important to me, as it was to Niebuhr himself. Christian realism did not belong to him alone, though he was its most articulate and influential voice. . . . This volume continues that effort to take the way of thinking that Niebuhr represented beyond his own formulation of it.2

Specifically, this means that Lovin wants to emphasize “the social and political pluralism in the Christian realist tradition and . . . the theology of responsibility on which his [Niebuhr’s] pragmatic approach to moral problems depends.”3 Niebuhr’s version of Christian realism is the paradigm, but his account needs filling out by those who have better articulated the role institutions play in ordering our common life. On the other hand, however, it is because Lovin interprets Niebuhr’s version of Christian realism as so context specific that it cannot account for the changing realities of both global political order and domestic democratic 183

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politics, which is increasingly constituted by institutional pluralism. On Lovin’s telling, Niebuhr’s realism relies on an understanding of politics in which the modern state is the central—if not quite single—institutional framework for understanding social order. Niebuhr’s analysis suggests some things about realistic political leadership, but it even more clearly defines the task of the theological realist in relation to the state. . . . When Niebuhr developed these ideas at the beginning of the Second World War, their application was clear to anyone who knew the rest of his Christian realism. . . . Subsequent history shows, however, that it is not so easy to maintain the coherence of this Christian realist analysis against the changing realities of an international order based on sovereign states.4

The “new realities” Christian realism must address, then, are centrally the realities of a social order constituted by institutional pluralism rather than by a single overarching institutional context in which the state is responsible for coordinating interests and goods. Multiple incommensurate institutions now pursue and secure goods that liberal thinkers at mid-century thought it would be the state’s responsibility to pursue and secure. I share Lovin’s view of the importance of institutional pluralism—including the emphasis he places on Bonhoeffer’s doctrine of the mandates for explicating it. But, I think that Lovin is, oddly enough, not Niebuhrian enough in his explication of institutions in New Realities. I want to suggest, then, that Niebuhr himself offers a compelling complement to Lovin’s Christian realist treatment of pluralistic institutions. I do this by arguing that Niebuhr’s own account of politics contains an implicit theoretical framework for institutional pluralism. While Lovin renders the institutional pluralism explicit via Bonhoeffer and the liberal theorists mentioned above, attending to Niebuhr’s argument directly is helpful because near the center of his argument is an account of the good that undergirds flourishing institutional pluralism.‌‌ * * *‌‌‌‌‌ ‌‌‌ my description of Lovin’s position, I have, no doubt, overstated the disIn tinction he draws between a kind of institutional monism defined by the state and institutional pluralism defined by “multiple contexts.” After all, even in Niebuhr’s formulation there is a clear delineation between at least the two institutions of state and the church. My reason for overstating this distinction is to draw attention to the way Lovin’s version of Christian realism provides a framework for understanding that different contexts not only pursue and

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secure particular goods, but that as contexts of responsibility they operate with implicit conceptions of the good. In the overstated case, we can see how states operate this way. The normative upshot, however, is that institutions broadly conceived—not only states—are bearers of traditions of the good.5 Lovin puts Niebuhr’s state-centric position in conversation with the political liberalism paradigmatically articulated by John Rawls. Rawlsian public reason shapes the account of the state that we who inhabit the world of the “new realities” take for granted. At first blush our Rawlsian presumptions seem to easily cohere with Niebuhr’s core convictions, given that Niebuhr is most often associated with a position that is suspicious of the state’s ability to conflate its own self-interest with the will of God. The balance of powers and interests that public reason is meant to secure, and the way public reason deflates our epistemological pretensions to accurately discern the will of God in history is congruent with Niebuhr’s suspicions of state power. But Niebuhr’s account of the state was formed in a context in which the options were fairly clearly between totalitarianism and democracy, and it predates John Rawls’s account of political liberalism and public reason. Niebuhr’s account of the state, then, is more confident about the state’s role as a keeper or mediator of a conception of the good than is the account of Rawls and his inheritors.6 Niebuhr’s willingness to unironically use terms like “the great civilized nations” shows just how straightforwardly he is willing to assume that nations are bearers of traditions that can be more or less just—that there is a realism to his understanding of what we may call a state’s “moral ontology.”7 The question is how we are to understand these political institutions as bearers of conceptions of the good. Like most of Niebuhr’s dialectical arguments, the answer to this question is less than straightforward. For Niebuhr, cultures and civilizations are bearers of meaning—bulwarks against nihilism—in history. But they are meaningful because they are objects of “the final judgment.” As Niebuhr explains: All historical realities are indeed ambiguous. Therefore no absolute distinction between good and evil in them is possible. But this does not obviate the necessity and possibility of a final judgment upon good and evil. . . . The very rigour with which all judgments in history culminate in a final judgment is thus an expression of meaningfulness of all historic conflicts between good and evil. Yet the necessity of a “final” judgment upon all other judgments is derived from the ambiguity of these conflicts.8

It is as historical realities ordered to final judgment that cultures and civilizations bear within themselves genuine goods. The central good they bear is an account of the good that makes them identifiable as a culture or civilization. An account of the good, that is, is itself a good. If this is true of a culture or

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civilization as an historical reality, it should also be true of the state as an historical reality and, to extend one more time, of other institutions as historical realities. This confidence in cultures and civilizations as bearers of the good is based on Niebuhr’s understanding of the “transcendence” of humans and human activity. This confidence, however, is twinned with Niebuhr’s realistic assessment of the temptations of transcendence. Not only can humans transcend themselves in “infinite regression,” as he puts it several times in Nature and Destiny. It is this capacity for transcendence that tempts us—to pride, when we fixate on our capacity for transcendence, and to sensuality when we deny it. If this is true of humans in spoonfuls, it is true of institutions in spades. This is the theological provenance of Niebuhr’s famous assessment of the irony of “moral men” constituting “immoral societies.”9 ­­The ability of institutions to bear within themselves the good that is an account of the good tempts them to overestimate their own virtue and to defend their existence in ways that are vicious. It is in this set of themes and arguments that Niebuhr is most Augustinian.10 Scholarly debates about how faithful Niebuhr is to Augustine regarding the finer points of Christian doctrine notwithstanding, what Niebuhr provides here is the core of an Augustinian answer to the Augustinian question about what constitutes a people.11 For Augustine, there is an eschatological reality that promises ultimate peace for those who love God even to the contempt of self and portends ultimate anguish for those who love self even to the contempt of God. But the eschatological reality frames rather than funds our historical situation. We cannot build a common life around our ultimate loves because they are veiled to us. Under the constraints of such ignorance about the deepest loves of both our neighbors and ourselves, we cannot form our common life on promised eschatological peace. Rather, we form it around the approximation of such peace, by cultivating love for the good(s) we share in common. The peace of the eschaton is pure; peace in history is alloyed. This leads Augustine to identify historical peoples as those who have a genuine but alloyed good at the core of their existence. Niebuhr may not be as confident as Augustine that the division between peoples is as stark as the choice between love of God and love of self—not least because he may not be as confident as Augustine that there are those in history whose love for God is at the core of their existence. But he is deeply Augustinian in his argument that cultures and civilizations are bearers of meaning in history insofar as they judge between good and evil while being themselves under the threat and promise of ultimate judgment. The judgment of good and evil within history is the alloyed version of the pure good of the ultimate judgment of good and evil beyond history.

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Niebuhr’s most famous version of this argument, that historical peoples possess genuine but alloyed good at their core, is his “vindication of democracy”—that democracy is made possible by the human capacity for justice but made necessary by the human inclination to injustice.12 Democracy is a term that represents “a free society,” and these free societies prosper “best in a cultural, religious and moral atmosphere which encourages neither a too pessimistic nor too optimistic view of human nature. . . . A free society requires some confidence in the ability of men to reach tentative and tolerable adjustments between their competing interests and to arrive at some common notions of justice which transcend all partial interests.”13 Free societies, then, are those in which the account of the good that makes them a people is at the same time cultivated and contested. Or, to put it differently, the contestation over the good is the good they bear in history. The genius of democracy is that it provides the framework for this kind of contestation. Insofar as the mechanisms of democracy are flourishing—or even decently functional—they help cultivate love for this good. By creating and maintaining the space within which the contestation about goods and the good can be conducted, the government is engaged in fostering love for this particular good. This is so because we learn to love the good that is contestation over the good by engaging in that contestation, not by having it forced upon us. As contemporary critics of liberalism never tire of pointing out, this is a very limited account of the good. It appears to require the government to maintain strict neutrality related to any explicit account of the good while trading on residual cultural virtues that long traditions—especially religious traditions—have cultivated within that society. There is undoubtably some truth to this criticism. The desire to engage in a contestation over the good is itself shaped by prior traditions—traditions that emphasize the importance of truth, and the importance of individuals as capable of discerning it and conforming themselves to it. Attending to this criticism reveals the important place of institutions in the life of “free societies.” Institutions, and not only political regimes, are bearers of traditions of the good in at least two ways. First, institutions are contexts in which we can and do contest the good. Second, institutions are themselves bearers of residual cultural virtues—sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. The current frailty of political life in the most developed democracies may have as much to do with undervaluing institutions as it does with the deficiencies of party politics or the devolution of parliamentary norms. The future of free societies, then, may rest in a revitalization of institutional life. And, concomitantly, the future of Christian realism will be less like repeating Niebuhr’s particular arguments about various subjects—though that will remain important—and more like replicating Niebuhr’s ability to

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interpret for the world the common life it takes for granted, and cultivating the conditions for the possibility of that common life. In Niebuhr’s time, those conditions were most obviously related to the norms of international order under the conditions of war and a bipolarity of great powers. In our case, those conditions are related to the revitalization of institutional life in domestic politics. This kind of revitalization requires attending to both features of institutional life I have just mentioned. First, we need to build—or rebuild—institutions that explicitly conduce to the contestation over the good. The most obvious example of this kind of institution is the university, and the future of free societies may very well depend in no small part on the ability of university administrators and faculty to forge a path back from the endless work of attracting students to their tuition-dependent campuses with swim parks and the reputation of their business schools, to the work of cultivating lovers of the good that is contestation over the good. However, universities are not the only institutions that serve this purpose. As Joshua Hordern has compellingly argued, healthcare institutions depend on substantive accounts of the good to enable us to make choices about everything from the most contested healthcare questions—e.g., abortion—to the most seemingly mundane.14 Recall that for Niebuhr, “the very rigour with which all judgments in history culminate in a final judgment is thus an expression of meaningfulness of all historic conflicts between good and evil.”15 Healthcare institutions are built to intentionally and routinely engage in making judgments about life and death. Often, they are tasked with making these decisions themselves; even more often they are the framework within which individuals and families must reason about life and death and then make decisions about them. In this way, healthcare institutions—perhaps even more than universities—are bearers of meaning in history. Most university students will never take an ethics course; almost everyone will be required at some point in their lives to reason morally in a healthcare institution. For Hordern, the fact that healthcare institutions depend on substantive accounts of the good is not simply a point about the responsibilities of healthcare practitioners or administrators. Rather, this points to a deeper reality about our common political life. Because health care is a vital part of common life to which the government allocates public funding, every moral decision made in a healthcare institution underwritten with public funding challenges the putative neutrality of the government that allocates those funds. One implication of Hordern’s argument is that official political neutrality should be in the service of institutional commitments to particular goods. This is, of course, a kind of good. Properly conceived, neutrality is—as Lovin describes autonomy—a political achievement, rather than a natural feature of the moral life.16

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This gives credence to the arguments of critics of liberalism, insofar as it shows that substantive features of liberalism—such as autonomy and neutrality—are culturally conditioned and constructed rather than natural. If we mistakenly assume them to be central or primary goods of natural human life, we are in danger of inhabiting forms of life that are without meaning. Mistaking achievements of political life, like autonomy and neutrality, for natural goods that constitute human life leads to an account of human life built around nothing but the endless whims of the will and practiced indifference to everything but conflict avoidance. This accusation of nihilism is occasionally made explicit in the criticisms of liberalism, but it is more often implicit in them, just below the surface. It is an important criticism: we should not want to inhabit a form of life that uses moral aspiration as a warm cloak to insulate us from an otherwise cruel and empty cosmos. But, if on the one hand, the accounts of neutrality and autonomy provided by Hordern and Lovin give credence to the concerns of critics of liberalism, on the other, they give the lie to them. Insofar as features of liberalism like autonomy and neutrality are conceived of as the accomplishment of politics rather than as the ground for it, what becomes clear is that liberal politics is meant to secure the conditions for human flourishing conceived of as at least partially constituted by a contestation over goods and the good. By attempting neutrality, the government secures the space for institutions to be built around substantive commitments. By securing and defending the conditions for autonomy, the government makes individuals responsible for their own moral decision making—decisions that are most often made within the institutional contexts that mediate the accounts of the good that make possible that kind of decision-making. Put this way, liberalism seems to be the framework most conducive to the good life as even Alasdair MacIntyre conceives it: that is, as “the life spent looking for the good life.”17 Here, then, we reach the point where Niebuhr’s own assessment of cultures and civilizations as bearers of meaning—what I have above called bulwarks against nihilism—sheds light on the centrality of institution-building for the future of Christian realism. In his time, Niebuhr felt existentially compelled to defend democracy against the external threats to it. In doing so, he could presuppose a democratic order filled to the brim with institutions that secured a domestic order that revolved around a constant contestation over the good. In so many ways, we do not inhabit Niebuhr’s world, but this may be the most important difference between his time and ours. We do face grave threats to democracy from without, but unlike Niebuhr we cannot presuppose a robust institutional life within. This means that because the future of free societies may depend on the revitalization of institutions, the future of Christian realism may be as much about building institutions as it is about being a theological voice interpreting the life of societies.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Finnemore, Martha. “Review: Norms, Culture, and World Politics: Insights from Sociology’s Institutionalism.” International Organization 50, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 325–47. Fox, Richard. Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Gaston, K. Healan. “Niebuhr’s Background: Family, Church, and Society.” In The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr, edited by Robin Lovin and Joshua Mauldin, 3–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Hordern, Joshua. Compassion in Healthcare: Pilgrimage, Practice, and Civic Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. ———. “The Challenge of Healthcare for Consensus Public Reason.” Social Theory and Practice 47, no. 3 (July 2021): 485–517. Lovin, Robin W. Christian Realism and the New Realities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981. Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944. ———. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man. Vol. II, Human Destiny. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949. ———. “Augustine’s Political Realism.” In The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, edited by Robert McAfee Brown, 123–141. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Sabella, Jeremy L. An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2017.

NOTES 1. Robin W. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). By contrast, the words “mandate” or “mandates,” which are central terms in Lovin’s interpretation of Bonhoeffer across multiple chapters, appear fewer than fifty times. 2. Lovin, Christian Realism, vii. 3. Lovin, Christian Realism, vii. 4. Lovin, Christian Realism, 172. 5. Sociologists, scholars of international relations, and others have been arguing about the importance of “strong external cultural support,” as motivations for the actions of social groups, rather than rationality defined in terms of functionality or efficiency. The arguments of this school of “institutionalists” corroborates the idea that institutions are bearers of traditions of the good. See, Martha Finnemore,

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“Review: Norms, Culture, and World Politics: Insights from Sociology’s Institutionalism,” International Organization 50, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 334. 6. As Healan Gaston puts it, “Despite dramatic shifts on the world scene, Niebuhr would repeatedly equate countries, movements, and social groups with philosophical positions—usually errors—and assume that their historical fortunes reflected the adequacy of the underlying ideas.” K. Healan Gaston, “Niebuhr’s Background: Family, Church, and Society,” in The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr, eds. Robin Lovin and Joshua Mauldin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 10. 7. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) [originally published in 1944], 161. 8. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II, Human Destiny (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 292–93, emphasis added. 9. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932). 10. See especially, Reinhold Niebuhr, “Augustine’s Political Realism,” in The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, ed. Robert McAfee Brown (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 123–41. 11. Augustine’s question is one he has inherited, not one he has initiated. 12. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, xxxii. 13. Niebuhr, Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, “New Forward,” xxvii, and “Forward to the First Edition,” xxxi. 14. Joshua Hordern, “The Challenge of Healthcare for Consensus Public Reason,” Social Theory and Practice 47, no. 3 (July 2021): 485–517. See also, Joshua Hordern, Compassion in Healthcare: Pilgrimage, Practice, and Civic Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). 15. Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. 2, 293. 16. On autonomy as an achievement, see Robin W. Lovin, “Human Flourishing and Palliative Care: Autonomy, Mortality, and Rationality,” in The Pursuit of Life: The Promise and Challenge of Palliative Care, eds Robert Fine and Jack Levison (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), 142–54. 17. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007) [originally published in 1981], 219.

Chapter Twelve

Christian Realism and Race in the United States Peter Paris

The purpose of this chapter is threefold: (a) to explore how Reinhold Niebuhr became important to me; (b) to provide a brief description of Christian realism as Niebuhr’s major contribution to Christian social ethics; and (c) to discuss the ambiguous value of Christian realism for social justice activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and others. HOW NIEBUHR BECAME IMPORTANT TO ME I first encountered Reinhold Niebuhr’s writings in the Student Christian Movement of Canada (SCM), which was then and continues to be an ecumenical association of students in most Canadian universities including my alma mater, Acadia University in Nova Scotia. Its national office is in Toronto, and its worldwide headquarters is in Geneva, where it continues to be closely associated with the World Council of Churches. I became a member of the organization in my junior year at Acadia. The SCM was characterized by its study groups that centered on the Bible, theology, and such social issues as war and peace, labor relations, and international concerns. In its study groups we read and discussed essays and book chapters of many prominent theologians, including sections of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society and his little book, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, Paul Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith and The Courage to Be, Karl Barth’s Against the Stream, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s, The Cost of Discipleship, and the works of many others, including plays and novels by prominent writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and 193

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Christopher Fry, to mention only three. I was deeply moved by Niebuhr, because he was the first author in my entire academic career to address the problem of racial discrimination and segregation. Since I was the only person of African descent in the organization and one of the very few in my university, it was most gratifying to see that issue mentioned in a theological text because it was ubiquitous throughout my native Nova Scotia, omnipresent in my daily life, and a divisive principle among the churches in the province. Thus, I cannot describe adequately Niebuhr’s profound impact on me both then and now largely because his theological thought acknowledged the reality of my daily life. Suffice it to say, however, I remained in the Student Christian Movement of Canada throughout my years as a seminary student, after which I joined its national staff and served as General Secretary of the organization at the University of Alberta for three years. I then accepted another three-year assignment as the National Traveling Secretary for the SCM of Nigeria that had been organized there by Nigerians who had encountered it while pursuing higher education in Europe. Similarly, it had expanded to many other countries in Africa. During those early years of the 1960s, when the continent of Africa was seething with new birth as newly formed independent nations, my recently wedded wife and I were privileged to begin our married life in Nigeria. We were supported there by the newly formed ecumenical assistance program of the World Student Christian Federation’s triangular partnership with the SCMs of Canada and Nigeria. After another year of service as the World Mission National Traveling Secretary for the SCM of Canada, I embarked on PhD studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School in the fall of 1965. Much to my delight, the first course I registered for at that school was an in-depth study of Reinhold Niebuhr’s two-volume work The Nature and Destiny of Man taught by Professor Alvin Pitcher. One of my classmates in that course was the twenty-three-year-old civil rights activist Jesse Louis Jackson, who during that semester founded his organization, Operation Breadbasket, with a small group of students including myself in the basement of Friendship Baptist Church on the south side of Chicago. The organization’s name was later changed to Operation PUSH. For the first couple of years its weekly meetings were held on Saturday mornings in the dining room of the Chicago Theological Seminary, where Jackson was pursuing his MDiv degree. But after Dr. King’s assassination in April 1968, that location was changed to a local movie theater because the space had become too small to contain the large numbers of people who began attending largely as a memorial tribute to Dr. King. In those early days, Professor Pitcher exerted much effort in trying to persuade Jackson to adopt Niebuhr’s understanding of love, justice, and

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power as an adequate theological ethic for interpreting his organization’s life and mission. It is interesting to note, however, that the ethical principles of love, justice, and power that guided Dr. King, Jackson, and many others, did not originate with Niebuhr though they were constitutive dimensions of his thought. Nevertheless, Niebuhr’s negative view of power was always an implicit problem for the freedom movement that used the method of nonviolent resistance as its primary means for actualizing racial justice in this country. Most important, no one actively engaged in the Civil Rights Movement at that time ever raised any criticism of nonviolence as a valued moral instrument wholly compatible with the ethics of Jesus and rendered demonstratively effective by Mohandas Gandhi. Though Niebuhr’s criticism of power remains helpful in assessing the arrogant pride and idolatry implicit in the philosophy of white supremacy, the basic cause of all white racism, his theological thought as a whole never gained primacy beyond the mainline white Protestant churches and the various seminary classrooms where their white clergy were taught. In other words, Niebuhr’s thought was not a major influence on the theological perspective of Martin Luther King Jr. or the Civil Rights Movement he led. By the end of the decade, when Jackson had embraced the emergent Black Power ethos, he and others relegated all white activists and sympathizers in the Civil Rights Movement, including Pitcher and Niebuhr, to the unflattering category of “white liberals” for whom the struggle for racial justice was not a life-and-death issue, as it was for Black people. Accordingly, white people were charged to organize opposition to racism in their own residential neighborhoods and thereby leave the organizing of Black people to themselves. Alas, that was a very painful experience for Professor Pitcher and many other whites who, under the inspiration of the 1965 Selma-Montgomery March, had only recently become active participants in the Civil Rights Movement. Now, it is important to note that Jackson had been commissioned by Dr. King to work with the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCOs) on the south side of Chicago to prepare the city for the move of the southern Freedom Movement to the north during the forthcoming summer of 1966. His dedication to that mission was so time consuming that it actually prevented him from completing his coursework at Chicago Theological Seminary for the Master of Divinity degree, which was bestowed on him later as an honorary degree, possibly the first such award ever given. Always interested in economic development for African Americans, both Dr. King and Jesse Jackson were greatly inspired by Rev. Leon Sullivan’s work in Philadelphia. As pastor of the Zion Baptist Church in that city, he had inspired over four hundred Black pastors to persuade their members not to buy from stores where they could not work. That tactic, popularly known as boycotting, though strategically named by him as “selective purchasing,”

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achieved a major victory in Philadelphia in 1964 when Sullivan’s congregation succeeded in purchasing a shopping center, which they named Progress Plaza. Inspired by Sullivan, Black clergy in that city had organized their congregants to purchase shares at ten dollars a month for thirty-six months (the so-called 10/36 plan) in order to purchase the property. The success of that self-help venture was enormous, as evidenced by an official visit to the site by President Richard Nixon in 1968 in order to promote Sullivan’s socalled “black capitalism” program as a plank in his presidential campaign strategy. Sullivan soon founded the Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America (OIC), which, with the help of many Black churches, soon formed branches throughout the United States and several other countries around the world. After he became a board member of General Motors and the first African American on the board of any major corporation, Sullivan soon developed what became known as the “Sullivan Principles,” which provided guidelines for many business investments in South Africa during the apartheid era. Needless to say, perhaps, those principles were highly contested throughout the Civil Rights Movement, which resisted any such compromise with apartheid. Nonetheless, before his untimely death in 2001, Sullivan had received both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian award. In short, Sullivan’s OIC model proved to be an effective empowerment plan for poor communities and bestowed positive meaning on all such quests for economic power: quests that Reinhold Niebuhr could affirm ambiguously since he believed that all power was endlessly expansive and thus tended inevitably to some form of tyranny. Such an ambiguous view of power neither comprised any real threat to those who had power nor constituted any restraint on Sullivan’s advocacy of selective purchasing which, incidentally, King affirmed as compatible with his active promotion of nonviolent resistance. It is an understatement to say that both Dr. King and Reverend Jackson were deeply impressed with Sullivan’s economic success. In fact, Jackson sought a way to implement the program in Chicago even while being pressured by Dr. Pitcher to embrace Niebuhr’s theological thought in speaking theologically about his actions since he (Pitcher), being wholly ignorant of the Black church tradition, was unable to discern any theological efficacy in it whatsoever despite the fact that both King and Sullivan had been morally and theologically formed in that context rather than the predominantly white universities and seminaries they had attended. Alas, an inevitable and irreconcilable break soon occurred between Pitcher and Jackson.

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NIEBUHR’S CHRISTIAN REALISM The concept “Christian realism” represents Niebuhr’s response to “Christian idealism,” which he thought represented all theological and moral perfectionists in both Europe and the United States whose thought was influenced more by the rational idealism of the enlightenment than St. Augustine’s biblical understanding of humanity that had significantly shaped the Protestant Reformation, which Niebuhr fully embraced. In fact, Niebuhr’s view of the so-called social gospel movement in the United States that was led by such theological luminaries as Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, William Dwight Porter Bliss, Abbott Lyman, Shailer Mathews, Edward Everett Hale, Charles Munroe Sheldon, and others exemplified his most vivid examples of Christian idealism in the United States. Unlike that movement’s mission of striving to realize an ideal vision such as the Kingdom of God, Christian realism challenged thinkers to attend to all the realities in any historical situation that militated against the full realization of any such ideal construct. It required careful consideration of all the sociological, political, economic, psychological, and moral factors in any situation including, most of all, the propensity of all humans to sin by denying their finitude and thinking more highly of their moral, intellectual, and practical achievements than they ought. Niebuhr called such an inclination the sin of pride, which he believed attended the thought, morality, and achievements of all those who possessed either political or economic power such as dictators, social aristocrats, and other wealthy elites. While Niebuhr was widely suspicious of the morality of all such people, and though he sympathized with those who were victimized by them, he failed to be an unambiguous source of inspiration for those who sought sufficient power to transform their social condition. That failure might have been attributable to the social distance that existed between himself and his Harlem neighbors especially after joining the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Between the years 1915 and 1928 he had pastored a German-speaking immigrant church in Detroit, which enabled him to be in close contact with the working-class people in his congregation while the industrial tycoon, Henry Ford, was rapidly rising to enormous heights of power not only in Detroit but throughout the nation as a whole, a rise that Niebuhr could not ignore as he strenuously endeavored to help his congregation develop the necessary resources for a viable life in an urban context that was dominated by an economic force whose wealth was gained at the expense of poorly paid laborers working in unhealthy automobile factories. Niebuhr’s book Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic discussed that power relation in a somewhat cynical though realistic way.

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THE LIMITATIONS OF CHRISTIAN REALISM FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE ACTIVISTS Now, it is important to note that whenever Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or President Barack Obama occasionally spoke about their high regard for Reinhold Niebuhr, neither of them was a Niebuhrian in any full sense of the term. Rather, they both deeply appreciated Niebuhr’s sympathetic mention of the race problem and his praise for all endeavors to effect racial justice and societal transformation. Further, both of them delighted in his pairing theology with politics by never addressing the one in isolation from the other, which clearly revealed the imprint of Augustine’s theological realism on his thought. As stated above, both Niebuhr’s explicit and implicit criticisms of all agents of transformative power failed to motivate those for whom power is a necessary means for changing their unjust situations. Hence, we might reasonably ask, what word of moral encouragement does Niebuhr’s thought offer those who are caught in the grip of such immoral foes? At best, it must be ambiguous. Following the Civil War, thousands of impoverished Black sharecroppers dreamed about a better way of life. Similarly, countless numbers of innocent Black children struggled to gain an education in unequal segregated public schools. Further still, during that time and for a long while afterward, Black men and women were denied access to jobs, public facilities, decent housing, health care, and the right to vote. At the same time, European imperial powers had colonized hundreds of millions of people throughout the southern hemisphere, robbing them of their personal dignity, political sovereignty, economic resources, and spiritual aspirations. Since power was a necessary means for changing those situations, how did Niebuhr’s criticism of power guide, inspire, or motivate those who urgently needed it as the means for realizing the moral transformation of their social and political condition? Since Niebuhr enjoyed the privileged status of a white American man both in the city of Detroit and later in New York where he lived and worked within the one square block of the fortresslike walls of Union Theological Seminary, which was closely associated with the prestigious Columbia University, it should not be difficult to understand why he failed to relate closely to either the Black or Spanish populations who lived a short distance away in Harlem, people who must have viewed the resources of his learned environment as alien to them. Moreover, he had no Black colleagues at Union and very few Black students who could either affirm or challenge his assumptions. Thus, more often than not, whenever he had occasion to speak about Black people and their plight, he invariably did so in the third person and almost never in

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a face-to-face relationship with them. One prominent exception, however, occurred in a 1964 filmed interview of him and the novelist James Baldwin soon after the death of the four little girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. In that discussion, moderated by the Reverend Thomas Kilgore, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Baldwin constantly disagreed with what he considered to be Niebuhr’s inadequate analysis of the problem of white supremacy which, in his view, constituted the primary cause of the church’s bombing. Now, if Christian realism involves careful consideration of all the factors in a situation, were not Niebuhr’s neighbors in Harlem crucial factors in his situation? Is it not ironic that when Dietrich Bonhoeffer was welcomed to Union Theological Seminary in the 1930s by Niebuhr and others, he soon visited the predominantly Black Abyssinian Baptist Church, where he eventually taught a Sunday School class while his American host Reinhold remained a stranger in Harlem? Reggie Williams’s important book Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance (2014) has rescued that subject from the possible oblivion of history.1 Niebuhr was not unaware of the problems associated with his ambiguous attitude toward such social realities. In fact, it became his ever-present trademark even in discussing the most tragic events in Western history. For example, in his 1948 speech at the founding meeting of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam when the world was just beginning to rebuild itself after World War II, he said the following concerning the victims of that horrific war: “Must we not remind those who are weak and defrauded and despised that God will avenge the cruelties from which they suffer, but will also not hear the cruel resentment which corrupts their hearts?”2 His habitual analysis of both sides of an issue sometimes seemed insensitive to the particular issue under discussion. Yet, while acknowledging the great disparities between the forces of labor and management, he was convinced that almost any self-interest on the part of labor was a move toward social justice as long as labor remained powerless. But such a judgment would inevitably change as soon as labor should gain power because he believed that power invariably corrupts its subject. Yet as Robert McAfee Brown has noted with regard to the relation of religious responsibility and political affairs, Niebuhr on another occasion could make the following claim: “[It is] my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made the servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.”3 Both in that statement and elsewhere, Niebuhr’s sympathies always favored the powerless over the powerful by viewing the impulses of the powerless as the starting point in the quest for social justice. But the inclination for the necessary power to correct

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the imbalance would have no self-limits and thus continue unabatedly until it was challenged by some opposing force. Justice, as the balancing of opposing powers, must always be a constantly changing reality. Since Niebuhr himself was a finite mortal being, his knowledge and judgments were constantly evolving as evidenced by various troubling statements he made earlier in his life about the race problem in the United States, which he and others were prone to call by the misnomer of “The Negro Issue in America.” In 1944 he discussed that concern in his journal, Christianity and Crisis, in which he said that the “Negroes” have more rights in World War II than they had in World War I. Yet they were more resentful then than earlier, which he attributed to their increase in education and other advances. That statement implied that they had lacked the capacity for such resentment earlier. Though he was right in saying that if a community desires to keep another in subjection, it will need to rob its people of the capacity to resist injustice, he was wrong in claiming that any community could be robbed of such a capacity. In other words, humans may be denied certain forms of public resistance but not the capacity itself to resist. Any rigorous historical analysis of African American history reveals that the capacity for resistance was never lost, even during the darkest times of their enslavement. That fact was evidenced by the many and varied plantation revolts undertaken by such courageous leaders as Gabriel Prosser (Richmond, 1800); Denmark Vesey (Charleston, SC, 1822); and Nat Turner (Virginia, 1831); as well as Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad (1849–1860) and Sojourner Truth’s (1843–1883) work as both an abolitionist and a women’s rights activist. With the awareness of all of these and many others, the iconic nineteenth-century Black leader Frederick Douglass, was inspired to declare that the only enduring weapon that Black people had was “to agitate, agitate, agitate.” Historical analysis reveals that such agitation was undertaken in many different ways, including the inner lives of many who might have appeared to be accommodationists like the unknown authors of the spirituals. Yet, at the same time, Niebuhr was always deeply aware of the racial divisions within the Christian Church which prevented Black people and white people from worshipping together. Accordingly, he rightly chided the white church about its denominational and racial divisions thusly: Racial conflict has become the most vicious of all forms of social conflict in this nation. And the racial tensions will become worse long before they will become better. The church might better try to present the national community with a greater number of truly contrite souls, truly ‘emancipated’ of race prejudice, who express their emancipation partly in the contrite recognition of the remnant of pride that remains in the souls of even the emancipated.4

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As a theologian in the United States, Niebuhr was unique in writing many short meaningful commentaries about the race problem. In the main his instincts were altogether in accord with those of progressive Black leaders of his day even though he was not in direct contact with them. Yet, he was a keen observer of the nation’s daily events and was never reluctant to express his opinions about them whenever asked to do so. He also learned much from his former white students after they had returned to the south with the resolve to engage in the struggle for racial justice. Arguably, the most prominent of those former students was Miles Horton, the cofounder of the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, James Bevel, John Lewis, Anne Braden, Bayard Rustin, and many others occasionally met with a number of progressive whites to discuss cooperative activities in the racial struggle. One cannot overestimate the danger implicit in such undertakings at that time, especially since many of them were unfairly branded as communists by their local opponents. Now, Niebuhr frequently spoke about the race problem as an example of race pride “that expressed itself in every encounter between different races, particularly when one race has a minority status.”5 Such a universal claim was contradicted by an alternative fact, namely, that many Black artists, literary writers, performers, and others sought refuge from US racial injustice by emigrating during the first half of the twentieth century to Paris and other European cities, places where they were a minority yet treated fairly with dignity and respect. Niebuhr also claimed that racism is a deep moral and spiritual problem that cannot be resolved merely by political or legal means. “If the law goes too far beyond the moral and social standards of the community” it cannot be obeyed. “The majority of the community must accept the law . . . if it is to be enforceable.”6 Thus, here and elsewhere, Niebuhr’s admonition unwittingly gave greater comfort to those who supported the status quo than those who sought to change it. In order to give him the benefit of the doubt, however, Niebuhr might have corrected himself had the issue been pointed out to him at the time. Similarly, in my judgment, Niebuhr is guilty of another grave offense, as revealed in the most shocking thing he ever wrote; namely, his 1956 statement about the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision: In 1896, the Supreme Court tried to ease the hiatus between the ideal and the social realities by its doctrine of “separate but equal” rights before the law. It was a very good doctrine for its day; for we must remember that the present Supreme Court decision would, at the beginning of the century, merely have prompted revolt. And revolt that is so widespread that police power cannot suppress it represents the defeat both of the law and the ideal. History had to prepare

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the nation for the present Supreme Court decision. By “history” we mean something more embodied than the abstract concept. We mean the thoughts and aspirations of a people, and the dozens of hesitant or bold actions that were taken by individuals and groups to overcome racial bias, to lift the educational standards of the allegedly inferior group and to breach the bar of segregation in every walk of life and in every communal relationship.7

The above quotation reveals that at that time Niebuhr aligned himself with those who seemed more concerned about a spurious good for white Americans than justice for Black children, which reveals a troubling moral problem with his doctrine of Christian realism which easily led him to advance an unfortunate moral judgment. Similarly, Niebuhr appeared to agree with the southern journalist and politician Hodding Carter andthe renowned writer William Faulkner when he said “that, whatever may be the ultimate issues of justice in this problem, it is now unwise to push the cause of desegregation too consistently, lest the Southern white people are pushed, in Faulkner’s phrase, ‘off balance’ and are not allowed time to get their balance.”8 Once again, it appears that Niebuhr’s realism implied a measure of agreement with the so-called moderate Southerners who opposed rapid social change and rarely if ever agreed to a time schedule for the dawn of social justice. Thus, all such statements by Niebuhr provided fertile soil for many subsequent neoconservatives like Michael Novak, John Richard Neuhaus, Peter Berger, and other founders of the Institute of Religion and Democracy (IRD) to claim him after his death as the inspirational source of their ideology. Niebuhr’s view of the common involvement of humans in the sins of racial loyalty and prejudice led him to conclude that race prejudice “is not a Southern sin, but a general human short-coming.”9 That easily placated the consciences of both northern and southern racists. Since no one in particular can be either blamed or praised for what is universal, his attempt to quell the self-righteousness of northerners did more to support the status quo than provide much-needed support for the agents of racial justice, despite the following alternative statement he offered in the same discussion that deplored inaction: Nevertheless, the realization of our general involvement in the evils of racial prejudice must not prompt us to inaction when particularly flagrant forms of the sins we all commit challenge our conscience. The fact that we all violate the law of love in some way or other ought not to obscure to our conscience the force of that law. Every Christian, for instance should have some sympathy for a group of Negroes, who have long smarted under the contempt of their fellow men and who now see a chance, under the changing environment, to challenge age-old

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customs of segregation on public buses. Their boycott must appeal to sensitive men everywhere as another assertion of the dignity of man.10

In my judgment, Niebuhr often appeared to talk out of both sides of his mouth, so to speak, by praising those who were struggling for racial justice while, at the same time, sympathizing with the perpetrators of injustice should they be forced to obey the laws of justice without appropriate preparatory time to adjust to the proposed new conditions. Such expressions of empathy for the comfort of the latter easily appear to gain ascendancy over the dictates of its resisters. That is why I declare an ambiguous future for the concept of Christian realism. On the one hand, Niebuhr’s thought provides many good insights about the human condition that should be affirmed and discussed by Christian ethicists, because it attends to all the factors in any particular situation, including the reasoning on all sides of a social problem by revealing the temporary status of all moral virtues in the human situation as well as the imbalance of power relations that marks the initial cry for resistance as the necessary means for restoring a temporary balance among those powers. But, on the other hand, such a thorough analysis of the realities in the situation can easily lead to premature judgments about the adopted means for social change as clearly revealed in some of the above examples. Despite their imperfections, however, the many realities in any situation constitute permanent dimensions of the human condition, and Niebuhr’s theological and ethical analysis of them will certainly have continuing relevance in both the church and the classroom for understanding both the politics and the theology implicit in all struggles for social justice. Thus, I conclude that Niebuhr’s doctrine of Christian realism remains a meaningful resource for assessing the overreach of the self-serving actions of the powerful while failing to be an unambiguous source of inspiration for the powerless in their struggle for social justice, on the one hand, and the necessary curtailment of the ambitions of the powerful, on the other hand. BIBLIOGRAPHY Brown, Robert McAfee, ed. The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Reinhold Niebuhr. Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr. Edited by D. B. Robertson. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992. Williams, Reggie. Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014.

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NOTES 1. Reggie Williams, Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014). 2. Robert McAfee Brown, (ed.), The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), xx. 3. Brown, “The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr,” xxii. 4. Reinhold Niebuhr, Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr. D. B. Robertson ed. (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 129. 5. Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 146. 6. Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 146–47. 7. Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 149–50. 8. Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 152–53. 9. Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 153. 10. Niebuhr, Love and Justice, 153.

Chapter Thirteen

Fostering the Impossible in a World Marked by Sin Bringing the New Christian Realism into Conversation with the Opioid Crisis Todd Whitmore

It is difficult to explain or even characterize what it feels like to be in active addiction to those who have never experienced it (my own bout spanned three to four years in my late teens and early twenties). It is difficult for “normies” to wrap their mind around how the addicted brain works—like why it is that when someone overdoses, other users, rather than avoid the fatal drug, seek out its dealer (It must be good shit!), or why if users steal, they do so first of all from the people they love most (man, I feel sick . . . Mom’s jewelry box!). The best analogy that I have been able to come up with is that active addiction is like being on fire. All of your focus is on putting the fire out, and the only thing that can readily do so, even if only temporarily, is your drug of choice (another drug will do in a pinch). At the same time, the drug is an accelerant, and the user well knows this. It is temporary relief at the cost of a more intense and extensive conflagration later, but it is the only relief at hand. One of the ways addiction alters the neural pathways is that it narrows the person’s perception of what is possible. Given the givens, then, moving out of active addiction appears to be both subjectively and objectively impossible. Once those neural pathways of addiction are forged and overrun by drug-fueled dopamine, there does not seem to be any chance of changing them. And yet change happens. 205

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Christian realism is about making difficult choices against a horizon of hope in a world marked by sin. However, as Robin Lovin notes in his Christian Realism and the New Realities, Reinhold Niebuhr “says very little about how the impossible ideal which is always relevant to concrete, historical choices becomes relevant” (emphasis added).1 Much of Christian Realism and the New Realities seeks to address this lacuna. Lovin’s concern is more with how the impossible ideal becomes relevant, in his words, “to the public discussion”; my work as an addiction recovery coach focuses on how the impossible ideal can become a force in the lives of persons with addictions. As we will see, however, the two concerns intertwine: much of how someone with a substance use disorder views and responds to their addiction is shaped by public discourse—the words used and not used, the noise and the silences. In what follows, I move in two parts. I first lift up how Christian realism can illuminate aspects of the opioid crisis that are often moved over in silence or missed altogether. Then I will draw upon my fieldwork among persons with addictions to suggest ways of fostering the realization of the impossible ideal, ways that Christian realism to date has overlooked. Here I will argue that for Christian realism to attend to and account for how the impossible ideal becomes relevant in human life, it needs to offer thicker accounts— ethnographic depictions—of the everyday lives of persons, especially those whose lives are deeply ensconced in a finitude where sinfulness and helplessness intersect so as to preclude, it seems, any hope in an ideal. Offering thicker accounts of everyday practices will also expand Christian realism in two helpful directions. First, it will turn Christian realism from being what is for the most part simply a Christian political theory into a more comprehensive theological ethics. Second, it will allow an interrelating of Christian realism and at least certain elements of what Lovin terms the “Witness” approach to public discourse. For decades, these two approaches, Christian realism and Witness, have been at battle. Lovin himself writes that the Christian realist, “adopts a strategy that is directly opposite that of the Witness.”2 I will argue for a kind of Christian bifocality that accounts for and relates Christian realism’s insistence on the impossibility of the ideal in a sinful world and the Witness approach’s focus on specific practices that embody and thus bring to life the kingdom of God here and now. My concerns with Christian realism are both substantive and methodological. Substantively, I seek a retrieval of the irrational follower of the path of Jesus—the seeker of the impossible—that Reinhold Niebuhr and most subsequent Christian realists leave behind after the last chapter of Moral Man and Immoral Society. Methodologically, I call for a detailed specificity in interpretive description of everyday life to complement the focus on social structures found in Christian realist political theory. Lovin sets out three dimensions of Christian realism—political, moral, and theological; I want to

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add a fourth: interpretive literary realism. Christian realism needs to develop methodologies that encourage a style of representation that literary circles call creative nonfiction: vivid detailed accounts of the lives people actually live. My wager is that this methodological move will open up avenues for understanding how the impossible can indeed manifest itself here and now. The stakes are high. In the year between April 2020 and April 2021 alone there were more than 100,000 overdose deaths, 75,673 of them from opioids.3 Lovin cites that the big recent change-events for Christian realists have been the collapse of “Real Socialism” in 1991 and the 9/11 bombings. I am suggesting that we also look closer to home for our cues. We will find that Christian realism can be a source of critique of the dominant discourses about addiction in the United States today, to which I now turn. A WORLD MARKED BY SIN: THE OPIOID CRISIS IN LIGHT OF CHRISTIAN REALISM A key concept that Lovin introduces in Christian Realism and the New Realities is that of what he calls “contexts.” These are analogous to the “orders of creation,” “mandates,” and “subsidiary institutions” found in other Christian social theories.4 One of the main achievements of Lovin’s work is to draw upon the concept of contexts to broaden modern notions of what constitutes “politics.” The modern understanding of politics includes conversation in and about the operations of government, and little more. Lovin insists that the other contexts—he adds work, family, culture, and religion5—also involve critical conversations important for seeking the goods necessary for human flourishing, and thus constitute politics in the broader, Aristotelian sense. There is nothing in Lovin’s political theory that limits the kinds of contexts to the ones he names. On the contrary, he stresses repeatedly that contexts are not static things, but rather shift over time.6 In the case of the opioid crisis, it is possible to delineate five immediate contexts: the judicial/carceral, the medical, the pharmaceutical, the therapeutic, and the user-communal. These contexts contend over how to understand addiction and the people who are addicted. The judicial/carceral context is built around a view of the user as moral and legal deviant (the religious context and specifically churches have often contributed to such an understanding); the medical and therapeutic contexts counter that the user is rather a patient or client, someone who has a “brain disease.” The pharmaceutical context views the user—whether of legally prescribed or illegally obtained drugs, in the end it does not matter much which—as a consumer. The user is caught in the three-way crossfire

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between these competing understandings of the user as deviant, patient, and consumer. From my ethnographic fieldnotes, July 2018: Josh7 wakes up and finds himself in the back of an ambulance with an IV drip of naloxone, the opioid reversal drug, winding down to his right forearm. He started out using opioids the way many of his friends did, by getting pills— Vicodin, Percocet, OxyContin—off the street. It wasn’t hard. Between 2012 and 2016, there were more opioid prescriptions in Indiana than there are people in the state.8 Pharmaceutical representatives have flooded physicians’ offices with free samples and the claim—based on scant evidence—that opioids are addictive only in a small number of cases. Doctors in the meantime find themselves caught in a vise between the insistence of the Pain Management Standards of the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations,9 on the one hand, and the quota requirements of managed care—reducing time with each patient to about 15 minutes—on the other. There is not the time to spend with each patient to do life histories so as to get at the root of the pain. A pill will have to do. More recent crackdowns on overprescribing have led to shortages of the pills on the street, jacking up prices and turning many users to heroin, which is cheaper. Crackdown on heroin by law enforcement has led to the street market shifting to fentanyl—which is 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin, and thus can be shipped in smaller quantities. Keeping with the crackdown mentality, the St. Joseph County, Indiana Prosecutor has floated the idea that when someone overdoses a third time, law enforcement ought to be able to arrest the person for possession. It is a more lenient policy than that suggested by some politicians and sheriffs in other locales that the user not be given naloxone at all, but be left to die.10 Josh, still woozy, feels something hitting his ankle. He raises his head enough to see a sheriff’s deputy sitting at his feet, reading him his rights, and tapping his ankle with a pen with each phrase. You have the right to remain silent. Tap. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. Tap.

With these contestations between contexts in view, we can highlight a number of aspects of the opioid crisis in light of Christian realism, aspects otherwise overlooked: the depth and perdurability of sin, the role of self-interest, the irony of history whereby our best efforts have unintended negative consequences, the need for balances of power within and between contexts, and the recognition that often the best that we can achieve is the lesser of evils. I address each of these areas of insight in turn. Much has been made in the media about how pharmaceutical companies—with the most well-known perpetrator being Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin—have fueled the opioid crisis.11 Until fairly

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recently, doctors prescribed opioids almost exclusively in cases of terminal illness, in which case the addictive properties of the drug matter little. But then the American Pain Society—in part funded by pharmaceutical companies—pushed to have pain recognized as the “fifth vital sign” to be measured by physicians, alongside pulse rate, temperature, respiration rate, and blood pressure. Sales representatives of Purdue Pharma and other companies took bogus evidence—limited to a letter to the editor of a medical journal—to claim that opioids could treat pain while rarely leading to addiction, and they overwhelmed doctor’s offices with their pitch. The companies themselves barraged the public with direct to consumer advertising through a wide range of media (“Ask your doctor about . . .”). In St. Joseph County, Indiana, this confluence of contexts led a man to shoot and kill a physician in a parking lot outside a medical facility when the doctor refused to prescribe opioids for the man’s wife.12 Deep structural sin creates a latticework of contexts within which grave individual sin takes place. The temptation is to think that if we could only go after large pharmaceutical companies with civil suits and criminal proceedings, we could create a situation where doctors prescribe only what is necessary and patients take only what is prescribed. But Niebuhr and Lovin both warn us about the persistence of evil.13 A Christian realist approach would note that this is not the first go-round where pharmaceutical companies sought profit-maximization over the well-being of persons such that any consumer, legal or illegal, is a good consumer. The pharmaceutical company Smith, Kline and French began marketing methamphetamine under the brand name Benzedrine (“bennies” in street argot) in 1939, with the claim that it is effective against an array of conditions from depression and weight gain to impotence and the common cold. Ads appeared, “For Those Who Eat Too Much and Those Who Are Depressed.”14 Doctors continued to prescribe it into the 1980s. Then awareness of its addictive qualities became more widespread, and, like in the later case with opioids, production shifted to illegal labs. And like with opioids, people already addicted simply moved their purchasing to the black market. In the mid-eighties, law enforcement proposed a law whereby all shipments into the United States of ephedrine, a key active ingredient in meth production, be monitored. By the time the bill reached Congress in 1987, right in the middle of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign, it was so altered by representatives supported by big pharma that it allowed imports of ephedrine in pill form without regulation.15 What this brief historical overview of meth in the United States tells us from a Christian realist perspective is that sin—profound, structural as well as individual sin—may, in Niebuhr’s words, not be “necessary,” but it is “inevitable.”16 Many commentators on the opioid crisis write as if it is a new

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phenomenon; a Christian realist approach warns us that only the drug has changed, and therefore to be on the lookout for similar patterns, even now. For instance, while most mainstream public attention is currently on opioids, use of an ever-shifting drug variously called K2 or Spice is spreading. Sometimes referred to as “synthetic cannabis” because its first formulations were modifications of the THC molecule, current manifestations are vastly more powerful and harmful than the leafy plant. Chemists, mostly in China, alter the molecule to circumvent laws in the United States, and the many variations of Spice have been sold in convenience stores in South Bend and across the United States. When legal statutes catch up to the present composition of the drug, the chemists simply change it again. Thus, while many commentators seek to isolate the opioid crisis so as to address it with proposals that seem doable, a Christian realist approach warns us that the interlacing contexts that have produced the opioid crisis are at work, with some modification, elsewhere as well. Both Niebuhr and Lovin tell us that while self-interest is not synonymous with sin, the Christian realist is always on watch for the ways in which self-interest shapes the choices and self-presentations of persons and institutions. Here is another scene from my fieldnotes (May 2018): The man on the panel of parents who have lost children to opioids is wearing a middle-hue grey suit that goes well with his silver hair. He lives in the city of Indianapolis. A subtle grey-patterned tie, white dress shirt, and unscuffed shiny black shoes complete the sartorial presentation. He lost his step-son to heroin three years ago. The determined monotone of his speech reminds me of the people I know in northern Uganda when they recount the loss of loved ones to a Lord’s Resistance Army ambush. They, the loved ones, were alive, and then, like that, they are dead. The monotone can mean one of two things: either it is protecting from public breakdown, or no more breakdown is possible. After his narrative, when he gets to the message portion of his talk, what he says jars me: “We are two parents, both college-educated. We have good jobs. We do not look like parents of a heroin addict.” I think, “What does the parent of a heroin addict look like? Does she look like the woman sitting next to you on the panel, the one from the RV-manufacturing town of Elkhart in the black t-shirt and jeans and with the deep brown roots showing three inches between her scalp and her bottle-blond hair, the one who did break down, apologize, break down again, then continue on? Does she look like the parent of a heroin addict?” Both perturbed by the man’s comments and uneasy with my own judgmentalism, I quickly look online into the non-profit that his wife founded after her son’s overdose that provides, among other things, education in the administering of the overdose reversal drug, naloxone. In a newspaper article covering the organization, the theme comes up again, this time from the wife, the son’s mother. “I don’t think I look like the mom of a heroin addict.”

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There has in recent years been a strong push in the public conversation regarding the opioid crisis to present it as a public health rather than criminal issue. Even Newt Gingrich has done an about-face. In 1989, he insisted that the criminalization of addiction is something that is “very old-fashioned, because it works.” In 2016, however, his emphasis shifts dramatically: “There’s this myth that everybody can just will themselves off of it. Imagine that we said, ‘You know, we shouldn’t give people insulin—they ought to will themselves to the correct diet and exercise and giving insulin makes them weaker.’”17 What has made for such a dramatic shift? Heroin addicts used to be stock characters in sociological treatments of deviance. Now we are told that they are not so different after all. Christian realists would warn us that we have not entered into a new age of enlightenment regarding addiction. Something more must be in play. A number of Black commentators have pointed to at least one aspect of that something more. New York Times columnist Charles Blow’s tweet gets to the point: “I just can’t get over ppl saying ‘opioid-addicted’ now that the drug epidemic is among white ppl. We got ‘crack babies’ & ‘Losing Isaiah’ . . . ”18 What has not been pointed out nearly as often as race is class and geography. From September 2018: Cliff19 lives in Kewanna, Indiana, population 613. The sign upon entry reads, “The Little Town with a Big Heart.” Fiberglass production of recreational vehicle moldings is the only manufacturing in the area. $12 an hour starting pay. It puts a single person above the poverty line, but not by much. In northern Indiana, methamphetamine and recreational vehicle manufacturing have a symbiotic relationship: demand in RV production is almost always high, and speed in manufacturing (and in the worker’s bodies) is required. Given the low base pay, the frequently offered overtime work, at time-and-a-half pay, is hard to resist. Meth keeps the workers working. It becomes especially important as a worker and his body ages, and keeps the worker from aging out of his addiction, an otherwise common pattern. I am in Kewanna for a home visit with Cliff. Before stopping in, I drive around the town to check for a good eatery. The conversations are always better over food. The only building that looks like it could have been a restaurant is long closed, grass growing long and thick in the cracks of what was the parking lot. There used to be a gas station too: JD’s auto service. But the pumps are ripped out and a “price reduced” real estate sign sits out front. Finally: the “Kibitzer”— its sign telling us to “HAVE A SAFE HARVEST AND HUNTING SEASON”— promises pizza and Budweiser, but we can’t go there. Cliff is on probation and is not allowed to frequent bars. So we meet in his home, a weather-beaten but structurally sound, single-wide trailer. The couches inside are draped in blankets to cover the worn upholstery, but the place is tidy, clean.

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He could be my brother. Same slate-blue eyes; same bone structure around them. At 57, he is only three years younger than I am. We could have—and in all likelihood would have—gotten high together growing up. It is unsettling, haunting. What is and what could have been. Cliff’s upper and lower jaw do not seem to fit together, however. Teeth jut out in all directions, only half covering the multiple gaps in his mouth so that he looks like he is grinding something when he talks. The halting way he articulates himself adds to the effect. Cliff was first arrested in 1989 for dealing methamphetamine. Meth has been Cliff’s drug of choice for thirty years. He was there at the beginning of the “meth crisis.” That first bust was for cooking small-batch in his home. This is not Breaking Bad. Since then, Cliff has had sixteen criminal cases, none for manufacturing or dealing. Almost all are for things like marijuana possession, public intoxication, Driving Under the Influence (DUI), driving with a suspended license, and probation violation. With Cliff being busted so often, law enforcement can now add charges of HTV (habitual traffic violator) and HSO (Habitual Substance Offender) to whatever charge he gets in a particular instance, jacking up the amount of time he has to serve. As often as not, it is a probation violation—failing a drug test—that gets him sent back in, a clear indication of his addiction. He just cannot seem to find a way to stay off the drugs even when the penalties for not being able to do so are severe. It is not until late 2011—twenty-two years after his arrest for dealing meth and well into the public response to the opioid crisis—that treatment rather than incarceration arises as an option within the judicial system, and this only because Cliff himself took the initiative. In January 2011, he received a sentence of thirty months—one year for good behavior—for “possession of marijuana, after previous,” that is, marijuana possession as a Habitual Substance Offender. Almost 10 months into the sentence, Cliff files a motion for an amendment to his sentence that allows him to serve the rest of his time at a treatment facility, and the court decides in his favor. It seems to work for a while; he is not arrested again, at any rate, until 2016, for operating a vehicle after a forfeited license. Upon a standard drug test for vehicular arrest, he tests positive for meth, a probation violation. The judge orders a sentence of 1825 days, or five years. This time, the judge takes the initiative. He orders Cliff to “purposeful incarceration”—that is, to incarceration where there is a treatment program, with the possibility, upon successful completion of the program, of having his otherwise five-year carceral sentence for driving without a license modified to probation.

The crack and meth crises (which are still very much going on) have not prompted a shift to a public health paradigm in the public conversation

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because Black people and poor rural white people are not included in that conversation, and they are not included in the conversation because in the eyes of those who do participate in the conversation, they, to borrow the phrase, “look like drug addicts.” The rise of the language of public health in the public imagination would not have been possible without there being what critical race theorist Derrick Bell calls “interest convergence”20 between health officials, the wealthy white parents of addicted persons, and, almost incidentally, the addicted people themselves. Similarly, Lovin tells us that “to be ‘realistic’ . . . means having a keen eye for all the interests that are actually at work in a political situation, thinking clearly about how they relate to one another, and looking beyond rhetoric . . . to determine what is actually driving choices and strategies.”21 I welcome the effort in the public health rhetoric to lower the stigma attached to drug use, but at the same time the Christian realist warns us to proceed clear-eyed about the fact that wealthy urban/suburban white privilege in the interlacing contexts of the opioid crisis, involves, among other things, the ability to be addicted to heroin, or the parent of such a person, without being designated a deviant. What has been called the “medicalization of deviance” serves to give such persons the language with which to deflect such a designation.22 And, the Christian realist might point out, the privileged and powerful will make this deflection tool available only as long as needed, that is, until junkies look like junkies again. Because what the “I don’t look like the parent of a heroin addict” phrase does, in the guise of an “it can happen to anyone” rhetoric, is keep in place and even reinforce the previous dominant accounts of deviance. Again, what does a parent of a heroin addict look like? More, the medicalization of deviance only appears to lower the stigma attached to addiction.23 What is advertised as lowering stigma, from a Christian realist perspective that is on the look-out for self-interest, is really primarily a shift in the power to designate who is and who is not a deviant from the judicial/carceral context to the medical/therapeutic context. Doctors label persons who do not follow protocol “noncompliant,” and often “fire” their patients for being so; therapists refer to their clients having “substance use disorders” as if a world where, for instance, the Catholic church calls homosexuality a “disorder,” such a term can be neutral. If a person relapses, two-thirds of treatment centers will kick her out, precisely at the time when she is in most need of nonjudgmental help. The instability of interest-driven destigmatization of addiction is also evident in the fact that, even now, there is not yet parity in insurance coverage between those with a mental illness (more likely to be covered) and an addiction (less likely),24 and that, to date, combating addiction is not funded to the degree that combating other diseases, such as cancer, is.25

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With such a crisscrossing of interests, sometimes converging, other times diverging, one can expect events that do not always follow, and sometimes contravene, even the best of our intentions, something Niebuhr termed the “irony of history” and Lovin calls “history’s ironic reversals of human achievements.”26 The designation of addiction as simply a disease, however well-meaning, has two deleterious effects. First, it can rob the person with the addiction of whatever agency he has left.27 Any habit reshapes our neural pathways so that we do not have to give much thought to our actions. When that habit is fueled by drugs that overload our brain with dopamine, the neurobiological basis for the compulsive habit that we call addiction asserts itself even more. On the social level, rejection by family and friends further reinforces the sense of limited options. The designation of addiction as a brain disease, something little different than cancer, can suggest that the only way out is another pill. In the meantime, pharmaceutical companies are intensely searching for precisely that panacea. Purdue Pharma has patented a drug to wean addicts off of the very drugs that Purdue Pharma itself has peddled.28 The best current research shows that it is a combination of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and counseling and other supports that shows the highest success rate for recovery from severe opioid addiction.29 The second (perhaps) unintended effect of the disease model is that it deflects attention away from the social factors that contribute to addiction. Social dislocation, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), family dysfunction, hyper-incarceration, and economic distress all contribute to a higher probability that a person will develop an addiction. A comprehensive approach to recovery must attend to these factors, while an unmodified disease approach glosses over them. A Christian realist approach to the opioid crisis recognizes that the turn to a disease model of addiction is not simply about the neurological pathways of the person who is addicted, but is also about social attitudes. It is more about the rest of you than it is us: it enables you to approach us with less judgment. While destigmatization is a good, all of the persons with addictions with whom I work as a recovery coach know that moving out of their current situation in any sustained way requires some recognition of and accountability for the things they have done while in active addiction. I passed out on two occasions while driving in excess of sixty miles per hour. I could have killed someone. The important thing for me is to keep that fact just enough in view to remind me but not so much as to overwhelm me. A pill cannot do that. Pressing too hard in the opposite direction, that of the deviantization and criminalization of addiction also has its unintended effects. As mentioned above, the crackdown, otherwise justified, on the overprescription of opioids like OxyContin drives up street prices of the pills, prompting users to turn to heroin as a cheaper and more powerful alternative. And police crackdown on heroin turns dealers to the even more powerful (and lethal) fentanyl,

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because the latter, as a synthetic opioid, can be produced anywhere, and as a more powerful drug brings greater financial return per unit of product.30 The Christian realist would know that this has happened before, during Prohibition: the restriction on all alcohol prompted producers to make more powerful libations in more discreet quantities. As in the 1920s and 1930s, so in the 2020s. A Christian realist approach suggests that the best we can do is to have a balance of the forces in play from an array of contexts. Lovin quotes Niebuhr on the need for “checks and balances upon the pretensions of men as well as upon their lust for power; it thereby prevents truth from turning into falsehood when the modicum of error in truth is not challenged and the modicum of truth in a falsehood is not rescued and cherished.”31 If other contexts can place a check on the medical disease model such that it does not provide a totalizing interpretation of addiction, then we can recognize the truth that persons with addictions have agency, even if it is not yet robust. If certain contexts can serve to check the rubric of deviance, then we can perhaps turn away from the punitive criminalization of addiction while allowing room for those who seek recovery to confess and heal from the sins they committed while in the throes of addiction. And certainly we need strong social, political, and juridical checks on the ethos of pharmaceutical companies, for whom we are all just consumers, real or potential. Lovin’s own social theory, what he calls “Pluralistic Realism,” emphasizes that whatever balances are struck are only temporary because the exchange between contexts in public forums is ongoing. Moreover, there is no single, unifying principle that can adequately prioritize our choices. We are left with the languages and dialects—sometimes converging, often conflicting—that arise within and between the different contexts. It is no surprise, then, that often the most we can hope for is the lesser of two evils. Even Christian realism, in Lovin’s words, “can claim to be no more than a tolerable solution.” Still, he writes, “one thing that makes a tolerable situation tolerable is that it may last long enough to improve upon it.”32 One of the persons I am coaching went on a binge where he wrecked his car, lost his job, and spent all of the money he was saving to move out of his parents’ house and get an apartment. Despondent, he combined high doses of Xanax and heroin—an often lethal combination33—three nights in a row, suggesting that he might subconsciously be trying to commit suicide. As much as I dislike the carceral system, when his mother came to me asking for direction I told her that one of her options was to turn him in. She had previously done so with her other son, also an addicted person. It might be the safest place for him given that he did not think that he “needed help.” This time, she waited. Within two weeks, law enforcement busted him for us: he was arrested for stealing televisions from Walmarts in the region. To say that

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he had an epiphany during his four months in jail would be an overstatement. Still, since his release he has shown a new interest in recovery (incarceration sometimes has that effect). He is now in an inpatient facility that permits him to work outside, an arrangement that allows him to save up for another car and, eventually, the first and last months’ rent on that place of his own that he has always wanted. A Christian realist would warn me not to get my hopes up (one of the liabilities of being a recovery coach is repeat heartbreak), but I have internalized the message about lesser evils, a message that the recovery field calls “harm reduction.”34 From June 2018: Kevin and his girlfriend, Jennifer, live in the Cross-Street Apartments because it is the only place they can afford.35 It has sliding scale rent subsidized by a government program. Neither Kevin nor Jennifer work because the demands of scoring so as not to get sick structures their days more rigorously than any job. Their apartment is spare. A mattress on box springs but no bedframe is to the immediate left of the door when you enter. Next to the bed, a two-drawer end-table serves as a platform for a small, 24-inch computer screen and DVD device that in turn serves as their “television”; there is no way that they can afford cable. Their heroin habits eat up all that comes in from their disability checks. The living room to the right is carpeted, but empty. Still, the place is neat every time I stop over. The bed has sheets and a cover, and is always made. They and their clothes are always clean. Except for his hollowed-out eyes, they do not “look like” addicts, to use the phrase. Kevin is thin—there are days where he does not eat—but he is not skeletal. Word has been getting around the user community of my work as a recovery coach, and Kevin’s cousin has referred him to me. I am visiting Kevin today because he is trying a second time with me in an effort to detox, and we need to touch base to see how things are going. This time we are even using a futuristic devise called “The Bridge,” which, with adhesive, attaches behind the ear. Wires from the device send electrical pulses to electrodes attached to the ear itself, pulses that go to the part of the brain affected most during detox. The Clinical Opiate Withdrawal or COW scale measures the intensity of withdrawal symptoms.36 Reports of The Bridge have it cutting symptoms by 90% within a half-hour. Given that Kevin failed in his first attempt to detox, I asked a local mental health provider if they could spare one of their twenty devices. It is no small ask: they cost $500 and are single use devices. The provider agrees and two nurses attach the device behind his right ear. Kevin is wearing a grey and red plaid shirt and jeans when he meets me at the door. He gets right to the point when I enter. “I have to tell you. I can’t keep it a secret. I feel so guilty. But I have to tell you. I used last night.”

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“You used?” “Just a little bump. It wasn’t much at all.” “Bad withdrawal?” “No.” “Nausea?” “No.” “Aches and pains?” “No.” “What happened?” “I was just anxious. I don’t know. I just woke up at about five this morning and I was anxious. So I did a little line. It wasn’t even for the heroin, really. It was just for the feeling of having the straw in my nose and something going up it. It calms me down. I didn’t really need the heroin. I don’t know. I was just anxious.” I think for a moment. Then, “You sometimes smoke cannabis to calm you down when you are anxious, right?” “Yes.” “Well, that’s sort of like the snorting. Packing the bowl. Lighting it up. Feeling the smoke go down into your lungs. Kind of like a ritual. Is that comforting for you as well?” “Yes.” “Do you have some cannabis on hand?” “Yes.” “Okay. Let’s try this. The Bridge works for five days. Only one day has passed. You have four more to try to detox with it. It usually takes five days or so to detox, but we’ll worry about the last day when we get there. Have Jennifer get

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all of the heroin out of the house and put it somewhere, but not tell you where. It will be easier if you cannot readily get at it.” “Okay, I can do that.” “And tonight, or tomorrow morning, if you get anxious again, and you feel like snorting a line, consider smoking weed instead.”

FOSTERING THE IMPOSSIBLE October 2018: By the time I arrive in the emergency room, Jackson37 is lying prone on the examination table, writhing. I cannot see his face. His black hair, a mop of curls, blocks me from even getting a side view. He intermittently draws his knees in, scrunching up in pain and, as a result, points his hospitalgown-revealed butt to the lights, holds the position taut for what seems both like a few seconds and a very long time, then re-extends himself to a fully prostrate position. I am here because I wrote a successful grant to train recovery coaches to respond to overdose cases in the local hospital so that instead of simply reviving the persons and sending them home, we also ask them if they are interested in help in recovery. If they give even the slightest indication of interest, the hospital phones the on-call coach, who is to arrive within thirty minutes. I live close by, so I make it in fifteen. I am doing test runs of the model until the other coaches are trained and certified and hired by the local mental health facility so that they can take over. Jackson’s case is unusual. He did not overdose, but rather has come in because he tried to quit cold turkey and is now paying the price. Twenty years ago, he injured his knee in an industrial accident and was prescribed Vicodin, a lot of it. When the doctor refused to prescribe more, Jackson, now dependent, went to the streets. Soon, he began doing Percocet, which is stronger, just to feel normal.38 Then he graduated to the gold standard: OxyContin. 20 milligrams per day is considered “opioid-tolerant.” Jackson is up to 400. He pops two 80’s just to get up in the morning, then three more throughout the day so that he can work and, later, be present to his teenage son after school lets out. It is an amount that would in all likelihood kill you and me. He’s trying to detox because his habit has gotten too expensive, and he does not want to turn to heroin. Other than the occasional, “Aw, fuck,” Jackson mostly just groans. His mother is there, but is silent unless I ask her a question. I am not sure why, but I step forward, put my hand, open-palm, on Jackson’s upper back where the shoulder blade meets the lung area, and say, “shhh.” And he relaxes. Only for a second,

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and hardly completely, but there is a palpable relaxation response. This is as close as I am ever going to get to casting out demons, so I continue, off and on, touching the back of this, to me, faceless man, for two hours. The doctor had given Jackson buprenorphine, a relatively mild opiate, to try to stave off the cramps, but instead of keeping it under his tongue to dissolve—the quickest way it can enter his system—Jackson swallowed it, and it has to make its way through the digestive tract to have any effect, if at all. It seems to kick in around 2:00 a.m., allowing us to talk. Jackson’s face is red from the near-constant grimacing, but even now his dark eyes convey an intelligence. Still, I address both him and his mother together to increase the likelihood that they will remember what I say. There is much to set up and do: register for Medicaid, see the Medication-Assisted Treatment doctor, schedule a psych evaluation, inquire about whether Jackson can get his job back. I ask the people I coach whether they want me to go with them for their first appointments, and most, like Jackson, say yes. Most of them do not have working knowledge of the institutions set up to help them; many have a deep distrust of those very institutions. Recovery coaches are, in a sense, their social Virgil, leading them through bureaucratic hell. Jackson and I will be seeing a lot of each other in the next few days.

Moving into recovery from active addiction requires more than tolerating the lesser of two evils. The ever-intensifying cycle of compulsive need and temporary release that constitutes addiction is too hard to break if that is all we have to work with. People in active addiction need, somehow, to imagine another world when such a world is, under the usual conditions of addiction, almost impossible to imagine, let alone engender. And it is here that Christian realism has left us short. In the last chapter of Moral Man and Immoral Society, Niebuhr reminds us of what he calls the “double focus of the moral life”: One focus is in the inner life of the individual, and the other in the necessities of man’s social life. From the perspective of society the highest moral ideal is justice. From the perspective of the individual the highest ideal is unselfishness. Society must strive for justice even if it is forced to use means, such as self-assertion, resistance, coercion and perhaps resentment, which cannot gain the moral sanction of the most sensitive moral spirit. The individual must strive to realize his life by losing and finding himself in something greater than himself. These two moral perspectives are not mutually exclusive and the contradiction between them is not absolute. But neither are they easily harmonized.39

I would quibble with Niebuhr’s depiction of the tension between individual and social as being between internal and external, and I would depict the relationship more in terms of a tension between two different kinds of location,

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both of which are social. But his insistence on a “double focus,” what I term “bifocality” in Christian ethics, is well-taken. The chief flaw in Christian realism since the last chapters of Moral Man and Immoral Society is that it has focused almost exclusively on, to put it in Niebuhr’s terms for the moment, the “social” at the expense of the “individual,” thereby pushing to the margins of consideration the moral life of the latter. In Christian Realism and the New Realities, Lovin provides justification for such a move. After discussing the biblical view of the person as both created in the image of God and fallen, he writes, “What distinguishes Christian realism is the conviction that the best place to see this human condition in ordinary experience is in those largescale relationships and interactions we call politics . . . Although many people center their moral reflections in personal relationships and close communities, Christian realists find the moral life more clearly presented in political problems that show the limits of our understanding, demand higher levels of self-restraint, and demonstrate our dependence on powers and forces outside of our control.”40 As is perhaps evidenced in the first part of this article, if I were to develop a Christian political theory, elements of it would look a lot like what Lovin sets out in Christian Realism and the New Realities. Still, my experience as a recovery coach working one-on-one with persons with addictions has led me to recognize that, when due attention is paid, we can see quite clearly that “the limits of our understanding,” the “demand [for] higher levels of self-restraint,” and “our dependence on powers and forces outside of our control” assert themselves quite forcefully in small-scale interpersonal relationships, as I hope is evident from the scene with Jackson. Failure to develop a thick account of social life at the small-scale level by Christian realists has contributed to the kind of seemingly interminable disputes between more realist Christian social theorists on the one hand and representatives of what Lovin calls the “Witness” approach on the other, disputes that have sometimes brought more heat than light, with realists charging advocates of the Witness approach of being irresponsible sectarians and Witness theorists countering that realists give away all that is distinctive about a Christian perspective. “Witness” advocates, for their part, contribute to this condition of being at loggerheads by refusing to develop a social theory beyond the simplistic call to, in Stanley Hauerwas’ terminology, “be church.”41 Neither approach is adequate on its own for a comprehensive ethics. Like in the case of Jackson above, what is required, in this instance for a recovery coach, is both personal presence and institutional savvy, a contemporary version of being “wise as snakes” as well as “gentle as doves” (Mt 10:16). Niebuhr is right that the two comportments do not always sit well

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together, but to recognize such is far different from abandoning one for the other in our accounts of the moral life. There are aspects of Lovin’s Christian realist social theory that point us in the right direction. As indicated above, he expands what we understand to be “the political” to include not only conversation in and about government, but also those discussions centered around subsidiary groups—in Lovin’s terminology, the “contexts”—of religion, family, work, and culture. Moreover, he argues that conversation between contexts be directed by what he calls the “Unapologetic Principle”: “No context is required to explain itself in terms that reduce it to an instrument of other purposes.”42 It seems that the church can “be church” after all. What the Unapologetic Principle involves, however, is equally the claim that voices from the work context, for instance, do not need to reduce their conversation to, say, biblical parables, and that if business and church leaders wish to talk to each other, both are going to have to speak a mixed dialect if conversation is to be had at all.43 Lovin is not sanguine about the possibilities here, only insistent that it is the only kind of conversation possible. The church neither has a special privilege of testimony nor a special burden of explanation. The problem, as I see it, is that Lovin repeatedly points to, but does not in his writing dwell in, the subsidiary contexts. The result is that when he searches for that “more” to say about the moral dimension of the social order, the most that he can articulate is a version of Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative. Kant wrote, “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.”44 Lovin argues that “persons should not be treated as mere means to the goods they can create.”45 Both statements are true, but neither are adequate as articulations of what drives and guides the work of a recovery coach in the emergency room. Lovin might counter that he does not set out to provide such a thick account, and that is precisely my concern. The kind of scene that I describe with Jackson takes place all across the country and, indeed, world, on a daily basis, whether in the context of addiction or not. We are all, or we all should be, recovery coaches for each other in this world marked by suffering and sin, and this fact manifests itself so often that to point to it but otherwise pass over it in silence is to leave a gap that is unjustifiable in any comprehensive Christian ethics. To address this gap in Christian realism, and in much Christian ethics generally, we need ethnographic methodologies that give substance to careful, “thick” depictions of everyday life. Lovin distinguishes and interrelates three dimensions of Christian realism: political, moral, and theological. I add a fourth: interpretive literary realism.46 Like the “Witness” approach, such a literary realism focuses on individual and communal practices; unlike the Witness approach as evidenced in the writing of Hauerwas, it follows through

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in a consistent way on the call for literary representation that has concrete specificity. Literary realism seeks to display, rather than simply talk about, the claim in virtue ethics that sometimes what is most compelling is not a principle, unapologetic or not, but exemplification. One of the main roles of the recovery coach is to display to the recoveree in an ordinary, everyday, yet real fashion, that the impossible—recovery—is possible. Ninety percent of our job is just showing up. The Christian in literary realism relates the impossible ideal to the real just by being there with and for others. Like each of the political, moral, and theological realisms, literary realism does not always sit flush with the other realisms, not least because it demands a different mode of representation. It therefore requires a tacking back and forth between more abstract analysis and what the literary “context” calls “creative nonfiction.”47 But this tacking back and forth also helps reproduce in writing the finite, often fractured world of the contexts in which we live and love. And it is in that tacking back and forth that we can begin to tease out the ways in which small-scale love of neighbor is often thwarted by, but also sometimes infiltrates, large-scale institutions. BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Tammy L., Brittany Lynn Scott, and Philip R. Kavanaugh. “Race, Inequality and the Medicalization of Drug Addiction: an Analysis of Documentary Films.” Journal of Substance Use 20, no. 5 (2015). Bell, Jr., Derrick A. “Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma.” Harvard Law Review 93 (1980). Bever, Lindsey. “The Man Who Made Billions of Dollars from Oxycontin Is Pushing a Drug to Wean Addicts Off Opiods.” The Washington Post, September 8, 2018, https:​//​www​.washingtonpost​.com​/news​/business​/wp​/2018​/09​/08​/the​-man​-who​ -made​-billions​-of​-dollars​-from​-oxycontin​-is​-pushing​-a​-drug​-to​-wean​-addicts​-off​ -opioids​/​?utm​_term​=​.7ccc0acfb64b. Blow, Charles, M. (@charlesmblow). “I just can't get over ppl saying.” Twitter,  June 29, 2017, 6:49 a.m., https:​//​twitter​.com​/CharlesMBlow​/status​/880392896477835264. Center for Community Change. “Black Lives Matter Less Even in Drug Addiction.” Accessed on October 25, 2016, https:​//​communitychangeaction​.org​/changewire​/ black​-lives​-matter​-less​-even​-drug​-addiction​/. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Drug Overdose Deaths in the U.S. Reach 100,000 Annually.” Accessed on November 17, 2021, https:​//​www​.cdc​.gov​/ nchs​/pressroom​/nchs_press​_releases​/2021​/20211117​.htm. Conrad, Peter, and Joseph W. Schneider. Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness, expanded edition. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. Creative Nonfiction. “What Is Creative Nonfiction?” https:​//​www​.creativenonfiction​ .org​/online​-reading​/what​-creative​-nonfiction.

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“The Difference Between Vicodin and Percocet.” Recovery First Treatment Center, last updated June 27, 2022, https:​//​www​.recoveryfirst​.org​/prescription​-abuse​/ vicodin​-vs​-percocet​/. Fiore, Kristina. “Opioid Crisis: Scrap Pain as 5th Vital Sign?” MedPage Today, April 13, 2016, https:​//​www​.medpagetoday​.com​/publichealthpolicy​/publichealth​/57336. Hauerwas, Stanley. The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Hilgers, Laura. “Let’s Open Up About Addiction and Recovery.” New York Times, November 4, 2017, https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2017​/11​/04​/opinion​/sunday​/drug​ -addiction​-recovery​-alcoholism​.html​?​_r​=0. Indiana Attorney General. “Opioid Settlement & Litigation.” Retrieved August 13, 2022, https:​//​www​.in​.gov​/attorneygeneral​/about​-the​-office​/complex​-litigation​ /opioid​-settlement​/​#:​​~:​text​=From​%202012​%20through​%202016​%2C​%20there​ ,AmerisourceBergen​%2C​%20Cardinal​%20Health​%20and​%20McKesson. Ivonova, Irina. “OxyContin Maker gets Patent for Drug to Treat Opioid Addiction.” CBS News, September 7, 2018, https:​//​www​.cbsnews​.com​/news ​ / oxycontin​ - maker​ - receives​ - patent​ - for​ - drug​ - to​ - treat​ - opioid​ - addiction​ / ​ ? ftag​ =COS​-0510aaa0h​&utm​_campaign​=trueAnthem​%3A+Trending+Content​&utm​ _content​=5b9454e904d30161f0b1576c​&utm​_medium​=trueAnthem​&utm​_source​ =facebook. Joint Commission. “About the Joint Commission.” Joint Commission, https:​//​www​ .jointcommission​.org​/about​_us​/about​_the​_joint​_commission​_main​.aspx. Kant, Immanuel. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 3rd edition. Indianapolis/Cambridge:Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1993. Lewis, Marc. The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease. New York: Perseus Book Group, 2015. Lovin, Robin W. Christian Realism and the New Realities. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Marlatt, G. Alan, Mary E. Larimer, and Katie Witkiewitz, eds. Harm Reduction: Pragmatic Strategies for Managing High-Risk Behaviors, second edition. New York: The Guilford Press, 2012. McGreal, Chris. “The Making of an Opiod Epidemic.” The Guardian, November 8, 2018, https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/news​/2018​/nov​/08​/the​-making​-of​-an​-opioid​ -epidemic​?CMP​=Share​_iOSApp​_Other. National Institutes of Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. “Pocket Guide.” https:​//​store​.samhsa​.gov​/product​ /Medication ​ - for​ - the​ - Treatment​ - of​ - Alcohol​ - Use ​ - Disorder ​ - Pocket ​ - Guide ​ / SMA15–4907POCKETGUID. Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932, 1960. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, vol. I: Human Nature. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941. NeurAxis, “A New Standard of Care,” NeurAxis. https:​//​i​-h​-s​.com​/.

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“On the Front Lines of Opioid Epidemic, U.S. Police Split on Narcan.” CBS News, December 19, 2017, https:​//​www​.cbsnews​.com​/news​/narcan​-police​-split​-opioid​ -epidemic​/. Phillips, Kristine. “A Doctor Was Killed for Refusing to Prescribe Opioids, Authorities Say.” Washington Post, July 29, 2017, https:​//​www​.washingtonpost​.com​/news​/to​ -your​-health​/wp​/2017​/07​/29​/a​-doctor​-was​-killed​-for​-refusing​-to​-prescribe​-opioids​ -authorities​-say​/​?utm​_term​=​.d956f2e19d25. Quinones, Sam. Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2015. Reding, Nick. Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009. Roy, Ken, and Michael Miller. “Parity and the Medicalization of Addiction Treatment.” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 42 no. 2 (June 2010): 115–20. Szalavitz, Maia. Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016. Whelan, Aubrey. “How Fentanyl Took over Pennsylvania.” NBC Philadephia, November 10, 2018, https:​//​www​.nbcphiladelphia​.com​/news​/local​/How​-Fentanyl​ -Took​-Over​-Pennsylvania​-500204141​.html. Wing, Nick. “Sheriff in Heart of Ohio’s Opioid Epidemic Refuses to Carry Overdose Reversal Drug.” Huffington Post, July 8, 2017, https:​//​www​.huffingtonpost​.com​/ entry​/richard​-jones​-butler​-county​_us​_595fb129e4b02e9bdb0c3b78. Wootson, Jr., Cleve R. “One Politician’s Solution to the Overdose Problem: Let Addicts Die.” The Washington Post, June 30, 2017, https:​//​www​.washingtonpost​ .com​/news​/to​-your​-health​/wp​/2017​/06​/28​/a​-council​-members​-solution​-to​-his​-ohio​ -towns​-overdose​-problem​-let​-addicts​-die​/​?utm​_term​=​.18515afe5ee4.

NOTES 1. Robin W. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 72. 2. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 39. 3. See Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Drug Overdose Deaths in the U.S. Reach 100,000 Annually” Accessed on November 17, 2021, https:​//​www​ .cdc​.gov​/nchs​/pressroom​/nchs​_press​_releases​/2021​/20211117​.htm. Overdose deaths attributed to opioids stood at 75,673. 4. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 100. 5. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 209–12. 6. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 104–5. 7. A pseudonym. 8. Indiana Attorney General, “Opioid Settlement & Litigation,” retrieved August 13, 2022, https:​//​www​.in​.gov​/attorneygeneral​/about​-the​-office​/complex​-litigation​/ opioid​ - settlement​ / ​ # :​​ ~ :​ t ext​ = From​ % 202012​ % 20through ​ % 202016 ​ % 2C ​ % 20there​ ,AmerisourceBergen​%2C​%20Cardinal​%20Health​%20and​%20McKesson.

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9. See Joint Commission, “About the Joint Commission,” https:​ //​ www​ .jointcommission​.org​/about​_us​/about​_the​_joint​_commission​_main​.aspx; and Kristina Fiore, “Opioid Crisis: Scrap Pain as 5th Vital Sign?” MedPage Today, April 13, 2016, https:​//​www​.medpagetoday​.com​/publichealthpolicy​/publichealth​/57336. 10. See Cleve R. Wootson, Jr., “One Politician’s Solution to the Overdose Problem: Let Addicts Die,” Washington Post, June 30, 2017, https:​//​www​.washingtonpost​.com​ /news​/to​-your​-health​/wp​/2017​/06​/28​/a​-council​-members​-solution​-to​-his​-ohio​-towns​ -overdose​-problem​-let​-addicts​-die​/​?utm​_term​=​.18515afe5ee4; Nick Wing, “Sheriff in Heart of Ohio’s Opioid Epidemic Refuses to Carry Overdose Reversal Drug,” Huffington Post, July 8, 2017, https:​//​www​.huffingtonpost​.com​/entry​/richard​-jones​ -butler​-county​_us​_595fb129e4b02e9bdb0c3b78; and “On the Front Lines of Opioid Epidemic, U.S. Police Split on Narcan,” CBS News, December 19, 2017, https:​//​www​ .cbsnews​.com​/news​/narcan​-police​-split​-opioid​-epidemic​/. 11. See, for instance, Chris McGreal, “The Making of an Opiod Epidemic,” The Guardian, November 8, 2018, https:​//​www​.theguardian​.com​/news​/2018​/nov​/08​/the​ -making​-of​-an​-opioid​-epidemic​?CMP​=Share​_iOSApp​_Other. For a longer treatment, see Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2015). 12. Kristine Phillips, “A Doctor Was Killed for Refusing to Prescribe Opioids, Authorities Say,” Washington Post, July 29, 2017, https:​//​www​.washingtonpost​.com​ /news​/to​-your​-health​/wp​/2017​/07​/29​/a​-doctor​-was​-killed​-for​-refusing​-to​-prescribe​ -opioids​-authorities​-say​/​?utm​_term​=​.d956f2e19d25. 13. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 22 and 66. 14. Nick Reding, Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), 44–46. 15. Reding, Methland, 67–69. 16. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, vol. I: Human Nature (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941), 150. 17. Quoted from Center for Community Change, “Black Lives Matter Less Even in Drug Addiction” Accessed on October 25, 2016, https:​//​communitychangeaction​.org​ /changewire​/black​-lives​-matter​-less​-even​-drug​-addiction​/. 18. Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow), “I just can't get over people saying,” Twitter, June 29, 2017, 6:49 a.m., https:​ //​ twitter​ .com​ /CharlesMBlow​ /status​ /880392896477835264. 19. Cliff is a pseudonym and is a composite of more than one person. 20. Derrick A. Bell, Jr., “Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma,” Harvard Law Review 93 (1980): 518. 21. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 7. 22. Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Schneider, Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness, expanded edition (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992). 23. See Tammy L. Anderson, Brittany Lynn Scott, and Philip R. Kavanaugh, “Race, inequality and the medicalization of drug addiction: an analysis of documentary films,” Journal of Substance Use 20:5 (2015): 328. 24. Ken Roy and Michael Miller, “Parity and the Medicalization of Addiction Treatment,” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 42 (2) (2010): 115–20.

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25. See Laura Hilgers, “Let’s Open Up About Addiction and Recovery,” New York Times, November 4, 2017, https:​//​www​.nytimes​.com​/2017​/11​/04​/opinion​/sunday​/ drug​-addiction​-recovery​-alcoholism​.html​?​_r​=0. 26. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 106. 27. For a more extended treatment of this point, see Maia Szalavitz, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016); and Marc Lewis, The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease (New York: Perseus Book Group, 2015). 28. See Lindsey Bever, “The Man Who Made Billions of Dollars from Oxycontin Is Pushing a Drug to Wean Addicts Off Opiods,” The Washington Post, September 8, 2018, https:​//​www​.washingtonpost​.com​/news​/business​/wp​/2018​/09​/08​ /the​-man​-who​-made​-billions​-of​-dollars​-from​-oxycontin​-is​-pushing​-a​-drug​-to​-wean​ -addicts​-off​-opioids​/​?utm​_term​=​.7ccc0acfb64b; and Irina Ivonova, “OxyContin Maker gets Patent for Drug to Treat Opioid Addiction,” CBS News, September 7, 2018, https:​//​www​.cbsnews​.com​/news​/oxycontin​-maker​-receives​-patent​-for​ -drug​-to​-treat​-opioid​-addiction​/​?ftag​=COS​-0510aaa0h​&utm​_campaign​=trueAnthem​ %3A+Trending+Content ​ & utm ​ _ content ​ = 5b9454e904d30161f0b1576c​ & utm​ _ medium​=trueAnthem​&utm​_source​=facebook. 29. This is why the National Institutes of Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration “Pocket Guide” for administering Medication-Assisted Treatment includes the counsel to “integrate pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic therapies.” See “Pocket Guide,” https:​ //​ store​ .samhsa​ .gov​ /product​/Medication​-for​-the​-Treatment​-of​-Alcohol​-Use​-Disorder​-Pocket​-Guide​/ SMA15–4907POCKETGUID. 30. See Aubrey Whelan, “How Fentanyl Took over Pennsylvania,” NBC Philadelphia, November 10, 2018, https:​//​www​.nbcphiladelphia​.com​/news​/local​/How​ -Fentanyl​-Took​-Over​-Pennsylvania​-500204141​.html. 31. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 109, quoting from Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 14. 32. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 2–3, 7, 13–14, 17, 22–23, 34–35, 56–57, 73–81, 100, 105–9, 162ff, and 180. 33. Both Xanax, a benzodiazepine, and heroin suppress the respiratory system. Overdoses occur because the person simply stops breathing. 34. See G. Alan Marlatt, Mary E. Larimer, and Katie Witkiewitz, eds., Harm Reduction: Pragmatic Strategies for Managing High-Risk Behaviors, Second edition (New York: The Guilford Press, 2012). 35. Both the names of the people and the apartment complex are pseudonyms. 36. See NeurAxis, “A New Standard of Care,” https:​//​i-​ h​-s​.com​/. 37. A pseudonym. 38. See “The Difference Between Vicodin and Perocet,” Recovery First Treatment Center, last updated June 27, 2022, https:​//​www​.recoveryfirst​.org​/prescription​-abuse​ /vicodin​-vs​-percocet​/. 39. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932/1960), 257. 40. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 2.

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41. Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 99. 42. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 129. 43. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 141: “[W]e must understand that the Unapologetic Principle is not the exclusive prerogative of the church. Family, culture, work, and even government may be unapologetic, too.” 44. Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 3rd edition (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1993), 36. 45. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 207. 46. I add the word “interpretive” here because there is a long-standing critique on the part of anthropologists who have made the “interpretive turn” against objectivist “realism” in representation. In keeping with the phrase, “creative nonfiction,” I recognize the role of interpretation in representation. At the same time, as the term “nonfiction” indicates, the aim is a kind of verisimilitude that retains a concept of accuracy. 47. Creative Nonfiction, “What Is Creative Nonfiction?” https:​ //​ www​ .creativenonfiction​.org​/online​-reading​/what​-creative​-nonfiction.

SECTION THREE

Global Perspectives on the Future of Christian Realism

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The Chinese Dream of Prosperity Historical Roots, Ironies, and Challenges Luping Huang

A decade ago, President Xi Jinping, who was had newly come to power, introduced the concept of “the Chinese Dream,” defined by economic prosperity, national rejuvenation, and increasing public well-being. Explaining how to achieve the Chinese Dream, Xi proposed increased GDP and the diminution of poverty, emphasizing that the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation should be established upon a modern socialist society that was “prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious.”1 Unsurprisingly, the concept received a divided response. While mainland China’s mainstream media and the general public responded positively overall, skeptical voices were raised in the broader international community, casting doubt upon the nature of the Chinese Dream.2 Some claimed that the slogan merely replicated the famous American Dream, indicating a shift from a teleological utopian metanarrative to a more practical and possibly Westernized dream of prosperity and success. On the other hand, some believed it was “an incarnation of liberal nationalism,” reflecting the ambition of a rapidly rising China.3 It has to be said that the slogan itself invites multiple interpretations. Is the Chinese Dream a collective dream or more individualistically oriented, like the American Dream? Does it concern the nation’s international aspirations, domestic affluence, or both? Who is the target audience of the rhetoric, Chinese people or international ears? Answers to these questions are also likely to be multifaceted.4 For the purpose of this chapter, we will focus on the most significant feature of the Chinese Dream, namely the pursuit of prosperity. In doing so, this chapter first traces the incessant pursuit of prosperity 231

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in contemporary China back to its origins in China’s journey from an underdeveloped semifeudal and semi-colonized society to a powerful modernized nation. The “Chinese Dream” and the related dream discourse formulated by Xi did not arise from, nor should it be considered a counterpart of, the American Dream. Furthermore, it should not be understood as mere propaganda. The Chinese Dream of prosperity is a history-laden fruit growing out of many past events and ideas. It is reaching maturity in the present and will continue to exert an influence in the future. Moving forward from this premise, I introduce the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr, which exposes the ironies facing world superpowers, especially the United States, in its heyday, demonstrating that there is no simple coordination between prosperity and virtue. The last section returns to the discussion of China’s dream of prosperity. Presenting some ironies in the situation in which today’s China finds itself, this chapter endeavors to show that although the fulfillment of the dream of prosperity is a significant achievement, China should be cautious of hubris and intentionally cultivate humility as a means to curb upsurging nationalism and achieve balanced power. THE CHINESE DREAM: STRIVING FOR PROSPERITY What is the Chinese Dream? Over the last decade, there have been myriad efforts to demystify the concept. According to William A. Callahan, the Chinese Dream discourse is “mostly about domestic politics”; it combines “individual dreams for the good life” with “collective dreams for a wealthy and powerful nation.”5 Josef G. Mahoney sees it as a “metanarrative” that “aims to express official visions of the past, present and future” in pursuing “national rejuvenation, rising prosperity, a more advanced socialist society, and a stronger military.”6 Wang Zheng suggests locating the dream discourse in a larger context centered on both past glories and humiliations interwoven in the historical trajectory of contemporary China. He also notes that although Xi is the first Chinese leader to formulate the specific “Chinese Dream” narrative, the idea of “national rejuvenation” has been invoked by “almost every generation of Chinese leaders, from Sun Yet-sen to Chiang Kai-shek and from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao.”7 The rejuvenation discourse is so ingrained in Chinese collective memory that Li Xing claims, not without reason, that “the Chinese Dream project already started 175 years ago (after the Opium War).”8 The first Opium War (1840–1842) certainly marks a watershed in contemporary Chinese history. After the war, China embarked on a long and challenging course of modernization. This arduous journey, juxtaposed with the humiliating memory of China’s transformation from a complacent empire to the victim of foreign aggression and subjugation, has been generalized by Xu

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Jilin as the pursuit of prosperity (富强) and civility (文明). In a highly generalized way, “prosperity” refers to wealth and power, whereas “civility” has a nomaterialistic connotation indicating society’s cultural and moral aspects. Xu claims that with few exceptions, the dream of prosperity has overshadowed the dream of civility in the history of modern China. This has been at least partially driven by strong Chinese enthusiasm to learn from the West, which led to the assimilation of a social Darwinist framework, prioritizing development and competitiveness to “save” China from its status as a victim of bullying.9 As many Chinese found, the quickest way to shake off the yoke of foreign imperialism was to become a prosperous country with a strong military (富国强兵). Somewhat paradoxically, China wanted to learn from those powers it had resented for their oppression. However, this contradictory attitude can be partially justified by social Darwinism itself. In contrast to traditional Chinese values (which prioritize morals and rites over material gain), social Darwinism advocated predominance. It held that the strong would become stronger and the weak would become weaker through the natural evolution of forces. By this “rule of the jungle,” the fittest were entitled to survive and prevail. Therefore, wealth and power were not only what made the strong thrive; they were inherent characteristics of strength. Against this background, it is no surprise that Chinese intellectuals concerned about China’s survival almost invariably criticized the traditional, rigid, and hierarchical Chinese culture and social structure for being backward and stagnant. For them, while the Western conquerors were partly to blame for China’s plight, China’s own lack of power had made it vulnerable to imperial aggression. This tendency was evidently manifest in the thought of Yen Fu (严复, 1854–1921), who attributed China’s ills more to internal causes than Western imperialism. As Benjamin Schwartz observes in his pioneering study, Yen’s social Darwinism made it impossible for him to stand in moral judgment on the imperialist powers: “He constantly deplores the effects of Western imperialism on China, but the imperialism of the West was in his view a normal result of the unhampered processes of the struggle for existence. China’s inability to participate in this struggle must be explained in terms of its own debilities as an organism.”10 As one of the first Chinese intellectuals who set out to unveil the secret of Western wealth and power, Yen claimed that the West’s military, economic, and political might resulted from “the uninhibited flow of the evolutionary process.” In contrast, the poverty of China came from the inhibition of such flow.11 In other words, the exaltation of energy and self-assertion was justified and glorified in the Western psyche but ignored in the Chinese mindset, which prioritized inertia and harmony.

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It seemed that embracing the cult of energy and progress, in which the aim was to release the entire range of human potential—or, as Schwartz calls it, “the Faustian-Promethean nature of Western civilization”12—was the concise solution to China’s poverty and powerlessness. Nevertheless, the more subtle cultural aspect of Western success did not elude Yen’s sharp observation. He noted that there were two kinds of reform, external and fundamental. The former was concerned with military modernization, economic reform, and diplomatic tactics, and the latter involved education and changing customs and the public mindset. Yen was aware that external reform would not establish cumulative effects without parallel developments in culture. Yet, he also noted that since fundamental reforms took longer, it was necessary to prioritize the more immediate external reforms, given that the nation was in an acute crisis.13 This Janus-like attitude was an indicator of the antagonistic relationship between dreams of prosperity and civility in Yen’s thought. Xu proposes that this tension was also manifest in the thought of other contemporary intellectuals, especially Liang Qichao (梁启超).14 However, the next generation of the Chinese intelligentsia, particularly among the May Fourth thinkers, were more willing to assert the priority of cultural transformation. For example, Chen Duxiu (陈独秀), a faithful adherent of social Darwinism and a leading figure of the May Fourth Movement, as well as a cofounder of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), championed science and democracy as means to transform China. Chen held that the gap between China and the Western powers was not purely material: the ability to optimize technology was the most significant difference. Thus, his life’s work was mainly devoted to facilitating cultural reform. Like Yen, Chen realized that cultural reform was the foundation of economic reform; however, unlike Yen, he believed that cultural reform was even more urgent. Only a rigorous and comprehensive transformation of old morals and ideas would eventually produce the necessary economic change.15 Lin Yü-sheng calls the tendency to stress cultural over political and economic reform among the May Fourth intelligentsia “the cultural-intellectualistic approach.” According to Lin, this approach continued to exert an influence in the post–May Fourth years.16 If we accept Lin’s thesis, we may propose that this cultural-intellectualistic approach shifted the balance between the ideals of prosperity and civility somewhat toward civility during or even after the May Fourth era—although these two were never entirely separate ideas. Nevertheless, there is one particularly noteworthy aspect of the May Fourth Movement that Lin largely overlooks: The movement itself originated in a political crisis. In the first place, it was a campaign based on the more immediate agenda of achieving autonomy and assertiveness in the

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international arena, which meant that, even in the May Fourth period, the demand for reform was not wholly “cultural-intellectualistic.” Li Zehou reminds us that the May Fourth Movement actually included two different movements. One was the New Culture Movement (1917–1921), which featured intellectuals such as Chen Duxiu, Cai Yuanpei (蔡元培), Hu Shi (胡适), and Lu Xun (鲁迅). The other was the official trigger of the May Fourth Movement—the anti-imperialist demonstrations by Chinese students in 1919. Li argues that the objective of the New Culture Movement was enlightenment (启蒙), while the patriotic movement’s goal was to save China (救亡). In the May Fourth context, enlightenment refers to the acceptance and dissemination of science and democracy, while national salvation can be broadly understood as anti-imperialism, the pursuit of prosperity and military power, and the process of modernization. According to Li, the two goals of enlightenment and national salvation were mutually complementary and interpenetrative during the May Fourth period. The complexity shown in Yen Fu’s thought was undoubtedly more incisively and vividly manifested in the May Fourth thinkers. Nevertheless, Li contends that although the May Fourth intellectuals considered enlightenment more fundamental, their appeal to cultural means was instrumental: national salvation was always the ultimate end. Commenting on the May Fourth intelligentsia’s seemingly apolitical tendency, Li states: The complexity of the problem was that the self-consciousness of the New Culture Movement (which laid the foundation of social progress on ideological reform and democratic enlightenment) was not political but cultural. Yet from the very beginning, the political elements were explicitly or implicitly embedded in it. The goals of enlightenment, the transformation of culture, and the sublation of tradition were still aimed at changing China’s social and political situation. They had not drifted away from . . . the mainline of saving China from foreign aggression and pursuing prosperity in modern China. The sublation of tradition (the old culture and morals represented by Confucianism), the smashing of idols (Confucius), total Westernization, and democratic enlightenment were all still aimed at making China wealthy and powerful, driving progress in Chinese society, and freeing China from bullying and oppression so that the vast mass of the Chinese people could lead a better life.17

In this way, Li counters Lin’s thesis, stating that the self-consciousness of the May Fourth movement, which prioritized intellectual and cultural change, itself resulted from the failure of the preceding economic reforms of the Self-Strengthening Movement (洋务运动) and the political reforms of the Wu Hsu Reform (戊戌变法) and the 1911 Revolution (辛亥革命).18 Li calls the dynamics of enlightenment and national salvation that ran through the whole history of modern China “a double variation.” He also notes that after

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a short time of convergence in the May Fourth period, the theme of national salvation gradually attained dominance, becoming the overwhelming melody that long reverberated in the collective memory of the Chinese people. The communist success in China, Li cogently points out, was primarily due to the fact that the communist ideal offered a tangible and immediate solution to national salvation. Even more to the point, at that time, it seemed that the realization of utopian dreams for a better society had begun in Bolshevik Russia. In other words, the Chinese embrace of communism was more instrumental than theoretical. As Li says: “The acceptance and dissemination of MarxismLeninism mainly responded to the needs of the actual struggle in China at that time, rather than being the result of any thorough analysis of Western liberal theory in the ivory tower.”19 Li believes that after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, China continued along the route of national salvation rather than enlightenment.20 National interests, wealth, and power were given utmost concern, while cultural renewal often went unheeded. The trajectory of history seems to validate Li’s judgment. Under the banner of anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, the main goal of communist China’s great cause (i.e., proletarian revolution) was the elimination of poverty. The radical reform of the CCP, abolishing private ownership in the first decade of its rule, was a typical materialist approach that regarded economic reform as the basis of cultural reform. Although the Great Leap Forward Movement (1958–1960) was a failed and catastrophic example of economic development, it highlighted the CCP’s urgent desire to alleviate poverty. Other fanatical cultural reforms took the nation by storm periodically from the 1950s to 1970s. It was not until Deng Xiaoping’s series of market economy reforms known as the “reform and opening up” that China was put back on the track of economic development. Since then, China’s route to national rejuvenation has been circumscribed by pragmatism. Regardless of the varied political slogans, whether it was Deng Xiaoping’s “Four Modernizations” (modernization in industry, agriculture, science and technology, and military), Jiang ZeMin’s “Three Representatives” (representing advanced social productive forces, the progressive course of China’s advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the majority), Hu Jintao’s “Scientific Development and Harmonious Society,” or Xi’s “Chinese Dream,” the ultimate purpose of rejuvenating a prosperous and powerful nation has remained constant. Thus, we surely should not be surprised to find that a somewhat abstract and nebulous concept like the Chinese Dream has manifested in concrete goals like the Two Centenaries (两 个一百年), according to which China aims to become a “moderately well-off society” by 2021 and a fully developed country by 2049. As of 2022, it looks like China has achieved the first goal of the Two Centenaries. It has risen to become the second-largest economy worldwide,

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preceded only by the United States; and it is quickly closing this gap in terms of economic, political, and military power. China’s success has created an unprecedented socioeconomic landscape within the country. Has the dream of prosperity been fulfilled in today’s China? If the answer is an apparent yes, where does that leave the dream of civility? Although many Chinese are basking in the joy accompanying the fulfillment of the dream of prosperity, others have expressed concerns about China’s newly gained wealth and power. For them, prosperity itself is insufficient for true national rejuvenation—prosperity and civility are inseparably connected to a nation’s welfare.21 One central tenet of this chapter is that prosperity may not be a pure blessing—it also brings with it multiple challenges and responsibilities. The dream of civility, whether it derives from democracy, enlightenment, the communist ideal of equalitarianism, or traditional Confucian virtues, has existed in tandem and in tension with the dream of prosperity throughout modern Chinese history. Whenever this tension is downplayed, interpretations of the Chinese Dream are reduced to utilitarian perspectives on materialistic gain, ignoring the concept’s multilayered nature. To further articulate this point, we shall now introduce Reinhold Niebuhr’s analysis of the ironies presented in US history, using it as an analogy to understand China’s current situation. REINHOLD NIEBUHR AND THE IRONY OF PROSPERITY In 1952, Niebuhr published The Irony of American History, in which he introduced the concept of irony into an interpretation of the situation of the United States in the Cold War. In the years following World War II, the United States witnessed phenomenal growth in its economic and political power. The postwar United States, as Niebuhr noted, had become “a kind of paradise of domestic security and wealth.”22 While the material prosperity and the world political ascent of the United States had become legendary, the country had also become embroiled in several unfavorable dilemmas Niebuhr deemed ironic. According to him, this irony contained incongruities that were not merely coincidental, that is, the people involved in these contradictory situations bore some responsibility for them. Containing an element of comic absurdity, irony, therefore, was neither tragedy nor pathos. Rather than eliciting admiration or pity, it stimulated laughter or even derision. Niebuhr explained the category of irony as such: If virtue becomes vice through some hidden defect in the virtue; if strength becomes weakness because of the vanity to which strength may prompt the mighty man or nation; if security is transmuted into insecurity because too much

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reliance is placed upon it; if wisdom becomes folly because it does not know its own limits—in all such cases the situation is ironic.23

Niebuhr argued from various fronts that the postwar United States participated in and was also victimized by such ironic situations. One of the most apparent clues, he said, was the discrepancy betweenthe self-image of the United Statesand the image that its critics and friends had of it. The United States deemed itself a virtuous nation, a new Israel that had been separated from the evils of the past: “Every nation has its own form of spiritual pride. . . . Our version is that our nation turned its back upon the vices of Europe and made a new beginning.”24 However, its communist critics pointed out that, given its economic colonialist tendencies, the United States was indistinguishable from those European imperialist powers: “America is, in the eyes of communism, an exemplar of the worst form of capitalistic injustice, while it is, in its own eyes, a symbol of pure innocence and justice.” Even more, between America and its allies, there was a considerable misunderstanding that represented “a milder version of the contradiction between ourselves and our foes.”25 Many factors contributed to the discrepancy, one of which was a different understanding of the relationship between prosperity and virtue. According to Niebuhr, US history was founded on the assumption of simple equivalence between prosperity and virtue. “For, from the later Puritans to the present day we have variously attributed American prosperity to our superior diligence, our greater skill or (more recently) to our more fervent devotion to the ideals of freedom.”26 Puritans mostly regarded their prosperity as a gift of special divine providence, while Jeffersonians emphasized the role of an irreligious law of nature in making the United States thrive; nonetheless, both tried to establish complete compatibility between virtue and prosperity—it is this view that Niebuhr found problematic. Leveling his criticism against the Puritan conception of prosperity as a mark of divine reward for the virtuous, and the Jeffersonian view of prosperity as the foundation of virtue—a view that ascribed social evils to economic problems and accordingly regarded prosperity as the key moral criterion— Niebuhr argued that the prosperity of the United States was not an a priori indicator of its virtue. Instead, US success resulted from the convergence of many fortuitous factors. The United States benefited more from “objective” elements like the continent’s location and rich natural resources than from the moral character of the society. Random luck had also contributed tremendously to the nation’s success. Besides, Niebuhr pointed out that many unsolved problems connected to social injustice lay beneath US society’s remarkable economic achievements; it was inevitable that they would surface in the future. When the day came, Niebuhr held, those problems could not simply be solved by expanding the economy.27

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Although criticisms from the international community were not necessarily cogent, Niebuhr noticed that the allies and foes of the United States were more cognizant of US spiritual pride than were people in the United States. “We are also offended by the contumely of allies as well as foes, who refuse to regard our prosperity as fruit and proof of our virtue but suggest that it may be the consequence of our vulgar Philistinism.”28 Self-righteousness brought the United States some vexing problems in the international arena during the Cold War, especially in its relation with underdeveloped and formerly colonized Asian countries. Contrary to US expectations, Asians considered US wealth and power as evidence of imperialism rather than a manifestation of its virtue: We expect Asians to be grateful to us for such assistance as we have given them; and are hurt when we discover that Asians envy, rather than admire, our prosperity and regard us as imperialistic when we are ‘by definition’ a nonimperialistic nation.29 Meanwhile the difference between our wealth and the poverty of the technically undeveloped world is interpreted by communist propaganda as irrefutable evidence of the exploitative character of our economy. We sometimes naively contribute to the effectiveness of this propaganda by unduly stressing the height of our standard of living as proof of our social virtues.30

Although the United States did not colonize other countries politically (of course, it did participate in covert economic imperialism), it became the main heir of resentments toward imperialist powers after World War II. The irony was compounded when the United States, unaware of the incongruity between its prosperity and virtue, tried to solve complex problems within wider global communities “in quantitative terms,” wielding economic and military power inordinately: American world authority rests so directly upon our military power; and this in turn is drawn so immediately from our economic strength. We have had so little experience in managing or participating in the conscious and quasi-conscious power struggles of life and in fathoming the endlessly complex compounds of ethnic loyalties, historic traditions, military strength and ideological hopes which constitute historic forms of power, that we would fain move with one direct leap from the use of economic to the use of military power.31

Thus, it seemed that the descent from innocent self-appreciation to a more hazardous abuse of power could be rather rapid. Niebuhr warned that undue confidence in achievements and self-righteousness would undermine the desire of the United States to take root in the international community

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and meet its worldwide responsibilities, and would only fuel backlashes. Nevertheless, despite all his criticisms of US foreign policy during the Cold War, Niebuhr cautioned against the abandonment of the nation’s international moral responsibilities and any return to a policy of isolationism. As a global superpower, the United States had to learn how to exert its power responsibly and walk a path between the two poles of imperialism and isolationism. Virtue, after all, did not rest upon the illusion of innocence, but came from an acute awareness of one’s limitations and the willingness to face one’s own iniquities and act accordingly. Niebuhr proposed humility as an antidote to the hubris of powerful nations. A seemingly incongruous quality in the ruthless struggles of power politics, humility could be seen as a form of self-awareness that recognized a mutuality of guilt and the admixture of vice and virtue even in human beings’ highest potentialities. Among nations, humility was an even more scarce virtue: “We cannot expect even the wisest of nations to escape every peril of moral and spiritual complacency; for nations have always been constitutionally self-righteous.”32 Moreover, national vanity was often more easily observed by outsiders and critics than by internal participants. Yet Niebuhr insisted that political humility was not totally improbable since even internal participants had the potential to detect the self-deception of the group (i.e., the tendency to equate its own welfare with the universal good) and thus admit that all nations had a common need for grace and forgiveness. A humble recognition of one’s own fallibility also led to contrition— without which irony turned into impenetrable evil. Speaking in theological terms, Niebuhr stressed “a sense of awe before the vastness of the historical drama.”33 In this way, he emphasized the role of a sense of the larger meanings of history, transcending the immediate interests of nations. Of course, this conscious effort to relativize the magnificence of varied human accomplishments was not a simple possibility; nonetheless, Niebuhr defined it as a merit of faith capable of overcoming the ironies of history through judgment as well as mercy: Thus we tried too simply to make sense out of life, striving for harmonies between man and nature and man and society and man and his ultimate destiny, which have provisional but no ultimate validity. Our very success in this enterprise has hastened the exposure of its final limits. Over these exertions we discern by faith the ironical laughter of the divine source and end of all things. “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.” . . . The scripture assures us that God’s laughter is derisive, having the sting of judgment upon our vanities in it. But if the laughter is truly ironic it must symbolize mercy as well as judgment. For whenever judgment defines the limits of human striving it creates the

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possibility of a humble acceptance of those limits. Within that humility mercy and peace find a lodging place.34

PROSPERITY, HUMILITY, AND NATIONALISM It is not difficult to see how Niebuhr’s critique of American exceptionalism and his call for humility and a sense of responsibility are still relevant to the present international situation. But what specifically does this have to do with our current discussion about the Chinese Dream? In a broad sense, while some studies have compared 21st century China with the Soviet Union,35 this chapter argues that understanding similarities between China and the United States is more useful. Like the United States during the Cold War, today’s China has tremendous economic power; it is rising to become a global superpower. Furthermore, like America, China is caught in a series of ironic situations. Undoubtedly, contemporary China faces plenty of conundrums when wielding its powers, and is not only surrounded by friendly voices in the international arena. As we have seen, China has been striving to shake off backwardness and poverty since the Opium Wars. The background of the Chinese Dream narrative is China’s peculiar historical journey, from being a self-sufficient and powerful empire to humiliation and subjugation and later returning to the ranks of great powers. For the Chinese people, China’s rise is an inspiring success story, showing that even in an adverse political and economic environment, a nation can still succeed through exertion and persistence. However, the Western world casts a skeptical eye on China’s success. There has been growing fear that China’s upsurge will produce conflicts, challenging the existing world order and peace in the international community. Outside observers suspect that the Chinese Dream goes beyond national rejuvenation; it instead contains a hegemonic agenda that seeks to extend China’s economic power into the realm of world politics at the expense of other countries.36 Having noticed this tension, the Chinese government has reiterated that China’s rise is intended to be peaceful. Given its culture that values harmony and peace, China says it has no intention to take the path of military aggrandizement or adopt interventionist policies. Instead, it seeks coexistence, multilateralism, and mutual benefits. Nevertheless, critics point out that in a globalized world, imperialism usually takes the form of economic manipulation rather than overt military invasion. For example, the gigantic Belt and Road Initiative has drawn criticisms for being “a debt trap.” It is said that China has been exerting its economic power to Sinicize and gain political

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influence over certain strategically located countries, thereby threatening the sovereignty of these countries.37 As with the criticism of America made by its adversaries during the Cold War, these criticisms are not necessarily pertinent. As previously shown, China’s pursuit of wealth and power has deep historical roots. Therefore, the Chinese people’s dream of national rejuvenation should not simply be equated with an imperialist desire for expansion. However, the irony of the situation also illustrates some of the conundrums facing China in terms of its current relationships within the international community. Over the past hundred years, China’s transformation has been driven, above all, by its desire to restore its former glory. While China now seems to be on the right track to achieving that goal, its economic achievements and the concomitant growth in its political and military power might trigger containment efforts from other international powers, especially its regional neighbors and the United States. Thus, economic and political barriers could significantly restrict the space for China’s economic development. Furthermore, although the realization of the dream of prosperity is an outstanding achievement, we should not forget the dream of civility that has travelled alongside the dream of prosperity since the late Qing dynasty. The realization of the dream of civility is founded essentially upon a cultural transformation that would establish a genuine sense of national dignity. This not only depends upon China’s own efforts, but also requires that respect and recognition are accorded to it by other countries worldwide. Otherwise, today’s China could rapidly revert to the path trodden by the Qing regime, which considered itself the center of the world and the only civilized kingdom standing in stark contrast to its barbarian tributaries. Ignorant of the vagaries and vicissitudes of history, Manchu China basked in past achievements and glories rather than keeping pace with the times. Alain Peyrefitte rightly calls this misplaced confidence, which transformed Qing prosperity into decadence and decline, a form of “collective autism.”38 In this connection, humility remains a necessary quality for today’s China, since it has not yet ascended to the heights of its potential power. As Niebuhr reminded us, the wise, the powerful, and the virtuous are more easily tempted to “obscure and deny the human limitations in all human achievements and pretensions.”39 However, recognizing this ironic element in wisdom, power, and virtue may not be easy, since a double sense of self-righteousness has dominated Chinese consciousness for more than a century. On the one hand, social Darwinism, the “official” philosophy that propels the dream of prosperity, advocates the power politics of struggle. It equates success with virtue since the victory of the powerful is the inevitable result of natural selection. By this logic, the rise of China is almost predestined, and China’s wealth and power are irrefutable evidence of its righteousness. On the other, the cult

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of prosperity is also associated with a victimization narrative. According to classical Marxist theory, the oppressed are by nature righteous. Furthermore, victims are not just victims but also future victors. Therefore, in recent years, various sentimental discourses have revolved around the Chinese memory of “a century of humiliation,” emphasizing the bravery and uprightness of the Chinese people and their unstoppable march to glory. Both China’s recent success and its previous victimhood are undeniable historical facts. Nevertheless, three perspectives pertinent to our current interest are particularly worth mentioning. The first one calls for a clear awareness of the danger of dislocated egoism and a critical distance from the social Darwinism that has circumscribed Chinese consciousness for more than a century. As Liu Xuelian and Yang Xue point out, powerful nations often follow the beaten path of hegemony-seeking because, when protecting their own interests, they are blind to the fact that their interests reside also in dynamic relationships with other members of the international community. Ignorant of this crucial dynamic, they recklessly suppress and exploit others to gain the upper hand. Liu and Yang warn that such egoism based on the logic of power politics will lead to spiraling and uncontrolled competition, making the outbreak of war inevitable and ultimately leading to the decline of great powers. In explaining Xi’s concept of “great power diplomacy” (大国外交), Liu and Yang emphasize that great power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics should break the typical cycle whereby rising powers are bound to seek hegemony by cooperating with, rather than competing against, other powers. They write, “a nation’s self-choice is surely one of the determining factors in great power diplomacy, but great powers are also defined within their communities. Therefore, the stance that only focuses on China’s initiative ignores to some extent the constraints of the current international community on the promotion of great power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.”40 From a realist perspective, the checks and balances between nations facilitate national resilience and mutual development more than pure adherence to the rule of the jungle. China has to learn how to be a power among others, to bear the responsibility of being a balancing power, and also to accept the checks and balances that may be imposed upon it by external conditions. Secondly, upsurging nationalism is likely to impede China’s path to rejuvenation. Contrary to the Chinese government’s “peaceful rise” narrative, bellicose nationalism has been gaining popularity among the general public, mass media, and intelligentsia in recent years, especially after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. As Xiao Gongqin notes, the cultural atavism that extolls Sinocentrism and the so-called “Wolf Warrior Culture” that advocates the superiority of the Chinese model are both prevalent, especially among younger generations.41 Although nationalism may be a good tool for fostering national identity and social solidarity, especially in the face of a global

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crisis, it nevertheless poses threats to domestic stability and international equilibrium. Zhao Suisheng distinguishes two types of nationalism: top-down (which he calls “state nationalism”) and bottom-up (which he calls “popular nationalism”). Popular nationalism, he points out, actually poses “a daunting challenge” to the Chinese government in their attempts to conduct diplomacy centered on “peaceful coexistence”: “Without constraints, nationalism could become a dangerous Pandora’s Box . . . If Chinese leaders could not deliver on their nationalist promise, they would become vulnerable to nationalistic criticism.” The interplay of state nationalism and grassroots popular nationalism, as Zhao sees it, will push the Chinese leadership to take increasingly proactive actions in the international arena.42 As we can see, there is a chasm between the Chinese Dream’s “peace narrative” and the nationalist sentiment that calls for a hawkish foreign policy. Unsurprisingly, critics often accuse China of doing little to regulate the surging nationalist fever, despite the Chinese government’s continual assertions that it has no imperialistic ambition. Xiao warns that letting extreme nationalism go unchecked could have severe consequences. He urges China to learn from the failures of Germany, Japan, and America when engaging in international affairs. In this regard, he sees the traditional Chinese aphorism, “never be prosperous and arrogant,” as a potential antidote.43 Exalting nationalism is neither an appropriate way to mitigate China’s ironies nor to fully realize the Chinese Dream. Only by consciously cultivating humility can irrational emotions among the vast mass of the Chinese people be regulated, and only by working with other nations across the international community can China have a better future. Finally, as Maria A. Carrai says, the Chinese Dream of rejuvenation should be “inclusive and pluralistic” and should “open its historical narratives to contestation.”44 Moving on from the COVID-19 era, China is facing many domestic and international issues. The stagnation of economic growth in the foreseeable future will inevitably affect domestic stability since the Chinese government’s legitimacy has thus far been predicated on its own performance. Unlike the Mao era, which aimed to construct its legitimacy through appeals to revolutionary ideology, the pragmatic approach of “performance legitimacy” that the Chinese government has adopted over the last few decades emphasizes concrete goals like economic growth, good governance, and international status as means to reinforce its rule.45 While this approach has largely been successful, many have expressed concerns about the sustainability of performance and the potential for a legitimacy crisis if economic growth is hampered.46 Thus, performance legitimacy is a double-edged sword. It can bring considerable social consent and foster patriotism, but it can also serve as a critical catalyst when the government’s performance is nonoptimal. As Yang Hongxing and Zhao Dingxin point out,

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“good government policies will raise people’s desire and demand and bad policies will induce state-centered grievances. . . . Performance-based legitimacy gives the Chinese government and people a perpetual sense of crisis, on the one hand, and the Chinese society a great tension and rare kind of energy, on the other hand. This tension can lead to economic breakthrough as well as state breakdown.”47 Mostly heedless of such warnings, many Chinese indulge in the fulfillment of the dream of prosperity. They regard economic success as the source of China’s confidence and virtue. Yet, even though GDP figures are soaring, China is by no means a perfect society. Domestically speaking, many deep-rooted social problems are yet to surface; internationally speaking, China is situated in a potentially hostile environment where many countries fear its growing prosperity, which they perceive as a threat rather than a virtue. As a rising superpower with great potential—just like America during the Cold War—China has to learn that there is no simple coordination between prosperity and virtue. Economic power alone cannot be the silver bullet in domestic and foreign affairs. Genuine virtue comes from an awareness of a variety of limitations rather than blind self-confidence in one’s achievements. The Chinese Dream is about much more than economic and military modernization. It is about civility—social justice, a sound legal system, human rights, political and religious tolerance, the balance and separation of powers, and collaboration with fellow members of the international community. Without question, the success of the so-called “China model” is unique, but China’s uniqueness should facilitate its role as a responsible member of the international community rather than making it a perpetual “other.” BIBLIOGRAPHY Ali, Habiba. “BRI: Debt-Trap Diplomacy or a Win-Win Strategy?” Strafasia. Accessed July 6, 2022. https:​//​strafasia​.com​/bri​-debt​-trap​-diplomacy​-or​-a​-win​-win​ -strategy. Berkofsky, Axel. “‘The Chinese Dream’ and Chinese Foreign and Security Policies— Rosy Rhetoric versus Harsh Realities.” Asia-Pacific Review 23, no. 2 (2016): 109–28. Callahan, William A. China Dreams: 20 Visions of the Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. ———. “Dreaming as a Critical Discourse of National Belonging: China Dream, American Dream and World Dream.” Nations and Nationalism 23:2 (2017): 248–70. Carrai, Maria Adele. “Chinese Political Nostalgia and Xi Jinping’s Dream of Great Rejuvenation.” International Journal of Asian Studies (2020): 1–19.

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Chen, Duxiu ‌‌‌陈独秀. “Constitution and Confucianism”. In The Selected Works of Chen Duxiu《陈独秀选集》. Tianjin Renmin Publisher, 1990. ———. “The Theory of Harmonization and Outdated Morality” . in The Selected Works of Chen Duxiu 《陈独秀选集》. Tianjin Renmin Publisher, 1990. Ci, Jiwei, Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Dyer, Geoff. The Contest of the Century: The New Era of Competition with China— and How America Can Win. New York: Vintage, 2014. Edney, Kingsley. “Building National Cohesion and Domestic Legitimacy: A Regime Security Approach to Soft Power in China.” Politics 35: 3–4 (2015): 259–72. Gertz, Bill. The China Threat: How the People’s Republic Targets America. Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2002. Ian, Liu Yuying, “The Chinese Dream, Neoliberalism, and International Legal Ideology.” The Chinese Journal of Global Governance 4 (2018): 81–121. Kerr, David, ed., China’s Many Dreams, Comparative Perspectives on China’s Search for National Rejuvenation. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Li, Xing. “Interpreting and Understanding ‘The Chinese Dream’ in a Holistic Nexus.” Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 8 (2015): 515–20. Li, Zehou李泽厚, On the History of Modern Chinese Thought《中国现代思想史 论》. The Orient Press, 1987. Lin, Yü-sheng. The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fouth Era. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978. Liu, Mingfu. The China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Posture in the Post-American Era. New York: CN Times Books, 2015. Liu, Xuelian, and Yang Xue 刘雪莲, 杨雪. “Breaking the Hegemony Cycle: Great Power Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics”. Exploration and Free Views《探索与争鸣》5 (2021): 35–46. Mahoney, Josef G. “Interpreting the Chinese Dream: An Exercise of Political Hermeneutics.” Journal of Chinese Political Science 19, no. 1 (2014): 15–34. Mearsheimer, John. “China’s Unpeaceful Rise.” Current History 105: 690 (2006): 160–62. Moore, Gregory J. Niebuhrian International Relations: The Ethics of Foreign Policymaking. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Irony of American History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952. Osnos, Evan. “Can China Deliver the China Dream(s)?” New Yorker, March 26, 2013. Peng, Guoxiang 彭国翔. Reestablishing Siwen: Confucianism and Today’s World 《重建斯文：儒学与当今世界》. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2013. Peyrefitte, Alain. The Immobile Empire. Translated by Jon Rothschild. New York: Knopf, 1992. Ren, Jiantao 任剑涛. “China’s International Identity” . Xuehai《学海》1 (2016): 143–60.

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Schwartz, Benjamin. In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983. Wang, Yiwei. “Avoid a Narrow Understanding of the Chinese Dream.” Accessed July 7, 2022. http:​//​www​.chinatoday​.com​.cn​/english​/zhuanti​/2013​-08​/26​/content​ _563269​.htm. Wang, Jiayu. “Narrative Mediatisation of the ‘Chinese Dream’ in Chinese and American Media.” Journal of Language and Politics 15:1 (2016): 45–62. ———. “Representing Chinese Nationalism/Patriotism through President Xi Jinping’s ‘Chinese Dream’ Discourse.” Journal of Language and Politics (2017): 1–19. Wang, Zheng. “The Chinese Dream: Concept and Context,” Journal of Chinese Political Science 19:1 (2014), 1–13. Xu, Jilin 许纪霖. How does the Enlightenment Regain Power? The Dilemma of Modern Chinese Intellectuals《启蒙如何起死回生：现代中国知识分子的思想 困境》. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2011. ———, “From Seeking Prosperity and Power to Civilization Consciousness: The Historical Transition of Powerful Nation Dream in the Late Qing” . Fudan Journal (Social Sciences) 4 (2010): 1–14. Yee, Herbert S. China’s Rise—Threat or Opportunity? New York: Taylor & Francis, 2013. Xiao, Gongqin萧功秦. “How do Chinese People Rebuild Cultural Confidence” . Accessed July 6, 2022. http:​ //​ www​.hybsl​.cn​/zonghe​/zuixinshiliao​/2021​-05​-17​/73334​.html. Yang, Hongxing, and Zhao Dingxin. “Performance Legitimacy, State Autonomy and China’s Economic Miracle.” Journal of Contemporary China 24: 91 (2015): 64–82. Zhao, Suisheng. “Foreign Policy Implications of Chinese Nationalism Revisited: The Strident Turn.” Journal of Contemporary China (2013): 1–19. Zhu, Yuchao, “Performance Legitimacy and China’s Political Adaptation Strategy.” Journal of Chinese Political Science 16 (2011): 123–40.

NOTES 1. Xi Jinping, “The Chinese Dream is the People’s Dream,” http://en.qstheory. cn/2021-04/09/c_608759.htm, accessed July 7, 2022.  2. Evan Osnos, “Can China Deliver the China Dream(s)?” New Yorker, March 26, 2013; David Kerr, ed., China’s Many Dreams, Comparative Perspectives on China’s Search for National Rejuvenation (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Axel Berkofsky, “The Chinese Dream” and Chinese Foreign and Security Policies—Rosy Rhetoric versus Harsh Realities,” Asia-Pacific Review 23:2 (2016): 109–28; Maria Adele Carrai, “Chinese Political Nostalgia and Xi Jinping’s Dream of Great Rejuvenation,” International Journal of Asian Studies (2020): 1–19.

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3. Wang Yiwei, “Avoid a Narrow Understanding of the Chinese Dream, http:​//​ www​.chinatoday​.com​.cn​/english​/zhuanti​/2013​-08​/26​/content​_563269​.htm, accessed July 7, 2022. 4. William A. Callahan, China Dreams: 20 Visions of the Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Wang Zheng, “The Chinese Dream: Concept and Context,” Journal of Chinese Political Science 19:1 (2014), 1–13; Josef G. Mahoney, “Interpreting the Chinese Dream: An Exercise of Political Hermeneutics,” Journal of Chinese Political Science 19:1 (2014): 15–34. Liu Mingfu, The China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Posture in the Post-American Era (New York: CN Times Books, 2015); Li Xing, “Interpreting and Understanding ‘The Chinese Dream’ in a Holistic Nexus,” Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 8 (2015): 515–20; Wang Jiayu, “Narrative Mediatisation of the ‘Chinese Dream’ in Chinese and American Media,” Journal of Language and Politics 15:1 (2016): 45–62; Wang Jiayu, “Representing Chinese Nationalism/Patriotism through President Xi Jinping’s ‘Chinese Dream’ Discourse,” Journal of Language and Politics (2017): 1–19; Ian Liu Yuying, “The Chinese Dream, Neoliberalism, and International Legal Ideology,” The Chinese Journal of Global Governance 4 (2018): 81–121; William A. Callahan, “Dreaming as a Critical Discourse of National Belonging: China Dream, American Dream and World Dream,” Nations and Nationalism 23:2 (2017), 248–70. 5. Callahan, “Dreaming as a Critical Discourse,” 253. 6. Mahoney, “Interpreting the Chinese Dream,” 15, 27. 7. Wang Zheng, “The Chinese Dream,” 1–2. 8. Li Xing, “Interpreting and Understanding,” 511. 9. Xu Jilin许纪霖, How does the Enlightenment Regain Power? The Dilemma of Modern Chinese Intellectuals《启蒙如何起死回生：现代中国知识分子的思想困 境》(Beijing: Peking University Press, 2011), preface, 1. 10. Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 177; also 89. 11. Schwartz, In Search, 56. 12. Schwartz, In Search, 239. 13. Schwartz, In Search, 85. 14. Xu Jilin, “From Seeking Prosperity and Power to Civilization Consciousness: The Historical Transition of Powerful Nation Dream in the Late Qing” , Fudan Journal (Social Sciences) 4 (2010): 1–14. 15. Chen Duxiu 陈独秀, “Constitution and Confucianism”; “The Theory of Harmonization and Outdated Morality”, in The Selected Works of Chen Duxiu 《陈独秀选集》(Tianjin Renmin Publisher, 1990) 37; 84–87. 16. For instance, Lin argues that Mao Zedong’s resolution to purge all feudal and bourgeois residues in the Chinese society during the last years of his life reflected a heritage from the May Fourth radicalism, though in a slightly different vein. See Lin Yü-sheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fouth Era (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 156–60.

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17. Li Zehou 李泽厚, On the History of Modern Chinese Thought《中国现代思 想史论》(The Orient Press, 1987), 11–12. 18. Li, On the History, 11, note 3. 19. Li, On the History, 32. After Marxism-Leninism was introduced to China, many pioneers of the New Culture Movement, like Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao (李大钊), Qu Qiubai (瞿秋白), and Mao Zedong, became actively involved in the communist cause, turning from liberal democrats or anarchists into Marxists. 20. Li, On the History, 35–48. 21. Xu, How does the Enlightenment Regain Power; Peng Guoxiang 彭国翔, Reestablishing Siwen: Confucianism and Today’s World《重建斯文：儒学与当 今世界》(Beijing: Peking University Press, 2013); Ren Jiantao 任剑涛, “China’s International Identity” , Xuehai《学海》1 (2016): 143–60. 22. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 45. 23. Niebuhr, Irony, viii. 24. Niebuhr, Irony, 28. 25. Niebuhr, Irony, 34. 26. Niebuhr, Irony, 48–49. 27. Niebuhr, Irony, 29. 28. Niebuhr, Irony, 46. 29. Niebuhr, Irony, 42. 30. Niebuhr, Irony, 116. 31. Niebuhr, Irony, 76. 32. Niebuhr, Irony, 149. 33. Niebuhr, Irony, 174. 34. Niebuhr, Irony, 63–64. 35. See Gregory J. Moore, Niebuhrian International Relations: The Ethics of Foreign Policymaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 147–50. 36. Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People’s Republic Targets America (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2002); John Mearsheimer, “China’s Unpeaceful Rise,” Current History 105: 690 (2006): 160–62; Herbert S. Yee, China’s Rise— Threat or Opportunity? (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2013); Geoff Dyer, The Contest of the Century: The New Era of Competition with China—and How America Can Win (New York: Vintage, 2014). 37. Habiba Ali, “BRI: Debt-Trap Diplomacy or a Win-Win Strategy?” Strafasia, https:​//​strafasia​.com​/bri​-debt​-trap​-diplomacy​-or​-a​-win​-win​-strategy, accessed July 6, 2022. 38. Alain Peyrefitte, The Immobile Empire, trans. Jon Rothschild (New York: Knopf, 1992), chapter 46. 39. Niebuhr, Irony, 147. 40. Liu Xuelian and Yang Xue 刘雪莲, 杨雪, “Breaking the Hegemony Cycle: Great Power Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics” , Exploration and Free Views《探索与争鸣》5 (2021): 35–46.

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41. Xiao Gongqin萧功秦, “How do Chinese People Rebuild Cultural Confidence” , http:​//​www​.hybsl​.cn​/zonghe​/ zuixinshiliao​/2021​-05​-17​/73334​.html, accessed July 6, 2022. 42. Zhao Suisheng, “Foreign Policy Implications of Chinese Nationalism Revisited: The Strident Turn,” Journal of Contemporary China (2013): 1–19. 43. Xiao, “Cultural Confidence.” 44. Carrai, “Chinese Political Nostalgia,” 16. 45. Zhu Yuchao, “Performance Legitimacy and China’s Political Adaptation Strategy,” Journal of Chinese Political Science 16 (2011): 123–40; Kingsley Edney, “Building National Cohesion and Domestic Legitimacy: A Regime Security Approach to Soft Power in China,” Politics 35: 3–4 (2015): 259–72. 46. See, Ci Jiwei, Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019); Yang Hongxing and Zhao Dingxin, “Performance Legitimacy, State Autonomy and China’s Economic Miracle,” Journal of Contemporary China 24: 91 (2015), 64–82; Zhu, “Performance Legitimacy and China’s Political Adaptation Strategy.” 47. Yang and Zhao, “Performance, State Autonomy and China’s Economic Miracle,” 82.

Chapter Fifteen

Christian Realism in Japan Yoshibumi Takahashi

The purpose of this chapter is to outline the scholarship on Christian realism, especially Niebuhrian Christian realism, in Japan. We will look at the main figures, roughly chronologically, who introduced Niebuhr, both positively and negatively, in Japan. Then we will consider the significance of Christian realism for Japan’s future. From the outset, we must consider two factors unique to Japan. The first is the position occupied by Christianity in Japanese society. The current Christian population is only about 1 million, less than 1 percent of the total population, making Christians an overwhelming minority in Japan.1 Nevertheless, Christianity has influenced aspects of the culture, especially in the field of education, far out of proportion to its numbers. Christian schools have a unique and important position among private schools in Japan, and Christians both by proportion and impact have had an impact on the academic and business worlds. The second factor is the pacifism of the Japanese Constitution that resulted from the defeat in World War II. The Constitution notes that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” and holds that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.”2 This Constitution with its peace clause was regarded from the beginning as provisional and in need of early revision. Yet despite the fact that this revision has always been a platform of the Liberal Democratic Party, in power almost consistently since the war, the peace clause has had the support of the majority of the Japanese people for over seventy years.3 In the meantime, the peace clause has been interpreted realistically to say that it does not necessarily deny the right to self-defense or collective security. 251

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This latter interpretation, while still under intense debate, can be said to have gained majority support. The Japanese Constitution is relevant to our discussion because the majority of Japanese Christians are pacifist supporters of the current Constitution. For the most part, they have rejected the recent collective security system and highly appreciate the pacifism of the Constitution. The reason for this is that during World War II they could not, with a few exceptions, effectively oppose the nationalist government and the national religion (State Shinto). The church regrets deeply having willingly gone along with the government.4 These two points loom large for Christians in Japan and must be taken into account in any examination of Christian realism. THE FIRST GENERATION OF NIEBUHR SCHOLARSHIP In Japan, Niebuhr was introduced in earnest from the 1940s to the mid-1960s, beginning shortly after the end of the Pacific War. During this period, the study and translation of Niebuhr was intensive, and the contribution of Otis Cary, Norimoto Iino, Shin Yamamoto, Kiyoko Takeda and others laid the foundation for the subsequent study of Niebuhr. These people can be called the first generation of Niebuhr scholars in Japan. It is also necessary to mention Tetsutaro Ariga, who although he did not introduce Niebuhr comprehensively, contributed in a unique way. It was Takeda, however, who stood out in this generation. Otis Cary, Norimoto Iino, Shin Yamamoto, Tetsutaro Ariga Otis Cary (1921–2006), an American born in Otaru as a missionary child, taught history at Doshisha University and contributed to the exchange between Japan and the United States after the war. Cary, in collaboration with several young researchers, translated Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History and The Self and the Dramas of History. Cary’s notable achievement is that he translated the “Intellectual Autobiography” written by Niebuhr in 19565 and included it as an appendix in their translation of The Self and the Dramas of History. Norimoto Iino (1908–1990), a religious philosopher, earned his PhD under Edgar S. Brightman at Boston University and was a professor at International Christian University (hereafter ICU). Iino translated two books by Niebuhr6 and also wrote books and essays introducing Niebuhr’s life and thought.7 Shin Yamamoto (1913–1980), a scholar of civilization, wrote two books about Niebuhr and his realism.8 Yamamoto’s books introduce Niebuhr’s thought,

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particularly from the 1930s. Tetsutaro Ariga (1899–1977), who influenced Motoi Kurihara before World War II, took up Niebuhr in a unique way after the war. Ariga translated the exchange between Barth and Niebuhr, held right after the World Council of Churches’ (hereafter WCC) Inaugural Meeting at Amsterdam in 1948, which he found in The Christian Century magazine and published in a single book titled The Controversy between Barth and Niebuhr.9 This unique contribution came at a time when interest in Barth began to increase after the war and introduced Niebuhr’s viewpoint in contrast to Barth’s. Kiyoko Takeda Among the first generation of those who studied Niebuhr, the most prominent was Kiyoko Takeda (1917–2018). After studying for two years at Columbia University, Takeda began working at Union in 1941 under Paul Tillich and Niebuhr, but in December of that year the Pacific War began, and in June 1942, she returned to Japan on the first Japan-US exchange ship.10 After the war, Takeda was the national director of YWCA’s youth division and a teacher at the newly established ICU, and is known for her work on the history of modern Japanese thought.11 At the same time, she actively participated in Asian and other international ecumenical movements, had a close relationship with Willem A. Visser’t Hooft, Emil Brunner, Karl Barth and other prominent theologians, and later represented Asia as one of the six presidents of the WCC.12 She later recalled that Niebuhr’s thought inspired all of her progress in these activities.13 One of Takeda’s important achievements was the introduction of Niebuhr to Japan. Like Iino, she translated Niebuhr, but she also interacted widely with political thinkers, leading to their interest in Niebuhr. Takeda translated Niebuhr’s book The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness and energetically introduced and discussed Niebuhr in several magazines, including Science of Thought.14 Takeda reminisced that the book, “given the great interest in democracy and helped by the Cold War social situation, attracted many people,” not only those with interest in Christianity, but also Marxists and others.15 Takeda’s introduction and discussion of Niebuhr across a range of academic exchanges focused mainly on human sin and history. Given the postwar historical context, Christian realism occupied an important position in her writings. In her book Man, Society, and History: Life and Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr, Takeda, while focusing on Niebuhr, clarified her own position in the section, “Absolute Pacifism and Realism.”16 After a rather detailed summary of Niebuhr’s long essay, “Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist”17 Takeda wrote:

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From the standpoint of the Christian gospel, Niebuhr criticizes absolute pacifism, pointing out fundamental problems in its understanding of the gospel and optimistic view of human beings. Significantly for Christian ethics, Niebuhr confronts absolute pacifism with the historical relativity of sinful humans and the problem of realizing justice amidst the struggle for balance of power in the world. However, it must be pointed out that Niebuhr’s criticism of pacifism, if misunderstood, can be seen as affirming war or confused with affirmation of war. However, as long as humble self-reflection is strictly observed, no such problem arises.18

After confirming the position of Niebuhr’s Christian realism in comparison with pacifism, Takeda discussed the issue of pacifism and realism independently as a Christian problem in Japan, making the following four points.19 First, we need to fully appreciate and learn how Niebuhr’s Christian realism poses very important questions regarding the Christian view of man and history, while at the same time remaining conscious of the danger inherent in Niebuhr’s Christian realism. The danger of Christian realism is the tendency of “realism to overemphasize its relativism,” so that “just war is justified for abolishing the sins of others we have demonized.” In the sense of calling realists to awareness, “an absolutely peaceful theory of absolute peace has great meaning.” Japanese Christians should learn from the criticism of absolute pacifism, “not only criticism from the outside, but also conscientious criticism from the inside, and yet continue to advocate the absolute pacifism without disregarding the harsh criticism from realism at the same time.” Second, in the reality of today’s harsh Cold War, peace is maintained by securing a marginal line that prevents the outbreak of war by the balance of power between the US and the Soviet Union. We must admit this, but at the same time, it is necessary to realistically grasp the “neutral, mediating position and the meaning of its existence” between the US and the Soviet Union. As Niebuhr says, we must resist dictatorial tyranny. However, “when we take the position of Asia and Japan, we cannot conclude that the United States is a just country and the Soviet Union a dishonest country.” Thirdly, there is a problem regarding whether or not the “free society” to be preserved that realists such as Niebuhr have set as the standard is truly free. There is also the problem of whether it is appropriate to transplant this society directly into the Orient or Japan. Japan needs to consider on its own the question of what is truly the “free society” and how to establish it. Fourth, at the time of the Cold War, it was necessary to place importance on the meaning of the “new determination to survive the path as an unarmed peaceful nation,” the abolition of militarism that Japan vowed to the whole world with the new Japanese Constitution. Today, as the momentum for reconsidering the constitutional amendment is getting stronger, we need

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to think deeply. We Christians must be confident that Japan will never do anything like the former war of invasion that disturbs the peace of Asia and the world.‌‌‌‌‌ We have reviewed Takeda, Japan’s early Niebuhrian, and her straightforward considerations about realism after the postwar period in the early 1950s, where signs of the so-called “reverse course”20 in Japan had become evident. Takeda’s sense of crisis based on the danger of the “reverse course” seems to have stayed with her even later in life. Takeda, strongly desiring pacifism, no doubt always debated using Niebuhr’s humanism-backed realism. However, a strong feeling for the significance of Article 9 of the Constitution, based on her regret for the Pacific War, sometimes intensified her consideration of the danger of Niebuhrian realism. Takeda’s later promotion of the “Article 9 Society” makes this clear. THE SECOND GENERATION OF NIEBUHR SCHOLARSHIP Following Takeda and others of the first generation of Niebuhr scholarship, Yasuo Furuya and Hideo Ohki from Tokyo Union Theological Seminary (hereafter Tokyo Union) from the late 1960s to the 1980s grappled more seriously with Niebuhr and his ideological position in their introduction of Niebuhr. Their efforts can be also regarded as the acceptance of Niebuhr’s realism. Consequently, they may be regarded as the second generation of Niebuhr scholars in Japan. Yasuo Furuya Yasuo Furuya (1926–2018) obtained his ThD at Princeton Theological Seminary, studying Ernst Troeltsch’s treatise on the absoluteness of Christianity. Furuya returned to Japan for a long career teaching at ICU and was also active internationally as a theologian. Furuya, who was particularly interested in the trends of Christianity in the United States, became Japan’s pioneer in writings about American theology and churches, publishing books such as America the Christendom and The Turbulent Church in America.21 Furuya also wrote on the theology of religion and on the university, and on the theology of Japan (with Hideo Ohki), attracting attention and becoming regarded as one of Japan’s leading theologians. While studying at Princeton, Furuya frequently visited New York, where he became acquainted with Niebuhr and his wife. From early on, Furuya had a greater familiarity with Niebuhr than he did with other contemporary theologians. Although Furuya did not write a book about Niebuhr, he included

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several journal articles about Niebuhr and other references to the theologian in the books noted above. Furuya takes Niebuhr first and foremost as a Christian realist, always discussing Niebuhr from that perspective, and drawing out what to learn from it. In particular, Furuya highly valued the theological insights on human nature and destiny that underlie Niebuhr’s realism and tuned his theological perspective. But Furuya’s evaluation of Niebuhr’s realism per se was ambivalent from the start. In the 1970s, student conflicts that occurred simultaneously throughout the world increased in intensity in Japan, including at ICU where Furuya taught. In the United Church of Christ in Japan (hereafter UCCJ), the conflict between the group that emphasized the social role of the church (social group) and the group that focused on the formation and mission of the church (church group) deepened, to become a sort of sectarian conflict that continues to the present. Furuya sympathized at first with the protesting students of the so-called new left-wing movement, but soon switched sides. He confronted the protestors to maintain order at the university and stood with the church group in the UCCJ. Furuya relied here on the Niebuhrian Christian realism inspired by Hideo Ohki, which will be discussed later.22 Furuya translated and published Niebuhr’s pastoral diary, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, in the midst of the conflict, seeing Niebuhr’s “Christian pastoral experience in Detroit for 13 years as the experience that spawned Niebuhr’s theology.” “Through the translation work, I gradually organized the chaos in my mind and found hope in my agony.”23 Furuya learned Niebuhr’s realism from this book, and thereby fought the university and church conflicts as a realist. Furuya came to appreciate Niebuhr rather early, but had considerable doubts about his political realism. A typical example is found in his book America the Christendom, chapter 9: “The Vietnam Problem: The Irony of Reinhold Niebuhr,”24 which discussed the Christian church’s attitude to the Vietnam War. Furuya questioned why a US church that had been pacifist after World War I had been so late to express opposition to the Vietnam War. He asked, “Why didn’t the NCC clearly criticize the government until December 1965? I wonder why even the progressive The Christian Century and Christianity and Crisis refrained from direct criticism until June 1965.” Furuya charged that “they were slow in criticizing the Vietnam War because of Niebuhr’s influence. The fact that The Christian Century didn’t advocate absolute pacifism after World War II, different than after World War I, and, therefore, did not stand absolutely opposed to the Vietnam War is the greatest proof of Niebuhr’s influence.”25 Furuya was for most of his career known as a Niebuhr-like Christian realist, who in February 2011 made a change to Yoder-like pacifism or Biblical realism. Furuya declared:

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I think J. H. Yoder’s pacifism, that is, today’s Biblical Realism’s position, as opposed to Niebuhr’s Christian realism is more realistic . . . the pacifism of Quakers and Mennonites, which was previously considered unrealistic, is now more “real” . . . [it is] Biblical Realism based on the non-violence and pacifism of Tolstoy, Gandhi and King. Therefore, in particular, I believe that Japanese Christians should stand up for Article 9 of the Constitution by standing in Biblical realism, not Christian realism as Niebuhr says. This is my conclusion.26

Thus Yasuo Furuya, one of the representative theologians of the second generation of Niebuhrians in Japan, turned away from Niebuhr’s Christian realism and toward pacifism. This was a “confession” for Furuya, long known as a Niebuhrian realist. When Furuya finally faced a contradiction between the Peace Constitution (i.e., the Constitution of Japan) and Niebuhr’s Christian realism, he chose the former. Hideo Ohki Hideo Ohki (1928–2022), more than Furuya, represents the second generation of Niebuhr reception in Japan. Shortly after the Pacific war, Ohki, influenced by Toyohiko Kagawa, converted to Christianity and went to Tokyo Union to study theology. While a graduate student, Ohki served as assistant to Emil Brunner, who had come to Japan as a professor at ICU. Ohki, the army cadet turned Christian, had experienced Japan’s dramatic change from a wartime nationalist system to a postwar democratic state. He keenly desired to know the historical sources and significance of democracy and the essence and future of the modern world, especially Japan. As Ohki wanted to study in Europe or the United States after finishing at Tokyo Union, he consulted Brunner, who advised that Ohki study democracy under Niebuhr. Ohki took Brunner’s advice and began studies in 1957 at Union under Niebuhr, Tillich, Pauck, and others. Ohki, one of Niebuhr’s last doctoral students, completed his ThD dissertation, “Ethics in the 17th Century English Puritanism” in 1960, the year Niebuhr retired. The dissertation clarified the origins of democracy dating back to seventeenth-century British Puritanism. Ohki found inspiration from the new Puritanism research done by Perry Miller and William Haller since the 1930s. Researchers today occasionally cite Ohki’s dissertation, which is still considered an excellent work.27 Ohki returned to Japan and became a professor at Tokyo Union active in the fields of systematic theology and Christian social ethics. Ohki’s original theological insights and developments would eventually make him Japan’s leading theologian.28 Ohki contended from a Niebuhrian perspective that the way of true realism lay in the tension between “priestly wisdom” and “prophetic wisdom.” He argued, in contrast to the optimistic realists of the

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time, for a deep view of human nature and history that included elements of irony and nihilism.29 Ohki concluded by introducing for the first time in Japan Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer, along with June Bingham’s explanation of the background of the prayer. Ohki’s widely read book Eschatological Reflections has always been considered an introduction to Niebuhr, especially Niebuhr’s Christian realism, but it is more than just an introduction. With Niebuhr as his base, Ohki grapples in a lively dialogue with various schools of thought in Japan. Ohki, as a systematic theologian, completed a major trilogy of ethics, dogmatics, and apologetics. Ohki himself did not consider this work complete and sometimes referred to it as a basic theory or prolegomena. However, it at least expresses more than an outline of the theological system Ohki aimed to build and can indeed be considered one of the major theological achievements in twentieth-century Japan. Ohki characterized his trilogy as “theology of history,” also as “theology as history” or “Geschichtstheologie.” It is not a theology about history, but a theology with history built deeply into its structure. Each volume of the trilogy introduces and incorporates Niebuhr’s thought, which forms the basis of many of Ohki’s arguments. Ohki saw the whole of Niebuhr’s theology as a “theology of history.” Based on the understanding of human nature in the dialectic of sin and righteousness and on the importance of the doctrine of atonement, it expects the ultimate fulfillment of history at the end of time yet sees certain fulfillments in history. In 1992, Ohki, as Director of the Research Institute for Seigakuin University, hosted a series of Niebuhr workshops and a symposium on “Niebuhr and the United States” to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Niebuhr.30 In this symposium Ohki gave a lecture, “My Teacher Reinhold Niebuhr,” touching on issues of nihilism in Japan after World War II, discussions between Niebuhr and Karl Löwith, and disputes between Niebuhr and Barth. At that time, Ohki would write: Niebuhr is a theologian who worked on the historical world theologically. Working theologically, one must on the one hand determine the relativity of historical reality and the depth of the sculpture of its concreteness, and on the other hand, understand correctly the yearning or trend for completion in historical reality. Niebuhr has integrated both into Christian realism. Niebuhr has found in Augustine’s The City of God an example of Christian realism but criticizes it. In this criticism, you can see Niebuhr’s realism.31

Ohki’s understanding of Niebuhr’s theology, especially Niebuhr’s understanding of Christian realism, deepened in later years through his further interest in irony. Ohki had already translated Niebuhr’s Moral Man, thereby

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introducing Niebuhr’s early realism, but after seeing the realism based on the understanding of history found in The Nature and Destiny of Man, he began to take a close look at Niebuhr’s understanding of history and the depth of its realism as he translated The Irony of American History (hereafter Irony).32 In his paper, “Characteristics of the Way of Thinking in Reinhold Niebuhr: On the Irony of American History,”33 Ohki gives an overview of Irony’s content chapter by chapter, highlighting the nature of Niebuhr’s historical concepts and including the ironies contained therein.34 Ohki then made the following statement with an eye to Barth, which also captures the depth of Niebuhr’s realism. This book [Irony] is a book of American self-criticism written using the concept of irony and at the same time a criticism of the Soviet Union, an adversary at that time. It should be noted here that the argument is made using the category of history. In Niebuhr, the doctrine of man and the theology of history are intertwined. The doctrine of revelation by Barth is vertical end to end. His anthropology is reduced to Christology. But . . . the flow of world history cannot be captured by Barth’s vertical dimension. Niebuhr combines it with the theology of history.35

Ohki consistently stressed the significance of the postwar Japanese Constitution and insisted on maintaining it. Ohki’s strong enthusiasm for the present Constitution of Japan lies in the fact that this Constitution has the freedom and human rights the prewar Constitution of Imperial Japan (Meiji Constitution) lacked. Ohki understood the profound break between the understanding of freedom in the Meiji Constitution and the current constitution. In the current constitution, we see the form of democracy emanating from puritanism. Ohki shows some appreciation for the constitutional pacifism (in the Preface and Article 9) on which many Christians concentrate, but unlike most Christians, including Takeda and Furuya, Ohki does not cling to it. Ohki seems to believe that the constitution is more of a document of freedom and human rights than it is of pacifism, and an example of Troeltsch’s concept of the “contribution of Christian philosophy to political ethics.”36 Ohki’s understanding of Niebuhr had a major impact on the next generation of Niebuhr scholarship in Japan. THE THIRD GENERATION OF NIEBUHR SCHOLARSHIP As Kiyoko Takeda, Yasuo Furuya, Hideo Ohki, and others introduced Niebuhr and his realism, scholars in the next generation, especially in the 1980s and

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1990s, overlapping with these predecessors, conducted full-scale Niebuhr research in Japan for the first time. Yugo Suzuki, Shin Chiba, Tadasuke Hirata, Yoshibumi Takahashi, and Kosuke Nishitani can be called the third generation of Niebuhr scholarship in Japan. To their number may be added Toshimasa Yasukata and Katsuhiko Kondo, who although they published no comprehensive study of Niebuhr, wrote about him at length. Yugo Suzuki Suzuki, who pioneered Niebuhr research beginning in the 1980s, obtained his ThD at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, and then became a professor at Aoyama Gakuin University. In 1982, he published Reinhold Niebuhr’s View of Man.37 The book went beyond Niebuhr’s view of man to give a well-balanced explanation of Niebuhr’s thought. In the latter half of the book, Suzuki took up issues of politics, economy, pacifism, war, the Cold War and the World Community, and race as applications of the essence of human nature shown in the first half, presenting Niebuhr’s views on and activities in response to these issues. Suzuki notes Niebuhr’s definition of politics as “an effort to establish tolerable community, the sinfulness of men presupposed”38 and his claim that “in the field of collective behavior . . . the only harmonies possible are those which manage to neutralize this force [the force of egoistic passion] through balances of power.”39 Suzuki looks at Niebuhr’s views on such diverse issues as power conflicts, American self-confidence, politics and faith, Marxism, pacifism, the Cold War, nuclear war, the World Community, the Vietnam War, and civil rights movements. Suzuki essentially confirms Niebuhr’s claims to realism. In the process, Suzuki questions the validity of Furuya’s claims regarding “the irony of Niebuhr.” In response to Furuya’s view that Niebuhr’s realism made him late in opposing the Vietnam War, Suzuki countered that it was only after 1965 that American citizens began to obtain objective information about the Vietnam War. In Niebuhr’s defense Suzuki fairly argued that “Niebuhr’s criticism was never lagging behind these [anti-war movements], but rather pioneering them.”40 At the same time, Suzuki also points out a very important criticism of Niebuhr’s realism during the Cold War. Suzuki criticizes Niebuhr for his paucity of reflections during the Cold War that not only the Soviet Union but also US foreign policy played a role in adding tension and anxiety: We think that there was a monolithic view that ignored the potential for diversity in communism and had excessive expectations for American democracy. In other words, Niebuhr the theologian consistently pointed out the ambiguity of power, but Niebuhr as a political scientist thinking of a specific approach to

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communism during the Cold War had a significant tendency to have the ambiguity of power swallowed by the need for power.41

Nevertheless, despite seeing Niebuhr’s prophetic nature as slightly weakened during the Cold War period, Suzuki saw Niebuhr regaining, especially in his opposition to the Vietnam War and in his support of the civil rights movement, the critical approach he had established in the 1930s. Suzuki regarded this as a powerful resurrection, pointing in the end to the validity and effectiveness of Niebuhr’s Christian realism. In 1998, Suzuki published another book, the widely read Reinhold Niebuhr and America,42 which comprehensively reviewed Niebuhr’s relationship with the United States and Niebuhr’s view of America. To quote from Suzuki’s well-put conclusion, [Niebuhr's] realism is called Christian Realism because it is liberated by faith in God’s judgment and forgiveness from the position of maintaining the status quo. . . . The true spirit of Christian Realism, even in the period of sticking to the negative solution of containing the Soviet Union and its followers, is evident in the fact that it was never driven by the temptation to regard America as a perfect manifestation of justice. The stereotype of Niebuhr as a “Cold War ideologue,” a scholar used by the government to help strengthen consciousness of America as a great and powerful nation completely overlooked the characteristics of this Christian Realism.43

Having said this, Suzuki looked back on the state of Japan after the collapse of the Cold War structure and pointed out that the Japanese government was “unable to present any policy to establish its own disarmament and international peace.” He reiterated the significance of Niebuhr’s Christian realism for “Japan with its important challenges and responsibilities for contributing to a new world peace.”44 Yoshibumi Takahashi Yoshibumi Takahashi and Kosuke Nishitani researched and wrote their master’s theses on Niebuhr at Tokyo Union under the guidance of Hideo Ohki. Learning from Ohki’s “theology of history,” they continued their theological studies focusing especially on Niebuhr. The present author, Takahashi obtained his ThD under Ohki at Tokyo Union in 1991 and published his dissertation, “Theology of History in Reinhold Niebuhr: A Study of the Background, Aspects, and Essence of Niebuhr’s Theology.”45 Takahashi then continued his research on Niebuhr at Seigakuin University General Research Institute, which was directed by Ohki, and published many essays on Niebuhr, including one presented at the event celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Niebuhr’s birth hosted

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by the Institute in 1992. Beginning in 2007 he was responsible for the Reinhold Niebuhr Research Center established at the Institute, and held research meetings featuring Takeda, Furuya, Ohki, and the next generation of Niebuhr researchers. In 2013, with support from the governmental Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Takahashi coordinated the International Symposium and Lectures on Reinhold Niebuhr, inviting Robin Lovin as a lecturer. In addition to the symposium, Lovin lectured at Tokyo Union, ICU, and Seigakuin University.46 Takahashi then compiled and published the major papers in Niebuhr and Liberalism: An Inquiry into the Theological Perspective of Reinhold Niebuhr.47 Takahashi has also translated The Nature and Destiny of Man, which had not been completely translated in Japan, and The Contribution of Religion to Social Work as well as Charles C. Brown’s Niebuhr and His Age.48 Takahashi devoted most of his research to Niebuhr and the debate over Niebuhr’s thought, particularly the interpretation of his theological thought. Takahashi tried to highlight where the core of Niebuhr’s theology is located while critically confronting previous interpretations of Niebuhr. In Theology of History in Reinhold Niebuhr, Takahashi considers the historical background of Niebuhr’s theology, mainly focusing on the theological characteristics of Niebuhr’s denominational background, his experience and thought in Detroit, and his dealings with Marxism in the 1930s. Takahashi analyzed Niebuhr’s thinking on themes such as epistemology, anthropology, eschatology and history, and history and Christology as the important doctrinal aspects of Niebuhr theology, trying to capture the characteristics that emerged inductively. Niebuhr’s statement from his dialogue with Tillich summarizes this succinctly. The Bible conceives life as a drama in which human and divine actions create the dramatic whole. . . . The drama is told primarily in terms of a contest between good and evil in history. The Bible is concerned primarily with God’s “mighty acts,” that is, with those events in history through which and in which the ultimate power which bears history reveals its mystery.49

Takahashi sees this in a sense as the key text representing the nature of Niebuhr’s theology. In Niebuhr’s thought the divine mystery is revealed in the mighty acts of God woven in this historical drama. In other words, he concludes that the dialectics of history and revelation, or “dialectics of ‘from the bottom’ and ‘from the above,’” are the true characteristics of Niebuhr’s theology.50 Takahashi calls it “theology of history” (Geschichtstheologie). It is an inductive conclusion obtained from analyzing the background and content of Niebuhr’s thought, but as a result it confirms Ohki’s understanding of Niebuhr and shows Ohki’s influence. Building on this understanding,

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Takahashi further argued that the dialectics of Niebuhr’s theology of history was the basis of the impossible possibility, and that Niebuhr developed his Christian realism with this theology as its base.51 Takahashi did not discuss Niebuhr’s Christian realism per se, but Niebuhr and Liberalism has a detailed chapter on the history of the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) in the 1950s from the establishment of the Union for Democratic Action, the predecessor of the ADA.52 Takahashi traced Niebuhr’s role in the ADA and discussed practical examples of Niebuhr’s political realism during the Cold War. In consequence, Takahashi found that the essence of the role played by Niebuhr lies in the thought behind the ADA and Vital Center Liberalism, which includes a pessimistic view of man and of the relationship between history and eternity, as often pointed out by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., one of the ADA leaders. Takahashi argued that Niebuhr’s most essential characteristic is the transcendental theological point of view that penetrated his thought and practice. Takahashi made clear in this sense the essential characteristic of Niebuhr’s Christian realism. Takahashi also examined Niebuhr’s position on the race problem from his Detroit era to the later years, checking all the texts Niebuhr wrote on this issue. Takahashi argued how the criticism often made that Niebuhr was not active in racial issues was wrong, especially how the judgment of James H. Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree was an unfair overkill based on an inaccurate understanding of Niebuhr. Takahashi here could again emphasize the validity and significance of Niebuhr’s Christian realism.53 Kosuke Nishitani Another scholar who worked on Niebuhr under the influence of Ohki was Kosuke Nishitani. Nishitani, after completing studies at Tokyo Union, studied at the University of Basel in Switzerland under the direction of Jan Milic Lochman and wrote his doctoral dissertation in theology on the theme suggested by Ohki, “Theology of History in Josef L. Hromadka and Reinhold Niebuhr: Its Significance for Social Ethics,” eventually revising the dissertation and publishing the resulting book in Japanese and then in English.54 This work compared Niebuhr and Czech theologian Hromadka, taking into consideration Marxism, Troeltsch, and Barth as its argument developed. Nishitani’s unique achievement was in the particular attention he paid to Troeltsch as a thinker who influenced Niebuhr, a point brought to light in Nishitani’s comparison and analysis of the two theologians. Niebuhr quoted Troeltsch very rarely, but with his brother H. Richard Niebuhr, he had read Troeltsch from an early age. In his later years, Niebuhr, in response to questions from The Christian Century, called Troeltsch’s The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches the first of the books that greatly influenced his life. The influence

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of Troeltsch on Niebuhr had already been pointed out by Pauck, Reinhard Neubauer, and others, and Takahashi touched on it, but Nishitani explicated these scholars’ arguments in greater depth.55 Nishitani also responded to Lovin’s lecture, “Judgment, Freedom, and Responsibility: Christian Realism for the 21st Century” at the symposium mentioned earlier. Lovin’s book Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism presented the three dimensions of political realism, moral realism, and theological realism, to which Nishitani proposed adding “historical realism”: My own proposal was to add another dimension of realism, that is, “historical realism” to other three kinds that Dr. Lovin distilled from the thought of [Reinhold Niebuhr]. . . . The point of my argument is that there has been, and will be, provisional realizations of Christian ideals in the history of mankind and that Christian theology should always be aware of these historical realities as significant traces of salvation history in universal history and, accordingly, as the basis of Christian apologetics as well.56

Nishitani researched Niebuhrian Christian realism from many perspectives, building a foundation on which he established his own social ethical viewpoint, one that he developed into the business ethics he taught at Aoyama Gakuin University Business School. Masatoshi Yasukata Masatoshi Yasukata, who studied at Kyoto University, chose Niebuhr as the topic for his master’s thesis. He turned to Tokyo Union’s Ohki for guidance in working with Niebuhr’s concept of history, especially as presented in Human Destiny. Yasukata later earned his PhD from Vanderbilt University on the philosophy of history in Troeltsch.57 Influenced by Ohki and parallel to Nishitani, Yasukata noted Troeltsch’s influence on Niebuhr. However, unlike Ohki, Nishitani, and others who set Niebuhr’s concept of history as the basis of social ethics or Christian realism, Yasukata, taking his cue from Niebuhr, moved on to research in philosophical historicism, and from that perspective immersed himself in a study of Troeltsch. Later, Yasukata became interested in Gotthold E. Lessing and wrote a book on the philosophy of history in Troeltsch, Niebuhr, and Lessing. After publishing other research on Lessing, Yasukata shifted his focus from historicism to hermeneutics in nineteenthcentury Germany, developing this into a study of the history of thought.58 Yasukata, however, consistently maintained his interest in Niebuhr, particularly in relationship to Troeltsch. Following Nishitani in highlighting Troeltsch’s influence on Niebuhr, Yasukata observed that “Niebuhr critically accepted Troeltsch and switched the train of the Troeltsch-type ‘theology

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of religious history’ and ‘philosophy of history’ to a ‘Christian theology of history.’” Although it was not “a clearly continuous solid line, but rather a broken or dotted line including breaks and refractions,” Yasukata saw the “line of direction from Lessing through Troeltsch to Niebuhr.”59 Yasukata sees such a direction at the same time in H. Richard Niebuhr and discusses in detail the continuity and discontinuity between Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, and Troeltsch in a chapter of his book History and Hermeneutics, “The Niebuhr Brothers and the ‘Shadow of Ernst Troeltsch.’”60 Katsuhiko Kondo After studying at Tokyo Union, Katsuhiko Kondo earned a doctorate in theology at Tübingen University, focusing on Troeltsch under the direction of Jürgen Moltmann.61 Kondo then joined the faculty of Tokyo Union, where his diligent theological research and prolific writing has made him a leading systematic theologian in the generation of scholars after Ohki. Kondo has established his own theological direction while still sharing much in common with Ohki. Kondo wrote important works in doctrine, ethics, and apologetics, while at the same time writing and speaking about the specific role of Christianity in modern civilization and the problems of Christian education and evangelism. In working out his theological positions, Kondo valued dialogue with major twentieth-century theologians such as Barth, Tillich, Moltmann, and Wolfhard Pannenberg. Kondo also referred often to Niebuhr, particularly his view on pacifism in Christian ethics and the theory of democracy.62 Taking into account Hauerwas’s criticism of Niebuhr, Kondo carefully analyzed the content of Niebuhr’s famous dispute with H. Richard over the Manchuria issue in The Christian Century magazine, making the following two points. The first point is about what Niebuhr lacks. When Niebuhr said it was “ethically oriented forcing” in emphasizing the importance of the “exercise of coercion” against H. Richard’s “Doing nothing” position, Kondo felt something was unclear and pointed out that it requires “ethical objective cultural ethics” and “spiritual training of ethical agents,” which Niebuhr’s thought lacks. The second is the “view of history” issue. H. Richard argued that “History is not a permanent tragedy, but a way to fulfillment,” against Niebuhr’s view of history in which “history is a permanent tragedy and the goal of history is beyond history.” Kondo argued that the grounds for both views are theologically insufficient. He pointed out that the problems concerning the relationship between eternity and time, transcendence and immanence, God and history, and immanent trinity and economic trinity have not been adequately explored.

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Kondo sees the theological basis of Niebuhr’s theory of democracy in the doctrine of the atonement, noting that for Niebuhr, democracy is “the social ethical development of the doctrine of atonement” or “the doctrine of atonement in the interim of history.” Kondo questions Niebuhr’s democracy theory for emphasizing criticism over formation. Kondo also discusses the peace clause of the Constitution of Japan and expresses his views clearly.63 Kondo stated that the current constitution, which stipulates that Japan “forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” is unique in the world. While adhering to the constitutional interpretation procedure, he admits the necessity of maintenance of the strengths of the “Japan-U.S. Security Treaty” and “Self-Defense Forces.” According to Kondo, maintaining defensive power properly is one of the considerations for responsibly establishing an order of justice and peace. In this realistic interpretation, although he opposed the right of collective self-defense as being “in conflict with Article 9 of the Constitution,” Kondo highly appreciated this provision for national self-defense. In other words, Kondo thinks that there is no contradiction between Christian realism and the constitutional peace clause. Unlike Takeda and Furuya and others that saw contradictions and conflicts between the two, Kondo has advanced Ohki’s position further and tried to overcome the contradictions based on his strong interest in pacifism and his sense of mission. Kondo’s attitude toward realism is extremely important for Christian realism in Japan. Tadasuke Hirata All of the third generation of Niebuhr scholars mentioned above were theologians, but there were also political scientists, including Tadasuke Hirata and Shin Chiba, who conducted Niebuhr research. A researcher of the history of political thought, Hirata studies American diplomatic history, especially the political liberalism of the 1940s, and in this context Hirata focused on Niebuhr, publishing a book: Modern America and Political Intellectual: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Political Discourse.64 This was the first time a political scientist has written a book about Niebuhr. This book looks at Niebuhr’s historical concepts, and then discusses democratic theory, Cold War policy, American diplomatic theory, the irony of history, and postwar liberal democracy theory. Hirata claims that “the concept of irony was a way for Niebuhr to maintain a balance between ‘reconciliation’ and ‘critical distance’ with the United States and was self-confirmed.”65 Hirata said that “for Niebuhr, ‘irony’ is a concept that helps intellectuals endure the tension of their complex role of both criticizing and advocating liberalism while maintaining at the same time a distance that allows them to look objectively at the United States.”66

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Shin Chiba Chiba specializes in the history of political thought and political theory in Western Europe, but he is also well-versed in theology and active in a wide range of fields such as politics and peace and constitutional theory with a view to theological considerations. Chiba studied theology at Oxford University and then earned a PhD in political ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary under the guidance of Charles C. West, Gibson Winter, and Sheldon S. Wolin. The starting point of Chiba’s philosophy is still his doctoral dissertation, “Transcendence and the Political: A Critical Comparison of Reinhold Niebuhr and Jürgen Moltmann,”67 which was later published in Japan.68 Chiba has since published several papers about Niebuhr, all of which are based on this book’s position. Chiba proposed a highly original “hermeneutic approach” as a method of interpretation of Niebuhr’s thought. Chiba’s research from this unique point of view has highlighted the nature of Niebuhr’s thought in relation to transcendence and the political. Chiba develops this interpretation consistently in his subsequent papers and remarks about Niebuhr. And it is this interpretation of Niebuhr that plays an important role in Chiba’s own quest for a theory of peace that will be described later. Chiba noted two kinds of realism that are clearly distinguished by Niebuhr’s philosophy of realism: For many years I have been thinking about the important difference between the early Niebuhr’s “Christian realism from below” (the 1930s and early 1940s) that was based on his “prophetic religion” framework and the later Niebuhr’s post-war “Christian realism from above” that was grounded in his reliance on mixed economy and balance of power strategy. So we can observe two different kinds of “Christian realism” in Niebuhr.69

Chiba believes that there is a radical realism unique to Niebuhr in his early Christian realism. “From below . . . Christian realism takes into account the viewpoints of victims, the oppressed, and the helpless in society and places importance on social criticism of the existing order. It targets the main beneficiaries and powers.” Niebuhr’s later postwar realism, on the other hand, is dubbed “from above.” “Niebuhr generally talked about politics and made political judgments ‘from above.’ This is because particularly after World War II, Niebuhr undeniably supported the government, and through contact with politicians and diplomats, started to see politics from the side of governance.”70 Chiba thought “the ideological function of Christian realism in the 1950s and early 1960s clearly deviated from Niebuhr’s original intent.” Nevertheless, Chiba praised Niebuhr, who opposed the Vietnam War and

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supported the civil rights movement in the later 1960s, because “Niebuhr’s early ‘from below’ Christian realism was restored to a significant degree” during this period.71 Chiba evaluated the role played by Niebuhr’s original political and ethical radicalism as follows. Niebuhr not only refused to use various religious concepts that could have ideological implications, such as “Exodus,” “Promised Land,” “Chosen People” and “New Jerusalem,” but by presenting the philosophy of prophetic religion, he also has drawn up a distinct symbolic world that is completely different from civil religion. The emphasis was . . . on biblical subjects or concepts that recognize both human limits and God’s potential for humans. Among these, in particular, the sharp identification of God’s judgment in history was a central momentum for a new symbolic horizon of prophetic religion. . . . Niebuhr’s emphasis on this thought of judgment may be seen from a fundamental shift in the tradition of American theological political thought.72

Thus, Chiba, who saw the trend of realism in Niebuhr as presented above, raised an alarm over the fact that Niebuhr research in the 1980s and beyond had generally neglected the radicalism of Niebuhr’s early thought. In contrast with many Niebuhr scholars, Chiba emphasizes Niebuhr’s early thought. This emphasis has a practical meaning incorporated into the development of Chiba’s own peace philosophy. Uchimura, founder of the Non-Church group to which Chiba belongs, opposed the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) and chanted the “theory of no-war,” which cultivated a strong tradition of pacifism in Japan, although Uchimura himself cannot be said an absolute pacifist in the strict sense of the word. As a person standing in that tradition, Chiba has consistently stressed that commitment to non-violence which is a more appropriate testimony to the power of transcendence, truth, and freedom. As a political scientist he has unalterably supported the peace constitution and insisted on maintaining its peace Article 9.73 Chiba acknowledged the undeniable presence of elements of idealism in the Constitution and the tendency for the peace clauses to be exclusively perceived as idealistic, and then discussed the “realism of the Peace Constitution” or “realistic aspects of constitutional pacifism.”74 This is a unique and important aspect of Chiba’s theory of the Peace Constitution. Chiba defines realism as follows: There can be notably three characteristics of thinking singled out as the basic underlying premises of realism in the sphere of politics. First, the realists have a pessimistic view of human nature and group, which they believe have an unavoidable inclination to evil and selfishness. Second, they harbor a sober view of power that supports and directs politics. Third, using . . . the Weberian

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terminology, realists are more committed to bringing about good consequences of politics, that is, an Antwortungsethik, than they are concerned with inner motives of political actors, that is, Gesinnungsethik.75

Chiba advocates for the realism found in the Peace Constitution, especially Article 9, which has three characteristics: The first is “its consistent skepticism toward its own government and, in particular, to military power.” The second is “the fact that it grew out of . . . a pacifism of immediate experience of the people,” which includes “the extreme experience of atomic warfare (Hiroshima and Nagasaki).” The third is the “Peace Constitution . . . both presupposes and suggests the relativization of the sovereign power of the modern nation-state.” In this way, Chiba claims the Peace Constitution has a truly realistic aspect which he calls one of “soft-power realism.” And the democracy that this constitution aims to be is that of a “humiliated democracy in which democracy and pacifism are organically and inseparably united with one another,” in contrast with the “imperial democracy” of the George W. Bush administration, or any kind of “triumphant democracy.”76 Chiba makes little mention of Niebuhr in the above discussion on the peace constitution. The depth in that discussion, however, is the realism that Chiba saw in the early Niebuhr and considered Niebuhr’s original realism. For Chiba, Niebuhr’s prophetic religion, still lives on: Niebuhr’s hidden vision of God represents both God’s transcendence as judgment and God’s transcendence as mercy. God’s transcendence as judgment . . . has the impulsive power that inescapably exposes hidden sin and ideology. God’s transcendence as mercy removes the mask of absoluteness from all ideologies and ends the vicious circle of ideological persistence.77

Thus, Chiba discussed the realism of a peace constitution backed by Niebuhr’s prophetic religion. Chiba’s interpretation of Niebuhr’s realism, which recognizes two different realisms and considers the early realism as the original and most significant, may be disputed as to its validity.78 With its quest for pacifism, however, there is no doubt that Chiba’s interpretation occupies an important and unique position in the history of scholarship on Niebuhr in Japan. Chiba’s efforts thus play a distinct role in shaping the outlook on Christian realism in Japan. THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIAN REALISM IN JAPAN We have reviewed how Niebuhrian Christian realism has been perceived in Japan, focusing on the main scholars. We have also looked at how Niebuhr’s

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theological philosophy has been perceived and his realism considered, particularly in relation to the pacifism laid out in the Japanese constitution. “Christian” realism, especially “Niebuhrian” realism, has seen extremely limited exposure in Japan, as one might expect in view of the tiny Christian minority. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the remarks and actions of Takeda, Ohki, Chiba, and others have received significant notice in the wider intellectual world. A new generation of researchers are now studying Niebuhr, Chiba, and others,79 giving us reason to expect developments in the future. What is the role of Niebuhrian realism in today’s Japan? In Japan, Christianity tends to be seen as idealistic, and although recognized as having some social significance, the voices evaluating Christianity’s relevancy in terms of its realism are mostly unheard. Under such circumstances, if Niebuhr’s thought, especially its Christian realism, is meaningful in Japan today, it is probably due to Niebuhr’s transcendental perspective. Ohki called this perspective “eschatological,” Hirata, “religious,” Takahashi, “transcendental theological,” and Chiba, “transcendence” or “prophetic.” This is not, however, the perspective Chiba claimed to see in the early Niebuhr, but one that originated in the prewar Niebuhr and matured from the 1940s. This perspective also embraces “irony.” Morgenthau once described Niebuhr as “a man who could look at the American Society, as it were, from the outside . . . sub specie aeternitatis.”80 Morgenthau argued that such a point of view is necessary for political philosophy, but Japan has this same need. In fact, this viewpoint is absolutely necessary in Japan. This is because the traditions of thought in Japan, including political traditions, are overwhelmingly “immanent”; Japan lacks the perspective to see itself “from the outside.” The political status quo always prevails and tends to flow as it is, as we so often see in politics today. But on the other hand, if Christian realism tries to confront the real world with a Niebuhrian transcendental perspective, it will probably be confused with mere idealism and will be perceived as irrelevant to history. Christian ideals have received high acclaim in Japan as abstract concepts, but it is hard to say that Christianity has been accepted as a realistic possibility. Christianity tends rather to be perceived as an idea free from history. Niebuhr’s own “from outside” perspective is a bit more subtle. Niebuhr stated in the chapter on Justitia Originalis in his Gifford Lectures that Christian utopians, “do not realize that the law of love stands on the edge of history and not in history, that it represents an ultimate and not an immediate possibility.”81 The expression to be noted here is “on the edge of history.” It is not in history, but probably not outside of history. “Edge” is not inside but not completely outside. In Niebuhr, the law of love is not in history but not outside of history. Jeremy Sabella highlighted this point in Niebuhr.82 Sabella

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discussed the significance of Niebuhr using the concept of “edge” and based on this concept made Niebuhr’s idea “the voice of conscience.”83 There is a perspective that transcends history but does not leave history. Therefore, the perspective of “sub specie aeternitatis” that Morgenthau saw in Niebuhr is neither a Platonic eternity nor a Barthian eschatological point of view. The dialectical perspective of immanence and transcendence is important for Niebuhr’s thought. If there is a role that Niebuhrian Christian realism can play in Japan today and in the future, it may be from the perspective embedded in Niebuhr’s “edge” concept. In other words, Niebuhrian Christian realism presents the relevancy of the Christian viewpoint while transcending Japan’s society and politics. It presents a way of life which, because of its realism, is not buried in history. But neither is it merely floating above, free from and irrelevant to Japanese history. In overwhelmingly non-Christian Japan, the Niebuhrian realism introduced here still has much room for development and practical application. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ariga, Tetsutaro ed. The Controversy between Barth and Niebuhr [in Japanese]. Translated by Tetsutaro Ariga and Masao Abe. Tokyo: Kobundo, 1951. Brown, Charles C. Niebuhr and His Age: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Prophetic Role and Legacy [in Japanese], translated by Yoshibumi Takahashi. Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2004. Chiba, Shin. “The Contemporary Significance and Limitation of Reinhold Niebuhr: A Response to Dr. Lovin’s Lecture ‘Judgment, Freedom, and Responsibility: Christian Realism for the 21st Century.’” In Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism, and Social Ethics, edited by Yoshibumi Takahashi. Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2014. ———. “On Constitutional Pacifism in Post-war Japan: Its Theoretical Meaning.” Peace Movements and Pacifism after September 11. Edited by Shin Chiba and Thomas J. Schoenbaum. Cheltenham, UK, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2008. ———. Peace Constitution as “Unfinished Revolution”: From a Standpoint of the History of Constitutional Thought [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 2009. ———. Political Thought of Modern Protestantism: A Comparison of R. Niebuhr and J. Moltmann [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1988. ———. “R. Niebuhr and Prophetic Religion.” Chap. 5 in 20th Century and the Evangelical Faith [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 2001. ———. “Transcendence and the Political: A Critical Comparison of Reinhold Niebuhr and Jürgen Moltmann.” PhD diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1983. Dower, John. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.

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Furuya, Yasuo. America the Christendom: Its Reality and Problems [in Japanese]. Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1967. ———. The Turbulent Church in America: Liberal or Evangelical? [in Japanese] Yorudansha, 1978. ———. “On Niebuhr’s ‘Christian Realism’” [in Japanese]. Seigakuin University General Research Institute Bulletin, No. 51 (2012). ———. “Reinhold Niebuhr’s ‘Confession.’” In Protestant Syndrome and Today: Toward Exodus from Confusion [in Japanese]. Yorudansha, 1973. ———. “Translator’s Afterword,” [in Japanese] in Kyoukai to Shakaino Aidade: Pastoral Notes [Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic] by Reinhold Niebuhr. Translated by Ysuo Furuya. Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1971. Hara, Makoto. The Church which Could not Transcend the Nation: the Protestant Church in Japan under the Fifteen Years’ War [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 2005. Iino, Norimoto. “Character and Thought of Niebuhr” [in Japanese]. In The World Crisis and American Responsibility [Kyosanshugi tono Taiketsu], translated by Norimoto Iino. Tokyo: Jijitsushinsha, 1961. ———. Niebuhr [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1962. ———. Socialism of Niebuhr [in Japanese].Tokyo: Risosha, 1952. ———. A View of Life: the Character and the Message of Niebuhr [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Hanawa Shobo, 1952. Ikarashi, Narumi. “Grace and History: on the Aspect of Historical Formation in Reinhold Niebuhr’s Theology.” PhD diss., Seigakuin University, 2016. “In Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Reinhold Niebuhr.” Seigakuin University General Research Institute Bulletin, No. 4 (1994). Kiyoko Takeda. Encounter: People, Country, and their Thoughts [in Japanese] Tokyo: Kirisuto Shinbunsha, 2009. ———. The Sources of Democracy after the World War II [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995. ———. “The Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr: Insights into Man and History,” [in Japanese] Seigkuin University General Research Institute Bulletin, No. 4 (1994): 79. Kondo, Katsuhiko. Study on Troeltsch, 2 vols. [In Japanese]. Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 1996. ————. The World Policies of Christianity: Responsibilities and Roles of Christianity in the Civilization Today [in Japanese]. Chapter 6. Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 2007. ———. “Ethics of Peace.” Chap. 8 in Christian Ethics [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 2009. ———. “A Theology of Democracy in Reinhold Niebuhr.” Chap. 5 in Theological Thought of Democracy: Tradition of Liberty and Protestantism [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 2000. Kurihara, Motoi. “Translator’s Preface,” Kindai Bunmei to Kirisutokyo [Does Civilization Need Religion?]. 1928. Maruyama, Masao. Works [in Japanese]. Vol. 4. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995.

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Matsutani, Yoshiaki. “Afterword” [in Japanese], in Puritan: Mental Structure of Modernization. Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2006. Morgenthau, Hans. “Niebuhr’s Political Thought.” In Niebuhr: A Prophetic Voice, edited by Harold R. Landon. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2001. Neubauer, Reinhart. Geschenkte und umkaempfte Gerechtichkeit: Eine Untersuchung zur Theologie und Sozialethik Reinhold Niebuhrs im Blick auf Martin Luther. Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1953. Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Contribution of Religion to Social Work [in Japanese]. Translated by Yoshibumi Takahashi and Toshiko Nishikawa. Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2011[2010]). ———. Faith and History [in Japanese]. Translated by Norimoto Iino. Tokyo: Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1950. ———. An Interpretation of Christian Ethics. New York: The Seabury Press, 1979 [1935]. ———. The Irony of American History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952. ———. The Irony of American History. [in Japanese]. Translated by Hideo Ohki and Tomoaki Fukai. Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2002. ———. Moral Man and Immoral Society. [in Japanese]. Translated by Hideo Ohki. Tokyo: Hakusuisha, 1974. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, Vol. 1: Human Nature. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. I: Human Nature [in Japanese]. Translated by Yoshibumi Takahashi and Hiroo Yanagida. Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2019. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II: Human Destiny [in Japanese]. Translated by Yoshibumi Takahashi and Hiroo Yanagida (Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2017. ———. The Self and the Dramas of History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955. ———. The World Crisis and American Responsibility [in Japanese]. Translated by Norimoto Iino. Tokyo: Jijitsushinsha, 1961. ———. “Biblical Thought and Ontological Speculation in Tillich’s Theology.” In The Theology of Paul Tillich, edited by Charles W. Kegley and Robert W. Bretall. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964. ———. “Intellectual Autobiography.” In Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought. Edited by Charles W. Kegley and Robert W. Bretall. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1956. ———. “Toward Intra-Christian Endeavors,” The Christian Century 86, no. 53 (December 31, 1969). ———. “Utilitarian Christianity and the World Crisis,” in Essays in Applied Christianity. New York: World Publishing Co., 1959. ———. “Why the Christian Church is Not Pacifist.” In Christianity and Power Politics. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940. Niebuhr, Ursula M. ed., Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr: Letters of Reinhold and Ursula M. Niebuhr. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991.

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Nishitani, Kosuke. Niebuhr, Hromadka, Troeltsch, and Barth: the Significance of Theology of History for Christian Social Ethics. American University Studies Series VII: Theology and Religion, Vol. 209. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999. ———. Theology of History in Josef L. Hromadka and Reinhold Niebuhr: Its Significance for Social Ethics [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Yorudansha, 1996 ———. “Christian Realism Embedded in Prophetism.” In Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism, and Social Ethics, edited by Takahashi Yoshibumi. Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2014. Ohki, Hideo. Ethics of New Community, Vol. 2. ———. Ethical Thought of Puritanism: Relationship between Modernization and Protestant Ethics [in Japanese] (Japanese Edition of Doctoral Thesis). Tokyo: Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1966. ———. Eschatological Reflections [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Chuokoronsha, 1970. ———. Puritan: the Mental Structure of Modernization [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Chuokoronsha, 1968, Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2006. ———. “Characteristics of the Way of Thinking in Reinhold Niebuhr: On The Irony of American History” [in Japanese]. Seigakuin University General Research Institute Bulletin 47 (2009): 43–73. ———. “Ethics in the 17th Century English Puritanism,” ThD diss., Union Theological Seminary in New York, 1960. Pauck, Wilhelm. Harnack and Troeltsch: Two Historical Theologians. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. ———. From Luther to Tillich: The Reformers and Their Heirs. Edited by Marion Pauck. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984. Reves, Emery. The Anatomy of Peace. New York & London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1945. Sabella, Jeremy L. An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2017. Sakai, Masataka. “Man Participating in the Irony: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Doctrine of Man.” PhD diss., Seigakuin University, 2017. Suzuki, Yugo. Reinhold Niebuhr and America [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1998. ———. Reinhold Niebuhr’s View of Man [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 1882. 　 ———. “An Examination of the Doctrine of Man of Erich Fromm and Reinhold Niebuhr,” ThD diss., Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia, 1971. Tadasuke Hirata. Modern America and Political Intellectual: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Political Discourse. [in Japanese]. Kyoto: Houritsubunkasha, 1993. Takeda, Kiyoko. The Sources of Democracy after the World War II [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995. Takahashi, Yoshibumi. Niebuhr and Liberalism: Inquiry of Theological Perspective of Reinhold Niebuhr [in Japanese]. Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2014.

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———. Theology of History in Reinhold Niebuhr: A Study of the Background, Aspects, and Essence of Niebuhr’s Theology [in Japanese]. Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 1993. ———. “Niebuhr and Puritanism.” Niebuhr and Liberalism: Inquiry of Theological Perspective of Reinhold Niebuhr [in Japanese]. Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2014. ———. “Niebuhr and the Race Problem: In Touch with James H. Cone’s Evaluation.” Paper presented at Seigakuin University General Research Institute, December 17, 2018. Takahashi, Yoshibumi, ed.. Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism, and Social Ethics: The International Symposium and Lectures on “Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought.” A Theology of Japan Monograph Series 8. Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2014. “The United States and the Soviet Union—Some Quaker Proposals for Peace.” A Report Prepared for the America Friends Service Committee, 1949. Villa-Vicencio, C. M. L. “History in the Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr and Wolfhart Pannenberg.” PhD diss., Drew University, 1975. Ward, Vanessa B. “Takeda Kiyoko: A Twentieth-century Japanese Christian Intellectual,” New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 10, no.2 (2008): 70–92. Yamamoto, Shin. Niebuhr’s Criticism on Marxism [in Japanese]. Nagoya: Reimei Shobo, 1949. ———. Violence, Peace, and Revolution [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Koubunndo, 1951. Yasukata, Masatoshi. Ernst Troeltsch: Systematic Theologian of Radical Historicality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000 [1986]. ———. History and Hermeneutics: A Genealogy of the “Berliner Geist” [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Chisen Shokan, 2012. ———. History and Quest: Lessing, Troeltsch, and Niebuhr [in Japanese] Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2001. ———. Lessing’s Philosophy of Religion and the German Enlightenment.New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. The Yearbook of Christianity [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Kirisuto Shinbunsha, 2018.

NOTES 1. According to the recent official data of The Yearbook of Christianity (written in Japanese. Hereafter J.) (Tokyo: Kirisuto Shinbunsha, 2018), the total number of Christians in Japan is 976,434 and the total population of Japan in 2019 is about 124,770,000. The ratio is 0. 78%. 2. Niebuhr, several years after the passage of this new Japanese Constitution, declared it “a ridiculous article” that claimed “a perpetual pacifist defenselessness.” Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 149. But Niebuhr here only expresses his embarrassment at the ironic movement contrary to the original intention in the plan of triumphant democratic

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countries to demilitarize defeated militaristic countries. He does not touch on the peace article or discuss the constitution itself. 3. Former prime minister Shinzo Abe, who died in July 2022 at the hands of an assassin, was known as a strong advocate for the enactment of an independent constitution or for constitutional reform. Although he and his administration maintained high approval ratings, they still could not gain enough popular support to revise the Constitution. 4. The United Church of Christ in Japan, showing remorse for those actions, made the “Confession of War Responsibility” as a public statement, and several other denominations followed suit. Cf. Makoto Hara, The Church which Could not Transcend the Nation: the Protestant Church in Japan under the Fifteen Years’ War [J.] (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 2005). 5. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Intellectual Autobiography,” in Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, eds. Charles W. Kegley and Robert W. Bretall (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1956), 3–23. 6. He translated Faith and History (Tokyo: Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1950) and The World Crisis and American Responsibility (Tokyo: Jijitsushinsha, 1961). 7. Norimoto Iino, Socialism of Niebuhr [J.] (Tokyo: Risosha, 1952); Iino, A View of Life: the Character and the Message of Niebuhr [J.] (Tokyo: Hanawa Shobo, 1952); Iino, Niebuhr [J.](Tokyo: Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1962); Iino, “Character and Thought of Niebuhr,” [J.] in The World Crisis and American Responsibility [Kyosanshugi tono Taiketsu], trans. Norimoto Iino (Tokyo: Jijitsushinsha, 1961), 122–227. 8. Shin Yamamoto, Niebuhr’s Criticism on Marxism [J.] (Nagoya: Reimei Shobo, 1949); Yamamoto, Violence, Peace, and Revolution [J.] (Tokyo: Koubunndo, 1951). 9. Tetsutaro Ariga, ed., The Controversy between Barth and Niebuhr [J.], trans. Tetsutaro Ariga and Masao Abe (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1951). 10. According to Takeda’s reminiscences, when the Pacific War began the Niebuhrs tried to persuade her to remain in the United States, offering to become her guardian, and after returning to Japan her close friendship with the Niebuhrs continued. Kiyoko Takeda, The Sources of Democracy after the World War II [J.] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995). 11. Takeda’s life and her thought is well-versed in the following article: Vanessa B. Ward, “Takeda Kiyoko: A Twentieth-century Japanese Christian intellectual,” New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 10, no. 2 (2008): 70–92. 12. Kiyoko Takeda, Encounter: People, Country, and their Thoughts [J.] (Tokyo: Kirisuto Shinbunsha, 2009), 120–23. 13. Kiyoko Takeda, The Sources of Democracy after the World War II [J.] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995). 14. Kiyoko Takeda, “The Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr: Insights into Man and History,” [J.] Seigakuin University General Research Institute Bulletin, No. 4(1994): 79. 15. Takeda, Encounter, 75. 16. Takeda, Encounter, 75. 17. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Why the Christian Church is Not Pacifist?” in Christianity and Power Politics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940). 18. Takeda, Man, Society, and History, 162.

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19. Takeda, Man, Society, and History, 179–83. 20. “Reverse Course” is a change toward a creation of armed force in US government and Allied Occupation policy during the post–World War II reconstruction in Japan which lasted until the end of the occupation in 1952. Cf. John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 23, 271–73, 525–26. 21. Yasuo Furuya, America the Christendom: Its Reality and Problems [J.] (Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1967); Furuya, The Turbulent Church in America: Liberal or Evangelical? [J.] (Yorudansha, 1978). 22. Yasuo Furuya, “On Niebuhr’s ‘Christian Realism’” [J.] Seigakuin University General Research Institute Bulletin, No. 51(2012), 50. 23. Yasuo Furuya, “Translator’s Afterword,” [J.] in Reinhold Niebuhr, Kyoukai to Shakaino Aidade: Pastoral Notes [Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic], trans. Ysuo Furuya (Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1971), 166. 24. Furuya, America the Christendom, 178–206. 25. Furuya, America the Christendom, 197. 26. Yasuo Furuya, “On Niebuhr’s ‘Christian Realism’” [J.] Seigakuin University General Research Institute Bulletin, No. 51(2012): 59–60. 27. Hideo Ohki, “Ethics in the 17th Century English Puritanism,” ThD diss. Union Theological Seminary in New York, 1960. Cf. Yoshiaki Matsutani, “Afterword,” [J.] in Hideo Ohki, Puritan: Mental Structure of Modernization (Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2006), 227. 28. Hideo Ohki, Ethical Thought of Puritanism: Relationship between Modernization and Protestant Ethics [J.] (Japanese Edition of Doctoral Thesis) (Tokyo: Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1966); Ohki, Puritan: the Mental Structure of Modernization [J.] (Tokyo: Chuokoronsha, 1968, Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2006); Ohki, Eschatological Reflections [J.] (Tokyo: Chuokoronsha, 1970). 29. Ohki, Eschatological Reflections, chapter 1 especially 14–23. 30. Cf. Seigakuin University General Research Institute Bulletin, No. 4 (1994), Special feature: “In Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Birth of Reinhold Niebuhr.” 31. “In Commemorating,” 112. 32. The translation of The Irony of American History by Hideo Ohki and Tomoaki Fukai was published in 2002 (Ageo: Seigakuin University Press); and Moral Man and Immoral Society in 1974 (Tokyo: Hakusuisha). Already Irony was translated by Cary and Moral Man by Takeda but Ohki translated them again, revising their defectiveness. 33. Hideo Ohki, “Characteristics of the Way of Thinking in Reinhold Niebuhr: On The Irony of American History,” [J.] Seigakuin University General Research Institute Bulletin, No. 47(2009): 43–73. 34. Ohki, in the process, focuses on Niebuhr’s reference to James Bryce’s point that there is “a hearty puritanism” in the understanding of human nature of the American Constitution, and calls it “Christian realism.” Ohki, based upon his study of puritanism, promotes the awareness that Niebuhr understands American history from such an

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“intellectual resource” in its history. Ohki, “The Characteristic of the Way of Thinking in Reinhold Niebuhr,” 50–51, 57; Irony, 23. 35. Ohki, “The Characteristics of the Way,” 63. 36. Cf. Ohki, Ethics of New Community, Vol. 2, 83–84. 37. Yugo Suzuki, Reinhold Niebuhr’s View of Man [J.] (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 1882). Cf. Yugo Suzuki, “An Examination of the Doctrine of Man of Erich Fromm and Reinhold Niebuhr,” Th. D. diss., Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia, 1971. 38. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Self and the Dramas of History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955), 200. 39. Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979 [1935]), 85. 40. Suzuki, Reinhold Niebuhr’s View of Man, 173. 41. Ibid., 168. 42. Yugo Suzuki, Reinhold Niebuhr and America [J.] (Tokyo: Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1998). 43. Suzuki, Reinhold Niebuhr and America, 278. 44. Suzuki, Reinhold Niebuhr and America, 282–83. 45. Yoshibumi Takahashi, Theology of History in Reinhold Niebuhr: A Study of the Background, Aspects, and Essence of Niebuhr’s Theology [J.] (Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 1993). 46. Cf. Yoshibumi Takahashi ed., Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism, and Social Ethics: The International Symposium and Lectures on “Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought,” Robin W. Lovin, Sung Bihn Yim and others, A Theology of Japan Monograph Series 8 (Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2014). 47. Yoshibumi Takahashi, Niebuhr and Liberalism: Inquiry of Theological Perspective of Reinhold Niebuhr [J.] (Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2014). 48. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. I: Human Nature [J.], trans. Yoshibumi Takahashi and Hiroo Yanagida (Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2019); Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II: Human Destiny [J.], trans. Yoshibumi Takahashi and Hiroo Yanagida (Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2017); Niebuhr, The Contribution of Religion to Social Work [J.], trans. Yoshibumi Takahashi and Toshiko Nishikawa (Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2011[20110]); Charles C. Brown, Niebuhr and His Age: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Prophetic Role and Legacy [J.], trans. Yoshibumi Takahashi (Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2004). 49. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Biblical Thought and Ontological Speculation in Tillich’s Theology,” in The Theology of Paul Tillich, eds., Charles W. Kegley and Robert W. Bretal (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964), 216. 50. Takahashi, Theology of History in Reinhold Niebuhr, 280, 287. The expression of this dialectics is originally seen in the following doctoral thesis: C. M. L. Villa-Vicencio, “History in the Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr and Wolfhart Pannenberg,” (PhD diss., Drew University, 1975), 60, 105. 51. Takahashi, Theology of History in Reinhold Niebuhr, 297. 52. Takahashi, Niebuhr and Liberalism, 133–79.

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53. Yoshibumi Takahashi, “Niebuhr and the Race Problem: In Touch with James H. Cone’s Evaluation,” A Paper read at the Niebuhr-Study Meeting of Seigakuin University General Research Institute, on December 17, 2018. 54. Kosuke Nishitani, Theology of History in Josef L. Hromadka and Reinhold Niebuhr: Its Significance for Social Ethics [J.] (Tokyo: Yorudansha, 1996); Nishitani, Niebuhr, Hromadka, Troeltsch, and Barth: the Significance of Theology of History for Christian Social Ethics, American University Studies Series VII: Theology and Religion, Vol. 209 (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999). 55. Wilhelm Pauck, Harnack and Troeltsch: Two Historical Theologians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 43–44; Pauck, From Luther to Tillich: The Reformers and Their Heirs, ed. Marion Pauck (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), 106; Reinhart Neubauer, Geschenkte und umkaempfte Gerechtichkeit: Eine Untersuchung zur Theologie und Sozialethik Reinhold Niebuhrs im Blick auf Martin Luther (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1953), 332–33; Takahashi, Theology of History in Reinhold Niebuhr, 330–33. 56. Kosuke Nishitani, “Christian Realism Embedded in Prophetism,” in Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism, and Social Ethics, Takahashi, ed., 37–38. 57. Masatoshi Yasukata, Ernst Troeltsch: Systematic Theologian of Radical Historicality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000 [1986]). 58. Masatoshi Yasukata, History and Quest: Lessing, Troeltsch, and Niebuhr [J.] (Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2001); Yasukata, Lessing’s Philosophy of Religion and the German Enlightenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Yasukata, History and Hermeneutics: A genealogy of the “Berliner Geist” [J.] (Tokyo: Chisen Shokan, 2012). 59. Yasukata, History and Quest, 204. 60. Yasukata, History and Hermeneutics, Chapter 8, 345–85. 61. His doctoral dissertation was published in Japan. Katsuhiko Kondo, Study on Troeltsch, 2 vols. [J.] (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 1996). 62. Katsuhiko Kondo, Christian Ethics [J.] (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 2009), Chapter 8: Ethics of Peace; Kondo, Theological Thought of Democracy: Tradition of Liberty and Protestantism [J.] (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 2000), Chapter 5: A Theology of Democracy in Reinhold Niebuhr. 63. Kondo, Christian Ethics, 272–76. Cf. Kondo, The World Policies of Christianity: Responsibilities and Roles of Christianity in the Civilization Today [J.] (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 2007), Chapter 6. Modern America and Political Intellectual: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Political Discourse. 64. Tadasuke Hirata, Modern America and Political Intellectual: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Political Discourse. [J.] (Kyoto: Houritsubunkasha, 1993). 65. Hirata, Modern America and Political Intellectual, 123. 66. Hirata, Modern America and Political Intellectual, 179. 67. Shin Chiba, “Transcendence and the Political: A Critical Comparison of Reinhold Niebuhr and Jürgen Moltmann,” PhD diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1983. 68. Shin Chiba, Political Thought of Modern Protestantism: A Comparison of R. Niebuhr and J. Moltmann [J.] (Tokyo: Shinkyo Shuppansha, 1988).

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69. Shin Chiba, “The Contemporary Significance and Limitation of Reinhold Niebuhr: A Response to Dr. Lovin’s Lecture ‘Judgment, Freedom, and Responsibility: Christian Realism for the 21st Century,’” Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism, and Social Ethics, ed. Yoshibumi Takahashi (Ageo: Seigakuin University Press, 2014), 33. 70. Shin Chiba, 20th Century and the Evangelical Faith [J.] (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 2001), Chapter 5: R. Niebuhr and Prophetic Religion, 111. 71. Chiba, 20th Century and the Evangelical Faith, 112. 72. Chiba, 20th Century and the Evangelical Faith, 121. 73. Shin Chiba, Peace Constitution as “Unfinished Revolution”: From a Standpoint of the History of Constitutional Thought [J.] (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 2009), vi. 74. Chiba, Peace Constitution, 149–63; Shin Chiba, “On Constitutional Pacifism in Post-war Japan: Its Theoretical Meaning,” Peace Movements and Pacifism after September 11, Shin Chiba and Thomas J. Schoenbaum, eds. (Cheltenham, UK・Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2008), 138–47. 75. Chiba, “On Constitutional Pacifism,” 139. 76. Chiba, “On Constitutional Pacifism,” 139–44. 77. Chiba, Political Thought of Modern Protestantism, 349. Cf. Chiba, “Transcendence and the Political: A Critical Comparison of Reinhold Niebuhr and Jürgen Moltmann,” PhD diss., 327. 78. Takahashi doubts Chiba’s interpretation of Niebuhr’s realism. Takahashi sees an organic “developing relation” between Niebuhr’s early prophetic radicalism and later Christian realism, and asserts that Niebuhr’s early Christian realism should be regarded as the “determined standpoint” for the later Niebuhr based upon his mature theology of history since the 1940s, refined through Niebuhr’s reading of Augustine and Edmund Burke, for example, in the context of World War II and the political struggles during the Cold War. Cf. Takahashi, Niebuhr and Liberalism, 192–94. 79. Masahiko Kaburagi (Kyushu University) and Masanaru Tanoue (Keio University) are among them. Recent studies on Niebuhr in the field of theology are as follows: Narumi Ikarashi, “Grace and History: on the Aspect of Historical Formation in Reinhold Niebuhr’s Theology,” Ph. D. diss. Seigakuin University, 2016; Masataka Sakai, “Man Participating in the Irony: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Doctrine of Man,” PhD diss. Seigakuin University, 2017. And Hiroo Yanagida (Seigakuin University) translated two volumes of The Nature and Destiny of Man, with Yoshibumi Takahashi, in 2017 and in 2019. 80. Morgenthau, “Niebuhr’s Political Thought,” Niebuhr: A Prophetic Voice, Landon, ed., 109. 81. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, Vol. 1: Human Nature (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941), 298. 82. Jeremy L. Sabella, An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2017). 83. Sabella, An American Conscience, 139.

Chapter Sixteen

Christian Realism in the African Context Simeon O. Ilesanmi

Any discussion of the future of Christian realism must necessarily begin with some clarification of its conceptual antecedents and/or contenders, the modes of its contemporary expressions, and the sociohistorical contexts of its normative appeal. While each of these preliminary concerns is undoubtedly important, my focus in this essay will be on the question of context because I believe this will afford us a broader platform from which to appreciate the insights and relevance of Christian realism and to envision what its future trajectory might be. As a mode of theological-ethical reflection on the nature of the moral life and the quandaries of human existence, Christian realism is not only a uniquely American product, but also a particular inflection of the Christian faith—the Protestant tradition. The principal thinker associated with its emergence,1 the concatenation of issues and events that necessitated a paradigm shift in theological and ethical thinking at the historical juncture when Christian realism surfaced, and the wider sociohistorical frames within which its key elements and ideas were progressively worked out and interpreted were all of American provenance. Even if we grant that those consequential issues and events to which Christian realism was responding had less to do with the domestic realities of the United States than the challenges facing the self-understanding and self-expression of Western civilization, the hegemonic position of the United States within this orbit might still permit us to accord historical precedence to this context in our assessment of the contemporary relevance of Christian realism. Yet, I believe that the validity and credibility of ideas are not entirely a function of geography or even of their proponents. Christian realism is an interpretive framework, a way of understanding ourselves, our world, and the 281

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various institutions and structures that significantly impinge upon our lives, sometimes enhancing them, and some other times distorting and frustrating them. It is simultaneously a theory of knowledge (epistemology), a theory of being (metaphysics), and a theory of morality (ethics).2 In all these respects, especially when used as a framework for political and moral analysis, it requires us “to take all factors in a social and political situation, which offer resistance to established norms, into account, particularly the factors of selfinterest and power.”3 The established norms to which Niebuhr refers here are principles and rules of conduct drawn primarily, though not exclusively, from religion, especially Christianity.4 That he designates these norms in plural rather than singular terms also suggests that the traditions in which they are grounded defy a simplistic or superficial interpretation, although he himself leaves the impression that there is a wide consensus (denoting their being “established”) around two such norms, namely agape (sacrificial love) and justice. Most importantly, his identification of the social and political context as posing a unique obstacle to any efforts, however genuine, to practically implement the requirements of these norms raises two interrelated questions. The first is about the nature of these spheres: why are they resistant to religio-moral norms, especially the ones Niebuhr highlights? The second question has to do with the obstacles identified with these spheres: self-interest and power. Is the relationship between these obstacles and the sociopolitical spheres logical or contingent? And in what forms do these obstructive vices manifest themselves, especially within the spheres deemed most susceptible to them? The first question is institutional in that it revisits the age-old debate about the proper relationship between religious convictions and politics, an issue that is as alive in the West as it is in Africa. For example, the mutual suspicion and occasional hostility that characterize the interactions among African Muslims, Christians, and adherents of the traditional religions revolve around the disagreement over the limits, if any, that should be imposed on their freedom and the scope of responsibility they should have in shaping political life, broadly construed. Whether in religiously pluralistic or homogenous societies, opinions have varied widely on this issue, both among scholars as well as religious partisans. For some, an impermeable wall of separation should be erected between religion and politics, either because of the belief, albeit inaccurate, that religion rightly deals with matters that are private—such as concerns for the salvation of one’s soul or family configurations—while so-called public affairs are the business of politics, or that religion is inherently disruptive and destabilizing in the social and political sphere because of its imperviousness to consensus. Whether the reasons adduced for separation are theological, including the sectarian supposition that the two spheres are fundamentally incompatible and Luther’s division of labor thesis (two

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kingdoms doctrine), or pragmatic, such as the fear that commingling of religion and politics would inevitably corrupt both, Christian realism is not persuaded by separationism because it understands politics inclusively as an activity that involves deliberation among plural voices about human good. More importantly, because Christian realism “locates the work of the church as a distinctive task within that framework [i.e., politics], rather than apart from it,”5 it expects and even encourages religious persons to be active participants in this deliberative civic endeavor. Thus, it is not surprising that for much of his life, professionally and as a church person, Niebuhr was engaged and remained a leading voice in debates about a wide range of “public” issues, notably, the promise and pitfalls of capitalism, race relations, and war. However, what distinguished him from others throughout this period was not so much the volume or frequency, but the substance, of his contributions to these debates. Unlike his fellow theological interlocutors, especially those whose voices and activities helped shape the social gospel and pacifist movements in the United States, and for whom the gospel’s call to model this world after God’s kingdom is an achievable goal, Niebuhr argued that our enthusiasm to undertake this responsibility must be disciplined by a prior acknowledgement of the moral powers that human nature is capable of. Thus, with respect to the second question raised above, an ineradicable defect of all humans, as individuals and collectivities, is their susceptibility to pride, in consequence of which they manifest the tendency to “overreach themselves” and to demand “ultimate loyalty for limited causes.”6 While not denying that Christians, as citizens, have the responsibility to seek to influence their society, as the proponents of the social gospel and pacifism avowed, the realist in Niebuhr, and by extension Lovin, counseled a more modest expectation. His reason is as anthropological as it is theological: “what we can accomplish is limited not only because our knowledge, skills, and energies are finite, but more fundamentally, because judgment belongs to God. God’s judgment deprives our achievements and decisions of any claim to be the last word.”7 In the remainder of this essay, I will argue that this assertion about the dual impulse of Christian realism—as both “a reminder of our limits and an affirmation of our hope,”8 provides a helpful framework for understanding and assessing the varied postulations by scholars and other observers alike about the relevance of, and reliance upon, religiously derived moral norms to give meaning and direction to African people’s lives and governing institutions. The late African theologian from Kenya, John Mbiti, once famously described Africans as incurably religious,9 a perception that is hard to dismiss, not just because of the high profile visibility of the three main religions that are domiciled in the continent—Islam, Christianity, and the complex instantiations of indigenous religions—but also because of the mixed records of their individual and collective performance, institutionally and through

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the activities of their adherents, in different spheres of society. It is thus understandable that religion is often dragged into the general and seemingly interminable debate about how to diagnose and solve the mammoth problems with which Africans have had to contend even before the formal colonization of their homeland, but which have peaked in both intensity and scale since the reins of power devolved into the hands of their fellow citizens. The first African Nobel Laureate in Literature, Wole Soyinka of Nigeria, hinted at some of these problems in his acceptance speech at the award ceremony, where he opines that “of those imperatives that challenge our being, our presence, and our humane definition at this time, none can be considered more pervasive than the end of racism, the eradication of human inequality and the dismantling of all its structures.”10 Except for the collapse of apartheid and the institutionalization of post-racial democracy in South Africa, not much has changed in Africa since Soyinka gave his speech in 1986. For, while the Western world has been grappling with the tension between modernity and postmodernity, the rest of sub-Saharan Africa has barely left the Hobbesian state of nature in which life is marked by “continuall feare, and danger of violent death.”11 Despite the phenomenal affluence that the global dynamics of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have putatively unleashed on the world,12 Africa remains the “other” continent, eking out a precarious existence at what is not just the margin but the margin of the margins. The euphoria of independence in the 1960s gave way to political instability in the 1970s, then the economic debacle of the 1980s. In the 1990s, in an ironic twist of fate, the collapse of communism was accompanied by a dramatic escalation of the crisis of governance and democratization in Africa. The last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the present one saw the successive and spectacular unravelling of both the state and the nation in Libera, Somalia, and Rwanda, leaving in their wake anomie, large-scale banditry, and warlordism. By the middle of the same period, genuine democratic reforms had been aborted in such countries as Togo, the former Zaire, Côte D’Ivoire, Gabon, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso. Even with the ongoing experimentation of democratic rule and constitutionalism in countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, the commitment of those in charge is nothing short of anemic. This endemic political instability has caused a marked deterioration in the economic and social health of many African nations. Even where a semblance of order is maintained, crushing debt, collapsing infrastructure, and the grave inability to accumulate and valorize capital have reduced many countries to pathetic caricatures of true nation-states. If Niebuhr and, by extension, Lovin were correct that it is in the context of “those largescale relationships and interactions that we call politics” that the moral life is “more clearly presented,”13 then it makes sense why the

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persistent political and economic malaise adumbrated above has been the backdrop against which deliberations about Africa’s moral challenges have been taking place. The goal of these deliberations is to find a way to achieve what Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s former president, referred to as African Renaissance,14 or more specifically, to “proffer answers to the central questions of political philosophy as those are apprehended in the African context.”15 The first mirrors the concern of theological and moral anthropology, asking: “what type of being is it whose well-being is the ultimate end of any political order and will best conduce to its being the best of its type that it can be?” The second, which bears on the criteria for justifying and legitimizing political arrangements under which some exercise power and others are required to obey, asks: “who may rule, given that not all can rule?” The third and final question of African modern political philosophy asks about “how ought we to organize society for purposes of governance and social life?”16 Religious participants in the deliberations share this central goal, but they bring into them an understanding of political morality that is broader than the stance of those whose preoccupation is merely transactional, which is to negotiate the rebalancing of power—political and/or economic—among different partisan groups historically constituted along regional, ethnic, and class interests. Meaningful renaissance in Africa, religious adherents argue, has to reflect a rich conception of politics that connotes “a much wider process that extends beyond the actions of states and includes many things that would generally be thought of as private, or even personal.”17 For lack of a better taxonomy, I will draw, when necessary, on the rubrics of “inculturation” and “liberation” that African theologians have created to articulate the type of inclusive transformation necessitated by the diverse conditions, interests, and identities of all African peoples. The hope is to further clarify the areas of both convergencies and differences between African theological-ethical discourses and Western Christian realism articulated in the scholarship of Niebuhr and Lovin. Theological Ethics and the Quest for African Renaissance One potential hazard of defining a term is that the definition may arbitrarily restrict our analytical endeavor. This seems to be the inevitable impression one gets from the meaning of the term “idealism” conveyed by Niebuhr, which he defined as “loyalty to moral norms and ideals, rather than to self-interest, whether individual or collective. It is . . . characterized by disposition to ignore or be indifferent to the forces in human life which offer resistance to universally valid ideals and norms.”18 This is an unfortunate characterization of an otherwise admirable trait, that is, the disposition or

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tendency to be “loyal to moral norms and ideals” to further an agenda of sociopolitical renewal, for it stigmatizes persons evincing this attribute as ill-informed or foolhardy. Of course, Christian realism, as represented in Niebuhr’s work and more fully developed and defended by Lovin, is anything but pessimistic about social justice. In fact, it stresses that we cannot rightly lay claim to this perspective, as a framework for Christian theological-ethical reflection, if we lack concern for “the institutions by which we provide for our families, educate our children, share and preserve the experiences of our culture, and organize the production and distribution of goods and services.”19 What Christian realism insists on is that the choices we make in these institutional contexts must be “responsible” because they will affect not only “the fate of civilizations,” but also “make all the difference in the lives of ordinary human beings.”20 Thus, a point of convergence between African theological ethics and Christian realism is a commitment to the imperative of moral responsibility, in both the choices that are made and the actions or projects that are undertaken. This shared commitment has its roots in what Paul Ramsey calls the “bene esse” of the Christian tradition,21 that is, those primordial obligations that Christians believe that human beings were given at the dawn of creation, which include but are not limited to the duty to “cultivate and keep” the earth (Gen. 2:15). The two Hebrew words used in this text are abad and shamar. The former can be translated as work, nurture, sustain, and husband; the latter means to safeguard, preserve, care for, and protect. These are active verbs that convey God’s intention that human beings both develop and cherish the world in ways that meet human needs and bring glory and honor to him. In the Christian view, then, human beings are, by divine intent and their very nature, world-makers and world-changers. The passion to engage the world, to shape it and finally change it for the better, is supposed to be an enduring mark of Christians on the world in which they live. To be Christian is to be obliged to engage the world, pursuing God’s restorative purposes over all of life, individual and corporate, public and private. This, Christians believe, is the mandate of creation.22 Three complementary strategies, corresponding to the three normative concerns of modern African political philosophy, are discernible in African theological-ethical discourse about how to implement this mandate of creation. Inculturation Theology and the Ethics of Personal Renewal The first, found principally among theologians of inculturation, is through a new appreciation for and engagement with African culture, inspired and aided by a larger matrix of the struggle not only to define African identity

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and autonomy, but also to bridge the perceived “epistemological hiatus” in the ways in which “African Weltanschauungen and traditional systems of thought” have been presented in the literature.23 As it functions in this discourse, culture connotes more than what some anthropologists highlight as features of materiality24 but includes mores and norms of behavior that are believed to derive from indigenous worldviews. At the risk of generalization, this indigenous morality is captured by the Yoruba and Xhosa ideas of ọmọluabi and ubuntu, respectively, which are meant to inculcate the communitarian value of fellow feeling in people’s interactions with one another, and is aptly summarized in the maxim coined by Mbiti, “I am because we are, and because we are, therefore I am.”25 These norms presumably distinguish traditional African moral outlooks from Western conceptions of selfhood, often mischaracterized as purely individualistic,26 even though ọmọluabi and ubuntu morality defy easy categorization in terms of Western moral theory. For instance, it has consequentialist considerations as underscored in the Yoruba proverb—“ẹni ti ko fẹ wọ akisa, kii ba aja se ere e gele”—(“If you don’t want to end up in tatters, don’t play rough with a dog”; a saying that warns against incurring the community’s wrath). But it can also be rendered in the language of virtue ethics since it is also concerned with calibrating the moral universe around the degrees of moral decadence (ẹgbin in Yoruba) that members of the community are cautioned against, that is, despicable and odious acts that can bring about a loss of respect, humiliation, and dishonor to the moral agent, a paradigmatic example of which is imọtaraẹninikan (selfishness or a selfish act).27 What is of interest for our purpose here is that E. Bolaji Idowu, former head of Methodist Church Nigeria, characterizes actions that embody imọtaraẹninikan as symptomatic of “soul-sickness”28 and, like Niebuhr, attributes them to traits that are inherent in human nature. However, this is the extent of their agreement. Besides the stylistic differences in the way both thinkers account for the vices that human nature harbors, with Niebuhr offering a more precise and clinical diagnosis in terms of pride and morbid preoccupation with power, and Idowu using a more nebulous language of soul-sickness, Idowu also appears more optimistic than Niebuhr in holding out the possibility of a cure for this malady, which he suggests is a fundamental reordering, through evangelism, of human relationship to what he calls “Source-Being.”29 For him and many of his conversation partners in both church and the academy, the problems facing Africa can be traced back to a loss of vitality and moral propriety. They indicate the unhappy truth that people have lost their moral bearings, and only by changing the hearts of individuals who engage in such acts or who sanction them can real headway be made in stepping back from the precipice of social disintegration.30

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Some wings of African charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity have turbocharged the claim that evangelism can be an effective strategy for a moral reconstruction of society, a tool to refashion inwardly people believed to have been corrupted by the combined forces of modernity and globalization. This appears to be the rationale behind the well-advertised policy of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, the largest and fastest-growing Pentecostal church in Africa, to plant churches within five minutes of walking distance in every city in the hope that this will help to inculcate and spread holiness consciousness in the society.31 The same conviction underlies six of the twelve pillars of the Commission of the Living Faith Church, otherwise known as the Winners Chapel and headquartered in Nigeria, which are faith, the Word, the supernatural, the Holy Spirit, prayer, and consecration.32 We may also infer that the frequency of religious crusades in Africa, featuring both local and foreign evangelists and preachers, is animated by this belief. But the Pentecostals are not alone in tethering the fate and fortunes of the res publica to improved piety of individual Christians. The mainline churches have also returned to the argument that Idowu made in the 1980s, offering varied articulations of the same idea. In its Vision Statement adopted in the first decade of this century when it severed its ties with the Lambeth Conference over disagreement on same-sex marriage, the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) identified evangelism as its top priority, arguing that it is the most effective means to “enthrone detribalized thinking and actions” and to ensure “the transfer of the knowledge of [God] and His goodness” from one citizen to another.33 At its core, then, this strategy seeks to influence African societies not necessarily through an active involvement in politics or offering concrete public policy proposals, but through the moral formation of citizens, thereby attending to the first concern of African modern political philosophy. It relies on what Alexis de Tocqueville referred to, in his study of the role of religion in the United States during the 19th century, as indirect transmission of values. As he observed, “religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must nevertheless be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste of freedom, it facilitates the use of free institutions.”34 Although de Tocqueville admits that because this strategy would not always be effective in curbing the deleterious effects of social interests and morbid personal ambition, religion must sometimes act obliquely, selectively, and realistically. Nevertheless, he insists that religion has an important work to perform, for while it may “not succeed in curing men of the love of riches; [it] may persuade men to enrich themselves by none but honest means.”35 Theologically, this would require African Christians, according to Emmanuel Katongole, a Roman Catholic theologian from Uganda, to understand themselves as constituting a distinct community whose identity

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is shaped by the Gospel imperative to bear witness to an “alternative way of living” that embodies “a different story as well as different practices and virtues.”36 The goal is not to show how to be “politically successful,” e.g., by winning elections, but to be aretaically truthful: “For African Christians recovering this sense of story and community will in no way impoverish their lives. On the contrary, they may discover that if their lives are not materially improved, they would at least have become purposeful.”37 Politics as a Religious Vocation It would not be a hyperbole to say that the strategy of indirect transmission of values has not fared so well among African social activists and that it is unlikely to escape the strictures of the proponents of Christian realism, not just because it overestimates the power of moral persuasion but also because it conflates two distinct spheres of moral claims—personal and social—and wrongly assumes that a strategy that works in one is easily transferable to the other.38 It thus amounts to using a remedy which is effective only for ringworm to cure leprosy. Evangelism derives from a tradition associated with a tradition of thought which, to borrow Niebuhr’s word, we may label “idealism,” and which maintains that something ideal or nonphysical is the primary reality. It isn’t as though nature or the material world doesn’t exist or isn’t important, but what has greater ontological significance and is certainly prior to nature and the physical, are ideas—in short, the mind. Differently put, physical objects and social institutions are just pale imitations of the ideas and ideals that represent them. This is the rationale behind the focus on a holiness project designed to reform or change the mind/soul. As necessary as the task of soul-reformation is, the strategy is myopic because it misconstrues agency, implying the capacity to bring about influence where that capacity may not exist or where it may only be weak. More specifically, idealism underplays the importance of history and historical forces and their interaction with the larger society and culture. It thus leads to a naivete about the nature and dynamics of power by failing to realize what Reinhold Niebuhr calls the entrenched propensity of those who wield it to subvert the common good. This approach then must be supplemented with arguments that limit the glorification of power while affirming the good of human freedom and our capacity to create cultures and to shape our world and our lives. Perhaps this is why active involvement in politics, the second major strategy, has commended itself to both religious leaders and institutions. The reasoning goes like this: bad law is the outcome of bad choices made by individual politicians, judges, and policy makers. Thus, changing Africa requires that individual religious persons vote into office those who hold the right

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values or possess the right worldview and therefore make the right choices.39 The specific contours for expressing this religious sentiment undoubtedly vary from country to country, but the justification offered in support of the various arguments that Nigerian Muslim intellectuals have advanced for the institutionalization of Shari’a and for opposing any attempt to define Nigeria as a secular state, is fairly representative of the tenor of theological argument across sub-Saharan Africa. According to Mervin Hiskett, the opposition is a continuation of the Islamic tajdid (reform) begun in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the Sahel, whose rationale was that “Islam was the will of a true god of whom [Nigerians] had as yet no knowledge or experience.”40 Ibraheem Sulaiman is more direct in his defense of the strategy to have people with religious sensibilities in political office. He believes that a nation not “conducted and governed according to the rules and principles” of God would pay a heavy price in terms of “moral depravity, corruption, oppression, infidelity and syncretism.”41 Politics has also become the tactic of choice for many Christians and churches of different stripes as they think about engineering an African renaissance. Not only have regular Sunday homilies become mini-dissertations on political theology, but the reluctance of members of the clergy to thrust themselves into active politics is now a thing of the past. The intellectual guidance for this approach has been provided by African liberation, reconstruction, and feminist theologians. A leading voice in this cohort is the late Jean-Marc Ela from Cameroon, who christened his liberationist project a “shade-tree” theology, an apt metaphor for calling attention to the actual realities of the African people, as many of them, due to a cycle of civil wars, political unrest, economic stagnation, refugee crises, and various kinds of debilitating diseases, have nowhere to live but under the tree. Under this existential reality, Ela argues that the church cannot but invent a new theological-ethical grammar to help “the African human being attain a condition that will enable him or her to escape misery and inequality, silence and oppression.”42 Sensing that a theology that seems to be replete with political polemics might simply be dismissed as no-theology but merely an offshoot of political theory or secular revolutionary thought, Ela argues in a companion work that the theology of liberation, as he conceptualizes it, reflects a new way of rereading the narratives of the Christian faith. One inevitable consequence of such a rereading is the realization of the intensely public character of the Christian faith, the fact that the locus of salvation extends beyond the interior region of the soul and includes the restructuring of the larger fabric of human life. “There can be no profession of faith without concrete responsibility for persons and for life, and increased militancy,”43 he argues. Another consequence of what Ela elsewhere refers to as a subversive rereading of the Christian narratives is the awareness of the non-neutrality of God. God

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is shown in the gospel not only to be on the side of the poor and the dispossessed, but also to be radically opposed to all “the processes of oppression or the justification of repressive power and situations of injustice.”44 This new epistemic awareness is gained, however, not intuitively or from secular reason or general revelation, but through the patterns of thinking and practice that are inherent in the life of the Church as a saved community. The Christian community exists in dual relation to the narratives that shape it, as both the owner and the product of the narratives, and therefore, the possibility of its own self-renewal depends on its constant interaction with the narratives and critical retrieval of their key components. In this connection, Ela deduces the fact of divine partiality from the drama of the incarnation, arguing that the events with which the contemporary African struggles have a transcendent meaning. The struggles invoke the memory of the Crucified one, which in turn provides the basis for optimism for a more just future even amidst present tears and agonies. “The hope for a new world—a world to be built in a perspective of justice and peace, healing and life, and in a word, deliverance from evil—is at the heart of Christ’s passion and resurrection. The fundamental task of the church is to proclaim this hope to the Africa of today.”45 In contrast to the inculturationist proposal, Ela argues that theology must do more than excavate the past; it must also address the actual conditions in which people presently live. Even more important is the need to elevate theological discourse beyond polemical bashing of Western attitudes toward Africa and to acknowledge how successive African governments and religious hierarchies have been complicit in unleashing untold suffering on their people. “Our people’s situation,” he asserts, “cannot be attributed solely to the penetration of our continent by the multinationals, which regard Africa simply as a playground for the superpowers. We must look for internal factors in the dispossession of the African masses. . . . Along with the injustices perpetrated upon us from without, we now have a parade of miseries resulting from relationships within—between state and people, elite and masses.”46 Only so can the continent correct her present anomalous conditions, ones in which the “haves” take advantage of the “have-nots,”47 and where churches appear to be more concerned with the multiplication of their numbers than in attending to “the victim lying in the ditch.”48 While it is understandable to pursue the kind of emancipatory vision articulated in shade-tree theology through active involvement in partisan politics, Ibn Khaldun, the great medieval Muslim historian, warns that the approach is littered with potential landmines, as romance between politics and religion often leads to the mutual corruption of both. No other place has this warning been more borne out than in Africa itself. Rather than being the “salt in the world,” what has happened instead between the political and religious elites is a “hegemonic alliance” that allows both sides to constitute themselves into

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“a privileged zone of interpenetration and mutual reinforcement.”49 Contrary to the expectation that they would see themselves as occupying different roles with specific functions to perform in society, leading religious figures, Christian and Muslim alike, often behave as “class actors in partnership with political elites to seek to achieve mutually advantageous goals.”50 This entrenched system of co-optation not only blurs the distinction between the state and the private order, it also makes it aberrant for religious spokespersons to confront the state determinedly when it infringes (as it so often does) on the fundamental rights of its citizens. As such, religious authorities have become, like their counterparts within the political circle, “brokers of power in the most mundane sense.”51 Because of their preoccupation with the clientelistic concerns about how to survive in an environment of resource shortages, religious people and institutions have embraced the “Big Man” model of politics that also characterizes the behavior of temporal leaders. This is a type of politics that thrives on the assumption that “public office can bring private profit and influence” and fuels the perception of many ordinary Africans that “the ‘success’ of a religion is reflected at least in part in the ability of its leaders to exhibit a high level of material wealth.”52 The result, predictably, has been bad for both religion and the state. Neither is trusted or taken seriously by the people. A strategy animated partly by the desire, if possible, to wrest power from those who have lost their legitimacy to rule due to misgovernance, or alternatively, as suggested by Christian realism, share power with them (a sort of “balance of power” strategy), has ironically become complicit in perpetuating a political culture of exclusion. The challenge, then, for scholars and practitioners of religion alike is how to bring the concern for the poor and society’s dropouts to the center of our conception of religion and to offer a more liberatory vision of its role in Africa. Religious Social Criticism and the Ethics of Contestation To an extent, this clarion call has been answered by a shift in focus from the question about who may govern, which preoccupies the second strategy, to the third concern of African modern political philosophy having to do with how to govern. Given the repeated breaches of trust that African governments have so far displayed, attention is shifting to the renewal of civil society—the institutions that mediate between citizens and the state and market—for guidance on how to reconstitute the African political terrain towards more just and egalitarian ends. This explains why the last two decades in sub-Saharan Africa have witnessed the efflorescence of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), many of which are affiliated with religious institutions or led by

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religious persons. One such is “Save Nigeria Group,” a consortium of civil society organizations in the country, whose objectives include suggesting various ways of breaking “the stranglehold of the poverty that threatens our corporate existence and undermines our national integrity.”53 In the social science literature, two main arguments have been adduced to justify the relevance of civil society organizations to the moral progress of modern political life, one structural and the other normative. The structural argument traces its lineage to the Italian Marxist philosopher, Antonio Gramsci, who understood a well-functioning society as a system of sectors which are partly autonomous, analytically distinct, but mutually influential; and given the fact that human needs are multiple and complex, diverse forms of social organization are required to address them.54 While the state, in its management of public affairs, will continue to have its place in the larger scheme of things, he contends that it is limited in what it can actually accomplish. Thus, for a political society to function maximally, it must provide for what Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus call “mediating structures,” that is, “those institutions standing between the individual in his private life and the large institutions of public life,”55 and which are indispensable to the moral reconstruction of public life. But it is not only the social scientists who appreciate the importance of mediating structures to a wholesome political life. Robin Lovin suggests that we must go back to Aristotle for an accurate genealogy of this insight, premised on an understanding of politics as “deliberations by which we order life in the polis, to make human goods and human virtues possible,”56 and which was developed further in the Reformation and beyond, culminating in the acceptance of the necessity of social pluralism. In short, before its canonization in the social science, there had developed “a religious understanding of modern society that accepts institutional pluralism as integral to an understanding of human good.”57 What also emerges from Lovin’s account of the interdependence of liberal democracy and social pluralism is that the structural features and significance of mediating structures cannot be dissociated from any normative argument to justify them. One way in which their existence helps further our understanding of human good, especially in modern times, is by introducing “contention” as a strategy for making moral claims on each other. To contend is to argue, usually with someone, about shared moral meanings or a common moral frame. An example of these shared moral meanings in Africa are the affirmations in many national Constitutions that certain conditions are crucial for personal and communal flourishing. They include the protection of physical and civil security, the guarantee of civil-political liberties, provision of socioeconomic goods, and support for communal self-determination and cultural development. To the extent that all these conditions still elude

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many Africans, contemporary mediating structures have emerged not just as surrogate institutions that provide services that state governments are unwilling or unable to provide, but as social movements that help channel, through structured contestation, the anger and outrage of politically and economically disenfranchised citizens.58 As others have explained, “contentious politics” consists of coordinated contention by groups around a shared agenda, involving governments as “targets, initiators of claims, or third parties.”59 Practices shaped by this politics “span a spectrum from pure moral argument at one end, to riots, war, and other violent acts on the other.”60 Regardless of the form these activities might take—from “petitioning, publicity campaigns, theatrical performances, candlelight vigils, litigation, and political campaigns, to street demonstrations, boycotts, teach-ins, sit-ins, picketing, strikes, building occupations, and other forms of civil disobedience”—their aim is to disrupt “habitual ways of life”61 that are epitomized by wanton government corruption in many African countries. At the time of this writing, members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), representing the entire teaching staff of federal and state universities in Nigeria, have been on strike since February 15, 2022, demanding better salaries and funding of the nation’s tertiary institutions. Whatever benefits African workers have been able to squeeze from their governments have usually been through such organized protests, but it is a mechanism that leaves out a larger percentage of the people who are not government employees or unemployed. Citizens in this latter category rely on the contentious activities of other civil society groups, such as the previously mentioned “Save Nigeria Group,” to make their demands known and intelligible. Whatever the facilitating or mediating conduit may be, “contention aims to secure the satisfaction of claims by eliciting the recognition of those in power of the legitimacy of those claims, and thereby the incorporation into social institutions of an established recognition of those claims.”62 Pastor Bakare invokes a Yoruba proverb to explain the rationale for deploying this strategy: “When a man keeps quiet, what is on his body will keep quiet with him as well.”63 He goes further to articulate an argument that seems to be excerpted from the notebook of a Christian realist. Anticipating that some people might be confused as to why a pastor, “whose job is supposed to be preaching about the virtues which will transport people from the misery of their earthly bodies to a place of perfection where the streets are paved with gold, [should] concern himself with earthly politics,” he directs such potential cynics to the Hebrew prophets, who “didn’t merely cavort with kings while the state of Israel was being vandalized by pretend-leaders.”64 Seeing his own ministry against this backdrop, he opines that “men of God cannot afford to stand on the sidelines muttering pious incoherencies while their country is embroiled in a political

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and social crisis,” defending his stance on sound theological grounds: “a preacher’s duty does not stop with the soul of the flock. It spreads to the soul of the nation as well because the flock of God does not live in a vacant space. The people of God do not live on an island where they are hermetically shut from the challenges confronting everyone, Christians and non-Christians alike. They live in the general world and so our religious sensibility extends to social responsibility as well. We simply cannot afford to look away from the rot that goes on in the world.”65 CONCLUSION Christian realism is not a term that has featured much, if at all, in African theological and ethical discourse. However, what I have tried to do in this essay is show that the essential elements of its epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical claims are presupposed in the continent-wide conversations about the proper role of religious, especially Christian, beliefs and convictions in public life and political choices. When expressed against the backdrop of the litany of havocs that may justifiably be laid at the feet of religion, a stance of realism without its “Christian” qualifier may suggest a call for excluding religious voices and perspectives from any endeavor to construct a template on which to build a viable and just public order. This is how the so-called “secularists” have understood what it means to be realistic in the debate that centers on the task of clipping the wings of forces of chaos, destruction, and large-scale oppression in Africa, forces with which Christianity and Islam, the two dominant religions in the continent, are unfairly identified. As represented in the works of both Niebuhr and Lovin, Christian realism helps to correct this jaundiced, if not hostile attitude towards religion, explaining that one need not be anti-religious to recognize the evils that humans can perpetrate in the name of a religion or none, while at the same time acknowledging that religions can be, as they have been in many contexts and in different historical periods, forces for good. In fact, much of the injustices and indignities from which Africans have historically suffered and still do are byproducts of complex factors, of which religion is only a part, even if a substantive one, and Christians have been at the forefront of the collective quest to stem this unfortunate tide. Thus, I have argued that the contemporary articulations of African theological and ethical concerns approximate what can be understood as the agenda and insights of Christian realism in the three main questions to which those concerns address themselves, namely, the moral relationship between the state and its citizens, the nature and criteria of political legitimacy, and the proper ends of government. By interrogating the idioms of inculturation,

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liberation, and contestation in which these concerns are expressed, the essay shows the inherent diversity and perhaps inescapable tension within African theological and ethical discourse. There is, on the one hand, a robust confidence among many Christians and their intellectual guides, that increasing the level of their interest and participation in political affairs is the most effective and possibly desirable way to correct the many social ills that have beleaguered African societies. On the other hand, there is the increasing realization that Christians, as individuals and faith communities, are themselves complicit in the production and perpetuation of these ills, and that any supposition of a superior and incontrovertible Christian template for ordering and/or transforming societies only bespeaks theological and moral hubris. The possibility for African renaissance, therefore, lies in continuing dialogue not only between Christian realism and African theological ethics, but also between the latter and many other streams of knowledge and sources of moral wisdom in Africa and elsewhere. BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Elizabeth. “Moral Bias and Corrective Practices: A Pragmatist Perspective.” Proceedings and Addresses of the APA 89 (2015), 21–47. Bakare, Tunde. “Why We Cannot Wait or Be Quiet.” Accessed on July 19, 2022, https:​//​herald008​.wordpress​.com​/2012​/11​/. Bayart, Jean-Francois. The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly. London: Longman, 1993. Berger, Peter L., and Richard John Neuhaus. To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1977. Bewaji, John Ayotunde. “Ethics and Morality in Yoruba Culture.” In A Companion to African Philosophy, edited by Kwasi Wiredu, 396–403, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004. Birch, Bruce C. Let Justice Roll Down: Old Testament, Ethics, and Christian Life. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991. Bratton, Michael. “Enabling the Voluntary Sector in Africa: The Policy Context.” In African Governance in the 1990s: Objectives, Resources and Constraints. Atlanta: Carter Center, 1990. de Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. 2 vols. New York: Schocken Books, 1961. Ela, Jean-Marc. African Cry. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1986. Ellis, Stephen and Gerrie ter Haar. “Religion and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Journal of Modern African Studies 36, no. 2 (1998): 175–201. Harrelson, Walter. The Ten Commandments and Human Rights. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986. Haynes, Jeff. Religion and Politics in Africa. London: Zed Books, 1996.

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Hiskett, Mervin. The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usuman dan Fodio, 2nd edition. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1994. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan, edited by C. B. Macpherson. London: Penguin Books, 1968. Katongole, Emmanuel. “‘African Renaissance’ and the Challenge of Narrative Theology in Africa.” In African Theology Today, edited by Emmanuel Katongole. Vol. 1. Scranton, PA: The University of Scranton Press, 2002. Lovin, Robin W. Christian Realism and the New Realities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ———. Reinhold Niebuhr. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2007. ———. Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. “Christian Realism for the Twenty-First Century.” Journal of Religious Ethics 37, no. 4 (2009): 669–82. Macamo, Elisio. “Social Criticism and Contestation: Reflections on the Politics of Anger and Outrage.” Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien 20 (2011): 45–68. Magesa, Laurenti. Anatomy of Inculturation: Transforming the Church in Africa. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004. Mbeki, Thabo. “The African Renaissance Statement of Deputy President, Thabo Mbeki SABC, Gallagher Estate, 13 August 1998.” International Relations and Cooperation Republic of South Africa. Accessed on July 19, 2022. http: ​ / / ​ w ww​. dirco ​ . gov​. za ​ / docs ​ / speeches ​ / 1998 ​/mbek0813​.htmMbiti, John S. African Religions and Philosophy. London: Heinemann, 1969. Mbiti, John S. African Religions and Philosophy. London: Heinemann, 1969. Mudimbe, V. Y. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960. ———. “Augustine’s Political Realism.” In Christian Realism and Political Problems. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953. Oborji, Francis Anekwe. “Is The Church Political or Apolitical in Nigeria?” Accessed on July 20, 2022. https:​//​nigeriaworld​.com​/feature​/publication​/oborji​/080918​.html. Ohmae, K. End of the Nation-State: The Rise of Regional Economies. London: Harper Ellis, 1995. Pobee, J. S. Toward an African Theology. Nashville: Abingdon, 1979. Ramsey, Paul. Basic Christian Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950. ———. The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983. The Redeemed Christian Church of God, “Mission & Vision,” https:​//​www​.rccg​ .org​/mission​-and​-visionSen, Amartya. “It’s Fair, It’s Good: 10 Truths About Globalization.” International Herald Tribune (July 2001).

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Soyinka, Wole. “Nobel Lecture 1986: This Past Must Address Its Present.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 102, no. 5 (1987): 762–71. Stackhouse, Max L. “Religion, Society, and the Independent Sector: Key Elements of a General Theory,” in Religion, the Independent Sector, and American Culture, edited by Conrad Sherry and Rowland A. Sherrill. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992. Stout, Jeffrey. Blessed Are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. Sulaiman, Ibraheem. The Islamic State and Challenge of History: Ideas, Policies, and Operation of the Sokoto Caliphate. London & New York: Mansell Publishing Ltd., 1987. Táíwò, Olúfẹ́mi O. “Rethinking Political Philosophy in Modern Africa: A Proposal.” Philosophy in Africa: Contemporary Issues, 28 (2008), 146. Tilly, Charles, and Sidney Tarrow. Contentious Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Until Justice and Peace Embrace. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983.

NOTES 1. Reinhold Niebuhr enjoys paramountcy among theological ethicists with whom the term Christian realism is closely associated, although his thought hardly exhausts the idea as the theological movement that carries this banner antedated Niebuhr. See Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1. 2. For a fuller account of the scope and conceptual elasticity of Christian realism, see Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3–24; Robin W. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 6–11. 3. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Augustine’s Political Realism,” in his Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), 119. 4. Lovin points out that “Niebuhr relied on an understanding of human nature that he drew from the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, the teaching of Jesus, and the political insights of Saint Augustine.” See Robin W. Lovin, “Christian Realism for the Twenty-First Century,” Journal of Religious Ethics 37, no. 4 (2009), 669. 5. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 13. 6. Lovin, “Christian Realism for the Twenty-First Century,” 671. 7. Lovin, “Christian Realism for the Twenty-First Century,” 671. 8. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 8. 9. See John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969). 10. Wole Soyinka, “Nobel Lecture 1986: This Past Must Address Its Present,” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 102, no. 5 (1987): 771.

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11. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (London: Penguin Books, 1968), 186. 12. See K. Ohmae, End of the Nation-State: The Rise of Regional Economies (London: Harper Ellis, 1995). For a critique of globalization as being insensitive to the problem of asymmetry in the distribution of its benefits and burdens, see Amartya Sen, “It’s Fair, It’s Good: 10 Truths About Globalization,” International Herald Tribune (July 2001), 6. 13. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 2. 14. Thabo Mbeki, “The African Renaissance Statement of Deputy President, Thabo Mbeki SABC, Gallagher Estate, 13 August 1998.” International Relations and Cooperation Republic of South Africa, accessed on July 19, 2022, http:​//​www​.dirco​.gov​ .za​/docs​/speeches​/1998​/mbek0813​.htm. Mbeki gave this speech when he was Vice President of the country. 15. Táíwò, Olúfẹ́mi O., “Rethinking Political Philosophy in Modern Africa: A Proposal,” Philosophy in Africa: Contemporary Issues, 28 (2008), 146. 16. Táíwò, “Rethinking Political Philosophy,” 146–47. 17. Táíwò, “Rethinking Political Philosophy,” 14. 18. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism, 3–4. For a similar view, see also Rev. Fr. Francis Anekwe Oborji, “Is The Church Political or Apolitical in Nigeria?” accessed on July 20, 2022, https:​//​nigeriaworld​.com​/feature​/publication​/oborji​ /080918​.html. 19. Lovin, “Christian Realism for the Twenty-First Century,” 678. 20. Lovin, “Christian Realism for the Twenty-First Century,” 678. 21. See Paul Ramsey, Basic Christian Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), 1–45; Paul Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983), 3–18. For discussion of this idea in terms of justice and human rights terms, see Bruce C. Birch, Let Justice Roll Down: Old Testament, Ethics, and Christian Life (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991); Walter Harrelson, The Ten Commandments and Human Rights (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986). 22. For a robust discussion of this understanding from both Christian realist and neo-Calvinist perspectives, see Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2007), 35–69, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), 3–22, 69–98. 23. See V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), x. 24. Some theologians of inculturation, especially those seeking liturgical reform in the churches, were primarily interested in African material culture, in that they construe inculturation as entailing the use of African concrete resources—language, drums, fabric, etc.—as tools for proclaiming the gospel and worshipping God in a way they believe is compatible with African spiritual temperament; in short, inculturation designates an attempt “to translate Christianity into genuine African categories,” thereby making it relevant to homo Africanus. See J. S. Pobee, Toward an African Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979), 17–18.

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25. See John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969), 277. 26. See Laurenti Magesa, Anatomy of Inculturation: Transforming the Church in Africa (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2004). 27. See John Ayotunde Bewaji, “Ethics and Morality in Yoruba Culture,” in A Companion to African Philosophy, ed. Kwasi Wiredu (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 396–403. 28. See his “Pentecost or Babel?” (Ibadan: Oluseyi Press Ltd, 1974), 17. 29. Bewaji, “Ethics and Morality in Yoruba Culture,” 18–19. 30. See E. Bolaji Idowu, The Selfhood of the Church in Africa (Lagos: Literature Department of Methodist Church Nigeria, n.d.), 18–22. 31. See The Redeemed Christian Church of God, “Mission & Vision,” https:​//​www​ .rccg​.org​/mission​-and​-vision. 32. See https:​//​faithtabernacle​.org​.ng​/about. 33. See https:​//​faithtabernacle​.org​.ng​/about. 34. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), I:362. 35. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, II:30. 36. See his “‘African Renaissance’ and the Challenge of Narrative Theology in Africa,” in Emmanuel Katongole (ed.), African Theology Today, vol. 1 (Scranton, PA: The University of Scranton Press, 2002), 217. 37. Katongole, Emmanuel, “‘African Renaissance’ and the Challenge,” 218. 38. See Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960). 39. While it is common to valorize the triple religious heritage of Africa—Islam, Christianity, and the traditional religions—the religious competition to dominate the public square or what might be appropriately described as a crude politicization of religion is a phenomenon found mainly among adherents of the first two religions. 40. See his The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usuman dan Fodio, 2nd ed. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1994), viii. 41. See his The Islamic State and Challenge of History: Ideas, Policies, and Operation of the Sokoto Caliphate (London & New York: Mansell Publishing Ltd., 1987), 3. 42. Jean-Marc Ela, African Cry (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1986), vi. 43. Jean-Marc Ela, My Faith as an African (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994), 147. 44. Ela, My Faith as an African, 145. 45. Ela, My Faith as an African, 147. 46. Ela, My Faith as an African, 139. 47. Ela, My Faith as an African, vi. 48. Ela, My Faith as an African, 137. 49. Jean-Francois Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (London: Longman, 1993), 150–79. 50. Jeff Haynes, Religion and Politics in Africa (London: Zed Books, 1996), 6. 51. Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar, “Religion and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Journal of Modern African Studies 36, no. 2 (1998), 190. 52. Haynes, Religion and Politics in Africa, 9.

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53. Pastor Tunde Bakare, “Why We Cannot Wait or Be Quiet,” accessed on July 19, 2022, https:​//​herald008​.wordpress​.com​/2012​/11​/. A welcome address delivered at a public rally in Lagos, Nigeria on November 12, 2012. 54. Cited in Max L. Stackhouse, “Religion, Society, and the Independent Sector: Key Elements of a General Theory,” in Religion, the Independent Sector, and American Culture, ed. Conrad Sherry and Rowland A. Sherrill (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 12. See also Michael Bratton, “Enabling the Voluntary Sector in Africa: The Policy Context,” in African Governance in the 1990s: Objectives, Resources and Constraints (Atlanta: Carter Center, 1990), 105. 55. Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1977), 2. 56. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 12. 57. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities, 13. 58. See Jeffrey Stout, Blessed Are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Elisio Macamo, “Social Criticism and Contestation: Reflections on the Politics of Anger and Outrage,” Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien 20 (2011), 45–68. 59. Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, Contentious Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 4. 60. Elizabeth Anderson, “Moral Bias and Corrective Practices: A Pragmatist Perspective,” Proceedings and Addresses of the APA 89 (2015), 32. 61. Anderson, “Moral Bias and Corrective Practices,” 32–33. 62. Anderson, “Moral Bias and Corrective Practices,” 33. 63. Bakare, “Why We Cannot Wait or Be Quiet,” 7. 64. Bakare, “Why We Cannot Wait or Be Quiet,” 6–7. 65. Bakare, “Why We Cannot Wait or Be Quiet,” 8.

Chapter Seventeen

A Gospel That Opens Up Free Spaces Reinhold Niebuhr’s Insights into Understanding Church and State in Russia Today John P. Burgess

In 1944, Reinhold Niebuhr published The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, in which he develops the line of thinking that he had begun in “The Kingdom of God and the Struggle for Justice,” chapter 9 of his Gifford Lectures, The Nature and Destiny of Man. Niebuhr argues that certain religious, particularly Christian, teachings offer a better vindication of democracy than do typical secular defenses. In a new foreword to The Children of Light in 1960, he succinctly states his thesis: A free society prospers best in a cultural, religious and moral atmosphere which encourages neither a too pessimistic nor too optimistic view of human nature. Both moral sentimentality in politics and moral pessimism encourage totalitarian regimes, the one because it encourages the opinion that it is not necessary to check the power of government, and the second because it believes that only absolute political authority can restrain the anarchy, created by conflicting and competitive interests.1

However, even while affirming that religion can—and, at its best, will—contribute to a democratic political order, Niebuhr also notes that religious forces can resist democracy, seeing it as a threat to their most precious values. Niebuhr’s analysis can be related to contemporary Russia and the rise of political authoritarianism under President Vladimir Putin. In particular, 303

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Niebuhr’s comments about the capacity of religion either to promote or to obstruct political democracy offer insight into the relation of the Orthodox Church to the Russian government. I will argue, however, that moral sentimentality and moral pessimism are not the only factors that account for why the Orthodox Church has been largely supportive of President Putin. As importantly, the Church sees cooperation as the best practical strategy for preserving a space for its ministry in Russian society. I will examine, in particular, where this space allows for creative initiatives that may be able to contribute to formation of a civil society in which Russians learn to think critically about themselves and their nation.2 ORTHODOXY AND RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY The doubts that Niebuhr expresses about Russia in 1944 still ring true today: “Russia [in contrast to Britain or the United States] will have the greatest difficulty in establishing inner moral checks upon its will-to-power.” For Niebuhr, this is the case not because Russia “is communistic or materialistic; but rather because it is informed by a simple religion and culture which makes self-criticism difficult and self-righteousness inevitable.” Niebuhr further notes “the absence [in Russia] of democratic institutions through which, in other nations, sensitive minorities may act as the conscience of the nation.”3 Here Niebuhr is alluding to the role that sectarian religious groups played in establishing religious toleration, a key feature of democratic governments, in England and the United States.4 It is not entirely clear, however, what Niebuhr means by “a simple religion and culture.” Is he asserting that Russia has a single religion and culture, in the sense of the historical dominance of Orthodox Christianity among the Eastern Slavic peoples? Alternatively, is he asserting that Russia’s religion and culture have been “simplistic,” that is, intellectually undeveloped, never having wrestled with the legacy of Western Europe’s Enlightenment and Reformation? Neither of these interpretations of Russia would be quite right. In regard to the first, the Russian Empire and, then, the Soviet Union united highly diverse religions and cultures. Even today, the Constitution of the Russian Federation refers to the nation’s four “traditional religions”: Christianity (understood as Orthodoxy), Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism. A fuller depiction of Russian history would include the various pagan religions of tribal peoples in Siberia, as well as the Catholicism and Protestantism that Western European missionaries and immigrant groups brought to Russia. In regard to Russian intellectual life, Peter the Great and successive Russian rulers were deeply influenced by Enlightenment ideals—even the

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casual visitor to St. Petersburg today will immediately note the similarity of its classical architecture to that of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain and Italy. And while it is true that the Reformation scarcely touched Orthodox Russia, commanding intellectual figures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, such as Lev Tolstoy, nevertheless issued withering critiques of formalistic, ritualistic religion, critiques that resemble those that Western Europe’s sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestants issued against the Roman Catholic Church. Did Niebuhr not know Russian history? Was he working from common Western stereotypes? The next sentence of The Children of Light suggests yet a third possibility for understanding Russia’s “simple religion and culture.” Niebuhr writes that Russia’s “creed assumes the evil intentions of capitalistic powers and the innocency and virtue of a nation which stands on the other side of the revolution.”5 What makes Russia’s religion and culture “simple” is perhaps this: an ideological assertion of a simple contrast between East and West, between a prerevolutionary and a postrevolutionary order. Niebuhr is clearly thinking about the Bolshevik Revolution and its promise of a workers’ paradise. But we could add that at times Orthodoxy, too, has asserted a simple contrast between Russia and Western Europe. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, monastic circles in Russia spoke of Moscow as the “third Rome,” the defender of true (Orthodox) Christianity against Catholicism in the West and Islam in the former Byzantine Empire. In the nineteenth century, the Slavophiles contrasted the simple (Orthodox) faith of Russia’s peasantry to the decadent commercial spirit of Western Europe’s bourgeoisie. The belief in Russia’s distinctive “innocency and virtue” did not begin with Lenin; indeed, it has a long history. Myths of Russian “innocency and virtue” won popular currency again after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Initially, the new Russia seemed to aspire to integration into the globally dominant Western European/North Atlantic economic and political order. President Boris Yeltsin called on experts and specialists from the West to reform a Russia that had lost seventyfive years to communist mismanagement. At the same time, conservative Protestant missionaries from the West sought to win “atheistic” Russians back to Christianity. In the end, for most Russians, the 1990s ultimately proved chaotic, disorienting, and even humiliating. As the Soviet Union disintegrated into separate nation-states, Russians could no longer take pride in being a global superpower. Even if their nation still possessed nuclear weapons, its gross national product barely rivaled that of tiny Denmark. Popular resentment grew against the country’s oligarchs who had hoarded the nation’s wealth and transferred it to Western bank accounts. The genius of Vladimir Putin—and his success in rising to power—lay in his recognition that Russians had a deep longing to think of themselves as, somehow, still a

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great nation with a distinctive identity, rather than as a second-tier European nation with a failed historical experiment in Marxist-Leninism or, after 1991, in Western capitalism. In this respect, Putin and a resurgent Orthodox Church have been able to make common cause—most recently, in 2022, in relation to invading Ukraine. Political and Church leaders regard Orthodoxy as a key element of Russia’s great and unique historic identity. They identify the West as a threat to national security, whether, as in Putin’s view, by seeking to subjugate the nation to Western political interests, or, for the Church, by corrupting the nation morally. In addition, asserts the Church, the Russian state today is responsible to protect and even promote Orthodoxy, in the aftermath of communism’s unparalleled persecution of the faith in the twentieth century. Close cooperation between church and state began already under President Yeltsin, as symbolized by the rebuilding of Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral, razed on Stalin’s orders in 1931. This cooperation has accelerated under President Putin. The Church helps give Russians pride in their nation—and therefore in their government. And the state helps the Church establish parishes, monasteries, theological schools, and educational and social projects. In 2006, I was visiting a small monastic community in Russia’s far north. After a vigil service that did not conclude until 4 a.m., the abbot introduced me to another visitor, a Russian monk, who upon learning who I was, blurted out, really without thinking, “But how can a person possibly be a Christian in America?” Many Russian Orthodox priests and monks today, like their Slavophile forbears, regard the West as antireligious. For them, Orthodoxy is the true faith, and Russia has the divine mission of protecting Christianity and what the Russian Church—and President Putin—have come to call “traditional moral values.” According to this way of thinking, ethnic Russians are inherently Orthodox. And, indeed, as many as 70 to 80 percent of ethnic Russians today have been baptized into the Orthodox Church and identify themselves as Orthodox. What is elusive to measure, yet fascinating to observe, are the complex ways in which they relate and do not relate to the Orthodox Church. By some estimates, fewer than 1 percent of Muscovites regularly attend church services. Probably no more than 10 percent of Russians attend church services at all, even at Easter (Pascha), the highest and holiest of the Church’s festivals. Nevertheless, most Russians have icons in their homes. Most support the restoration of churches once confiscated or razed by the Bolsheviks, and many support the construction of new churches, notwithstanding local protests in recent years in Moscow and Yekaterinburg against government proposals to give the Church corners of precious public park land. As a popular mayor in one of Moscow’s suburbs said, “It is my responsibility to respond to citizen

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interests. People want kindergartens, shopping malls, and movie theatres. The city should provide for their religious needs, too.” It goes without saying that the mayor does not provide for Baptists or Jehovah’s Witnesses (indeed, the state has labeled the latter as an illegal “extremist” organization). For its part, the Orthodox Church seems all too happy to seek and to enjoy state favoritism. What Niebuhr says of pre– Vatican II Catholicism is also true of the Orthodox Church in Russia today: “Its doctrinal position is that the true religion is known and validated, and that it is the business of the state to support the true religion.”6 Nevertheless, Niebuhr would not have dismissed out of hand the role of the Orthodox Church in establishing the Russian nation’s historic identity and value. Indeed, he accuses liberal democratic idealists of not seeing “that the power of some particular, limited and unique historical vitality and experience creates the original core of community and the original prestige and authority of its government; and that even in its most complex elaborations an advanced community continues to depend partly upon this power for its cohesion and for the authority of its government.”7 THE ORTHODOX CHURCH AND THE PUTIN PRESIDENCY To some Western political observers, aspects of Putin’s Russia resemble Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union, the two totalitarian orders that Niebuhr regarded as pointing up the failure of “the children of light” (liberal democratic thinking) to articulate an adequate understanding of human nature. Putin has succeeded in eliminating his political rivals and taking ever more power into his own hands. While on paper, Russia is a democracy, its state institutions are too weak to provide adequate checks and balances on the president, and Putin has been unable or unwilling to strengthen these institutions. As for the Russian Orthodox Church, it has demonstrated little ability to criticize injustices of the Putin government. Niebuhr’s analysis of moral sentimentality and moral pessimism offer a partial, but not complete, explanation of why. Niebuhr associates moral sentimentality with classical liberal thinking, which assumes that “human history is moving toward a form of rationality which will finally achieve a perfect identity of self-interest and the public good.”8 In this view, individuals (and groups of individuals) have an innate capacity to restrain their egotism and to cooperate with one another. But, argues Niebuhr, “the same man who displays this capacity also reveals varying degrees of the power of self-interest and of the subservience of the mind to these interests. Sometimes this egotism stands in frank contradiction to

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the professed ideal or sense of obligation to higher and wider values.”9 The children of light must therefore learn how to “beguile, deflect, harness and restrain self-interest, individual and collective, for the sake of the community.”10 Otherwise, a movement such as fascism becomes possible, in which an authoritarian leader appeals to national self-interest in order to assume absolutist powers. In Russia, moral sentimentality about the coherence of national and religious identity has blinded the Church to President Putin’s manipulation of Orthodoxy to legitimize his political rule and agenda. As a sharp-tongued American Orthodox priest and longtime observer of Russia once remarked to me, “Russian Orthodox leaders have three loves, and in this order. They love the Russian nation above anything else. Second, they love the Russian Orthodox Church. And last of all they love, perhaps, Jesus Christ.” In response to large public demonstrations against his bid for reelection in 2012, Putin gathered religious leaders to endorse him. Patriarch Kirill called Putin’s years of rule “a miracle of God” that had saved Russia from the disasters of the 1990s. In contrast, the Church has never publicly clarified where the interests of the President or the nation may contradict the gospel. The moral pessimism that Niebuhr identified as a second pathway to totalitarianism has also played a role in the Orthodox Church’s support of Putin. The Church fears that liberal democracy undermines the moral values that the Church regards as foundational to Russian (and European) civilization: patriotism, the sanctity of marriage between male and female, protection of the unborn and the elderly, and respect for religious faith and religious institutions. In a globalized world in which Western media propagate liberal values of personal choice, material wealth, and bodily pleasure, the Church has supported state restrictions on public expression of same-sex attraction, and on public “blasphemy” that violates the sensibilities of religious believers. To many Orthodox believers, Putin seems to guarantee social and moral stability. Nevertheless, I believe that the Church’s support of Putin is generally based on far more practical considerations. Religious bodies in every part of the world depend on state permission and assistance in order to conduct their work effectively. In a state in which power is highly centralized, as in Russia, cooperation is all the more necessary. Construction of new churches can proceed only if state officials approve zoning and building permits. Restoration of old churches is typically regulated by laws relating to historical preservation—which may also open state coffers. Church social work—such as drug rehabilitation centers, hospices, and soup kitchens—requires state licensing and inspection. Parochial educational institutions seek state accreditation. As a Russian Orthodox bishop once confided to me, “Being a dissident doesn’t get you anywhere in Russia.” Better to negotiate behind closed doors with state officials than to organize pickets and public demonstrations. Or as a

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prominent priest in Moscow told me, “In Russia, the ‘personal factor’ is what matters most. You get things done not by changing the laws but rather by using your connections.” To the outside observer, the line between personal connections and corruption will not seem clear, but even in a liberal democracy, churches generally seek cooperative relationships with state officials, not confrontation, in order to get things done. FREE SPACES FOR CIVIL SOCIETY Close cooperation between Church and state officials in Russia at high political levels has given cover to parishes and monasteries to develop creative ministries. To be sure, this cooperative relationship also ensures that these projects remain local in influence and uninvolved with any opposition political movement. Nevertheless, they have the potential to change Russia more than a Western observer might anticipate. They contribute to the formation of a civil society, that social “free space” in which people take the initiative to organize their life together, rather than depending on state authorities to take care of them. In the process, people acquire skills that, according to many political scientists, are requisite for developing a democratic political order. People learn to identify social problems, negotiate solutions, and organize common action. The Feodorovskii Cathedral stands just behind Saint Petersburg’s central train station. The cathedral was erected in the early twentieth century in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of the reign of the Romanov family. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the cathedral was plundered and closed. Its domes were removed; smaller work sheds were attached to it; and in 1932, the complex was converted into a milk factory. With the fall of the Soviet Union, local authorities promised to return the cathedral to Church ownership, a process, however, that would not be completed until 2005. The small parish and its head priest, Father Alexander Sorokin, soon realized that the task of restoration was well beyond their financial capacity. But at the end of 2006, Boris Gryzlov, the presiding officer of the Russian Duma and head of President Putin’s United Russia party, announced that restoration of the cathedral was a political priority, and he and Fr. Alexander organized a board of government and business leaders to raise money for the project. Restoration would involve returning the cathedral to its historic appearance, both inside and out. There was one complication, however. The cathedral has two churches within it, but the revolutionary events of 1917 had disrupted completion of the lower church. No provisional architectural sketches for it even existed. Fr. Alexander asked the monk Father Zinon Teodor, arguably Russia’s most talented icon painter, to take on the project.

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Fr. Alexander’s proposal was remarkable—and potentially controversial. In 1996, Fr. Zinon’s bishop had removed him from his monastery and forbidden him from serving as a priest, after Fr. Zinon had allowed a group of visiting Italian Catholics to say the Latin Mass in the monastery chapel. Although Patriarch Aleksii removed the ban in 2001, Fr. Zinon doubted that he had a future in Russia. For a time he lived in Austria and then on Mt. Athos. By 2009, he was planning to return to his native Ukraine. After years of tireless effort to persuade him, Fr. Alexander nevertheless succeeded in winning him over to the project in 2010, promising him a free hand. In the spring of 2013, Fr. Zinon completed his work, and the parish began using the space. The upper church has the sort of iconostasis that developed in fourteenthand fifteenth-century Muscovy: a multitiered wall of icons completely separating the altar area, reserved for the clergy, from the nave, where the worshippers assemble. For Fr. Zinon, this arrangement reflects the hierarchical, feudal social arrangements of the Russian Middle Ages—a time in which the Orthodox Church acquired wealth and power by supporting, and submitting to, the tsarist state. Fr. Zinon believes, however, that Christianity calls people into communities of mutual responsibility and service. To reflect this principle, Fr. Zinon reduced the iconostasis in the lower church to a low, unobtrusive barrier, similar to the arrangement of space in Christianity’s earliest churches. Worshippers can now see into the altar area; they celebrate the liturgy together with the clergy. Icons are still present, but they hang from the church’s walls and pillars, thereby surrounding the priests and the people, rather than forming an impenetrable barrier between them. The saints of the past become present in such a way as to join with the assembled community in its worship.11 To translate Fr. Zinon’s artistic achievement into political terms, the lower church is a symbolic space for civil society. And, in truth, this spirit pervades the entire parish. Fr. Alexander has succeeded in bringing together conservative and liberal believers, young urban professionals as well as unassuming, not well-to-do pensioners. One member told me that the cathedral had given parishioners a space in which they could openly express opposition to the Russian government’s interference in Ukraine, first after the Maidan Revolution in 2013–2014, which deposed a pro-Russian president, and then after the Russian military invasion of Ukraine in 2022. St. Tikhon’s University in Moscow represents a second significant on-the-ground church initiative. The rector of the university, Father Vladimir Vorob’ev, was born in Moscow in 1941, earned a doctorate in physics and mathematics, and worked in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. His family had raised him in the Christian faith—one grandfather, a priest, had been arrested and exiled by the Bolsheviks in the 1930s.

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In the 1970s, Fr. Vladimir began attending the Church of St. Nicholas in Kuznetsakh, whose priest, Father Vsevolod Shpiller, attracted members of an intelligentsia that had become disenchanted with Marxist-Leninist ideology. With Shpiller’s blessing, Fr. Vladimir entered the Moscow Theological Academy and became a priest. In 1990, six years after Shpiller’s death, Fr. Vladimir himself assumed priestly duties in the St. Nicholas parish. As church and society won new freedoms with the fall of communism, Fr. Vladimir together with other leading Moscow priests organized an institute for lay religious education. The programs were so popular that the institute soon grew into a university, housed in a cluster of buildings on the territory of the St. Nicholas parish. Today, the university has nine departments (primarily in the humanities) and more than three thousand students. It is Russia’s most prominent Orthodox institution of higher education and is ranked as one of Russia’s best private universities. In 2004, the university received state accreditation. A year later, the St. Nicholas parish received title from state authorities to the Moscow Diocesan House, the site of the Local Church Council of 1917–1918, which restored the Patriarchate, abolished by Peter the Great two hundred years earlier, and considered wide-ranging reforms of church life, until Bolshevik pressure forced the Council to abandon its work. Like the Feodorovskii Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Moscow’s Diocesan House, which had served as a movie production center during the Soviet era, was in need of extensive renovation. Fr. Vladimir approached several wealthy businessmen associated with the St. Nicholas parish and became acquainted with Arkadii Rotenberg, Russia’s gas pipeline king and an old associate of President Putin. Rotenberg agreed to provide major funding for the project. At the dedication of the chapel in the renovated building in 2015, Patriarch Kirill served the liturgy, and the following day President Putin toured the building. Given these circumstances, St. Tikhon’s seems tainted by state favoritism and, perhaps, even official corruption; after the invasion of Ukraine, Rotenberg came under Western sanctions. Nevertheless, the university offers a free space in which serious academic work takes place. Among its professors are leading theologians, philosophers, church historians, and sociologists of religion. They engage Western, as well as Russian scholarship, abide by international academic standards, and demand academic rigor and honesty from their students. The university has established academic partnerships with twenty-one foreign universities, including the Humboldt University in Berlin and the University of Milan, Italy. The head of the university’s international relations department, Fr. Georgii Orechanov, until his premature death in 2020, organized international colloquia in which scholars reflected on anticlerical sentiment in contemporary Russian society, especially among young people. Fr. Georgii himself wrote sympathetically about Lev Tolstoy’s

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criticism of the Orthodox Church.12 Here Niebuhr’s point about sectarian Christian religious groups and democratic institutions is relevant; an appreciative assessment of Tolstoy’s religious views has implicit political significance in today’s Russia. Perhaps the greatest contribution of St. Tikhon’s University to Russian society has been its promotion of research into the crimes of the Soviet Union against Orthodox believers and, therefore (in the Church’s understanding), the nation as a whole. The university maintains a database of more than 36,000 individuals whom the Bolshevik regime persecuted for their faith.13 Fr. Vladimir and other university leaders have actively promoted the Orthodox Church’s canonization of more than one thousand martyrs and confessors of the Soviet era. Father Alexander Mazyrin and other faculty members are leading historians of the Red and Stalinist Terrors of the 1920s and 1930s. The icon of those martyred by the communists, designed by Fr. Vladimir and members of the university’s religious arts department, now hangs in almost every Moscow church, a quiet but insistent reminder that government, though ordained by God, can become demonic, and that believers must be prepared to maintain their integrity over and against such regimes. To be sure, some fanatical, conservative Orthodox wish to canonize Stalin, and many Russians, including Orthodox believers, are still too ambiguous about the man who led the country to victory over Nazi Germany yet bears responsibility for unspeakable crimes against his own people. Moreover, I am not aware of any scholar at St. Tikhon’s who would openly criticize President Putin or current political arrangements. The university may heroize the victims of Stalinist repression, but it has forbidden students and professors from participating in antigovernment demonstrations. Nor does it welcome criticism of its own centralized, nondemocratic power structure. Nevertheless, quietly in the hallways, students and professors do express their doubts about both the Church and the state. As one recent graduate remarked to me, “St. Tikhon’s, despite itself, taught me to think critically.” By encouraging academic inquiry, St. Tikhon’s nurtures niches of civil society in which people learn to raise critical questions about social and political arrangements. I could name dozens of other, less-known initiatives on the ground. Village priests are organizing parishioners and local residents to rebuild not only abandoned church buildings but also the economic base of their communities. Parishes and dioceses are developing drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs. Monasteries are training parents to care for autistic children and elderly relatives. As one priest said to me, “The Church in Russia today is freer than it’s ever been. The question is whether we will use that freedom.” The Church, no doubt, could do much more. But in political circumstances that discourage grassroots initiatives, the work of particular parishes and monasteries is impressive. Here people are coming together to address social

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problems in their small corners of the nation. They are confident that they can do something for the common good. Even if they have little hope of changing the current political order, they slowly but surely transform Russian society from below. They demonstrate that the state need not be the country’s only political actor. Politics is also people working on the ground, developing democratic practices in the space between moral sentimentality and moral pessimism. CRITIQUING THE NATION IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY As we have seen, Niebuhr recognizes that religion can rightfully contribute to a nation’s sense that it has a unique identity and worth. But it would be a mistake to reduce Orthodoxy in Russia today to this function. To be sure, few Russians are religious in the sense of being able to explain church dogma or church practice, but the beauty of Orthodox architecture, art, and worship nevertheless touches them. As choirs chant ancient hymns, as incense fills the air, even those who just “drop in” for a moment sense something in the church that transcends ordinary reality. Perhaps they subconsciously glimpse a better, more humane order than the one they currently know. When they remember a deceased family member, or when they worry about their health or job, they come to the church to light candles before an icon of St. Nicholas or the Mother of God. When they are confused or distraught, they make pilgrimage to Orthodox holy places and ask for prayer. Longing somehow to brush up against the holy, they draw water from holy springs or ask a priest to bless their cars and businesses. Is this superstition? Is it religion? Perhaps what matters is whether this popular Orthodoxy helps them see both their nation’s greatness and its shortcomings. In the summer of 2019, a priest at one of Moscow’s large parishes invited me to attend a celebration of the feast day of St. Vladimir, July 15. Vladimir, prince of Rus’ (at that time, centered in Kiev), converted to Orthodoxy in 988 and according to legend was baptized in what is now Crimea. The parish in Moscow sponsored a concert, followed by a gala reception. Here I was, sticking close to my acquaintance, as we quietly mingled among Moscow’s social elite—professors at prestigious institutes, artists and musicians, and government officials. Then the toasts began. Toasts to the head priest of this particular parish. Toasts to the Russian nation, followed by speeches about Russian patriotism, and about how the country would never bow to its enemies. Toasts to Russian military might, now so powerful that it commands respect even from the United States. A slight sweat broke out on my forehead. Joking to myself, I half wondered whether I would get out alive.

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The next day, I thanked my acquaintance again but confessed to him how awkward I had felt. His response surprised but also encouraged me. “John,” he said, “Russians don’t have a lot to be proud of. It’s good when Orthodoxy helps them feel proud about their country, because then they also understand that Russia stands beneath God and God’s judgment and mercy.” Whether President Putin, who identifies himself as an Orthodox believer, or the typical Russian make this connection is disputable. Certainly, nothing the previous evening had suggested the kind of humility and toleration of difference that Niebuhr believes religion should call forth.14 At present, democratic reform is nowhere in sight in Russia—not in the state, and not in the Orthodox Church itself. Nevertheless, monotheistic religions—in this case, Orthodox Christianity— have resources to defy complete cooptation by any earthly power. Their worship and teachings draw people into a higher, transcendent reality which, according to Niebuhr, “can be a constant source of power for purifying and broadening the justice and brotherhood of the community.”15 “The most effective opponents of tyrannical government,” Niebuhr approvingly notes, “can say, ‘We must obey God rather than man.’ . . . They have a vantage point from which they can discount the pretensions of demonic Caesars and from which they can defy malignant power as embodied in a given government.”16 Whether and how the Orthodox Church and its corners of civil society will contribute to a broader movement of sociopolitical democratization in Russia is unclear. But we can be certain that even a politically passive Russian Orthodoxy does not lack reforming impulses in its parishes and monasteries, and these impulses will occasionally break out, reminding us of religion’s— and Orthodoxy’s—potential to challenge existing social arrangements. And while, as we have seen, these reforming impulses typically remain local in character and do not ally themselves to any organized political opposition movement, they can at unexpected moments assume larger sociopolitical dimensions. In the summer of 2019, unauthorized demonstrations took place in Moscow against government manipulation of city elections. Many of the protestors were young people—high school and university students. Police were present en masse, and their actions were heavy-handed. As many as 1,300 people were arrested on July 27 alone.17 On that day, some demonstrators sought refuge in nearby Orthodox churches. One priest asserted that he had done nothing extraordinary in receiving them—he noted that his church is open throughout the day and welcomes all who enter, without regard for their political views. He told the young people that he admired them for standing up for their convictions, and he invited them to join him in a traditional Orthodox prayer for peace.18

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In the fall of that year, a number of the summer’s young protestors were given harsh jail sentences. Several leading intellectuals and professional societies publicly argued that the sentences were excessive and did not correspond to international standards of justice. A group of priests also issued a public letter, the first time in post-Soviet Russia that Church representatives have criticized state authorities so directly: “We call on the people holding judicial authority and serving in law enforcement agencies of our country. Many of you are baptized in the Orthodox Church and consider yourself believers. Judicial proceeding should not be repressive in nature, courts should not be used to stifle dissenting voices, and the use of force should not be implemented with unjustifiable cruelty.”19 Among the letter’s signatories was the priest in whose church the protestors had found refuge.20 The letter was of limited significance. While unusually bold, it did not chart a new course for church-state relations. Both state and higher Church officials criticized the authors for speaking out about an issue that they knew too little about. However, the letter did demonstrate that the critical edge of the gospel can come to public expression even in contemporary Russian Orthodoxy. A number of the signatories have in the past called for a compassionate response to Russians who go to the streets to demonstrate for political fairness. And while these priests have not spoken out publicly against President Putin, they do seek to shape their parishes to be spaces for people of different political views (like Fr. Alexander Sorokin of St. Petersburg’s Feodorovskii Cathedral, although he was not among the signatories). In the end, whether out of secret sympathy or sheer political calculation, the Patriarchate signaled that its bishops should not take disciplinary action against the signatories. Similarly, in 2022, several hundred priests signed an open letter asking President Putin to cease hostilities in Ukraine, even though their Patriarch, Kirill, remained loyal to Putin.21 One signatory was arrested and fined, after he criticized the invasion in a sermon. Another signatory, a member of Fr. Sorokin’s staff, asked for asylum in the West. Other priests, while not signing the letter or expressing their misgivings publicly, were nevertheless concerned about the scars that the war was leaving on their parishioners and the Russian people as a whole. In these and other quiet ways, the gospel sometimes wins just a little more space even in Putin’s Russia. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS We see that Niebuhr’s reflections in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness remain highly relevant to political analysis today. They help us understand developments in church and state in Russia and caution Western liberal observers not to reduce the Orthodox Church to nothing more than

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a political tool of an authoritarian president.22 Niebuhr was well aware that democracy in the West was a historical achievement that had evolved over centuries of political debate and experience. He also knew that democracy could take different national forms, as in the contrast between Britain and the United States. Notwithstanding its “simple religion and culture,” Russia, too, is capable of developing democratic state and church institutions. But a Russian democracy, if and when it emerges, will reflect the country’s unique history, including the decisive role that Orthodoxy has played in shaping it. The Children of Light issues a powerful challenge to the Russian Orthodox Church—indeed, to religious groups anywhere in the world. Russian Orthodoxy will be most Christian—and most true to its own teachings— when it confesses its limited point of view. One place to start, Niebuhr might add, is in acknowledging and, indeed, honoring the essential place of other, smaller, marginalized religious groups in Russia’s history and identity.23 All of these churches suffered oppression and persecution under Russian communism.24 Today, all of them, with the Orthodox Church at their head, have reason to commit themselves to a Russia that advances both religious and political freedom. BIBLIOGRAPHY “Baza dannykh za Khrista postradavshie,” [“Database of Those Who Suffered for Christ”]. Last modified 2022. http:​//​pstgu​.ru​/baza​-dannykh​-za​-khrista​ -postradavshie​/. Burgess, John P. Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2017. Cathedral of Feodorovskaya Icon of the Mother of God. “Cathedral of Our Lady Feodorovskaya—Site of Feodorovskaya Cathedral.” Last modified 2022. http:​//​en​ .feosobor​.ru​/. Chapnin, Sergei. “Russian Orthodox Clergy Support Justice and Respect for the Law.” Public Orthodoxy, Oct. 14, 2019. https:​//​publicorthodoxy​.org​/2019​/10​/14​/ russian​-orthodox​-clergy​-support​-justice​/. Diedrich, Hans-Christian. “Wohin sollen wir gehen . . .” Der Weg der Christen durch die sowjetische Religionsverfolgung. Russische Kirchengeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts in ökumenischer Perspektive. Erlangen: Martin-Luther Verlag, 2007: 429–30. “Eastern Orthodox Priests in Russia Denounce Invasion of Ukraine.” Washington Post, March 9, 2022. Fagan, Geraldine. Believing in Russia: Religious Policy after Communism. New York: Routledge, 2013. “‘Na to my i khram’: Monolog sviashchennika iz khrama v tsentpe Moskvy, gde protestuiushchie ukrylis’ ot Rostgvardii i politsii” [“‘That’s What We and the

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Church Are Here for’: Words of a Priest of a Church in the Center of Moscow, Where Protestors Hid Themselves from the Police”]. Meduza, July 27, 2019. https:​ //​meduza​.io​/feature​/2019​/07​/27​/na​-to​-my​-i​-hram. Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944. Nechepurenko, Ivan. “Moscow Police Arrest More Than 1,300 at Election Protest,” New York Times, July 27, 2019. Orekhanov, Georgii. Lev Tolstoi: “Prorok bez Chesti” [Lev Tolstoy: Prophet without Honor]. Moscow: Eksmo, 2016. “Otkrytoe pis’mo sviashhennikov v zashchitu zakliuchennykh po ‘Moskovskomu delu’” [“Open Letter from Priests in Defense of Those Imprisoned in the ‘Moscow Case.’”] Pravmir, Sept. 18, 2019. https:​//​www​.pravmir​.ru​/otkrytoe​ -pismo​-svyashhennikov​-v​-zashhitu​-zaklyuchennyh​-po​-moskovskomu​-delu​/. Poole, Randall A., and Paul W. Werth, eds. Religious Freedom in Modern Russia. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018. Yaffa, Joshua. Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia. New York: Tim Dugan Books, 2020.

NOTES 1. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944), viii. 2. In footnotes, I refer to Russian resources only in exceptional cases. Much supporting information can be found, however, in my book Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2017). The reflections in this chapter have been sharpened by my conversations with theological scholars in the realist tradition, such as Robin Lovin, who have shared my interest in contemporary Russia and Ukraine. 3. Niebuhr, Children of Light, 183. 4. Niebuhr, Children of Light, 136. 5. Niebuhr, Children of Light, 183. 6. Niebuhr, Children of Light, 126. 7. Niebuhr, Children of Light, 167. 8. Niebuhr, Children of Light, 31. 9. Niebuhr, Children of Light, 40. 10. Niebuhr, Children of Light, 41. 11. The church’s website (also in its English version) provides a brief history of the church and of its recent restoration: http:​//​en​.feosobor​.ru​/. For beautiful photographs of Fr. Zinon’s lower church, see: https://www​.flickr​.com​/photos​/feosobor1​/ sets​/72157634128361756​/. 12. Georgii Orekhanov, Lev Tolstoi: “Prorok bez chesti” [Lev Tolstoy: Prophet without Honor] (Moscow: Eksmo, 2016). 13. “Baza dannykh za Khrista postradavshie” [“Database of Those Who Suffered for Christ”], http:​//​pstgu​.ru​/baza​-dannykh​-za​-khrista​-postradavshie​/.

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14. Niebuhr, Children of Light, 134. 15. Niebuhr, Children of Light, 84. 16. Niebuhr, Children of Light, 82. 17. Ivan Nechepurenko, “Moscow Police Arrest More Than 1,300 at Election Protest,” New York Times, July 27, 2019. 18. “‘Na to my i khram’: Monolog sviashchennika iz khrama v tsentpe Moskvy, gde protestuiushchie ukrylis’ ot Rostgvardii i politsii” [“‘That’s What We and the Church Are Here for’: Words of a Priest of a Church in the Center of Moscow, Where Protestors Hid Themselves from the Police”], Meduza, July 27, 2019, https:​//​meduza​ .io​/feature​/2019​/07​/27​/na​-to​-my​-i​-hram. 19. Sergei Chapnin, “Russian Orthodox Clergy Support Justice and Respect for the Law,” Public Orthodoxy, Oct. 14, 2019, https:​//​publicorthodoxy​.org​/2019​/10​/14​/ russian​-orthodox​-clergy​-support​-justice​/. 20. “Otkrytoe pis’mo sviashhennikov v zashchitu zakliuchennykh po ‘Moskovskomu delu’” [“Open Letter from Priests in Defense of Those Imprisoned in the ‘Moscow Case,’”] Pravmir, Sept. 18, 2019, https:​//​www​.pravmir​.ru​/otkrytoe​-pismo​ -svyashhennikov​-v​-zashhitu​-zaklyuchennyh​-po​-moskovskomu​-delu​/. 21. “Eastern Orthodox Priests in Russia Denounce Invasion of Ukraine,” Washington Post, March 9, 2022. 22. A position all too typical among Western journalists and political scientists. For one example, see the chapter on Orthodoxy in Joshua Yaffa, Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia (New York: Tim Dugan Books, 2020), 122–63. 23. See Geraldine Fagan, Believing in Russia: Religious Policy after Communism (New York: Routledge, 2013); and Religious Freedom in Modern Russia, ed. Randall A. Poole and Paul W. Werth (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). 24. See Hans-Christian Diedrich, “Wohin sollen wir gehen . . .” Der Weg der Christen durch die sowjetische Religionsverfolgung. Russische Kirchengeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts in ökumenischer Perspektive (Erlangen: Martin-Luther Verlag, 2007), 429–30.

Chapter Eighteen

Christian Realism in the United Kingdom Nigel Biggar

EARLY ANGLICAN CHRISTIAN REALISM Insofar as it denotes an ethics that is willing to have its rules of conduct and moral judgements informed by a sober reckoning with human realities, not least political ones, Christian Realism in England can be found at least as far back as the late sixteenth century. For it was then that Alberico Gentili (1552–1608)—a Protestant refugee from Italy who became Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford and had close ties to the court of Queen Elizabeth I—published De Jure Belli Libri Tres (Three Books on the Laws of War, 1588–1559, 1598). In this he presented a systematic account of the ethics of war, but one that, eschewing “the scholastic method, . . . [which] entailed virtually pure logical analysis with very little historical perspective,” was nourished by unusually close attention to historical examples, military practice, and actual events.1 One interpreter finds in it striking points of affinity with the emerging “raison d’état” tradition of political thought, together with its basic concern for the preservation of the state and its ideas of political necessity and the balance of power.2 Moreover, acutely mindful of the political reality of English vulnerability to aggression from imperial Spain, Gentili developed “just war” thinking in a controversially permissive direction, arguing in favor of “preventative,” as distinct from “preemptive,” war. The latter is a defensive action taken at the eleventh hour against an attack that is known to be in the process of being realized and that will be launched at midnight. The former is a “defensive” action taken against a party that might, at some indeterminate time in the future, become an active threat, but is not presently. Gentili hints at this, when he writes that “one ought not to delay, 319

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or wait to avenge at one’s peril an injury which one has received, if one may at once strike at the root of the growing plant and check the attempts of an adversary who is meditating evil” (I.XIV).3 But his meaning becomes more explicit later: we should oppose powerful and ambitious chiefs [or princes: principibus potentibus et ambitiosis]. For they are content with no bounds, and end by attacking the fortunes of all. . . . We must therefore oppose them; and it is better to provide that men should not acquire too great power, than to be obliged to seek a remedy later, when they have already become too powerful. . . . But to conclude: a defence is just which anticipates dangers that are already meditated and prepared, and also those which are not meditated, but are probable [verisimilia] and possible [possibilia] [I.XIV].4

The early Church of England’s attention to human realities was not limited to the brute facts of power and fear in international relations. Early in the seventeenth century, some Calvinist Anglicans lamented the lack of precise moral guidance, formally along the lines of Roman Catholic casuistry—that is, the development of norms of conduct in dialogue with real, concrete cases—but based on Evangelical theological presuppositions. For example, in the opening pages of Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof (1639), the Puritan William Ames (1576–1633) explained that he had been led to devote himself to casuistry, because he had noticed that in many churches enjoying purity of doctrine and order, “practicall teaching was much wanting, and that this want was one of the chiefe causes of the great neglect, or carelessenesse in some duties which neerely concerne Godlinesse, and a Christian life.”5 Casuistry flourished in the Anglican Church for over a century from the late sixteenth century in the hands of divines such as Ames’s mentor William Perkins (1558–1602), Robert Sanderson (1587–1663), Joseph Hall (1574–1656), and Jeremy Taylor (1613–67).6 It disappeared quite abruptly in the early 1700s, but was revived again (briefly) by Kenneth Kirk (1886–1954) in his 1927 book Conscience and Its Problems.7 REINHOLD NIEBUHR’S INFLUENCE ON ANGLICAN AND REFORMED CHRISTIAN ETHICS It was shortly afterward that Reinhold Niebuhr’s version of Christian realism—with its emphases on the secular intractability of sinful egoism (especially of social bodies), the need for political compromise, and sufficient justice as the aptly modest goal of politics—first began to influence British thinking. The international Oxford Conference on Church, Community, and

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State (1937) introduced Niebuhr to William Temple (1881–1944), who would become Archbishop of Canterbury five years later. Temple had drunk deeply at the well of British Idealism, but in the 1930s a combination of political experience and the influence of Niebuhr combined to make him more appreciative of the entrenched realities of class interest and collective egoism, less sanguine about the possibility of giving social expression to Christian love, and therefore more critical of Hegelian optimism about the realization of social harmony.8 Accordingly, in his best-known work, Christianity and the Social Order (1942), Temple wrote soberly as follows: “a statesman who supposes that a mass of citizens can be governed without appeal to their self-interest is living in dreamland and is a public menace. The art of government in fact is the art of so ordering life that self-interest prompts what justice demands.”9 After Temple’s death in 1944, Niebuhr wrote of him that he “was able to relate the ultimate insights of religion about the human situation to the immediate necessities of political justice and the proximate possibilities of a just social order more vitally and creatively than any modern Christian leader.”10 Nevertheless, it seems that Niebuhr never quite broke the spell that Hegel, through his British mediator, T. H. Green, had over Temple. According to Alan Wilkinson, “Niebuhr’s influence did not fundamentally alter his cast of mind which was unable . . . to go down into the pit of despair and tragedy. . . . Niebuhr’s theology arose out of the experience of industrial conflict in Detroit. All Temple’s ministry was among those high tables of life.”11 Temple, however, was not the only British churchman to be influenced by Niebuhr. Ronald Preston (1913–2001), who became the dominant British force in Christian social ethics from the late 1970s until his death, was among the first in the United Kingdom to read Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), and it was thanks in part to his enthusiasm that SCM Press was persuaded to publish An Interpretation of Christian Ethics in 1935.12 Two years later Preston attended the Oxford conference, where, as a joint secretary of the Youth Section, he met Niebuhr in the flesh.13 Niebuhr had a profound influence on him, as he himself attests in his article, “Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971).”14 Normunds Kamergrauzis, who has made a book-length study of Preston’s social ethics, writes: “[his] interpretation of the Kingdom of God, the assessment of human moral possibilities and the relationship between a disclosure of God’s love and justice reflect development of the characteristic Niebuhrian way of approaching ethics.”15 Nevertheless, Preston’s appropriation of Niebuhr was characteristically Anglican, in that it expressed an un-Lutheran optimism about the persistence of human moral and rational capacities, which echoes its Thomist heritage. Thus, Preston chose to assert the ethical implications of original righteousness as much as those of original sin:

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Original Righteousness is just as much a fact of human life as Original Sin. There are not fixed bounds to human achievements under God, and to the quest for social justice which love motivates. Nor, of course, are there guarantees that the achievements of one generation will be maintained by future ones. Nevertheless, Christian Realism is not a gloomy outlook, but a hopeful one. It is not disposed to be satisfied with things as they are; the Christian gospel has a radical challenge accompanying its good news.16

Further, Preston endorsed the Thomist concept of conscience that survived in seventeenth-century Anglican moral theology and was revived by Kenneth Kirk, with its confidence in the ability of (even sinful) humans to engage in moral reasoning together.17 He also affirmed a more nuanced view of selfinterest, which does not assume that it is always regrettable: “self-interest is a powerful and necessary element in human life which must be allowed for and harnessed, but . . . it is also a dangerous element which has to be handled with care.”18 As Kamergrauzis comments, for Preston “to promote the good of the other need not necessarily mean to disregard one’s own interests.”19 One of Preston’s greatest contributions to Christian realism was his development of the methodological concept of “middle axioms.”20 This was first formulated by J. H. Oldham (1874–1969) at the Oxford conference in 1937. As he saw it, the Church’s role is to articulate, not only the general ethical demands of the Gospel, but also more specific “middle axioms” that “define the directions in which, in a particular state of society, Christian faith must express itself.” These “are not binding for all time, but are provisional definitions of the type of behaviour required of Christians at a given period in given circumstances.” Nor are they so definite as to relieve the individual of “responsibility of decision in concrete situations.”21 Preston endorsed this concept partly in order to clarify the role and authority of official church pronouncements on political, social, and economic issues. On most matters of this kind a variety of views about the implications of Christian theological belief and moral principles for policy can be held by more or less reasonable people, and churches invariably contain such variety: “Christians who accept the aim may well conscientiously disagree on the details.”22 Therefore, “it is generally better for churches to keep at this middle level of main directions than to go into detailed policies, because the more detailed one becomes, the more likelihood there is of genuine differences of opinion in interpreting such data as are available, and on the probable outcome of the different policies that are on offer.”23 Preston’s own development of Oldham’s approach was shaped by his experience as a student of economics at the London School of Economics from 1932 to 1935, which gave him an appreciation of the relative autonomy of the social sciences in relation to theology and ethics. Consequently, he

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went beyond Oldham—as well as John C. Bennett—in understanding middle axioms as the product of dialectic between Christian ethical principles and empirical data, “allowing theology to use its categories to analyze the data of this world and our responsibilities in it; and the data of this world to call in question theological irrelevancies and abstractions.”24 For that reason, he was not entirely happy with the term “middle axioms,” “which suggests a process of deductive logic which is not at all what [Oldham] had in mind.” Rather than “a deduction from a basic doctrinal premise . . . they involve assessment of empirical evidence.”25 One of the practical implications of this high regard for empirical data is the importance of Christian theologians entering into dialogue with social scientists and other academic experts. This itself has a wider importance, as Kamergrauzis points out: “Since the procedure demands the empirical expertise of professionals and the direct experience of the affected parties, it also promotes co-operation, mutual respect (and even friendship) between Christians and those with other views of life.”26 The influence of Niebuhr upon thought in the United Kingdom was not confined to English Anglicans. It also made itself felt among Scottish Presbyterians, although to a lesser degree than one might have expected. John Baillie (1886–1960) was a colleague of Niebuhr’s at Union Theological Seminary in New York, when he taught there from 1930, before returning to Edinburgh in 1934 to become, first, Professor of Divinity, and then Principal, at New College. The two men “were very close to one another theologically,”27 and Baillie smiled upon “middle axioms” which “exhibit the relevance of the ruling principles to the particular field of action in which guidance is needed.”28 Yet the bulk of his own thinking and writing was not in social ethics, but the study of religion. A Scot with better claim to represent some form of Christian realism is Duncan Forrester (1933–2016), who also served as Principal of New College. Forrester admired Niebuhr, partly “because his thought, more than that of any other theologian in the English-speaking world in the twentieth century, was an acknowledged influence on politicians and policy-makers.”29 Toward the end of his career Forrester’s own work inclined heavily toward public policy, as is evidenced by his founding the Centre for Theology and Public Issues in 1984 and by the titles of his books—for example, Christianity and the Future of Welfare (1984) and Christian Justice and Public Policy (1997). Nevertheless, his admiration of Niebuhr was not uncritical, since he thought that “Niebuhr’s realism . . . could easily deteriorate into an accommodation with the status quo and a cynical assumption that politics was simply the struggle between self-interested groups and justice no more than temporary and fragile equilibrium between conflicting interests.”30 For similar reasons, he was sceptical of “middle axioms,” because the approach had been developed by groups of “male, white, middle-class and European and

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North American” people sharing a common perspective and power positions accompanied by “a high level of consensus based on a shared Christian/idealist ideology,”31 and that therefore “the collapse of [that] consensus . . . raises acute problems for the Oldham method.”32 ENGLISH CHRISTIAN REALISM BEYOND THEOLOGY British proponents of some version of Christian realism were not confined to the ranks of theologians. In “The Tragic Element in Modern International Conflict” (1950), the historian and Methodist lay preacher Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979), began to develop what Brendan Simms has called “a pessimistically ‘Christian’ view of international politics”: He was particularly critical of national self-righteousness and utopianism in foreign policy: conflict could only be managed, not abolished; and there was no such thing as total security, which could only be bought at the cost of the total insecurity of others. Butterfield could see no pattern in international history, no working towards a preordained goal, only the mysterious workings of “Providence”: all the statesman could do was “work with Providence.”33

Christian pessimism, however, cannot be absolute. So, whatever the tragic element, Butterfield also thought that “the history of diplomacy, properly studied, betrayed human value and personality in its recesses and confuted any idea that international relations could be understood as a desiccated science of power.”34 Although his name had already been widely associated with Niebuhr’s by reviewers of Christianity and History (1949),35 his realism was sui generis. It was not until 1956 that the two men met at Columbia University, but when they did, they recognized in each other intellectual allies with a common debt to the political thought of Saint Augustine.36 Much the same is true of Martin Wight (1913–1972), the father of the “English School” of international relations. Wight certainly admired Niebuhr, commenting in a review of the latter’s Discerning the Signs of the Times: Sermons for Today and Tomorrow: “As a political scientist this restless, angular, unconformable New York theologian can make rings round half the professionals. He knows the forces of power better than Mr Wallace on his left, their moral tensions and ambiguities better than Mr Bullitt on his right.”37 What is more, commentators noticed the similarity of their views.38 And, like Niebuhr (and Butterfield), “he was to remain impressed by St Augustine’s City of God.”39 Nevertheless, in his account of the history of thought about international relations—International Theory: The Three Traditions (published posthumously in 1991)—Wight makes only a passing

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reference to Niebuhr.40 His own intellectual debt is rather to a combination of Hugo Grotius and Edmund Burke.41 On the one hand, following Grotius, he believed that there is such a thing as an international society of states, bound together by interests wider and deeper than mere survival and by a consequent sense of obligation to the common good.42 There are indeed duties “owed, not only by each government to its subjects, but by one government to another, and by one people to another.”43 On the other hand, he had no time for naive idealism of the sort espoused by Woodrow Wilson, and, after quoting Burke, he wrote soberly: “Politics is the perpetual movement from one stage of the provisional to another. There are no complete solutions, only the constantly repeated approximation towards the embodiment of justice in concrete arrangements, which do constantly dissolve with the passage of time.”44 The necessary middle ground between personal morality and raison d’éétat is what Wight called “political morality,” which rests partly on the view that ethics and interest need not be at odds with one another.45 Another English source of quasi-Christian Realism is the thought of the politically conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990). In a contribution to a 2008 collection of essays on the Anglican Church and British foreign policy, the scholar of international relations Adrian HydePrice saw fit to appeal to Oakeshott.46 A realist ethics, Hyde-Price tells us, cannot aim to achieve a particular telos—a “single substantive purpose”— and so must be “non-teleological.”47 It rejects “the illusion that in politics there is anywhere a safe harbour, a destination to be reached or even a detectable strand of progress.”48 Accordingly, statecraft seeks to navigate the shifting tides of international politics with “neither starting-place nor appointed destination,”49 seeking not perfection but the lesser evil, preferring “present laughter to utopian bliss.”50 My own view, however, is that Oakeshott’s realism is too lacking in eschatological tension, too much reduced to demoralized prudential maneuvring, too Hobbesian, to count as properly Christian; and Hyde-Price himself implies as much when he concludes by invoking Niebuhr’s paradox: that in order to mobilise the energy and enthusiasm necessary to overcome entrenched vested interests and achieve the desired reforms that can approximate the prophetic vision, it is necessary to nurture and encourage a ‘sublime madness in the soul’ that only an illusory belief in perfect justice and universal brotherhood can ignite.51

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ANGLICAN CHRISTIAN REALISM AT THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM Let us return to the Church of England and bring the story of Christian realism in the UK up to the present day. Ronald Preston’s conception of middle axioms as the fruit of a dialectic between Christian ethical norms and empirical realities naturally lent itself to the kind of interdisciplinary work undertaken by the Church of England’s Board for Social Responsibility BSR).52 Launched in 1958, the Board brought together churchmen, theologians, philosophers, social scientists, and professional experts to work out a Christian view of the ethical and social issues of the day for over forty years. Arguably its best known report is On Dying Well: A Contribution to the Euthanasia Debate, originally published in 1975 and then revived in a second edition in 2000.53 The composition of the Working Party is typical in its range of expertise, if extraordinary in the distinction of the experts: Peter Baelz, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford; Basil Mitchell, Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford; R. M. Hare, White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford; Lord Amulree, consulting physician at University College Hospital and former president of the British Geriatric Society; Cicely Saunders, medical director of St Christopher’s Hospice, Sydenham, and founder of the hospice movement; and Garth Moore, Chancellor of the Dioceses of Durham, Southwark, and Gloucester and barrister-at-law. One of the last chairmen of the BSR, before it closed in 2003, was Richard Harries, then Bishop of Oxford (1936–present) and now—in recognition of the high quality of his contributions to public deliberation—Baron Harries of Pentregarth and a member of the House of Lords. Harries’s identification with Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism is evidenced by his editing two collections of essays on Niebuhr: Reinhold Niebuhr and the Issues of our Time in 1986, and Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power in 2010.54 Two of my mentors at the University of Chicago—James Gustafson and Langdon Gilkey—contributed chapters to the first volume, and a third mentor—Robin Lovin—wrote a chapter for the second one. So did I.55 Before I arrived at the University of Chicago in 1979 I had been strongly drawn to Blaise Pascal’s advocacy of Christian belief in terms of its superior ability to make sense of human nature and the human predicament.56 And when, through Langdon Gilkey, I discovered The Nature and Destiny of Man,57 I warmed strongly to Niebuhr’s own version of that argument, which was systematically articulated, often in terms of political theory. At that stage, however, I was primarily driven to work at the theological end of Christian ethics, and so ended up spending the best part of ten years studying the ethics

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of Karl Barth. This bore published fruit in 1993 with the appearance of The Hastening that Waits: Karl Barth’s Ethics,58 where I laid out, as best I could, Barth’s formidably systematic theological framework for Christian ethics and began to form my own mind in relation to it. One signal point where I found myself diverging from Barth was over his method of moving from theological assertions or general moral principles to the judgment of practical cases, which seemed to me too quick, intuitive, and ill-disciplined, raising hosts of unanswered questions. One particularly egregious example of this problem was his astonishing assertion that the revelation of God in the Light of Jesus Christ generates “the inevitable political corollary” that the Church is “the sworn enemy of all . . . secret diplomacy.”59 Accordingly, in The Hastening that Waits I began to complain about Barth’s cavalier treatment of empirical data and to defend methodical, circumspect casuistry against his allergic dismissal.60 Indeed, before that book appeared in print, I had already published an article that bore the title, “A Case for Casuistry in the Church.”61 In the years that have followed, I have concentrated on bringing my theologically informed intelligence to bear upon pressing moral issues of public importance. But this has involved a dialectical process that has been educative, and sometimes soberly corrective. Thus when I first began to think about making peace after civil conflict—not least in Northern Ireland—I blithely assumed that “reconciliation” was an appropriate term. But then, at a conference in 1998 two revelations of political reality stopped me in my tracks.62 One was when Garrett FitzGerald, former Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, observed that Irish people had only just begun to be able to talk across the dinner table about their civil war in 1922–1923 two generations after the event, that is, when all the protagonists were dead and buried. The second was when Ulrike Poppe, a Lutheran pastor who had been twice imprisoned by the authorities in East Germany, stood up and said, “What’s all this talk about ‘reconciliation’? I now live on the same street as the man who informed on me. I didn’t know him then, and I certainly don’t want to know him now. What do you mean by ‘reconciliation’?.” Since then, when talking about making peace at a political rather than an interpersonal level, I have learned to use more modest terms such as “accommodation” or “coexistence.” The encounter with political reality has educated my Christian ethics, and helped to make them more politically plausible.63 More recently I have found myself using history with its wealth of particular realities to test and refine ethical concepts. So, in In Defence of War (2013) readers will find one chapter that uses military history in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to consider what kinds of “love” a combat soldier can reasonably be expected to exercise—as well as another that uses the Battle of the Somme and British belligerency in World War I to work

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through the meanings of “proportionality.”64 Two years later I published an article, “Less Hegel, More History: Christian Ethics and Political Realities,” which justified and recommended the greater use of history in Christian ethics, as well as the concomitant need for Christian ethicists to “get out more.” I explained: One reason that Christian ethics so often manages to evade the challenges posed by empirical reality is that social contact between academics (not least those in departments of religion and theology) and those whom Reinhold Niebuhr nicely called ‘the burden-bearers of the world’ is so often lacking. . . . Christian ethicists need to get to know those in public office, get acquainted with the burdens they bear, appreciate the constraints under which they must operate, and enter with them imaginatively into the tragic dilemmas they must face. Then, having taken the trouble to exercise their love in playing pastor, they will have earned the right to play prophet.65

Certainly, Niebuhr would have approved. But so, I think, would Alberico Gentili. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ames, William. Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof. London, 1639. Reprint, Amsterdam and Norwood, NJ: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum & Walter J. Johnson, 1975. Barth, Karl. “The Christian Community and the Civil Community.” In Community, State, and Church: Three Essays. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1968. Bennett, John C. Christian Ethics and Social Policy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946. Bentley, Michael. The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield: History, Science, and God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Biggar, Nigel. In Defence of War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. ———. The Hastening that Waits: Karl Barth’s Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Revised edition, 1995. ———. “Blaise Pascal and the Wisdom of the Way of Under-Standing.” Unpublished manuscript, 1981. ———. “A Case for Casuistry in the Church.” Modern Theology 6, no. 1 (1989): 29–51. .———. “Less Hegel, More History: Christian Ethics and Political Realities.” Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy, 1 (Fall 2015): 10–16. ———. “Making Peace and Doing Justice: Must We Choose?” In Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict, 3–24. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003.

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———. “Melting the Icepacks of Enmity: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland.” Studies in Christian Ethics, 24, no. 2 (May 2011): 199–209. ———. “Reinhold Niebuhr and the Political Possibility of Forgiveness.” In Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power, edited by Richard Harries and Stephen Platten, 141–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Bull, Hedley. Introduction to International Theory: The Three Traditions, by Martin Wight. Edited by Gabriele Wight and Bernard Porter. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991. Butterfield, Herbert. “The Tragic Element in Modern International Conflict.” Review of Politics 12, no. 2 (April 1950): 147–64. Church of England Board for Social Responsibility. On Dying Well: A Contribution to the Euthanasia Debate, 2nd edition. London: Church House Publishing, 2000. Church of Scotland General Assembly Commission for the Interpretation of God’s Will in the Present Crisis. God’s Will for Church and Nation. London: SCM, 1946. Cochran, Molly. “The Ethics of the English School.” In Oxford Handbook of International Relations, edited by Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal, 286– 97. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Epp, Roger. “The Augustinian Moment in International Politics: Niebuhr, Butterfield, Wight and the Reclaiming of a Tradition.” International Politics Research Occasional Paper, no. 10. Aberystwyth: Department of International Politics, University of Aberystwyth, 1991. Fletcher, Christine M. “An Anglican Middle-Axioms Reading of Caritas in Veritate.” In Religion, Economics and Culture in Conflict and Conversation, edited by Laurie Cassidy and Maureen H. O’Connell, 236–54. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011. Forrester, Duncan B. Beliefs, Values, and Policies. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989. ———. Christianity and the Future of Welfare. London: Epworth, 1985. ———. Christian Justice and Public Policy. Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion, no. 10. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ———. “Returning Friendly Fire: Ronald Preston and the New Ecumenical Social Ethics.” Crucible (October–December 1997). Gentili, Alberico. The Photographic Reproduction of the Edition of 1612. Vol. 1 of De Iure Belli Libri Tres. The Classics of International Law, edited by James Brown Scott. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933. Harries, Richard. Reinhold Niebuhr and the Issues of Our Time. London: Mowbray, 1986. Harries, Richard, and Stephen Platten, eds. Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Hyde-Price, Adrian. “Christian Ethics and the Dilemmas of Foreign Policy.” In British Foreign Policy and the Anglican Church: Christian Engagement with the Contemporary World, edited by Timothy Blewitt, Adrian Hyde-Price, and Wyn Rees. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Jackson, Robert. “From Colonialism to Theology: Encounters with Martin Wight’s International Thought.” International Affairs 84, no. 2 (2008).

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Kamergrauzis, Normunds. The Persistence of Christian Realism: A Study of the Social Ethics of Ronald H. Preston. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis: Uppsala Studies in Social Ethics 27. Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2001. Kirk, Kenneth E. Conscience and Its Problems. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927. Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941, 1943. Oakeshott, Michael. “On Hobbes.” In Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991. ———. “Logos and Telos.” In Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991. ———. “Political Education.” In Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991. Oldham, J. H. “The Function of the Church in Society.” In The Church and its Function in Society, by Willem A. Visser t’Hooft and Joseph H. Oldham. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1937. Pitt, H. G. “Wight, (Robert James) Martin, 1913–1972.” Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. https:​//​www​.oxforddnb​.com​/ view​/10​.1093​/ref:​odnb​/9780198614128​.001​.0001​/odnb​-9780198614128​-e​-38935. Preston, Ronald H. Confusions in Christian Social Ethics: Problems for Geneva and Rome. London: SCM, 1994. ———. Religion and the Ambiguities of Capitalism. London: SCM, 1991. ———. Religion and the Persistence of Capitalism. London: SCM, 1979. ———. “Letters.,” In Crucible (October–December 1997). ———. Appendix 2 “Middle Axioms in Christian Social Ethics.” In Church and Society in the Late Twentieth Century: The Economic and Political Task, The Scott Holland Lectures for 1983 (London: SCM, 1983). Preston, Ronald. “Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971).” In Theological Themes 1/2 (1992). Reichberg, Gregory, Henrik Syse, and Endre Begby, eds. The Ethics of War: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Simms, Brendan. “Butterfield, Sir Herbert.” Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. https:​//​www​.oxforddnb​.com​/view​/10​ .1093/ref:​odnb​/9780198614128​.001​.0001​/odnb​-9780198614128​-e​-30888. Suggate, Alan. “Reflections on William Temple’s Social Ethics,” Crucible (October–December 1981). Temple, William. “Christian Faith and the Common Life.” In Christian Faith and the Common Life. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1938. ———. Christianity and the Social Order. London: Penguin, 1942. VanDusen, Henry P., and World Council of Churches. The Church and the Disorder of Society: An Ecumenical Study Prepared Under the Auspices of the World Council of Churches, Man’s Disorder and God’s Design Vol. 3. London: SCM, 1948. Vergerio, Claire. “Alberico Gentili’s De Iure Belli: An Absolutist’s Attempt to Reconcile the Jus Gentium and the Reason of State Tradition.” Journal of the History of International Law, 19 (2017).

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Wight, Martin. Review of Discerning the Signs of the Times: Sermons for Today and Tomorrow by Reinhold Niebuhr. International Affairs (23 October 1947). ———. “Western Values in International Relations.” In Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics, edited by Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966. Wilkinson, Alan. Christian Socialism: Scott Holland to Tony Blair. The 1998 Scott Holland Lectures. London: SCM, 1998. Wood, Thomas. English Casuistical Divinity During the Seventeenth Century with Special Reference to Jeremy Taylor. London: S.P.C.K., 1952.

NOTES 1. Claire Vergerio, “Alberico Gentili’s De Iure Belli: An Absolutist’s Attempt to Reconcile the Jus Gentium and the Reason of State Tradition,” in Journal of the History of International Law 19 (2017), 434, 435–56. Vergerio writes: “one key aspect of Gentili’s universe of citations stands out as particularly unusual. I am speaking here of his considerable reliance on historians from all ages and most notably—an uncommon feat at the time amongst jurists—on contemporary historians.” Vergerio, “Alberico Gentili’s De Iure Belli,” 441. 2. See Vergerio, “Alberico Gentili’s De Iure Belli.” 3. Gregory Reichberg, Henrik Syse, and Endre Begby, eds, The Ethics of War: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 376. 4. Reichberg et al., The Ethics of War, 377; Alberico Gentili, De Iure Belli Libri Tres, 2 vols., The Classics of International Law, ed. James Brown Scott, vol. I: “The Photographic Reproduction of the Edition of 1612” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 101. 5. William Ames, Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof (London, 1639); reprint ed., Amsterdam and Norwood, NJ: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum & Walter J. Johnson, 1975), 1–2 of “To the Reader.” 6. See Thomas Wood, English Casuistical Divinity during the Seventeenth Century (with special reference to Jeremy Taylor), (London: S.P.C.K., 1952). 7. Kenneth E. Kirk, Conscience and its Problems (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927). For an explanation of Protestant casuistry’s sudden demise in the early eighteenth century, see Nigel Biggar, “A Case for Casuistry in the Church,” Modern Theology 6, no. 1 (1989), 29–51. 8. See Alan Wilkinson, Christian Socialism: Scott Holland to Tony Blair, the 1998 Scott Holland Lectures (London: SCM, 1998), 116–17; William Temple, “Christian Faith and the Common Life,” in Christian Faith and the Common Life (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1938), 47ff. 9. William Temple, Christianity and the Social Order (London: Penguin, 1942), 43. 10. Reinhold Niebuhr in The Nation, 11 November 1944, 585, cited in Alan Suggate, “Reflections on William Temple’s Social Ethics,” Crucible, October–December 1981, 155. 11. Wilkinson, Christian Socialism, 127.

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12. Normunds Kamergrauzis, The Persistence of Christian Realism: A Study of the Social Ethics of Ronald H. Preston, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis: Uppsala Studies in Social Ethics 27 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2001), 23. In my account of Preston here I have relied heavily on Kamergrauzis’ comprehensive study. 13. Kamergrauzis, Persistence of Christian Realism, 23. 14. Ronald Preston, “Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971),” in Theological Themes, Vol. 1/2 (1992). 15. Kamergrauzis, Persistence of Christian Realism, 23. 16. Ronald H. Preston, Confusions in Christian Social Ethics: Problems for Geneva and Rome (London: SCM, 1994), 126. 17. Kamergrauzis, Persistence of Christian Realism, 67. 18. Ronald H. Preston, Religion and the Persistence of Capitalism (London: SCM, 1979), 72. 19. Kamergrauzis, Persistence of Christian Realism, 115. 20. Kamergrauzis provides a very useful discussion of the history of the concept of ‘middle axioms’ in Persistence of Christian Realism, 45, 51–52, and especially chapter 4, “Middle Axioms in Christian Social Ethics.” Preston’s own fullest treatment of the concept appears in Preston, Church and Society in the Late Twentieth Century: The Economic and Political Task, the Scott Holland Lectures for 1983 (London: SCM, 1983), Appendix 2, “Middle Axioms in Christian Social Ethics,” 141–56. Niebuhr himself neither invented nor developed the idea, but he did endorse it, albeit at a certain distance: “The Oxford Conference sought a middle ground between a Christian view which offered no general directives to the Christian with regard to social and political institutions, and the view which tried to identify the mind of Christ too simply with specific economic and social and political programmes. For the ecumenical movement, in the opinion of many, this middle ground is still the proper basis of approach” (The Church and the Disorder of Society: An Ecumenical Study Prepared Under the Auspices of the World Council of Churches, Man’s Disorder and God’s Design III (London: SCM, 1948), 28n.1). 21. J. H. Oldham, “The Function of the Church in Society,” in Willem A. Visser t’Hooft and Joseph H. Oldham, The Church and its Function in Society (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1937), 209–10. 22. Ronald Preston, “Letters,” in Crucible, October-December 1997, 215. 23. Ronald H. Preston, Religion and the Ambiguities of Capitalism (London: SCM, 1991), 82. 24. Kamergrauzis reports this quotation of Preston in Persistence of Christian Realism, 125n.30. However, the reference he gives—“ibid., p. 29”—is indeterminate, since the immediately preceding work is not by Preston and it is not clear to which other work he is referring. John C. Bennett also took up and developed his own version of “middle axioms,” in for example, Christian Ethics and Social Policy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946), 77–83. 25. Preston, Confusions in Christian Social Ethics, 157. 26. Kamergrauzis, Persistence of Christian Realism, 133. 27. Duncan B. Forrester, Christianity and the Future of Welfare (London: Epworth, 1985), 38.

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28. Church of Scotland, General Assembly Commission for the Interpretation of God’s Will in the Present Crisis, God’s Will for Church and Nation (London: SCM, 1946), 45. Baillie was Moderator of the Church of Scotland when the report was being prepared. 29. Duncan B. Forrester, Christian Justice and Public Policy, Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion 10 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 215. 30. Forrester, Christian Justice and Public Policy, 219. 31. Duncan Forrester, “Returning Friendly Fire: Ronald Preston and the New Ecumenical Social Ethics,” Crucible, October–December 1997, 189. 32. Duncan B. Forrester, Beliefs, Values, and Policies (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 22. 33. Brendan Simms, “Butterfield, Sir Herbert,” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004): https:​//​www​.oxforddnb​.com​/view​/10​.1093​/ ref:​odnb​/9780198614128​.001​.0001​/odnb​-9780198614128​-e​-30888. See Herbert Butterfield, “The Tragic Element in Modern International Conflict,” Review of Politics, 12, no. 2 (April 1950). 34. Michael Bentley, The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield: History, Science, and God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 339. 35. Bentley, The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield, 223. 36. Bentley, The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield, 339–40. 37. Martin Wight, “Discerning the Signs of the Times: Sermons for Today and Tomorrow,” book review, International Affairs, 23 October 1947, 558. 38. For example, Robert Jackson comments that Wight’s position “is very near to that of Reinhold Niebuhr and Herbert Butterfield” (“From Colonialism to Theology: Encounters with Martin Wight’s International Thought,” International Affairs, 84.2 [2008], 359). See also Roger Epp, “The ‘Augustinian moment’ in International Politics: Niebuhr, Butterfield, Wight and the Reclaiming of a Tradition,” International Politics Research Occasional Paper 10 (Aberystwyth: Department of International Politics, University of Aberystwyth, 1991). 39. H. G. Pitt, “Wight, (Robert James) Martin (1913–1972,)” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004): https:​//​www​.oxforddnb​.com​/view​/10​.1093​/ref:​odnb​/9780198614128​.001​.0001​/odnb​ -9780198614128​-e​-38935. 40. Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions, ed. Gabriele Wight and Bernard Porter, intro. Hedley Bull (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991). 41. In fact, Wight’s own position was more subtle. As his former student Hedley Bull wrote: “he would regard it as ideal to be a Grotian, while partaking of the realism of the Machiavellians, without their cynicism, and the idealism of the Kantians, without their fanaticism.” Bull, “Martin Wight and the Theory of International Relations,” in Wight, International Theory, xiv. 42. Molly Cochran, “The Ethics of the English School,” chapter 16, Oxford Handbook of International Relations, ed. Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 286–87.

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43. Martin Wight, “Western Values in International Relations,” in Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics, ed. H. Butterfield and M. Wight (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966), 128. 44. Wight, International Theory, 243. Robert Jackson, “From Colonialism to Theology,” 358: “Woodrow Wilson in particular is a target of Wight’s philosophy.” 45. Cochran, “Ethics of the English School,” 294. 46. Adrian Hyde-Price, “Christian Ethics and the Dilemmas of Foreign Policy,” in British Foreign Policy and the Anglican Church: Christian Engagement with the Contemporary World, ed. Timothy Blewitt, Adrian Hyde-Price, and Wyn Rees (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 24–25. 47. Hyde-Price cites Michael Oakeshott, Part Three: “On Hobbes,” “Logos and Telos,” in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991), 358. 48. Oakeshott, “Political Education,” in Rationalism in Politics, 66. 49. Oakeshott, “Political Education,” in Rationalism in Politics, 60. 50. Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative,” in Rationalism in Politics, 408. 51. Hyde-Price, “Christian Ethics and the Dilemmas of Foreign Policy,” 27. 52. Preston himself worked with the Board for Social Responsibility (Christine M. Fletcher, “An Anglican Middle-Axioms Reading of Caritas in Veritate,” in Religion, Economics and Culture in Conflict and Conversation, ed. Laurie Cassidy and Maureen H. O’Connell, College Theology Society Annual Volume 56 [2010] [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011], 240). 53. On Dying Well: A Contribution to the Euthanasia Debate, 2nd edition, GS Misc 600 (London: Church House Publishing, 2000). 54. Richard Harries, ed. and intro., Reinhold Niebuhr and the Issues of our Time (Oxford: Mowbray, 1986); Richard Harries and Stephen Platten, eds., Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 55. Nigel Biggar, “Reinhold Niebuhr and the Political Possibility of Forgiveness,” in Harries and Platten, eds., Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics: God and Power.  56. Before arriving in Chicago, I had begun a master’s dissertation on Pascal at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. I completed this in 1981 under the title, “Blaise Pascal and the Wisdom of the Way of Under-standing.” It has not been published. 57. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941, 1943). 58. Nigel Biggar, The Hastening that Waits: Karl Barth’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993; rev. ed., 1995). 59. Karl Barth, “The Christian Community and the Civil Community” (1946), in Karl Barth, Community, State, and Church: Three Essays (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1968), XXII, 176. 60. Biggar, The Hastening that Waits, 36, 40–41, 44–45, 163. 61. Biggar, “A Case for Casuistry in the Church.” See note 7 above for full bibliographical details.

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62. The conference, “Burying the Past: Justice, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation in the Politics of South Africa, Guatemala, East Germany, and Northern Ireland,” was held at St Antony’s College, Oxford on 26–28 September 1998 and brought together theologians, philosophers, civil servants, politicians, churchmen, and members of other NGOs. This interdisciplinary method of fostering a dialectic between Christian ethics and empirical realities, which was characteristic of the Board for Social Responsibility until its demise in 2003, has been revived by the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life in Oxford, since its foundation in 2008. 63. Indeed, readers can detect growing sobriety in my writing on the topic of making peace and doing justice after civil conflict: compare “Making Peace and Doing Justice: Must We Choose?” in Nigel Biggar, ed., Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001; second revised edition, 2003) with “Melting the Icepacks of Enmity: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” Studies in Christian Ethics 24, no. 2 (May 2011). 64. Nigel Biggar, In Defence of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), chapter 2, “Love in War”; and chapter 4, “Proportionality: Lessons from the Somme and the First World War.” 65. Nigel Biggar, “Less Hegel, More History: Christian Ethics and Political Realities,” Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy 1 (Fall 2015), 15.

Chapter Nineteen

American Exceptionalism, Christian Realism, and the New Realities Rebekah L. Miles

In recent decades we have seen renewed interest in an old idea in US political life and foreign policy—American exceptionalism, the idea that the United States and its values and aspirations have a unique role in the movement of history and global affairs. Political leaders have offered differing, and even conflicting, accounts of this unique role and the aspirations and values that stand behind it. Here I examine recent uses and analyses of American exceptionalism and then draw on Reinhold Niebuhr to examine critically American exceptionalism. Niebuhr is well known for his biting realism about the tendency of nations to hide their selfish interests behind a cloak of virtue and of individuals to be naive about these claims to virtue. Even so, for Niebuhr, a prophetic realist challenge to the pretense of a people is most often grounded in their shared ideals and virtues, including those that are a part of American exceptionalism.1 NOT COCK OF THE ROOST FOREVER: RETHINKING AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM In 2006 former President Bill Clinton sat down with Strobe Talbott to talk about their time together at the White House. Clinton and Talbott had been friends since the late 1960s, when they were students and housemates at Oxford University, and then, during Clinton’s presidency, Talbott had worked in the U.S. State Department, focusing on US foreign policy in the wake of 337

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the collapse of the Soviet Union. With more than five years’ distance from Clinton’s presidency, the two men were reflecting on the role of the United States in the world and what they had tried to accomplish.2 Clinton told Talbott that in his tenure as president, he had aspired to “build a world for our grandchildren to live in where America was no longer the sole superpower, for a time when we would have to share the stage.” Talbott remembered that during his presidency Clinton would occasionally in private conversations talk frankly about the inevitable day when other countries would catch up with the United States. “We’re not going to be cock of the roost forever, you know,” Clinton would say. This recognition, Talbott insists, was at the heart of Clinton’s foreign policy even though the president would not say so publicly. When they sat down to talk in 2006, Talbott chided Clinton for his reticence. Why had he not been honest with the American people? Clinton countered, “That’s why you’re a wonk and I was president of the United States. Because it’s political suicide to say, ‘Here is my vision—my vision is that we have to prepare for our children’s or grandchildren’s era when America’s not going to be the top dog.’ I’d have been ridden out of town on a rail!”3 The United States has long been captivated by the idea that it has a special place in history and a unique responsibility in the world, and this idea has shaped not only national perception but also politics and foreign policy. This belief has been described, especially recently, with the term “American exceptionalism.”4 The phrase “American exceptionalism” itself was used only rarely before the middle of the last century—first by an English observer of the Civil War—reflecting on why the armies on both sides of the conflict were so exceptionally bad and then by Marxist observers in the early years of the twentieth century, who were wondering why workers in the United States were proving the odd exception to their expectation for workers to rise up.5 Although the phrase gained greater usage only in the 1980s and real popularity in the early decades of the twenty-first century, it represents a much older idea that has pervaded and shaped much of US history. Scholars write of two ways of looking at American exceptionalism—objective and subjective.6 The first is a broader effort primarily by sociologists and pioneered by Seymour Lipset in the middle of the last century, to examine relevant data (e.g., political, economic, and social) looking for objective differences between the United States and other nations. The subjective way of looking at American exceptionalism is more common and much older. It is less concerned about data and more about American exceptionalism as a “mythic belief system” that shapes a people’s understanding of itself and its role in the world. This chapter is focused on the more subjective aspects, though with the acknowledgement that the subjective has real, objective effects in the world.

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Andrew Bacevich, emeritus professor of international relations and history at Boston University, offers a fitting definition of American exceptionalism as the sense of “mission to transform history . . . For believers, that means we are God’s chosen people. For non-believers we are a chosen people in that we are assigned by providence or destiny or history to accomplish some special purpose in bringing history to its intended end.”7 This idea is often most passionately embraced in US political life. Political leaders sometimes use other phrases to get at the same or similar ideas. John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale, and Bill Clinton, drawing on the language of Scripture and the early American Puritans, invoked the image of the United States as the “city on a hill.” Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Hillary Clinton used the language of the “indispensable nation,” which has links with the Niebuhrian realist tradition. The language of “American exceptionalism” has been central in US politics in recent decades, and its enthusiastic embrace has even been considered necessary for political survival, as Clinton was quick to remind Talbott. And these expectations continued. In the run-up to the 2016 elections, for example, major Republican candidates and most of the Democratic ones repeatedly emphasized their belief in American exceptionalism. Monica Crowley, a conservative news commentator before being appointed by President Trump to the U.S. Department of Treasury, offered advice to Republican politicians in 2015, writing of “the exceptional thing the successful GOP candidate must say” to win the US presidency; “he or she must speak of American exceptionalism from the heart.”8 This is not surprising advice in light of the pride of place given to American exceptionalism in the Republican platforms in 2012, 2016, and 2020. (In 2020 the Republicans decided to readopt the 2016 platform, instead of coming up with a new one.) American exceptionalism, one of eight themes in the 2012 platform, was defined as “the conviction that our country holds a unique place and role in human history.” Through reliance on “divine providence” and a commitment to freedom, democracy, and “peace through strength,” the United States can remain exceptional and continue to shape the world and its future.9 Democrats made similar claims in their 2012 platform but used the language of “the indispensable” role of the United States in the world.10 Many conservative politicians had criticized President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for failing to affirm American exceptionalism. Chiding Obama, political commentator and former politician Mike Huckabee averred, “To deny American exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation.”11 But Obama was no denier; he praised American exceptionalism more than any other president in US history. A few months into his first term, Obama had compared the US embrace of exceptionalism with that of other countries.

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“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”12 Although criticized for making US exceptionalism nothing exceptional, Obama regularly affirmed American exceptionalism. Indeed, he insisted that he “believes in American exceptionalism with every fiber of [his] being.”13 President Obama was not the lone Democratic believer. Hillary Clinton, asked if she still believed in American exceptionalism, replied “I believe even more than I did when I became Secretary of State.”14 It is worth noting that this strong resurgence of the language of American exceptionalism originated from Obama making a side remark in response to a question at an international press conference, followed by Republicans doubling down on him, followed by Obama recalibrating and emphasizing American exceptionalism more than any other president, followed by Republican candidates embracing American exceptionalism more strongly, etc. In this case, the narrative around the embrace of American exceptionalism may be more closely tied with political expediency than transcendent ideals! Although President Obama and Secretary Clinton both affirmed American exceptionalism with enthusiasm, they also sought to reinterpret it.15 Both maintained that US leadership and any forward movement through history—as well as any concept of American exceptionalism—should be rooted in a national capacity for self-criticism and self-correction that pushes the country toward faithfulness to its highest aspirations. Replying to journalist Jane Pauley’s query as to whether she believed in American exceptionalism, Secretary Clinton explained that the United States was exceptional “not just in the way we were created but the way we’ve evolved. When we started, you and I certainly wouldn’t have been included then. . . . We are still making changes to try to move us toward that more perfect union. I don’t know of any other nation that is as self-correcting, self-aware, as willing to make changes in order to live up to our founding principles as we are.”16 In 2015, in preparation for President Obama’s speech marking the fiftieth anniversary of a major civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, the president’s speechwriter, Cody Keenan, took notes as Obama talked about what makes the United States exceptional. “This dynamic, evolving, pressing, expanding, self-critical experiment . . . an America that’s chronically dissatisfied with itself, because embedded in our DNA is this striving, aspirational quality to be even better. . . . what has driven progress for everybody. Black, white, men, women, gay, straight, everybody. . . . What Selma does better than perhaps any other moment in our history is to vindicate the faith of our founders; to vindicate the idea that ordinary folks . . . are able to shape the destiny of their nation. You can’t get more American than that. This is the most American of ideas.”17

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There have been other attempts to reframe American exceptionalism. President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright preferred the term “indispensable nation,” and that wording found its way into the 2004 Democratic platform with echoes in the 2008 and 2012 platforms and was used frequently by Hillary Clinton both as Secretary of State and as a presidential candidate. The phrase “indispensable nation” was coined by Sidney Blumenthal, a senior aide of President Clinton, in conversation with James Chace, who was, at the time, writing a book on Dean Acheson, a Niebuhrian realist. They were trying to articulate the differences between the Bush and Clinton administrations and were looking for a phrase that would “crystallize an idea of post–Cold War liberal internationalism in the tradition that fused national interest and values.”18 The changing role of the United States as an indispensable nation emphasized “international organization, coalitions of forces” and the recasting of traditional alliances.19 Obama picked up the language of the United States as an indispensable nation as, of course, did his secretaries of state John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.20 In summary, many US politicians have attempted to convey the idea of the special role of the United States in the world. Some framed this in ways that seem triumphalist, often using the language of American exceptionalism. Others, such as Presidents Obama and Clinton, along with Secretaries of State Clinton and Albright, attempted to reshape the idea of American exceptionalism as a capacity for self-correction and for the special role of the United States in the world. Whatever one’s party or position, it was common wisdom that one could not win the presidency without embracing some form of American exceptionalism. And then came Donald Trump, winning the presidency even though he did not commend American exceptionalism but, indeed, rejected it outright and mocked the very idea. The phrase not only insults other countries, Trump insisted, but is also inaccurate. The United States is not exceptional; on the contrary, it is losing out economically to other nations who have taken advantage of US weakness.21 Note here that Trump is not simply rejecting American exceptionalism but also redefining what it means to be great. To be great means to successfully pursue national economic interests. When Trump, borrowing without attribution the clarion call of Ronald Reagan, spoke of making America great again, Trump was referring most often to US economic interests, particularly the interests of US businesses, not to its founding principles and aspirations, as was the case with Reagan. Trump replaced the larger mythic idealist language of American exceptionalism with a brutally frank focus on raw national interest, especially the interest of private business. Trump’s embrace of America First and outright rejection of the language of American exceptionalism as well as long patterns of international alliances,

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changed the discourse and expectations of the US role in the world. And these changes ended up sending the United States in the opposite direction, not only from the Clinton and Obama era but from key features of US foreign policy for many decades. In the most recent election cycle leading up to Trump’s defeat and Biden’s victory, the language of American exceptionalism was remarkable for its absence, not only in Trump’s campaign but also Biden’s and others. The shifting evaluation of American exceptionalism signals larger changes in US perceptions of itself and its role in the world, changes to which Bill Clinton was pointing in his conversation with Strobe Talbott. Within this debate, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian realism are helpful resources in reflecting on American exceptionalism, or any national exceptionalism, as well as the temptations and responsibilities of powerful nations in relation to other nations and peoples. He offers resources that can help alert a people to the dangers of thinking of their nation as “top dog” and prepare them for a time when they will no longer be able to sustain that illusion but must still act responsibly in the world. NIEBUHRIAN REALIST RESOURCES In a 2019 lecture on Reinhold Niebuhr and US foreign policy, Shaun Casey, ethicist and former U.S. State Department official, noted, “I can walk into any State Department office and have a discussion about Reinhold Niebuhr and politics.” In the years since his death, Reinhold Niebuhr has continued to have a remarkable influence on many leaders in the United States, especially in their work on foreign policy, including Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama; Secretaries of State Albright and Clinton; Senators Humphrey, Danforth, and McCain; FBI director James Comey, and many others. And if Shaun Casey is correct, that influence extends not just to the highest leaders but also through the ranks. Niebuhr is particularly helpful as a resource for thinking about the role of the United States, or any powerful nation, in the world. How might Reinhold Niebuhr illumine these reflections on exceptionalism? I draw on Niebuhr for two purposes. Niebuhr is a resource to examine the dangers and temptations of national exceptionalism, especially the hypocrisy of hiding self-interest behind claims to virtue, the false claims of innocence, and, particularly in the West, an idolatrous and false understanding of history. And Niebuhr offers possible remedies to those dangers, including an emphasis on prophetic voices and shared values and a faith in the God in and beyond history. For Niebuhr, a prophetic realist challenge to the pretense of a people is most often grounded in their shared ideals and virtues.

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Dangers and Temptations of National Exceptionalism If someone had read nothing more of Niebuhr than the dust jacket of his early work Moral Man and Immoral Society, they could still rightly guess that he would be suspicious of any claims to national exceptionalism, including the American variety. Niebuhr may have tempered some of his early suspicion of human collectives that was so characteristic of Moral Man and Immoral Society, but he never backed down from claiming that 1) nations act primarily from self-interest and 2) they try to hide their self-interestedness through deceit, cloaking self-interestedness behind the pretense of virtue, the virtue of the nation. “Perhaps,” wrote Niebuhr, “the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.”22 This hypocrisy is “a naïve and unstudied self-deception” among many ordinary citizens who believe the pretense. Politicians, on the other hand, are usually willful in their deceit. “The politican “practices it consciously . . . to secure the highest devotion from the citizen for his enterprises.”23 National Messianism Niebuhr, throughout his career, noted that nations and peoples tend to have a grander sense of their own importance than is warranted by the facts. He often described this as a kind of messianism. “Every culture at some time or other makes explicit Messianic pretensions and conceives the ambition of making itself the centre of the universal community.”24 This messianism is the open, public expression of an underlying, partly hidden, national pride, and it expresses itself differently across ages and cultures. “Every nation has its own form of spiritual pride.”25 The United States has had its own version of messianism, which Niebuhr sometimes spoke of as the “American dream,” in which the United States came to see itself as a chosen people who were, by the providence of God, destined to play a role in the redemption of history. In the early centuries of American history, both the Calvinists and the Deists shared, for all their differences, a common belief in American destiny. Both groups believed that God had a special role for this people in creating a new beginning, in contrast to the failures and vices of the old world of Europe, from which the early colonists were fleeing. They were creating a new, purer church (Calvinists) or a new political reality (Deists), and ultimately for both groups America was “called out by God to create a new humanity. We were God’s ‘American Israel.’”26 This is a version of American exceptionalism. A key part of this American dream was a sense of innocence. (This was not an uncommon theme in other forms of messianic nationalism, including that of communist Russia during the time of Niebuhr’s writing; indeed he thought

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the problem was worse for Russia, because they did not have the checks and balances built into their political system). The dream of innocence within the US context was linked to a myth of its origins. In its founding, so the story goes, the early colonists rejected the vices of the old world, including class division and inequities, focusing instead on freedom and equality.27 In this false innocence, with its naivete about their power and place in the world, nations became prone to irresponsibility. Niebuhr wrote, “There are two ways of denying our responsibilities to our fellow men. The one is the way of imperialism, expressed in seeking to dominate them by our power. The other is the way of isolationism, expressed in seeking to withdraw from our responsibilities to them.”28 Faith in History At the heart of nationalistic messianism in modern culture, especially in the West, is a particular view of history. Niebuhr notes that for all the differences among the various philosophical and political theories in the modern West, most share a confidence or faith in history, particularly the redemptive possibilities within the forward movement of history. Indeed, Niebuhr insisted that “faith in history” has been the central theme of the modern West.29 When people of the early twentieth century encountered the global tragedies and conflicts of their time, they had a hopeful view of history that did not fit their new reality. They looked on “the rigors of life in the 20th century with nothing but the soft illusions of the previous two centuries to cover their spiritual nakedness.”30 Although their view of the forward movement of history stood in deep contrast to the tragic realities before them, they were so shaped by the dominant ideas of their time that they had no “vantage point” from which to view their predicament rightly. Modern persons, he claimed, tried to use a deeply flawed “principle of comprehension” to make sense of their shattered world.31 Niebuhr understood this ironic situation as the crisis of the age, a crisis which could not find resolution in history. Remedies: Faith in God and the Emergence of Prophets Misguided faith in history does have a remedy which Niebuhr finds in a review of the larger themes of the biblical narrative. To make sense of national messianic misconceptions and to understand their roots, Niebuhr looked to biblical understandings of history. He insisted, in short, that people need faith not in history but in the God known in the biblical tradition, the God who is in and beyond history. The biblical understanding of God’s sovereignty over history is unique in that God is understood as separate from the nation and God’s purposes as separate from the nation’s purposes. Niebuhr

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insists that in biblical faith, this divine sovereignty in history is universal. It extends over all time, all history, all peoples, all nations. It stands not only over them, but also against them. God’s will is not the nation’s will. When the people of a nation think that their nation is special, they face deeper dangers because this feeling leads to pride and denial; the nation’s selfish motives are hidden in the language of virtue or divine favor. Because of these pretensions, they face “uniquely severe divine condemnation.”32 Nations cannot make themselves, their projects, or any other finite thing the center of meaning without ensuring their own destruction. It is only this God, who transcends history, who is able to provide the ultimate center and meaning of and beyond history. Humans, for all their efforts, are also not able to see the patterns that make up the unity and meaning of history. These are found only by faith—faith in the sovereign God who is both over and within history and who unifies history. For Niebuhr, just as humans are broken, finite mortal creatures who deny and strive against their brokenness, so nations are finite and prone to distortion, pretense, and exaggerated pride, and they try to deny and hide that distortion, even from themselves. These futile efforts lead only to greater brokenness and deeper sin. All of our attempts to heal our brokenness, to make sense of history, to see the patterns in history, or to overcome the ambiguities of life and history are futile and sinful; they make things worse. We cannot find the end or meaning of history within history except as God reveals Godself. God can “complete what man cannot complete.”33 Finally, Christian faith means that we trust that our lives and history, though flawed and fragmented, will be made whole and will find meaning in God. The suffering love of God, especially as known in Christ, is the key to God’s completion of history. This faith also encompasses repentance for our sin, including our attempts to find meaning and to complete history on our own. This recognition is not a slowly growing awareness but a miraculous revelation. This sin and pretense are never overcome by human effort, but only by divine grace that can lead to self-awareness, a recognition of sin, and repentance. Only then is new life possible. Although Christian faith may provide insight into the meaning of history, in the actual scheme of things, Christians are no more free from illusions than any other peoples. On the contrary, Niebuhr insists that Christian nations are especially prone to “ridiculous conceptions of nationalistic messianisms, in which a particular nation is regarded as the instrument or agent of the culmination of history.” These national pretensions to redeem history can become means of evil and destruction within history.34 Of course, Niebuhr’s Christian vision of the relation of God to national pretensions is not what we have grown accustomed to in US life, especially in recent years when US Christianity is not the reminder of the limits of national

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messianism but the underwriter of it. But this recent Christian failure is not a repudiation of the larger biblical ideal but a call for greater fidelity to it. A means to that greater fidelity is not simply the biblical narrative but also key figures or types within it. For Niebuhr, within the biblical traditions the prophets played a key role in combating the illusions and idolatries of the powerful, including powerful nations. The prophets reminded their people that humans, especially rulers and collectives, are prone to defy God’s rule and make themselves gods. They often justify the will of the leader or the nation by claiming that it is God’s will. They co-opt God’s name in support of the projects of their own will. They hide their pretensions and deceit even from themselves. The prophets stand over and against the culture against which they speak. At the same time, the prophet has no other place to stand but within the shared tradition. This standing over and against culture is, inevitably, located within and draws from the shared space in which all live. In other words, the best place to find leverage for criticism is on shared ground. The most fitting place from which to challenge triumphalist Christian nationalism is from within the Christian tradition itself. And the most fitting place from which to challenge US excess may be shared US traditions and values, including those ideas about what makes the country and culture unique and even exceptional. Returning to Contemporary Political Realities: No Longer Cock of the Roost? While he was still president, Barack Obama wrote about the tension between the idealists and realists in his administration, describing the “friction between the new and old guard inside my foreign policy team.” In that tension, Vice President Biden tended to side with the new guard—the idealists, sometimes called “progressive idealists,” and within his administration President Biden chose Obama’s idealists (or new guard) to lead his foreign policy team— Secretary of State Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.35 The ascendancy of Obama’s idealist new guard in the Biden administration left many expecting—and even fearing—that Biden and his foreign policy team would be more interventionist than Obama’s had been.36 Critics warned that Biden’s appointees represented a rejection of a realist tentativeness about international engagement and, instead, an embrace of idealist confidence for US interventionism around the world. Overall, however, that has turned out not to be case. Biden may sound at times like an idealist but he governs as a realist in his foreign policy. As Leon Hader put it, “President Joe Biden talks the liberal internationalist talk but walks the realist walk.”37

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Of course, one could read Biden’s apparent shift less as an abdication of his prior idealist commitments and more as a recognition of new realities. Perhaps it isn’t so much that his own idealism has been tempered but, instead, that we now face new social realities where the kind of interventionism possible in earlier eras is no longer fitting. It is hard to listen to the Clinton and Talbott story with which this chapter opened and not recognize how much the world has changed. President Clinton was offering a slow preparation for a changing role in the world, and that change has come faster than most of us had anticipated. As I have reflected on our responsibilities within our current political chaos, I have been reminded of Max Weber’s word on politics as the “strong and slow boring of hard boards.”38 Compared to our current political life, I would take an actual stack of hard boards any day, even with nothing more than an old hand drill or an awl or even a sharpened rock. Politics is hard work. Politics may be the slow and strong boring of hard boards, but just as important, it is also the slow preparation of a people for news they do not want to hear. Politics involves persuading them to see the world in a more helpful and truthful way. That’s politics at its best. At its worst, politics panders to whatever people want to hear and even works to distort their hearing. We have been slow in telling and hearing the truth. We need leaders across US society, not just the politicians, to help prepare citizens for these new realities. In the end, we cannot leave the truth to the politicians; it belongs to all of us. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bacevich, Andrew. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2009. Beinart, Peter. “The Left and the Right Have Abandoned American Exceptionalism.” The Atlantic, July 4, 2018. Blumenthal, Sidney. “James Chace: 1931–2004.” The American Prospect, October 19, 2004. Bromwich, David. “It’s Time to Rethink American Exceptionalism.” The Nation, October 24, 2014. Brooks, David. “The American Idea and Today’s GOP.” New York Times, September 25, 2015. Crowley, Monica. “The Exceptional Thing the Successful GOP Candidate Must Say.” Washington Times, April 15, 2015. Farley, Robert. “Obama and ‘American Exceptionalism.” FactCheck.Org, February 12, 2015. https:​//​www​.factcheck​.org​/2015​/02​/obama​-and​-american​-exceptionalism​ /.

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Friedman, Uri. “Democratic Platform Swaps ‘American exceptionalism’ for ‘Indispensable Nation.’” Foreign Policy, September 4, 2012. Hadar, Leon. “Joe Biden: Foreign Policy Realist.” The Spectator World, December 20, 2021. Heer, Jeet. “Donald Trump Killed the ‘Indispensable Nation.’ Good!” The New Republic, May 15, 2017. Jaffe, Greg. “Obama’s New Patriotism: How Obama has Used His Presidency to Redefine ‘American Exceptionalism.’” Washington Post, June 3, 2015. Kagan, Robert. “Trump Marks the End of America as World’s ‘Indispensable Nation.’” Financial Times, November 19, 2016. Kaplan, Fred. “Biden’s Team of Allies: The President-Elect’s Foreign Policy Team Will Be on the Same Page from Day One, but There’s a Risk of Groupthink.” Slate, November 23, 2020. LaFranchi, Howard. “Beware Entanglements? ‘Realists’ Fret over Biden Foreign Policy.” Christian Science Monitor, January 12, 2021. Levitz, Eric. “American Exceptionalism Is a Dangerous Myth.” New York Magazine. January 2, 2019. Mann, James. “On Realism, Old and New.” The American Prospect. October 30, 2014, 30–35. Miller, Kerri. “The Politics of American Exceptionalism.” Interview with Andrew Bacevich and David Azerrad. Minnesota Public Radio, May 11, 2015. Niebuhr, Reinhold. Faith and History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949. ———. The Irony of American History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952. ———. Moral Man and Immoral Society. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol II. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964. Office of the Press Secretary. “News Conference By President Obama.” The White House, April 4, 2009. https:​//​obamawhitehouse​.archives​.gov​/the​-press​-office​/news​ -conference​-president​-obama​-4042009. Pauley, Jane. “Hillary Clinton: I Still Believe in American Exceptionalism.” Interview with Jane Pauley, CBS News, June 15, 2014. Pilon, Juliana. “Let’s Take Exception to the Term ‘American Exceptionalism.’” Wall Street Journal, 29 April 2017, A.13. The Republican Party. “American Exceptionalism.” The 2012 Republican Party Platform, https:​//​www​.gop​.com​/platform​/american​-exceptionalism​/. Romney, Mitt. “Text of Mitt Romney’s Speech on Foreign Policy at The Citadel.” Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2011. Smith, Ben, and Jonathan Martin. “The New Battle: What it Means to be American.” Politico, August 20, 2010. Talbott, Strobe. Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation. Riverside: Simon & Schuster, 2009. Tyrell, Ian. American Exceptionalism: A New History of an Old Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. Walt, Stephen. “The Myth of American Exceptionalism.” Foreign Policy, October 11, 2011.

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Weber, Max. “Politics as a Vocation.” In Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946. Wertheim, Stephen. Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy. Harvard University Press, 2020. Wertheim, Stephen, and Elmira Bayrasli. “The End of the Indispensable Nation.” Political Syndicate, Aug 31, 2021. Wertheim, Stephen, and Joshua Shifrinson. “Biden the Realist: The President’s Foreign Policy Doctrine Has Been Hiding in Plain Sight.” Foreign Affairs, September 9, 2021. Wright, Robert. “Biden’s Foreign Policy Team is Full of Idealists Who Keep Getting People Killed.” Washington Post, December 15, 2020.

NOTES 1. Niebuhr’s writings from the mid 1940s to the early 1950s are crucial here. 2. James Mann, “On Realism, Old and New,” The American Prospect (October 30, 2014): 30–35 and Strobe Talbott, Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation (Riverside: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 329–30. 3. Mann, 30. 4. For more on American exceptionalism and especially its place in recent politics, see Ian Tyrell, American Exceptionalism: A New History of an Old Idea (University of Chicago Press, 2021); Eric Levitz, “American Exceptionalism Is a Dangerous Myth,” New York Magazine, January 2, 2019; Peter Beinart, “The Left and the Right Have Abandoned American Exceptionalism,” The Atlantic, (July 4, 2018); David Bromwich, “It’s Time to Rethink American Exceptionalism,” The Nation, (October 24, 2014); and Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2009). 5. Tyrrell, American Exceptionalism, 5 and 111. 6. Tyrrell, American Exceptionalism, 13. 7. Kerri Miller, “The Politics of American Exceptionalism,” interview with Andrew Bacevich and David Azerrad, Minnesota Public Radio, May 11, 2015. See also Stephen Walt, “The Myth of American Exceptionalism,” Foreign Policy, October 11, 2011. 8. Monica Crowley, “The Exceptional Thing the Successful GOP Candidate Must Say,” Washington Times, April 15, 2015. 9. The Republican Party, “American Exceptionalism,” The 2012 Republican Party Platform, https:​//​www​.gop​.com​/platform​/american​-exceptionalism​/). For other recent uses of American exceptionalism by Republican candidates, see David Brooks, “The American Idea and Today’s GOP,” New York Times, September 25, 2015. 10. Uri Friedman, “Democratic Platform Swaps ‘American exceptionalism’ for ‘Indispensable Nation,’” Foreign Policy, September 4, 2012. 11. For more on these criticisms of Obama, see Mitt Romney, “Text of Mitt Romney’s Speech on Foreign Policy at The Citadel,” Wall Street Journal, October 7,

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2011, and Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin, “The New Battle: What it Means to be American,” Politico, August 20, 2010. 12. Office of the Press Secretary, “News Conference By President Obama,” April 4, 2009, https:​//​obamawhitehouse​.archives​.gov​/the​-press​-office​/news​-conference​ -president​-obama​-4042009. 13. See Robert Farley, “Obama and ‘American Exceptionalism,” FactCheck. Org, February 12, 2015. https:​//​www​.factcheck​.org​/2015​/02​/obama​-and​-american​ -exceptionalism​/. 14. Jane Pauley, “Hillary Clinton: I Still Believe in American Exceptionalism,” interview with Jane Pauley, CBS News, June 15, 2014. 15. Greg Jaffe, “Obama’s New Patriotism: How Obama Has Used His Presidency to Redefine ‘American Exceptionalism,’” Washington Post, June 3, 2015. 16. Pauley, “Hillary Clinton.” 17. Jaffe, “Obama’s New Patriotism.” 18. Sidney Blumenthal, “James Chace: 1931–2004,” The American Prospect, October 19, 2004. 19. Blumenthal, “James Chace.” For a celebration of the decline of the indispensable nation, see Jeet Heer, “Donald Trump Killed the ‘Indispensable Nation.’ Good!” The New Republic, May 15, 2017. See also Robert Kagan, “Trump Marks the End of America as World’s ‘Indispensable Nation,’” Financial Times, November 19, 2016. 20. Stephen Wertheim argues that the idea, if not the language, of the U.S. as “the indispensable nation,” arose as a part of the U.S. entry to World War II. Wertheim, Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy (Harvard University Press, 2020). See also, Stephen Wertheim and Elmira Bayrasli, “The End of the Indispensable Nation,” Political Syndicate, Aug 31, 2021. 21. Juliana Pilon, “Let’s Take Exception to the Term ‘American Exceptionalism,’” Wall Street Journal, 29 April 2017, A.13. 22. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932), 95. 23. Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 97. 24. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol II (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964), 317. 25. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 28. 26. Niebuhr, The Irony or American History, 24. 27. Niebuhr, The Irony of American History, 28–29. 28. Niebuhr, The Irony of American History, 37–38. 29. Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 3. 30. Niebuhr, Faith and History, 1. 31. Niebuhr, Faith and History, 9–12. 32. Niebuhr, Faith and History, 106. 33. Niebuhr, Faith and History, 150. 34. Niebuhr, Faith and History, 115.

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35. Fred Kaplan, “Biden’s Team of Allies: The President-Elect’s Foreign Policy Team Will Be on the Same Page from Day One, but There’s a Risk of Groupthink,” Slate, November 23, 2020. 36. Robert Wright, “Biden’s Foreign Policy Team is Full of Idealists who Keep Getting People Killed,” Washington Post, December 15, 2020 and Howard LaFranchi “Beware Entanglements? ‘Realists’ Fret over Biden Foreign Policy,” Christian Science Monitor, January 12, 2021. 37. Leon Hadar, “Joe Biden: Foreign Policy Realist,” The Spectator World, December 20, 2021 and Stephen Wertheim and Joshua Shifrinson, “Biden the Realist: The President’s Foreign Policy Doctrine Has Been Hiding in Plain Sight,” Foreign Affairs, September 9, 2021. 38. Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946).

Conclusion Christian Realism in a Polarized Society Robin W. Lovin

My writings on Christian realism belong to the second or third generation of Niebuhr scholarship. When I first encountered his work, as a ministry student at Harvard Divinity School, I regarded him as a historical figure, albeit from what was then the recent past. We were more likely to read his works in church history than in ethics courses. Reinhold Niebuhr was like Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Bultmann, and the other giants of the mid-twentieth century—heroic figures, but distant from the remaking of church, society, and the university that we could see going on around us in the early 1970s. A few years of real experience in church and society made me more receptive to Niebuhr’s ideas about the persistence of self-interest and self-deception, and when I returned to Harvard for PhD studies, I was fortunate to have the guidance of Preston Williams, who has a long view of social change and social movements. He encouraged me to study the school desegregation crisis that was happening in Boston at the time, but he also had me reading law and political philosophy. He introduced me to James Cone, and to practically everyone else of contemporary importance in social ethics, but he also encouraged me to read Catholic social teaching back to Leo XIII, the writings of Martin Luther King Jr., and of course, Reinhold Niebuhr. By that time, I could appreciate the formidable array of challenges that Niebuhr had faced over the course of his career, and I could see the extent of his influence, even on later generations of scholars and activists who found his realism too limiting for their own aspirations. Problems, strategies, and political programs might overthrow one another in rapid succession, but the remarkable thing about the key ideas that Reinhold Niebuhr had stated with 353

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such force in Moral Man and Immoral Society was the way they remained relevant through decades of extraordinary political change. That enduring political relevance, with an irony that Niebuhr himself might appreciate, stems from the fact that Christian realism is not primarily about politics, but about theology. Its key text is The Nature and Destiny of Man, Niebuhr’s effort to restate the central themes of Christian doctrine about God’s relation to humanity. God’s creation, the human fall that begins history, the expectation and arrival of Christ in history, and the ultimate restoration of all things at the end of history provide enduring reference points for understanding what is happening around us now. Part of what makes Christian realism realistic, however, is the assumption that these realities of human nature and destiny will make their appearance in common human experience, even when politics is shaped by a rejection of Christian beliefs, and even “where a Christ is not expected.”1 The Christian realist therefore moves with some confidence to make connections between theology and contemporary experience, not merely as an illustration of the theology, but as a guide to action. The central purpose of Christian realism is not theological apologetics, but social ethics.2 A course of action emerges from a dialectic between durable truths and changing circumstances, mediated by an observer who has a good grasp of both. One way to project a future for Christian ethics, then, is to consider the possibilities for this dialectic between theology and ethics in light of the way it has developed in the past. In this essay, I will make some suggestions about this by first reviewing how Christian realism changed and took on new directions over the course of Reinhold Niebuhr’s work. Then I will consider how the essays in this volume provide some reference points for projecting Niebuhr’s Christian realism into the future. The authors of these essays are themselves making those projections, and their work already shows us some important things about how Christian realism took the shape it has today, toward the end of its first century. AN ETHICS OF “PROXIMATE SOLUTIONS” Reinhold Niebuhr’s understanding of society and politics was shaped in a time of crisis. He experienced labor unrest and racial tension firsthand as a pastor in Detroit. He moved to Union Theological Seminary and took up moderate Socialist politics as the United States entered the Great Depression, and in his travels in Germany, he saw firsthand the economic and political dislocations that would, in a few years, spell trouble for the whole world. Moral Man and Immoral Society urged American Christians to take seriously the movements

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that were demanding revolutionary change, but he also warned that the kind of comprehensive moral transformation imagined by Marxist revolutionaries or social gospel reformers is beyond the reach of the limited, self-interested human beings who make up the societies they want to change.3 Politics, as he would concisely put it some years later, is “a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.”4 Niebuhr’s position here is close to the “ethics of responsibility” outlined by Max Weber during the revolutionary upheavals in Germany at the end of World War I. The vocation of the politician, as Weber saw it, is not to remake the world according to some ultimate goal, but to take responsibility for limited results that can be clearly foreseen and to leave possibilities open to others for further development beyond the limits of present choices. As Niebuhr’s writings made increasingly clear, he saw this not just as the situation of twentieth-century politics, but as a permanent feature of the human condition. Long before it was a political theory, it was set out in Christian teaching about the limitations of human nature and about God’s final judgment over the course of history. These realities of sin and self-interest led some theologians to advise withdrawal from political life. Karl Barth and other Europeans working under the shadow of rising authoritarian movements thought Niebuhr was still too enthusiastic about the possibilities for social justice, and as a new global conflict began in Asia, even his brother, H. Richard Niebuhr, counseled “the grace of doing nothing.”5 In short order, however, realists, pacifists, and revolutionaries were all caught up in World War II, which pitted “the children of light” against “the children of darkness.” But Niebuhr adopted the image of light and darkness as the title for his most important wartime work not to join a crusade, but to remind the children of light of their need for humility and for collaboration with others who might not share their ideas about ultimate truth. The greatest risk to the children of light is not that they will be defeated by the forces of self-interest, but that they will foolishly expect too much from their own idealism.6 As Dallas Gingles reminds us, the compromises required by proximate solutions sometimes include a compromise with our own ideas of moral purity.7 This collaborative work toward proximate solutions and responsible politics carried Niebuhr and a growing cohort of Christian realists into the postwar years, which marked the high point of his public influence. If it seemed that history had vindicated his moderate, democratic commitments in ways that went far beyond his own realistic expectations, he was now concerned to remind his readers that history is ironic, even when it is not tragic. Americans, who found themselves now in the unfamiliar position of global leadership in a new Cold War, were also discovering that the ideals they had formed as an emergent power isolated from imperial conflicts were not quite adequate to

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this new role they now had in the world.8 If the task in the 1930s had been to warn against the exaggerated expectations of socialist and nationalist revolutionaries, the Christian realist now had to warn against the exaggerated confidence and self-righteousness of American democracy and American Christianity.9 THE LIMITS AND POSSIBILITIES OF NIEBUHRIAN REALISM The last decades of Niebuhr’s life were marked by physical problems that he recognized as inherent in human nature even as he chafed under their limitations.10 Nor was he entirely surprised by the emergence of new lines of criticism of his thought, even if he was not always able to answer them in writing or join the action in the streets that was reshaping American politics in the late 1960s. It was not just that his proximate solutions needed to be updated. There were insoluble problems that his critics thought he had missed. Still, the basic structure of human nature and human destiny proved itself useful to new generations of thinkers across a wide range of problems. Realist analyses of war and peace, international order, and social justice continued to appear as those problems changed shape over time, and the tools of irony, humility, and an ethics of responsibility proved useful in handling new questions about identity, culture, and ecology, sometimes even for those who thought that Niebuhr’s own response to these issues had been seriously lacking. Three or four decades later, Christian realism had a breadth and variety that might have surprised those who had tried to sum it up at the end of Niebuhr’s career.11 Complex questions about war and the use of force in international relations brought new attention to the principles of the just war tradition and, more broadly, to questions about whether the “proximate solutions” that Christian realism offered to conflicts in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia had the resources to provide sufficient critical distance on the interests at stake in these situations. Paul Ramsey led the development of a more strictly deontological approach to the use of force in Christian ethics, and contemporary thinkers like Kevin Carnahan have formulated a moral response to conflict by putting pragmatic considerations of national interest in dialogue with these principles of just war thinking.12 These modifications of realism by norms that might once have been regarded merely as utopian or reduced to “regulative principles”13 also played a role in realistic thinking about international law more generally, beyond the specific issues of war and peace. William George has applied the law of the sea to global questions about the use of natural resources, and his essay in this volume develops the systematic use of Christian realism that shaped

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his project.14 In the work of Elisabeth Kincaid, the overarching ideals that Niebuhr identified in American history can be given more robust normative formulations through a philosophy of law that draws on the natural law tradition and American Catholic social thought.15 In these ways, Christian realism since Niebuhr has joined a wider range of political debates by expanding its use of historic systems of legal, political, and moral thought. Something like a tradition of realist legal thought has developed alongside of realist politics. The scope of Christian realism has grown, too, as new problems have emerged at the center of contemporary attention. This is seen perhaps most clearly in studies of race, gender, and other identity issues that have reshaped American culture in recent decades. Niebuhr himself tended to subsume these issues into more general political questions about justice and equality,16 and many later writers have been sharply critical of the limitations of his mid-century perspective. But many of these critics, too, would join Peter Paris and Rebekah Miles in recognizing the importance of adapting Niebuhr’s account of human nature as a key to realistic expectations about future developments in politics and society.17 BEYOND THE POLITICS OF GOVERNMENT Perhaps most important, as the problems of modern society have multiplied, realistic approaches have emerged in fields less immediately related to politics, law, and government. The environmental crisis certainly raises political questions, but it is more profoundly a question about human nature and humanity’s place in the natural order, as Frederick Simmons points out in his essay in this volume. The realist’s effort to “confront the severity of the environmental crisis . . . without fostering despair” translates the questions of human nature and human destiny into a new, scientific discourse about how to avoid destroying the world that sustains us.18 Economics, likewise, takes a place in realistic thinking that is not just a function of how corporations and markets can best be regulated by law and politics. In a complex, global order, economics has its own reality, which Nathan McClellan argues must be studied alongside the realities of human nature and the procedures of government to give direction to our common life.19 Todd Whitmore’s study of the opioid crisis shows just how complex these interactions may be between the human aspiration for self-transcendence, the limits imposed by self-interest, and the use of economic incentives both to meet human needs and to exploit them.20 The complex institutional structures of modern society have also led to the development of professional ethics in medicine, the practice of law, business, education, and cultural institutions. Realistic thinking has been carried into these settings, too, and as Gerald McKenny points out, it often leads to a

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different assessment of the goods that can be created in these social contexts. Niebuhr was skeptical of appeals to the “common good,”21 but his effort to avoid sentimentality in politics on a large scale could obscure the proximate or “penultimate” goods22 around which people organize their clinics, schools, offices, and neighborhoods. This, too, is a kind of political life, but unlike Niebuhr’s account of politics, “the goods themselves do not precede their social contexts, as interests do, but rather emerge within them. They are therefore genuinely common, even as they benefit individuals.”23 A shared understanding of these social goods is required for cooperation among the people who have to work together to create and maintain them. A more differentiated account of the varieties of politics at work in a modern society also encourages the development of Christian realism in different cultural and national settings. Reinhold Niebuhr’s early works were clearly intended for an audience in the United States struggling with questions of economic and racial justice, and even as events forced Americans to widen their horizons to a global perspective, his writings were about how their own history and culture often left them unprepared for these new challenges.24 Much of that history and culture was, of course, shared with the United Kingdom, and Nigel Biggar locates the origins of Christian realism in English thought, long before the German-American pastor’s son began his theological career.25 Niebuhr himself became more and more conscious of his affinity to Anglican theology, especially after his marriage to Ursula Keppel-Compton, his participation in the Oxford Conference of 1937, and his 1939 Gifford Lectures, which became The Nature and Destiny of Man. In turn, his influence spread among theologians, church leaders, and what became known as the “English School” of international relations. Niebuhr’s continuing importance is both documented in Nigel Biggar’s essay in this volume and illustrated in his own career. Along with these applications of Christian realism to their own social problems, scholars in the United Kingdom have in recent decades made contributions to the study of Niebuhr’s thought.26 It was Robin Gill who first pointed out the analytic distinction and systematic interaction between political, moral, and theological realism, both in Niebuhr’s works and in my interpretations of them. The end of the Cold War and the globalization of economic, religious, and cultural relations since the 1990s have given rise to studies that not only look at other cultures from outside, but apply a Christian realist analysis to their social and political problems from within. Thus, John Burgess has developed a Niebuhrian view of Russian Orthodoxy based on his own experience in Russia and Ukraine, which began shortly after the end of the Soviet Union.27 Yoshibumi Takahashi introduces American readers to a developed school of Christian realism in Japan that began with Niebuhr’s own students and has found expression both in Christian ecumenism and in Japanese political

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thought.28 Luping Huang is among a new generation of Chinese scholars who have both made constructive theological contributions to Christian realism and provided a realist analysis of contemporary Chinese culture and politics.29 Simeon Ilesanmi explores the relevance of both realism and hope in political developments across the nations of Africa.30 REALISM AND HOPE While theological and cultural critics were putting Niebuhr’s realism in dialogue with new problems and with the rising political expectations of marginalized groups, an important school of political realists found in his skepticism about ideology and his tendency to deflate estimates of military power exactly the corrective needed in international politics in a post–Cold War War era. The disastrous outcomes of interventions in regional conflicts in Central America, Iran, and Afghanistan served as reminders of the importance of self-interest and the limits of idealism in international relations.31 Andrew Bacevich, whose introduction to The Irony of American History made the connection to Niebuhr’s realism explicit, showed that the warning not to expect too much of the morality of nations was as relevant as it had been in 1952 or in 1932.32 Among theologians, however, the elaboration of Christian realist themes took, overall, a more hopeful turn. The end of the Cold War had opened up new opportunities for international cooperation at a grassroots level, and the success of liberation movements both in the United States and around the world suggested that Niebuhr had seriously overestimated the durability of power and underestimated the potential for change that comes from the bottom up. In a presidential address to the Society of Christian Ethics in 2000, I argued that a future Christian realism would need to be more realistic about these new realities.33 Gerald McKenny’s essay in this volume provides an excellent summary of the different kind of realism I had in mind.34 For me, that presidential address was followed by two extraordinary decades of teaching and international scholarly collaboration, resulting in many of the collegial relationships that are reflected in this volume. But my raised expectations were not just a reflection of my personal experience. I was also attempting to capture the theological significance of the human destiny that was part of Reinhold Niebuhr’s realism from the beginning, an eschatology that balanced his sometimes pessimistic assessment of human nature and played an increasing role in his interpretation of history later in his career.35 William Schweiker has integrated this theological center in Reinhold Niebuhr’s ethics with H. Richard Niebuhr’s “radical monotheism” and ethics of responsibility to produce a version of moral realism in which John

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Wesley’s idea of “Christian perfection” also has a place. As Schweiker puts it, “the basic level of faith is the understanding of what is not perceptible but is real and that undergirds human hope.”36 Douglas Ottati offers a Reformed theologian’s version of this rethinking of Christian realism that likewise tempers pessimism about the course of events and skepticism about human motives with a theological realism that refuses to reduce politics to mere exertions of power. Such a theology, Ottati argues, moves beyond human sin with a providential grace that is, in the end, more real and more plausible than an optimistic liberalism that refuses to acknowledge the reality of sin in the first place.37 We arrive beyond tragedy, as Reinhold Niebuhr put it, only by coupling a realistic account of the evils in human history with an insistence that the “centre, source, and fulfilment of history lie beyond history.”38 NIEBUHRIAN REALISM AND POLITICAL POLARIZATION As Gary Dorrien has persistently reminded us, there are nevertheless two sides to Niebuhr’s legacy. If we do not reach, as we did after the end of the Cold War, toward ideas of peace and justice that transcend our historical experience, our thinking will remain captive to the way things have been, and we will be “restricted to marginal reforms.”39 But if we forget Niebuhr’s warnings about the limitations of idealism, we will repeat the failures of the Social Gospel and fall victim to the cynics who understand self-interest and power. Niebuhr held consistently to the dialectic between the “children of light” and the cynical “children of darkness,” and he might appreciate the irony that the hopeful realism that some of us proclaimed in his name at the beginning of the twenty-first century has been called into question by street protests, political gridlock, and a return to global confrontation. Similarly, while Niebuhr saw the irony of American history in the sudden need for the United States to undertake the responsibilities of global leadership during and after the Second World War, that irony is itself compounded in recent developments detailed by Rebekah Miles, as some in the United States articulate a new “American exceptionalism” that excuses their country from dealing with complexities and constraints that international order imposes even on the most powerful states.40 The resurgence of authoritarianism in many parts of the world raises questions about the power of grassroots movements to produce lasting change. The three-way competition between the United States, Russia, and China is more complex than the bipolar world of the Cold War, but it has similar effects

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in reducing international politics to calculations of relative power, especially military power. The optimistic suggestion that the competition might this time be conducted largely in economic terms fades as Russia, in particular, exerts military power in the invasion of Ukraine and frames its objectives in terms of national destiny. The tendency for other powers to respond by likewise construing what is at stake in ideological terms ensures that the oppositions will be long-lasting, regardless of how the immediate conflicts are resolved. Changes in the global order have an impact on domestic politics, as well. During the twentieth century, foreign threats usually led quickly to domestic political unity, but today’s global polarization comes during a period of intense political partisanship in the United States. Thin margins between electoral victory and defeat are incongruously paired with bold claims about the differences between the two parties, so that politics becomes a quest to continue in office, rather than a search for proximate solutions. What is important is not what our party will do with power, but that the other party must not have it. If this continues, it is likely that our politics in 2032 will resemble the situation Reinhold Niebuhr described in 1932 in Moral Man and Immoral Society. Sharply divided ideologists—Niebuhr did not hesitate to call them “fanatics”41—will promise that a decision for their side will solve all problems and permanently change the political order. Make this choice, and no further choices will be needed. One difference, however, is that in 1932, Niebuhr thought that religious groups tended to be sentimental and ineffective when confronted with this sort of fanaticism. Today they are increasingly tempted to join it. Joshua Mauldin shows how easy it is for the sentimental children of light to become cynical children of darkness, even as the polarizing divisions remain unchanged.42 The violence that broke out at the U.S. Capitol as the electoral votes were counted in 2021 was an ominous indication of what is possible. But we today may escape the tragic consequences that followed from the fanaticisms of the 1930s precisely because the ideologies that divide the parties are too poorly defined to sustain open civil conflict for more than a few hours. Their point seems to amount to little more than the assertion that we are not them, and that the failures that we all can see are the fault of the other side. A comparison of today’s polarized rhetoric with the fanaticisms of the 1930s calls to mind Marx’s saying that when history repeats itself, the first time is tragedy. The second time is farce.43 Nevertheless, the sharp divisions in our society point to the importance of Christian realism in the religious, moral, and even political formation of people who might be able to offer an alternative to polarization. A simple distinction between us and them is incompatible with a radical monotheism that insists that we share a common human nature and human destiny, even with

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our enemies. That theology leads to a moral humility that expresses itself in political responsibility and a search for proximate solutions. We cannot now assume, if we ever could, that the wider culture will support this theological, moral, and political realism. Religious leaders, congregations, and thoughtful people of faith will have to articulate these commitments clearly and adhere to them consistently, rather than simply adapting religious life to a polarized social environment.44 The purpose of this formation in Christian realism cannot, however, be a sectarian withdrawal that only increases the fragmentation of a divided society. The purpose is to send people with new confidence into those institutional settings that Gerald McKenny and Dallas Gingles describe, where competing interests nonetheless give rise to genuine common goods.45 The further development of Christian realism through systematic thinking about professional ethics, social institutions, and local communities, distinct from the politics of law and government, may prove to be the most effective resource at a time when political gridlock prevents change in administration and legislation at the national level. Those who do their politics in these small-scale local settings that we describe as the “private sector” or as “civil society” are less inclined to polarized thinking, partly because they know they need all the help they can get to create and maintain the goods for which they are responsible.46 In the immediate future, this search for proximate solutions in social institutions outside of government and national politics is where we should look for political realism. It will, of course, include the efforts of many administrators and civil servants who continue to seek the common goods in particular agencies and offices that are not absorbed by the politics of holding power just to keep it out of the reach of the other guys. Whether this kind of political realism will be able, eventually, to overcome the farce of polarization and renew politics at the national level remains to be seen. As Gary Dorrien puts it, “The borders of possibility remain untested.”47 At the moment, we can see farther across those borders in either direction, toward hope or failure, than we have seen before. The century of Christian realism was also the American century. When our system was threatened by external foes and internal divisions, we remained for the most part confident that it would survive. That political question now seems more open than it has been, perhaps at any time since the Civil War. But the theological realist will insist that the end of history remains in God’s hands and is not defined by our ideas about it.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bacevich, Andrew. “Introduction.” In Reinhold Neibuhr, The Irony of American History, ix–xxi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Bennett, John C. The Radical Imperative: From Theology to Social Ethics. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ethics, In Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. VI. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005. Carnahan, Kevin. Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. George, William P. Mining Morality: Prospecting for Ethics in a Wounded World. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019. Gingles, Dallas. “‘Dirty Hands’: Guilt and Regret in Moral Reasoning,” Studies in Christian Ethics 36/1 (February 2023).‌‌‌‌ Harland, Gordon. The Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960. Harries, Richard, and Stephen Platten, eds., Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Huang, Luping. Women and Pride: An Exploration of the Feminist Critique of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Theology of Sin. Carlisle, UK: Langham Monographs, 2018. Lieven, Anatol, and John Hulsman, Ethical Realism. New York: Pantheon Books, 2006. Lovin, Robin W. Christian Realism and the New Realities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ———. What Do We Do When Nobody Is Listening?: Leading the Church in a Polarized Society. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022. ———. “Christian Realism: A Legacy and Its Future.” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, vol. 20, 3–18. Decatur, GA: Society of Christian Ethics, 2000. Marx, Karl. “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” In The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed., edited by Robert C. Tucker. New York: Norton, 1978. Miles, Rebekah. “Family, Sexuality, and Society.” In The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr, edited by Robin Lovin and Joshua Mauldin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Niebuhr, H. Richard. “The Grace of Doing Nothing.” Christian Century 49 (March 23, 1932): 378–80. Niebuhr, Reinhold. Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965. ———. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960. ———. Faith and History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949. ———. The Irony of American History. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952. ———. Moral Man and Immoral Society. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932. ———. The Nature and Destiny of Man. Vol. II, Human Destiny. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964. ———. “Frustration in Mid-Century.” In Pious and Secular America, 14–23. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958.

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———. “Epilogue: A View from the Sidelines.” In The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr, edited by Robert McAfee Brown, 250–57. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. ———. “Intellectual Autobiography.” In Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, edited by Charles Kegley and Robert Bretall. New York: Macmillan, 1961. ———. “Justice to the American Negro from State, Community, and Church.” In Pious and Secular America, 78–85. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958. ———. “Must We Do Nothing?” Christian Century 49 (March 30, 1932): 415–17. Schweiker, William K. Responsibility and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Ottati, Douglas. Hopeful Realism. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1999. ———. Living Belief. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022. Stone, Ronald. Reinhold Niebuhr: Prophet to Politicians. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972. West, Traci. “Racial Justice,” In The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr, edited by Robin Lovin and Joshua Mauldin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

NOTES 1. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964), II: 6–15. 2. See Reinhold Niebuhr, “Intellectual Autobiography,” in Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, ed. Charles Kegley and Robert Bretall (New York: Macmillan, 1961), 3. 3. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932). 4. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960), 118. [First published 1944.] 5. H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Grace of Doing Nothing,” Christian Century 49 (March 23, 1932), 379. Reinhold Niebuhr’s reply, “Must We Do Nothing?” appeared a week later. Christian Century 49 (March 30, 1932), 416–17. 6. Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 11–15. 7. Dallas Gingles, “‘Dirty Hands’: Guilt and Regret in Moral Reasoning,” Studies in Christian Ethics 36/1 (February 2023)‌‌‌‌. 8. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952). 9. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Frustration in Mid-Century,” in Pious and Secular America (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 14–23. 10. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Epilogue: A View from the Sidelines,” in The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. Robert McAfee Brown (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 250–57. 11. See, for example, Gordon Harland, The Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960); Ronald Stone, Reinhold Niebuhr: Prophet to

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Politicians (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1972); John C. Bennett, The Radical Imperative: From Theology to Social Ethics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975). 12. See Kevin Carnahan, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010). See also 113–34 ‌‌‌‌above. 13. See Niebuhr, “Liberty and Equality,” in Pious and Secular America, 61–77. 14. See William P. George, Mining Morality: Prospecting for Ethics in a Wounded World (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019). See also 91–112‌‌‌‌ above. 15. See Elisabeth Kincaid, above 71–88.‌‌‌‌ 16. See Niebuhr, “Justice to the American Negro from State, Community, and Church,” in Pious and Secular America, 78–85. 17. See Peter Paris, above 193–204‌‌‌‌. See also Traci West, “Racial Justice,” and Rebekah Miles, “Family, Sexuality, and Society,” in The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. Robin Lovin and Joshua Mauldin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 501–40. 18. See Frederick Simmons, 136‌‌‌‌ above. 19. See Nathan McClellan, 171–82 ‌‌‌‌above. 20. See Todd Whitmore, 205–28‌‌‌‌ above. 21. Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 11. 22. Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, In Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. VI (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 146–70. 23. Gerald McKenny, see above, 31‌‌‌‌. 24. See The Irony of American History, especially 17–42. 25. See above, 319–36‌‌‌‌. 26. See Richard Harries and Stephen Platten, eds., Reinhold Niebuhr and Contemporary Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 27. See above, 303–18.‌‌‌‌ 28. See above, 251–80‌‌‌‌. 29. Luping Huang, Women and Pride: An Exploration of the Feminist Critique of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Theology of Sin (Carlisle, UK: Langham Monographs, 2018). See also her essay on “The Chinese Dream of Prosperity” in this volume, above 231–50.‌‌‌‌ 30. See above, 281–302.‌‌‌‌ 31. See, for example, Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman, Ethical Realism (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006). 32. Andrew Bacevich, “Introduction,” in Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), ix–xxi. 33. Robin W. Lovin, “Christian Realism: A Legacy and Its Future,” The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 20 (Decatur, GA: Society of Christian Ethics, 2000), 3–18. 34. See McKenny, above, 21–36‌‌‌‌. See also Robin W. Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 35. Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949). 36. See above, 60‌‌‌‌. See also William K. Schweiker, Responsibility and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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37. See above, 37–52‌‌‌‌. See also Douglas Ottati, Hopeful Realism (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1999) and, more recently, Living Belief (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022), 113–18. 38. Reinhold Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965), ix. [First published 1937.] 39. Gary Dorrien, 17‌‌‌‌ above. 40. See Miles, 337–52‌‌‌‌, above. 41. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 222. 42. See above, 161–70. 43. Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd. ed. (New York: Norton, 1978), 517. 44. See Robin W. Lovin, What Do We Do When Nobody Is Listening?: Leading the Church in a Polarized Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022), 81–101. 45. See above, 21–36, 183–92. 46. What Do We Do When Nobody Is Listening?, 118–25. 47. See above, 17.

Index

Abe, Shinzo, 276n3 Abyssinian Baptist Church, 199 Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), 294 Acadia University, 193 Acts 2:17, xi ADA. See Americans for Democratic Action addiction, 205–6; criminalization of, 211, 214–15; disease model of, 214; stigma of, 213; withdrawal, 218–19 Afghanistan war, 119, 167 Africa, 282–83; inculturation theology in, 286–89; morality in, 287; NGOs in, 292–93; Pentecostalism in, 288 African Americans, Niebuhr, Reinhold, and, 198–201 African Renaissance, theological ethics and, 285–86 Against the Stream (Barth), 193 agape, 282 Albright, Madeline, 339; on American exceptionalism, 341 Allison, Graham, 124–25 Allott, Philip, 98–99 Almond, Roncevert Ganon, 99 America First campaign, 341–42

American Dream: Chinese Dream contrasted with, 231–32; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 343 American exceptionalism, xxi, 241, 360; Albright on, 341; Bacevich on, 339; Biden on, 342; Clinton, B., on, 341; Clinton, H., on, 339–40; defining, 338–39; in foreign policy, 337; history of, 338–39; language of, 339– 40; Marxists on, 338; Niebuhrian realism on, 342–47; Obama on, 339–40; objective view of, 338–39; rethinking, 337–47; subjective view of, 338–39; Trump on, 341 American Pain Society, 209 Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), 16, 263 America the Christendom (Furuya), 255 Ames, William, 320 Anglican Christian realism, 326–28 Anglican ethics, Niebuhr, Reinhold, influencing, 320–24 Antigone (Sophocles), 58 anti-utopianism, 6 Aoyama Gakuin University Business School, 264 Apartheid, South African, 284 aporia, of moral realism, 57, 63 Aquinas, Thomas, 79–80 367

368

Index

Ariga, Tetsutaro, 252–53 Aristotle, 3, 28, 62, 68n16, 207; politics according to, 140 al-Assad, Bashar, 124 ASUU. See Academic Staff Union of Universities Atonement, Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 147–48 Attlee, Clement, 13 Augustine (Saint), xviii, 28, 72, 81, 104, 137–38; Christian realism of, 113– 14; on love, 153n20, 186; Niebuhr, Reinhold, and, 10, 13–14, 186; on politics, 113 authenticity, 59, 64–65 authoritarianism: global resurgence of, 360–61; under Putin, 303–4 autonomy, in liberalism, 188–89 axioms, middle, 322–23, 326 Bacevich, Andrew, 359; on American exceptionalism, 339 Baelz, Peter, 326 Baillie, John, 323 Baker, James, 118 Baldwin, James, 199 Barr, William, 91 Barth, Karl, 4, 193, 258, 259, 265, 271, 353; Biggar on, 327–28; ethics of, 327; Niebuhr, Reinhold, contrasted with, 253 basic moral realism, 55–56 Battle of Mogadishu, 116 Baxter, Richard, 48 Bazelon, Emily, 72 Beckley, Harlan, 6 Belt and Road Initiative, 241 Bennett, John C., 323; on middle axioms, 332n24 Berger, Peter, 202, 293 Berlin, Isaiah, 28–29 Bernstein, Eduard, 11 Bevel, James, 201 Bianchi, Andrea, 92 Biblical anthropology, 135

Biden, Joe: on American exceptionalism, 342; foreign policy of, 126–27, 346–47 bifocality, in ethics, 220 Biggar, Nigel, 327–28, 358 black capitalism, 196 Black Power ethos, 195 Bliss, William Dwight Porter, 197 Blow, Charles, 211 Board for Social Responsibility (BSR), 326 Boettke, Peter, 174 Bolshevik Revolution, 305, 309 Bolsheviks, 310–11, 312 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 3, 4, 7, 22, 29, 183, 353 Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus (Williams, Reggie), 199 Bonino, Jose Miguez, 42 Braden, Anne, 201 Brexit, 124 British Idealism, 321 Brooks, David, 41 Brown, Charles C., 262 Brown, Robert McAfee, 147; on politics, 199 Browning, Christopher, xix Brunner, Emil, 4, 253 Bryce, James, 277n34 BSR. See Board for Social Responsibility Buddhism, 62 Bultmann, Rudolf, 353 Burgess, John P., 317n2, 358–59 Burke, Edmund, 325 Burkina Faso, 284 Bush, George H. W., 115 Bush, George W., 114, 119–20, 269 Butterfield, Herbert, 324 Cai Yuanpei, 235 calling, 48 Calvinism, 343 Cameroon, 284 Camus, Albert, 193–94

Index

capital accumulation, 176 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 176–77 capitalism, 10, 43; black, 196; globalization and, 41–42 capitol riots, US, 361 Carnahan, Kevin, 356 Carrai, Maria A., 244 Carter, Hodding, 202 Cary, Otis, 252–53 “A Case for Casuistry in the Church” (Biggar), 327 Casey, Shaun, 342 categorical imperative, 221 Catholicism, xviii C&C. See Christianity and Crisis CCCOs. See Coordinating Council of Community Organizations CCP. See Chinese Communist Party Chen Duxiu, 234, 235, 248n19 Chiang Kai-shek, 232 Chiba, Shin, 266, 267–69, 280n78 Chicago Theological Seminary, 195 children of darkness, 161–62, 355, 360; explanation of, 163–65; global political relevance of, 165–69 children of light, 14, 37–38, 98, 161–62, 355, 360; explanation of, 163–65; global political relevance of, 165–69 Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (Niebuhr, Reinhold), 14, 161–62, 166, 303–5, 315–16; translation of, 253 China, 128; communism in, 122; economic power of, 241–42, 245; GDP of, 245; history of, 232–36; Marxism in, 242–43, 248n19; nationalism in, 122, 241–45; peace narrative, 241, 243–44; poverty in, 233; rise of, 241; as superpower, 241, 245; US relations with, 117–18 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 234, 236 Chinese Dream: American Dream contrasted with, 231–32; goals

369

of, 245; metanarrative of, 232; prosperity in, 232–37; Xi Jinping on, 232 The Christian Century, 253, 256, 263 Christian doctrine, 47 Christian faith, 290–91 Christian Faith and Public Choices (Lovin), 4 Christianity and Crisis (C&C), 14, 200, 256 Christianity and History (Butterfield), 324 Christianity and the Future of Welfare (Forrester), 323 Christianity and the Social Order (Temple), 321 Christian Justice and Public Policy (Forrester), 323 Christian metaphysics, 65 Christian nationalism, 345–46 Christian perfection, 360 Christian realism, xvii, 86n7, 354; Anglican, 326–28; of Augustine, 113–14; conjunctive response of, 140–41; defining, 92, 93–94; doctrinal bases for, 49; economic order and, 171–72; environmental ethics of, 138–43; environmentalism of, 136–43; eschatology of, 146–47; ethics, 137–38; history of, 93; hope and, 178, 359–60; international law and, 91–92; as interpretive framework, 281–82; in Japan, 269–71; judgment in, 146; on law, 72–73, 84–85; literary realism in, 221–22; Lovin on, 4–5, 6–8, 21–22, 25–26, 37–39, 92, 206–7, 221, 354; moral responsibility commitment of, 286; of Niebuhr, Reinhold, xviii, 5, 17; pluralism and, xviii–xix, 140–41; politics and, 22, 43–44, 92, 139–42; salvation history according to, 143–49; on self-interest, 210–11; social justice and limitations of, 198–203; soteriology of, 148–49;

370

Index

theological realism and, 22–23, 24–28; UNCLOS and, 94–99. See also specific topics “Christian Realism” (Lovin), 39 Christian Realism and the New Realities (Lovin), 6, 32, 39, 183–84, 206, 220 Christian witness model, 6 Christian Zionism, xxi Church of England, 320 City of God (Augustine), 324 civil rights, 340 Civil War, 198 Clarion Clipperton Zone, 96 climate change, 167–68; Hardin on, 156n54 Clinton, Bill, 116, 339; on American exceptionalism, 341; foreign policy of, 338; Talbott and, 337–38, 347 Clinton, Hillary, 123; on American exceptionalism, 339–40 coercion, 142, 156n54; necessity of, 163 Cold War, xvii, 17, 239, 241–42, 254, 358–59; liberalism after, 121 Columbia University, 324 Comey, James, 342 Commission of the Living Faith Church, 288 common good, 31, 358; subversion of, 289 common heritage, 103; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 97–98 communication, 58 communism, 12; in China, 122; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 165 Cone, James, 4, 263, 353 Confucianism, 237 conjunctive response, of Christian realism, 140–41 Conscience and its Problems (Kirk), 320 Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof (Ames), 320 conservatives, 34 Constitution of the Russian Federation, 304

contexts: Lovin using, 207; of opioid crisis, 207–8 The Contribution of Religion to Social Work (Niebuhr, Reinhold), 262 The Controversy between Barth and Niebuhr (Ariga), 253 Convention on the Rights of the Child, 101 Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCOs), 195 corporate governance, Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 75 corruption, 46–47 cosmopolitanism, xx Cote D’Ivoire, 284 counter-apocalyptic model, 6 COVID-19, 122, 167–68 Cox, Harvey, 41–42 crack cocaine, 211–13 creative nonfiction, 222, 227n46 Cripps, Stafford, 13–14 critical realism, 47 Crocket, Molly, 71 The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Cone), 263 cultural virtues, in institutions, 187 cyberwarfare, 128 cynicism, 44–45 death, 58–59, 61 De Civitate Dei (Augustine), 113 DeepGreen, 94 Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC), 94 De Jure Belli Libri Tres (Gentili), 319 democracy: economic, 15; humiliated, 269; idealism and, 164; imperial, 269; liberal, 28–29, 41, 293; Marxism and, 11–12; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, xx–xxi, 15, 37–39, 163, 166, 186–87; political, 15; responsibility in, 164–65; triumphant, 269; in US, 166–67 democratic socialism, 11, 13 Deneen, Patrick, 177

Index

Deng Xiaoping, 122; Four Modernizations of, 236 Desert Shield, 116 Desert Storm, 116 despair, Lovin, 178 Detroit, 197 Discerning the Signs of the Times (Niebuhr, Reinhold), 324 disease model of addiction, 214 Doomsday Clock, 104 Dorrien, Gary, 179, 360, 362; on globalization, 181n23 Douglass, Frederick, 200 drone strikes, 91 DSCC. See Deep Sea Conservation Coalition Dworkin, Ronald, 72, 81–82, 84; on law, 73–74; on principles, 73–74; theories of rules and principles of, 73–75 Dynamics of Faith (Tillich), 193 ecclesiastes, xxi economic democracy, 15 economic growth, rate of return and, 176–77 economics and economic order: Boettke on, 174; Christian realism and, 171–72; globalization and, 177–78; moral realism and, 175–77; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 171–72; political realism and, 172–74; Robbins defining, 173; theological realism and, 177–79 egbin, 287 egotism, 307–8 Ela, Jean-Marc, 290, 291 the Enlightenment, xx, 37, 304 environmental catastrophe, 143–49 environmental ethics: Christian realist, 138–43; hope and, 143–49; politics and, 138–39; power and, 141–42; sin in, 141–42; the state in, 141–42 environmentalism, of Christian realism, 136–43

371

Eschatological Reflections (Ohki), 258 eschatological theological realism, 29–30 eschatology, 62; Christian realist, 146– 47; politics and, 63 Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (Robbins), 173 Eternal Return, 62 eternity, 58–59 ethical idealism, 16–17 ethics: Anglican, 320–24; bifocality in, 220; Christian realist, 137–38; deontological approach to, 356; environmental, 138–43; of proximate solutions, 354–56; reformed Christian, 320–24; of responsibility, 355; in salvation history, 148–49; theological, 285–86, 295n1; virtue, 287 evangelism, 289 evil: Lovin on, 209; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 209 Exclusive Economic Zones, 97 faith, 65; in God and prophets, 344–45; in history, 344; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 344; saving, 60 Fellowship of Socialist Christians, 16 feminism, 93 fentanyl, 208, 215 Feodorovskii Cathedral, 311, 315; restoration of, 309–10 finitude, 173 First Amendment, 75 FitzGerald, Garrett, 327 Fitzgerald, Valpy, 42–43 Ford, Henry, 197 foreign policy: American exceptionalism in, 337; of Biden, 126–27, 346–47; of Clinton, B., 338 Forrester, Duncan, on Niebuhr, Reinhold, 323–24 Four Modernizations, 236 fourth dimension, 58 Fox, Richard W., 12

372

Index

Francis (Pope), 98 freedom, 38; of press, 84 Freedom Movement, 195 free societies: Japanese conception of, 254–55; necessity of institutions in, 187–88 French, Bill, 5 From Apology to Utopia (Koskenniemi), 100, 102–3 Fry, Christopher, 194 Fukuyama, Francis, 115 Fuller, Lon, 3 Furuya, Yasuo, 255–57, 259 G8, 125 Galston, William, 7, 28–29 Gandhi, Mohandas, 195 Garner, Brian, 72 Gaston, Healan, 191n6 Gentili, Alberico, 319 The Gentle Civilizer of Nations (Koskenniemi), 103 geoeconomics, 123, 128 George, William, 356–57 German Social Democratic Party (SPD), 11 Gifford Lectures of Niebuhr, Reinhold, 13, 270 Gilkey, Langdon, 326 Gill, Robin, 358 Gingles, Dallas, 355, 362 Gingrich, Newt, 211 Gladden, Washington, 197 globalization, 358–59; capitalism and, 41–42; Dorrien on, 181n23; economic order and, 177–78; imperialism and, 241; Lovin on, 34 God, 145; comprehension of will of, 48–49; faith in, 344–45; judgment of, 146–47; mercy of, 146–47; nationalism and, 345; Niebuhr, Reinhold, conception of, xxi; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 45–46, 345–46; theological realist perspective on, 179

good life, 40–41 Gramsci, Antonio, 293 grassroots movements, 360–61 Great Depression, 354 Great Leap Forward, 236 greenhouse gas emissions, 144–45 grief, 68n19 Grotius, Hugo, 325 Gryzlov, Boris, 309 Gustafson, James, 326 Hader, Leon, 346–47 Hale, Edward Everett, 197 Hall, Joseph, 320 Haller, William, 257 Hardin, Garrett, on climate change, 156n54 Harding, Vincent, 16 Hare, R. M., 326 harm reduction, 216 Harries, Richard, 326–27 Hart, H. L. A., 3 The Hastening that Waits (Biggar), 327 Hauerwas, Stanley, 6, 220, 222, 265 Havel, Vaclav, 123 Hebrews 11: 1–3, 59–60 Hegel, G. W. F., 14, 321 hegemonic alliances, 291–92 Heidegger, Martin, 55, 59; on meaning, 61, 64 hermeneutical realism, 57–60, 63 heroin, 208, 211, 215 Hilferding, Rudolf, 10–11 Hinze, Christine, 5 Hirata, Tadasuke, 266 Hiskett, Mervin, 290 historical realism, 264 history: of American exceptionalism, 338–39; of China, 232–36; of Christian realism, 93; faith in, 344; hope and, 144–49; irony of, 214; Marx on, 361; Niebuhr, H. Richard, view of, 265; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 344; of Russia, 121; salvation, 143–49; theology of, 262–63

Index

History and Hermeneutics (Yasukata), 265 Hitler, Adolf, 13 Hobbes, Thomas, 13, 15, 80, 103, 284, 325; Niebuhr, Reinhold, contrasted with, 163 holiness, 288, 289 Holland, Scott, 11 Hollenbach, David, 4, 6 Holy Rus’ (Burgess), 317n2 hope, 48; Christian realism and, 178, 359–60; environmental ethics and, 143–49; history and, 144–49; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 159n90; political change and, 39–40 hopeful realism, 147 Hordern, Joshua, 188, 189 Horton, Miles, 16, 201 How Democracies Die, xix How Democracy Ends, xix Hromadka, 263 Huckabee, Mike, 339 Hu Jintao, 122, 232, 236 Human Destiny (Niebuhr, Reinhold), 264 human flourishing, 22, 28 human good, 28–29, 33–34, 140–41; in free societies, 187 human nature, 357; Kant on, 159n90; love in, 153n20; Lovin on, 295n4; in The Nature and Destiny of Man, 186, 262–63, 326; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 101–2; transcendence of, 186 Humboldt University, 311 humiliated democracy, 269 humility, 372; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 240; prosperity and, 241–45 Humphrey, Hubert, 16 Hu Shi, 235 Hussein, Saddam, 115 hybrid war, 124 Hyde-Price, Adrian, on Niebuhr’s paradox, 325–26 Ibn Khkaldun, 291

373

ICJ. See International Court of Justice ICU. See International Christian University idealism, 44–45, 289; British, 321; defining, 285–86; democracy and, 164; ethical, 16–17; Niebuhr, Reinhold, attacking, 9–10, 285–86; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 164–65; Obama on, 346 identities, marginalized, 32–33 Idowu, E. Bolaji, 287 Iino, Norimoto, 252–53 imagination, 38 immortality, 62 imọtaraẹninikan, 287 imperial democracy, 269 imperialism: globalization and, 241; US, 239–40 incommensurability, Lovin attacking, 7 inculturation theology, 286–89, 299n24 In Defence of War (Biggar), 327–28 infinite regression, 186 Institute of Religion and Democracy (IRD), 202 institutional pluralism, 184 institutions: cultural virtues in, 187; Lovin on, 183–85; necessity of, in free societies, 187–88; as tradition bearers, 187 internal moral realism, 56 International Christian University (ICU), 252 International Court of Justice (ICJ), 103 internationalism, 167–68; liberal, 115– 18; of Niebuhr, Reinhold, xx international law, 105; Christian realism and, 91–92; dialectical character of, 100; Koskenniemi on, 100, 103; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 100–101. See also specific topics International Seabed Authority, 97 International Theory (Wight), 324–25 interpretation, 58 An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (Preston), 321

374

Index

interpretive turn, 227n46 intuition, 56 Iran, 119, 169 Iran crisis, 96 Iraq, 119 Iraq war, 119–20 IRD. See Institute of Religion and Democracy Ireland, 327 irony: of history, 214; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 266; of prosperity, 237–40 The Irony of American History (Niebuhr, Reinhold), 166, 237, 359; translation of, 259, 277n32 irony of prosperity, 237–40 Islam, 290 isolationism, US, 240 Israel, xxi Jackson, Jesse, 194–95 Jackson, Robert, 333n38 Japan: Christianity in, 270; Christian realism in, 269–71; free societies as conceived of in, 254–55; Niebuhrian realism in, 251; reverse course in, 255, 277n20; scholarship on Niebuhr, Reinhold, 252–69 Japanese Constitution: Article 9, 255, 268; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 275n2; pacifism of, 251–52 Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, 266 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 307 Jesus Christ, 29–30, 47, 76 Jiang ZeMin, 236 Jian Zemin, 232 Johnson, Mordecai, 16 judges, Murray, J. C., on, 82–83 judgment, 47–48; in Christian realism, 146; of God, 146–47; mercy and, 148–50, 240; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 240 “Judgment, Freedom, and Responsibility” (Lovin), 264 jurisprudence, 73

justice, 31, 166, 282; love and, 76; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 76–77, 139; racial, 198–203, 211–13. See also social justice Just Say No campaign, 209 just war theory, 319 K2, 210 Kaburagi, Masahiko, 280n79 Kagawa, Toyohiko, 257 Kamergrauzis, Normunds, 321–22, 323; on middle axioms, 332n20 Kant, Immanuel, xx, xxi, 55, 59, 62, 65; categorical imperative of, 221; on human nature, 159n90; Niebuhr, Reinhold, contrasted with, 159n90 Karma, 62 Katongole, Emmanuel, 288–89 Kavanaugh, Brett, 72 Keenan, Cody, 340 Keller, Catherine, 6, 8 Kennedy, John F., 339 Kenya, 283–84 Kerry, John, 341 Keynes, John Maynard, 10–11 Keynesianism, 10 Kilgore, Thomas, 199 Kincaid, Elisabeth, 357 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 16, 353; assassination of, 194 Kingdom of Ends, 65 Kirill (Patriarch), 308, 311, 315 Kirk, Kenneth, 320, 322 Kondo, Katsuhiko, 265–66 Koskenniemi, Martti, 92, 93, 99–103; on international law, 100, 103 Kuhn, Thomas, 95 Kurihara, Motoi, 253 Kuwait, 115–16 Kuyper, Abraham, 45–46 Kuznetsakh, 310–11 Kuznets curve, 139 Labour Party, 13 Lambeth Conference, 288

Index

language, philosophy of, 67n7 Latin America, 42–43 Lavrov, Sergei, 123 law: Christian realism on, 72–73, 84–85; Dworkin on, 73–74; Murray, J. C., on, 83–84; rule of, 74–75, 82 Law of the Sea Treaty, 97 Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic (Niebuhr, Reinhold), 193, 197, 256 Lebacqz, Karen, 5 Leninism, 12 Leo XIII (Pope), 353 “Less Hegel, More History” (Biggar), 328 Lessing, Gothold E., 264 Lewis, John, 201 Liang Qichao, 234 Libby, Scooter, 118 liberal democracy, 28–29; Lovin on, 293; the market elevated in, 41; social pluralism interdependent with, 293–94 Liberal Democratic Party, 251–52 liberal internationalism, of US, 115–18 liberalism, xx, 8–9, 10; autonomy and neutrality in, 188–89; after Cold War, 121; critiques of, 188–89; Niebuhr, Reinhold, critiquing, 14–15; Rawls on, 185 liberalization, 114–15 liberation theology, 5, 42–43, 174 Liberia, 284 Li Dazhao, 248n19 Lincoln, Abraham, xviiii Lin Yü-sheng, 234–36 Lipset, Seymour, 338 literary realism, 207; in Christian realism, 221–22 Liu Xuelian, 243 Li Zehou, 235–36 Local Church Council, 311 Locke, John, 14 London School of Economics, 322–23

375

love: Augustine on, 153n20, 186; in human nature, 153n20; justice and, 76; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 153n20, 186; war and, 327–28 Lovin, Robin, xvii, 32, 172, 189, 262, 264, 295, 326; on Christian realism, 4–5, 6–8, 21–22, 25–26, 37–39, 92, 114, 206–7, 221, 354; on collapse of superpowers, 115; contexts used by, 207; on despair, 178; on evil, 209; on globalization, 34; on human nature, 295n4; incommensurability attacked by, 7; on institutions, 183–85; on irony of history, 214; on liberal democracy, 293; on moral realism, 38–39, 56; on new realities, 39–44; on Niebuhr, Reinhold, xviii, 3–6; pluralist realism of, 215; on political polarization, 71–72; on political realism, 38–39; on politics, 33–34, 207; theological realism of, 24–31; Unapologetic Principle of, 221; on Witness approach, 206, 220 Löwith, Karl, 258 Luther, Martin, 159n90, 282–83 Lutheranism, 137 Lu Xun, 235 Lyman, Abbott, 197 Macchiavelli, 103 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 7, 189 Madison, James, xviii Mahoney, Josef G., 232 Maidan Revolution, 310 Malotky, Dan, 5 Man, Society, and History (Takeda), 253 Mandela, Nelson, 39 Mao Zedong, 248n16, 248n19 marginalized identities, 32–33 the market: elevation of, in liberal democracy, 41; nature and, 42 Marx, Karl, xx, 9–10, 62; on history, 361; on the state, 10 Marxism, 9, 10, 15, 42; on American exceptionalism, 338; in China,

376

Index

242–43, 248n19; democracy and, 11–12; in Russia, 306 MAT. See medication-assisted treatment Mathews, Shailer, 197 Matthews, Gary, 5 Mauldin, Josh, 361 May Fourth Movement, 234–35, 248n16 Mays, Benjamin E., 16 Mazyrin, Alexander, 312 Mbeki, Thabo, 285 Mbiti, John, 283–84, 287 McCann, Dennis, 5, 6 McClellan, Nathan, 357 McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life, 335n62 McDonnall, Brett, 75 McKenny, Gerald, 358, 362 meaning, 57, 67n7; of cultures and civilizations, 185; Heidegger on, 61, 64; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 185–86; time and, 64 media outlets, 45 mediating structures, 293 medicalization of deviance, 213 medication-assisted treatment (MAT), 214 mercy: of God, 146–47; judgment and, 148–50, 240; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 240 metaphysics, 212; Christian, 65; defining, 60; of morality, 60–61, 65 methamphetamine, 209–10, 212–13 middle axioms: Bennett on, 332n24; Kamergrauzis on, 332n20; Preston on, 322–23, 326 Miles, Rebekah, 357, 360 Miller, Perry, 257 Mitchell, Basil, 326 Modern American and Political Intellectual (Hirata), 266 Moltmann, Jürgen, 265, 267 Mondale, Walter, 339 Moore, G. E., 55 moral intuition, 55

morality, 25; African, 287; metaphysics of, 60–61, 65 Moral Man and Immoral Society (Niebuhr, Reinhold), 4, 162, 193, 206–7, 321, 343, 354–55; double focus of moral life in, 219–20; politics described in, 361; translation of, 258–59, 277n32 moral outrage, 71 moral progress, xx moral realism: aporia of, 57, 63; basic, 55–56; defining, 53; economics and, 175–77; of the future, 60–63; internal, 56; Lovin on, 38–39, 56; political realism and, 172; strong, 56–57; Thomistic, 72–73; time in, 53–54; types of, 55–57 moral respect, 63 moral responsibility, 63–65; Christian realist commitment to, 286 moral truth, 54–55 Morgenthau, 270 Moscow, 306, 308–9 Moscow Diocesan House, 311 Moscow Theological Academy, 311 Muelder, Walter, 16 multilateralism, 119 multipolar world, 121–22, 360–61 Murdoch, Iris, 55 Murray, John Courtney, 3, 7, 73, 77–85, 93–94; on judges, 82–83; on law, 83–84; on strict textualism, 80–81 Murray, Pauli, 16 Muscovy, 310–11 myth, 62; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 26 naloxone, 208 narrative ethics, 68n16 nationalism, xx, 115; in China, 122, 241–45; Christian, 345–46; dangers of, 343; God and, 345; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 343; popular, 243–44; of Putin, 305–6; Russian, 117; state, 243–44; of Trump, 125, 169 national messianism, 343–44

Index

National Security Council, 124–25 NATO, 117, 121–22, 128 natural law, 3, 5, 55, 357; Niebuhr, Reinhold, wary of, 102 nature: the market and, 42; religion and, 42 The Nature and Destiny of Man (Niebuhr, Reinhold), 14, 38, 194, 259, 303, 354, 358; human nature described in, 186, 262–63, 326; translation of, 262 Nazism, 165, 312 Nazi-Soviet pact, 13 Neff, Stephen C., 92 negative theology, 48–49 neoconservatism, 4, 114, 118–19 neoliberalism, 139, 141 Neuhaus, Richard John, 179, 202, 293 neutrality, in liberalism, 188–89 New Culture Movement, 235 New Deal, 6, 16; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 10 NGOs. See non-governmental organizations Niebuhr, H. Richard, 25, 46, 263; history viewed by, 265; radical monotheism of, 26–27, 31, 359; on social justice, 355 Niebuhr, Reinhold, xvii, xix, 24, 61, 63, 92, 141, 206, 303; African Americans and, 198–201; on American Dream, 343; Anglican ethics influenced by, 320–24; on Atonement, 147–48; Augustinianism of, 10, 13–14, 186; Barth contrasted with, 253; children of darkness, 161–62, 163–65, 355, 360; children of light, 14, 37–38, 98, 161–62, 163–65, 355, 360; Christian realism of, xviii, 5, 17; on common heritage, 97–98; on communism, 165; on corporate governance, 75; on democracy, xx–xxi, 15, 37–39, 163, 166, 186–87; on economic order, 171–72; ethical radicalism of, 268; on evil, 209; on faith in history,

377

344; Forrester on, 323–24; on God, 345–46; God conceived of by, xxi; Hobbes contrasted with, 163; on hope, 159n90; on human nature, 101–2; on humility, 240; on idealism, 164–65; idealism attacked by, 9–10, 285–86; internationalism of, xx; on international law, 100–101; on irony, 266; on irony of history, 214; on irony of prosperity, 237–40; on Japanese Constitution, 275n2; Japanese scholarship on, 252–69; on judgment, 240; on justice, 76–77, 139; Kant contrasted with, 159n90; legacy of, 360; liberalism critiqued by, 14–15; life experiences of, 354–55; on love, 153n20, 186; Lovin on, xviii, 3–6; on meaning, 185–86; on mercy, 240; on moral life, 219–20; on nationalism, 343; on national messianism, 343–44; on natural law, 102; on Nazi-Soviet pact, 13; on politics, 63, 260; on power, 75–76, 196–97; Preston and, 321; on racial justice, 198–203; on racism, 201–2; Rawls and, 185; reformed Christian ethics influenced by, 320–24; on Russia, 304, 343–44; on sectarianism, 311–12; on sin, 158n73, 209–10, 345; on socialism, 11–12, 354–55; socialism supported by, 10–11; social justice supported by, 199–200; on social order, 162– 63; on the state, 10–11; theological ethics and, 295n1; on totalitarianism, 308; on Troeltsch, 263–64; on US, 166–68, 237–38; World War II supported by, 114 Niebuhr, Ursula KeppelCompton, 13, 358 Niebuhr and His Age (Brown, C.), 262 Niebuhr and Liberalism (Takahashi), 262–63 Niebuhrian realism, 72–73, 75–77, 197; on American exceptionalism,

378

Index

342–47; in Japan, 251; limits and possibilities of, 356–57; pacifism and, 254; political polarization and, 360–62; on self-interest, 168; on strict textualism, 75–76. See also specific topics Nigeria, 284, 288, 294; Islam in, 290 1911 Revolution, 235 Nishitani, Kosuke, 263–64 Nixon, Richard, 196 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 335n62; in Africa, 292–93 non-subordination, principle of, 30 Northern Ireland, 327 North Korea, 119, 169 Novak, Michael, 202 Nova Scotia, 194 nuclear power, 169 Oakeshott, Michael, 325 Obama, Barack, 115, 120–21, 123, 125, 167; on American exceptionalism, 339–40; on idealism, 346 O’Donnell, James, xviii Ohki, Hideo, 255, 256, 257–59, 261, 262, 264, 266, 277n34 OIC. See Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America Oldham, J. H., 322 ọmọluabi, 287 On Dying Well, 326 Operation Breadbasket, 194 Operation Push, 194 opioid crisis: Christian realism on, 207– 18; contexts of, 207–8; racial justice and, 211–13 Opium Wars, 232–33, 241 Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America (OIC), 196 optimism, 164; pessimistic, 147 Orechanov, Georgii, 311 Orenstein, Mitchell, 124 original righteousness, 321–22 original sin, 321–22 Ornstein, Mitchell, 121

Ottati, Douglas, 147, 360 overdosing, 208 Oxford Conference on Church, Community, and State, 320–21, 358 OxyContin, 208–9, 214–15 Pacific War, 276n10 pacifism: of Japanese Constitution, 251– 52; Niebuhrian realism and, 254 pain, 209 Paine, Thomas, 14 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 179, 265 Pardo, Arvid, 95–97, 101, 105 Paris, Peter, 357 Paris Climate Accords, 127 Paris Climate Agreement, 125, 157n68 Parks, Rosa, 201 participation, principle of, 30 Pascal, Blaise, 326–27 Passion for Justice (Beckley), 6 Patriarchate, 311 Pauck, 257 Paul (Saint), 62 Pauley, Jane, 340 Peace Constitution, 257, 268269 Pearl Harbor, 14 Pentecostalism, in Africa, 288 Perkins, William, 320 Perry, Michael, 7 personalism, 30–31 personal renewal, ethics of, 286–89 pessimistic optimism, 147 Peter the Great, 304–5 Peyrefitte, Alain, 242 Piketty, Thomas, 176–77 Pitcher, Alvin, 194–95, 196 Plato, 62 Plessy v. Ferguson, 201–2 pluralism, xviii, 6–7, 40–41, 78; Christian realism and, xviii–xix, 140–41; institutional, 184; social, 40, 293; value, 28–29 pluralist realism, 140; of Lovin, 215 political change, hope and, 39–40 political democracy, 15

Index

political polarization: Lovin on, 71–72; Niebuhrian realism and, 360–62 political realism: economic order and, 172–74; Lovin on, 38–39; moral realism and, 172; theological realism and, 24–25 political theology, 8 politics, 10; Aristotelian, 140; Augustine on, 113; Brown, R., on, 199; Christian realism and, 22, 43–44, 92, 139–42; environmental ethics and, 138–39; eschatology and, 63; of government, 357–59; Lovin on, 33–34, 207; Moral Man and Immoral Society describing, 361; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 63, 260; as religious vocation, 289–92; of spectatorship, 168; values, 41, 44–45; Weber on, 347 Poppe, Ulrike, 327 popular nationalism, 243–44 populism, 39 positive feedback loops, 135 Posner, Eric, 72 post-truth era, 71 poverty, in China, 233 power: environmental ethics and, 141– 42; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 75–76, 196–97; self-interest and, 168; of the state, 141–42; will to power, 164 PPP. See Purchasing Power Parity prescriptive realism, 153n16 Preston, Ronald: at London School of Economics, 322; on middle axioms, 322–23, 326; Niebuhr, Reinhold, and, 321; on original righteousness, 321–22 principles, Dworkin on, 73–75 progressives, 6, 34 Progress Plaza, 196 prophets, faith in, 344–45 prosperity: in Chinese Dream, 232–37; defining, 233; humility and, 241–45; irony of, 237–40; social justice

379

and, 238; in US, 238; virtue linked to, 238–39 Prosser, Gabriel, 200 Protestantism, 78, 281 proximate solutions, 362; ethics of, 354–56 public reason, 185 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), 122, 214 Purdue Pharma, 208–9 Putin, Vladimir, 39, 117, 120, 169, 311, 314; authoritarianism under, 303–4; nationalism of, 305–6; Russian Orthodox Church and, 307–9; Ukraine invaded by, 306, 315 Al Qaeda, 119 Qing dynasty, 242 Qu Qiubai, 248n19 racial justice: Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 198–203; opioid crisis and, 211–13 racism, Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 201–2 radical monotheism, of Niebuhr, H. Richard, 26–27, 31, 359 Radical Religion, 12 Ragaz, Leonhard, 11 Ramsey, Paul, 286, 356 Rauschenbusch, Walter, 9, 197 Rawls, John, 3, 7; on liberalism, 185; Niebuhr, Reinhold, and, 185 Reading Law (Scalia & Garner), 72 Reagan, Nancy, 209 Reagan, Ronald, 339, 341 Reagan Administration, 97 realism: critical, 47; hermeneutical, 57–60, 63; moral, 38–39, 53–54; political, 24–25, 38–39; theological, 21–23; time and, 54–55 Redeemed Christian Church of God, 288 redemption, doctrine of, 47–48 Red Terror, 312 Reflections on the End of an Era (Niebuhr, Reinhold), 162

380

Index

Reformation, 293 reformed Christian ethics, Niebuhr, Reinhold, influencing, 320–24 Reformed Protestantism, 47–48 regulative ideals, 65 regulative principles, 356–57 Reinhold Niebuhr and America (Suzuki), 261 Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Lovin), 5–6, 32, 172, 183, 264 Reinhold Niebuhr and the Issues of our Time (Harries), 326 Reinhold Niebuhr’s View of Man (Suzuki), 260 religion, nature and, 42 Reset Button, 123 responsibility, 168; in democracy, 164– 65; ethics of, 355; moral, 63–65, 286 Rggs v. Palmer, 73–74 Ricouer, Paul, 58–59 righteousness, original, 321–22 Robbins, Lionel, 173 Roman Catholic Church, 305 Rome, 113 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 16 Rorty, Richard, 168 Rotenberg, Arkadii, 311 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 14 rule of law, 74–75, 82 rules, Dworkin on, 73–75 Russia, 128, 169; church-state relations in, 315; civil society in, 309–13; history of, 121; loss of superpower status, 117, 305; Marxism in, 306; national identity in, 304–7; nationalism in, 117; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 304, 343– 44; orthodoxy in, 304–7; Trump and, 125–26 Russian Orthodox Church, 303–7, 312, 358–59; critiques of, 313–15; Putin and, 307–9 Russo-Japanese War, 268 Rustin, Bayard, 201

Rwanda, 284 Sabella, Jeremy, 270–71 salvation: Christian realism account of history of, 143–49; ethics in history of, 148–49 Sanderson, Robert, 320 Sartre, Jean Paul, 193–94 Save Nigeria Group, 293, 294 Scalia, Antonin, 72, 77 scarcity, 173 Schilling, S. Paul, 16 Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 16, 263 Schmitt, Carl, 8 Schwartz, Benjamin, 233–34 Schweiker, William, 6, 359 SCM. See Student Christian Movement of Canada Scowcroft, Brent, 118 sectarianism, Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 311–12 Seigakuin University, 258, 262 selective purchasing, 195–96 Self-Defense Forces, 266 self-interest, 142, 165; Christian realism on, 210–11; hiding of, 342; Niebuhrian realism on, 168; power and, 168; sin contrasted with, 210; transcendence of, 166 Self-Strengthening Movement, 235 self-transcendence, 162–63 Selma march, 340 Selma-Montgomery March, 195 sensuality, 102 Serenity Prayer, 258 Sheldon, Munroe, 197 Shpiller, Vsevolod, 310–11 Sierra Leone, 284 significance, 57 Simmons, Frederick, 357 Simms, Brendan, 324 sin, 46–47, 60, 92; in environmental ethics, 141–42; inevitability of, 209– 10; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 158n73, 209–10, 345; original, 321–22;

Index

overcoming, 345; self-interest contrasted with, 210; structural, 209 skepticism, 45 Smith, Adam, 14 Smith, Kline and French, 209 Snowden, Philip, 10–11 social class, 71; consciousness, 9 social constructivism, 56 social criticism, 292–95 social Darwinism, 233, 234, 242 Social Ethics in the Making (Dorrien), 171 social gospel, 8–9, 17, 141, 143, 148, 171, 360; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 197 Social Gospel, xviii socialism: collapse of, 207; democratic, 11, 13; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 11–12, 354–55; Niebuhr, Reinhold, supporting, 10–11 Socialist Party, 9–10, 14, 16 social justice: limitations of Christian realism and, 198–203; Miebuhr, H. Richard, on, 355; Niebuhr, Reinhold, supporting, 199–200; prosperity and, 238 social media, 45 social order, Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 162–63 social pluralism, 40; liberal democracy interdependent with, 293–94 The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches (Troeltsch), 263 soft-power realism, 269 Soleimani, Qasem, 91 Somalia, 284 Sophocles, 58 Sorokin, Alexander, 309, 315 soteriology, of Christian realism, 148–49 soul-reformation, 289 Source-Being, 287 Soviet Union, 128, 260–61; collapse of, 117, 305, 338; research into crimes of, 312 Soyinka, Wole, 284 space law, 101–2

381

SPD. See German Social Democratic Party Spice, 210 Stackhouse, Max, 6 Stalin, Joseph, 13, 306, 312 Stalinism, 165 Stalinist Terror, 312 stare decisis, 74 the state: in environmental ethics, 141–42; Marx conception of, 10; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 10–11; power of, 141–42 state nationalism, 243–44 St. Nicholas Parish, 311 Stoics, 55, 61, 64 St. Petersburg, 305 strict textualism, 72; Murray, J. C., on, 80–81; Niebuhrian realism on, 75–76 strong moral realism, 56–57 St. Tikhon’s University, 310–12 Student Christian Movement of Canada (SCM), 193–94 sub-Saharan Africa, 290 Sudan, 284 suicide, 215–16 Sulaiman, Ibraheem, 290 Sullivan, Leon, 195–96 Sullivan Principles, 196 Sung, Jung Mo, 174 Sun Yet-sen, 232 superpowers, 117, 232; China as, 241, 245; Lovin on collapse of, 115; Russia losing status as, 117, 305; US as, 240 Suzuki, Yugo, 260–61 tajdid, 290 Takahashi, Yoshibumi, 261–63, 280n78, 358–59 Takeda, Kiyoko, 253–55, 259, 276n10 Talbott, Strobe, 342; Clinton, B., and, 337–38, 347 Taliban, 119 Tawney, R. H., 13, 175 Taylor, Jeremy, 320

382

Index

Temple, William, 321 Teodor, Zinon, 309–10, 312 theological ethics: African Renaissance and, 285–86; Niebuhr, Reinhold, and, 295n1 theological realism, 21; Christian realism and, 22–23, 24–28; economics and, 177–79; eschatological, 29–30; on God, 179; of Lovin, 24–31; newer realities and, 31–35; political realism and, 24–25; unity of the good and, 29–31; value pluralism and, 28–29 theology of history, 262–63 Theology of History in Reinhold Niebuhr (Takahashi), 262 Thomas, Norman, 9, 12, 13 Thomistic conception of conscience, 322 Thomistic moral realism, 72–73 Thompson, E. P., 9 thrown projects, 61 Thucydides, 113 Thurman, Howard, 16 Tillich, Paul, 16, 193, 253, 257, 262, 265 time: meaning and, 64; in moral realism, 53–54; realism and, 54–55 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 288 Togo, 284 Tokyo Union Theological Seminary, 255, 261 Tolstoy, Lev, 305, 311 de la Torre, Miguel, 42 totalitarianism, 37, 136, 185; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 308 TPP. See Trans Pacific Partnership “Transcendence and the Political” (Chiba), 267 Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), 125 triumphant democracy, 269 Troeltsch, Ernst, 255, 265; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 263–64 Truman, Harry S., 95

Trump, Donald, 91, 122, 167; on American exceptionalism, 341; isolationism of, 168–69; nationalism of, 125, 169; Russia and, 125–26 Truth, Sojourner, 200 Tubman, Harriet, 200 The Turbulent Church in America (Furuya), 255 ubuntu, 287 UCCJ. See United Church of Christ in Japan Uchimura, 268 UDA. See Union for Democratic Action Uganda, 284, 288–89 Ukraine, 127, 169, 311; Putin invading, 306, 315 Unapologetic Principle, 221 UNCLOS. See United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea unilateralism, of US, 118–20 Union for Democratic Action (UDA), 14 Union Theological Seminary, 197, 198, 260, 323, 354 United Church of Christ in Japan (UCCJ), 256 United Nations, 95–96 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), 93; Christian realism and, 94–99 United States (US): capitol riots, 361; China relations with, 117–18; democracy in, 166–67; imperialism of, 239–40; isolationism of, 240; liberal internationalism of, 115–18; Niebuhr, Reinhold, on, 166–68, 237–38; prosperity in, 238; as superpower, 240; unilateralism of, 118–20 unity of the good, theological realism and, 29–31 University of Chicago Divinity School, 194 US. See United States

Index

value pluralism, theological realism and, 28–29 values politics, 41, 44–45 Vanderbilt University, 264 Vergerio, Claire, 331n1 Vietnam War, 261, 267–68 virtue, prosperity linked to, 238–39 virtue ethics, 287 Visser’t Hooft, Willem A., 253 Vital Center Liberalism, 263 Vladimir (Saint), 313 Vorob’ev, Vladimir, 310, 312 Walesa, Lech, 123 Wang Jiayu, 232 Wang Zheng, 232 war: cyberwarfare, 128; just war theory, 319; love and, 327–28. See also specific topics Weber, Max, 355; on politics, 347 Wesley, John, 54, 55, 59, 65, 359–60 West, Charles C., 267 Whitmore, Todd, 5, 357 Why Liberalism Failed (Deneen), 177 “Why the Christian Church is Not Pacifist?” (Niebuhr, Reinhold), 253–54 Wight, Martin, 324–25; Jackson, R., on, 333n38 Wilkinson, Alan, 321 Williams, Preston, 3–4, 353 Williams, Reggie, 199 Williams, Roger, 79 will to power, 164 Wilson, Woodrow, 115, 325 Winners Chapel, 288 Winter, Gibson, 267 wisdom, 81 withdrawal, drug, 218–19

383

Witness approach, 220; Lovin on, 206 Wolfowitz, Paul, 118 Wolf Warrior diplomacy, 122, 243 Wolin, Sheldon S., 267 World Council of Churches, 199, 253 World Mission National Traveling Secretary, 194 World Trade Organization (WTO), 117–18 World War I, 14, 355 World War II, 239; Niebuhr, Reinhold, supporting, 114 WTO. See World Trade Organization Wu Hsu Reform, 235 Xanax, 215 Xhosa, 287 Xiao Gongqin, 243–44 Xi Jinping, 122, 231, 236, 243; on Chinese Dream, 232 Xu Jilin, 233–34 Yamamoto, Shin, 252–53 Yang Hongxing, 244 Yang Xue, 243 Yasukata, Masatoshi, 264–65 Yekaterinburg, 306 Yeltsin, Boris, 306, 311 Yen Fu, 233 Yoder, J. H., 256–57 Yoruba, 287, 294 Yugoslav wars, 117 Zaire, 284 Zhao Dingxin, 244 Zhao Lijan, 122 Zhao Suisheng, 243 Zion Baptist Church, 195–96

About the Contributors

Nigel Biggar, CBE, is Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford and the author of In Defence of War (Oxford, 2013), What’s Wrong with Rights? (Oxford, 2020), and Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (William Collins, 2023). John P. Burgess is the James Henry Snowden Professor of Systematic Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, He has twice been a Fulbright scholar to Russia (2012, 2018–19), has lectured in Ukraine, and is the author of Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia. (Yale, 2017) Kevin Carnahan is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri, former president of the Niebuhr Society, and former co-editor of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. Gary Dorrien teaches social ethics and philosophy of religion at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University. His many books include Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit, which won the PROSE Award in 2013, The New Abolition, which won the Grawemeyer Award in 2017, and Breaking White Supremacy, which won the American Library Association Award in 2019. His latest book is In a Post-Hegelian Spirit: Philosophical Theology as Idealistic Discontent (Baylor, 2020). William P. George is Emeritus Professor of Theology at Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois, where he taught a range of courses in theology and served for several years as director of the core curriculum. In addition to master’s degrees in philosophy and divinity, he holds a PhD in Ethics and Society from the University of Chicago Divinity School, where his dissertation, under the direction of Robin W. Lovin, focused on the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The author of Mining Morality: Prospecting for Ethics in a Wounded World (Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019), his articles and book chapters have focused on such topics as gun violence, climate change, future generations, war and peace, and education. 385

386

About the Contributors

Dallas Gingles is the Director of the Houston-Galveston Extension Program of Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, where he teaches courses in moral theology, systematic theology, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and bioethics. His research focuses on the problem of dirty hands. He has published in the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Studies in Christian Ethics, and is a frequent contributor to The Dallas Morning News. Eric Gregory is Professor of Religion and former Chair of the Humanities Council at Princeton University. He is the author of Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (2008), and various articles, including “Before The Original Position: The Neo-Orthodox Theology of the Young John Rawls” (Journal of Religious Ethics), “Democracy” (Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr), and “Augustinians and the New Liberalism” (Augustinian Studies). He is currently working on a book tentatively titled, The In-Gathering of Strangers: Global Justice and Political Theology, which examines secular and religious perspectives on global justice. Luping Huang is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. She is the author of Women and Pride (2018) and the translator of Langdon Gilkey’s On Niebuhr (in Chinese, 2020). Simeon O. Ilesanmi is the Washington M. Wingate Professor and Director of Graduate Program in Religious Studies at Wake Forest University. A former Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at Princeton University, he has published extensively on human rights, ethics of war, and religion and law, with a particular focus on Africa. He is a co-editor of The Rule of Law and the Rule of God (New York: Palgrave, 2014).  Elisabeth Rain Kincaid holds the Legendre-Soulé Chair in Business Ethics and serves as Director of the Center for Ethics and Economic Justice at Loyola University New Orleans. Her research interests include natural law theory, Spanish scholasticism, and the intersection between law, theology, and business ethics. She has published numerous journal articles, including in The Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Political Theology, The Journal of Moral Theology, and The Scottish Journal of Theology. Robin W. Lovin is Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics emeritus at Southern Methodist University. He served as dean of the Perkins School of Theology at SMU and is a former president of the Society of Christian Ethics. He is author of Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism and Christian Realism and the New Realities. Joshua Mauldin is Associate Director of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey. He is author of Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics (Oxford University Press, 2021), co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr (Oxford University Press, 2021), and co-editor of Theology as Interdisciplinary Inquiry: Learning with and from

About the Contributors

387

the Natural and Human Sciences (Eerdmans, 2017). He holds a PhD in religious ethics from Southern Methodist University, and his research interests include theological ethics, law and religion, and comparative understandings of religious freedom. His research has been published in scholarly journals such as the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, Political Theology, and the Journal of Law and Religion. Gerald McKenny is Walter Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. His published work focuses on theological ethics and biomedical ethics. His most recent book is Karl Barth’s Moral Thought (2021). Nathan I. C. McLellan is CEO and a Senior Teaching Fellow at Venn Foundation—an education institute helping people to connect the Christian faith to everyday life. He holds degrees in economics, finance, and theology from Massey University and Regent College, and a Ph.D. in Christian Ethics from Southern Methodist University. He has worked as a research economist and economic consultant, and has held leadership roles within the Christian not-for-profit sector. Rebekah L. Miles is Susanna Wesley Professor of Ethics and Practical Theology at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University and President of the Niebuhr Society. Her books include Georgia Harkness: The Remaking of a Liberal Theologian; The Bonds of Freedom: Feminist Theology and Christian Realism; When the One You Love Is Gone; and The Pastor as Moral Guide. She is also co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Christian Ethics. Douglas F. Ottati is Craig Family Distinguished Professor of Reformed Theology and Justice at Davidson College. His most recent books are A Theology for the Twenty-First Century and Living Belief: A Short Introduction to Christian Faith. Peter J. Paris is the Elmer G. Homrighausen Professor Emeritus of Christian Social Ethics, Princeton Theological Seminary. His books include Black Religious Leaders: Unity in Diversity; The Social Teaching of the Black Churches; The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a Common Moral Discourse; Virtues and Values: The African and African American Experience; he has also edited The History of the Riverside Church in the City of New York; Religion and Poverty: Pan-African Perspectives; and African American Theological Ethics: A Reader. William Schweiker is the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Chicago and holds an Honorary Doctorate from Uppsala University. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Dust That Breathes: Christian Faith and the New Humanisms (2010) as well as many articles and other volumes. He is an

388

About the Contributors

ordained United Methodist Minister and served as World Methodist Intern, Wesley’s Chapel, London. Frederick V. Simmons is the John Templeton Foundation Research Scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary. He has also held academic appointments at Amherst College, Boston University School of Theology, The Center of Theological Inquiry, La Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, La Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, and Yale Divinity School. Yoshibumi Takahashi, who died in 2021 while this book was being edited, was educated at Andrews University (MA) and Tokyo Union Theological Seminary (MA and Th.D). He taught at San-iku Gakuen Junior College as Professor and later became President. He was Professor of the Graduate School of Seigakuin University and Director of the General Research Institute of the University. His publications include the following Japanese works among: Theology of History in Reinhold Niebuhr, 1993 and Niebuhr and Liberalism, 2014. Todd Whitmore is Associate Professor of Theology and Concurrent Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Imitating Christ in Magwi: An Anthropological Theology. His current research centers around his work as a Certified Addiction Peer Recovery Coach for persons addicted to opioids and methamphetamine in northern Indiana.