Abstract
Pacifism is a clear, coherent and straightforward approach to the ethics of international politics. It stands as one extreme position on the ethics of the use of force. By rejecting it, Niebuhr set himself the task of elaborating an alternative approach to the ethics of international politics. It was his rejection of pacifism which led to his development of a Christian realist and political realist outlook, his alternative approach to ethics and politics which he believed more fully meets one’s moral responsibilities. The issue of pacifism was of particular significance in the development of Niebuhr’s political realist approach to politics (as important as his later turning away from Marxism and socialism). For war was central to the experience of his generation. Niebuhr’s adult life encompassed the Great War of 1914–18, the general revulsion of war that followed it, the preparation for and prosecution of an even greater war, and the ensuing perilous nuclear balance of the Cold War. War was, in Niebuhr’s time, an enormous and inescapable social and political issue.
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Notes
Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘The World Council and the Peace Issue’, Christianity and Crisis vol. 10, no. 14 (7 August 1950) 108.
Reinhold Niebuhr, letter in New Republic (22 February 1922) 372.
Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘Why I am Not a Christian’, The Christian Century (15 December 1927) 1482.
Devere Allen (ed.), Pacifism in the Modern World (New York: Doubleday, Doran 1929) 17.
D. B. Robertson (ed.), Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press 1957) 245.
Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘A Critique of Pacifism’, Atlantic Monthly 139 (May 1927) 639–41.
Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘Let the Liberal Churches Stop Fooling Themselves’, The Christian Century 48 (25 March 1931) 402.
Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘Germany Must be Told!’, The Christian Century 50 (9 August 1933) 1015–15.
Reinhold Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1940) 31.
Niebuhr, ‘The Churches and the War’, Town Meetings of the Air (27 August 1942).
John H. Yoder, The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press 1971) 77; also The Politics of Jesus, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1972) 106n.
Niebuhr, ‘Is Peace or Justice the Goal?’, World Tomorrow 15 (21 September 1932), 276.
Gordon Harland, The Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press 1960) 220.
Niebuhr, ‘Is Peace or Justice the Goal?’, World Tomorrow 15 (21 September 1932) 276.
Henry B. Clark, Serenity, Courage and Wisdom: The Enduring Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press 1994) 38.
The Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968) was a contemporary of Niebuhr who, in the wake of World War I, also broke with liberal theology. There were many similarities in their lives and their thought. They were both pastors and the sons of pastors (Barth in the Swiss Reformed Church), they were both active in workers’ rights (Barth organised a union for textile workers in Safenwil, Switzerland), and they were both involved in socialist politics (Barth in the Social-Democratic Party). Barth was influenced by Kierkegaard and broke with liberal theology to take up Reformation interests. He was known for his ‘neo-orthodox’ theology and for his striking attacks on the cherished assumptions of liberal theology. There are similarities in the political thought of Niebuhr and Barth too as Barth challenges the temptation to identify God with cultural expressions and national purposes. He warned how easily Christians could adopt the standards of the flag rather than the cross in dealing with social and political issues and then believe their state to represent the will of God on the world stage. This aspect of Barth’s thought developed in opposition to the nationalism of Nazi Germany where he lectured from 1931 until expelled in 1935. He then became a leader of the Confessing Church, a group opposed to Hitler’s policies. See Geoffrey Bromiley, Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth (London: Eerdmans 1979);
Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1968).
Niebuhr was often called a neo-orthodox theologian himself for his emphasis on original sin and his contrasting of all historical achievements to God. But he denied being a Barthian and was to criticise both the theology and the politics of Barth. He disliked the way Barthian thought lent itself to conservatism. In particular, Barth’s failure to condemn the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 drew harsh criticism from Niebuhr who insisted that relative judgements could still be made between human achievements. Barthian neo-orthodoxy, like liberalism and Marxism, was an idea-system from which Niebuhr drew many insights but against which he was to rebel vigorously; see June C. Bingham, Courage to Change: An Introduction to the Life and Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr (New York, 1961) 337–40.
Donald B. Meyer, The Protestant Search for Political Realism 1911–41 (Berkeley: University of California Press 1960) 355.
Dennis McCann, ‘Reinhold Niebuhr and Jacques Maritain on Marxism’, Journal of Religion vol. 58, no. 2 (April 1978) 140–168.
Charles C. Brown, Niebuhr and His Age (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International 1992) 100 and 120.
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© 1997 Colm McKeogh
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McKeogh, C. (1997). Niebuhr’s Critique of Pacifism. In: The Political Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25891-8_2
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