I usually prefer to stay away any political hog-wash but I do have to disclose that my vote in the last presidential election was influenced by Reinhold Neibhur. Now with my self-credibility at stake in front of the man in the mirror, I tend to closely follow how much of Obama's doctrine is Neibhurian. To my big relief for the past 11 months, it has been spectacularly Neibhurian (esp. his foriegn policy). Starting from his inaguration speech to last weeks speech at West Point had Neibhurianism written all over it but so far it has been just rhetorical and for the first time in his presidency "Neibhurianist" action is glittering after his Afghan troop decision.
Fareed Zakaria writes
"Obama is said to admire the great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. This approach—engaged in the world with a positive vision but cautious about overreaching—is Niebuhr in action."
and this by David Brooks:
"This style has never been more evident than in his decision to expand the war in Afghanistan. America traditionally fights its wars in a spirit of moral fervor. Most war presidents cast themselves as heroes on a white charger, believing that no one heeds an uncertain trumpet.
Obama, on the other hand, cloaked himself in what you might call Niebuhrian modesty. His decision to expand the war is the most morally consequential one of his presidency so far, yet as the moral stakes rose, Obama’s emotional temperature cooled to just above freezing. He spoke Tuesday night in the manner of an unwilling volunteer, balancing the arguments within his administration by leading the country deeper in while pointing the way out."
Niebuhr didn't believe too much in American expceptionlism, but I believe Obama believes in "Pragmatic" American expceptionlism (sans the machoness) more than Niebuhr ever did. That could be a crucial factor in his presidency and Damon Linker has a great piece today (thanks):
"For Reinhold Niebuhr, the greatest exponent of Christian realism, this gets things exactly backward—and threatens to encourage the very aspect of America’s national character that most needs to be moderated or restrained. “Every nation has its own form of spiritual pride,” Niebuhr noted in The Irony of American History (1952), and the American version takes the form of the myth that “our nation turned its back upon the vices of Europe and made a new beginning”—a beginning marked by moral purity and the special favor of God. This uniquely American self-understanding has tended to inspire national over-confidence with regard to our virtue.
Fareed Zakaria writes
"Obama is said to admire the great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. This approach—engaged in the world with a positive vision but cautious about overreaching—is Niebuhr in action."
and this by David Brooks:
"This style has never been more evident than in his decision to expand the war in Afghanistan. America traditionally fights its wars in a spirit of moral fervor. Most war presidents cast themselves as heroes on a white charger, believing that no one heeds an uncertain trumpet.
Obama, on the other hand, cloaked himself in what you might call Niebuhrian modesty. His decision to expand the war is the most morally consequential one of his presidency so far, yet as the moral stakes rose, Obama’s emotional temperature cooled to just above freezing. He spoke Tuesday night in the manner of an unwilling volunteer, balancing the arguments within his administration by leading the country deeper in while pointing the way out."
Niebuhr didn't believe too much in American expceptionlism, but I believe Obama believes in "Pragmatic" American expceptionlism (sans the machoness) more than Niebuhr ever did. That could be a crucial factor in his presidency and Damon Linker has a great piece today (thanks):
"For Reinhold Niebuhr, the greatest exponent of Christian realism, this gets things exactly backward—and threatens to encourage the very aspect of America’s national character that most needs to be moderated or restrained. “Every nation has its own form of spiritual pride,” Niebuhr noted in The Irony of American History (1952), and the American version takes the form of the myth that “our nation turned its back upon the vices of Europe and made a new beginning”—a beginning marked by moral purity and the special favor of God. This uniquely American self-understanding has tended to inspire national over-confidence with regard to our virtue.
Niebuhr maintains that American over-confidence makes us a nation impatient with various limitations that are coeval with the human condition. We are, first of all, impatient with limits on our knowledge and power. Convinced that God is on our side, we lack the humility to accept that “the whole drama of human history is . . . too large for human comprehension or management.” We are likewise impatient with limitations on the degree of moral purity—especially our own—that is possible in political life.
Niebuhr rightly remarks that Americans nearly always mean well when they act in the world. Our moral perils are thus “not those of conscious malice or the explicit lust for power.” Yet the rules of the world are such that good intentions—even our own—often lead to unintended bad consequences. This is a lesson we seem incapable of learning, or remembering, so eager are we to deny that the actions of even “the best men and nations” are “curious compounds of good and evil.” And this leads to a third, distinctly American form of impatience—one that expresses itself in an attitude of impotent defiance toward “the slow and sometimes contradictory processes of history.” We desperately want to believe that we are contributing to the realization of God’s plans for humanity, but we find it exceedingly difficult to accept that the path humanity will take on the way to its appointed end is as obscure to us as the precise shape of the end itself.
In Niebuhr’s view America needs regularly self-administered doses of humility.
Niebuhr rightly remarks that Americans nearly always mean well when they act in the world. Our moral perils are thus “not those of conscious malice or the explicit lust for power.” Yet the rules of the world are such that good intentions—even our own—often lead to unintended bad consequences. This is a lesson we seem incapable of learning, or remembering, so eager are we to deny that the actions of even “the best men and nations” are “curious compounds of good and evil.” And this leads to a third, distinctly American form of impatience—one that expresses itself in an attitude of impotent defiance toward “the slow and sometimes contradictory processes of history.” We desperately want to believe that we are contributing to the realization of God’s plans for humanity, but we find it exceedingly difficult to accept that the path humanity will take on the way to its appointed end is as obscure to us as the precise shape of the end itself.
In Niebuhr’s view America needs regularly self-administered doses of humility.
Then there is a different temptation—one that needs to be resisted by believing and skeptical politicians alike. This is the urge to use exceptionalist rhetoric and the hopes and expectations it raises to mold and manipulate public opinion for the sake of political gain.
Many American politicians, from George Washington to George W. Bush, have succumbed to these temptations. Yet the case of Barack Obama may be different. Not only does Obama follow Niebuhr’s teaching very closely, but in his public rhetoric he clearly strives to follow in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln—the public figure Niebuhr singles out for having left behind a public meditation on American exceptionalism that lives on to teach us by example. In his second inaugural address, delivered as the Civil War was at long last drawing to a close, Lincoln somehow managed to step back from his position as Commander-in-Chief of the Union Army to achieve a broader perspective on the conflict as a whole. Rather than praising the North for its victory or denigrating the cause of the defeated South, Lincoln spoke in tones of irony—of each side’s invocation of the blessings of the divine against the other. If providence was at work in the slaughter of the Civil War, it could be seen not, or not simply, in the triumph of the Union, but in the incalculable suffering of soldiers and citizens on both sides—as divine retribution for the national sin of slavery. But Lincoln did not permit even this humbling thought to serve as a consolation. For not even this possible theological meaning of the slaughter, or its ultimate outcome, could be known with any certainty. All the nation could do was hope and pray for an end to the conflict—and humbly accept whatever providence might bring.
Lincoln thus managed to invoke the idea of American theological exceptionalism while avoiding the vices it so often encourages. Which is why Niebuhr described the speech as an “almost perfect model of the difficult but not impossible task of remaining loyal and responsible toward the moral treasures of a free civilization . . . while yet having some religious vantage point over the struggle.” It was a considerable achievement—and one that our current president apparently wishes to emulate."
I sincerely hope Obama emulates it. The world can use considerable doses of humility and there never has been a surfeit of humility, in-fact more the merrier. Let's keep a close watch every day to check if the dream or caution of that prudent theologian comes true.
I sincerely hope Obama emulates it. The world can use considerable doses of humility and there never has been a surfeit of humility, in-fact more the merrier. Let's keep a close watch every day to check if the dream or caution of that prudent theologian comes true.
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