Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr

n their conversation James Cone and Bill Moyers reflect on the impact of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whose 20th century work related theology to modern society and politics. In 2005, famed historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. lamented the disappearance of Niebuhr from modern discourse:
...maybe Niebuhr has fallen out of fashion because 9/11 has revived the myth of our national innocence. Lamentations about "the end of innocence" became favorite clichés at the time. Niebuhr was a critic of national innocence, which he regarded as a delusion. After all, whites coming to these shores were reared in the Calvinist doctrine of sinful humanity, and they killed red men, enslaved black men and later on imported yellow men for peon labor - not much of a background for national innocence. "Nations, as individuals, who are completely innocent in their own esteem," Niebuhr wrote, "are insufferable in their human contacts." The self-righteous delusion of innocence encouraged a kind of Manichaeism dividing the world between good (us) and evil (our critics).
But Niebuhr has made a reappearance in the 2008 campaign conversation. NEW YORK TIMES columnist David Brooks quotes Niebuhr consistently, describing him as a thinker we could use today "to police our excesses" in foreign policy.
• Reinhold Niebuhr: Religion Online Library
Complete texts of A VIEW OF LIFE FROM THE SIDELINES BY REINHOLD NIEBUHR, LET LIBERAL CHURCHES STOP FOOLING THEMSELVES and OUR SECULARIZED CIVILIZATION by Reinhold Niebuhr. And the biography THE CHRISTIAN WITNESS IN A SECULAR AGE, REINHOLD NIEBUHR by Howard G. Patton

• "Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr"
ARTHUR SCHLESINGER Jr., THE NEW YORK TIMES, September 18, 2005

• Reinhold Niebuhr is Unseen Force in 2008 Elections
Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, September 27, 2007