The Split Between Christian Realists and Pacifists, 1930-1939

“As Tragic as the World Conflict”: The Split Between Christian Realists and Pacifists, 1930-1939

by Bryan DuBose Peery

B.A. in History, May 2003, University of Georgia M.Phil. in History, May 2008, The George Washington University

A Dissertation Submitted to

The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

May 20, 2012

Dissertation directed by

Leo P. Ribuffo Professor of History

The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University

certifies that Bryan DuBose Peery has passed the Final Examination for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy as of March 23, 2012. This is the final and approved form of the

dissertation.

“As Tragic as the World Conflict”: The Split Between Christian Realists and Pacifists, 1930-1939

Bryan DuBose Peery

Dissertation Research Committee:

Leo P. Ribuffo, Professor of History, Dissertation Director

Richard Stott, Professor of History, Committee Member

William H. Becker, Professor of History, Committee Member

iii

To My Parents

Acknowledgments

Although the process of writing this dissertation was often daunting, the help and support of numerous individuals over the last few years made sure it was never impossible. From my first encounter with Leo P. Ribuffo as a prospective student, I was amazed by both his intellect and his frankness, two qualities which I only grew to appreciate more as I endeavored to complete this project. It was during his lively graduate seminar on social thought in the United States that I first encountered Reinhold

Niebuhr. Professor Ribuffo’s continuous encouragement, guidance, and feedback immeasurably benefitted and shaped not only this dissertation but also its author.

A summer grant from the George Washington University allowed me to take several research trips during which I benefitted from the kindness of archivists and old friends. Martha Smalley of the Yale Divinity School Library and Ruth Tonkiss Cameron of the Union Theological Seminary’s Burke Library were both very helpful in the early stages of my research into mid-century Christian social activism. Mary and Carl Pyrdum and Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, all friends and fellow alumni of the University of Georgia’s

Demosthenian Literary Society, allowed me to stretch my research budget by providing accommodations in New Haven and New York.

Sydney Brown, wife of the late Robert McAfee Brown and a model of Christian social activism herself, demonstrated unparalleled generosity when she welcomed me into her home and opened up the files of her husband to me. She also arranged for me to meet with several individuals, including her son and daughter-in-law, Mark and Karen

Brown; Diana Gibson; Judy Dunbar; and Marion Pauck. To Pauck in particular, I owe special thanks for spending an afternoon with me reminiscing about Union Theological

Seminary and the intellectual luminaries who taught there in the 1940s and 1950s.

Unfortunately, a chronological reframing of the project precluded me from writing the account of Brown’s activism that I had originally intended, but his commitment to social justice and his interpretation of Niebuhr nevertheless left their mark on the present study.

I am also indebted to many members of the George Washington University community. Allida Black brought me on as a Fellow at the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers. Not only did the position provide me with much needed financial support, it also allowed me to improve my research and writing skills at a much more accelerated pace than would have been possible through coursework alone. Equally rewarding was the opportunity provided by the Department of History to serve as a teaching assistant for professors whose passion for history was contagious. In addition to keeping the department running smoothly, Michael Weeks also happens to be quite the theologian; I learned a great deal from our discussions of sin and grace. I am grateful to my many graduate student colleagues who participated in the department’s dissertation workshop. Sara Berndt, in particular, was instrumental in prodding me to stop reading and start writing. Andrew

Hartman, too, deserves special acknowledgment. Although he completed the program and was adjusting to life as a professor before I even began writing, he has continued to serve as an inspiration and mentor, providing encouragement and placing me into contact with other scholars who share my interests. For making my defense an intellectually rewarding and surprisingly enjoyable experience, I must thank Professors Dewey

Wallace, Richard Stott, Edward Berkowitz, and William Becker.

For my parents’ unwavering support, emotionally and otherwise, I am eternally grateful. I suspect neither knew exactly what they were getting into when they

vi encouraged me to apply for graduate school, but even if they shared my doubts about my ability to complete this project, they never let me know.

Finally, I must thank Britta Anderson. Her model of hard work and dedication as well as her unending encouragement made the goal of completing this project seem possible when I might otherwise have abandoned it.

vii

Abstract of Dissertation

“As Tragic as the World Conflict”: The Split Between Christian Realists and Pacifists, 1930-1939

Christian realism has left its mark well beyond the liberal Protestant circles in which it developed. Since the 1940s, politicians and intellectuals of all ideological stripes have turned to Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian realism’s chief architect, for answers regarding the United States’ role in the world. As Niebuhr ultimately supported American intervention in World War II and later earned a reputation as one of the most influential intellectuals behind the United States’ Cold War policy, Christian realism is commonly portrayed as little more than the rejection of pacifism and justification for a tough foreign policy.

Far too often scholars have relied solely on Niebuhr’s longer works and accepted without question his criticism of his liberal Protestant contemporaries. This dissertation restores nuance to our understanding of Niebuhr by placing him in conversation with both his allies and his critics, most notably John Coleman Bennett, Richard Niebuhr, and

Charles Clayton Morrison. Furthermore, I attempt to develop our understanding of

Niebuhr’s theology as well as his politics through rigorous analysis of both his books and his many editorials on contemporary events from the Manchurian crisis to Pearl Harbor.

By examining both sides of the debates over American intervention, I hope to recover the

overwhelming sense of confusion and helplessness that characterized all efforts to devise an

adequate response to Nazism in the 1930s and to demonstrate that the distinction between

Niebuhr’s new realism and the older liberalism has been greatly exaggerated, first by

Niebuhr, and later by historians.

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Table of Contents

Dedication ...... iv

Acknowledgments ...... v

Abstract of Dissertation ...... viii

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter One: The Search for a Christian Ethic ...... 10

Chapter Two: “Must We Do Nothing?”: Pacifists Confront the Manchurian Crisis ...... 53

Chapter Three: Strife Among the Pacifists: Moral Man and Immoral Society and the

F.O.R. Split...... 110

Chapter Four: A Time for Reflections ...... 139

Chapter Five: Niebuhr and His Critics ...... 178

Chapter Six: Pacifism and Internationalism, 1933-1935 ...... 230

Chapter Seven: Radical Religion in a Time of Crises: Ethiopia and Spain,

1935-1937 ...... 275

Chapter Eight: The Road to War, 1937-1939 ...... 318

Conclusion ...... 359

Works Cited ...... 371

Introduction

In a 2005 essay in the New York Times, historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., lamented that American intellectuals and political leaders were “forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr.” At a time when the United States military was engaged in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and

Americans waged a metaphorical cultural battle over the role of religion in politics at home, Schlesinger noted that Niebuhr, “the supreme American theologian of the 20th century,” was nowhere to be found.1

Just outside of Schlesinger’s purview, however, the latest of Niebuhr revivals had already begun. But the renewed interest in Niebuhr generated more heat than light. As

Paul Elie put it in his 2007 essay in the Atlantic, which documents the uses of Niebuhr

since September 2001, Niebuhr has become “a man for all reasons.” Both neo-

conservatives, who whole-heartedly endorsed the “war on terror,” and liberals, who either

reluctantly supported the war or opposed it outright, invoked Reinhold Niebuhr to justify

their positions.2

The revival reached its apex during the 2008 presidential campaign. Barack

Obama, the anti-war candidate, called Niebuhr “one of my favorite philosophers.” John

McCain, whose own experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam made him less

enthusiastic about the wars in the Middle East than many of his hawkish supporters,

included a chapter on Niebuhr in his book, Hard Call. Describing Niebuhr as “the former

pacifist who offered the most astute, eloquent, and persuasive denunciation of pacifism,”

1 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr,” New York Times, 18 September 2005, G12. 2 Paul Elie, “A Man for All Reasons,” Atlantic Monthly, November 2007, 82-96.

McCain implied that Niebuhr, too, would make the “hard call” to endorse military intervention were he still alive.3

These disputes over Reinhold Niebuhr’s legacy are nothing new. They began even

before his death in 1971. During the 1940s and 1950s, Niebuhr, who in the face of the

Nazi threat of the 1930s had argued that capitulation to tyranny was one political choice

that was morally worse than war, articulated a tough anti-communism that earned him a

reputation as the “philosophical godfather of the Cold War” among both sympathizers

and critics. By the late 1960s, his decision to speak out against American involvement in

Vietnam prompted the theologian Paul Ramsey, an erstwhile political ally, to quip that

“even Reinhold Niebuhr signs petitions and editorials as if Reinhold Niebuhr never

existed.”4

In 1972, the year after Niebuhr’s death, the Catholic layman Michael Novak

began his own journey from the anti-war “left” to neo-conservatism. He carried Reinhold

Niebuhr along with him. By 1986, Novak, now working for the conservative American

Enterprise Institute, argued that Niebuhr was “a model for neoconservatives.” By the

3 David Brooks, “Obama, Gospel and Verse,” New York Times, 26 April 2007, A23; John McCain and Mark Salter, Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them (New York: Twelve, 2007), 319-39, quote from 319. 4 In his 1982 afterword to his influential essay on Niebuhr, Schlesinger noted the widespread tendency to see Niebuhr as a Cold War architect and argued that it was unwarranted. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Reinhold Niebuhr's Role in American Political Thought and Life,” in Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, ed. Charles W. Kegley (New York: Pilgrim, 1984 [1956]), 217. Ramsey quoted in Gary J. Dorrien, Soul in Society: The Making and Renewal of Social Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 138.

1990s, he went further and called the one-time socialist theologian the “father of neoconservatives.”5

Who, then, was Reinhold Niebuhr? Was he the radical prophet who decried self- righteousness and questioned American pretensions in foreign affairs? Or was he the conservative critic who dismissed socialists and pacifists as naïve and utopian and who defended America’s tough foreign policy?

The short answer is that he was both. Many on the left have identified Niebuhr’s early years, when he was an avowed Socialist who predicted the imminent demise of capitalism, as the period in Niebuhr’s life in which his analysis was most compelling.

They suggest he was blinded to some extent by the Cold War but saw the light once again when he spoke out against Vietnam. For the right, the narrative is reversed. Conservatives argue that Niebuhr only turned to socialism in his early years because he was so dissatisfied with liberalism. By the outbreak of World War II, according to the conservatives, he had fully matured as a thinker and offered a strong defense of the

American way against both the Nazi and Communist threats. His opposition to the

Vietnam War, in this account, is dismissed as one of the “odd intellectual turns of his final years.”6

5 Michael Novak, “Needing Niebuhr Again,” Commentary, September 1972, 52-62; Michael Novak, “Reinhold Niebuhr: Model for Neoconservatives,” Christian Century, 22 January 1986, 69-71; Michael Novak, “Father of Neoconservatives,” National Review, 11 May 1992, 39-42. For Novak’s own account of his drift from “radicalism” (he never appears to have been much further to the left than John F. Kennedy, on whose presidential campaign he worked), see his “Controversial Engagements,” First Things, no. 92 (April 1999): 21-29. 6 Matthew Berke, “The Disputed Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr,” First Things, no. 27 (Nov. 1992): 37-42, quote from 42.

Both narratives emphasize the political positions Niebuhr adopted at any given time and not the underlying theology or philosophy of Christian realism that led him to adopt those positions. In doing so, they fail to see that, at its best, Christian realism possessed both radical and conservative elements simultaneously. Niebuhr’s Christian realism was radical in that it never abandoned the Christian ideal of a just society, of the kingdom of God. It was conservative in that it also recognized that the harsh realities of human nature ensured the kingdom ideal would never become real. Men and women should actively work to achieve incremental justice, but they must never delude themselves into thinking their mission had been accomplished, or ever could be complete.

In one of his earliest books, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic (1929), a

“diary” of his years as a minister in Detroit, Niebuhr himself warned of a tendency that few, if any, of the self-proclaimed Niebuhrians of today acknowledge: “When I sit in my study and meditate upon men and events I am critical and circumspect. Why is it that when I arise in the pulpit I try to be imaginative and am sometimes possessed by a kind of madness which makes my utterances extravagant and dogmatic?”

Attempting to reconcile his public and private personas, Niebuhr concluded there was no easy solution. It was better to accept the duality: “Let the study serve to reveal the relativity of all things so that pulpit utterances do not become too extravagant, and let the pulpit save the student from sinking in the sea of relativities.”

This honest self-reflection provides one final cautionary note to those who would seek to understand his thought solely through his many public pronouncements on

contemporary issues. Niebuhr recognized that his extravagance tended to rise proportionately with the size of his audience.7

For those trying to recover something of Niebuhr’s thought, “What was Christian

realism?” may be a more fruitful question than, “Who was Reinhold Niebuhr?” To be

sure, the two questions are inextricably related, but the latter should not obscure the

former, as it has done for far too long.

No one has had a more profound impact on shaping Niebuhr’s image than Arthur

Schlesinger, Jr. During the winter of 1940-1941, at the peak of the debates over the role

the U.S. should play in World War II, Schlesinger first heard Niebuhr speak. Niebuhr had

convinced Schlesinger and “many of [his] contemporaries” that one could reject the

optimistic overtones of liberalism without sinking into cynicism or despair. Schlesinger

quickly developed a friendship with Niebuhr that lasted until the end of the theologian’s

life, and the two worked together on many political causes, including the establishment of

the liberal and anti-communist Americans for Democratic Action in 1947.8

In his seminal essay on Niebuhr, published in 1952, Schlesinger portrayed the

theologian as a tough-minded liberal who, after succumbing to the spells of socialism,

pacifism, and John Dewey’s pragmatism, ultimately rejected the “utopianism” of all

three. In one sentence he conceded that Niebuhr, “the penetrating critic of the Social

Gospel and of pragmatism[,] . . . ended up, in a sense, the powerful reinterpreter and

champion of both.” But after dismissing the Social Gospel and Dewey’s pragmatism as

7 Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, With a Foreword by Martin E. Marty (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980 [1929]), 34. 8 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., “Reinhold Niebuhr's Long Shadow,” New York Times, 22 June 1992, A17.

naïve, the belated concession appeared half-hearted. Rather, Schlesinger implied that

Niebuhr’s politics were essentially his own: like Schlesinger, Niebuhr was a champion of the tough, anti-communist liberalism of the “vital center.”9

Donald Meyer, a student of Schlesinger’s, only furthered the notion that the

essence of Christian realism was its rejection of the pacifism and socialism associated

with the Social Gospel. Niebuhr’s biographers did little to challenge this dominant

narrative. Although Paul Merkley is more successful at capturing Niebuhr’s radicalism

than those who too closely identify him with the “vital center,” he does little to

rehabilitate the image of the Social Gospel. Richard Wightman Fox has provided the

most well-researched biography to date, but his insistence on psycho-analyzing Niebuhr

prevents him from fully addressing the meaning of Christian realism. Further

complicating matters, Fox was first introduced to Niebuhr’s thought by Michael Novak

and Robert McAfee Brown, a student of Niebuhr’s whose interpretation of Christian

realism placed him firmly in the left-liberal camp of Niebuhrians. Although Fox

ultimately presents Niebuhr’s politics as liberal, he perhaps concedes too much ground to

Michael Novak and the neo-conservatives in his attempt to balance the views of his two

former professors.10

9 Schlesinger, “Reinhold Niebuhr's Role in American Political Thought and Life,” in Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, ed. Kegley, (New York: Pilgrim, 1984 [1956]), 213. Schlesinger also included the essay in his essay collection, The Politics of Hope (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963), 97-125. 10 Donald B. Meyer, The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 1919-1941, 2nd ed. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988 [1960]); Paul Charles Merkley, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Political Account (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1975); Richard Wightman Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography, With a New Introduction and Afterword (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996 [1985]).

Although a new generation of historians has attempted to recover the legacy of the Social Gospel, they, too, have accepted the notion that Christian realism marked a clean break from the past. These scholars most often identify Niebuhr’s political opponents—A. J. Muste, who remained a pacifist during World War II, or Harry F.

Ward, who steadfastly refused to abandon his defense of the USSR in the midst of the

Cold War—as the rightful heirs of the Social Gospel. In doing so, they often disparage the tough-minded, Cold Warrior image of Niebuhr. They do not challenge the dominant narrative, but only question who emerged as the more admirable individuals in the struggle.11

Theologians have, as would be expected, fared better in their recovery of

Christian realism. While acknowledging that the Social Gospel, Christian realism, and the liberation theology that emerged in the 1960s are all distinct movements, Gary Dorrien nevertheless manages to connect all three under the broad rubric of “social Christianity.”

Robin Lovin provides a cautionary note to those who attempt to appropriate Christian realism to support their political positions when he recognizes that Christian realism, no systematic theology, has always had an amorphous quality that makes it difficult to

11 Joseph Kip Kosek, Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Leilah Danielson, “Not by Might: Christianity, Nonviolence, and American Radicalism, 1919-1963” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2003); Leilah Danielson, “Christianity, Dissent, and the Cold War: A. J. Muste's Challenge to Realism and U.S. Empire,” Diplomatic History 30, no. 4 (Sep. 2006): 645-669; Doug Rossinow, “The Radicalization of the Social Gospel: Harry F. Ward and the Search for a New Social Order, 1898-1936,” Religion & American Culture 15, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 63-106.

define. Niebuhr’s thinking was so dialectical, he reminds us, that it is easier to identify the ways of thinking it opposed than to offer a positive definition.12

While a precise definition of Christian realism will probably never prove satisfactory, one thing is for certain: there is something more to Christian realism than the rejection of pacifism and moral justification for intervention. At its core, Christian realism called for the re-introduction of the complementary Christian doctrines of sin and grace. According to Niebuhr and the Christian realists, the Enlightenment had led liberal

Protestants to all but forget about these doctrines and imagine human beings as inherently good creatures who were capable of redeeming the world without God. Reinhold’s younger brother, H. Richard Niebuhr, provided the Christian realists’ summation of liberal Protestantism’s beliefs in the following sentence: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the manifestations of a Christ without a cross.”13

Although this is one of the more polemical statements to come from the typically

less polemical of the two Niebuhr brothers, it nevertheless gets at the heart of the

difference between Christian realism and liberal Protestantism. It is all the more useful

because it does so without mentioning the facile distinction between Christian realism

and pacifism or socialism.

Christian realism’s emphasis on sin and grace at a time when many liberals

preferred to ignore both doctrines as outdated orthodoxy made it decidedly prophetic.

12 Dorrien, Soul in Society; Robin W. Lovin, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1-3. 13 H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America, With a New Introduction by Martin E. Marty (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988 [1937]), 193.

Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian realists distinguished “prophetic” religion from

“priestly” religion. Priestly religion comforted individuals, and in doing so, it easily became a protector of the status quo. Prophetic religion, however, always urged

Christians to recognize that their present social reality was far removed from the

Christian ideal. Again, H. Richard Niebuhr put the case more succinctly than any of his contemporaries: “The prophetic or revolutionary strain demands rebirth rather than conservation; it announces divine judgment rather than divine protection; and it looks forward to God’s salvation rather than to human victory.”14

Studies that attempt to isolate Niebuhr’s public stances on controversial issues

tend to deny the fluidity that characterized his prophetic religion. Whether intended or

not, such an approach to understanding Christian realism denies its prophetic character

altogether. Instead of a method of thinking about the world, Christian realism becomes

little more than a moral afterthought and justification for a vulgar political realism.

In the pages that follow, I do my best to recover Niebuhr’s prophetic religion.

Central to the project is examining Christian realism in the context of the 1930s debates

over the role of violence in bringing about social change, whether in the class struggle at

home or the international crises abroad that culminated in World War II. I hope that I

have restored nuance not only to Niebuhr’s thought, but also to those non-interventionists

and pacifists whom he criticized, often ruthlessly, by the end of the decade. Far removed

from the heat of the debate, the two sides appear to have more in common than either side

recognized.

14 Ibid., 11.

Chapter One: The Search for a Christian Ethic

“Does civilization need religion?” This was the question tackled by a young

Midwestern preacher in his ambitious first book, published in December 1927. Over the

course of the next four decades, that preacher, Reinhold Niebuhr, wrote more than twenty

books, nearly all of them overshadowing this one. Yet Does Civilization Need Religion?

was significant nonetheless, for it raised one of the most important themes in Niebuhr’s

thought, one that is often lost on political commentators who refer to him today. Despite

the many political shifts he made during his career, one constant in Niebuhr’s thought

was the core conviction that society did need religion.

Niebuhr’s understanding of religion likely differs greatly from that of both unbelievers and devout Christians today. Indeed, it was often quite distinct from most of his contemporaries’ conceptions of Christianity. Any study which undertakes to explain

Niebuhr’s Christian realism must therefore begin with an examination of Niebuhr’s ideas about religion and the context in which those ideas arose.

* * *

In the nineteenth century, the United States was indisputably a Christian nation.

Though the idea of religious establishment at the national level was never entertained by

the founding fathers and the last of the state churches were disestablished when

Massachusetts amended its constitution to end its support of the Congregational Church

through public funds in 1833, Americans never turned too far from religion. Indeed, as

Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed during his tour of the United States from 1831-

1833, disestablishment limited the direct influence of a single church on the state, but it

increased the influence that the churches and religion had on society through indirect means. Indeed, Christianity appeared to Tocqueville to have more influence on the

American people than on any other nation in the world.1

Echoing Tocqueville, the historian Robert Handy refers to formal disestablishment as only the first of two disestablishments in American history. The legal separation of church and state provided for an ever-expanding list of denominations, each with differences in doctrine, but Handy notes that the clergy of the various Protestant sects still shared one common goal: creating a Christian America. When, after the War for Independence, it looked as if Americans were becoming less devout, the clergy of nearly all denominations promoted the Second Great Awakening to bring the nation back to God. The effectiveness of the revivals only further supported the notion, unique to

American clergy, that the goal of Christianizing society could be accomplished far more effectively through voluntary methods such as revivalism than through state-supported churches or coercive legal measures that made church membership mandatory. Efforts to

Christianize the nation through voluntary methods led to a new informal establishment that, according to Handy, lasted until the “second disestablishment” of the 1920s. 2

For the greater part of the nineteenth century, nearly all Protestant denominations in America placed a great deal of emphasis on Biblical authority, stressed the need for personal salvation through conversion, and preached a millennial vision that Christians could and should remake society in accordance with God’s moral laws. Although the

1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Library of America, 2004 [1835]), esp. vol. 1, pt. 2, ch. 9. 2 Robert T. Handy, A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971).

variations of this millenarianism were many, an optimistic postmillenarianism went

virtually unchallenged until the 1870s: most American Christians believed that there

would be a period of Christian prosperity—one thousand years for those who took the

Book of Revelation literally—followed by Christ’s return. They were, in short, building

the kingdom of God in America.

Although the ultimate dissolution of this informal evangelical establishment did

not occur until the twentieth century, the process was already underway shortly after the

Civil War. A variety of challenges, including intellectual developments, demographic

changes, and growing economic disparities, undermined the old Protestant order.

To be sure, there had been liberal intellectual challenges to evangelicalism prior

to the Civil War, but American Christianity survived the “heresies” of deism,

Unitarianism, and transcendentalism relatively unscathed. It was not until the 1870s that

“liberalism” began to make inroads in mainline denominations and to divide Protestant

leaders.3

The theory of evolution as outlined in Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and expanded in his The Descent of Man (1791) played a central role in this development.

Inherit the Wind, the 1955 dramatization of the Scopes “monkey trial” of 1925, has forever trivialized and obscured the real challenge evolution posed to religion by suggesting that the issue at hand was only whether or not Genesis should be read literally.

3 In addition to Handy, cited above, my discussion of the fundamentalist-modernist controversies in the next few paragraphs is based on William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006 [1980]); Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004 [1972]), ch. 46.

For some Protestants, the challenge was this minimal, and reconciliation between

Christianity and evolution was simply a matter of accepting that the “days” referred to in

Genesis were really much longer periods of time. But they were in a minority.

For most Protestants, even those liberals who ultimately accepted Darwinism, evolution posed a far greater challenge. It raised questions about the origin of the Bible, and, even more significant, about the very meaning of existence. Their evangelical outlook had always assumed that there was a divine, supernatural order in the universe, but did not evolution suggest that perhaps they had been wrong? Perhaps the world was really ruthless, chaotic, and void of any significant meaning?

Those Christians who took these challenges seriously had two choices: they could either find some means of reconciling evolutionary theory with their religion or reject the new theories as heresy. Those who sought means of reconciliation had a ready blueprint for doing so provided by German theologians. In 1799, Friedrich Schleiermacher published Speeches to the Cultured Despisers of Religion, in which he defended religion from “culture”—the modes of thinking about the world that humans had developed over time, including philosophy, political theory, economics, and science. What the

“despisers” failed to recognize, Schleiermacher argued, was that religion, too, had changed and developed over time; religion was in fact a part of culture, not superior or inferior to these other disciplines, but concerned with its own distinct subject matter.

The new higher criticism of the Bible that emerged in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century was based on such an understanding of the development of religion. Its proponents pointed out that the Bible had been composed by a number of authors over a period of at least one thousand years—much of it passed down orally

before it was recorded, translated, canonized, and revised. Scholars, the higher critics argued, must study the historical contexts in which the various books of the Bible were written in order to understand the truth contained within. Orthodox Christians, who believed that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God, understandably found the proposition that only highly educated scholars could decode God’s truth appalling.

Although American clerics were familiar with higher criticism prior to the Civil

War, discussions of the implications of the new approach to the Bible were largely kept from public view. It was not until the late 1870s and 1880s that American theologians such as the Congregationalist pastor Newman Smyth and the Presbyterian Charles A.

Briggs, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, began to champion a new liberal theology. Both had studied in Germany during the 1860s, and by the 1880s they developed what became known as the New Theology, one which they argued allowed them to defend the essential orthodoxies of Christianity while accepting

Darwinism and higher criticism. According to the New Theology, the Bible itself was

“scientific” in that its authors were working to overturn older superstitions and orthodoxies in their own day. The Bible must therefore constantly be read anew in light of modern culture in order to decipher its eternal truths. Indeed, one of the central tenets of liberalism was the belief in an immanent God who was present even in the culture that more orthodox Christians found so threatening.

The New Theology was, of course, not without its critics. The Presbyterian theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary were among its greatest. Charles Hodge, the most prominent of the seminary’s faculty members, argued in What is Darwinism?

(1874) that the naturalism of the theory of evolution was completely irreconcilable with

the supernaturalism of the Bible. Those who believed in Darwinism were in fact denying the existence of God. To Hodge and other conservatives who criticized proponents of the

New Theology for conceding too much to culture, Briggs replied that it was they who had actually lost God’s message in culture—the cultures of the past, which they absolutized when they read the Bible as the inerrant Word of God.

Thanks to popularizers of the New Theology such as Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn and unquestionably the most influential preacher of the late nineteenth century, and Lyman Abbott, Beecher’s successor at

Plymouth and editor of the prominent Christian Union, the liberals, or “modernists” as they were soon known, had all but secured victory by the turn of the century. But the debates waged on and the conflict did not come to a head until after World War I.

Leading spokesmen for the new generation included the Baptist preacher Harry

Emerson Fosdick for the modernists and J. Gresham Machen for the group soon designated as the “fundamentalists,” despite their protests. Following his controversial and, thanks to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., widely distributed sermon entitled “Shall the

Fundamentalists Win?” (1922), Fosdick found himself at the center of the theological conflict. Since 1918, he had served as a guest pastor of First Presbyterian Church in New

York City, but higher-ups within the denomination were alarmed by this outsider’s use of one of the denomination’s most prestigious pulpits to defend modernism. In 1924 the

General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church invited Fosdick to join the denomination and retain the pulpit of First Presbyterian. If he had chosen to do so, he would have undoubtedly faced a heresy trial, a prospect that both his liberal defenders and fundamentalist critics welcomed, as each side hoped for a final victory in the controversy.

Fosdick, who always insisted that he sought reconciliation between the two sides, chose

to resign. His influence only increased in 1930, however, when he became pastor of

Rockefeller’s newly completed Riverside Church in Morningside Heights, adjacent to

Union Theological Seminary, on whose faculty Fosdick served for nearly four decades.4

Unlike Fosdick, Machen sought a clear and decisive conclusion to the conflict

between modernists and fundamentalists. By the 1920s, even Princeton Theological

Seminary, the one-time bastion of Presbyterian orthodoxy, had softened its tone and was

willing to overlook its differences with liberalism in order to preserve Presbyterian unity.

Machen opposed such accommodation. In Christianity and Liberalism (1923), he denied

that he was passing judgment on the moral status of liberals but insisted that the religion

they practiced was not Christianity. He resisted the “fundamentalist” label because

accepting it would imply that his traditional Calvinist views were characteristic of but a

subcategory of Christianity when in fact, he argued, what modernists called orthodoxy

was the only true Christianity. Machen demanded that both Princeton Theological

Seminary and the Northern branch of the Presbyterian Church decide between liberal and

orthodox theology. Although its professors never embraced liberal theology, the seminary

nevertheless repudiated the traditional, hard-line Calvinism that Machen championed. In

1929 Machen left Princeton to start Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

4 For Fosdick’s own account of the controversy at First Presbyterian Church, see his The Living of These Days, An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), ch. 7. See also Robert Moats Miller, Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

Seven years later he met with other dissenters to form what by 1939 became known as

the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.5

By the end of the 1920s, the modernists had succeeded in taking the reins of much

of American Protestantism. At the very least, they controlled many of the nation’s

leading seminaries and had the support of the cultural elite. The fundamentalist

movement did not die or fade away, however. As a popular movement, it grew

exponentially before re-emerging in the 1970s to challenge the liberalism of the dominant

culture. Nevertheless, the Christian realism of the 1930s emerged within the ranks of

liberal theologians, and the fundamentalism of the inter-war years is therefore largely

outside the scope of our narrative.

* * *

It was not only orthodox theology that liberal Protestants challenged in the late

nineteenth century; many liberals began to call for the revision of traditional Christian

ethics as well. Along with the unprecedented technological innovation and economic

growth of the Gilded Age came the concentration of that new wealth in the hands of a

few, the rise of urban areas as centers of industry, and an influx of immigrants to fill the

demand for labor. To further complicate matters from the perspective of the Protestant

establishment, many of these new immigrants were Catholics and Jews from central and

southern Europe. The urban slums in which this working class lived were a far cry from

Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian republic comprising independent yeoman

farmers. Yet, for those Protestants who took notice of these changes, the individualistic

5 On Machen, see D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).

ethics that American Protestantism promoted, a legacy of its Puritan roots, seemed far

more suited for Jefferson’s time than for the contemporary situation.

In this context, many liberal Protestants began calling for a new Social Gospel.6

To be sure, the postmillennial vision of a Christian America meant that reform

movements—by definition “social”—had been characteristic of American Protestantism

throughout the nineteenth century.7 But the older Sabbatarian and temperance

movements, though they called for changes in society’s laws, were aimed at

individuals—they did not question the political or economic order of society. The

abolitionist movement is perhaps in a different category, but abolitionists never

constituted more than a small minority of evangelicals. Those who opposed the

movement argued that the institution of slavery was a political matter and not a moral

issue. Even many of those who came to endorse abolition were not consciously trying to

radically alter society so much as rid it of the sins of the slave owners. As historian Henry

F. May writes, although the original abolitionist agitators may have been radical

6 For brief overviews of the Social Gospel see Ahlstrom, Religious History, ch. 47; Handy, A Christian America, 156-70; Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, 164-74; William R. Hutchison, Religious Pluralism in America: The Contentious History of a Founding Ideal (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), ch. 4. Although all three are over fifty years old, the following full-length treatments remain useful: Aaron Ignatius Abell, The Urban Impact on American Protestantism, 1865-1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1943); Charles Howard Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865-1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940); Henry F. May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York: Harper, 1949). Two collections of primary documents are Robert T. Handy, ed. The Social Gospel in America, 1870- 1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966) and Ronald C. White, Jr., and Charles Howard Hopkins, eds., The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976). 7 See for example, Robert H. Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

prophets, “emancipation became a vindication of existing Northern society, not a challenge to it.”8

What was new about the Social Gospel, then, was that its proponents recognized the need to change society itself. They remained evangelical and spoke of creating the kingdom of God on earth, but they no longer thought combating individual sin was enough (though for the overwhelming majority, this was still an important component in remaking society). The new industrial economy had introduced new corporate sins that had to be addressed, particularly in the realm of business-labor relations. Ministers whose parishes were in urban areas, and who therefore saw the effects of these corporate sins first-hand, led the calls for reform: Washington Gladden was a Congregationalist minister in Springfield, Massachusetts; Josiah Strong, also a Congregationalist, served in

Sandusky and Cleveland, Ohio; and Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist, worked in Hell’s

Kitchen in New York City before moving up-state to Rochester Seminary to teach

German and church history.

Accepting liberal theology did not automatically lead one to preach the Social

Gospel. Even if they sympathized with the Social Gospel, the majority of liberal ministers served middle-class congregations who were sheltered from the hardships of the urban slums. Rocking the boat and preaching a controversial social message might well have cost them their livelihoods, and it was a risk few were eager to take. Some theological liberals, including the Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner, actively opposed the Social Gospel. In his What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883),

Sumner derided philanthropists and socialists for teaching the working classes that

8 May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America, 29.

“poverty is the best policy”: reformers’ schemes of redistribution only discouraged hard work. Poverty and wealth were both products of the evolution of society, Sumner argued, and reformers should stop trying to interfere with the natural order.

Not all theological liberals were Social Gospelers, but all Social Gospelers were theological liberals. They argued that the Christian message had to be reshaped to handle the modern situation. One of the ongoing projects of the Social Gospel was a search for the “historical Jesus.” For the Social Gospelers, Jesus superseded the Bible in terms of moral authority: following the strictures of the Old Testament was less important than trying to emulate the life of Jesus. Furthermore, believing in the immanence of God and sharing little of the fundamentalists’ resistance to modern culture, they sought to apply new sociological and economic insights to help solve the problems. Even in the face of the present crisis, which the Social Gospelers saw more acutely than their contemporaries in the church, they retained an optimistic, postmillennial belief in the ability of men and women, working as God’s agents, to bring about virtually limitless progress and ultimately usher in the kingdom of God on earth. Few books captured this combination of condemnation towards the present situation and optimism towards the future better than did Josiah Strong’s Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (1885).

Politically, the lines were not so clear-cut. Sydney Ahlstrom aptly called the

Social Gospel “the praying wing of Progressivism.”9 As with the progressive movement, the line between left and right, between social justice and social control, was often blurred by the Social Gospel. Josiah Strong’s extolling the superior virtues of Anglo-

9 Ahlstrom, Religious History, 804. Ahlstrom credited the “praying wing of . . .” phrase to British historian D. C. Somervell, who had used it to describe the relationship of the Church of England to the Tory party.

Saxon culture, his endorsement of what would now be called “cultural imperialism,” and

his warnings against the “perils” of immigration, Romanism, Mormonism, intemperance,

and socialism would likely embarrass liberals today, but they were ideas that were held

by many “progressives” in his own time. What made Strong representative of the

progressive movement was his reliance on data and social science to analyze the present

situation, his belief in the possibility of overcoming society’s ills through reform, and his

inclusion of “wealth” on his list of perils facing society.

In its most popular expression, Charles M. Sheldon’s best-selling novel, In His

Steps (1896), the Social Gospel was apolitical in its prescription for action even if its attitude toward poverty put it left of center. Sheldon, a Congregationalist minister in

Topeka, Kansas, originally delivered In His Steps as a series of sermons. In the novel, he tells the story of the fictional Reverend Henry Maxwell’s and his parishioners’ attempts to live their lives by asking themselves, “What would Jesus do?”10

Although all of the characters in Sheldon’s novel begin as pious individuals, they soon discover this is not enough. When they examine their lives, they conclude that they are at least passively contributing to sins that they did not previously consider. The newspaper editor, for example, decides he must stop reporting on prize fights and publishing the paper on Sundays; he loses sponsorships and readership because of the decision. Another businessman discovers that the railroad company for which he works is in violation of interstate commerce regulation; he concludes he must expose the violation,

10 Due to an error in securing the copyright, the novel immediately entered the public domain and was published by more than a dozen presses. It has purportedly sold more than twenty-two million copies, making it second in sales records only to the Bible. Charles Monroe Sheldon, In His Steps (Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen Books, 1984 [1896]), “Foreword.”

resign from his middle-management position, and attempt to secure his former position as

a telegraph operator. A young woman with a talent for singing decides she must give up

the opportunity to join the opera and instead use her talent to improve the lives of those

living in the slums. The most harrowing of the stories centered around one group of

congregants’ push for the closing of the saloons; on the day of the election held to decide

the fate of the saloons, one of the women leading the call for temperance is killed when a

bottle flies from the angry crowd protesting the reformers’ action and strikes her in the

head. Sheldon’s message was clear: “What would Jesus do?” may sound like a simple

question, but living by it required a great deal of sacrifice.

In His Steps is an unmistakable refutation of social Darwinism, and it at least

implies that the profit motive is incompatible with Christianity. But it also retains the

evangelical faith in voluntarism that had characterized American religion from the

beginning of the nineteenth century. In the one scene in which socialism is addressed, the

Reverend Maxwell presides over a town hall meeting of working men. One man causes

quite a commotion when he rises to address the crowd and argues that workers will only

receive their just rewards through socialism. Rather than debate the socialist and refute

the claims, Maxwell asks Rachel, the young woman who gave up her singing career, to

sing for the men, and the crowd is silenced. Sheldon tells us that the meeting only

“burned into [Maxwell] more deeply, the belief that the problem of the city would be

solved if the Christians in it should once follow Jesus as he gave commandment.”11

Socialism and coercion were unnecessary so long as Christians made themselves aware

11 Ibid., 240.

of the suffering going on around them and recognized that following Jesus required a

great deal more self-denial and sacrifice.

Further to the left than Strong or Sheldon was Walter Rauschenbusch, whose

Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) and A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917)

were two classics of the Social Gospel genre and undoubtedly the most influential works

from the period on the Christian realists who emerged in the 1930s.12 Rauschenbusch

shared Strong’s conviction in the superiority of Protestantism to all other religions, as did

all Social Gospelers, but one reviewer of the recent reissue of Christianity and the Social

Crisis misses the point entirely when he dwells on “how harshly intolerant

Rauschenbusch sounds to a contemporary reader” and argues that Rauschenbusch paved

the way for Jerry Falwell and other leaders of the religious right.13

Rauschenbusch’s calls for “Christianizing the social order” may well be off-

putting to non-evangelicals in today’s pluralist society, but it must be pointed out that

Rauschenbusch had little interest in converting individuals to Christianity. His concern

was calling a nation that was overwhelmingly composed of men and women who

professed to be Christians to accept the full implications of their religion. The

individualist ethic, which too many Christians practiced and too many churches

12 The one hundredth anniversary edition of Christianity and Social Crisis reports that the book sold fifty thousand copies in its first three years and bills it as “the classic that woke up the church.” The reissue includes essays on the book’s significance by, among others, the Evangelicals Tony Compolo and Jim Wallis (both of whom self-identify as members of the religious left), the theologian Stanley Hauerwas, and the philosophers Cornel West and Richard Rorty, the grandson of Walter Rauschenbusch. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century: The Classic That Woke up the Church, ed. Paul B. Raushenbush (New York: HarperOne, 2007). 13 Alan Wolfe, “Mobilizing the Religious Left,” New York Times Book Review, 21 October 2007, 23.

continued to preach, was, Rauschenbusch argued, completely antithetical to the religion

of Jesus. He stopped short of tying Jesus to any political party or modern social scheme;

indeed, he criticized others who engaged in the anachronistic practice. But

Rauschenbusch left little doubt that if Christians actually attempted to live out Jesus’

message of love, their politics would necessarily be “socialistic” and even

“communistic.”14 The kingdom of God would only arrive when self-sacrificing Christians provided for the most downtrodden in society.

By the first decade of the twentieth century, many of the Social Gospel’s leaders were moving leftward with Rauschenbusch. Washington Gladden illustrates the trend. In his Working People and Their Employers (1876), widely recognized as the seminal book of the Social Gospel movement, Gladden insisted that Christ had remained neutral in class conflicts, and he declared his intention to do the same. He half-heartedly supported the right to unionize, but opposed the closed-shop and questioned whether strikes would ever help workers more than they harmed the community. Socialism was

“philosophically absurd,” and he had “no doubt” that “the working-people would, very shortly, be worse off under a socialistic order than they are at present.”

No new social scheme was needed, he argued, if only everyone involved in the conflict would strive to lead more moral lives: business owners should take an interest in their employees’ hardships and treat them as human beings; laborers should perform their work with dignity, abstain from “strong drink” (he devoted an entire chapter to the matter), and save their incomes for the future. As far as disputes over wages were

14 Bear in mind emulating Jesus precluded violence in Rauschenbusch’s mind and he used “communistic” a decade prior to the Russian Revolution. Still, most other ministers of the era would have shied away from these terms. Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, ch. 7.

concerned, Gladden concluded, “If the capitalist would measure his profits, and the

working-man his wages, by the Golden Rule, there would be instant peace.”

To be fair to Gladden and dampen the blow of the charges of unqualified

optimism that subsequent generations leveled against him, he did not believe the

implementation of his program would be easy. He recognized that “it will be a good

while before the masses of men, whether capitalists or laborers, are so fully governed by

the Christian law that they will cease to struggle for the advantage and mastery.”15

By 1911, as trusts grew beyond anything that could have been imagined in the

1870s, Gladden had himself concluded that the Golden Rule was not enough. He no longer attempted to remain neutral in the labor crisis. “We have been trying to correlate a political democracy with an industrial feudalism,” he wrote in The Labor Question.

Absent was his earlier criticism of socialism, though he still did not identify as a socialist.

He evidently associated socialism with revolutionary action, which he opposed, but he did call for the nationalization of at least some industries vital to the public interest.

Furthermore, he predicted that “a healthy evolution [that] will carry us in the direction of collective ownership of capital is altogether probable.” Finally, his earlier ambivalence toward unions had given way to unequivocal support: “There is no other way . . . under the pressure of the stupendous combinations of capital, to rescue labor from the degradation except by the firm organization of labor.”16

15 Washington Gladden, Working People and Their Employers (Boston: Lockwood, Brooks, and Company, 1876). Quotes are from 199, 231, 43, and 44, respectively. 16 Washington Gladden, The Labor Question (Boston: Pilgrim, 1911). Quotes are from 80, 126, and 86.

As this brief discussion makes clear, the Social Gospel comprised a variety of political viewpoints and evolved over time. This fact is frequently missed by its critics— the generation of theologians who came of age during and after World War I and who are the subjects of the present study, as well as the historians who have been too uncritical in their ready acceptance of this subsequent generation’s analysis. More than any other historian, William Hutchison has taken notice of this diversity of opinions within the

Social Gospel movement and has shown that liberal critics of its excessive optimism arose even before fighting in Europe began in 1914. He is correct in his assertion that the difference between the critics before and after the war is essentially the difference between “optimists who call bottles half full and pessimists who call them half empty.”

He is careful to note, however, that differences in temperament are not altogether insignificant; they can, and often do, have profound consequences.17

Still, there is no denying that World War I and the subsequent Great Depression had a profound impact on the Social Gospel and Protestantism in general. Robert Handy argues that the impact was so great that it brought about the “second disestablishment” of

Protestantism in America. Not only had the evangelical fervor of many of those

Protestants who had hoped to Christianize the world been sapped when they failed to prevent the war, but even the more modest aim of preserving a Christian America became increasingly difficult following the influx of immigrants during the first two decades of the twentieth century.18

17 Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, 191. 18 Handy, A Christian America.

The war seriously challenged the postmillennial optimism of the Social Gospel

movement. As Harry Emerson Fosdick, who always remained more optimistic than

Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian realists, wrote in 1922, sin was no abstract concept: it

was everywhere to be seen in the postwar world, “all we need to do is open our eyes to

the facts.”19 The Social Gospelers’ talk of creating the kingdom of God on earth virtually

disappeared. Yet even the most disillusioned among them did not reject the

postmillennial view in favor of the premillennial eschatology, then gaining currency

among fundamentalists. Premillennialists stressed the transcendence of God and his

corresponding absence from human culture. According to them, civilization was on a

downward spiral and would not be redeemed until Christ’s Second Coming.20

Rather than accept fundamentalist premillennialism, many of modernism’s liberal

critics turned to the new theology then gaining influence in postwar Europe—neo-

orthodoxy. The leading proponent of neo-orthodoxy was the Swiss theologian Karl Barth.

In his Epistle to the Romans (1918), Barth called for liberals to return to the Bible.

Modernists, he argued, must recall the doctrine of Original Sin, recognize the limits of human nature, and cease conflating God with culture. Barth’s was not a fundamentalist exhortation to treat the Bible as a set of rules which should guide one’s life, nor did it have the anti-intellectual overtones common in American fundamentalism. But Barth did

19 Fosdick quoted in Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, 254. 20 On premillennialism, see D. G. Hart, That Old-Time Religion in Modern America: Evangelical Protestantism in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), ch. 1; Marsden, Fundamentalism.

agree with the fundamentalists that God was transcendent. Liberal Christians had to stop

identifying their own schemes for remaking the world with his divine plan.21

Barth’s neo-orthodoxy was not directed towards the Social Gospel, which was a

distinctly American religious movement that had no real analogue in Europe. Few

Americans took notice of his work before 1928, the year that Douglas Horton, a

Congregationalist minister in Boston who later became Dean of Harvard Divinity School,

translated a collection of Barth’s essays and published them as The Word of Man and the

Word of God. By the 1930s, a group of young American theologians, led by the Niebuhr

brothers, were using neo-orthodoxy to critique the Social Gospel.

To be sure, the Christian realists did not import Barthian theology wholesale.

Reinhold Niebuhr criticized Barth throughout his career, prompting Niebuhr biographer

Richard Wightman Fox to quip that Niebuhr “ironically acquire[d] a reputation as an

American adherent of European (and Barthian) ‘neo-orthodoxy.’ He did not deserve it in

1929 or later.”22 Barth’s influence on Niebuhr may not have been direct, and he himself seems never to have fully recognized it, but there is no denying that, despite his protests,

Niebuhr’s theology often more closely resembled Barth’s than it did the liberal theology of his American contemporaries.

What distinguished American Christian realism from European neo-orthodoxy was that it never entirely abandoned the Social Gospel its proponents often mistakenly assumed they were laying to rest. As Robert Moats Miller has shown, at least the social activism of the Social Gospel remained alive and well in the inter-war period, and

21 For an overview of neo-orthodoxy and its impact on American churchmen, see Ahlstrom, Religious History, ch. 55. 22 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 117.

Reinhold Niebuhr was among its foremost practitioners. For this reason, it seems Sydney

Ahlstrom is more astute than other Niebuhr interpreters when he concludes that neo- orthodoxy manifested itself in American Protestantism as “a reshaped Social Gospel.” If anything, the war and neo-orthodoxy forced Social Gospelers to take the idea of corporate sin more seriously and abandon some of its rosier convictions concerning the ability of saint-like individuals to change society. Indeed, the war and the Christian realists did not defeat the Social Gospel so much as force it out of adolescence and into full maturity.23

In order to make that case, however, we must now turn our attention to that post- war generation of theologians who emerged as Christian realists after wrestling with liberal theology, the Social Gospel, and neo-orthodoxy.

* * *

Born in Wright City, Missouri, in 1892, there was little in Reinhold Niebuhr’s modest Midwestern background to suggest that he would become the most prominent

American theologian of the twentieth century. Reinhold’s father, Gustav, emigrated from

Germany in 1881, and after working on a relative’s farm for two years, entered Eden

Theological Seminary in St. Louis. Ordained into the German Evangelical Synod in

1885, Gustav appears to have been Sheldon’s Henry Maxwell with a German accent—a pious but liberal Protestant more concerned with the social aspects of Christianity than the details of religious doctrine. During the first ten years of Reinhold’s life, Gustav was constantly on the road. Preaching all over the state and setting up church-sponsored nursing homes, he left his wife Lydia, an American-born daughter of a German

23 Robert Moats Miller, American Protestantism and Social Issues, 1919-1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1958); Ahlstrom, Religious History, 948.

Evangelical minister, to take care of their daughter, Hulda, and three sons—Walter,

Reinhold, and Helmut. In 1902, Gustav moved the family to Lincoln, Illinois, where he served as pastor of St. John’s Church, superintendant of the denomination’s hospital, and leader of the local effort to close the saloons, a position which met with a great deal of resistance in the German community. Despite Gustav’s many commitments, Reinhold remembered him as a “scholarly man” who “made a habit of reading from the Old

Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek every morning.”24

Finding his father “the most interesting man in our community,” Reinhold decided at a very young age that he would become a minister.25 At fourteen, following his freshman year, Niebuhr left Lincoln High and entered the German Evangelical

Synod’s Elmhurst College before moving on to Eden Seminary. The terms college and seminary are misleading, for they suggest a rather rigorous academic regimen for such a young man. In actuality, they were far more modest institutions: instruction at both was carried out primarily in German, and neither offered an accredited degree. As the captain of his debate team and a writer for the school paper, Niebuhr demonstrated a predilection for the life of the mind that was absent among his peers.

With his father’s encouragement, Niebuhr decided to pursue a graduate degree at

“an eastern university.” He later explained that his “second rate” education was not good enough to get him into Union Seminary, whose students came from New England colleges, an admission that hints at the insecurity he felt as a scholar throughout his

24 On the Niebuhr’s family background and education, see Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, ch. 1; Reinhold Niebuhr, “Intellectual Autobiography,” in Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. Charles W. Kegley; Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Reminiscences of Reinhold Niebuhr,” (New York: Oral History Research Office, Columbia University, 1957). Quote is from “Reminiscences,” 2. 25 Niebuhr, “Reminiscences,” 1.

career. He settled on Yale Divinity School, whose academic standards were lowered in an effort to expand the size of the program. During his final semester at Eden, his father died suddenly, and Reinhold left school, was ordained into the German Evangelical Synod, and took over his father’s church. In the fall of 1913, however, he left the parish to attend

Yale as planned.26

Although his father’s theology had been more liberal than orthodox, it was not until Reinhold arrived at Yale that he encountered the full force of the modernist movement in theology. Gustav had never questioned the divinity of Christ, and he retained his belief in the miracles of the New Testament. But at Yale, Niebuhr was immediately drawn to Douglas Clyde Macintosh, a young Canadian Baptist who had established himself as a leading modernist theologian for his advancement of “religious realism,” a search for an empirical theology that ended in his accepting pragmatism as the best defense of religion.27

Under Macintosh, Niebuhr completed his B.D. thesis, entitled, “The Validity and

Certainty of Religious Knowledge,” an essay that, like Macintosh’s work, showed its author’s indebtedness to the pragmatism of William James. Niebuhr stayed at Yale a second year in order to complete his M.A., but he lost interest in advanced theological study after growing “bored with all the schools of epistemology that had to be charted.”

26 Ibid., 6, 11-12. 27 Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, 213-15; Douglas Clyde Macintosh, “Can Pragmatism Furnish a Philosophical Basis for Theology?,” Harvard Theological Review 3, no. 1 (January 1910): 125-35; Douglas Clyde Macintosh, ed. Religious Realism (New York: Macmillan, 1931).

He decided he preferred “relevance” to “scholarship,” and in 1915 he left Yale to become the pastor of Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit.28

During his thirteen years behind the pulpit, Niebuhr led the congregation of

Bethel through an unprecedented period of growth. When he took over the small parish, the congregation comprised roughly sixty members; even fewer could be expected in attendance at the Sunday morning service, then still conducted in German. In a little over a decade, Niebuhr, who insisted both on preaching in English and getting involved in controversial matters of social justice, helped expand the congregation to over eight hundred members. He was no doubt aided by the growth of Detroit itself during the

1920s, but the feat was nevertheless impressive.29

His involvement in social reform soon won him accolades outside of his congregation. The widespread notion that he preached to a largely working class congregation is, according to Richard Fox, a myth: his congregation was firmly middle- class. If anything, that makes his outspoken championing of labor rights and his criticism of the supposedly beneficent policies of Henry Ford all the more remarkable. He may not have gotten workers into the pews on Sunday, but he did earn their respect.30

On Niebuhr’s own account, his experience in Detroit radicalized him. In the

1950s, the Columbia Oral History Office conducted a series of interviews with Niebuhr, and the one topic he turned to again and again was Ford. During Niebuhr’s time in

Detroit, Ford was widely hailed as the epitome of a fair and just business manager for his

28 Niebuhr, “Reminiscences,” 16. On Niebuhr’s B.D. thesis, see Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 29-33. 29 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 41, 62; Niebuhr, “Reminiscences,” 22. 30 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 41.

“Five-Dollar-A-Day” wage policy. Niebuhr pointed out, however, that Ford’s “speed- ups” resulted in forced “holidays” during the 1920s, which meant many of the workers’ annual wages were in decline. But what really disturbed him was Ford’s Sociological

Department, the “rather vast system of investigation” which sought to oversee every aspect of his employees’ lives. Niebuhr saw Ford as something of a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde personality”: he was personally very kind but nevertheless had an unparalleled desire for power. It was Niebuhr’s witnessing Ford’s exercise of power in Detroit that

“accentuated any impulses that I had to make a closer study of the complexities of human behavior, man’s capacity for self-deception and for deceiving others, and the very tenuous relationship between morality and the power impulses in economics and politics.”31

Niebuhr’s social activism in Detroit was not limited to the labor struggle. He also took an interest in local politics and race relations. In 1925, he supported the Catholic

Mayor John W. Smith’s re-election campaign, an act which marked his entry into the world of ecumenism that extended beyond Protestantism. Grateful for his contribution to the campaign, Smith appointed Niebuhr to head his Committee on Race Relations.

Niebuhr’s public condemnation of the Ku Klux Klan and his leadership role on the mayor’s committee quickly earned him the respect of the city’s black leaders

Outside Detroit, too, Niebuhr’s star was on the rise. Although his commitment to

Bethel restricted the number of appearances he could make, he managed to establish himself as a popular speaker on the college lecture circuit, addressing youth at YMCA

31 Niebuhr, “Reminiscences,” 40, 82. On Ford’s Sociological Department, see Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 131-41.

and Student Volunteer Movement meetings across the Midwest. Readers of the non- denominational Christian Century, then the nation’s most widely circulated religious periodical, were also familiar with Niebuhr, who had served as a contributing editor for the journal since 1922.

Amid this flurry of activity, it is remarkable that he found time in 1927 to publish

Does Civilization Need Religion? Although often unfairly dismissed as the work of a

“pre-realist” Niebuhr, who shared in the optimism of the Social Gospel, the book contains the seeds of many ideas that he later developed more fully. Civilization needed religion, he argued, because it was the only means of preserving a sense of

“personality”—the individual’s sense of meaning—in the modern world. But religion was under attack on two fronts: its theology, by evolution, and its ethics, by the mechanical nature of modern industrial society. Niebuhr left no doubt that it was on ethics, and not theology, that defenders of Christianity should focus their efforts.

This was hardly a simple reiteration of the Social Gospel. Indeed, Niebuhr chided the movement for its belief that it was following in the footsteps of Jesus, a belief which he argued was a counterproductive deception: “It [the Social Gospel movement] imagines that it represents a simple return to radical and dynamic ethics of the religion of Jesus. By this deception it easily becomes the façade behind which the brutal facts of modern industrial civilization may be obscured rather than a force by which they might be eliminated.” He may not have invoked the love-justice dialectic that he would in later

works, but he was already beginning to recognize the ways in which a devotion to the

absolute (love) undermined the possibility of achieving even relative gains (justice).32

What Niebuhr called for was a “new asceticism,” or even a “Christian idealism,” a phrase which admittedly muddles the discussion regarding his realism at this point in his career. But his Christian idealism and later Christian realism were two closely related, if not identical, concepts; they were not, as they may appear on the surface, opposites.

The difference was, as Hutchison says of the pre-war and post-war liberal critics of the

Social Gospel, really one of the glass being half full or half empty. However he chose to express it, Niebuhr’s idea was that neither idealism nor realism was enough on its own; both had to exist in tension with one another. In 1927, Niebuhr was concerned about taming the cynicism he saw in the world with a moral idealism; later, shifting his focus to the optimistic moral idealism of liberal Protestant reformers, he emphasized the need for realism.

But even in 1927, his Christian idealism could not have been confused with the optimism of the Social Gospel. The Social Gospel was, he argued, too bound up in middle-class values and culture to bring society any closer to the Christian ideal. The

“new asceticism” would attempt to recover a true Christian idealism by remaining “in the world and not yet of it.” Niebuhr was, in short, calling for a prophetic religion:

“Civilization may be beyond moral redemption, but if it is to be redeemed a religiously inspired moral idealism must aid in the task.”33

32 Reinhold Niebuhr, Does Civilization Need Religion? A Study in the Social Resources and Limitations of Religion in Modern Life (New York: Macmillan, 1927), 64. Niebuhr actually uses the term “liberal Christianity” rather than Social Gospel, but there is little doubt about his meaning. 33 Ibid., 189, 229, 238.

Reviewers at the time did not mistake this for optimistic writing. In the Christian

Century, Francis J. McConnell, a Methodist and leading Social Gospeler, noted the book was “tinged with pessimism.” But this was not a criticism: “I should say Mr. Niebuhr’s pessimism is only thoroughgoing seriousness. In the religious camp we ought to be thankful for a change from the cheap and easy nostrums offered for a conflict as deep as that between the real and the ideal.” He agreed with Niebuhr’s call for a Christian idealism that remained distinct from culture, noting, “Mr. Niebuhr . . . is surely right when he insists that the attitude, though not the method, of the ascetics has perennial significance.” McConnell’s only concern was not about the book itself so much as about how others, especially advocates of orthodoxy who stressed the transcendence of God, might take it: “I have a misgiving that a school of dualistic thinkers in this country will take more aid and comfort from ‘Does Civilization Need Religion?’ than that to which they are justly entitled.”34

In the Saturday Review of Literature, Bernard Iddings Bell, an education reformer and head of St. Stephens College (later Bard), also praised Niebuhr’s pessimism. Does

Civilization Need Religion? provided the antidote to the “sentimental or deadly dull” volumes that would necessarily appear next to it on the shelves designated “religion” in bookstores. It certainly would not sell well to “Mr. Bruce Barton’s public” for it lacked his “bouncing sprightliness,” but this was its virtue. Niebuhr’s eschewing sentimentality

34 Francis J. McConnell, “A Challenge to Complacency,” review of Does Civilization Need Religion?, by Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Century, 16 February 1928, 208-10.

led Bell to conclude, “This man seems to know more than most parsons do about the

twentieth century.”35

Others agreed with Bell’s assessment of Niebuhr. Shortly after the publication of

Does Civilization Need Religion?, Niebuhr found a number of new opportunities

available to him. One of those was an appointment as a professor of ethics at Union

Theological Seminary. Sherwood Eddy, a financially well-off benefactor and booster for

several Christian social action organizations, had arranged for the appointment. Among

the nation’s most prominent Social Gospelers, Eddy had been impressed with Niebuhr

since his first introduction to the young minister in 1923. In 1927, he convinced Henry

Sloane Coffin, the president of Union Theological Seminary, to offer Niebuhr a position.

Eddy would pay Niebuhr’s salary, and Niebuhr would teach part-time and work part-time

as an associate editor of the World Tomorrow, the journal founded by Socialist party

leader Norman Thomas that had become the mouthpiece of the left-wing of the Social

Gospel.36

In the fall of 1928, the preacher who had thirteen years earlier chosen relevance

over scholarship exited the pulpit. Niebuhr was able to dedicate himself to teaching and

writing full-time. Yet, he never really quit preaching. It is perhaps more accurate to say

that he moved onto a bigger “church.” Does Civilization Need Religion? was, in effect,

his inaugural sermon to the “congregation” he would serve the rest of his life, the

American public.

35 Bernard Iddings Bell, “Is Modern Religion Modern?,” review of Does Civilization Need Religion?, by Reinhold Niebuhr, Saturday Review of Literature, 27 September 1928, 164. 36 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 104-5.

* * *

Christian realism is so entangled with the persona of Reinhold Niebuhr that it is easy to forget that he was not the only Christian realist. To be sure, it would be impossible to discuss Christian realism without him. Indeed, much of the spirit of

Christian realism may have been the product of his personality alone. But Christian realism’s essence—the ideas that lay at its core—was developed only in conversation with friends and critics.

The friendly critic who most shaped Reinhold’s Christian realism was his younger brother Helmut Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962). Although he has received far less attention from historians than Reinhold has, theologians often regard Richard’s thought as the more significant of the two Niebuhr brothers, and inside the nation’s seminaries, he is read more widely than Reinhold.

For the first twenty years of his life, Richard appeared to be following in his older brother’s footsteps. He, too, left high school to attend Elmhurst College and Eden

Seminary. But the two brothers’ personalities could not have been more different. While

Reinhold enjoyed the life of the pulpit and public activism, Richard preferred academic life. He took graduate courses in theology and sociology from no less than five different schools before earning his PhD from Yale Divinity School in 1924. He then served as president of Elmhurst College and as a professor at Eden Seminary before accepting an appointment to the faculty of Yale Divinity School in 1931.37

37 Jon Diefenthaler, H. Richard Niebuhr: A Lifetime of Reflections on the Church and the World (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986); James M. Gustafson, “Niebuhr, H. Richard,” American National Biography Online, February 2000.

No one would deny that the Niebuhr brothers were very different. Yet the distinguishing characteristics seem to be differences in temperament more than thought.

Like Reinhold, Richard appreciated paradox and tension. Reinhold could recognize tension between ideas and impulses, and quickly come down in favor of one side or the other in order to take action. If necessary, he could change his mind immediately.

Richard, however, seems to have had a far more difficult time resolving the tension long enough to take action. The distinction is illustrated by an oft-quoted quip of Richard’s.

When asked by students why Reinhold had published so much more than he had, Richard retorted, “I think before I write.” On the other hand, behind his back, Richard’s students affectionately described him as demonstrating the “paralysis of analysis.”38

Richard is rarely identified as a Christian realist. For many historians and political scientists, Christian realist appears to be synonymous with Christian interventionist.

Richard’s firm opposition to involvement in World War II excludes him from the often- cited group of realists that is more likely to include John Foster Dulles or Henry Pitney

Van Dusen. If there is a reason to withhold the label in Richard’s case, it is because he was less committed to political action than were the other realists. That political action seems to be the one distinguishing element between Christian realism and neo-orthodoxy.

If for no other reason than that he continuously led his older brother away from traditional liberal theology and closer to neo-orthodoxy, Richard Niebuhr deserves a place in any study of Christian realism. As Reinhold conceded in the 1950s when looking back on the development of his own thought, “[Richard] was always a few paces ahead of

38 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 237; Roger Lincoln Shinn, “Reinhold Niebuhr as Teacher, Colleague, and Friend,” in Reinhold Niebuhr Revisited: Engagements with an American Original, ed. Daniel F. Rice (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 2009), 15.

me in theological development; and all my life I have profited greatly from his clearer

formulations of views I came to hold in common with him.”39

Another individual involved with the development of Christian realism was John

Coleman Bennett (1902-1995). Like the Niebuhrs, Bennett was the son of a minister. His

father, a Presbyterian, had attended Union where he studied under the liberal theologian

William Adams Brown; Bennett had never known anything other than liberal theology.

After graduating from Williams College, Bennett studied at Oxford before entering

Union in 1926 to earn his B.D. and S.T.M. He was there when Niebuhr arrived in 1928

and the two began their life-long friendship. In 1930, he left Union to teach at Auburn

Seminary in upstate New York before accepting a position at the Pacific School of

Religion in 1938. While in California, he was ordained in the Congregationalist Church.

In 1943, he returned to Union, where he was reunited with Niebuhr.40

If Richard pulled Reinhold toward neo-orthodoxy, Bennett made sure that

Christian realism never completely abandoned liberalism. When the polemical Reinhold burned bridges, Bennett immediately stepped in to begin the process of rebuilding them.

Reinhold Niebuhr eventually came to recognize as much. “As an old man, who in his age regrets the polemical spirit of his youth,” he wrote in Bennett’s Festschrift, “I wish I had profited a little earlier by noting the unpolemical genius of my—then young—friend,

39 Niebuhr, “Intellectual Autobiography,” 4. 40 John Coleman Bennett and Mark Juergensmeyer, Conversations with John Bennett: Reflections on His Life and on the Career of Christian Ethics (Berkeley, CA: Graduate Theological Union, 1982).

with whom I maintained a personal, academic, and journalistic partnership without

friction for four decades.”41

One man whose relationship with Niebuhr suffered at the hands of Niebuhr’s

“polemical spirit” was Charles Clayton Morrison (1874-1966). Morrison, like the

Niebuhrs, was a Midwesterner: he grew up in Iowa and graduated from Drake University

in Des Moines before moving to Chicago, where he served as a minister in a Disciples of

Christ Church in the Hyde Park neighborhood. While there, he studied philosophy at the

University of Chicago under John Dewey. In 1908, he purchased the Christian Century, a

struggling Disciples journal. His decision to change the format of the journal to a non-

denomination bi-weekly that covered politics and culture as well as church matters

quickly made the Christian Century the most influential liberal religious journal in the

nation.42

No one, with the notable exception of Morrison himself, would mistake him for a

Christian realist. Indeed, he was the very foil against which Reinhold Niebuhr and John

C. Bennett defined their Christian realism when they self-consciously broke with the liberals and non-interventionists at the Christian Century in February 1941 to start their own rival bi-weekly Christianity and Crisis. Yet throughout the debates over intervention, Morrison insisted that his position was that of the true Christian realist. If we acknowledge that there is more to Christian realism than a rejection of pacifism—a philosophy that Morrison, unlike Reinhold Niebuhr, never claimed to endorse—then we

41 Reinhold Niebuhr, “John Coleman Bennett: Theologian, Churchman, and Educator,” in Theology and Church in Times of Change: Essays in Honor of John Coleman Bennett, ed. Edward Le Roy Long and Robert T. Handy (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970), 236. 42 Linda Marie Delloff, “The Century in Transition, 1916-1922,” in A Century of the Century, ed. Linda Marie Delloff (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1987), 3-16.

might grant there is some validity to Morrison’s assertion. His non-interventionist stance was not, as he suggested, the only position a Christian realist could take, but it may be that the philosophy which led him to that position more closely resembled Christian realism than has generally been acknowledged. At the very least, Morrison has earned a rightful place in any discussion concerning Christian realism.

Still, the critique of pacifism is so central to Niebuhr’s and Bennett’s self-identity as Christian realists that the issue cannot be ignored; rather, it must be reexamined in closer detail.

* * *

In trying to explain how Bennett and Niebuhr moved from pacifism to interventionism, it is tempting to identify a particular moment at which the scales tipped.

The personal conversion narrative, in which an individual rejects a previously held belief and embraces another, is perhaps the ideal form to illustrate such a distinct break from the past. Such a narrative is psychologically fulfilling in that it allows for easy categorization.

There is, however, one shortcoming: more often than not, the form is far from an accurate reflection of the messy paradoxes of real life.

Unfortunately, Niebuhr has fallen victim to such categorization. Many Niebuhr scholars suggest, if they do not explicitly state, that he underwent a theological and political conversion during the 1930s, abandoning his pacifist and liberal roots in favor of a tougher realism.43 On the one hand, Niebuhr himself gave credence to such a model,

43 For fear of treating Niebuhr’s previous biographers as unfairly as he treated some of his contemporaries, a clarifying note is in order. Both Richard Wightman Fox and Paul Merkley recognize that even Niebuhr’s earliest writings exhibit a more nuanced and subtle view of the world than did the writings of his liberal contemporaries. However, one is left with the impression that both Fox and Merkley accept the general outline of 42

claiming in 1939, “About midway in my ministry . . . I underwent a fairly complete

conversion of thought which involved rejection of almost all the liberal theological ideals

and ideas with which I ventured forth in 1915.” He singled out his own Does Civilization

Need Religion? as a book that “contain[s] almost all the theological windmills against which today I tilt my sword.”

Yet in typical Niebuhrian fashion, in the span of a few short sentences he qualified his statement to such an extent that he nearly reversed it. To his critics who accused him of “inconstancy” through this period, he retorted, “My own biased judgment is that there is no inconstancy in the development of my thought . . . though there is a gradual theological elaboration of what was at first merely socio-ethical criticism.”44

Bennett, often a more reliable interpreter of Niebuhr’s development than was

Niebuhr himself, provides a view of Christian realism much closer to Niebuhr’s latter assertion than the former. Describing his own development throughout the 1930s,

Bennett acknowledged that “the events and the stirring of thought of the past decade have led to important shifts of emphasis and interest in my thinking, but the shifts have been

the conventional Niebuhr narrative, first laid out by Arthur Schlesinger, that Niebuhr broke with a liberal past and only became a “realist” after the publication of Moral Man and Immoral Society in 1932. Schlesinger, “Reinhold Niebuhr's Role in American Political Thought and Life”; Merkley, Reinhold Niebuhr; Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr. To further demonstrate the futility of attempting to pinpoint the moment at which Niebuhr abandoned his pacifism in favor of realism, it is worth noting that Charles Chatfield argues Niebuhr remained a pacifist as late as 1939, a date which I suspect both Niebuhr and most pacifists would agree is a few years after their relations had soured. Charles Chatfield, For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914-1941 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971), 239n. 44 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Ten Years That Shook My World,” Christian Century, 26 April 1939, 542-46, quote from 542.

within a general framework which is still closer to theological liberalism than to any

other system.” He admitted that he was “A Changed Liberal—But Still a Liberal.”45

Even during his supposed “liberal pacifist” stage, Niebuhr held no illusions about liberalism. He, like other realists, was never as ideological as we sometimes suppose individuals to be. Neither Niebuhr nor Bennett made a simple ideological shift; rather, external events changed their perspectives. Neither could imagine the rise of Nazism and totalitarianism in the 1920s or early 1930s. When the horrors of Nazism became a reality, they, as reasonable individuals do, changed their perspectives and reconsidered some of their previous beliefs about human behavior in general and about war in particular.

As the following re-examination of the realists’ “pacifism” of the 1920s reveals, their new interventionist stance did not require a full-scale rejection of their former way of thinking about political action. Put more simply, “realism” was not necessarily incompatible with “pacifism” as most of these churchmen used the term.

* * *

Peace societies and pacifism have a long history in the United States. Not only did the historic peace churches such as the Quakers and Mennonites seek refuge in North

America, individuals from a variety of denominational backgrounds, and even those with a more secular bent, came together to form peace societies. In the aftermath of the War of

1812, David Low Dodge founded the New York Peace Society, the first organization devoted solely to furthering the cause of peace. By 1828, enough local groups formed in the northeast that they chose to merge and form the American Peace Society. Despite the popularity of these organizations in times of peace, they faced one perpetual problem: in

45 John C. Bennett, “A Changed Liberal—But Still a Liberal,” Christian Century, 8 February 1939, 179-81, quote from 179.

times of war, they were wracked by internal divisions or suppressed by external forces.

Perhaps the most serious issue was that those who had committed themselves to peace and opposed all wars in the abstract exhibited a remarkable capacity to justify specific wars. During the Civil War, for instance, erstwhile pacifist William Lloyd Garrison urged peace groups to stay silent, for any war that would lead to abolition was a righteous war if ever there were one.46

No war dealt a bigger blow to the pacifists and peace societies than the First

World War. Coercion played a role in weakening the anti-war movement. The Wilson administration used the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 to suppress any activities that threatened the war effort, including public criticism of the war.

Conscientious objectors suffered too, as they were forced into non-combat roles in the military or sent to prison.

But it was not only these overt acts of coercion that silenced the peace movement.

Many individuals who belonged to peace societies were progressives who had supported

Wilson’s domestic reforms. By the time the president delivered his Fourteen Points address to Congress in January 1918, most progressives were fully convinced that war in

Europe was, as Wilson had promised, a righteous war to promote democracy and peace, not solely the interests of the United States.

46 Devere Allen, “Introduction: Pacifism Old and New,” in Devere Allen, ed. Pacifism in the Modern World (New York: Garland, 1971 [1929]), vii-xviii. Ironically, many of those pacifists associated with the Fellowship of Reconciliation in the interwar period looked to Garrison for inspiration while simultaneously denouncing the Civil War. They likened their struggle for the outlawry of war to Garrison’s fight for the abolishment of slavery, but they failed to recognize that ultimately Garrison came to accept the use of violent force as an effective means of bringing about the change he desired. For the F.O.R.’s attitude toward the Civil War, see Kosek, Acts of Conscience, 13, 75-76.

The majority of liberal Protestants associated with the Social Gospel fell in line with their secular progressive counterparts and backed Wilson’s war, a fact which should call into question the tendency among historians to identify the Social Gospel movement of the inter-war era almost exclusively with pacifism. As late as November 1916,

Reinhold Niebuhr expressed apprehensions toward the war on the grounds that war demanded citizens fight for national interests rather than any universal value that would benefit civilization as a whole. Like so many other Social Gopelers, however, he slowly came to believe in Wilsonian idealism. Indeed, by mid-1917 he was so committed to the

Allied cause that he agreed to serve on his denomination’s War Welfare Commission. In this post he traveled around the Midwest instructing military chaplains and meeting with soldiers. In effect, Niebuhr became one of the many preachers who “put Christ in uniform,” to borrow the phrase coined years later by a penitent Harry Emerson Fosdick, who regretted his own role in mobilizing Christians for the war.47

If the Great War led many pacifists astray, events that unfolded at Versailles in

1919 brought virtually all of the former pacifists back into the fold and actually swelled the ranks of the peace societies. Disillusionment with the Great War sank in quickly. The harsh punishment meted out to Germany convinced many of those progressives who rallied behind Wilson that they had been duped. They came to believe that the war was not waged for any of the moral objectives that Wilson had asserted; it was fought only to promote the economic interests of the Allies. The failure of the United States Senate to ratify the treaty and join the League of Nations only further deflated the hopes of many

47 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 46-47, 49-59; Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Putting Christ into Uniform,” Christian Century, 13 December 1939, 1539-42.

progressives, for it was now clear that the U.S. had little intention of “making the world safe for democracy.”

Among the most prominent of these peace societies was the Fellowship of

Reconciliation (F.O.R.), founded in November 1915. Although a core group of dedicated members continued its work during the war years, the F.O.R.’s influence increased dramatically after the war under the direction of executive secretary John Nevin Sayre.

Individuals who had helped mobilize Christians for the war, including Fosdick and

Niebuhr, were now mobilizing for peace. It was on the editorial board of the F.O.R.’s unofficial journal, the World Tomorrow, that Niebuhr had agreed to serve when he accepted his post at Union.

Amid this growing disillusionment with the war and the corresponding interest in the peace movement, Devere Allen organized a symposium on pacifism in 1928. Allen had been trained as a sociologist at Oberlin College and was involved with both the

F.O.R. and the Socialist Party. Pacifist had become an epithet during the war years, and he now hoped to rescue the label from the “dogmatic fundamentalists of passivism.” He asked many fellow members of the F.O.R., including John Nevin Sayre and Kirby Page, editors of the World Tomorrow; A. J. Muste, a member of the F.O.R. who became a devoted Trotskyite in the late 1920s; and Reinhold Niebuhr to contribute essays. He believed the renewed interest in peace movements was a sign of the “evidence of its

[pacifism’s] imperishable vitality,” and he hoped that the young pacifists whom he asked to contribute to his symposium would help provide some sort of direction for the movement. Above all, Allen argued, pacifism was in no way a retreat from the world.

“The pacifism of today is strongly positive,” he declared, and he hoped his contributors would provide a proper course of action.48

Allen identified the pacifism of the 1920s as something “new” and sought to distinguish it from the “old pacifism” of the Peace Churches. This new pacifism was modern in that it was not the product of religious dogma so much as lived experience. As a sociologist, Allen asserted that the social sciences allowed the new pacifists to “subject their ideas to continual and rigorous tests.” He believed that the new pacifism was not utopian or overly idealistic, for it was confirmed by reality:

Today we are neither optimists nor pessimists. We know that even the probable does not always work out; but we also know that the impossible is being done again and again. The pacifist is no visionary as to trust war for the accomplishment of any good end; it is he, rather than the one who capitulates to apparent military necessities, who is after all the realist.49

Allen did not see pacifism and realism as incompatible. He believed that it was in fact the pacifists who deserved the realist label, and, in 1928, Reinhold Niebuhr seemed to agree.

To be sure, Niebuhr was never entirely comfortable as a pacifist. Even during the years of his career which historians identify as his pacifist phase—the decade of the

1920s in which he held leadership positions within the F.O.R. and served as an editor of the World Tomorrow—he distinguished his perspective from those of the many other individuals who claimed to be pacifists after World War I. Just one year prior to contributing to Allen’s symposium, Niebuhr published “A Critique of Pacifism,” in which he criticized many of his fellow pacifists for their moralistic calls to end war without addressing the causes of war. He argued that pacifism was a privileged position,

48 Devere Allen, “Introduction,” Pacifism in the Modern World, quotes from xiv, xiii, and xvi. 49 Ibid., xvii.

one which was only so widely held by Americans because they lived in “a paradise that is protected by the two walls of the tariff and the immigration restriction.” Americans could demand a permanent peace when they enjoyed so many economic and security advantages in the world, but it was naïve to think that nations which did not share those advantages would readily accept the pacifists’ call for outlawing war.

Pacifists claimed to be following Jesus’ ethic of love, but Niebuhr argued that trust alone did not amount to love. Love had to be sacrificial. Trusting enemies is not enough to win them over; only self-sacrifice provided any hope of converting them. To the millions of Americans who believed that outlawing war was the most noble course of action, Niebuhr pointed out that “if such action is to be morally redemptive, it must disassociate the individual not only from the policy of using physical force but from the policy of insisting on material advantages which destroy human fellowship and make the use of force necessary.” Niebuhr’s tendency to criticize pacifism even during these early years of his public career has led at least one of his biographers to deny that Niebuhr ever was a pacifist in any meaningful sense of the word.50

Yet even as Niebuhr criticized pacifists in the twenties, he still claimed to be one.51 How he could continue to call himself a pacifist is only clear when we consider

50 Reinhold Niebuhr, “A Critique of Pacifism,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1927, 637-41, quotes from 640 and 641. Paul Merkley cites this very article to suggest that Niebuhr was never much of a pacifist if pacifism implied absolute opposition to violence and war. My only quip would be that the same argument can be made for many of those who called themselves pacifists in the 1920s and 1930s. After all, by the time of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the vast majority of those who had called themselves pacifists came to support military action. The key is that until December 1941, many of the debates concerning the role the U.S. ought to play in the war actually occurred within the pacifist ranks, not just between pacifists and non-pacifists. Merkley, Reinhold Niebuhr, 121. 51 Besides his continued association with pacifist organizations throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, Niebuhr explicitly referred to himself as a pacifist in both “A Critique of 49

how he defined the term. For Niebuhr, pacifists were simply “social idealists who are

profoundly critical and skeptical of the use of physical force in the solution of social

problems.” This idea seems to contradict the thesis he later advanced in Moral Man and

Immoral Society—that physical force is morally indistinguishable from other forms of

force and ought not be dismissed outright—but he already made room for that argument

in 1928. He recognized that there were many different stripes of pacifists. There were

those on one end of the spectrum who opposed every use of physical force and believed

violence an unnecessary evil. But there were also those who were “less consistent,” i.e.,

not absolute, pacifists, who viewed violence as “an evil in all situations but a necessary

evil in some situations.” Niebuhr counted himself among the latter and only opposed one

specific form of violence—wars between nations. His logic was rooted in experience, for

“history has so vividly proven its [war’s] worthlessness as a method of solving social

problems that it can hardly be justified on any moral grounds.”52

Niebuhr provided two reasons why war was both “impotent and perilous.” First,

wars were fought between nations which were parties in a dispute. The end of war may

appear to end the dispute, but it never resolves the issues that led to the war in the first

place. Armed conflict only aggravates the underlying reasons for conflict, as the victor is

rarely, if ever, able to transcend the national interests for which it wages war.

Niebuhr thought that there might someday be a way to overcome this problem. An

international body set up to arbitrate in international disputes might provide a more

Pacifism” and his contribution to Allen’s symposium. Niebuhr, “A Critique of Pacifism,” 641; Niebuhr, “The Use of Force,” in Pacifism in the Modern World, ed. Devere Allen (New York: Garland, 1971 [1929]), 15-16. 52 Niebuhr, “The Use of Force,” 15, 16-17.

objective resolution to conflict, but Niebuhr’s realism led him to conclude that such hopes were slim. Although arbitration worked between individuals, there was far less reason to suspect it could work between nations. The difference is that a judge dealing with conflict between individuals usually does not know the individuals involved and can therefore at least approximate objectivity. Any international body would necessarily include the nations in conflict, and even those nations not directly involved in the conflict would most likely have interests that overlapped with those that were. Niebuhr did not even mention the League of Nations in this critique of international organizations, suggesting that, at least at the end of the 1920s, he had little faith in the League’s ability to transcend the national interest of its members.53

Niebuhr’s second objection to modern war was far more pedestrian, but it is worth noting since he so often overlooked this issue in the late 1930s. He recognized that modern war wreaked havoc on society and led to the loss of innocent lives, both those of civilians and soldiers. Although the significant number of deaths caused by modern warfare served as ample evidence of war’s immorality for many pacifists, Niebuhr went further and offered a pragmatic critique of modern warfare. He accepted that the casualties might be justified if they produced a desirable end, but the real problem with war was that it took the “lives of many who have had no share in the dispute and who are innocent of the evils which a war may be designed to eliminate.”

This concern reverberates with the criticism of the First World War he expressed in 1916. Then he had written that the tragedy of war was not simply that individuals died, but that their deaths really only furthered a short-term, trivial interest: “the nation’s crime

53 Ibid., 18-20.

against the individual” was that the state “claims a life of eternal significance for ends that have no eternal value.” Casualties of war were both unnecessary and meaningless in that they failed to have any lasting effect on civilization.54

Even as he contributed to Allen’s forum on the “new pacifism,” Niebuhr could not resist offering a critique. “Pacifists assume too easily, it seems to me,” wrote Niebuhr,

“that all controversies are due to misunderstanding which might be solved by a greater degree of imagination. When the strong exploit the weak they produce a conflict which is not the result of ignorance but of the brutality of human nature.” The problem was that the strong would always prey on the weak. As long as there remains inequality in power,

“it is difficult to establish moral relations. Weakness invites aggression.”55

* * *

One of the central tenets of Niebuhr’s Christian realism is this recognition of “the brutality of human nature.” He spent the greater part of his career elaborating this point, often invoking the concept of Original Sin. The young, pacifist Niebuhr had already come to incorporate the concept of sin while still believing in pacifism, albeit in a more complicated and pragmatic forms than most critics of the philosophy recognize.

Over the course of the next decade, a series of international crises coupled with an increasingly dire economic situation at home slowly forced Niebuhr to abandon his commitment to even this pragmatic pacifism. The first of those international crises began in September 1931, when Japanese and Chinese troops clashed in Manchuria.

54 Ibid., 17-18; Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Nation's Crime against the Individual,” Atlantic Monthly, November 1916, 614. 55 Niebuhr, “The Use of Force,” in Pacifism in the Modern World, 18-19.

Chapter Two: “Must We Do Nothing?”: Pacifists Confront the Manchurian Crisis

For ten hours on 17 February 1933, telegraph wires carried dots and dashes from the League of Nation’s headquarters in Geneva to stations around the world. After a year and a half of delay, the League was finally prepared to render its verdict in the

Manchurian crisis that began in September 1931. In an effort to place world public opinion squarely against Japanese aggression, the League transmitted the 15,000-word report of the Committee of Nineteen around the world just days before formally accepting it. The New York Times reprinted the report in full, earning the paper praise from the League, and leading the pacifist editors at the World Tomorrow to proclaim,

“Surely the departed devotees of secret diplomacy must have turned over in their

graves!” The editors went on to declare triumphantly that 21 February, the date on which

the League Assembly formally received the report, “deserves a red circle on the calendar

as the beginning of a new epoch in international relations.”1

In light of the subsequent conflicts that culminated in World War II, the pacifist proclamation of a new world order was undoubtedly premature. Their optimism was short-lived, as the pacifists themselves soon recognized their folly. Nevertheless, to fully appreciate the debates over U.S. intervention in the world crisis that occurred from 1939 to 1941, it is useful to consider the Manchurian crisis as a preliminary round. During the crisis, those pacifists who had been unwavering in their convictions since at least 1919

1 “Text of the Report of the League Committee of Nineteen on the Chino-Japanese Dispute,” New York Times, 18 February 1933, 8-9; “Journalistic Feat Gratifies Geneva,” ibid., 21 February 1933, 3; “The League Tells the World,” World Tomorrow, 1 March 1933, 200.

were forced to confront questions regarding the use of force and coercion in world affairs that temporarily divided—and permanently weakened—the Christian Left in the United

States. Whereas liberal Protestants stood united behind the twin banners of

“internationalism” and “pacifism” in the 1920s, the Manchurian crisis raised doubts about the complementary nature of those two ideals.

* * *

When, on 18 September 1931, Japanese troops left the South Manchuria Railway zone and began their occupation of Manchuria, the liberal Protestants associated with the

World Tomorrow and the Christian Century were among the Americans most attuned to the situation. Many of them had either served as missionaries in the Far East or knew others who had. In fact, the YMCA national secretary, Sherwood Eddy, was on the ground in Mukden when Japanese soldiers stormed into the city. Although the Japanese reported that Chinese soldiers in the area had dynamited a section of railroad tracks, Eddy cabled Kirby Page at the World Tomorrow to inform him that the evidence suggested otherwise. Most observers in Manchuria believed, correctly as it turned out, that Japanese military leaders had planned the attack in advance, and Eddy asked that Page immediately inform Secretary of State Henry Stimson of the situation. Eddy, like most pacifists, understood that both the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the antiwar pact which the U.S. signed in 1928, and the League of Nations were on trial.2

Although the editors at the World Tomorrow and the Christian Century shared with most observers the conviction that Japan was the aggressor in the crisis at hand, rather than immediately call for the harsh punishment of Japan, they first sought to

2 Chatfield, For Peace and Justice, 224; Sherwood Eddy, “Japan Threatens the World,” Christian Century, 16 March 1932, 346-47.

understand what compelled Japan to resort to violence. They condemned Japan’s actions, but they argued that the system of international capitalism explained Japan’s imperialist venture better than did arguments based on any militarism allegedly inherent in Japanese culture.

Both the World Tomorrow and the Christian Century reminded their readers that the over-populated island nation depended upon the natural resources of Manchuria for survival. Japan had long enjoyed economic privileges there, even if Manchuria had nominally been under Chinese rule. Now Japan found its investments in the region threatened by the Chinese nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, who was attempting to reassert Chinese dominance over Manchuria.

As regrettable as Japan’s methods were, the island empire was acting like “all the great powers,” who “at various times have intervened with armed force in the affairs of foreign countries, have seized strategic centers and then camouflaged the situation by establishing puppet administrations.” The U.S. was not exempt from such imperialist actions, for it had “intervened with armed force in the Caribbean on the average of once a year for thirty years.” Indeed, as Paul Porter, a field secretary for the F.O.R.-affiliated

League for Industrial Democracy, argued after his recent return from Manchuria, in their handling of the Manchurian situation, the Japanese might be seen “primarily [as] an effective, if tardy, imitator of lessons taught by Europeans and Americans.”3

Nevertheless, unlike such contemporaries as Senator Hiram Johnson (Rep.-CA) or

Arthur Brisbane, leading columnist of the Hearst Press—individuals for whom the

3 “Japanese Militarists Strike,” World Tomorrow, November 1931, 430; Paul Porter, “Imperialist Aggression in Manchuria,” ibid., December 1931, 394-96; Frank H. Hedges, “Are the Japanese Militaristic?,” ibid., January 1932, 8-10.

“isolationist” label was far more appropriate, and who drew moral parallels between the

U.S. and Japan to support the argument that the U.S. had no business butting into Asian affairs—the pacifists did not believe that Japan should be allowed free reign in China.

They argued that both the U.S. and the League of Nations should take some sort of action to alleviate the crisis. The pacifists’ insistence upon working with the League made this a form of collective security. But theirs was not the typical view of collective security.

They pushed for the U.S. and League to do more than simply condemn the actions of

Japan. In order to avoid charges of hypocrisy, both the League and U.S. should also renounce “special interests under the guise of a Monroe Doctrine,” whether it was articulated by Americans or the Japanese.4

Japan may not have the right to unilaterally claim and defend interests in

Manchuria, but the international community, according to the World Tomorrow, had an obligation to ensure that those interests Japan had secured through past treaties were protected. The first step in ending the conflict in Manchuria was not punishing Japan, but rather assuring Japan that when it used the peaceful means of signing treaties to secure rights, those treaties would be upheld. The pacifists sought, in other words, to remove whatever justification the Japanese government thought it had for occupying Manchuria.5

During autumn 1931, Japanese diplomats insisted that their government had no imperial ambitions and only sought to protect its citizens and investments in Manchuria.

As it was unclear exactly what Japan’s intentions in Manchuria were and no party wanted

4 “Japanese Militarists Strike,” World Tomorrow, November 1931, 430. On the response of Johnson and Brisbane to the Manchurian crisis, see Justus D. Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise: American Opinion-Makers and the Manchurian Crisis of 1931-1933 (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1984), 33. 5 “Japanese Militarists Strike,” World Tomorrow, November 1931, 430.

to risk escalating the crisis to a full-scale war, both the League of Nations and the U.S. exercised a great deal of patience and caution in dealing with Japan. The League Council first passed a resolution on 30 September 1931 that condemned neither side but asked

Japan to withdraw its troops from the area and China to assume responsibility for

Japanese citizens and property.

Japan showed no signs of backing down, however, sending its troops out further into the provinces and provoking China to request that the League take further action. By late October, the Council drafted a resolution demanding that Japan withdraw its troops by 16 November, but as Japan’s representative voted against the resolution, which required unanimity within the Council to be binding, no legal action could be taken when

Japan failed to comply with the deadline. Nearly three months after hostilities began, the furthest the League had gone was to issue on 10 December a resolution that called for a five-man Commission of Inquiry, soon known as the Lytton Commission after the Earl of

Lytton who headed the group, to investigate the crisis on the ground and provide recommendations to the League.6

Throughout the crisis, the U.S. demonstrated a willingness to work with the

League of Nations. Despite concerns of President Hoover and Secretary Stimson that the

“isolationist” American public would negatively react to attempts by the State

Department to cooperate too closely with the League, historian Justus Doenecke points out that opposition never really amounted to more than a handful of members of

6 For the League’s account of the crisis, see “Text of the Report of the League Committee of Nineteen on the Chino-Japanese Dispute,” New York Times, 18 February 1933, 8-9. See also, Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise; Justus D. Doenecke and John Edward Wilz, From Isolation to War, 1931-1941, 2nd ed. (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1991), ch. 2.

Congress. By and large, the American press appreciated Stimson’s efforts to avoid any obligations while furthering the cause of international cooperation. Few objections were raised when Stimson sent the American consul general at Geneva, Prentiss Gilbert, to sit in on the League Council’s deliberations in October 1931. Nor was there much concern when an American, General Frank McCoy, agreed to serve as one of the five members of the Lytton Commission.7

Both the World Tomorrow and the Christian Century commended Stimson’s handling of the crisis and encouraged his attempts to work with the League. As early as

November 1931, the World Tomorrow admitted the League had already exposed its limitations and shortcomings in dealing with Japan. “But one thing we can say with assurance,” the magazine cautioned, “without the League of Nations the prospect of maintaining peace would be utterly hopeless.”8 At least during the early months of the crisis, many of the pacifists still desired the U.S. to be permanently represented at the

League; they hoped that for all the ill that was sure to come of Japan’s actions, one good that might also arise would be closer American involvement with that international body.

Together, the U.S. and League might take specific steps to curb Japan’s aggression. By December, as the crisis in Manchuria had escalated, the World Tomorrow moved beyond its idealistic calls for the renunciation of special interests and offered up far more plausible steps for consideration. The League should set a specific date by which Japan must withdraw to the railroad zones or face binding repercussions. The pacifists argued the first step should be a “diplomatic boycott”: all League members and

7 Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise, 118. 8 “The Strategy of Peace,” World Tomorrow, November 1931, 339-40.

the U.S. should remove their foreign officials from Japan until the League’s demands

were met. “Japan would probably be compelled to yield,” but if not, some form of

economic embargo might be considered, but only “as a last resort.”9

Whereas the explicitly pacifist World Tomorrow made no mention of the possibility of military sanctions in its initial appraisals of the crisis, the editors at the

Christian Century raised the issue only to dismiss it outright. First, they voiced a common moral refrain against the use of force: “The exercise of military sanctions—that is, the use of war to suppress war or punish the war maker—only confounds the already existing confusion and compounds the evil.”10

But the Christian Century moved beyond moral critiques of war and argued that

the Manchurian crisis revealed the practical problems of implementing internationally

backed military sanctions. As Niebuhr had earlier cautioned, nations were unlikely to

fight for transcendent values if doing so was not in their immediate national interests.

Britain and France, in particular, seemed to prove his point; both countries dragged their

feet in dealing with Japan. Many of Britain’s leaders, including Foreign Minister Sir John

Simon, preferred a Japanese-occupied Manchuria to what they saw as the most likely

alternative, a Soviet-dominated Far East. French diplomats recognized the similarity

between Japan’s occupation of Manchuria to enforce treaty obligations and France’s

1923 occupation of the Ruhr to exact reparations from Germany which were owed under

the Versailles Treaty. Addressing the reluctance of Britain and France to impose any

sanctions, much less military sanctions, the Christian Century remarked: “The

9 “What Could Be Done in Manchuria?,” World Tomorrow, December 1931, 387-88. 10 “Manchuria—A Case Not yet Closed,” Christian Century, 13 January 1932, 50-51, quote from 50.

Manchurian crisis has this much to its credit, if it has nothing else: it has shown that

military sanctions have no reality, because they cannot be applied except against small,

weak nations, and even then only when the application of such sanctions happens to

coincide with the immediate interests of the great powers.”11

The Christian Century offered up “sanctions of peace” as an alternative to

“sanctions of war,” the editor’s term for military sanctions. One sanction of peace was the consumer boycott, which the Chinese had already employed against Japan at the time of writing. The editors predicted the Chinese boycott alone would cause Japan such economic hardship that, within a year or so, Japan’s militarists would lose power and

Japan would withdraw its troops. Though the editors were not aware of it at the time,

Stimson shared their belief in the power of boycotts; he confided to the French

Ambassador that he thought the Chinese boycott “was likely to bring [Japan] to her knees.”12

But the U.S. and the League need not sit idly and wait for the boycott to show results. Salmon O. Levinson, a Chicago lawyer who headed the outlawry of war campaign of the 1920s and helped draft the Kellogg-Briand Pact, had offered some suggestions for dealing with recalcitrant nations in a 1929 article from which the editors borrowed the phrase “sanctions of peace.”13 The Christian Century argued that the U.S.

11 Ibid., 50. On the reluctance of Britain and France to condemn Japan’s actions, see Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise, 48; Doenecke and Wilz, From Isolation to War, 31-32. 12 Henry L. Stimson, Memorandum, 29 October 1931, in United States Department of State, Papers of the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1931, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), 343; Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise, 35. 13 Salmon O. Levinson, “The Sanctions of Peace,” Christian Century, 25 December 1929, 1603-6.

and the League should follow Levinson’s suggestion of allowing the World Court to deal

with conflicts between nations by encouraging China—and Japan if the government

really thought it had a claim against China—to appeal to the court. Critics of the court

might object that it had no power of enforcement, but this was also true of the U.S.

Supreme Court, and it remained a powerful institution. What mattered was not the

immediate recourse to action that a verdict would provide but the long-term effect a

decision would have on public opinion: “The rendering of the decision, made known to

the peoples of the world, and spread upon the pages of history, would ultimately build up

such a solid wall of adverse public opinion as would make it impossible for Japan's

militarists to persist in their defiance.”14

The second sanction which the Christian Century advocated was non-recognition.

The U.S. and other signers of the Kellogg-Briand Pact should announce to Japan that they

would not recognize territorial changes made with armed force or the threat of armed

force. Like a diplomatic boycott, non-recognition was not only morally superior to other

possible sanctions, it would also prove more effective. “A title . . . disputed by all the rest

of the world would be a title not worth having,” the Christian Century confidently

declared. “The expenditure of a single yen or a single life to obtain such title would be

folly, and even the most militaristic of governments would be forced to recognize this.”15

Before the Christian Century’s editorial advocating non-recognition reached its audience, Stimson had formally adopted the position. In separate notes, dated 7 January

1932, he informed both China and Japan that the U.S. would not recognize new

14 “Manchuria—a Case Not yet Closed,” Christian Century, 13 January 1932, 51. 15 Ibid.

agreements or treaties that threatened the Open Door Policy in the Far East; nor would

the U.S. recognize any territorial changes in Manchuria that resulted from Japan’s

violation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Stimson had been patient with Japan for months,

but the Japanese occupation of Chinchow, the last Chinese stronghold in South

Manchuria, on 2 January 1932 prompted him to adopt a firmer stance and enunciate the

Stimson Doctrine, as his policy of non-recognition came to be known.16

Although, as Justus Doenecke points out, Stimson publicly stressed the Open

Door and the economic aspects of non-recognition, most commentators addressed the

Stimson Doctrine’s relation to the Kellogg-Briand antiwar pact. Much of the American

press approved of the Stimson Doctrine, but the degree of enthusiasm with which the

Christian Century welcomed the announcements was unparalleled. “As though written in letters of fire by an invisible hand across the face of Secretary Stimson’s latest note to

Japan and China,” read the opening lines of the magazine’s first editorial following

Stimson’s announcement, “there stands out this fact: The peace pact is law! It is not, as a cynical and war-sniffing press has declared, a mere pious sentiment. It is not, as commentators itching for methods of ‘enforcement’ have charged, an empty form of words. It is law! Established international law.”17

If the Stimson Doctrine’s degree of success is measured by its immediate effect

on Japanese behavior, then it is easily dismissed as an unmitigated failure. Three weeks

after Stimson’s note to Japan, just before midnight on 28 January 1932, Japanese troops

clashed with Chinese troops and attacked Chinese civilians in the port city of Shanghai.

16 “Text of Secretary Stimson’s Note,” New York Times, 8 January 1932, 1. 17 Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise, 48; “The Pact Is Law!,” Christian Century, 20 January 1932, 77.

Unlike the desolate Manchurian frontier, the city of Shanghai was a major urban center. It

included the Shanghai International Settlement, established by the British after the First

Opium War in 1842. British, French, and American citizens lived adjacent to the large

Japanese population that maintained its own sector in the Settlement. The Westerners

watched on in horror as low-flying Japanese planes dropped bombs on the neighboring

Chinese borough of Chapei and introduced the world to aerial bombing.

President Hoover responded to the crisis by sending six destroyers and an

additional 1,600 marines from Manila up the Yangtze River to reinforce the 1,300

American marines who were stationed in the Settlement to protect American citizens. But

neither Hoover nor Stimson wanted a fight. The marines’ primary role was to work with

British soldiers to turn away the Chinese troops who sought refuge in the Settlement,

thereby preserving the official neutrality of the British and American governments.

Hoover and Stimson would not, and realistically could not, move beyond condemning

Japan’s actions and urging a peaceful resolution to the latest outbreak in Shanghai.18

While the Christian Century, the World Tomorrow, and even Secretary Stimson had hoped that the Chinese boycott would weaken Japan to such an extent that the government would withdraw troops from Manchuria, Japan’s military leaders now demonstrated that they had different plans: they would respond to boycotts and demonstrations with bombs and machine-gun fire.

18 “Japanese Set Chapei Afire,” New York Times, 29 January 1932, 2; “Text of White House Statement,” ibid., 1 February 1932, 1; Walter LaFeber, The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Relations (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 171. For a book- length treatment of the Shanghai crisis, see Donald A. Jordan, China's Trial by Fire: The Shanghai War of 1932 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001).

Although Japan’s defiance dealt a blow to their optimism and increased the urgency of the discussion concerning what actions the U.S. and League might take, the pacifists continued to applaud Stimson’s caution and did not radically change their proposals after Shanghai. Even the typically optimistic Christian Century expressed shock. Japan was now “a nation run amok . . . She is an outlaw among nations; her hands reek with blood.” But the editors argued there were in fact two Japans. On the one hand, there were the “common people of Japan—kindly people, loving beauty, hospitable, happiest when at play with their children.” Shanghai, however, gave proof to the world that another Japan existed, “a callous assassin, swinging low in his airplane above an unprotected civilian area; dropping horrible destruction through the roofs, in the courtyards, in the crowded streets.”19

It was their distinction between the Japanese people and the militarists vying for power within the Japanese government that allowed the pacifists to continue to believe in the effectiveness of the Stimson Doctrine. Former missionaries and other authorities on the Far East supported the notion that there remained a liberal Japanese public that might one day soon challenge the authority of the military once convinced the world condemned Japan’s actions. Grover Clark, former editor of the Peking Leader and a professor at the National University in Peking (Beijing), assured readers of the World

Tomorrow that “the Japanese people are sensitive to world opinion to a degree which it is difficult for Americans to understand.” The Stimson doctrine was a first step in notifying the Japanese public that the U.S. did not approve of their government’s actions.

19 “Japan the Outlaw,” Christian Century, 10 February 1932, 182-84, quotations from 182.

Unfortunately, the League was slow to follow Stimson’s lead. Giving the League the benefit of the doubt regarding its members’ caution in dealing with Japan, Clark, writing before the League’s 11 March endorsement of non-recognition, assumed League members were reluctant to condemn Japan for fear of alienating the Japanese people and strengthening the military’s hand. Ironically, Clark argued, “the actual effect of this mildness . . . was to give the militarists the chance to say that the actions of the Western nations proved that they either were indifferent or that they approved of what the military had done.” Clark held out hope that non-recognition might still turn the Japanese people against the military leaders: “The Japanese people, who are not themselves militaristic, will become ashamed rather than proud of their military the moment they become convinced that the military has disgraced the country.”20

The Christian Century published an article by a Japanese anti-war leader,

Kuratoro Hirosa, which echoed Clark’s analysis. The article was shrouded in minor intrigue; it had been smuggled out of Japan to escape the censors, and the editors were

“not at liberty to reveal the way in which the article has reached the United States.” In what the Christian Century considered “the most important and revealing article to come out of Japan since the beginning of the present hostilities,” Hirosa explained that the

Japanese constitution created two largely independent governments in Japan: the civilian government (the Diet) and the military government. The Diet had little power to check the unruly military which reported only to the emperor. Unlike democracies, the military alone had war powers; the Diet exercised only minimal control over the military’s budget, much less its activities.

20 Grover Clark, “Outlaw Japanese Militarists!,” World Tomorrow, March 1932, 72-74.

Nevertheless, prior to the outbreak of the Manchurian crisis, the civilian government appeared to be gaining the upper hand over the military. The disarmament conference, set to convene in spring 1932, offered further hope of weakening the

Japanese army and navy. In a last ditch effort to save their power, military leaders planned and carried out the attacks on Manchuria and Shanghai without the knowledge of the Diet. The civilian government, caught between the League’s condemnation and the military’s imperialist ambitions, was in an impossible position.

Hirosa offered little in the way of advice on handling the situation. He did, however, caution Americans that high tariffs, restrictions on Japanese immigration (not to mention discrimination against those already in the U.S.), and reports that the Americans were considering an economic sanctions against Japan served as propaganda for the militarists and might lead to war between the U.S. and Japan. War, argued Hirosa, was exactly what Japanese militarists desired. While he held out hope the militarists would ultimately fail, one thing was for certain: “Their supremacy is assured . . . so long as war conditions obtain.”21

* * *

After Japan’s attack on Shanghai, many journalists and other opinion makers in the U.S. began clamoring for something more than the Stimson Doctrine, and the pacifists, too, were forced to consider further action. In early 1932, the American Boycott

Association formed and called for a consumer’s boycott on Japanese silk to work in conjunction with that already employed by the Chinese. Others, however, desired more

21 Kurataro Hirosa, “Japan's Militarist and Fascist Revolt,” Christian Century, 20 April 1932, 506-8. Historians have since corroborated Hirosa’s account of the militarists’ rise to power. See Doenecke and Wilz, From Isolation to War, 29-30, 42.

formal action. On 17 February, A. Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard, publicly

asked Congress to sever all economic ties with Japan. The American Committee on the

Far Eastern Crisis quickly formed in New York and circulated Lowell’s call for economic

sanctions as a petition. By March, the petition had more than ten thousand signatures.22

Both the World Tomorrow and the Christian Century were early advocates of a consumers’ boycott. The pacifist F.O.R. agreed with this approach and adopted a resolution endorsing boycotts in February 1932.23 Pacifists were careful, particularly in

the early months of the crisis, to distinguish between consumers’ boycotts and formal

economic sanctions. Though never explicitly stated, pacifists appear to have made a

moral distinction between the two, for many of those who criticized embargos as immoral

had few reservations about boycotts. As most Christian pacifists during the late 1920s

and early 1930s were apprehensive at the thought of using any form of coercion, it seems

quite plausible that they saw consumers’ boycotts, voluntary in nature, as free of coercion

but viewed formal sanctions, imposed by governments, as coercive.

Stressed more than any moral distinction, however, were the perceived

differences in practical consequences of consumers’ boycotts and formal economic

sanctions. Because most pacifists viewed wars as fought between governments and not

people, voluntary boycotts were assumed to run a lesser risk of war than were formal

economic sanctions. Perhaps an American consumers’ boycott would carry with it only

very minimal risks of war, but, as the Christian Century was forced to admit after the

Japanese bombing of Shanghai, consumers’ boycotts, like those carried out by the people

22 Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise, 70-72. 23 Chatfield, For Peace and Justice, 226.

of China, could in fact lead to war. Nevertheless, the Christian Century continued to advocate consumers’ boycotts after Shanghai and went so far as to suggest that little government action was needed to deal with Japan, for “if the women of Great Britain and the United States would resolve to buy no silk goods for one year, the influence of that decision would outweigh, in Japan, any conquests that may be maintained in Manchuria or the Yangtze valley.”24

If pacifists were relatively unanimous in favoring voluntary boycotts, they were far more divided on the issue of formal economic sanctions. Both the World Tomorrow and the Christian Century had mentioned the possibility of economic sanctions since the beginning of the crisis, but in the wake of proposals like Lowell’s, they were forced to ask whether or not the time had come to push for what they had long considered a “last resort.”

Charles Clayton Morrison’s Christian Century hardly entertained the notion.

Initially at least, Morrison was less against sanctions than he was for the Stimson

Doctrine. To those like Lowell who demanded something be done, the Christian Century responded in March 1932, “Something has been done.” That something was Stimson’s policy of non-recognition.

No longer did Morrison stress solely the impact non-recognition might have on public opinion; he argued that a non-recognition policy was itself a kind of economic or financial sanction. In its own note to Japan, dated 16 February, the League informally

24 Christian Century suggested that Japan’s attack on Shanghai was especially repugnant because it had been retaliation not for an action perpetrated by the Chinese government, but for one organized by the people themselves. Yet, in the same essay, the editors called for consumers’ boycotts in the U.S. and England. “Japan the Outlaw,” Christian Century, 10 February 1932, 182-84, quotation from 183.

stated its intention to back Stimson’s policy, and on 11 March the League Assembly

passed a resolution formally endorsing non-recognition. Japan would undoubtedly incur

great expenses in its occupation of Manchuria, but, now that no nation recognized

Japan’s claims to the area, who would possibly loan Japan the capital necessary to

develop it? “Any banker who loaned her a yen in the face of the declarations of January 7

and February 16,” claimed Morrison, “would be a fit subject for a sanity examination.”

To be sure, non-recognition was not “spectacular; not something that will halt the

charging troops in mid-career.” But given time, it would “ultimately accumulate strength

to teach Japan’s militarists such a lesson as they will not soon forget.”

The Christian Century called for the world to give non-recognition a chance to work. This crisis was a special moment in the history of the world when “sanctions of peace” were being worked out for the first time. Treating the Manchurian crisis like a lab experiment, Morrison wanted to control for outside interference to see how effective non- recognition might actually be. His greatest objection to embargoes was that they “would destroy the most clear-cut test of applicability of peaceful sanctions the world has yet witnessed.” An official boycott or even embargo might be effective, but they could still be used later if necessary. In fact, Morrison argued, economic sanctions would be more effective later if the members of the League and the U.S. first gave non-recognition a chance to work, for “having gone so far in common,” those nations would “be in a perfect position to appeal to those boycott measures which, to be effective, must be taken together.”25

25 “Steady All in China!,” Christian Century, 2 March 1932, 279-80. Like the World Tomorrow, the Christian Century’s practice of publishing unsigned editorials makes it impossible to speak with certainty about who wrote any particular column. It is common 69

Morrison’s insistence on testing sanctions of peace is probably best explained by

his close association with Salmon Levinson. Richard Wightman Fox writes that, in 1925,

“the Century staff was completely pre-occupied with the outlawry-of-war issue; Morrison

could think of nothing else and was increasingly subservient to Salmon Levinson.”

Niebuhr turned down an offer from Morrison to work at the Christian Century full-time,

fearing that “poor little me” would easily be overshadowed by Levinson. The intervening

years appear to have done little to weaken Levinson’s influence.26

Throughout the crisis Morrison repeated his claims that Japan would have

difficulty securing capital in financial markets due to the non-recognition policies in

place. Referring to the “financial strangulation that Mr. Stimson probably had in mind

when he announced the Hoover [Stimson] doctrine,” Morrison clearly suspected that

Stimson had envisioned a restriction on the extension of credit all along.27 The U.S.,

however, never formally prohibited bankers from lending money to Japan.

If Stimson had intended any restriction on investment with his note to Japan,

American businesses undermined his plan almost immediately. Before the Japanese

practice among historians to attribute all editorials to Morrison. As the Christian Century was indisputably his journal, this practice is not entirely unjustifiable. Undoubtedly Morrison wrote most of the editorials and personally approved them all. There are instances, however, where inconsistencies between columns in argument, tone, and style appear to be explained only by the fact that they were written by other members of the editorial board, which included Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Hutchinson, among others. In this case, the argument concerning the financial effects of non-recognition was made so frequently in the editorial columns that I am inclined to attribute those columns to Morrison. For a fuller discussion of Morrison’s practice of publishing unsigned editorials by other authors, including Niebuhr, see Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 72-74. 26 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 75. 27 “How Can the World Deal with Japan?,” Christian Century, 30 November 1932, 1464- 65, quotation from 1465.

government even replied to Stimson’s note, J. P. Morgan and Co. signaled its intention to

continue dealing with Japan, offering the nation an extension on its debt payments and

thereby easing the financial pressure on Japan during the very month it attacked

Shanghai. Transactions such as these went undetected by Morrison, who in July 1932 still

insisted that “Japan is coming closer and closer to the day of financial reckoning.”28

While Morrison continued to champion the Stimson Doctrine, other pacifists went on the offensive and raised serious objections to economic sanctions. One of the most frequently voiced concerns was a moral one: economic sanctions worked indiscriminately on entire populations. For individuals who were careful to distinguish between the

Japanese people and the military, this qualm was not so easily overcome. The logic behind economic sanctions, according to Devere Allen at the World Tomorrow, “contains within it the same fallacy as war: it assumes that ‘Japan’ is this and that, when students of nationality know that there is no reality in these arbitrary entities. War, like the boycott, punishes alike the guilty and the innocent.”29 Similarly, the Christian Century remained reluctant to employ economic sanctions, even after Japan’s assault on Shanghai: “This is a day in which judgment is being rendered against the military bourbonism which has directed Japan's policy. But that judgment must not be extended against those who are, in fact, the worst victims of that bourbonism.”30

Although he quickly came out in favor of economic sanctions, Reinhold Niebuhr

did not dispute Allen’s claim that there were moral similarities between economic

28 Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise, 51; “Is It Peace in the Far East?,” Christian Century, 18 May 1932, 632-33, quotation from 633. 29 Devere Allen, “The Boycott and Anarchism,” World Tomorrow, June 1932, 189-90. 30 “Japan the Outlaw,” Christian Century, 10 February 1932, 183-84.

sanctions and war. In Moral Man, published during the Manchurian crisis in December

1932, Niebuhr noted that “if the League of Nations should use economic sanctions

against Japan, or any other nation, workmen who have the least to do with Japanese

imperialism would be bound to suffer most from such a discipline.” He made the point

not as a case against economic sanctions, but rather to demonstrate that the effects of

non-violent methods were often indistinguishable from violent coercion: “non-violence

does coerce and destroy.”31 During the crisis of 1931-1933, Niebuhr never endorsed

military sanctions—he still called himself a pacifist—but it is notable that he was already

beginning to invert decidedly pacifist arguments to justify forms of coercion.

But it was not only moral concerns which gave pause to those pacifists

considering economic sanctions. There was also the very practical concern that an

embargo might very easily lead to war. As the World Tomorrow editors debated the issue of an embargo, a group of American missionaries in Japan wrote to them to oppose such action. Even reports that the U.S. was considering such an embargo strengthened the militarists’ position within the Japanese government, they wrote, concurring with

Hirosa’s account: “The agitation has already hindered peace and is being used effectively in Japan by the advocates of a strong military policy. We believe that such action by

America alone, far from promoting peace, would almost certainly cause war.” 32

This concern was not limited to overly sensitive pacifists who saw all forms of

coercion as possibly leading to war. It was shared by Hoover and Stimson. Even military

journals concurred: the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ magazine called embargoes the

31 Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Scribner's, 1960 [1932]), 241. 32 “From 135 Missionaries in Japan,” Correspondence, World Tomorrow, May 1932, 156.

“firebrand of war in disguise.” Stimson never announced his opposition to economic

sanctions publicly, though he privately informed the F.O.R.’s John Nevin Sayre of his

view in November 1931, leading Sayre, who had originally called for an embargo after

the incident in Manchuria, to change his position.33 Stimson kept his views from the

public on the belief that the mere talk of embargoes might stop Japan. As he explained to

Walter Lippmann, “A word unspoken is a sword in your scabbard, while a word spoken

is a sword in the hands of your adversary.”34

Unaware that the matter had already been settled as far as Stimson and Hoover were concerned, the World Tomorrow began agitating for immediate economic sanctions in spring 1932. Not everyone associated with the magazine was onboard: John Nevin

Sayre and Devere Allen opposed embargoes, while Kirby Page, Sherwood Eddy, and

Reinhold Niebuhr favored them. As the Shanghai and Manchurian crises dragged on, the

World Tomorrow admitted that “the evidence seems . . . convincing that public opinion

alone is inadequate as a means of restraining an aggressive nation.” The Japanese people

were as convinced as their military leaders that the occupation of Manchuria was

justified. As censorship in the Japanese press prevented voices against occupation from

being heard, there was little chance that the Japanese people would abandon the position

anytime soon.35 By April the World Tomorrow concluded that non-recognition was no

33 Chatfield, For Peace and Justice, 227. 34 Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise, 85, 91-92. 35 “Non-Military Sanctions or War,” World Tomorrow, June 1932, 166.

longer enough to stop Japan; it “must be followed by more drastic measures if Japan is to

be coerced into the abandonment of military domination in Manchuria”36

The editors agreed on two qualifications that any economic sanctions had to meet

in order to be justified. First, any embargo had to be partial, meaning only selected goods

would be included. A complete blockade by all member nations of the League was

“indefensible” on moral grounds, because it would likely result in starvation. Rather, the

World Tomorrow favored an embargo on Japanese silk and a freeze on certain raw material exports to Japan, including cotton. Such action was likely to wreak havoc on the

Japanese economy “without going to the extreme of starvation.” They believed such a partial embargo would cause widespread unemployment and “would place upon the government the responsibility of providing sustenance or running the risk of being overthrown by the suffering masses.”37

The second qualification was that, no matter what, the U.S. should never impose

an embargo unilaterally. Even those who advocated embargoes recognized that they

carried with them the risk of war. If the U.S. acted alone, the chance for war was far too

great, but if the members of the League and the U.S. worked together, the World

Tomorrow argued, the possibility of war was drastically reduced: “There is a possibility

that Japanese militarists would respond to economic pressure by attacking members of

36 “Consequences of Acquiescence,” World Tomorrow, April 1932, 100-101, quote from 101. See also Sherwood Eddy, “The War in the Far East,” ibid., April 1932, 110-11. For more complete lists of those pacifists who supported economic embargoes and those who opposed them, see Chatfield, For Peace and Justice, 226-27. 37 “What Sanctions Are Available?,” World Tomorrow, April 1932, 101.

the League and other cooperating nations. But it seems wholly improbable that they would be so insane as to wage war upon the world.”38

Devere Allen disagreed with his fellow editors regarding an international

embargo. Allen thought that their call for an embargo without a blockade was unlikely.

Such an embargo might be possible “were pacifists in control,” but they were not.

Pointing out that all past discussions concerning embargoes in the League included

provisions for blockades, Allen argued that “there is excellent ground for concluding that

to the League, boycott means blockade.” And if the League were to employ a blockade, it

very well might result in a world war. “That it is remote may be true; that there are

abundant historic precedents for military defiance in the face of overwhelming odds,

cannot be denied.”39

As the debate heated up, the pacifists moved on from arguments to insults. One

editorial in the World Tomorrow, likely written by Niebuhr, pointed out what strange

bedfellows those pacifists who opposed economic sanctions kept. For the first time,

pacifists were in agreement with the “frankly imperialistic and nationalistic newspapers,”

such as the Hearst press. Their new allies ought to give them pause to reconsider their

opposition: “Does not the squeamishness of pacifists who regard the application of any

kind of coercion as the equivalent of violence play into the hands of those who wish to

resort to violence for the attainment of social and national ends?” Regardless of their

motives, Niebuhr argued, the pacifists were advocating a political agenda that was

indistinguishable from those they most opposed, the more nationalistic “isolationists.” It

38 “Non-Military Sanctions or War,” World Tomorrow, June 1932, 166. 39 Devere Allen, “The Boycott and Anarchism,” World Tomorrow, June 1932, 189-90.

was one thing to critique the pacifists’ assertions; it was another altogether to lump them

in with their bitterest of political enemies. This may have been the first time Niebuhr

employed this strategy, but it certainly was not the last. 40

There was, however, a more substantive critique in Niebuhr’s editorial, one which

he continued to develop in Moral Man and most of his subsequent books. Pacifists,

Niebuhr argued, failed to recognize that there was an element of coercion in all social

interactions. Although pacifists desired a just and equitable social order, their refusal to

resort to any coercive action was paving the way for anarchy: “Are liberal journals and

organizations which have inclined to absolute non-resistance in dealing with the problem

of the Orient prepared to espouse the cause of anarchism in all political questions?”41

Even Kirby Page, who later opposed Niebuhr in the F.O.R. split over the domestic

“class struggle,” agreed during the Manchurian crisis that pacifists could not renounce

coercion wholesale. Sounding more like Niebuhr than he ever would, Page questioned

“whether or not coercion is necessarily a violation of the family spirit.” If coercion were

never justified, it meant that “the only consistent philosophy for a follower of Jesus is that

of anarchism,” and the Christian must retreat from the world. Certainly none of the

socially aware Christian activists in the F.O.R. could accept this position.42

40 “Militarists and Anti-Militarists,” World Tomorrow, May 1932, 132. It is common practice among many scholars, including Charles Chatfield in For Peace and Justice and Justus Doenecke in When the Wicked Rise, to attribute the unsigned editorials in World Tomorrow to Kirby Page, the managing editor, but the inconsistency in tone and language lead me to believe that several of these columns were written by other members of the editorial board, including Reinhold Niebuhr. 41 Ibid. 42 Kirby Page, “Is Coercion Ever Justifiable?,” World Tomorrow, June 1932, 173-75, quotes from 173.

But they need not do so, for, according to Page, “The God of Jesus is no soft, flabby sentimentalist.” Even if non-violent, Jesus used coercion: “His whole life is a burning denunciation of iniquity and an indomitable resistance to evil.” What distinguished Jesus’ form of coercion was that it was ethical: it was always an act committed with love for those whom he was trying to restrain. Page argued that families practiced such ethical coercion when they disciplined their members. Could not the

League of Nations employ the same tactic in dealing with Japan? Page believed it could.

The challenge for all Christians was “in deciding where ethical coercion ends and unethical violence begins.” He believed that economic sanctions which met those conditions set forth by the World Tomorrow fell on the right side of that line. “In an imperfect and developing world, suffering is inescapable,” concluded Page. “The policy of wisdom is to use that method which involves a minimum of suffering and which offers a maximum of redemption.”43

* * *

Most of the discussion in pacifist circles, including Page’s reappraisal of Jesus, was ethical and political rather than theological. It was not until the Christian Century published the first and only public exchange between Reinhold Niebuhr and his brother,

H. Richard, that more explicitly theological matters were addressed.

Unlike his politically active older brother, Richard never joined the F.O.R. or identified himself as a pacifist, though during the heated debates of 1940-41 he sided with those who opposed U.S. intervention. He was more a quietist than an F.O.R.-type pacifist: his pacifism was rooted in mysticism rather than politics. This distinction might

43 Ibid., 173-74.

appear irrelevant, especially to the pragmatist who finds the meaning of an idea or action

in the consequences it produces: if one opposes war, he or she opposes war regardless of

motive. Reinhold Niebuhr suggested as much when he lumped pacifists in with the

nationalistic isolationists. For Richard, however, motives behind actions were important,

for they helped to define the action.

Richard opened his influential March 1932 essay, “The Grace of Doing Nothing,”

with the assertion that inaction was itself a sort of action. Despite the fact that his

consideration of motive appears to be a rejection of pragmatism, Richard actually had a

rather pragmatic reading of action. There was no meaning in action other than the effects

it produced. If inaction produced effects, then was it not in actuality a form of action?

“When we do nothing we are also affecting the course of history,” wrote Richard. “The

problem we face is often that of a choice between various kinds of inactivity rather than a

choice between action and inaction.” 44

The best means of distinguishing between various forms of inactivity was motive.

Although motive may seem irrelevant to inactivity at any given point in time, Richard argued that inactivity was only temporary and would eventually give way to activity. The motive for the inactivity would affect both the timing and character of the subsequent action. Richard explained by first addressing two types of inactivity that few readers of the Christian Century would have supported. Some individuals were inactive during the

Manchurian crisis because they thought that the world was doomed and nothing could be done. Their inactivity may never lead to activity, but it still had consequences: it ensured the doomsday would come sooner rather than later. Another type of inactivity was that of

44 All quotations from the next several paragraphs are from H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Grace of Doing Nothing,” Christian Century, 23 March 1932, 378-80.

the “conservative believer in things as they are”—the nationalists that Reinhold criticized who were themselves political realists. They recognized that nations act in self-interest and that the Japanese government was merely pursuing theirs. These political realists remained inactive only until they thought their own national interests would be furthered by taking action.

After Richard dismissed these two forms of inaction, one might have expected him to defend a third form—that which the pacifists practiced. Instead, Richard offered a critique of pacifism that explains why he never considered himself a pacifist. Though he did not mention his brother’s name, the implication was clear: Reinhold belonged to this group, as did Sherwood Eddy and Kirby Page. Richard argued that their inactivity was characterized by “frustration and moral indignation.” Sooner or later this moral indignation would have to be released. “Righteous indignation, not allowed to issue in action is a dangerous thing—as dangerous as any great emotion nurtured and repressed at the same time,” wrote Richard. “It is the source of sudden explosions.”

Drawing parallels between the pacifists’ attitude towards Japan and the mood of pacifists just before the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War

I, he argued, “China is Cuba and Belgium over again, it is the Negro race beaten by

Simon Legree.” In each of those cases, moral indignation mounted until it gave way to war. Now such frustration was mounting again. Pacifists who advocated sanctions were not—to draw on the family analogy Page invoked—playing the role of the father who, acting out of love, allowed his child to learn from mistakes; they were acting like the

“irate father who believes that every false reaction on the part of his child may be cured by a verbal, physical or economic spanking.” Richard predicted that these pacifists, who

swore off violence after World War I, would soon go even further and ask themselves once again, “May it not be necessary to have one more war to end all war?”

Surprisingly, Richard spoke more favorably of the communists. He did not refer to the Soviet Union, underestimating the role that nation played in the international communist movement, but rather to the indigenous communist movements then at work in many nations. At the present moment, their inaction resembled that of the pessimist or the realist: the communists refused to get involved in the crisis, because such crises were to be expected as long as capitalism was in place. This cynicism, however, was combined with a “boundless faith in the future.” They had faith that the processes of history were working toward their end of a classless society; capitalism and nationalism would eventually destroy themselves. But communists did not sit idly by and wait for the time to act. Even though they did not directly involve themselves in the Manchurian conflict, they were acting, organizing small cells within nations, so that when the collapse of capitalism they believed would occur finally did come to pass, these cells would be there to usher in the new order. The communists’ inactivity included “a long vision, a steadfast hope and a realistic program of non-interfering action.”

There was one final form of inaction, however, that Richard favored above all others—that which was truly Christian. “It appears highly impracticable because it rests on the well-nigh obsolete faith that there is a God—a real God,” wrote Richard. The transcendental God of whom Richard wrote watched over not only human actions, but historical processes as well. There were forces at work over which no humans had direct control, but which nevertheless had consequences and shaped history, even more so than did “human aspirations after ideals”: “The forces may be as impersonal and as actual as

machine production, rapid transportation, the physical mixture of races, etc., but as parts of the real world they are as much a part of the total divine process as are human thoughts and prayers.” History was both “judgment . . . and . . . redemption.” The judgment would not be pleasant, for God could be “quite merciless.”

Richard’s eschatological talk of judgment and redemption referred not to the afterlife, but to a new era here on earth. He did not, however, speak in concrete terms about when that redemption would come. Rather, he wrote of his belief in redemption as a “contemporary mythology of social forces,” carefully defending his choice of terms by explaining, “Mythology is after all not fiction but a deep philosophy.” The myth was valuable because only the belief in it prevented the Christian’s inactivity from dissolving into cynicism. Like the communist, the true Christian had faith that a better world lay beyond the crisis.

But even devout Christians who believed that crises were part of a divine plan need not wait for that plan to be fulfilled. They could practice “meaningful inactivity.”

Richard called for a “Christian international.” Christians, like communists, should abstain from interfering in the current crisis, but they should work in all nations to form “cells” of Christians who rejected capitalism and nationalism in favor of loyalty to a transcendent God. Above all, they should practice self-reflection, or what was once referred to as “repentance,” though he warned that the modern usage of that word was too superficial to capture its full meaning.

Repentance required that Christians learn to fully appreciate the fact that the practices they condemned were those of which they too were guilty. For American

Christians, this meant understanding not only that Japan would interpret any action on the

part of the U.S. as hypocritical, but that in reality it would be hypocritical. If the U.S. intervened in the crisis, such intervention would certainly not be disinterested; it would be furthering American interests, just as Japan intervened in Manchuria to further

Japanese interests. American Christians must be patient and engage in “an American self- analysis which is likely to result in some surprising discoveries as to the amount of renunciation of self-interest necessary on the part of this country and of individual

Christians before anything effective can be done in the east.” Although he believed this

Christian form of inactivity was “the only effective approach” to the Manchurian crisis, he admitted it was a risky proposal that required profound faith, for “if there is no God, or if God is up in heaven and not in time itself, it is a very foolish inactivity.”

When Reinhold Niebuhr responded to his brother’s call for meaningful inactivity, he did so reluctantly, at the request of Charles Clayton Morrison. He worried that debating important theological issues in the context of how best to handle the specific crisis in Manchuria might not do justice to his brother’s theological perspective. As it turned out, such concern was warranted. Reinhold displayed in his critique of Richard’s argument a level of equanimity rare in his public debates, but he still managed to create a straw man of his brother’s argument by lumping him together with far more sentimental liberals. This oversimplification of Richard’s argument was immediately apparent to readers: within his first paragraph Reinhold claimed, “I do not share [Richard’s] conviction that a pure love ethic can ever be made the basis of a civilization.”45

While many Christian pacifists did practice a “pure love ethic” based on the teachings of Jesus, Richard was not one of them. He did not call upon Christians to live

45 Unless otherwise specified, all quotations in the following paragraphs are from Reinhold Niebuhr, “Must We Do Nothing?,” Christian Century, 30 March 1932, 415-17.

their lives asking themselves Charles M. Sheldon’s classic question, “What would Jesus

do?” In fact, Richard had made no mention of Jesus at all in “The Grace of Doing

Nothing.” He had stressed the role God played in history over that played by any human

aspirations, including aspirations to live by the love ethic. Furthermore, although Richard

spoke of “redemption,” he by no means suggested that such redemption would be final

after the Manchurian crisis or that the love ethic would prevail anytime soon.

Reinhold’s “Must We Do Nothing?” was far more effective as a critique of

sentimental liberals than it was as a response to Richard’s argument. He chided those

liberals who refused to take a stand against Japan for still clinging to the belief that “the

world will be saved by a little more adequate educational technique.” The Christian

Century at least implied that they believed progress and education would prevent conflicts like the present crisis from arising in the future when it explained Japan’s aggression in terms of “time lag.” It was “finally clear just what is the matter with that nation,” declared one editorial after Japan attacked Shanghai. “Japan’s trouble is evidently not any deep-rooted opposition to the idea of world peace nor any positive

desire to stir up international trouble. But Japan is still about thirty years behind the

times, mentally.”46 Furthermore, even as Japanese troops attacked Chinese civilians in

Shanghai, several contributors to the Christian Century persisted in equating Japanese

aggression to the imperialist actions of Britain, France, and yes, even the United States.47

46 “The Trouble with Japan,” Christian Century, 3 February 1932, 139. Emphasis mine. 47 See for example Harold Fey, “After Shanghai—What?,” Christian Century, 17 February 1932, 224-26; William Axling, “Be Just to Japan!,” ibid., 13 April 1932, 474- 76. Even these authors stopped short of justifying the bombing of Shanghai. Nevertheless, their timing was poor. Rather than wait until the end of the Shanghai crisis to come to terms with Japan’s actions, they persisted in rationalizing Japanese behavior even as Japan continued its assault on Shanghai. 83

Reinhold conceded that many of the objections which Richard and more sentimental liberals made to American intervention were valid. By supporting intervention, pacifists were likely to stir up hatred toward Japan, even if they did so inadvertently. He admitted that the U.S. “helped to create the Japan which expresses itself in terms of militaristic imperialism,” not just by providing a model through its own imperialist interventions, but also by imposing tariffs and strict immigration laws that affected Japan’s economy. No, Reinhold agreed, the U.S. would not be completely disinterested if it took action; that Americans discussed intervention while the British and

French were openly opposed only proved that U.S. interests were more deeply affected by the crisis than were the interests of those nations. He acknowledged Richard’s claim about moral indignation, noting that humans tend to “hide [their] sense of futility behind a display of violent emotion.” Finally, he recognized that “every social sin is, at least partially, the fruit and consequence of the sins of those who judge and condemn it.”

Furthermore, when individuals judged those social sins in which they themselves participated, they merely compounded the sin of the original action with the sin of self- righteousness.

But all of these objections combined did not amount to a case strong enough for

Reinhold to favor inaction over action. Those who believed the preponderance of evidence justified inaction, he argued, did not take the fact of sin seriously enough. They failed to make an important distinction between the “religious man” and the “moral man.” The moral man attempted to apply Jesus’ teachings as simple actions to guide his life, but the religious man “recognize[ed] the fact that he is not moral, that he remains a sinner to the world. This sense of sin is more central to religion than is any other

attitude.” To attempt to take Jesus’ commandment, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” as a guide to action was impossible. If Christians took the statement literally, they could never act in the world.

In addition to stressing the centrality of sin to Christianity, Reinhold raised several other theological issues he later developed more fully. First, he argued that groups had more difficulty acting morally than did individuals. This became the central thesis of

Moral Man and Immoral Society, which he began work on several months later, in June

1932.48 Now he offered only hints of that critique. Moral individuals set lofty goals for society, as they should, but these goals were unattainable because “society is and will always remain sub-human.” He did not yet articulate exactly what prevented groups from living up to the standards of individuals.

Second, Reinhold began for the first time his discussion of the relationship between love and justice, a subject which many Niebuhr scholars, including his friend,

John Coleman Bennett, regard as his most important contribution.49 Love (by which

Niebuhr meant agape, or indiscriminate love for all humankind) was an absolute ideal that could never be attained in the world. Justice, on the other hand, was a relative concept, and therefore far more applicable to the Christian who desired to act in the world; it was “probably the highest ideal toward which human groups can aspire.” But

48 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 134. 49 Bennett wrote of Niebuhr’s writing on love and justice, “There is no more fruitful analysis in all of his ethical writings than his discussion of this problem.” John C. Bennett, “Reinhold Niebuhr's Social Ethics,” in Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, ed. Charles W. Kegley (New York: Pilgrim, 1984 [1956]), 112. See also, D. B. Robertson, ed. Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, Library of Theological Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992 [1957]).

Niebuhr’s realism did not, as other variants of political realism have, call for the complete abandonment of the love ideal. “Justice, with its goal of adjustment of right to right, inevitably involves the assertion of right against right and interest against interest until some kind of harmony is achieved,” explained Niebuhr. “If a measure of humility and of love does not enter this conflict of interest it will of course degenerate into violence.”

Although unattainable, the absolute ideal of love remained necessary as a qualifier of justice.

Finally, Reinhold turned his attention to his brother’s eschatology. Although his subsequent writings deviated very little from most of the themes presented in this essay on the Manchurian crisis, his attitude toward eschatology did change. For the moment he appeared uncomfortable with it. He did claim that eschatology was “necessary to a vigorous ethic”: “The compound of pessimism and optimism which a vigorous ethical attitude requires can be expressed only in terms of religious eschatology.” But Richard’s eschatology was “impossible” for Reinhold to believe. Richard recognized all of the cruelty and conflict in the world as under God’s control, but then, “suddenly, by a leap of faith, [he] comes to the conclusion that the same God, who uses brutalities and force, against which man must maintain conscious scruples, will finally establish an ideal society in which pure love will reign.” Richard’s faith in redemption within history was

“even less plausible than the communist faith that an equalitarian society will inevitably emerge from them. There is some warrant in history for the latter assumption, but very little for the former.” By the time he sat down to write Moral Man, Reinhold had already changed his perspective: then he wrote that “myths” and “illusions” were powerful instruments necessary to effect any sort of positive change in the world.

The Niebuhr brothers’ public debate serves a truly classic example of “iron sharpening iron.” Because discussion of Christian realism often centers on political action, Reinhold Niebuhr receives far more attention than does Richard. But anyone who takes seriously the theological basis of Reinhold’s Christian realism, with its emphasis on sin, must surely recognize the role Richard played in helping to develop that perspective.

Reinhold never went quite as far as did Richard in extolling “the grace of doing nothing,” but it is difficult to read the first line of Reinhold’s Serenity Prayer—”God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed”—without seeing Richard’s influence. That the two brothers could disagree on the best course of action in the

Manchurian crisis merely emphasizes the fact that Christian realism, with its unique blend of theological and political perspectives, provides no easy answer in dealing with political problems.50

* * *

Even as Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr debated the theological aspects of the crisis, the debates over policy became virtually moot in the eyes of the pacifists. To

Hoover’s and Stimson’s increasing frustration, several individuals and organizations, including Lawrence Lowell and his American Committee on the Far Eastern Crisis, continued to agitate for economic sanctions throughout 1932 and into 1933.51 But from the beginning of the crisis, both the World Tomorrow and the Christian Century insisted that the U.S. must only employ economic sanctions if it did so in conjunction with the

50 Although this was the only public exchange between Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr, Richard Wightman Fox successfully conveys the sense that the life-long private dialogue between the brothers profoundly shaped the thought of both individuals. Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr. 51 Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise, 102-3.

League. By March 1932, it had become apparent that the League was not going to take

action anytime soon.

After establishing the Lytton Commission in December 1931 to investigate the

original incidents in Manchuria, the Council had to wait for the Lytton group to complete

its on-the-ground investigation, scheduled to take place between February and July 1932,

before taking any action. Japan’s attack on Shanghai, however, brought a second petition

from China, this time under Article XV of the Covenant, which allowed the Council to

refer the matter to the Assembly. When it became clear that the smaller nations who

dominated the Assembly were eager to push for some form of sanction as outlined in

Article XVI, Britain and France pushed through a compromise resolution. The same

resolution of 11 March that announced the League’s adoption of non-recognition also

took the question of how to deal with Japan out of the Assembly and placed it before a

new investigative committee, the Committee of Nineteen. Both the Assembly and the

Council spent the spring and summer months of 1932 waiting for their respective

reports.52

Events on the ground, however, moved much faster. In March 1932,

representatives from China and Japan met in Shanghai to negotiate an armistice. On 5

May, the two parties reached an agreement, and Japan began the process of withdrawing

its troops from Shanghai. In Manchuria, however, Japan’s hold was stronger than ever.

While the world’s attention turned to Shanghai, Japan sent advisors to Manchuria and on

9 March established the “independent” nation of Manchukuo. Henry Pu Yi, who, as a

52 “Text of the Report of the League Committee of Nineteen on the Chino-Japanese Dispute,” New York Times, 18 February 1933, 8-9. Doenecke and Wilz, From Isolation to War, 45.

child, was the last emperor of China, served as the titular head of state, but no one doubted that Japan was in control.

It is no wonder, then, that pacifists grew frustrated with the situation. More often than not, they vented their frustrations by criticizing the League. Between March and

September 1932, when the Lytton Commission completed its report, morale reached a low point, and pacifists were more vocal than ever in their criticism of the League. After it became clear that Britain and France would thwart all attempts of the League to take immediate action toward Japan, one editorial in the World Tomorrow, almost certainly written by Niebuhr, gloomily declared, “We face . . . a world in which national interests are still more powerful than the rather pressing problem of saving our whole civilization.

The international mind is still veneer and the international community exists in only a very inchoate form.”

Although Niebuhr soon emphasized sin and the dynamics of social relations to explain why nations could not transcend their own interests, for now he coupled a simpler

Marxist critique of capitalism with a call for realism:

Perhaps our present organization of society, leading as it inevitably does to nationalistic imperialism, is simply incapable of surviving in a technological civilization which demands a degree of mutuality which the nations are unable to attain. Whatever may be the outcome, it is obvious that optimism in the face of such a situation has become a vice. If we are to avoid catastrophe at all it will be only because we recognize its imminence.”53

Prior to the Manchurian crisis, many pacifists had called for the U.S. to join the

League, but the longer Japan remained in Manchuria, the less imperative membership in the League appeared. Recognizing that Stimson was much more willing than the League to denounce Japan’s actions, the World Tomorrow confessed, “While we have ourselves

53 “The League and Japan,” World Tomorrow, March 1932, 68-69, quotation from 69.

maintained that the failure of America to enter the League was partly responsible for the weakness of that institution in the face of the difficulties which confront the world, we are rather inclined at the present moment not to press that opinion too seriously.”54

Charles Clayton Morrison, whose dedication to the outlawry-of-war campaign made him a less enthusiastic supporter of the League than his counterparts at the World

Tomorrow, felt somewhat vindicated by the League’s inaction. His reservations to

League membership were due to Article XVI’s “automatic sanctions of force.” He argued that the League’s handling of the crisis proved its sanctions unworkable—”The notion of warring to end war is exploded.” Perhaps soon the League might abandon Article XVI altogether and instead embrace the Kellogg-Briand Pact and Levinson’s sanctions for peace.55

When in January 1933 Charles H. Strong, vice president of the League of Nations

Association, criticized Hoover and Stimson for being too timid in their handling of the crisis and renewed the organization’s call for the U.S. to join the League, the typically even-tempered Morrison rebuked the administration’s critics and vehemently defended the Stimson Doctrine once again:

How supposedly intelligent men and women can go on indulging in that sort of head-shaking and hand-wringing nonsense after the events of the last eighteen months passes our understanding. Nothing is clearer than that it has been the United States that has taken the lead in demanding that the Manchurian affair be settled on the basis of the sanctity of international commitments. Such willingness as the league has shown to touch this issue at all—and that has not been much— has come almost entirely as a result of the pushing of the United States. Left to itself the league, under the domination of the powers of Europe, would have whitewashed Japan and pigeonholed the entire affair. Indeed, it is not yet certain

54 Ibid., 68. 55 “How Can the World Deal with Japan?,” Christian Century, 30 November 1932, 1464- 65, quotation from 1464.

that it will not do so. If it does not, it will be because the American policy, plainly defined, consistently pursued, has so rallied the opinion of the peoples of Europe and of the smaller member-states of the league, as to force their hesitant leaders into some line of action.56

By February 1933, however, the pacifists’ frustration with the League gave way to a renewed optimism. In September 1932, the Lytton Commission completed its report, which resembled the pacifists’ own early analysis of the conflict. The Manchurian crisis was, according to the Lytton Report, far from a clear-cut case of one nation attacking another, for “in Manchuria there are many features without an exact parallel in other parts of the world.” Prior to hostilities Manchuria exercised a great deal of autonomy and had direct diplomatic negotiations with Japan. Furthermore, Japan had been given many special rights that the Chinese government now threatened. The current situation may not be outright war, but the relationship between Japan and China was “war in disguise.” The question was whether or not Japan’s claims of self-defense were justified, and that question, the Lytton Report correctly asserted, was one that could only be answered by the League.

In order to aid the League in determining whether Japan’s actions constituted justifiable self-defense, the commission provided several statements of fact, many of which impugned Japan’s integrity. First, there was no question that “without a declaration of war a large area of what was indisputably the Chinese territory has been forcibly seized and occupied by the armed forces of Japan.” Furthermore, the Manchukuo government was not a truly independent government, but rather one brought about only through Japan’s undue influence. Recognition of such a state would “not appear to us,”

56 “Mr. Roosevelt Will Carry On,” Christian Century, 1 February 1933, 143. “Our Foreign Policy Called ‘Timorous,’” New York Times, 13 January 1933, 4.

wrote the commission, “compatible with the fundamental principles of existing

international obligations,” specifically those laid out in the Nine-Power Treaty, the

Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the League Covenant.

The report’s recommendations, however, were surprisingly congenial to Japan’s

interests, though Japan did not see them that way. The Lytton Commission did not, to the

surprise of many observers, call for the return to the status quo of September 1931. It

explicitly recommended against the simple withdrawal of Japanese troops to the South

Manchurian Railway Zone as a solution, for “to restore these conditions would merely be

to invite a repetition of trouble.” Rather, the commission called for the creation of a new,

largely autonomous, Manchurian state which would remain under the sovereignty of

China. Any new arrangement must protect Japanese rights and interests in Manchuria, for

they were “facts which cannot be ignored, and any solution which failed to recognize

them and to take into account also the historical associations of Japan with that country

would not be satisfactory.”57

Had Japan halted its activities in Manchuria and waited for the League to act on

the Lytton Report, it might have escaped all but mild censure. But Japan took steps which

only aggravated the situation in the months following the Lytton Commission’s

investigation. In the short period of time between the completion of the Lytton Report on

4 September and its transmission to the League on 1 October, Japan formally recognized

Manchukuo. It was the only nation to do so. Furthermore, Japan continued its military

campaign in Manchuria. While the League deliberated over the Lytton report in winter

1932-33, reports from China indicated that Japan was planning to seize the Jehol

57 “Text of the Conclusions of the Lytton Commission on the Manchurian Dispute,” New York Times, 3 October 1932, 10.

province of northern China. Japanese troops all but confirmed the report when they

sparked another “incident” in early January 1933, this time in Shanhaikwan, the Chinese

city situated on the easternmost point of the Great Wall that served as a gateway into

Jehol. By February the Japanese government openly admitted its plans to pacify Jehol. It

claimed that the province was part of Manchukuo and that Japan was “bound by treaty

with [Manchukuo] to insure its security.”58

The Lytton Report did little more to rekindle pacifists’ faith in the League than it

did to stop Japanese incursions in Manchuria. In the months following the report’s

completion, the League once again appeared reluctant to act. When the Council met in

November 1932 to discuss the report’s findings, its members could not reach any

agreement and decided to send the entire Lytton Report on to the Assembly. In

December, the Assembly convened to make a decision. Once again, fearing that the

smaller nations might push for sanctions, the British delegation maneuvered to at least

temporarily take the matter out of the Assembly and place it before the Committee of

Nineteen.59

From December to February, the Committee of Nineteen sought to work with

Japan and China to reach a settlement, as it was required to do under Article XV. By

February it was clear Japan would not accept the committee’s recommendations, which included forming a new government in Manchuria with the help of an advisory committee composed of the members of the Committee of Nineteen and representatives of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Nothing short of the recognition of the Manchukuo government

58 “Japan Signs Treaty with Manchukuo,” New York Times, 15 September 1932, 10; “Text of Japan’s Comments on League Report,” ibid., 22 February 1933, 15. 59 Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise, 106.

would satisfy Japan. Firmly committed to the policy of non-recognition announced in the

Assembly’s 11 March 1932 resolution, the Committee of Nineteen refused to modify its recommendations and sent its report to the Assembly for a final decision on the Sino-

Japanese dispute.

The Committee of Nineteen’s report reiterated many of the statements of fact set forth in the Lytton Report, but it went further in condemning the actions of Japan. Like the Lytton Commission, the committee agreed that both parties bore responsibility for the initial conflict. Ironically, the committee found fault in China for imposing boycotts on

Japanese goods. The very act which pacifists advocated after the initial incident in

Mukden had, according to the committee, “contributed to creating the atmosphere in which the present dispute broke out. The use of the boycott . . . could not fail to make a situation which was already tense still more tense.” The committee agreed with pacifists, however, that after the Mukden incident, boycotts were appropriate reprisals.

Unlike the Lytton Commission, the Committee of Nineteen did not refrain from answering the question of whether or not Japan’s actions in Manchuria were justified in light of Chinese provocations. “The Assembly cannot regard as measures of self-defense the military operations carried out on that night [18 September 1931] by the Japanese troops at Mukden and other places in Manchuria,” concluded the committee. “Nor can the military measures of Japan as a whole, developed in the course of the dispute, be regarded as measures of self-defense.” The committee stopped short of branding Japan an aggressor nation, which would have been an admission that a state of war existed in

Manchuria and would therefore require some form of sanction under Article XVI.

Nevertheless, the committee had gone further than the League had hitherto been willing

to go. It condemned not only the Japanese military’s activities in Manchuria and

Shanghai, but also the Japanese government’s recognition of Manchukuo, which it deemed “incompatible with the spirit of the resolution of March 11, 1932.”60

There was one part of the committee’s report with which the Japanese delegation wholeheartedly agreed. The report began with the disclaimer, originally provided by the

Lytton Commission, that the “issues involved in this conflict are not as simple as they are often represented to be” and that “only an intimate knowledge of all the facts as well as of their historical background should entitle any one to express a definite opinion upon them.” The Japanese delegation doubted that the other members of the committee had the requisite “intimate knowledge” and appealed to them to “think twice before making their decision.”61

Like the World Tomorrow, whose reaction to the Committee of Nineteen’s report opened this chapter, the Christian Century hailed the mere transmission of the League’s report as “an event of permanent historic importance.” Commenting before the Assembly made its decision and while fighting continued in Manchuria, Charles Clayton Morrison declared, “Here is a new stage in world affairs. At one step, mankind strides out of the dark days in which wars and the making of wars have gone on behind a curtain where only a few favored diplomats were allowed to peak.” He held out little hope that the report would itself have any immediate effect on Japan’s actions, “but failure to restrain

Japan should not obscure the significance of the broadcasting of the Geneva report.”

60 “Text of the Report of the League Committee of Nineteen on the Chino-Japanese Dispute,” New York Times, 18 February 1933, 8-9. 61 “Text of Japan’s Comments on League Report,” New York Times, 22 February 1933, 15.

Although he had previously criticized the members of the League for failing to transcend their own national interests, he now argued that “the report of the committee of nineteen proves that a neutral review of the acts of sovereign powers can be obtained; the broadcasting of the report proves that the results of such a review can be mediated to mankind.”62

When the Assembly met to discuss the Committee of Nineteen’s recommendations on 21 February 1933, this widespread sense of the League’s accomplishment at simply publishing a report, coupled with the League’s own reluctance to take action the year before, created an atmosphere in which expectations were lower than they had been at any point in the crisis. Many observers, including many pacifists, had urged the League to impose sanctions during the fighting in Shanghai and talked as if nothing less than the immediate withdrawal of Japan from both Shanghai and Manchuria could be considered a success. After Japanese troops withdrew to the international settlement at Shanghai, however, the sense of urgency faded. The League had proved unwilling to adopt sanctions then, and no one really expected it to do so now. The question was not whether or not the League would impose immediate sanctions, but whether or not it would adopt the Committee of Nineteen’s report and risk Japan’s withdrawal from the League. After all, the Assembly might choose to remain silent in order to placate Japan. Adopting the report was now widely regarded as a positive course of action, for, as the New York Times pointed out, “the powers of the League have not

62 “A Turning Point in World History,” Christian Century, 1 March 1933, 276.

heretofore taken such a clear-cut stand” against Japan.63

The Assembly’s nearly unanimous approval of the report on 24 February 1933

was, therefore, seen as a victory for the League. Only the Japanese delegation voted

against it. After the vote, Japan’s representatives walked out of the Assembly never to

return. In March, the Japanese gave notice of their intention to formally withdraw from

the League.

Japan’s withdrawal did little to discredit the League in the eyes of the pacifists.

On the contrary, that the League allowed the Japanese delegation to leave without trying

to stop it made the League’s actions seem that much more significant in the eyes of the

Christian Century’s editors: “The league has saved its soul. By saving its soul it has

saved its life. . . . [H]aving acted with courage and conviction, the league gains

immediately in self-respect and in the estimation of all the nations. Its prestige is higher,

its importance for the future seems greater today than at any previous time in its stormy

history.” Japan’s isolation was “without precedent in modern history”; it had “walked

out—not only out of a meeting of the league assembly, but out of the company of nations

and of peoples.”

The Century maintained that non-recognition would prove effective in the long-

run. It was only a matter of time before Japan would change its ways and come back to

the community of nations, for “the day of bankruptcy is drawing swiftly near.” Military

conquests might save the nation’s prestige in the eyes of its people, but the more Japan

committed itself militarily, the sooner the impending financial crash would arrive. “Japan

63 Edwin L. James, “Japanese and the League Now Stand Face to Face,” New York Times, 19 February 1933, E1. See also Clarence K. Streit, “League Looks to U.S. in Policy on China,” ibid., 19 September 1932, 4.

is like a man with his neck in a noose; every time he thrusts out against the situation, the

noose tightens,” declared Morrison. There was little left for the League to do but “settle

down into an attitude of watchful waiting.”64

Although its actions were more in the vein of “watchful waiting” or Richard

Niebuhr’s “meaningful inactivity” than intervention, the League pressed on. The

Assembly created a new Manchurian Advisory Committee in accordance with the

Committee of Nineteen’s recommendations. Comprised of twenty-one League members,

including the members of the Committee of Nineteen, Canada, and the Netherlands, this

new committee’s first course of action was to invite two non-members, the U.S. and

U.S.S.R., to send delegates to serve in advisory roles. Immediately after the League

extended its invitation, Stimson indicated the U.S. would participate, but formal

acceptance did not come until March 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt took office. 65

The Christian Century was originally wary of Roosevelt’s foreign policy, but the president’s commitment to non-recognition and willingness to work with the League’s

Manchurian Advisory Committee quickly won the editors over. During the 1932 presidential campaign, Roosevelt had been noticeably silent on foreign affairs. The large contributions he received from William Randolph Hearst, the “most sinister figure in

American public life” who stood “for everything in international relations which peace- minded citizens oppose,” gave the Christian Century cause for concern. After a meeting with Stimson on 9 January 1933, however, Roosevelt announced that he would continue the Hoover-Stimson policy of non-recognition. The Christian Century rejoiced at the

64 “Japan Walks Out,” Christian Century, 8 March 1933, 321. 65 “Stimson Supports League in Dispute,” New York Times, 26 February 1933, 1; “Hull’s Reply to the League’s Invitation,” ibid., 15 March 1933, 12.

news, arguing that non-recognition remained the only sound policy. “It has . . . none of

the spectacular features of the A.E.F. [American Expeditionary Forces of World War I],

or even of an economic boycott,” admitted the editors. “We do not believe, however, that

it is ineffective. Time will prove.” Roosevelt agreed with this attitude. Stimson privately

noted after his meeting with the president-elect that Roosevelt shared with Hoover and

him the belief that, in the long-run, non-recognition would prove effective, for “Japan

would ultimately fail through economic pressure.”66

The Assembly’s request that the U.S.S.R join its Advisory Committee on

Manchuria prompted China to resume diplomatic relations with Russia and likely

encouraged Roosevelt to do the same. When the Committee of Nineteen first proposed

inviting the Soviets to participate in discussions regarding Manchuria in December 1932,

the Chinese and Russian delegates exchanged notes at Geneva that restored formal

relations between the two nations. Throughout the Manchurian crisis, many opinion

makers, including those at the World Tomorrow, had called for the U.S. to recognize the

U.S.S.R. so that the two nations might work together to deal with Japan. Stimson agreed

with the merits of this approach and pushed for recognition in summer 1932, but Hoover

adamantly opposed the idea. The debilitating effects of the American non-recognition

policy toward Russia were highlighted when the U.S.S.R. declined the League’s

invitation, pointing out that thirteen of the twenty-two nations set to serve on the

committee did not recognize its government. As France and Britain had both established

diplomatic relations with Russia in the 1920s, the New York Times took the Soviet’s

66 “Mr. Roosevelt and Foreign Policy,” Christian Century, 5 October 1932, 1193; “Mr. Roosevelt Will Carry On,” ibid., 1 February 1933, 143. Stimson quoted in LaFeber, The Clash, 176.

decision as a jab at the U.S., noting that “of these thirteen, twelve do not matter and the

thirteenth is the United States.” In November 1933, Roosevelt formally recognized

Russia. Whether or not the Soviet’s reaction to the Assembly’s request for cooperation

pushed Roosevelt toward recognition, many historians attribute the move to Roosevelt’s

desire to work with the Soviets in restoring order to Asia.67

While they may have indirectly helped improve relations between the U.S. and

U.S.S.R., the League’s actions had little effect on Japan. As the Japanese delegation in

Geneva watched the League members unite in their condemnation of Japan, Japanese

troops continued pressing on into the Jehol province. Fighting in Manchuria and northern

China finally came to a halt when Japan and China signed the Tangku truce on 31 May

1933. In return for Japan’s promise not to advance south of the Great Wall, the Chinese

government agreed to withdraw its troops south and west of a neutral zone within its own

borders that would be monitored by Japanese troops. No one claimed that the truce

proved the effectiveness of non-recognition, for it was clear China had simply suffered a

military defeat.

Unlike the publication of the Committee of Nineteen’s report, the truce elicited

little response from pacifists. The World Tomorrow did not so much as mention the

armistice in its June or July 1933 issues. The Christian Century ran an editorial asking,

“What has Japan won?” The answer: the hatred of China, economic isolation from the

rest of the world, and a more serious threat of a Sino-Soviet bloc after the crisis than

67 Clarence K. Streit, “Relations Resumed by China and Russia,” New York Times, 13 December 1932, 4; “Russia Won’t Aid League on Far East Issue,” New York Times, 8 March 1933, 11; Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise, 97-98.; LaFeber, The Clash, 178; Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945, With a New Afterword (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 [1979]), 78.

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before. For the pacifists, the significant point in the Manchurian crisis came in February

when the League condemned Japan; now the world could do nothing more than wait to

see the effects of that condemnation.68

* * *

Most historians remain highly critical of both the American and League responses

to the Manchurian crisis. In describing the American response, Robert Divine notes that

Stimson “protested vigorously” against Japan’s actions before he “finally resorted to the device of nonrecogntion”; in the end, “Stimson’s moral sanctions had little effect.”

Similarly, David M. Kennedy espouses the League of Nations Association’s line: both the American and League responses were “feeble” and “revealed the debilitating effects of American aloofness from the League of Nations.” Charles Chatfield even projects this sense of defeatism back onto the pacifists, asserting that “the Manchurian crisis seemed to reveal the futility of relying on the League of Nations as a force for international justice.”69

A few historians are more sympathetic to the League’s plight. Walter LaFeber notes that, by the spring of 1932, “not that much of an alternative [to non-recognition] existed”; Japanese troops already occupied Manchuria, which “made any negotiations with the League ludicrous.” Similarly, Justus Doenecke argues that “opponents of sanctions had the better case.” If the U.S. or League had actually imposed sanctions, such coercive measures surely could not have been implemented quickly enough to stop

68 “What Has Japan Won?,” World Tomorrow, 14 June 1933, 774-75. 69 Robert A. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent: American Entry into World War II, 2nd ed (New York: Knopf, 1979 [1965]), 4-5, emphasis mine; David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 93; Chatfield, For Peace and Justice, 228.

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Japan’s swift march through Manchuria. More likely, sanctions would have provoked

Japanese militarists to attack the Western-controlled islands in the Pacific and brought

about another world war. No nation other than China was willing to go to war over

Japan’s incursions; even those individuals who supported sanctions admitted that.70

Because they view the Manchurian crisis as a prelude to World War II, historians

tend to be dismissive of the Stimson Doctrine and non-recognition. Pacifists and most

other observers at the time, including American leaders, saw the Manchurian crisis not as

a harbinger of things to come, but rather as an epilogue to the old way of settling disputes

by military conflict. Only Doenecke recognizes the overwhelming sense of victory that

accompanied the League’s adopting of the Committee of Nineteen’s report, but even he

seems at a loss to explain it: “A wide variety of opinion–makers retained an optimism

that, curiously enough, appeared stronger at the end of the crisis than at the beginning.”71

During the crisis, pacifists were naturally outraged by Japan’s methods even if they sympathized with Japan’s economic plight. As Britain and France continued to delay any League action, the pacifists temporarily lost faith in the League. Ironically, their biggest criticism was that the League failed to impose the sanctions provided for under

Article XVI. As the battle in Shanghai waged on in early 1932, only Charles Clayton

Morrison recalled that it was Article XVI that, prior to the Manchurian crisis, had raised the most doubt in pacifists’ minds about the League.

Other than Article XVI, the League Covenant did not exactly facilitate immediate action. The League’s sanctions clause could only be invoked when a nation openly

70 LaFeber, The Clash, 173; Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise, 92-93. 71 Doenecke, When the Wicked Rise, 111.

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declared war on a member nation. As Japan argued that its actions were in self-defense, the Manchurian crisis was legally considered a “dispute” and not a war. Those Covenant articles providing for disputes specified very deliberate processes: “arbitration,” “judicial settlement,” and “enquiry.”72

With the armistice in Shanghai in May 1932, the pacifists’ moral indignation, which Richard Niebuhr correctly predicted would lead them to demand immediate action, subsided. In February 1933, they praised the League for the very deliberateness they criticized twelve months earlier. In a previous era, secret diplomacy may have plunged the world into war, but, for now, a world war had been avoided and the pacifists’ faith in the League and world public opinion was restored. According to the editors at the World

Tomorrow, war was no longer an effective means of securing political power:

The exploding bombs and flying shells of the Japanese army will prove to be as ineffective a method of securing permanent possession of the territories now being invaded as would be an endeavor to blast away the rocks of Gibraltar by firing dried peas from an air rifle. In an interdependent world of highly industrialized nations military power must yield to inexorable economic and political pressure.73

* * *

The impact of the Manchurian crisis on the pacifists cannot be overstated, for it shaped their response to the later European crises. At least in 1933, most pacifists viewed the League’s handling of the situation in Asia as a success, however qualified it may have been. They concluded that relative inactivity on the part of nations not directly involved was perhaps the best course of action in the face of crisis; if nothing else, such caution

72 “The Covenant of the League of Nations,” available online at the Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp. 73 “What Next in the Far East?,” World Tomorrow, 8 March 1933, 223.

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benefitted the international community by preventing the eruption of a world war.

Although their faith in the League waned throughout the 1930s, a significant number of

pacifists remained convinced that it had taken the correct action in regards to Manchuria

and continued to call for “watchful waiting” and “meaningful inactivity” in response to

developments in Europe.

Reinhold Niebuhr and other pacifists who, by the middle of the 1930s, referred to

themselves as Christian realists, were also profoundly affected by the Manchurian crisis.

It was during this crisis that Niebuhr first articulated many of those themes that

characterized his Christian realism. In “Must We Do Nothing?” he addressed the

differences between the “religious man” and the “moral man,” the centrality of sin to the

Christian message, the dialectical relationship between love and justice, and the tendency

of groups to be less moral than individuals. Indeed, it is no coincidence that he wrote the

bulk of Moral Man and Immoral Society while secluded in the small town of Heath,

Massachusetts, in July and August 1932. The ongoing Manchurian crisis and the

challenges facing socialists in the U.S. weighed so heavily on him that the task of

completing the manuscript was a matter of getting the ideas already in his head down on

paper.74

Although Niebuhr did not yet break away from the pacifist circles in which he

rose to prominence, he was already distancing himself from them, if only in attitude and

perspective. Niebuhr’s realism prevented him from sharing in the optimism of Morrison

and others regarding the League’s handling of the crisis. In Moral Man, he warned against pacifists’ “glorification of the League of Nations” and their tendency to view the

74 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 134-35.

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League as “partial fulfillment” of the kingdom of God on earth. Such a broad generalization about Christian naiveté was unfounded when he made it in 1932—the year during the crisis in which pacifists were most critical of the League—but by March 1933 it appeared far more accurate.

Yet Niebuhr noted it was “not necessary to discount the moral influence of the

League of Nations completely or to deny that it represents certain gains in the rational and moral organisation” to acknowledge that it did not live up to the ideals of some of the more sanguine liberal Protestants. Niebuhr, who frequently pointed out the inability of nations to transcend their own interests, may have recognized the League’s adoption of the Committee of Nineteen’s report as a significant accomplishment, but that did not make the League a success. He clearly stated his standards for success in Moral Man: “A society of nations has not really proved itself until it is able to grant justice to those who have been worsted in battle without requiring them to engage in new wars to redress their wrongs.” The League succeeded in joining together to condemn Japan’s actions without resorting to war, but one suspects that not even the most optimistic pacifists would have argued that China received justice.75

Furthermore, Niebuhr never gave the slightest indication, as many pacifists did, that he believed nations would stop fighting wars. He remained a pacifist because he could not yet imagine circumstances in which the U.S. should resort to war. Even when he supported economic sanctions during the Shanghai crisis, he did so only because he thought the chances of war were miniscule. Those individuals who have invoked Niebuhr

75 Niebuhr, Moral Man, xxi, 79, 19, 111.

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to justify U.S. intervention in any number of conflicts since 1945 seem to have missed this important point: not all wars are worth fighting.

That Christian realism was not synonymous with interventionism is highlighted by an essay Niebuhr wrote in March 1934. In “Shall We Seek World Peace or the Peace of America?,” Niebuhr chose the latter. Since the League’s condemnation of Japan the year prior, several developments led Niebuhr and other pacifists to once again voice their frustration. Japan remained in Manchuria, and French investors proved the ineffectiveness of non-recognition as a deterrent to investment when they loaned the

Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railway $60 million in October 1933. Moreover, that same month Germany dashed all hopes for disarmament when it declared its intention to rearm, withdrew from the disarmament talks at Geneva, and left the League altogether.

Finally, the truce between China and Japan seemed to set the stage for the possibility of a new conflict between the Soviet Union and Japan.76

With a Japanese attack on the U.S.S.R. a distinct possibility, Niebuhr provided a realist case for non-intervention, one that resembles arguments made by many non- interventionists in 1939. He feared that both radicals and conservatives would call for

U.S. intervention if war were to break out: radicals would want to defend the U.S.S.R. while conservatives would want to prevent Japan from closing the Open Door in China.

But no matter what, Niebuhr argued, the U.S. must resist the temptation to intervene in any form. There was a time before war broke out that all nations should work together to

76 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Shall We Seek World Peace or the Peace of America?,” World Tomorrow, 15 March 1934, 132-33. “French to Lend $60,000,000 for Manchuria,” New York Times, 17 October 1933, 12. By March 1934, criticism of the League was fairly widespread in World Tomorrow. See for example, Devere Allen, “Peace Is Dead—Long Live Peace!,” World Tomorrow, 15 March 1934, 127-29; Maxwell Stewart, “Stop the Next War!,” ibid., 15 March 1934, 130-31.

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try to prevent it, but once that time had passed and war seemed imminent, then those nations not directly involved should abstain from the conflict rather than exacerbate it.

Even sanctions ought to be avoided: they were “not only futile but also dangerous.” Any nation which threatened sanctions would surely be dragged into the conflict even if it was determined to stay out.

Just as the U.S. should not employ sanctions, it should refrain from joining the

League, for “American entrance into the League at the present time is almost bound to commit our country in some way or other to the perilous and futile task of preserving the

Versailles system against the day of judgment.” Only the “satisfied nations” could continue to renounce war. The League protected the status quo, and until there was a method of redressing the economic disparities between nations, the “unsatisfied nations” would continue to “resort to force once they are convinced there is no peaceful way out of what they regard as their slavery.”

Niebuhr’s predictions regarding the political situation in Asia reveal both the confusing nature of international relations in the 1930s and his own continued commitment to socialist politics. While many conservatives would have opposed intervention in a war between the U.S.S.R. and Japan with the hopes that the Japanese would crush Soviet Communism, Niebuhr feared that intervention might destroy socialism the world over. There was no guarantee that “the Russian experiment” would survive, even if the U.S. fought alongside the U.S.S.R. More likely, American intervention would draw Britain and France into the conflict and result in another world war. “While it is quite certain that the stresses and strains of another conflict would completely destroy capitalism,” wrote Niebuhr, “it by no means follows that a more ideal

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Socialist commonwealth of nations would grow out of it.” He argued that Germany might go socialist because there “the social contradictions of capitalism have worked themselves out to their final conclusion.” But such prosperous nations as Britain and the

U.S., where socialism was inchoate, were more likely to succumb to fascism. Using a phrase which pacifists would later use in the context of the emerging war in Europe, he argued that in a chaotic world “it will . . . be valuable to preserve some islands of sanity in a sea of insanity.”

Niebuhr recognized that others might think he was advocating a “counsel of selfishness,” but he argued that U.S. abstention would benefit the whole world. If the

U.S. refused to enter the world conflict, then so too might Great Britain. Despite the shortcomings of those two capitalist nations, even preserving the imperfect system was

“surely preferable to the complete chaos which would result from a world war.” This was not a purely selfish act, for “such abstention will ultimately redound to the benefit of the entire community and not merely to the non-participant.”

He did not, however, declare his position absolute and fixed. Rather, he based it on two assumptions. The first was that tensions had escalated to the point that a world conflict was virtually inevitable. The second was that “no conceivable good, and certainly no new and better society, will emerge out of a world conflict, no matter how resolute the forces which are working for a Socialist society.” In 1934, both of these assumptions were “justified by all available facts.”77

Circumstances changed dramatically throughout the 1930s, and so too did

Niebuhr’ s perception of these developments. But explaining his calls for intervention six

77 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Shall We Seek World Peace or the Peace of America?,” 132-33.

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years after his demand for the U.S. to remain an “island of sanity” as the logical outcome of his shift from pacifism to Christian realism will not suffice. Niebuhr did not radically change directions during the 1930s, for his response to the Manchurian crisis makes clear that he was already a Christian realist. By 1940, he denied that realism and pacifism were compatible. But realism can inform a pragmatic pacifism, and in 1934, no one made a stronger case for that position than Reinhold Niebuhr.

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Chapter Three: Strife Among the Pacifists: Moral Man and Immoral Society and the F.O.R. Split

The gap between Niebuhr and the pacifists widened throughout the 1930s, well before Hitler began wreaking havoc on Europe. Nothing did more to highlight this growing difference than did the publication of Moral Man and Immoral Society in 1932.

Perhaps if his contemporaries had read his articles in the 1920s more closely, they would not have been so surprised by Moral Man. Nevertheless, Moral Man and Immoral

Society provoked quite an uproar in liberal Protestant circles and beyond in the winter of

1932-1933.

If one were looking to identify a particular moment at which Niebuhr broke from his pacifist past, the publication of Moral Man seems a likely candidate. It should be kept in mind, however, that Moral Man was not an outright rejection of non-violent methods.

Niebuhr merely denied pacifism’s privileged moral position, which was virtually unquestioned among liberal Protestants. He sought to demonstrate that coercion and conflict, which are so readily apparent in outbreaks of violence, are actually defining characteristics of human existence. Once this fact was recognized, he argued, there was no moral basis for preferring non-violent acts over violent methods. The relative morality of each course of action could only be determined in specific situations, not in the abstract.

In 1932, Niebuhr’s interests lay primarily in achieving class justice, and he convincingly argued that violence may ultimately prove the only method of approximating that justice. He remained far more skeptical of the possibility of war promoting justice in the realm of international politics. He still believed, as he had written

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in his contribution to Allen’s 1928 symposium, that nations acted hypocritically,

proclaiming universal aims while acting solely out of self-interest.1 Although an assault

on some of the simple assumptions of liberal Christianity, Moral Man did not propose

any radical departure from pacifist politics. In fact, it actually legitimated pacifism in a

backhanded way. Pacifism may not be sound as an ethical absolute, but as a non-violent

form of coercion, it might very well prove to be a useful tactic.

Some of Niebuhr’s contemporaries recognized that he had more in common with

the liberal Protestants than he admitted, and they even questioned whether his challenge

to liberal Protestantism was as substantial as he believed it to be. Norman Thomas,

F.O.R. member and the Socialist party presidential nominee from 1928 to 1948, noted

that Niebuhr succeeded at showing that the difference between violence and nonviolence

was not as great as some practitioners of nonviolence assumed, but, he argued, “There are

not many people that suffer from sentimental pacifism.”2 He was probably right. As we

shall see, there were a few pacifists, such as John Haynes Holmes, Kirby Page, A. J.

Muste, and Harry Emerson Fosdick, who continued to insist during the war that violence

was absolutely incompatible with Christianity. But even members of this group did not

rely solely on their reading of the Bible to justify their position; they rooted their

arguments in historical experience as well as the teachings of Jesus. Many others who

opposed military intervention denied doing so on principle alone and argued that it was a

1 Niebuhr only addressed international politics in one chapter, “The Morality of Nations,” which perhaps would have been better titled, “The Immorality of Nations.” Keeping with the general tone of Moral Man, Niebuhr expounded on the characteristics of nations that prevented them from being moral, but he offered nothing in the way of a solution to overcome these problems. Niebuhr, Moral Man, 83-112. 2 Norman Thomas, “Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Review,” World Tomorrow, 14 December 1932, 566.

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tactical choice. As the historian Charles Chatfield reminds us, pacifists in the 1920s and

1930s were, after all, “sons of a science-minded generation, . . . and their world view

altered some of the earlier doctrines: the authority of the Bible rested on its illumination

of experience rather than on its prescriptive truth; human solidarity was a sociological

fact and a democratic ideal as well as a religious proposition; the sanctification of man

and the kingdom of God were relative possibilities; and the application of love might be

judged pragmatically.” By the 1930s, liberal Protestants no longer justified their beliefs

and practices with scripture alone; they sought to ground their beliefs in experience, as

well as the Bible.3

Niebuhr was in fact attacking a dying breed, a very small minority within the

pacifist movement, but he was suggesting that they constituted the whole. This practice

of oversimplifying his opponents’ thought, of creating straw men only to tear them down,

is something that Richard Fox argues Niebuhr learned as a young college debater and

continued throughout his life.4

Although Thomas was correct in asserting that Niebuhr oversimplified his critics,

Niebuhr did not fabricate the moralist position out of nothing. In response to Thomas’s objection, Niebuhr argued that the widespread criticism of Moral Man “rather justified me in believing that the entire middle-class world, whether avowedly pacifist or not, is confused about the relation of coercion to moral idealism.” The critics of Moral Man only made Niebuhr more confident in his criticisms of liberalism’s inherent sentimentality. Even if pacifists attempted to argue that rational thought, not the

3 Chatfield, For Peace and Justice, 132. 4 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 16-17, 70, 114, 136-137, 169.

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perfectionist desire to follow the path of Jesus, led them to their position, Niebuhr

doubted this was the case. He was convinced most American religious leaders lacked a

realistic view of man and continued to search for panaceas. He claimed that “nine out of

ten Europeans would accept without question” his notion that “the force of human

egoism and the limits of the human imagination” made the perfect political system an

impossibility. He was dismayed that the statement proved so controversial in the U.S.

“The fact that this conclusion . . . should be regarded in America as particularly

pessimistic proves how completely we are still involved in the utopianism of the past two

centuries, and how easily the radical merely substitutes a Marxian for a liberal

Utopianism.”5

What is most surprising about the reviews of Moral Man is that, with the

exception of Thomas (and, in private correspondence, Reinhold’s brother, Richard),

reviewers did not question Niebuhr’s characterization of liberal Protestants. They focused

instead on what they preferred to see as Niebuhr’s cynicism and pessimism.6 Rather than

clarify their own position, they caricatured Niebuhr, as he had them. They took the bait

and countered his polemic with polemics of their own, oversimplifying Niebuhr’s

position so much so that he might have, were he an outside observer, applauded their

efforts. But he was not an outside observer. He was, in his view, the victim of rather

unfair treatment.

5 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Optimism and Utopianism,” World Tomorrow, 22 February 1933, 179-180. 6 See for example Theodore C. Hume, “Prophet of Disillusion,” review of Moral Man and Immoral Society, by Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Century, 4 January 1933, 18-19., For a fuller discussion of the response to Moral Man, see Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 142- 147.

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Niebuhr was particularly irked by what he perceived as personal attacks on his

piety. For example, Thomas Hume, in a review that ran in the Christian Century,

described Moral Man as a “compound of practical philosophy and social psychology,

with a fainter sprinkling of theology than might have been expected from a professor of

Christian ethics.” His assessment was not too far off the mark, for anyone who reads

Moral Man for the first time must surely be struck by the fact that Marx receives far more

attention than Jesus. But Hume went further, suggesting that Niebuhr had perhaps

abandoned Christianity for Marxism. He warned prospective readers, “To read this book

on the threshold of a new year is to invite a twelve-month spiritual agony. To call the

book fully Christian in tone is to travesty the heart of Jesus’ message to the world.”

Hume clearly favored a religion that comforted and spread the “good news” of the gospel

to one which stressed the nature of sin. He did conclude, however, that Moral Man was

an important work that could not be ignored. No matter how unpleasant Niebuhr’s news

may be, Moral Man presented a thesis that “every thinking Christian must squarely face .

. . , or confess the impotence of his faith.”7

Niebuhr took no comfort in this last line. Instead, he focused on Hume’s assertion that his work was un-Christian in tone. So upset was Niebuhr by the accusation that he wrote a rejoinder, which Morrison agreed to publish in the Christian Century. Hume’s accusation made Niebuhr “wince and at the same time repent of the many times that I, in my salad days of liberalism, read people out of the Kingdom of God for disagreeing with me.” He claimed that while he would not object to any reader’s disagreeing with his interpretation of Christian ethics, he did object to being told that he had rejected, or even

7 Hume, “Prophet of Disillusion,” Christian Century, 4 January 1933, 18.

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moved beyond, Christianity. As he saw it, he was trying to rescue historic Christianity

from the overly sentimentalized version that liberal Protestants now promoted. He could

bear such an accusation when it came from a “good friend,” as he described Hume, but he

would not tolerate such a comment from those with whom he was not close. As the

decade continued and the debate between Niebuhr and the pacifists became more

contentious, it was this tendency to identify pacifism as the only Christian way that most irritated Niebuhr.8

* * *

Just as the controversy surrounding Moral Man began to cool, Niebuhr found

himself in the middle of another heated debate, this time within the pacifist organization,

the Fellowship of Reconciliation, on whose executive council he served. At the center of

the debate was J. B. Matthews, one of two executive secretaries of the F.O.R.. Although

the initial question facing the F.O.R.’s council was simply whether one individual,

Matthews, should remain on the fellowship’s payroll, the council soon found itself

engaged in a polarizing debate about the role of violence in the “class struggle.” The

F.O.R. was unanimously against international war—Christian pacifism was, after all, the

bedrock principle of the group—but for much of the leadership of the F.O.R. in the

1930s, it was not taken for granted that a “pacifist” must oppose the use of violence in all

situations. Indeed, in this controversy, Niebuhr found himself allied politically with

Matthews and the handful of other council members who argued that violence would be

one component of the class struggle and that, if the F.O.R. was to remain a realistic and

politically viable organization, it could not discount the use of violence outright.

8 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Dr. Niebuhr's Position,” Christian Century, 18 January 1933, 91- 92.

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The F.O.R. controversy warrants such extensive treatment here because of the

role it played in the development of Christian Realism as a school of thought that came to

be recognized as something distinct from the old Social Gospel. Second only to Moral

Man, the F.O.R. controversy serves as historians’ favorite watershed moment in the

development of Niebuhr’s thought. As Robert Moats Miller has written, “The rift is not

so important because of its results on the Fellowship . . . but because it illustrates the

growing gulf between the old Social Gospel and the new social action patterns of the neo-

orthodox group under the leadership of Reinhold Niebuhr.”9

There is no denying that Niebuhr viewed his dramatic exit from the F.O.R.

council in these terms, but the extent to which he abandoned his Social Gospel roots has

been overstated. As is usually the case in heated disputes, this debate owed as much to

personality conflicts as it did to legitimate differences of opinion. No personality loomed

larger than Matthews’s.

When hired by the F.O.R. to serve as executive secretary in 1929, Matthews was a

proponent of the Social Gospel. During his college years, Matthews, like many other

young Christians of his generation, was influenced by John R. Mott and other leaders of

the Student Volunteer Movement. He believed in Mott’s call for the “evangelization of

the world in this generation” and served as a missionary in Java. He returned to the U.S.

and earned graduate degrees in ancient languages and theology from Drew University,

Columbia University, and Union Theological Seminary. Increasingly convinced that the

most important realm in which the Social Gospel operated was that of race relations, he

9 Miller, American Protestantism and Social Issues, 97. Similar accounts of the F.O.R. split can be found in Chatfield, For Peace and Justice, 191-197; Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 154-156; Merkley, Reinhold Niebuhr, 123-125; Meyer, Protestant Search, 203-216; Kosek, Acts of Conscience, 140-145.

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became involved in political activities that did not always please his employers. He maintained only short-term employment at several institutions across the U.S. and in

Canada, and in at least one instance, while working at Scarritt College in Nashville, he was forced to resign due to his extracurricular involvement in organizing interracial meetings. When the F.O.R. hired Matthews, its leaders probably saw in him a prophetic soul whose path was quite similar to those which many of them had followed. Had they looked deeper into his past, they may have discovered that Matthews’ contentious, self- righteous personality explained his trouble maintaining employment as much as did his leftist politics.10

Matthews rightly viewed himself in retrospect as an embracer of panaceas.11 He had little tolerance for the gray areas that Niebuhr and many other leaders of the F.O.R. had come to accept. When his exposure to radical politics convinced him of the need of a revolution to save society from what he saw as a decrepit capitalist system, he abandoned the reformist politics that had come to define the F.O.R. He also denied that the Christian faith that motivated his earlier endeavors had any continuing relevance in the realm of social action. He, like many secular radicals, could not reconcile religion with Marxism.

Matthew’s position was at odds with the views of the majority of the F.O.R. council. Although many of the leaders, including Norman Thomas and Reinhold Niebuhr, agreed with much of Marxist analysis, they never abandoned Christianity; they espoused

10 For Matthews’s own account of his background prior to joining the fellowship, see J. B. Matthews, Odyssey of a Fellow Traveler (New York: Mount Vernon, 1938), 27-69. See also Robert M. Lichtman, “J. B. Matthews and the Counter-Subversives: Names as a Political and Financial Resource in the Mccarthy Era,” American Communist History 5, no. 1 (June 2006): 4-6. 11 Matthews, Odyssey of a Fellow Traveler, 256-57.

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Christian Marxism or Christian socialism. Furthermore, the F.O.R. council had

previously dealt with the relationship of Christianity to their political work in 1929-1930,

shortly after they hired Matthews. As the leadership sought to broaden the organization’s

base, they discussed dropping any specific mention of Jesus from their statement of

purpose so as to allow for members who were not Christian or even religious. The F.O.R.

council administered polls among the Fellowship’s members that revealed that religion

was an essential and distinguishing characteristic of the F.O.R. in the eyes of its rank and

file members. The members expressly disavowed being just another political

organization, for they sought to apply their reading of Christianity, with its emphasis on

Jesus’ message of love and reconciliation, to the political situation. The F.O.R. might,

when working with radical political groups, downplay their religious activities, but they

never failed to emphasize their Christian convictions when recruiting members from the

churches, their greatest constituency. In 1930, the F.O.R. council reworded the statement

of purpose, toning down the theological basis of the organization but not discarding it

altogether. The fellowship became, in the words of historian Charles Chatfield,

“essentially but not exclusively Christian.”12

Matthews re-opened the debate about the religious nature of the F.O.R. by flaunting his newfound radicalism and atheism. Throughout his short tenure at the F.O.R. he became involved in more and more radical groups, many of which, he later claimed, were communist fronts. He distanced himself from his former Social Gospel position and went so far as charging John Nevin Sayre, the F.O.R.’s other executive secretary, with placing too much emphasis on Christianity. Matthews now regarded his pacifism as a

12 Chatfield, For Peace and Justice, 184-87, quote from 185.

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tactical choice that could be abandoned when political realities no longer justified it. He framed his argument in black and white terms: one could either employ the social sciences and make tactical decisions in regard to political action or live by Christian dogmatism. One must choose between Marx and Christ, according to Matthews, and he chose Marx. The F.O.R. might work with atheists who shared their political aims, but most of the executive council agreed that there was no room in the leadership of the organization for someone who so openly denied sharing the Christian faith that was the basis of the group’s political work.

At a meeting of the executive council in March, 1933, tensions reached a head.

Both Matthews and Sayre offered letters of resignation, putting the question to the council members of whether either or both executive secretaries should be dismissed. In a debate which Charles Chatfield characterizes as “clouded by irrelevancies,” Matthews rearticulated his position that his pacifism was purely tactical. He began with a critique of non-violence that was reminiscent of Niebuhr’s in Moral Man. He argued that non- violence favored the status quo: the most effective form of non-violent coercion was the education system, which was “used by capitalism to prevent the spread of radical ideas.”

Revealing both a penchant for sensational language and his tendency to reject one panacea for another, he went further than Niebuhr and declared, “As between capitalism using non-violent resistance for injustice and communism using violent resistance against injustice, I am with the latter.”13

One would think that such a shocking declaration alone would be sufficient grounds for Matthews’ dismissal. Although F.O.R. reached out to other radical groups in

13 Chatfield, For Peace and Justice, 193-194. Matthews quoted on 194.

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the 1930s, most of the leadership, including Niebuhr, remained quite critical of communism. The council, however, ignored the fact that Matthews rather explicitly allied himself with the communists. Instead it confronted the issue that Niebuhr had broached in

Moral Man but on which the F.O.R. had yet to take a stance: Was violence ever justified, and, if so, when?

Suddenly the executive council found itself debating what stance it would take in a hypothetical class war. That the “revolution” was, of course, not imminent, did not stop the council from considering it in earnest. Unable to reach a conclusion at sessions in

March and June, the council referred the matter to the plenary meeting at the F.O.R.’s annual conference in October. Here, too, the discussion made little headway, and those present decided to put the question to all 6,000 members across the U.S.

The decision to query all members reflects not only the F.O.R.’s democratic values, but also its belief in the application of science to solve social problems. Rather than simply putting the questions of whether Matthews or Sayre should be retained to the members, the council devised a four-question survey in an attempt to quantify the membership’s attitudes towards coercion and derive a precise measurement that would help them to define when, if ever, the F.O.R. might justify using violence.

The heart of the survey was the controversial question II, which asked members to identify from a list of six positions the one that represented the furthest that they, as individuals, would go in participating in the class struggle. The positions are best categorized as follows:

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1. Strict neutrality. The individual would side with neither the working class

nor the employers and would use only “love, moral suasion and education” in

his or her attempts to ease the conflict.

2. Pro-labor, without coercion. The individual would openly declare his or her

sympathies for the working class and publicize its grievances, but would

refuse to get involved in any coercive measures. This individual would speak

out against the use of violence by either side, whether violence committed by

police in the name of security or violence committed by workers in the name

of justice.

3. Pro-labor, with non-violent coercion. The individual pledged to side with

the laborers and would condone the use of “non-violent political and

economic coercive measures in order to secure the abolition of capitalism,”

including organizing laborers into unions and even a political party. However,

he or she would still denounce violence and disassociate from any group that

resorted to violence.

4. Pro-labor, with personal non-violence. If employers used violence to protect

their interests, the individual would continue to support even those working

class groups that resorted to violence. However, the individual would only

support them in non-violent ways, including “as a social worker . . . , as a

maintainer of food supplies, [or] as a nurse or stretcher bearer.”

5. Pro-labor, with willingness to use violence. If employers use violence first,

the individual will stand with workers in the struggle, even if that means

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resorting to violence. He or she would do so “regretfully and only while the

necessity for it continues.”

6. Pro-labor and pro-violence. This position was proactive, and even

provocative, in that the individual declared his or her intention to “assist in the

arming of workers and in other ways prepare them for the struggle” prior to

employers’ resorting to violence. Once “general class warfare” had begun, he

or she would “urge workers to acts of violence and participate with them in

such acts.”

The scale was not only used to ask each individual member what position he or she would personally take, it was also a measuring stick for limiting the actions of any future

F.O.R. secretary. Question IV of the survey asked members to use the scale from II to indicate which position(s) were unacceptable for any secretary of the F.O.R. to hold.

The other two questions were much more straightforward in that they only required “yes” or “no” answers. Question I simply posed to the membership the original question facing the council: Should the F.O.R. continue to emphasize its founders’

Christian values? Question III asked whether or not the F.O.R. should adopt the same policy of non-violence in “the class war” that it had preached in the realm of international relations for nearly two decades.

If the council members had hoped that the surveys would dispel some of the tensions that raged within the council over the issue of non-violence, then they were most certainly disappointed when they met again in December 1933. At that time, they had received nearly one thousand replies, which they planned to use to guide their actions as they considered the fate of Matthews and Sayre. Unfortunately, the survey offered more

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heat than light, as the interpretation and validity of the results were hotly contested by those present at the meeting.

On the surface, continued debate hardly seems justified. The overwhelming majority of members, about three quarters of them in all, believed that the F.O.R. should continue to emphasize its Christian nature. Non-violence, too, won out if one only considers that nearly eighty percent of respondents answered “yes” to question III.

However, the fact that nearly ten percent of respondents abstained from answering question III hints at some of the methodological problems of the survey. After considering the six positions set forth under question II, the ten percent who did not answer the question on non-violence probably refrained from doing so because they had become confused about exactly what a policy of non-violence entailed. Had the survey makers simply sequenced the questions differently and asked the general question about non-violence prior to outlining the six rather arbitrary positions they decided upon, confusion might have been avoided.

The real problems, however, were questions II and IV. All of the questions on the survey, and the six positions outlined in question II in particular, were the products of compromise and “were not one hundred per cent satisfactory to any member of the committee.”14 Many of the rank and file F.O.R. members evidently found the hypothetical positions problematic as well. Several individuals checked more than one position under question II, despite the fact that the council believed the six stances to be mutually exclusive. In those cases, only the one closest to the advocacy of violence was counted.

14 Edmund B. Chaffee, “Why I Stay in the F.O.R.,” Christian Century, 3 January 1934, 15.

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The membership of the F.O.R. was no more of one mind than was the council.

Votes were distributed fairly evenly across the first four positions: positions II-1 through

II-3 (all of which stated the refusal even to associate with groups that committed

violence) were each supported by approximately twenty per cent of the membership, and

position II-4 (pro-labor coupled with personal non-violence) received a slight plurality

with about thirty per cent of the membership supporting it. The two positions that

condoned violence were clearly less popular: roughly ten per cent of the membership

supported II-5, while less than two percent supported II-6.15

If the responses to questions I through III clearly suggested that Matthews was out of sync with the members of the F.O.R., question IV, the one question that should have mattered in deciding what positions a secretary of the F.O.R. could hold, produced less conclusive results. Part of the problem was that question IV was rather poorly phrased. It was not a question at all, but rather the statement, “A secretary of the F. O. R. should in my opinion resign if his position [in question II] is . . .”16 It is unclear whether the council expected members to place a check next to more than one objectionable position or not, but most members who answered did check more than one. They were not unreasonable for doing so. It is quite understandable that someone who held position II-2, II-3, or II-4

15 As the survey was a rather imprecise measurement to begin with, I have chosen to refer to approximations in the text. The council actually received 996 surveys before considering the results at the December meeting. The actual responses for question II were as follows: 210 members (21%) supported position 1; 191 members (19%), position two; 167 members (17%), position 3; 310 members (31%), position 4; 94 members (9%), position 5; and 19 members (2%), position 6. The exact wording of the survey questions and the tabulation of the responses are reported in Chaffee, “Why I Stay in the F.O.R.,” 15-16. The questions are also reprinted in Kirby Page, “The Future of the Fellowship,” World Tomorrow, 4 January 1934, 9. Page included the responses from an additional 93 members that had not arrived in time to be considered by the council. 16 Ibid.

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would want neither a secretary who refused to take sides in the labor struggle nor one who advocated the use of violence.

To further complicate matters, nearly two hundred of those who returned their surveys did not respond to question IV at all. Some council members, such as Kirby

Page, seemed to think that those who did not answer question IV simply “refrained from expressing an opinion.”17 However, whether or not it was the survey taker’s (or makers’) intention, such a non-response ought to indicate that the individual believed no one’s personal position should preclude him or her from serving as secretary. Unlike question II where a plurality would have some significance, a position in question IV required that a majority of respondents agree it was objectionable before any results could be considered decisive. Question IV was not really one question, but rather six, asking respondents to indicate “yes” or “no” as to whether each of the six positions was one that a leader should not hold.

Only position II-6, which advocated immediate preparation for the use of violence, received an overwhelming number of objections. Three quarters of all respondents agreed that any secretary who believed in the arming of workers prior to an outbreak of war ought to resign immediately. This was not too surprising, even to the members of the council who supported Matthews. No one on the council took this position seriously (Matthews himself endorsed II-5), for it confused the willingness to use violence with the outright advocacy of violence. Francis Henson, a self-proclaimed

Marxist who resigned his seat on the council following the controversy, argued that “no

17 Page, “The Future of the Fellowship,” 9.

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one but an agent provocateur planted by the enemies of the working class or . . . a very

ignorant person” could possibly agree with the sixth position.18

Although the results of the survey indicated that the majority of the membership

objected only to a secretary who held position II-6, the council decided, by a vote of 18-

12, that a secretary who held position II-5 ought to be dismissed. They accepted

Matthews’ letter of resignation, but chose to retain the services of Sayre. The majority’s

logic was sound enough: a secretary’s views ought to be in accord with the membership,

and only a little over ten per cent of the membership supported even the “reluctant” use

of violence. As Page argued, any group had the right and even responsibility to choose

leadership that reflected the views of its members: Would anyone cry foul play if the

Socialist party dismissed a leader who had abandoned Socialism for Communism?19

The council, however, did not need to infer the desires of its membership. It had asked the membership directly whether or not they objected to having a leader who would personally engage in acts of violence if a class war broke out, and the responses were inconclusive at best.20 Matthews and the twelve members who voted against his

dismissal argued that the council had overstepped its bounds and ignored the will of the

members.21

18 720 out of the 996 respondents indicated that a secretary should resign if he or she held position II-6. Chaffee, “Why I Stay in the F.O.R.,” 16. Francis A. Henson, “A Dialectical Marxist Interpretation,” World Tomorrow, 4 January 1934, 8. 19 Page, “The Future of the Fellowship,” 10. 20 477 members out of 996 (48%) indicated that they objected to a leader who held position II-V, a significant number for sure, but not the majority necessary to indicate that Matthews should be dismissed. Chaffee, “Why I Stay in the F.O.R.,” 16. 21 J. B. Matthews, “An Open Letter to Kirby Page from J. B. Matthews,” World Tomorrow, 18 January 1934, 41. Interestingly enough, historians who have commented 126

Although on procedural grounds Matthews could make the case that he should be

retained, the debate that ensued did not concern itself with procedure so much as with

principle. The survey had clearly demarcated splits within the Fellowship of

Reconciliation that members of the council made irreconcilable. For Page and the

majority of the council who voted against Matthews, the most important distinction was

between positions II-4 and II-5. They claimed to be pragmatists who distanced

themselves from sentimental liberals by recognizing the need for coercion in achieving

justice, but they insisted that that coercion remain non-violent. Those who could endorse

position II-5 and accept violence as a tactic, no matter how reluctantly, had in their eyes

abandoned the Christian principles on which the F.O.R. had been founded.

Although certainly not the embodiment of reconciliation (he was, after all,

responsible for provoking the debate), Matthews argued that the distinction between

positions II-4 and II-5 was greatly exaggerated. They were both essentially violent, even

if those who supported II-4 would not personally engage in violence. Matthews pointed

out the inconsistency of Page’s own position, for he and other pacifists had opposed non-

combatant service during World War I on the grounds that such service “was complete

moral entanglement in the war system.” Now Page refused to recognize that men who

practiced personal non-violence but sided with the workers in a class war were as morally on the F.O.R. split have failed to note that Matthews made a valid point when claiming that his dismissal did not reflect the will of the group. Historians have treated this as a rather clear-cut case of the majority of the F.O.R. refusing to condone violence. Another possibility is that respondents were more honest than some of the council members regarding their personal roles in class conflict. It is possible that members who would never personally commit an act of violence and who thought the F.O.R. should remain officially non-violent would tolerate a secretary whose personal views were different from their own. Perhaps the rank and file membership recognized that debate over class war was, at least in the U.S. in 1933, purely theoretical, and that such theoretical differences had little bearing in the F.O.R.’s daily activities.

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culpable as those who served on the “front line of armed conflict against the defenders of

capitalism.” If war were to break out, Matthews asked, would not the theoretical distance

between men like he and Page be overlooked as they worked for a common cause?

Matthews argued their differences would be ignored, for “the exponents of both [II-]4

and [II-]5 . . . will occupy the same prison cells of the owning class, will reject all

neutrality in the class warfare, will share identical aims, and will in every high sense of

the word be comrades of the new society.”22

Matthews was not the only one affected by the council’s decision. Charles

Webber, F.O.R. secretary for industrial affairs, and Howard Kester, the Fellowship’s southern secretary, were also asked to resign when they refused to denounce position II-

5. As the schism attracted the attention of both the Christian and the secular press, it was not Matthews, but rather Reinhold Niebuhr who became the spokesman of the exiled group.23

It should not have come as a surprise to anyone in the F.O.R. that Niebuhr sided

with Matthews. Matthews’ argument was, after all, substantially the same critique of

pacifism Niebuhr had articulated in Moral Man. Yet as long as the F.O.R. advocated non-

22 J. B. Matthews, “An Open Letter to Kirby Page from J. B. Matthews,” 41. 23 The F.O.R.’s own World Tomorrow provided the most coverage of the controversy. See in particular, John C. Bennett, “That Fellowship Questionnaire,” 21 December 1933, 690-692; Henson, “A Dialectical Marxist Interpretation,” 4 January 1934, 8; Page, “The Future of the Fellowship,” 4 January 1934, 9-11; Arthur L. Swift et al., “Fellowship Reverberations,” 18 January 1934, 40-46. Christian Century also commented on the split extensively and ran articles and correspondence presenting both sides: Chaffee, “Why I Stay in the F.O.R.,” 3 January 1934, 15-17; Reinhold Niebuhr, “Why I Leave the F.O.R.,” 3 January 1934, 17-19; “A Regrettable Rupture,” 10 January 1934, 46-48. Even the New York Times found the schism worthy of comment: “Pacifists in Row over What is ‘War,’” 18 December 1933, 3; “Ten Pacifists Quit in Row Over War,” 19 December 1933, 8.

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violence in the international realm without articulating its justification for doing so,

Niebuhr and other realists had no reason to leave the Fellowship. The realists could still

refer to themselves as pacifists in the sense that they continued to “regard an international

armed conflict as . . . suicidal.”24

With the returns from the surveys counted however, Niebuhr came to the

conclusion that opposition to international war was no longer enough to unite the group.

“Perhaps it would clear the issue,” wrote Niebuhr, if he and those who shared his position

“admitted that we are not pacifists at all.” That forty per cent of the Fellowship could

endorse positions II-1 and II-2, which denounced any form of coercion, revealed to him

“the failure of liberal Protestantism to recognize the coercive character of political and

economic life.” He insisted that his Christianity be both realistic and consistent, and the

only way those who opposed any form of coercion could be consistent was to practice a

kind of asceticism that very few individuals could live by. As long as the liberals who

made up the Fellowship benefitted from the political and economic structures that existed

in the U.S.—structures characterized by ubiquitous coercion—they were hypocrites who

advocated an unattainable “ethical perfectionism.”

Perhaps even more hypocritical in Niebuhr’s eyes were those like Page who

claimed to be realistic about coercion in the world but who stopped short of condoning

violent coercion. As in Moral Man, he pointed out that non-violent coercion was most effectively used by those in power to preserve the status quo. But now he went further than Moral Man. Not only was there no moral distinction between violent and non- violent coercion, but “non-violence may be covert violence.”

24 This and all quotations in the next few paragraphs, unless otherwise specified, are from Reinhold Niebuhr, “Why I Leave the F.O.R.,” Christian Century, 3 January 1934, 17-19.

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Poverty was a form of non-violent coercion “for which everyone who has more

than the bare necessities of life must feel some responsibility,” and it took the lives of

innocents just as did munitions. Those individuals who were unwilling to personally

participate in violence but who claimed to support the working class in a violent struggle

had no more moral ground to stand on than those who renounced all forms of coercion,.

He had come to believe that the struggle for working class justice was “bound to result in

some degree of violence in the day of crisis.” To claim to support the working class but to

refuse to commit violence was a self-righteous act committed by men who desired to be

on the right side of history, but who were unwilling to take up the responsibility that

came with that role.

Ultimately, Niebuhr defined his position dialectically, as he so often did in public

debates. Although he stated that he “share[d], roughly speaking, the political position of

Mr. Matthews,” he distinguished himself from Matthews and other Marxist critics of the

F.O.R.’s decision. Whereas Matthews came to argue that his dismissal demonstrated that

the F.O.R. was something of a capitalist pawn, Niebuhr thought such assertions wholly

unfounded. Personally he sympathized with Page and Sayre and the many Christian

pacifists in the F.O.R. who still believed they could attain a more just society without a

fight. He made this sympathy clear privately in a letter to Page in which he admitted to

feeling “like a lonely soul” for turning his back on his “personal friendships” with Page

and those who remained in the F.O.R. to side with Matthews, for whom he had no

affection.25 Publicly, too, he defended Page, Sayre, and John Haynes Holmes from

Matthews’ charges. He understood that it was their commitment to the Christian law of

25 Niebuhr to Page, 25 December 1933, quoted in Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 105.

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love that led them to insist on non-violence, and he declared that Marxists carried out a great “injustice to the courageous champions of justice” when they suggested that the

F.O.R.’s pacifism was simply the product of “class interests.”26

Niebuhr distanced himself from the Christian pacifists for not being pragmatic enough and from the Marxists for failing to believe in the absolute law of love. He still regarded the Christian law of love as “the only absolute law,” and faulted the pacifists for conflating the “law of love” with non-violence. For him, the law of love was not an ethic which prescribed a specific action. It was “an ideal which transcends all law,” but one which “the hard realities of life” made impossible to translate into a simple absolute rule to guide action. Love was the rule to live by, not non-violence. He asserted, without providing much support for his claim, that one could commit acts of violence without hating those individuals towards whom such acts were directed. “Non-hatred,” he concluded, “is a much more important sign and symbol of Christian faith than non- violence.” Niebuhr believed that with a contrite heart, Christians could commit acts of violence that were at the very least acts of “non-hatred,” if not outright acts of love.

When the F.O.R. survey revealed that the majority of the F.O.R. did not share this view of violence, Niebuhr concluded that F.O.R. members were not as pragmatic as they liked to believe. They continued to insist on the absolute ethic of non-violence in spite of the harsh realities of the class struggle.

There were those outside the F.O.R. who questioned Niebuhr’s own characterization of his position as pragmatic. Charles Clayton Morrison, never a member of the F.O.R. though he shared their aim of bringing an end to international wars,

26 Niebuhr, “Why I Leave the F.O.R.,” 18.

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believed that the real problem was that neither side of the schism was truly pragmatic. If both sides had actually practiced the pragmatism they preached, they would have

“refused to be drawn into contentious controversy over any abstract rationalization of

[their] common purpose.” Not only were all parties concerning themselves with theoretical questions that Morrison claimed to be irrelevant to the pragmatist, but Niebuhr was articulating his own absolutism whether he wanted to admit it or not. Niebuhr’s absolutism, according to Morrison, was in his Marxist belief that any struggle for justice would necessarily be accompanied by violence.27

In his response to Morrison, Niebuhr insisted that his position was not dogmatic.

Personally he hoped violence would be unnecessary, but he had no reason to suspect that a non-violent revolution could be successful and every reason to suspect that violence would accompany any struggle. According to Niebuhr, this debate was not about a future struggle for justice, but rather about “the character of human society past and present.”

Nowhere in human history did a society without coercion exist, for society “could never count on such universal social imagination as to make voluntary cooperation and uncoerced cohesion possible.” Anyone who recognized what he regarded as this truth about human nature would not accuse him of subscribing to Marxist dogmatism.

Dogmatism required that one hold a belief “in defiance of the facts.” On the contrary,

Niebuhr argued that his prediction about violence in the class struggle was “scientific” in that it was based on “all the facts of life and history.”28

27 “A Regrettable Rupture,” Christian Century, 10 January 1934, 47. 28 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Professor Niebuhr Replies,” Christian Century, 31 January 1934, 155.

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Whether or not one agrees with Niebuhr’s position in this controversy, it is hard

to consider seriously Morrison’s claim that he was an absolutist. Niebuhr was not as

easily absolved, however, from questions regarding his supposed realism. Even if we

accept Niebuhr’s reasonable, if not entirely verifiable, assertion that only violent

revolution could bring about the demise of capitalism, how realistic was it for him to

suppose that the United States was on the verge of such a revolution? He never claimed

the revolution was imminent. In fact, in Reflections on the End of An Era, a collection of essays that he published shortly after the F.O.R. split, he declared that there was “no authentic proletariat in America”: most of the working class continued to believe that they could elevate themselves to the ranks of the middle-class any year now. Any working class rebellion in the US was more likely to be “analogous to the sporadic peasant rebellions of the middle ages rather than to the sustained radicalism of the advanced section of the European proletariat.”29

If he did not believe in violent revolution as a real possibility in the US, why did

he involve himself in this controversy, particularly in such a public manner? One

possibility is that Niebuhr just could not resist. He was never really one to retreat from a

debate, and this particular question of violence in the cause of class justice was one which

had preoccupied much of the Left in the 1930s, particularly the intellectuals and radicals

in the Upper West Side of Manhattan where Niebuhr had resided since 1928. Perhaps if

Niebuhr were still preaching at Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit he would have

remained aloof of such questions of revolution while still championing the rights of the

working class.

29 Reinhold Niebuhr, Reflections on the End of an Era (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1934), 78.

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If his mere talk of revolution does not create doubts about Niebuhr’s realism, certainly his claim that he would actively participate in the violence of a class war begs the question. He did not merely argue that workers would be justified in using violence to further their cause, he advocated position II-5, which stated that he personally was willing to engage in violent acts. And he went further than that. He actually condemned as self-righteous those individuals who declared their intention to support workers, but only in non-violent roles. Their emphasis on “personal purity” was a shirking of responsibility in his eyes. On the other hand, he accepted the “tragic character of man’s social life.” As Niebuhr was so often capable of doing, he claimed humility in the face of self-righteousness while, rather self-righteously, belittling those who disagreed with him.

But was he, the forty-one year old intellectual who claimed he was willing to bloody his hands in the class struggle, not more self-righteous than realistic when he denounced the middle-class members of the F.O.R. who admitted that they would only support workers in non-violent capacities?

There were a few individuals who approached the controversy more realistically than Niebuhr. John Coleman Bennett, for one, shared roughly the same view as Niebuhr, but was much more nuanced. Whereas Niebuhr sought to polarize his audience, Bennett tried to convince all of those involved in the F.O.R. controversy that they had much more in common than they suspected. Differences in Niebuhr’s and Bennett’s personalities help to explain their divergent approaches to the controversy, but so too did differences in geographic location. Bennett spent the early years of the 1930s teaching at Auburn

Theological Seminary in upstate New York. He considered himself a socialist, but he was far enough away from New York City that he was immune to the infighting that

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preoccupied so many socialists there. From his vantage point, the whole F.O.R.

controversy was based on a “hopelessly unreal picture of the American scene,” one in

which the struggle would come in the form of a “class war,” complete with armed

workers in the street. Not only was this unlikely to happen in America, but open violence

would “be the surest way of defeating what chance we have to build a good society in

America,” where any hope of real economic change would depend on convincing a large

middle-class that they ought to side with the workers. As an all-out class war was

unlikely to occur in the U.S., both sides in the F.O.R. debate would do well to stop

assuming it would. Once they abandoned the rhetoric of “class war,” they might be able

to reconcile their differences.30

For Bennett, the differences were mostly of emphasis, rather than of substance.

He explicitly recognized the connections between this latest controversy and that which

followed Moral Man. Like Norman Thomas and H. Richard Niebuhr, Bennett believed

Niebuhr had overestimated the substantive differences between his position in Moral

Man and those held by most liberal Protestants. Indeed, according to Bennett, a slight

change in emphasis and Moral Man would have “inspire[d] hope rather than pessimism

concerning the possibility of peaceful change.” 31 Now, he argued, the F.O.R. should

abandon its own divisive rhetoric of “class war” and its distinction between coercion and

violence.

A more important distinction than that between violent and non-violent coercion

was, Bennett argued, that between incidental and planned violence. Like Niebuhr, he

30 Bennett, “That Fellowship Questionnaire,” World Tomorrow, 21 December 1933, 691. 31 Ibid., 692.

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recognized that non-violent coercion was always at work in social relations. Anyone who wanted to change society would have to use some form of coercion, whether it was violent or non-violent. He argued, however, that even those pacifists who advocated non- violent coercion had to expect that violence would ensue as a result of their actions, for any challenge to the status quo was likely to result in some minimal amount of violence.

Wherever enough workers got together to organize a substantial strike, violence was likely to follow: the owners or the state may resort to violence in the name of preserving law and order, or a minority of the striking workers themselves might turn to violence in order to tip the balance in the ensuing stalemate. Unlike Niebuhr, Bennett argued that the

Christian should continue to denounce violence, even incidental violence, but that he or she must do so with humility. “The most that [a Christian] can do if he is to plan [play?] an effective part in the struggle for justice,” concluded Bennett, “is to stand firmly against the self-destructive folly of all violence, planned and incidental, knowing as he does so that he has himself helped to let loose forces which make a minimum of incidental violence inevitable.”32 Although Bennett’s wording was far less polemical than

Niebuhr’s, Niebuhr most surely would have agreed with the message, for Bennett articulated a truly Christian position—one free from the self-righteousness Niebuhr accused the absolute pacifists from exhibiting, but also one which did not force the

Christian into the awkward position of sounding like a champion of violent revolution.

In the end, Bennett’s assertion that the F.O.R. controversy had more to do with emphasis than substance was borne out. Ultimately the much-publicized split had little effect on the work of the F.O.R. Even Niebuhr, who so dramatically announced his

32 Ibid.

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resigning from the F.O.R. council in the pages of the Christian Century, wrote Morrison within a month of the controversy to inform him, “Many of us who have resigned from leadership in the F.O.R. still wish to express our sympathy with its objectives, particularly in regard to the issue of international war.”33 Niebuhr continued to devote

time to his F.O.R. friends’ causes for years after the controversy. He provided readers of

the F.O.R.’s World Tomorrow his interpretation of current events in his column, “Ex

Cathedra,” until the journal folded in July 1934, and he delivered speeches on Kirby

Page’s Peace Campaign as late as 1936.34

The effect of the F.O.R. controversy on Niebuhr’s relationship with Morrison at

the Century, however, may have been more pronounced. Not only had Morrison called

Niebuhr an “absolutist,” but he had also described the controversy as one brought about

by “childish difference of opinion on academic and hypothetical questions,” certainly

something which no self-described realist wanted to hear.35 Despite their differences of

opinion, no F.O.R. leader singled out Niebuhr in the public debate as Morrison had done

in the Century. The exchange between Morrison and Niebuhr regarding the F.O.R. only exacerbated the tension between the two that had existed at least since Morrison chose to run Hume’s critical review of Moral Man in the Century.

33 Morrison quotes this letter in his rejoinder to Niebuhr’s original response. Christian Century, 31 January 1934, 156. 34 Niebuhr refers to one such speaking engagement organized by Page in a letter to his wife, Ursula. Reinhold Niebuhr to Ursula Niebuhr, 8 May 1936, reprinted in Ursula Niebuhr, ed. Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr: Letters of Reinhold and Ursula M. Niebuhr (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 101. 35 Charles Clayton Morrison, Editor’s Response to “Professor Niebuhr Replies,” Christian Century, 31 January 1934, 155.

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Although the F.O.R. controversy does not mark the radical break from pacifism for Niebuhr that some historians imply, it does foreshadow the debates that began in autumn 1939 concerning the role the U.S. should play in the Second World War. Then

Niebuhr and Bennett developed many of the ideas about love, justice, violence, and responsibility that they first articulated in the context of the class struggle.

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Chapter Four: A Time for Reflections

Throughout most of his career, Niebuhr was at least as much a pundit who

commented on contemporary events as he was a theologian who addressed timeless

questions about human relations to each other and to God. But there were times in his life

where he remained relatively quiet on contemporary politics and focused on larger

theological matters. Beginning with his summer trip to Europe in 1933, Niebuhr enjoyed

a brief, two-year period that proved to be one of his most productive theologically,

resulting in two important books, Reflections on the End of an Era (1934) and An

Interpretation of Christian Ethics (1935). He could not escape the political realm

altogether—the F.O.R. debate over the use of force discussed in the previous chapter

occurred in the winter of 1933-34—yet reflective and ruminative, two words that were

rarely more applicable to Niebuhr than active, are appropriate descriptors in this case.

Scarred from the conflicts that he helped provoke within the ranks of liberal

Protestantism with his publication of Moral Man and Immoral Society, Niebuhr took some time to lick his wounds and further develop his Christian realist perspective.

Niebuhr’s trip to Europe in the summer of 1933 was not his first, nor was it even his first since the end of the World War. Like many other young Christians who travelled abroad under the auspices of Protestant organizations such as the Student Volunteer

Movement or the YMCA, Niebuhr benefitted from the international perspective and financial support of these groups. He owed much to one YMCA leader in particular:

Sherwood Eddy. Eddy sponsored an annual trip that took young churchmen and other

American leaders to Europe beginning in 1921. Upon meeting Niebuhr in 1923, Eddy

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became one of the preacher’s most dedicated champions and regularly invited him to join these summer trips, known as the “American seminar.” Niebuhr spent the summers of

1923, 1924, and 1930 traveling around Europe with Eddy, and, on the last of those trips, he even made it as far as Moscow.1

The 1933 trip seems to have been particularly significant in shaping Niebuhr’s political and theological perspectives. The European political situation had grown more dire, especially in Germany, where Hitler had risen to power. But Niebuhr’s situation had also changed. No longer a part of Eddy’s seminar, he was freer to immerse himself in the culture and politics of the places he visited, particularly in Britain where he stayed for six weeks in May and June before heading to Germany.2

To help pay for the trip, Niebuhr wrote columns for the Christian Century based on his travel diary. Rather than calls to action or clearly argued essays, the columns consisted of several unconnected paragraphs or “diary entries” containing his observations, many of which served as seeds of ideas he more fully developed in the two books he published during this period.3 Although he later established himself as something of a foreign policy expert among American Protestants, in these columns he was primarily a cultural critic.

Perhaps no culture provided him more fodder than Great Britain’s. Unlike most

American radicals of the early 1930s who looked to the socialist experiment in the Soviet

1 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 77-85,122-23. 2 Ibid., 149. 3 The diary entries appeared as Reinhold Niebuhr, “Notes from a Berlin Diary,” Christian Century, 5 July 1933, 872-873; “Notes from a London Diary,” 12 July 1933., 903-04; ibid., 19 July 1933, 927-29.

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Union for inspiration, it was Britain, not Russia, that captivated Niebuhr. No doubt his marriage in December 1931 to Ursula Keppel-Compton, a British foreign exchange student who attended Union in 1930, helped shape his perspective. At the very least, it gave him more occasions to travel to Europe. But Niebuhr’s fondness for Britain was more than simply the affection one might feel for the homeland of his or her spouse; it grew out of a deep admiration for Britain’s cultural heritage and its future prospects.

Niebuhr was no Tory who sought to glorify Britain’s past, but he was enamored with British society’s connection to that past. British culture embodied what he described as the “organic relationships of life,” as opposed to the purely rational and “mechanical” relationships that characterized the modern world. While watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace one summer afternoon in 1933, Niebuhr reflected on the meaning of the event. He acknowledged that most casual observers would see in the ritual little more than “quaint traditionalism,” but for him it was an “expression of the sense of the organic character of national life which has never been destroyed by the mechanical character of a technical civilization.” Liberals and radicals failed to appreciate this character altogether; after all, it was not rational, but rather “must be expressed in mythology and liturgy.” Fascists, on the other hand, understood the significance of myth and moved in the opposite direction; they substituted a new myth based on racial and national purity for rationalism. Pure capitalism was “all reason and mechanism”; it could not “hide the naked display of power and greed.” Britain was unique in that capitalism did not destroy the feudal culture there: “England merely grafted the liberalism of bourgeois society upon the traditionalism of feudal society and thereby benefited from the advantages of each.” The British successfully navigated the

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constant tension between rationalism and mythology, allowing them to retain “the impressive drama of monarchism.” But Germans had only “the cheap theatricality of

Hitlerism.”

Of course, even British politics and society were imperfect. Demonstrating his own preference for contradiction and paradox, in the diary entry immediately following that quoted above, Niebuhr concluded that the British system was “in many respects worse than the purely liberal, democratic, capitalistic state. Its class distinctions outrage my liberal democratic soul.” British “snobbishness”—a trait he saw manifest in Britain’s

“public schools,” in the aristocracy’s patronizing attitude toward the working class, and, perhaps even worse, in the working class’s ready acceptance of its position at the bottom of the hierarchy—was an affront to his latent Midwestern sensibilities. “I wish sometimes that I could put a stick of revolutionary dynamite under the whole social pyramid and blow it to bits,” he wrote, before backing down and once again admitting the importance of the recognition of the “organic” character of life. Certainly there was no debating that the British way was superior to the alternative the Germans had chosen.

While his admiration for British culture was tempered somewhat by his disdain for hierarchy, his feelings about British politics, and the British Labour party in particular, were less mixed. The British Labour party seemed to Niebuhr unique among the world’s socialist parties. It successfully mixed Marxist politics with Christianity, something many Americans claimed to do but never really accomplished. American

Protestants were too sentimental; they recognized the social injustices perpetuated by capitalism but assumed that calling attention to them was all that was required to end them. But the British Labour party had leaders like Sir Stafford Cripps, whom Niebuhr

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described as developing “a philosophy which will do justice to both the democratic

tradition and the general skepticism about democracy which recent events in Europe have

prompted.” Cripps, leader of the Labour party’s left-wing Socialist League, recognized

that coercive measures might be required to protect gains socialists made in the

democratic process from fascists who had successfully manipulated the democratic

process elsewhere. As a Christian who harbored no sentimental illusions about the use of

force, Cripps became the ideal socialist statesman for Niebuhr; he embodied the only

realistic hope for a socialist future.4

Whereas Niebuhr found hope in Britain, his first trip to Germany under Hitler was cause for alarm. The political situation there was almost unimaginable to anyone “who has not breathed the atmosphere.” As readers of his Christian Century reports were aware, horrible economic conditions caused by the Allies’ harsh treatment of Germany, combined with the terror perpetuated by Hitler, allowed the National Socialists to seize control. More shocking, however, was the fact that many Germans actually seemed to believe in the “glorious promises of Hitler’s regime.” Hitler had convinced the German people to support his government “with a unanimity and intensity of conviction which surprises the outside observer.”5

In just three short years, Hitler had seized control of Germany. On his final trip

with Eddy’s American Seminar in July 1930, Niebuhr had dismissed Hitler and his party

as an unthreatening political force, nothing more than “the unhealthy and decaying

4 Niebuhr, “Notes from a London Diary,” Christian Century, 12 July 1933, 903-904. 5 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Religion and the New Germany,” Christian Century, 28 June 1933, 844.

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residue of old Germany.”6 At that time, the National Socialist party held less than three percent of the seats in the Reichstag, but just months after Niebuhr’s visit, in the

September 1930 elections, the party unexpectedly won over eighteen percent of the vote, making it the second-largest party in Germany. The gains continued in the 1932 elections, which provided the Nazis with a plurality within the Reichstag. Thereafter

Hitler consolidated power rapidly. President von Hindenberg appointed him chancellor in

January 1933; the Reichstag burned that February, resulting in the restriction of civil liberties in Germany; and, in March, the Enabling Act effectively made Hitler dictator.

In June 1933, Niebuhr witnessed firsthand just how wrong his earlier estimate of

Hitler had been. He now described Hitler’s government as a “totalitarian state,” one that sought control of all aspects of society and culture. If there was any positive sign in

Germany, it was that “interestingly enough . . . the strongest opposition [to Hitler] has arisen from the church.”7

Niebuhr wrote in the midst of an ongoing struggle for control of the Reich church.

In April 1933, the provincial German churches had, without interference from the state, united in one large administrative body. But the new Reich church quickly proved vulnerable to National Socialist control through the so-called German Christians, a group of fervent Nazi supporters within the church. In May, the older church leadership won what proved to be but a short-term victory in the bureaucratic struggle against the state:

6 Quoted in Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 123. 7 Niebuhr, “Religion and the New Germany,” 844.

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they narrowly elected one of their own as Reich bishop over the German Christian’s candidate who was handpicked by Hitler.8

As was so often the case with Niebuhr, however, his optimism was tinged with pessimism, his praise of the church leaders’ stance coupled with criticism. He identified the Young Reformers, those churchmen who had been most influenced by the Swiss theologian Karl Barth’s neo-orthodoxy, as the most outspoken critics of Hitler. Yet he feared that Barth’s influence would, in the end, leave them unprepared for the struggle in which they now found themselves. To be sure, Barth’s recognition that all human actions and political ideals fell short of God’s will provided the Young Reformers with a perspective from which they could easily criticize the pretensions of a totalitarian state like Hitler’s. But from the Barthian perspective, liberalism was equally flawed. The

Young Reformers had no way of defending one ideology against the other. They had a negative critique of both ideologies, but no positive alternative.

Niebuhr’s observations concerning the German churchmen are important for two overlapping reasons. First, Niebuhr has often been identified as the leading American proponent of neo-orthodoxy, but this label obscures the profound difference between

Niebuhr’s theology and Barth’s. Like Barth, Niebuhr was critical of liberalism’s faith in man, and he sought to restore to theological discussions Reformation theology’s emphasis on sin. But where Barth stressed the transcendence of God only to conclude that Christianity must remain pure and free from the corruption of worldly politics,

Niebuhr argued that the recognition of the imperfect nature of politics was necessary to

8 Shelley Baranowski, “The 1933 German Protestant Church Elections: Machtpolitik or Accommodation?,” Church History 49, no. 3 (Sep. 1980): 298-315.

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make a realistic assessment of political choices; it was not a reason to eschew politics altogether.

Another significance of Niebuhr’s take on the German churches is that it highlights his complicated attitude towards liberalism. Always a master polemicist,

Niebuhr penned scathing attacks on liberalism. But he also found much in liberalism worth defending. In an American context, where his opponents were generally liberal churchmen, Niebuhr rarely went out of his way to extol the virtues of liberalism. But the

German context was quite different. From the punitive Treaty of Versailles to the economic hardships of the intervening years, Germans had experienced the failure of liberalism first-hand. The German “passion for consistency,” Niebuhr argued, had led them to reject not only specific liberal policies but all ideas associated with liberalism as well.

What Niebuhr soon referred to as liberalism’s “creed” may be flawed, but there was much in its “spirit” to be admired. The creed comprised ideas which arose in the specific political context of the 1920s and 1930s, such as faith in the League of Nations to overcome international tensions. Germans had good reason to reject this element of the creed in particular. But the spirit of liberalism included timeless values that should not be abandoned. Tolerance and an emphasis on human rights were part of the spirit of liberalism, as was rationalism, “in spite of its obvious limitations.” These were values which Germans had evidently abandoned. How else, Niebuhr asked, could one explain the failure of the churches to speak out against Germany’s rampant anti-Semitism?9

9 Niebuhr, “Religion and the New Germany,” Christian Century, 28 June 1933, 844-845. Niebuhr made the explicit distinction between the “creed” and “spirit” of liberalism in “Blindness of Liberalism,” Radical Religion 1, no. 4 (Autumn 1936): 4-5.

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In the summer of 1933, the organized national campaign against the Jews in

Germany was just beginning. The Nazi government declared a boycott of Jewish

businesses on 1 April and announced the exclusion of Jews from certain professional

positions. News of these measures reached the U.S. but failed to provoke widespread

public outrage; no one could foresee at the time that this was the first step down a path

that would include the Jewish loss of citizenship under the Nuremburg Laws of 1935,

Kristallnacht, and, of course, the “Final Solution.” After the atrocity stories and

propaganda of the First World War, many Americans were skeptical of the early accounts

of Nazi cruelty. Others sympathized with the German people and shared their anti-

Semitic beliefs. Still other Americans argued that Germany simply made explicit the

same sort of unwritten exclusionary practices that occurred in the U.S.; to speak out

against German policies, wrote one Jewish contributor to the Christian Century, was an

act of hypocrisy.10

Although he was never an apologist for anti-Semitism, Niebuhr’s initial reaction

to the new Nazi policies was to downplay the racial issue. He argued in April 1933, prior

to his departure for Europe, that Hitlerism, “a devil’s brew,” was a combination of three

ingredients: nationalism, anti-Semitism, and reactionary politics. Still analyzing

international developments primarily through a Marxist lens, he asserted, “Of the three,

anti-Semitism is not the most significant even though it is the most publicized at the

present moment. Anti-Semitism is, in fact, secondary to the economic aspect of the

10 On the initial reaction of Americans to the treatment of Jews under Hitler, see Robert H. Abzug, ed. America Views the Holocaust, 1933-1945: A Brief Documentary History (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999), 5-44. Robert E. Asher, “A Jew Protests against Protestors,” Christian Century, 12 April 1933, 492-94 is reprinted in this collection, 37- 40.

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movement.” Although he was critical of “economic determinists who think they can

reduce race prejudice to economic interests,” he himself remained in this camp with some

minor qualification. He conceded that racial problems could not be explained by

economic strife alone—other “complexities of human motive and behavior” came into

play—but maintained that “the economic factor is on the whole more powerful, and it

usually uses race antagonisms as a tool of its purposes.”

The real problem in Germany, Niebuhr argued, was “the political incompetence

of the petty bourgeoisie.” The struggling middle class had no understanding of how to

turn its political and economic woes into a positive reform movement and instead had

been easily manipulated by “modern society’s capitalistic overlords.” Rather than devise

an economic plan that addressed the middle class’s grievances, the Nazis turned to anti-

Semitism as a means of allowing frustrated Germans to voice their resentments.

Convinced that anti-Semitism was orchestrated by the wealthy class, Niebuhr predicted

that Jewish bankers and capitalists, some of whom he suspected had helped finance the

National Socialists, would be immune to the attacks.11

By August 1933, his emphasis changed dramatically. Whereas before he had offered a detached analysis of the causes of the latest wave of anti-Semitism, he was now emotionally invested in the Jewish plight. Having witnessed the Nazi treatment of the

Jews, he authenticated the stories reaching American shores and concluded that the only plausible explanation was that Germans suffered from a “national neurosis.” There was nothing the German Jews could do to stop what he now recognized as “one of the darkest pages in modern history.” Even the wealthy Jews could not escape the state’s policies as

11 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Hitlerism—A Devil's Brew,” World Tomorrow, 19 April 1933, 369-370.

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he had originally predicted, for “no matter how influential, they are not listened to.” If any of his readers thought assimilation was the answer, he quickly disabused them of the notion, informing them that those Jews who had assimilated and were now practicing

Christians were actually worse off than practicing Jews. As most relief efforts were being channeled through the synagogues, Christian Jews had little access to aid.

What Niebuhr witnessed in Germany only deepened his convictions that there was little moral ground to distinguish between violent and non-violent action. To be sure,

American pacifists did not condone German treatment of the Jews, but the German people themselves referred to Nazi policies as “humane extirpation.” “The Germans constantly remind the visitor that the streets are quiet, and invite him to observe the peacefulness of the cities,” wrote Niebuhr, but behind closed doors the Nazis showed no restraint, beating and even killing Jews in their custody. Yet even the public treatment of

Jews “can be regarded as humane only by those who believe that starvation is a more humane form of murder than the bullet or poison.”

Once again Niebuhr called attention to the power myth could have over rational thought. “The Nazis have a new mythology in which the Jew is cast in the role of the devil,” he wrote. The church in Germany ought to have spoken up, but his earlier fears about the churchmen’s inability to stand up against the state had come to fruition sooner than even he had expected. The Young Reformers in the German church had achieved a short-term victory in mid-July when the church adopted a new constitution recognizing its independence from the state, but in the elections that followed two weeks later, the

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German Christians won control of the church, making its independence nominal.12 The

Young Reformers continued to struggle for control of the church after the election, but this meant that the one group in Germany that might speak up in defense of the Jews was too preoccupied with ecclesiastical matters to do so. Meanwhile, the German Christians simply used the church to propagate the anti-Semitic myth and justify the state’s crimes.

As it was clear that the German church could not be counted on to raise its voice in opposition to anti-Semitism, Niebuhr urged others to do so. The Jews outside of

Germany could only do so much. The American Jewish Congress organized a boycott of

German goods, but the older American Jewish Committee opposed the action, preferring to work quietly behind the scenes so as not to provoke further backlash against German

Jews.13 Niebuhr agreed with the committee, warning, “This boycott is like waging a war against a nation which holds over a million of your own hostages and which may be sufficiently angered by hostilities practically to exterminate the hostages.”

It was therefore up to Christians outside of Germany to take the lead in defense of the German Jews. He praised the English churches for speaking out and urged American

Christians to follow their lead. They should talk about the issues in local meetings, and, more important, let their representatives in Washington know they were outraged. Fearful that such publicity may take the form of anti-German hysteria as it had during the First

World War, Niebuhr called for American Christians to “solemnly recognize that our own sins of indifference have helped to create the neurosis from which the German people are now suffering.” He did not yet advocate any specific policy or action that the American

12 Baranowski, “The 1933 German Protestant Church Elections,” Church History 49, no. 3 (Sep. 1980): 310. 13 Abzug, America Views the Holocaust, 33.

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government should take, but he did argue that, at the very least, Americans should speak

up and let the German people know that they disapproved of Hitler’s policies. By simply

voicing their disapproval, American Christians would “inform the German people of the

impression which their actions make upon sane people. There is some hope that it will

persuade them to a larger measure of sanity.”14

What Niebuhr saw in Europe in 1933 did not yet lead him to champion any

particular foreign policy position, but it did force him to reconsider his understanding of

human nature. There he witnessed suffering and cruelty unlike anything he saw in the

U.S., even during the worst of the depression years. To be sure, even Niebuhr’s earliest

writings offer a bleaker perspective on humankind than those of many of his American

contemporaries. But his European travels during the inter-war period confirmed his belief

in the persistence of sin and reinforced his view of politics as conflict, in turn, raising his

pessimism to new heights. Were it not for his travels abroad, Niebuhr may have been

much slower to develop the perspective that has become known as Christian realism.

* * *

Considering the number of books Niebuhr published in his lifetime and the

similarities in theme among them all, it is only natural that some are relatively ignored in

favor of others. It is unfortunate, however, that Reflections on the End of an Era and An

Interpretation of Christian Ethics appear to have been two of his books which have fallen

by the wayside. His two-volume Nature and Destiny of Man (1941, 1943), originally

delivered as the Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1939, is widely recognized

as his magnum opus in theological circles. Yet both Reflections and An Interpretation

14 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Germany Must Be Told!,” Christian Century, 9 August 1933, 1014-15.

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develop many of the same theological themes as Nature and Destiny of Man without the grandeur and broad scope that render that work far less accessible. Outside of the nation’s seminaries, historians and political scientists focus on Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Irony of American History, two of his less theologically oriented books. One consequence of this trend is that, even though Niebuhr is identified as the leading proponent of Christian realism, the distinctly Christian element of his realism is often missed, or at least downplayed.15

One possible explanation for Reflections on the End of an Era’s fall into obscurity is Niebuhr’s own attitude toward the book. In the preface, he described the following chapters as “merely tracts for the times” (ix).16 During his later years, he distanced himself further from the book, calling it his “most Marxist work.” It is little wonder that, during the Cold War, scholars interested in his thought chose to look elsewhere for the seeds of his Christian realism. The fact that the era whose imminent demise Niebuhr predicted in the title was the capitalist or bourgeois era both gave credence to his characterization of Reflections as a Marxist work and seemed to render it obsolete as capitalism flourished after World War II. Yet, as the following pages will suggest,

“merely” has no place in a description of Reflections. The work marked a major

15 Paul Merkeley, writing in 1975, lamented the fact that Reflections was “the one work of Niebuhr’s mature years which has been allowed to go out of print without reissue” and argued that it “richly deserves revival”: “Of all his books, it has the liveliest style.” Although many of Niebuhr’s books have been reissued in the last decade, Reflections does not appear to have been reprinted since the 1930s. Merkley, Reinhold Niebuhr, 87. The other book I mention here, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, was brought back into print by the theological publishing house Wipf and Stock in 2010. 16 This and all parenthetical references in the following pages refer to Niebuhr, Reflections on the End of an Era (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1934).

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development in Niebuhr’s thought and might just as easily, as Richard Niebuhr pointed

out, be considered a tract for all times.17

To be sure, Niebuhr borrowed greatly from the philosophical writings of Karl

Marx, but he shared neither the political agenda nor optimism of his contemporary

Marxists. Indeed, orthodox Marxists must have found the militant tone of Moral Man and its justification of violence much more congenial than the detached tone of Reflections.

The latter owed more to the conservative German, Oswald Spengler—”the brilliant

protagonist of social reaction” (146)—and his The Decline of the West [1917] than it did to any recent Marxist work. Like Spengler, Niebuhr wrote of the “life and death of civilizations.” Capitalism, whether liberals recognized it or not, was on its deathbed. The capitalist system and bourgeois culture which perpetuated it were “like a man of robust frame who ignores the disease from which he suffers for months before he finally admits its existence” (52). Fascism was merely the “delirium which precedes death” (53). John

Maynard Keynes and other liberal economists who urged social planning were not, as conservatives later claimed, ushering in fascism; they were “doctors of a moribund social system” (53) who could provide only palliative treatments to their dying patient. Whereas in Moral Man Niebuhr offered his readers a choice between violence and relative justice or non-violence and perpetual injustice, he now suggested that the choice was irrelevant.

Capitalism was dying either way: “We may deprecate or welcome that fact but we can hardly deny its inevitability” (147).

17 Niebuhr characterized Reflections as Marxist in a 1967 interview with Ronald Stone. Ronald H. Stone, Professor Reinhold Niebuhr: A Mentor to the Twentieth Century (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 90, 118n19. Richard Niebuhr to Reinhold Niebuhr, N.D., Reinhold Niebuhr Papers [hereafter RN Papers], Library of Congress, Box 58, “Niebuhr, Richard, 1930-1940.”

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If the collapse of the modern bourgeois society was inevitable, Niebuhr’s task in

Reflections was not to devise a plan to bring about its demise, but rather to pave the way for the society which would succeed it. In the opening pages, Niebuhr explained what he considered to be the best mindset with which to meet this challenge: “In my opinion adequate spiritual guidance can come only through a more radical political orientation and more conservative religious convictions than are comprehended in the culture of our own era” (ix).

This was the first time he explained his own trajectory as moving to the left politically and to the right theologically, but it was an idea he echoed many times throughout the 1930s. He understood that the notion was idiosyncratic, and he accepted that it would probably prove incomprehensible to most of his contemporaries. Even if they understood him, he recognized his position was unlikely to win many converts: “It will satisfy neither the liberals in politics and religion, nor the political radicals nor the devotees of traditional Christianity” (ix).

Niebuhr began Reflections with a critique of capitalism no more likely to appeal

to socialists than to the system’s liberal defenders. What socialists identified as the vices

of capitalism were not endemic to that system alone; they were inherent in the very

nature of human beings. Niebuhr agreed with Lenin that capitalism necessitated

imperialism, but whereas Lenin seemed to suggest imperialism itself was the product, or

“highest stage” of capitalism, Niebuhr argued that it was a far baser impulse that actually

preceded capitalism.18

18 V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline (New York: International Publishers, 1939 [First German trans. 1920]).

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Once again addressing the distinction between the “mechanical” and “organic” relationships that he first noted in his journal entries from London, Niebuhr argued that capitalism’s greatest shortcoming was that its mechanical character had convinced modern civilization that humans were rational rather than impulsive. The feudal civilization which preceded capitalist society was organic in nature and did not hide humans’ desire for power. Its hierarchies and power disparities were apparent to all, but they were able to persist through a culture that encouraged reverence for the elite among the masses and patriarchal obligation to the masses among the elite. Capitalism dispensed with these mutual dependencies and obligations in favor of mechanical, impersonal, and rational relationships. During the Enlightenment and Reformation, the myths which traditionally held society together were deemed antiquated, even barbaric, and tossed aside in favor of reason.

Modern man was gravely mistaken in his triumphant view of history in which reason was propelling the world toward perfect social harmony. The old power disparities had not changed; rather, they had just been obscured by the new mechanical society:

The techniques of credit and exchange, of stock ownership, dividends and interest reduce the process of economic life to seemingly passionless circles and series of social relationships in which reason and conscience have ostensibly eliminated friction and conflict. The social mechanisms of a commercial civilization, in short, veil the brutal realities of social life and obscure the factors of egoistic and imperial impulse which determine it to a large degree. They prevent the modern man from realizing that collective behavior is primarily impulsive, that its impulses are heedless and undirected and that the will-to-live of every individual and social organism is easily transmuted into an imperial will-to-power. (4)

The dichotomy of reason and impulse was itself false. Humans could always use reason to rationalize their impulses. Indeed, the ability to do so was what separated humans from animals. All animals exhibited the survival impulse, or the will-to-live, but

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only the human mind was able to translate that will-to-live into a will-to-power. This discussion of will-to-power was not entirely new for Niebuhr; he had attributed such a will to social groups in Moral Man. But there he was concerned primarily with social egoism and with the tendency of dominant groups to easily rationalize their impulses. In his chapter, “The Rational Resources of the Individual for Social Living,” he had argued that reason worked to check the individual egoism, even if it tended to first obscure and then justify the will-to-power of groups. Now he had moved further in his interpretation of human nature. Reason was not a force opposed to the survival impulse; it merely changed and justified that impulse. Self-consciousness allowed humans to recognize their own mortality and finiteness, instilling them with an anxiety and fear which animals did not share. It was not only natural, but very reasonable, therefore, that humans acted preemptively to ward off threats to their survival: “Mind is the servant of impulse before it becomes its master and . . . the first effect of mind upon impulse is to make man more deadly in his lusts than any brute” (17). Specifically, imperialism was not simply the basest of impulses run amok; rather, it was the will-to-live augmented with reason.

Niebuhr still admitted that the individuals’ worst tendencies were magnified in social groups, but now, rather than emphasizing the individual vs. society dichotomy, in

Reflections he focused on the tension between two forms of rationality, “nature” and

“spirit.” He borrowed the terms from Carl Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul [1933] as a short-hand for what he argued were the two opposing rational responses to the fact of individual finiteness. These were not precise, scientific terms but rather “mythological” or symbolic terms that gave expression to the desire of the individual to subject him- or herself to the universal (“spirit”) and to the opposing impulse to universalize the

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individual ego and conquer all other individuals who refused to conform (“nature”).

Although in his typical pessimistic manner Niebuhr did not go to great pains to explain the good in human nature, it is worth noting that he explicitly stated that spirit, or the altruistic impulse, was just as much a part of human nature as was the will-to-power impulse. This is why spirit was not simply reason. Reason, then, did not create impulses of its own; it merely magnified two competing impulses innate in human nature.

The liberal culture that arose under capitalism muddled this dichotomy, falsely believing that through rationalism, spirit could conquer nature. This belief in the triumph of spirit over nature inevitably led both individuals and nations to confuse their impulses and believe they were acting with some universal principle in mind when in fact they were acting on egoism. Because of this confusion, the capitalist class was not, for

Niebuhr, quite the embodiment of evil that orthodox Marxists portrayed it as. Lenin, for example, spoke of capitalists as men who sought to “deceive” and “bribe” the working class; he attributed a great deal of agency to a few wealthy capitalists who were consciously, even if not always maliciously, controlling the economy and society.19

Niebuhr argued not only that the capitalist was not wholly malicious, but that the businessman did not even consciously recognize that his actions were imperialistic. The capitalist was not an evil individual; he could treat his family with love and care, even as he treated his workers, with whom his relationship was purely mechanical, with apathy or even disdain. More often than not, the capitalist assumed he was acting out of “spirit” and serving all of society. Furthermore, many capitalists could point to their philanthropic endeavors as signs of their generosity. Despite their own perceptions, Niebuhr disparaged

19 Lenin, Imperialism, 10 , 13. Lenin attributes “no particular malice” to capitalists who support imperialism on p.75.

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philanthropy as little more than “rather generous crumbs which fall from the rich man’s

table” (11). Many of those “crumbs” went not to the poor, but rather to liberal academics

who attempted to devise utopian schemes to organize society peacefully. The capitalist

benefactors were “unconscious of the fact that they are dreaming of such a moral world

in a leisure provided by privileges which have emerged out of a terrific conflict of

power” (11).

Niebuhr’s noting the discrepancies between bourgeois intentions and actual

outcomes illustrates that by the early 1930s he had already come to recognize the irony

and paradox in human existence, an appreciation of which was central to his later writing.

Indeed, Reflections was the first book in which Niebuhr quoted the Pauline confession

(Rom 7:19): “The good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

This scriptural passage, perhaps the one he cited most often in his lifetime, was

“perennially justified by human experience, particularly in collective human behavior”

(30). All men were doomed to sin despite their best intentions.

Systems, too, seemed to demonstrate a similar paradox. Capitalism demanded

new markets to continue to grow, yet as new markets were conquered, there were fewer

and fewer populations to which surplus capital and goods could be deployed. “Capitalism

in short,” wrote Niebuhr, “can exist only by attempting to universalize itself but it can

live healthily only as long as it fails to do so. . . . No better illustration could be found in

history of the paradox that the seed of death is in the thrust of life” (27-28).

For all of his criticism of capitalism and the “blindness of liberalism” (47),

Niebuhr recognized that in addition to its vices, liberalism had its virtues. To attribute

pure evil to an individual, class, nation, or even historical process was entirely too

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simplistic: “The processes of history are too rough to make a precise discrimination between good and evil possible” (87). The chief virtue of the liberal culture that accompanied capitalism was its emphasis on individual rights. Who would deny that universal suffrage was a real achievement in the history of civilization? Furthermore, liberalism’s preoccupation with the individual had created the very notion of human rights and led the way for real advancements in humanitarianism as societies began to accept greater responsibility for the welfare of individuals they comprised.

Virtues could not be tallied up alongside their vices on a balance sheet to determine whether society had achieved a net gain or suffered a net loss during any particular era. Virtues and vices were often one in the same. The same emphasis on individualism that resulted in suffrage and human rights also produced the “most dangerous aspect of bourgeois individualism” (94)—”libertarianism,” a word Niebuhr used well before conservatives embraced it in the post-World War II era. When, under the old feudal order, the nobility enjoyed economic privileges, the trader class’s libertarian demand for laissez-faire economics was quite useful in promoting justice. But now capitalists used the same libertarian arguments to maintain their own privileged position:

The [libertarian] dogma, which emancipated their fathers from subjection to the nobility, became in their hands a justification of socially unrestrained commercial and industrial greed. Their fathers honestly believed that competition would provide a sufficient check upon the self-interest of trader and manufacturer. But they built an economic system in which economic power became too monopolistic to be subject to any automatic checks. Yet they persisted in the individualistic creed of the fathers and thereby prevented society from checking their greed in the interest of consumer and worker. (95)

This criticism of excessive individualism was a lasting theme in Niebuhr’s thought. Even after he had distanced himself from some of his earlier radicalism and

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Marxism, he never abandoned his disdain for libertarianism. In 1956, responding to

critics who detected conservative overtones in his thought, Niebuhr explained his

relationship to the budding conservative movement in the U.S.: “Any conservatism which

is merely interested in the preservation of some status quo would be anathema for any

one who had drawn inspiration from the Old Testament prophets. American

conservatism, which is nothing more than a decadent liberalism, would be doubly

unacceptable.” 20

One of the great ironies of Niebuhr’s intellectual development is that what he

considered the most conservative elements of his thought can actually be traced back to

Reflections, the book he believed to be his most radical. Niebuhr himself appears to be unaware of this point. In the same retrospective essay in which he distanced himself from the American Right, he wrote that he had “recently come to some conclusions which have been defined as conservative.” What others referred to as his conservatism involved

“an increasing appreciation of the organic factors in social life in contrast to the tendencies stemming from the Enlightenment which blind modern men to the significance of these organic factors.” But it was not the 1950s which first saw Niebuhr emphasize the “organic” as opposed to the purely rational or mechanical; rather, it was during the 1930s that he first echoed Edmund Burke and articulated a “conservative” critique of the Enlightenment.21

It was this critique of the Enlightenment and of modern society’s lack of an

appreciation for the organic that allowed Niebuhr to criticize radicals as well as

20 Niebuhr, “Reply to Interpretation and Criticism,” in Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, ed. Kegley, 510. 21 Ibid., 509-510.

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capitalists in Reflections. Radicals grasped the importance of organic relationships no better than did liberals. They sought to do away with the last vestiges of the organic: the family, religion, and the nation. Like liberals, radicals desired a society in which rationalism and science regulated all relationships. They planned to replace one mechanical society with another. In this sense, “communism reveal[ed] itself to be the victim and not the nemesis of a capitalistic civilization, destined not to correct the weakness of a bourgeois culture but to develop them to the last impossible and absurd consistency” (102-3).

Niebuhr found the Communist belief that a truly international movement was underway and that a world government might one day be established particularly absurd:

There will never be a community of mankind in the sense that there is a national community. Such a community is too vague, too all-inclusive, and too bereft of the symbols by which common men comprehend the social organization of which they are a part, to arouse the intense loyalties which men are accustomed to pay their national communities. (181)

This was not an endorsement for a rekindled nationalistic fervor. Indeed, as in

Moral Man Niebuhr recognized that nationalism was collective egoism and that it could all too easily give way to self-righteousness. Radicals were correct: nationalism was often used by capitalists in power to perpetuate injustice. But recognition of this fact “betrays

[the radical] into a romantic internationalism which can never be completely realized”

(182). Furthermore, the radicals’ criticism of the idea of nation only served to alienate those workers who should be aligned with them but whose patriotic sentiment turned them against the radicals. The realistic radical, then, had to learn to appreciate the organic relationships of the modern world, including nationalism, and recognize that such loyalties could not be dismissed as irrational and wished away. Niebuhr conceded that

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these organic relationships were irrational, but that did not make them any less important

or necessary; on the contrary, rationalism’s inability to account for the organic was an

indictment of rationalism.

Just as radicals were not entirely realistic about nationalism, they also held

illusions about the working class. If the realist understood capitalists were not the

embodiment of pure evil, he or she must also never expect the proletariat to be saints.

Although Niebuhr’s general critique of social groups in Moral Man might easily be

applied to the proletariat and other groups that were the victims of injustice, in that book

he never leveled a specific critique at the working class. In the one instance where he had

considered the use of violence to promote justice, the case of African-Americans in the

U.S., he concluded that violence should be avoided because it would prompt a swift and

violent counterattack by the whites in power and would most likely end in a bloody race

war. Violence was rejected because the class in power could not be expected to give up

without a fight.22

But in Reflections, Niebuhr expressed more concern about the morality, or spirit, of the proletariat. As the victims of injustice, the working class undoubtedly fought for a moral cause and could rightly point to spirit as a motivating force. Yet they were also motivated by egoism, or nature, which in the case of the oppressed manifested itself as vengeance. Vengeance itself was not entirely evil; it was inevitable and a necessary motivating factor in the struggle for justice. “It is impossible for large masses of men to resent injustice as injustice,” wrote Niebuhr. “They resent the injustice which is done to them” (167). Contrary to liberal and radical beliefs about human motivations, neither

22 Niebuhr, Moral Man, 253-254.

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individuals nor groups ever acted purely out of spirit, but only out of a combination of both nature and spirit. This principle proved even more central to Niebuhr’s thought as his attention moved from class conflict to international wars in the final years of the decade.

There was no doubt in Niebuhr’s mind that Marxists were on the right side in the current struggle, but this did not mean they would always be on the side of justice. Unlike their liberal counterparts, Marxists saw the conflict that lurked just below the veneer of the “peace” liberals held so dear. Niebuhr could thus declare that “radicalism is more realistic than liberalism” for the moment. He was equally certain, however, that in the future radicalism would prove “no more realistic than liberalism” (210). Because they were fighting for justice in the contemporary situation, radicals convinced themselves that they were the ultimate executors of justice and failed to see the extent to which vengeance and impulse motivated their own actions. The Marxist might recognize the selfish impulses at work under capitalism, but ultimately the radical “believes that a kingdom of pure love can be established in history and that [the proletariat’s] vindictive justice will be transmuted into pure justice” (136). There was no reason to believe that the radicals would renounce their vengeful spirit after they took control of society. In fact, if the Russian government’s treatment of peasants was any indication, the proletariat would likely do as the capitalist class currently did and carry out the most egoistic acts while claiming that such acts were done with universal interests in mind (171-172).

Niebuhr’s drift toward the Left politically was explained by his assertion that radicalism perceived the realities of the current social conflict more accurately than did liberalism, but it was his move toward a more orthodox Christianity that set him apart

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from his contemporaries both within and outside of the church. One element of orthodox

Christianity which particularly attracted Niebuhr was its myths. Exhibiting none of the uneasiness toward eschatology that he expressed in his exchange with Richard Niebuhr during Manchurian crisis, Reinhold now fully embraced his brother’s insistence on the power of myths. Myths were useful and necessary because they provided meaning to human existence.

Niebuhr’s use of myth is quite vague. Never one to define his terms, the reader is left to conclude that myths are for Niebuhr ideas that are not empirically or rationally justifiable. Myths are not mere stories—and they certainly are not false ideas—but they can never be supported by scientific facts. They help explain the mysteries that lie beyond the reach of empiricism, in effect creating a realm of knowledge separate from rational thought. This realm might be described as the supernatural, but Niebuhr was less comfortable with that term, believing that it created a dualism that did not conform to reality. The mysteries with which he was concerned occurred in the world of nature, or in history, not outside of it.

By employing this broad category of myth, Niebuhr avoided the epistemology and ontology that pre-occupied formal philosophers. Reflecting back on his friend’s career,

Paul Tillich, the German émigré theologian whom Niebuhr helped bring to Union

Theological Seminary in 1933, quipped,

The difficulty of writing about Niebuhr’s epistemology lies in the fact that there is no such epistemology. Niebuhr does not ask, ‘How can I know?’; he just starts knowing. And he does not ask afterward, ‘How could I know?’, but leaves the convincing power of his thought without epistemological support.23

23 Paul Tillich, “Reinhold Niebuhr's Doctrine of Knowledge,” in Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, ed. Kegley, 90.

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Niebuhr responded that the inexplicable “mysteries” of God and of human nature were

“beyond the rational structure of mind . . . beyond the limits of a rational ontology.”24

Myths, with their powerful symbols, lay at the heart of the sorts of organic relationships that Niebuhr believed were neglected in modern society. The mechanical nature of the modern world and liberalism’s emphasis on empiricism risked doing away with myths all together. Empiricism might adequately identify the cause and effect of any particular event or series of events, but Niebuhr correctly recognized history as something more than just facts: the historian “must combine the exact data of the scientist with the vision of the artist and must add religious depth to the philosophical generalizations” (122). Historians needed a “vision of the whole,” not just the particulars, and that whole could only be incorporated with some sort of myth about human destiny.

Without mythology, history had no meaning.

Falsely believing that they were more “scientific” than their political opponents, liberals and radicals alike scoffed at myths. Yet even as they dismissed myths as vestiges of a more traditional and naïve faith, both groups embraced myths of their own, a point belied by the fact that their “sciences” produced such different interpretations of human history (194). The liberal myth was embodied in the optimistic narrative of inevitable progress, in which rationalism conquered nature and humankind ultimately redeemed itself. The communist myth was a slight variation on the liberal myth: communist debates over “determinism” and “voluntarism” demonstrated that they recognized forces at work beyond the control of humans and set at least some limits on human agency. Although communists may not recognize their belief in the “science” of Marxism as myth, Niebuhr

24 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Reply to Interpretation and Criticism,” Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought, ed. Kegley, 508-509.

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noted that the myth was nonetheless valuable, for the deep conviction that one’s actions

were bringing about a pre-ordained event—that one was on the right side of history—was

a powerful impetus to action.

But for Niebuhr, there was a more powerful and accurate myth—that of orthodox

Christianity. Niebuhr was not simply championing Christianity as it existed in the U.S.;

rather, he called for the recovery of a traditional or prophetic Christianity that had long

been forgotten. Such a Christianity not only recognized human beings as sinners, it also

incorporated the belief that God acted in history. Liberal Christianity had, in Niebuhr’s

estimation, abandoned both elements of this myth and in their place substituted the

secular liberal’s optimistic myth of progress. Rather than God, liberal Christian’s spoke

of Jesus. Their Jesus was not a symbol of God’s intervention in history so much as a

model for ethical action: if only humans would choose to follow in the footsteps of Jesus,

they could bring about their own redemption.

Liberal Christianity did not appreciate the two distinct traditions that shaped

orthodox Christianity—the Jewish and Greek traditions (in subsequent writings Niebuhr

preferred the terms Hebraic and Hellenic). The Hebraic tradition of the Old Testament provided Christianity the apocalyptic myth that spirit would one day, with God’s intervention, conquer nature and establish the Kingdom of God on Earth. The Hellenic tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, introduced a dualism into Christian theology, for it separated the world of nature from the world of spirit altogether. Both modes of thought persisted in relatively pure forms in modern Christianity: the Hebraic tradition lived on in millenarian sects, and the Hellenic tradition found new life in the dualism of

Karl Barth’s neo-orthodoxy. Niebuhr objected to both of these alternatives.

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Neither tradition was adequate by itself. Those Christians who embraced a pure

Hebraism waited for God to perform miracles in the modern world; their “pathetic hopes”

(126) warranted ridicule. But a too pure Hellenic Christianity might just as easily lead to

fatalism, as Niebuhr argued it had under Barth, for if God were truly transcendent and

other worldly, how could the Christian justify attempting to do the impossible of bringing

nature into accord with spirit?

The only myth adequate to explain God’s relation to the world was the “rational

absurdity” (200) that God was both transcendent and immanent. God both resided above

and beyond history while simultaneously acting in it. Christianity was at its best when it

combined the immanent God of the Hebraic tradition and the transcendent God of the

Hellenic tradition.

From the publication of Reflections to the end of his career, Niebuhr remained committed to incorporating both traditions into his thought, yet critics suggested that he never succeeded. As he had in their exchange over the Manchurian Crisis, Richard

Niebuhr continued to argue that Reinhold never fully accepted the supernaturalism of the

Hebraic tradition and remained under the constraints of Hellenic rationalism. On the other hand, while admitting that he personally had much in common with Niebuhr’s thought, Paul Tillich suggested that Niebuhr abandoned the Hellenic tradition to such an extent that he made it “unnecessarily difficult for people who examine [his thought]

‘from outside’ [the Christian religion].” According to Tillich, Niebuhr completely succumbed to the Hebraic tradition and could therefore too easily be dismissed as a

“supernaturalist.” Niebuhr freely admitted that much of his life’s work had been committed to embracing the Hebraic tradition which he understood was out of place in

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the modern world, but he refused to abandon it altogether: “If it is ‘supernaturalistic’ to

affirm that faith discerns the key to specific meaning above the categories of philosophy,

ontological or espistemological, then I must plead guilty of being a supernaturalist.” That

partisans of both the Hebraic and Hellenic traditions accused Niebuhr of yielding too

much to the other mode of thought suggests he was more successful at synthesizing the

two than even his friendly critics recognized.25

Niebuhr’s defense of the Christian myth of an immanent and transcendent God

was not that it was verifiably “true,” but rather that it had a certain “truth” that the

alternative myths lacked. As with his use of the term myth, Niebuhr never defined truth,

an exercise that he undoubtedly found too pedantic—and probably too troublesome—to

engage in. Nevertheless, throughout Reflections runs an implicit definition of truth that reveals Niebuhr’s indebtedness to American pragmatism, particularly as articulated by

William James. “The truth of an idea,” wrote James, “is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.” Ideas were true

when they led to positive interactions with reality. Truth, in short, was “useful,” a word

whose colloquial tone provided much ammunition for philosophers who criticized James’

pragmatism.26

The “truth” of the Christian myth for Niebuhr was rooted in its more accurate description of reality than the alternatives posed by liberalism and communism. In this sense it was, as James wrote, “made true.” Only the idea of a transcendent and immanent

25 Paul Tillich, “Reinhold Niebuhr's Doctrine of Knowledge,” Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought , ed. Kegley, 96; Niebuhr, “Reply to Interpretation and Criticism,” ibid., 509. 26 William James, “Pragmatism's Conception of Truth,” in Writings, 1902-1910, ed. Bruce Kuklick (New York: Library of America, 1987), 574-575.

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God “does justice both to the moral necessities of human life and to the actual facts of

human experience; for experience constantly reveals harmonies, meanings and purposes

which, by their very imperfection, suggest a perfection beyond them but which in spite of

their imperfection contain elements of the perfection which transcends them” (201).

Revealing a greater interest in psychology than in philosophy, Niebuhr went

further and demonstrated the “usefulness” of the Christian myth to the psychological

well-being of the would-be reformer. This point was implicit: unlike Norman Vincent

Peale’s vulgarization of Christianity which Niebuhr vehemently criticized in the 1950s,

Niebuhr never suggested individuals should become Christians because it would improve

their lives. Nevertheless, he argued that only the Christian myth provided the

combination of pessimism and optimism that was necessary to take action in the world.

Anyone who had ever worked to bring the world into accord with the idealism of the

spirit must admit that such aspirations were always frustrated. In Niebuhr’s conception of

religion, this frustration was almost always a precursor to the belief in the supernatural.

“There may be other sources of theism and supernaturalism in both primitive and modern

psychic life,” he conceded, “but the experience of moral frustration is a perennial source

of theistic belief and the guarantee of its regular emergence in human life” (200).

The Christian doctrine of grace provided reason for hope and optimism even after

one recognized it was impossible to make the world conform to the moral ideal. Niebuhr

devoted Reflections’ final chapter, “The Assurance of Grace,” to the theological concepts of grace and “justification” of sin. Grace itself seems to have been primarily a psychological phenomenon for Niebuhr. Although he spoke of God’s immanence, he offered no examples of God acting in the world, as Richard had in “The Grace of Doing

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Nothing.” Jesus’ death and resurrection served as the most potent “symbol” of God’s grace in the world, but nowhere in Reflections did Reinhold suggest the event was historical fact. Indeed, those who engaged in debates about the divinity of Christ and the truth of resurrection were guilty of attempting to rationalize the mythological symbol, a process which stripped the mythology of its power. “This ultimate paradox of high religion [the doctrine of justification] is not an invention of theologians or priests,” wrote

Niebuhr. “It is constantly validated by the most searching experiences of life” (285).

Grace was not a “supernatural” phenomenon that occurred in the afterlife, but rather an “experience” that occurred within history. When individuals recognized that they were themselves imperfect and failed to live up the ideals of the spirit, as they inevitably must, the concept of God’s grace allowed them to continue on and strive to improve themselves and their societies. Grace was a means of accepting one’s own fallibility without resigning oneself to failure. In short, grace was the only means of attaining a state of “serenity” (284). Even this optimistic note came out rather gloomy:

“Grace seeks to console the human spirit to its inevitable defeat in the world of nature and history.” (279; emphasis mine). Nevertheless, Niebuhr believed that grace allowed for optimism to endure: “The genius of classical religion, is that it finds a basis for optimism after it has entertained the most thoroughgoing pessimism” (202).

It is no coincidence that one of the better interpreters of Niebuhr’s thought, Robert

McAfee Brown, chose to include this chapter in his edited volume of Niebuhr’s writing.

Convinced that Niebuhr’s ultimate optimism had been lost on self-described Niebuhrians over the years, Brown, a former student, colleague, and close friend of Niebuhr’s, noted

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that the final chapter from Reflections serves as “a reminder that the reality of grace was

not a late discovery, but informed the whole of Niebuhr’s writing.”27

Although Niebuhr noted the effects of the Christian message on the individual

psyche, he was not turning away from the Social Gospel in favor of an older individual

gospel. Serenity was not an end in itself; it was a necessary state from which individuals

could engage in politics realistically. Indeed, it was in Reflections that Niebuhr first

attributed a “political realism” to Christianity. In Moral Man, he had disparaged liberals for their “unrealistic” views and proceeded to counter some of them, but his argument had been primarily negative. In Reflections, he identified a “test” for realism and subjected Christianity, liberalism, and communism to it. He argued that competing mythologies had to be examined in the political realm, where the ideas were translated into action. The most realistic ideas were those which demonstrated an “understanding of the persistence and inertia of collective egoism against the aspirations and demands of the spirit” (209). For Christians, the “demand of the spirit” was to follow Jesus’ law of love.

Yet when this demand was held in combination with the myth of original sin, Christians were forced to recognize the impossibility of living up to the law of love. Nevertheless, the law of love remained “the highest moral ideal for human life,” and it could “neither be renounced nor completely realized” (216).

Implicit in Christianity, then, was what Niebuhr called the “law of justice.”

Justice was the law of love in a “more negative form”: “It demands not that the interests of the neighbor be affirmed but that the interests of the self be restricted” (217). By articulating the law of justice, Niebuhr provided a theological basis for the coercion that

27 Robert McAfee Brown, ed. The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), vii.

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he had justified primarily on pragmatic grounds in Moral Man. If the law of love was

impossible for humans to follow, then some level of coercion was necessary to check the

impulses of individuals. Recognition of this fact provided religious sanctification to the

idea of government. Liberalism, with its belief that given the proper education

individuals would act morally, could offer no such justification for any government when

pushed to its logical conclusion, for governments were inherently coercive. The

implications of the law of justice therefore made Christianity far more realistic than

liberalism in the political realm.

Like liberalism and radicalism, however, Christianity was not without its

shortcomings. The problem with Christianity was rooted in the “inexactness of

mythological thinking” (217). The law of justice provided for a more realistic

understanding of politics than did liberalism or radicalism, but it did not prescribe any

specific political alternative. The recognition that governments were necessary had

historically led Christians to defend the status quo and sanctify not only the idea of government but whatever particular government existed in any given context.

Even democracies like that of the U.S. were unworthy of such sanctification, for democracy was too wedded to capitalism: “History . . . has revealed democratic principles to have been screens for middle-class interests” (30). To be sure, the “spirit of liberalism” held justice in high esteem, but in practice, the democratic structure that liberals established “hides the injustices behind the forms of justice” (272).

Only the insights of Christianity revealed the shortcomings of the political choices in the contemporary situation. “For the next decades” that choice would be between the

“hypocrisy” of liberalism and the “vengeance” of communism (272). Christian realism

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shed light on the problems that existed, but it could not provide an easy way to overcome them. In the moment of crisis that was marked by the Great Depression, Niebuhr argued that the best political option was to side with the radicals who sought to reconstruct society and work to temper their vengeance with both liberalism’s spirit and the insights of Christianity.

Niebuhr’s drift toward anti-communism following World War II required no ideological shift, for his endorsement of radical politics in the 1930s was, paradoxically, as tentative as it was emphatic. He was fully prepared to reconsider his political position in the future. He recognized that radicalism

may become completely engulfed by the forces of nature in history which it seeks to manipulate. It may express itself in terms so vindictive and [with] so blind a hatred that it becomes a peril to society and to the interests of those it seeks to serve. There are always demonic forces in politics. To seek their complete elimination is a counsel of perfection. (273)

Furthermore, he understood that at least the spirit of liberalism had a role to play in the future. Liberalism was impotent in the time of crisis because it refused to even recognize that there was a crisis: it was blind to the class conflict that Niebuhr believed was so apparent. But in times of relative peace, radicalism was less effective because its claim that “social issues are determined purely in terms of competing interests is too cynical to be true” (254-55; italics mine). Liberalism was far more successful than radicalism at seeing “the elements of mutual accord which actually develop in every social situation” (251). Radicalism was necessary to usher in a new order, but liberalism was necessary to continue the process of attaining a relative justice once that new order was in place:

The contributions of the liberal spirit to the problems of society, its fruits of tolerance, goodwill and rational sympathy are discounted in an era like our own

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because its claims have been too extravagant and its fruits have been too meager for the task of building a new social order. But they will come into their own again in any established society which confronts the problems of minimizing racial antagonisms, of preserving harmony between social groups, of relating specialized social functions to each other and of making the relations between individuals in any social group tolerable. (258)

For all of his talk of realistic politics, Niebuhr offered little in the way of

specifics. What was important was that activists adopt a realistic political perspective so

that they might choose the best course of action in the future. In his reading of the

situation in 1933, he saw “greater moral possibilities in a class struggle than in an

international conflict because there is actually more justice on the one side than the other”

(169). Still a pacifist in the international realm, he left the door open to the shift that

occurred in his attitude toward war later in the decade. At the moment, he could not

conceive of a war between nations which would be something more than a clash over

national self-interest, the product of “nature.” There was no “spirit” behind the “perennial

desire of, let us say, France and Germany to achieve ‘justice’ by avenging the wrong

which the other has committed upon it in a previous decade” (169).

Hitler’s fascism would, Niebuhr argued, inevitably lead to war for both economic

reasons and to preserve national unity, but he believed the regime would not last long. If

a revolution did not occur before war, once armed, the workers whom the fascists were

counting on to fight would most likely see through Hitler’s “cheap theatricality” (59) in

the time of crisis and turn their guns on the fascists. Niebuhr did not and could not know

the extent of the danger fascism posed, nor did he anticipate that by the end of the decade

he would be defending a major international conflict as a “just war.” Nevertheless, the

Christian realism he outlined in Reflections provided the theological and political rationale for such a war.

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Even his reading of the domestic situation called for no immediate action.

Niebuhr showed no signs of backing down from his argument as outlined in Moral Man: violence may be the only means of bringing about the sort of shift in power necessary for a more relative justice, but now was not the time for a revolution in the U.S. Echoing the

“safety valve” theory of the frontier popularized by Frederick Jackson Turner, Niebuhr recognized that the frontier had promoted a sense of individualism that precluded any vital radical movement in the U.S.: “In temper America is still a nation of pioneers” (77).

Just as a vital socialist movement relied on class consciousness, so too did fascism. But a sense of class cohesion simply did not exist in the U.S. No fan of

Roosevelt in the 1930s, Niebuhr attributed to the president the general blindness which all liberals possessed. Nevertheless, he argued, “it is foolish to speak of the Roosevelt program as ‘fascism’” (79), as some of the president’s critics on the far Left did. Fascism was the last gasp effort of the business class to prevent a revolution by allying with the military. For the moment, the U.S. was immune to a violent class struggle, but that did not mean the underlying conflict would not one day rise to the surface: “There is, in short, nothing in the unique character of American life which can prevent a social struggle, inherent in the nature of modern society, from working itself out to its logical conclusion. But there are unique elements in our life which may postpone the ultimate crisis until the end of the century” (82).

Anyone who hoped for a political program that offered a means of avoiding the impending crisis found none in Reflections. The desire for an ultimate way out of political problems was understandably human, but Niebuhr made no such promises, for he knew they would be empty. Christian realism did not offer a solution to the political

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problems of the day, but it did provide a perspective that could help observers analyze the

problems more clearly. Niebuhr’s realism had no permanent loyalties to any political

party; its devotion was to justice alone. But justice was a relative value and the political

alternatives which promised it were always in flux.

In the hands of a more optimistic writer, the message may have been one of

compromise. If neither liberalism nor radicalism offered the perfect solution in the

political world, and neither an otherworldly Christianity nor this-worldly secularism

offered an adequate religious perspective, was there not some middle ground between

these poles to which reasonable individuals could stake a claim?

For Niebuhr the answer was “no.” There was no more sensible middle-ground

between opposite ideas than there was genuine reconciliation between competing wills.

Compromise was a decidedly liberal concept, its tone too optimistic and its solution too

final. Tension, on the other hand, captured the instability Niebuhr saw in nearly

everything: there was tension between the individual and society, violence and non-

violence, liberal and radical, Hebraic and Hellenic, religious and secular, optimism and

pessimism, and, most important of all, there was tension between nature and spirit.

Repeatedly in Reflections, Niebuhr indicated that the key to his realistic perspective was not in resolving these tensions but in accepting them. There was no way to reconcile optimism and pessimism, for they pulled an individual in opposite directions.

Nevertheless, a profound religion was one which incorporated both optimism and pessimism yet recognized that it could “never achieve a perfect equilibrium or harmony”

(213) between the two. The same was true in the world of politics where spirit and nature competed with one another: “The tension between spirit and nature must remain to the

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end of history lest the impulses of nature clothe themselves with the moral prestige of the spiritual and secure a moral immunity behind which they express themselves without moral restraint” (136).

Niebuhr’s realism offered no panaceas, but it did allow him to state the diagnosis without mincing words.

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Chapter Five: Niebuhr and His Critics

“When Reinhold Niebuhr writes a new book,” wrote J. King Gordon in the World

Tomorrow, “philosophers, radicals and men of religion the world over take time off to

ponder a while.” Given that Niebuhr still served as an editor of the F.O.R.-affiliated

journal, one would expect its reviewer to view the publication of his latest book as a

significant event. But Gordon’s claim rang true. Gordon himself suggested the

international appeal of the book: he was an ordained minister in the United Church of

Canada and a professor of ethics at Union Theological College of McGill University in

Montreal. That the New York Times, Nation, and New Republic all ran reviews of

Reflections indicated that interest in Niebuhr’s work extended well beyond the nation’s churches.1

The reviewers for the popular press are as noteworthy as the publications

themselves. These were not churchmen commissioned to write reviews, but established

academics and activists who went on to enjoy remarkable careers. Odell Shepard, who

reviewed Reflections for the New York Times, was an English professor at Trinity College

in Connecticut and author of several books, one of which, Pedlar’s Progress, a biography

of the Transcendentalist, Bronson Alcott, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1938. The literary

Shepard argued that Niebuhr’s sense of tragedy “sets him apart from most representative

thinkers of the day.” Although Reflections was “not cheerful reading,” Shepard noted that

Niebuhr was “not one who cries havoc for the sake of sensation.” Niebuhr could confront

the grim signs of the times head-on because “he finds tragedy always at the very heart of

1 King Gordon, “The Twilight of This Age,” World Tomorrow, 1 March 1934, 115-17.

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man’s life and creation—tragedy in the deep and now almost obliterated sense of that

word which the effeminate bourgeoise [sic] temper of our times can no longer

understand.”2

James Burnham, a young radical and professor of philosophy at New York

University, reviewed the book for the Nation. Burnham famously moved to the right after

the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939. In 1934, when he reviewed Reflections, he was a Trotskyist who praised Niebuhr’s politics but worried, “If his radicalism goes much further he is fairly sure to lose his job.” Burnham’s protestation that “the book is hard to summarize” aside, mention of Christianity or God is conspicuously absent in his review. He does note religion as one component of Niebuhr’s radicalism, but according to Burnham, Niebuhr’s religion was merely “an intuition of the absolute.” As with many radicals, Burnham was not interested in Niebuhr’s theology, but he still found Niebuhr “a striking figure and an impressive orator.”3

In his review of Reflections, Robert Morss Lovett, the books editor at the New

Republic and a professor at the University of Chicago, used the term “Christian realist” to

describe Niebuhr, and he may well have been the first person to do so. Lovett was a

prominent leader of the non-Communist left in the U.S., who, throughout the 1930s and

1940s, sought to unite liberals and radicals. His willingness to work with Communists led

the Un-American Activities Committee of the House of Representatives to deem him

subversive and dismiss him from his government position in 1943. Revealing his own

conciliatory personality, Lovett saw in Reflections not tension, but “nicely balanced

2 Odell Shepard, “Social Radicalism and Conservative Faith,” New York Times, 25 March 1934, BR12. 3 James Burnham, “Religion and Pessimism,” Nation, 11 July 1934, 50-51.

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ratios” between opposing ideas and impulses. For him, the book was a call to radicals to

stop alienating liberals, particularly religious liberals, and work together to promote

justice. He candidly admitted what Burnham implied by omission: “Not all readers will

follow Mr. Niebuhr in his theology, but few will fail to find his social criticism both

clarifying and exciting, the product of a candid mind and vigorous, forthright thinking.”4

Revealing a great deal about liberal Protestantism in the 1930s, reviewers in the religious journals seemed almost as uneasy with Niebuhr’s theology as were their secular counterparts. In his review for the World Tomorrow, Gordon voiced his reservations toward what he deemed Niebuhr’s growing “religious absolutism.” Niebuhr’s conception of sin as egoism provided no means of distinguishing between the “economic man,” whose will-to-power resulted in imperialism, and the socialist, whose will-to-live demanded justice and equity. Dismissing Niebuhr’s assertion that radicals were motivated by vengeance, Gordon argued, “It is surely reasonable to assume that in a more highly socialized state the individual would be more capable of a higher ethical development.”

Gordon was equally concerned about Niebuhr’s “assurance of grace.” He argued that pushed to its logical conclusion, such an assurance would lead to asceticism and indifference toward politics, the very position that Niebuhr criticized Barthians for taking. Gordon suggested that this faith in God’s grace was more optimistic than liberalism: “Surely here is the ‘supramoral and ultramundane optimism’ which Niebuhr himself condemns.”

4 Robert Morss Lovett, “The Christian Realist,” New Republic, 18 April 1934, 288-89.

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Nevertheless, Gordon’s review was overall favorable because he recognized the

tension that ran throughout Reflections and believed it was Niebuhr’s most significant

contribution to current political discussions. “One may expect to behold academics,

liberal churchmen, Socialists, Communists, atheists and pacifists alternately throwing

their hats to the sky and tearing their hair as they find their prejudices supported by cool,

critical reasoning and their creeds punctured by unerring shafts.” There were several

different Reinhold Niebuhrs in the pages of Reflections, Gordon noted insightfully. As

these different personalities engaged one another, Niebuhr demonstrated that he was his

own greatest critic. Indeed, Gordon admitted that all of his objections were actually

raised by Niebuhr himself. This was not a weakness, for “consistency, after all, is a mean

virtue.” But Gordon did not believe Niebuhr struck quite the right balance between

optimism and pessimism: “So strong is his antipathy to liberal Protestantism that he

constantly inclines to make this pessimism [of orthodox Christianity] his own.”5

Despite the growing personal rift between Charles Clayton Morrison and Niebuhr

that resulted from the F.O.R. dispute in January 1934, Morrison wrote a glowing review

of Reflections in the Christian Century.6 That Morrison, who rarely wrote book reviews,

took the time to comment at all indicates just how significant he thought Niebuhr’s work.

Morrison was quite explicit: “Of the many writers who interpret modern culture and

civilization from the standpoint of religion, it is doubtful if there is one who sees just

what our western society is made of more clearly than does Reinhold Niebuhr.” The

5 Gordon, “The Twilight of This Age,” World Tomorrow, 1 March 1934, 115-17. 6 Charles Clayton Morrison, “Good Wholesome Pessimism,” Christian Century, 7 March 1934, 323-324. 181

marketing department at Scribner’s used excerpts from his review to advertise Reflections

in other journals.7

Nevertheless, Morrsion did have his qualms. First of all, he was one of the few

reviewers to defend liberalism from Niebuhr’s attack. To accuse liberals of a “simple

faith” in the power of education and moral suasion to overcome egoism was “wholly

gratuitous” and disingenuous. He challenged Niebuhr to identify any liberal writer who

articulated such a simple position. “It is perfectly legitimate, in the interest of his own

argument, to state the inevitable shortcoming of any social order which men may hope to

attain,” wrote Morrison, “but it is not fair to charge that so childish a conception is held

by any group of intelligent Christian leaders. Liberalism has weaknesses enough without

piling on follies of which it is not guilty.” He neglected to mention that Niebuhr himself

admitted liberalism’s virtues in Reflections.

Morrison also challenged Niebuhr’s understanding of sin. It was “a rationalistic rather than a realistic conception.” Niebuhr condemned the individual for failing to be perfect; Morrison condemned the individual for failing to be as good as one knew one could be: “I cannot hold myself morally responsible for being finite, and there is room enough in my finitude for plenty of actual evil without drawing upon a transcendent good to increase my sense of guilt.”

But the saving grace of Reflections for Morrison was Niebuhr’s doctrine of grace itself. “For years I have been wishing that some one would take this great concept from the framework of an obsolete theological system and from the literal context of the

Christian scriptures . . . and carry it down into concrete ethical experience,” he wrote.

7 See for example the advertisement in World Tomorrow, 10 May 1934, 256.

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“This Niebuhr has done.” Unlike Gordon who accused Niebuhr of recovering an outdated

doctrine of grace that too easily led to fatalism, Morrison pointed out that Niebuhr’s

understanding of grace was not a recapitulation of an older doctrine or even of European

neo-orthodoxy. Niebuhr’s conception of grace as the only source of serenity in life made

a place for grace in history, not in “a sort of Barthian realm of transcendental unreality.”

And Morrison agreed with Niebuhr’s assessment wholeheartedly, noting that “human

nature [is] such that it cannot be at peace with itself save as it finds in God both grace and

truth.”

Morrison’s kind words were undoubtedly overshadowed in Niebuhr’s mind by a

critical essay the Christian Century ran two months after the initial review. In what must

certainly be a candidate for the greatest misreading of Reflections published, Thomas

Voelkel, a Congregationalist minister in Wisconsin, wrote, “In the midst of baffling perplexities, [Niebuhr] appears to enjoy the serenity of simplicity and the peace of sweeping generalizations.” According to Voelkel, Reflections was “a study in black and

white”: capitalism was black, socialism was white; nature was black, spirit was white.

Voelkel challenged Niebuhr’s talk of “civilizations,” arguing that such clean breaks in

epochs between feudal, capitalist, and socialist were non-existent: “Life at all times is a

mixture, or confusions . . . . It is always composed of accumulations from the past,

particular insights and practices from the present, and a variety of dreams for the future.”

His talk of the life and death of civilizations aside, Niebuhr had actually provided ample

evidence in Reflections to support the argument Voelkel now claimed discredited his

work. As Voelkel proceeded to defend capitalism and discredit socialism, it became

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apparent that his real problem with Niebuhr was political: he shared none of Niebuhr’s

radicalism.

But Voelkel did not critique Niebuhr on purely political grounds. “A distinct

disservice is done to religion by those who take pleasure in making it absurd,” he wrote.

Voelkel claimed that Niebuhr’s conception of religion as making absolute demands on

individuals was “fanatical”: “The extreme religious tension of which Mr. Niebuhr speaks

is characteristic only of those who see nature as utterly black and the spirit as pure white.

Such a sharp contrast will lead either to utter pessimism, or to the escape of asceticism, or

to repose in the peace of paradox.” Voelkel offered no alternative to Niebuhr’s

“fanatical” reading of Christianity; instead he argued that the insights Niebuhr attributed

to such a reading could also be derived from “a realistic interpretation of history.”

Voelkel may have criticized Niebuhr’s analysis, but his response to Reflections gave

credence to much of it: few essays better supported Niebuhr’s argument that liberal

Christianity was hardly distinguishable from a more secular liberalism.8

Niebuhr did not take such criticism lightly. “I do not quarrel with Mr. Voelkel for

disagreeing with me but I do object to having opinions imputed to me which I not only do

not hold but have been careful to disavow,” he wrote in a rejoinder which the Christian

Century published. Point-by-point he refuted Voelkel’s claims with page numbers to relevant sections in Reflections. He had most certainly not argued socialism was pure white and regarded Voelkel’s assertion as “completely and probably willfully misleading.” As for his description of history as passing through stages, Niebuhr reminded Voelkel that he had carefully argued that this was more symbolic than

8 Elmer E. Voelkel, “A Study in Black and White,” Christian Century, 30 May 1934, 725-727.

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scientific. He also pointed out that historians employed this practice regularly when they

referred to the “Renaissance” or the “Age of Reason,” epochs without clear-cut

beginnings and conclusions that were nevertheless important in drawing any meaning

from the past. Finally, as to the charges that his religion was “fanatical,” Niebuhr argued,

“Mr. Voelkel’s quarrel is with the New Testament and not with me,” for Jesus clearly

demanded perfection in his Sermon on the Mount.

Yet Niebuhr also took the opportunity to distance himself from a perfectionist

ethic and respond to other critics who lamented that he had not given enough attention to

“the way of the cross” as a means of change. While Jesus’ law of love was the ideal

which must always remain in the minds of Christians, it was not as easy to translate into

political action as many liberal Christians proposed:

I do not believe in the loose way in which the modern pulpit speaks of the “way of the cross” when it means deeds of unselfishness and kindness. These always fall short of the cross on the one hand and of meeting the needs of social justice on the other. If, however, the ideal of complete martyrdom is meant by the way of the cross I think it could be said that the ideal of complete self-sacrifice is above all law and therefore cannot be preached as a principle of social action, particularly not by those, who, like myself, have not suffered the cross. Furthermore, the purest acts of sacrifice are never ‘instruments of policy.’ They may have profound social consequences but they do not have that intention. Jesus does not even suggest that we ought to love our enemies in order to make them friends. He declares rather we ought to love them that we may be children of our father in heaven.9

Voelkel’s criticism paled in comparison to the harsh words of the liberal reformer

and pacifist John Haynes Holmes, minister of the non-denominational Community

Church of New York. To make matters worse, Holmes’s review was not confined to the

back pages of a religious journal but appeared in the New York Herald Tribune Books.

9 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Mr. Neibuhr [Sic] Replies to a Critic,” Christian Century, 20 June 1934, 837.

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After providing a summary that, like Voelkel’s, ignored much of Reflections subtle analysis, Holmes expressed dismay that Niebuhr “moves far to the left in his attitude toward social change,” while, “in his acceptance of religion as a ‘devotion to the absolute’ he swings far, far to the right.” Reflections was but “one more contribution to the contemporary literature of despair,” a despair that Niebuhr attempted to overcome with “resort to theological fantasies.”

To be sure, Niebuhr, who seems to have been especially sensitive to book reviews, would probably have been upset with Holmes’s summary of Reflections if the review had ended there. But Holmes’s criticism extended beyond the book, and his final two paragraphs attacked the author himself. Though never especially close, Niebuhr and

Holmes knew each other personally: both lived in New York City and were involved in many of the same religious and left-liberal political organizations. Holmes believed he had witnessed remarkable changes in Niebuhr, including his “growing dogmatism of temper, his flat repudiation of idealism, his cynical contempt of the morally minded, his pessimistic abandonment of the world to its own unregenerate devices, and his desperate flight to the unrealities of theological illusion.” Holmes almost admired the way Niebuhr made his points and conceded that “Niebuhr’s intellectual brilliancy remains unimpaired.” But he was also shocked by the direction in which Niebuhr was moving:

“The moral significance of his collapse is appalling.” Indeed, Holmes argued that

Niebuhr seemed to have lost sight of the Christian message altogether:

In these essays there is more confusion about the Nazarene and the teaching than I remember to have seen in any book for many years. But it is clear enough that Jesus’ serene trust in human nature, his stern acclaim of the moral law, his utter reliance upon spiritual forces, his sunny optimism, his radiant passion, would all have seemed a little ridiculous to Niebuhr. The latter would not have opposed the

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Man of Galilee, but he certainly would have despised him. And with what relief he would have turned to the “cynical and realistic” Pilate as the man of the hour!10

Niebuhr immediately fired off a letter to Holmes accusing him of being

“monstrously unfair” in his treatment of Reflections and asking Holmes to refrain from reviewing any of his books in the future. Holmes replied with his own lengthy letter, in which he accused Niebuhr of being “doubly or trebly unfair.” Holmes protested that he had “acted upon what is not merely the privilege, but duty of the reviewer, namely, to state what he himself thinks of an author’s book. Is it possible that you would have me be faithless to this duty?” Holmes rather disingenuously added, “If I was unduly swayed by any feeling, it was the feeling that I must go out of my way to be rigorously fair to you just because I was conscious of not agreeing with you.” To be sure, there were some real differences of opinion between Niebuhr and Holmes, but Holmes refused to believe that

“difference of opinion can strain or weaken friendship.”

Holmes saw in Niebuhr a “peculiar sensitiveness to reviews of your books”: “You apparently collect and read these reviews with feverish intensity, and immediately rise up in fury against any reader who dares to speak a word of adverse criticism. Writing replies to reviews in magazines and papers is a most unusual procedure, and yet you seem to practice it persistently.” He cited several examples of this behavior in response to critical reviews of Moral Man. Niebuhr’s refusal to accept criticism revealed a real “arrogance” when he ought to recall that “modesty becomes a man.”

One doubts Niebuhr sought such advice when he wrote Holmes. More likely,

Niebuhr hoped for a sincere apology. While Holmes did apologize for the strain that had

10 John Haynes Holmes, “Reinhold Niebuhr's Philosophy of Despair,” New York Herald Tribune Books, 18 March 1934, 7.

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been put on the relationship, he did not desist in his criticism of Niebuhr and took the opportunity to “frankly” state his concerns about Niebuhr’s recent development:

Your present position in the religious world is utterly deplorable. I doubt if you realize to what an extent your recent writings are coming to be regarded as a tragic instance of intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy. . . . Your writings bring abundant evidence to the fact that you are falling victim, in a pathetically hopeless way, to reactionary influences in the religious world which are essentially alien to your spirit, and are surrendering abjectly to conditions of the times which are apparently proving too strong for your resistance. It is not the assertion of your thought but the abandonment of your thought which presents so heart-breaking a spectacle. You are no longer yourself; you are now aping another man, speaking in an alien voice, and taking the hopeless color of your environment. You represent inwardly the same phenomenon that the world represents outwardly, namely, the phenomenon of disintegration, confusion, and breakdown. I am not saying this in any pontifical or dictatorial spirit, but I am trying merely to express my personal opinion, and also to emphasize that this opinion is shared by many others whose judgment you cannot safely disregard. It is not merely among the older men of my generation, but also among many of the younger men that a sensation of mingled amazement and despair is being felt at what you are doing. . . . You are too able, too devoted, too fine in every way, and particularly too young, to suffer any such permanent catastrophe as this.11

Needless to say, these words were not welcomed by Niebuhr, who promptly responded to Holmes and let him know that he considered their friendship over. Holmes wrote once again, and this time the tone contrasted starkly with that of his first letter.

What has happened to us, dear friend? Here we are, quarreling in most unseemly fashion. We are not discussing the important matters of opinion which divide us, not debating principles and ideals, not trying cooperatively to find the way of truth, but hurling accusations at one another and just quarreling like two bruisers on the street corner.

Holmes expressed genuine sorrow and begged Niebuhr to meet up with him in person, for it was “this miserable letter-writing that is the trouble.” But it was too late. According

11 John Haynes Holmes to Reinhold Niebuhr, 3 April 1934, RN Papers, Box 49, “Holmes, John Haynes, 1934.” Unfortunately, Niebuhr’s 31 March 1934 letter to Holmes is not in the files.

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to Richard Fox, Niebuhr confided in his friends that “Holmes was one man he truly

despised.”12

If anything, the exchange with Holmes only reinforced Niebuhr’s belief in man’s

egoism and liberalism’s blindness to it. Here was John Haynes Holmes, a leading liberal,

too blind to see that his points of disagreement with Niebuhr were not minor differences

of opinion that could easily be reconciled. Their disagreement was the product of two

competing wills, each more sure of itself than its opponent. There was no easy

compromise between such diametrically opposed conceptions of human nature as those

held by Holmes and Niebuhr.

But Niebuhr would have done well to recall some of his own words from

Reflections. In his attempt to encourage Christians and Communists to work together in the short-run, he had to address the fact that most Christians and Communists thought their own world-view was incompatible with that of the other. The problem as Niebuhr saw it was that the “truth neglected by the one side is made the basis of error by the other.

Probably each side, having half the truth, protests against the other side more vehemently because it dimly suspects that the error of the foe is a suppressed portion of the truth.”13

Niebuhr’s own realistic analysis explains his position in the heated exchange with

Holmes. He had argued many times that it was nearly impossible for anyone in the midst

of conflict to attain a transcendent perspective from which to judge that conflict. But an

observer far removed from the quarrel between Niebuhr and Holmes may well note the

“half-truths” in each of their positions. Holmes was oblivious to the fact that his letters

12 John Haynes Holmes to Reinhold Niebuhr, 13 April 1934, ibid.; Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 153. 13 Niebuhr, Reflections on the End of an Era, 225.

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were seen by Niebuhr as evidence of both the hypocrisy and blindness of liberalism.

Niebuhr, so quick to point out Holmes shortcomings, refused to recognize that Holmes had a point as well: Niebuhr could use a lesson or two in humility, a virtue which he himself had praised as the most Christian of all. The self-righteous Holmes, however, was not the right man for the job.

Richard Niebuhr, on the other hand, taught humility by example. While he preferred “the massive, solid character” of Moral Man, Richard thought Reflections, a book which Reinhold had dedicated to him, was “a notable addition and strikes some overtones which were not so audible in the former book. Something here of serenity amid strife. Something of the ‘everlasting arms.’ It’s a fine job nobly done.”

Nevertheless, Richard had his differences with Reinhold. “I can appreciate your opinions, I think, without either sharing them or feeling violated by them,” he told his older brother. The main reason for their differences of opinion was “that our words mean different things to us.” Richard explained:

Nature for you means mostly human nature; to me it means sun, rain, grass, stars, climate, race, glands. You think in terms of psychology where I think in terms of biology and sociology. You think in terms of the absolute and relative where I think in terms of determinism and indeterminism. God for me is not so much the absolute as he is the determining dynamic. You do not convince me because I do not recognize religion to be what you define—well, yes, I recognize it but there’s a hitch. To me the trans-historical, absolute point of reference, the X beyond all X’s has no particular significance. This religion of the absolute remains, to my mind, all aspiration not a faith, a trust, a hope, a surrender.

Richard suggested that Reinhold had actually managed to reason God, but where, in such a formulation, did belief and faith come in? For all of Reinhold’s criticism of rationalism and praise of the inexplicable, had he not tried to explain God and religion as useful and true? Richard still believed Reinhold too attached to the Hellenic conception of a

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transcendent God. Where was the immanent God of Hebraic tradition? Where, exactly, did God enter into history? Where was God in Niebuhr’s understanding of nature?

Richard not only questioned Reinhold’s theology, he also expressed his own disagreement with Reinhold’s increasingly relativistic ethics. He admitted that the question of ethics was no easy matter and confided to his brother that he had his own internal struggle between absolutism and relativism. “In the world of thought I am a liberal, an absolute relativist, who expects truth only from the struggle of opinion,” he explained. But in terms of ethics, he “remain[ed] an absolutist with the naïve judgment that wrong is wrong and that the thirst for power and balance of power are of the devil.”

This struggle between his relativist and absolutist tendencies was “the acute dilemma of my life.”14

Unfortunately, it is impossible to know the exact effect that Richard’s words had on Reinhold. Richard Niebuhr, described by one biographer as “an intensely private man,” destroyed all of his personal correspondence.15 But Richard Fox’s assertion that

“Richard’s critique touched a tender nerve, and the brothers bickered back and forth through the spring,” is supported by a subsequent letter from Richard to Reinhold.

Recalling a childhood memory –one that “I hope you’ve forgotten, but I can’t”—in which he chased Reinhold “with a big poker” around the house, Richard softened his earlier criticism of Reflections in order to reconcile the tension with his older brother.

I’ve been Cain ever since and gone after you with pokers because your sacrifices have been more acceptable in the sight of God than mine. But you’re a forgiving

14 Richard Niebuhr to Reinhold Niebuhr, N.D., RN Papers, Box 58, “Niebuhr, Richard, 1930-1940.” 15 Diefenthaler, H. Richard Niebuhr: A Lifetime of Reflections on the Church and the World, xiii; Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 154.

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Abel whose blood doesn’t cry for vengeance—and this Cain—thank God—is not so put out as this Abel. Your Abel-ity and my Cainishness have appeared again this past year when I have been confounded by your book and it has appeared that my doubts of your position were ill-founded and that my antagonism was premature. The next year will mark you more than ever as a leader of American Christendom toward Christianity. Of that I have no doubt. And if I may make a non-Cainitish request—conserve your power for the big things which are coming to you and through you.16

Richard’s change of heart may have been due to the passing of time, as he suggested. In

his initial letter regarding Reflections, he acknowledged having read “nearly all of it.”

Perhaps he had yet to read the final chapter, “The Assurance of Grace,” which spoke

most directly to his concerns, though the short chapter probably did not assuage them

entirely. More likely, Richard saw the toll the critical reactions took on Reinhold and

recognized that his brother needed support and encouragement more than criticism, even

if it were constructive. Reaching out to his brother, Richard demonstrated a rare

combination of humility and kindness, just the sort of selfless act which Reinhold’s

writing often implied individuals were incapable of performing, even with members of

their own family.

If Reinhold had suffered privately, publicly he continued to criticize liberal

Christianity and develop several of Reflection’s arguments in a series of essays in the

Christian Century. To those critics who persisted in seeing radical politics and a more conservative theology as incompatible, he conceded that the church as an institution was necessarily conservative because it was forced to make concessions to the prevailing culture for survival. But the church played only a minor role in Niebuhr’s conception of religion; he was much more concerned with Christianity’s prophetic tradition. “Religion

16 Richard Niebuhr to Reinhold Niebuhr, 21 June 1934, RN Papers, Box 58, “Niebuhr, Richard, 1930-40.”

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searches for and finds transcendent perspectives for life and the world,” he wrote. “From the vantage point of these perspectives it is equally capable of promoting attitudes of piety which give meaning to the world’s chaos and attitudes of spirituality which strain after perfection in an imperfect world.” The church as an institution emphasized piety, but many religious individuals were more spiritual than pious. Like the prophets of the

Old Testament, their spirituality led them to champion radical political causes.

Niebuhr went so far as to claim that “practically every radical leader of consequence in the present American scene was originally inspired by religious conviction, however anxious some of them may be to hide or deny that fact now.” He offered several examples and explained their religious connections. There were those individuals who remained firmly committed to Christianity, such as F.O.R. leaders Kirby

Page and John Nevin Sayre and Niebuhr’s fellow Union Seminary faculty member, Harry

F. Ward. Others, like Socialist Party leader, Norman Thomas, and American Workers’ party leader, A. J. Muste, had abandoned their religious affiliations. And there were also those whose connections to religion were less known, including radical leaders Max

Eastman, whose parents were Congregational ministers; Scott Nearing, who had in his earlier years attempted to incorporate Christianity into his politics by arguing Jesus was a radical; and Robert Dunn, an avowed Communist who “came out of a pious home of the

Reformed church and has a brother in the ministry.”

Although one may reasonably question whether the religious backgrounds of this last group of radicals in particular were essential or incidental to their political narratives,

Niebuhr firmly believed that exposure to religion was a central element in the radical’s development. Again revealing the extent to which his analysis was indebted to Freud and

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Jung, he explained radicals’ discomfort with religion in psychological terms. They may

“consciously” oppose conservative religious institutions and therefore religion, but

“unconsciously” radicals were “still driven by religious motives.”

Radicalism and religion were nearly one and the same for Niebuhr. “In what other

but religious terms can the desire for a just society, for a classless world in which no one

will live at the expense of any other man, be explained?” he asked. The failure of radicals

to reconcile their conscious and unconscious attitudes toward religion produced a

“confusion” which performed a disservice to both radicals and religious individuals. On

the one hand the confusion made individuals like Niebuhr appear inconsistent, or at least

exceptional, when they ought to be recognized as thoroughly consistent and perhaps the

“most legitimate product[s] of religion.” Furthermore, as long as radicals remained

consciously irreligious, they faced the practical problem of alienating church members,

who may otherwise sympathize with them, and the ethical problem of tempering their

vengeance with the “pity and forgiveness” that Niebuhr argued could only be understood

from a religious perspective.17

In an essay entitled, “When Will Christians Stop Fooling Themselves?,” Niebuhr

addressed the complaint voiced by Morrison that his portrayal of liberalism was unfair.

Although he maintained that many liberals Christians still believed that justice could be

achieved in “purely moral terms,” he acknowledged that groups like the Fellowship of

Reconciliation disavowed such claims. The F.O.R. may have recognized that

involvement in the dirty work of politics was necessary to bring about justice, but the

organization’s decision to limit itself to non-violent coercion meant they, too, were

17 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Religion as a Source of Radicalism,” Christian Century, 11 April 1934, 491-94.

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“moral idealists who imagine they are changing the world by their moral ideals.” Such moral idealism led to self-righteousness: “Moral idealists never forgive their foes. They are too secure in their own virtue to do that.”

For the first time, Niebuhr himself used the phrase “Christian realism” to describe his own position. He distinguished between “moral idealists” and “religious realists”—a distinction similar to the one he made between “moral man” and “religious man” in the exchange with Richard Niebuhr during the Manchurian crisis—but argued that realism and idealism were not mutually exclusive. The realist retained the moral ideal of love and attempted to live by it without sharing the idealist’s belief that the law of love could be implemented in the world of politics. Unlike the idealist, the realist understood that

“masses of men, even when they are in Christian churches, move by interest.” This was a

“common sense” insight. To be sure, one could be a political realist, as Niebuhr recognized Marxists were, without being a religious realist. But Niebuhr argued that religion offered exclusive resources for dealing with this fact ethically: “Only religious realists can have respect, pity, and forgiveness for those whom they do not understand.”

This religious realism not only had consequences in terms of the political choices an individual made, it also affected individuals on a personal level:

If this kind of love and forgiveness within and above the inevitable battles of life seem unimportant one may become convinced of their importance if one has suffered for a while from the fury of liberal moral idealists and of radical moral idealists who have little in common except what they share with all moral idealists, that is, complete lovelessness toward those who disagree with them.

Clearly Niebuhr felt his critics had treated him unjustly, but one suspects that John

Haynes Holmes, and later, Charles Clayton Morrison, among others, would argue that

Niebuhr’s realism did not make him immune to charges of self-righteousness. It was one

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thing to recognize that all men were sinners before God, another altogether to treat one’s

opponents with love, or even respect, in the middle of a heated political debate.18

Niebuhr did, however, make an effort to treat two theologians with whom he had

disagreements with respect in a third essay in the Christian Century. He continued to

distance himself from the Barthian neo-orthodoxy that had gained prominence in Europe

and was making inroads in the U.S., but he also avoided his common practice of painting

all of his opponents with the same brush and exempted Karl Barth and Emil Brunner

from his criticism. Barth and Brunner remained allied with socialists politically, though

their conception of a transcendent God watching over a sinful world meant that they did

not share Niebuhr’s belief that radicalism was the most “legitimate” expression of

Christianity. “In the case of Barth, the conception of the transcendence of God is so

absolute that it is impossible to use either religious dogma or religious emotion for the

purpose of supporting or sanctifying any particular political program, either conservative

or radical,” wrote Niebuhr. “Among his followers this is less true.”

Niebuhr singled out German theologian Friedrich Gogarten as the Barthian most

responsible for tying neo-orthodoxy to reactionary politics. Under Gogarten, “the new

dualism of Barthian orthodoxy works in paradoxical fashion . . . . In one moment the

world is a world of sin which cannot be redeemed. In the next moment it represents a

‘God-given’ order which must not be violated.” For Gogarten, inequality existed in the

natural order of things, and equality was only introduced by the liberal rationalists who

attempted to disrupt that order. Even Hitler’s anti-Semitism was justified by Gogarten

and other Barthians for whom racial inequality was simply part of this “God-given”

18 Reinhold Niebuhr, “When Will Christians Stop Fooling Themselves?,” Christian Century, 16 May 1934, 658-60.

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order. Barth, who was critical of Hitler and anti-Semitism, could not be held responsible

for Hitler, but his theology had been enough of an “abettance” that it made Niebuhr

uncomfortable: “As one who bears a few wounds from doing battle against a complacent

liberalism, I must confess that this appropriation of Barthian thought by reaction almost

persuades me to return to the liberal camp as a repentant prodigal. Fortunately there are

alternatives which make it unnecessary to embrace liberal illusions for the sake of

avoiding orthodox confusions.” In Reflections on the End of an Era, Niebuhr had

outlined his proposed alternative, Christian realism.19

* * *

In An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, originally delivered as the

Rauschenbusch lectures at Colgate Rochester Divinity School in spring 1934, Niebuhr

further developed his Christian realism with, as the title implied, greater emphasis on the

religious side of his thought. In Reflections the main dynamic had been between

liberalism and radicalism: Niebuhr used Christianity to illuminate the shortcomings of

both political alternatives. But now, addressing a Christian audience, religion took center

stage. Yet Niebuhr’s emphasis on the ethics of Christianity meant that his message, even if not overtly political, had political implications.

As he had done in Reflections, Niebuhr again made a case for myths. Likening myths to portraits and photographs to science, he argued that a painter could better capture the true character of an individual through minor exaggerations and even falsifications than could a photographer who caught the “immediate actualities” of an individual in a given situation. Photographers might object to the analogy for its denying

19 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Barthianism and Political Reaction,” Christian Century, 6 June 1934, 757-59.

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the artistic character of their work, but comparing myth to portraiture was nevertheless an

apt metaphor that Niebuhr employed on more than one occasion. Myths could provide

meaning that science could not, but they were not perfect conveyors of truth. Just as

portraits could easily become caricatures, so too could myths, for it is “difficult . . . to

distinguish between deception in the interest of a higher truth and deception which

falsifies the ultimate truth.”20

Just as he had sought to reveal the “half-truths” of both liberalism and radicalism

in politics, now he used his understanding of myths to identify the half-truths on both

sides of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, a controversy that most of his liberal

Christian audience assumed they had laid to rest in the previous decade.21 The liberal churches had been all but absorbed by “modern culture” and had forsaken Christianity’s traditions for that culture’s “short-lived prejudices and presumptuous certainties” (4).

Fundamentalism preserved much of traditional Christianity and therefore contained some

“insights and perspectives, in many ways superior to those of liberalism” (4). But those truths were unfortunately overshadowed by the “dogmatisms of another day” (4).

Both the fundamentalists and modernists may have suffered from error, but

Niebuhr left little question as to which had committed the greater error: “If liberal religion had not admitted science (in the form of a critico-historical analysis of its

20 Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935), 83-84. Niebuhr used the same metaphor of myth as portrait and extended it even further to describe religion as art in Reinhold Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1937), 5-6. 21 The battles for control of the mainline churches that occurred in the 1920s ended with the fundamentalists leaving the older denominations to form new ecclesiastical organizations, meaning there were likely no fundamentalists in Niebuhr’s audience at the liberal divinity school. Ahlstrom, Religious History, 910-915.

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sources) into the very heart of the church it would have been impossible to free what is eternal in the Christian religion from the shell of an outmoded culture in which it had become imbedded” (11). For all of his criticism of the Enlightenment and of the pretensions of science, he argued more clearly than he ever had before that, even if liberals failed to see what they had sacrificed in giving rationalism such a privileged position, the Enlightenment was a positive step forward in human history. A religion which had no place for scientific knowledge was no better than a worldview which failed to accommodate faith. “Faith must feed on reason,” wrote Niebuhr. “But reason must also feed on faith” (14).

If fundamentalists committed the error of believing in myths as historical truths, liberals were guilty of the equally harmful error of belittling them as useless fictions and dismissing them altogether. One myth with which Niebuhr was particularly concerned was the myth of the Fall and the concept of “original sin.” Fundamentalists read too much into the original myth and regarded it as a historical fact. For them, the lesson was simply that individuals were corrupted from birth and this corruption could be traced back to a historical event, Adam and Eve’s decision to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

This reading of the Fall led to great confusion among fundamentalists. Rather than deriving a deeper understanding of sin from the myth, they treated the Bible as a fixed law proscribing certain behaviors. Their discussions of sin were thus preoccupied with “the violation of Sabbatarian prohibitions or puritanical precepts, . . . [with] preserving the minutiae of social or moral standards which may once have had legitimate

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or accidental sanctity, but which have . . . now lost both religious and moral meaning”

(4).

While not a historical event, the myth of the Fall was useful nevertheless because it pointed to a higher truth. The genius of this myth for Niebuhr was that it captured the subtlety of his understanding of original sin. God did not make Adam and Eve sin, but rather created them in his image and allowed them freedom to make their own choices.

God could not be held responsible for their sin, just as He could not be held responsible for all of the evil in the world. He had given human beings the gift of freedom, and it was this gift from which the evil in the world arose. “Evil,” Niebuhr explained, “is not the absence but the corruption of good” (73).

Although often identified as a modern-day Augustine, Niebuhr distanced himself from the Augustinian doctrine of “total depravity.” The concept resulted in a too pessimistic interpretation of human nature. If human nature were pure evil, if sin were inherited, then individuals could not be held responsible for their actions. Therefore,

Niebuhr argued, “Original sin is not an inherited corruption, but it is an inevitable fact of human existence, the inevitability of which is given by the nature of man’s spirituality. It is true in every moment of existence, but it has no history” (90).

If human awareness of sin arose, as Niebuhr argued, from being created in the image of God, then there was also a message of hope in the concept of sin. At their best, individuals could transcend themselves and recognize an absolute beyond themselves, even if living up to the standards of the absolute was impossible. This understanding of sin preserved the tension between the transcendent ideal and the current reality which

Niebuhr had argued was so important in Reflections. The “general sense of religious

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guilt” which came from failing to live up to the ideal was “a fruitful source of moral responsibility” (78). Man could never become perfect, but he could and should always strive to become better.

Another implication of Niebuhr’s understanding of original sin was that he was not overly concerned with those prohibited acts which preoccupied other Christians, particularly the fundamentalists. Understanding sin as the product of the human will-to- power, Niebuhr was far more concerned with the sins that resulted from human pretensions. For him, the cardinal sin was that self-righteousness, the thought that one had somehow made oneself closer to God than one’s peers: “Evil in its most developed form is always a good which imagines itself, or pretends to be, better than it is. The devil is always an angel who pretends to be God” (87).

Nowhere was this pretension more evident than in the liberal Christian’s insistence on living by the ethic of Jesus. Jesus’ ethic was far less applicable to life than many Christians supposed:

The ethic of Jesus does not deal at all with the immediate moral problems of every human life—the problem of arranging some kind of armistice between various contending factions and forces. It has nothing to say about the relativities of politics and economics, nor of the necessary balances of power which exist and must exist in even the most intimate social relations. (39)

The law of love was an impossible ethic—one which Niebuhr now referred to for the first time as the “impossible possibility,” as opposed to the “simple possibility” liberal

Christians supposed (118). In their attempts to rediscover the “historical Jesus” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, liberal theologians had slighted the study of

Paul, who made clear that, no matter their aspirations, humans could never meet the demands of such an ethic. Although there were obviously varying degrees of self-love, at

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its most basic level self-love was indistinguishable from self-preservation. Jesus

recognized this, and, according to Niebuhr, urged a complete disregard for self-

preservation. There was in Jesus’ ethic “a completely unprudential rigorism . . . which

appears again and again” (42). To live absolutely by the ethic of Jesus was impossible,

for it required such a complete disregard for one’s own needs that it must certainly end in

death.

Yet the Social Gospel failed to recognize the impracticability of Jesus’ ethic. Just

as he had begun to do with the Barthians, Niebuhr now distinguished between the leading

advocates of the Social Gospel. Shailer Mathews, who had argued in his The Gospel and

the Modern Man [1910] that “revolutions have seldom, if ever, won more rights than the more thoughtful among the privileged would have been ready to grant,” epitomized for

Niebuhr the naïveté of the Social Gospel.22 So too did E. Stanley Jones, a Methodist

missionary to India who, through his friendship with Gandhi, became a proponent of non-

violence. Jones provided “the most perfect swan song of liberal politics” (180) in his

Christ’s Alternative to Communism [1935]. Liberals like Mathews and Jones either denounced politics altogether or assumed that the law of love itself could serve as a basis for political action. Niebuhr admired these men personally, referring to Jones as “one of the genuine saints of the missionary movement,” but it did not change the fact that their messages had a “complete lack of relevance to the political and economic problems of the hour” (180-81).

Niebuhr reserved special vitriol for the Oxford Group (later known as Moral Re- armament). While he may have respected Mathews and Jones personally, he expressed

22 Shailer Mathews, The Gospel and the Modern Man (New York: Macmillan, 1910), 253, quoted in Niebuhr, Interpretation, 173.

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nothing but scorn for Frank Buchman, the Lutheran preacher who founded the Oxford

Group. Through “house parties” at the homes of the rich and politically powerful, the

evangelical Buchman hoped to convert the elite so that they might carry out God’s will.

In 1936 Buchman went so far as to praise Hitler for serving as the “front line of defense

against the Anti-Christ of Communism” and to ponder the possibilities if Hitler were to

“surrender to the control of God”: “Through such a man God could control a nation

overnight and solve every last bewildering problem.”23 Even before Buchman’s

statements about Hitler, Niebuhr regarded the Oxford Group as “the final and most

absurd expression of the romantic presuppositions of liberal Christianity,” for it had

sought to “solve all the problems of modern economics and politics by persuading

individuals to live in terms of ‘absolute honor’ and ‘absolute love’” (177-78). Buchman’s

Oxford Group demonstrated how easily liberal theology, with its sentimental notions

about human capacity for good, could lead to conservative politics.

In light of these conservative manifestations of the Social Gospel, it is no wonder

that Walter Rauschenbusch and others in the “left wing of the social gospel movement”

(185) fared better in An Interpretation. That Niebuhr was delivering the lectures for

whom Rauschenbusch was the namesake no doubt partially explained his judiciousness.

But Niebuhr also believed Rauschenbusch possessed a “social realism” absent in many of

23 Ahlstrom, Religious History, 925-926, Buchman quoted on 926. While the Oxford Group’s approach to social problems may have been naïve, the movement did have a very positive effect on the lives of countless individuals through Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), founded by Oxford Group members in the 1930s. Ironically, given Niebuhr’s outspoken criticism of the Oxford Group, AA officially adopted his “Serenity Prayer” in the 1940s. The AA-affiliated Hazelden Treatment Center and Foundation continues to recognize its ties to the Oxford Group and has recently published some of its original literature from the 1930s. Practice These Principles; and, What Is the Oxford Group?, (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 1997 [1933]).

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his contemporaries; he was “not only the real founder of social Christianity in this country but also its most brilliant and generally satisfying exponent to the present day”

(vii). What separated Rauschenbusch and others on the left from Mathews and Jones, not to mention Buchman, was that they better understood the dynamics of power and the economic factors which helped preserve power disparities. They did not berate politics or try to escape from the political realm; they became Christian socialists.

But even this left wing remained confused about the ethic of Jesus. Although

Christian socialists accepted coercion as necessary, most attempted to draw a line at violence. The “law of love,” the “ethic of Jesus,” the “way of the Cross”—all of these phrases had become catchwords for absolute pacifism, for non-violent resistance.

Christian socialists practiced what Niebuhr now referred to as “religious pacifism.” His own pacifism had always been pragmatic and tentative, never absolute. But he now explicitly identified himself as an advocate of “pragmatic pacifism” as opposed to the

“religious pacifism” popular among the Christian Left (188).

That he contrasted pragmatic with religious rather than absolute is a subtle distinction, but an important one nevertheless. Niebuhr’s disagreement with liberal

Christian pacifists was not only that he could envision a time when violence might be justified while they remained absolutely committed to non-violence; his grievance was that they justified their opposition to violence with Christian language. They believed that by opposing violence, they were somehow following in Jesus’ footsteps.

Niebuhr did not argue, as some churchmen had during World War I, that Jesus was a realist who used violence to further justice. Nor did he believe that Jesus opposed violence but used “ethical coercion,” as Kirby Page had suggested during the Manchurian

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crisis.24 Jesus, according to Niebuhr, was an absolute idealist who opposed all forms of coercion, violent and non-violent alike. He held an apocalyptic view of history in which the Kingdom of God would be brought about only by the grace of God. Humans could not usher in the Kingdom of God on earth through any political action of their own, not even non-violent resistance; they could only repent. Repentance, not the non-violent resistance of Christian pacifists, was the love ethic in its purest form. Put another way,

Jesus’ love was “vertical . . . between the loving will of God and the will of man”; it was not the “horizontal” love that Christian pacifists hoped to establish between men in the political realm (39).

Niebuhr had made passing reference to the distinction between Jesus’ non- resistance and the pacifists’ non-violent resistance in Moral Man. In that book, however,

Jesus was hardly the focal point of discussion; then Niebuhr had been primarily concerned with critiquing pacifism on pragmatic grounds. If violence could bring about justice more quickly and decisively than non-violence, it should not be dismissed as a political method. Then he had argued that absolute pacifism was bad politics; now he was arguing it was also bad religion. What justification did Christian socialists have for drawing the line between ethical and unethical coercion at violence? Had they not already violated the ethic of Jesus well before violence entered into the discussion?

They [pacifists] must recognize that a Christian’s concern over his violation of the ethic of Jesus ought to begin long before the question of violence is reached. It ought to begin by recognizing that he has violated the law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Out of the violation of that commandment arises the conflict of life with life and nation with nation. It is highly desirable to restrict this conflict to non-violent assertions and counter-assertions, but it is not always possible. Sometimes the sudden introduction of a perfectionist ethic into hitherto pragmatic and relative political issues may actually imperil the interests of justice. The

24 Page, “Is Coercion Ever Justifiable?,” World Tomorrow, June 1932, 173.

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Christian who lives in and benefits from, a society in which coercive economic and political relationships are taken for granted, all of which are contrary to the love absolutism of the gospels, cannot arbitrarily introduce the uncompromising ethic of the gospel into one particular issue. (186)

Niebuhr was not rejecting pacifism, or at least not the pragmatic pacifism with which he had always identified himself. If anything, he sounded more committed to non- violent resistance as a political method in An Interpretation than he had in Moral Man or during the height of the F.O.R. debate. Then he had tended to emphasize the distinction between the class struggle, in which violence might be justified, and international conflicts, in which he could not envision such a case. Now he was for more reticent about violence even in the context of class conflict, a shift of emphasis that was probably more a reaction to critics who unfairly characterized him as an advocate of violence than it was an indication of any substantive change in attitude toward violence in his own mind.

Niebuhr now used “pragmatic pacifist” and “realist” interchangably. A pragmatic pacifist understood that we live in a world where “interest is set against interest and force against force,” yet he or she remained committed to “mitigating the struggle between contending forces, by insinuating the greatest possible degree of social imagination and intelligence into it and providing the best possible means of arbitration so that violent conflict may be avoided” (188-89). After all, Niebuhr argued, “violence is a great evil and ought to be avoided if at all possible” (189).

Furthermore, he distanced himself from those radicals with whom his liberal critics often lumped him. Although “a responsible relationship to the political order . . . makes an unqualified disavowal of violence impossible,” a responsible Christian should also “oppose romantic appeals to violence on the part of the forces of radicalism” (189).

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As in Reflections, he urged Christians to keep in mind the law of love at all times while acting in accord to the less strenuous law of justice.

What bothered Niebuhr about the Christian socialists was that they combined a reasonable pragmatic pacifism with religious pacifism. He had grown tired of moralistic exhortations to follow in Jesus’ steps. Jesus had no place in a discussion of violence or non-violence; indeed, he had no place in any political discussion. Niebuhr never invoked

Jesus to justify his political positions: the only times he ever mentioned Jesus were when

he was disputing liberals’ claims to be carrying out Jesus’ ethic.

Niebuhr always preferred Christ to Jesus. The former was a powerful symbol of

the intersection of God’s transcendence with human history. Christ captured the tension

between pessimism and optimism that Niebuhr argued was central to the Christian faith:

“Christ and the cross reveal not only the possibilities but the limits of human finitude in

order that a more ultimate hope may arise from the contrite recognition of those limits”

(120-21). Liberals, on the other hand, spoke not of Christ, but of Jesus. They stripped the

transcendent element from the symbol of Christ by focusing on Jesus as a man who lived

in history. They were guilty of “reducing Christ to a figure of heroic love who reveals the

full possibilities of human nature to us” (120).

Niebuhr’s treatment of Jesus reveals the sort of ambiguity one encounters when

trying to understand his Christian faith. Did he believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ? His

response to the liberal tendency to focus on Jesus as man suggests that he might have,

and certainly those liberals who accused him of “religious absolutism” thought he was

returning to an outdated orthodoxy. But one should recall that he was discussing

Christian myths. Nowhere did he defend the doctrine of incarnation, and his very use of

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the term myth was surely anathema to fundamentalists. Indeed, he used the category of myth so that he did not have to bother with the question of historical truth. Although the importance of such questions to believers ought not be dismissed as frivolous, any understanding of Niebuhr’s Christianity must begin with the recognition that he showed little interest in many of those questions with which Christian theology was traditionally concerned.

He was, after all, a professor of Christian ethics, not a systematic theologian. As a philosophical pragmatist at heart, he preferred to address the consequences of

Christianity’s mythological symbols—their effect on the human psyche and the actions that they led Christians to take. But unlike many of his Christian contemporaries, both the fundamentalists who practiced an “uncritical piety” (161) and the liberals who thought

Jesus’ ethic was practicable, Niebuhr did not believe Christianity in and of itself could provide a guide to ethical action. Nor did he agree with those rationalists who argued that reason alone could furnish an adequate morality: “The theory presupposes a nonexistent unity of man’s impulsive life, a greater degree of rational transcendence over impulse than actually exists and a natural obedience of impulse to the ideal which all history refutes” (207-8).

John Dewey’s recent book, A Common Faith, served as Niebuhr’s example of such an attempt to find a rational basis for morality, an ironic choice considering Dewey claimed a middle ground between fundamentalism and atheism that in many ways resembled Niebuhr’s Christianity. Much of the difference between the two thinkers can be attributed to temperament. There is little question that Dewey was far more optimistic than Niebuhr even if one accepts that the latter’s pessimism has been exaggerated. But

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confusion also stemmed from the fact that they did not have a shared understanding of

the terms of the debate: Niebuhr’s Christianity hardly resembled the “religion” from

which Dewey hoped to rescue the “religious,” and Dewey’s science was not as

mechanical as Niebuhr believed it to be.25

Nevertheless, where Dewey argued that the rational imagination could provide the

sort of tension between the ideal and the actual that Niebuhr found essential for ethical

action, Niebuhr remained convinced that neither Christianity nor rationality in isolation

could meet the moral challenges which humans faced. Once again he employed a

metaphor to illustrate his point:

Historic Christianity is in the position of having the materials for the foundation and the roof of the structure of an adequate morality. But it is unable to complete the structure. Its faith in a meaningful world, having a source beyond itself, is the foundation. Its faith in the end and fulfillment is the roof. The walls, the uprights, and diagonals which complete the building are the moral actions and ideals which are fashioned by the application of religion’s ultimate insights to all specific situations. This application is a rather sober and prosaic task and a profound religion with its insights into the tragedy of human history and its hope for the ultimate resolution of that tragedy is not always equal to it. (166)

Christianity, therefore, would have to “borrow from some scheme of rationalism to

complete its ethical structure” (205).

As Niebuhr’s polemics against rationalism and non-violence had been toned

down—though not abandoned—in An Interpretation, so too had his emphasis on sin at the expense of grace. Gone was the imminent doom of Reflections, replaced by a hopefulness derived from a religious understanding of human life which incorporated the grace of God. Although Reflections noted the balance of optimism and pessimism

Christianity provided, nowhere in its pages could one encounter a claim as optimistic as

25 John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934).

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the following from An Interpretation: “To understand life in its total dimension means to

accept it with grateful reverence as good. It is good in its ultimate essence even when it

seems evil and chaotic in its contingent and momentary reality” (218-19).

Exactly what grace looked like in history was still vague, but it was ever present

nonetheless. “There are . . . forces in life which can only be described as the grace of

God,” wrote Niebuhr. Reason and imagination may inspire men to action, but degree of

inspiration could not explain what men could accomplish: “What men are able to will

depends not upon the strength of their willing, but upon the strength which enters their

will and over which their will has little control” (217). Humankind could not achieve

justice merely by hoping for it, or even by taking action to secure it. Both steps were

necessary components in the struggle, but so too was the contrite recognition that, despite

their pretensions, humans were not God and were therefore incapable of making the

actual conform to the ideal.

An Interpretation of Christian Ethics left a longer lasting impression than

Reflections on the End of an Era. More than forty years after its publication Charles C.

West, Professor of Christian Ethics at Princeton University, declared it was “not only a

milestone in its time; it is still a classic presentation of the tension between the love ethic

of Jesus and the hard requirements of relative justice in the power conflicts of a sinful

world.”26 In its own time, however, An Interpretation received far less attention than

Reflections. No doubt those philosophers and radicals, who, according to J. King Gordon, always took time to ponder Niebuhr’s latest work, were far less interested in books aimed

26 Charles C. West, review of An interpretation of Christian Ethics, by Reinhold Niebuhr, Princeton Seminary Bulletin 2, no. 3 (1979), 287.

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specifically at a Christian audience. The New York Times, Nation, and New Republic, all

of which published reviews of Reflections, did not do the same for Niebuhr’s latest work.

Niebuhr’s more hopeful tone seems to have rattled liberal Protestants much less than his earlier books: no one felt compelled to call him out for his pessimism as John

Haynes Holmes and others had after Moral Man and Reflections. Furthermore, Wilhelm

Pauck, professor of Reformation history at the University of Chicago Divinity School (in

1953 he joined Niebuhr and Bennett at Union Theological Seminary), suggested that

Niebuhr could no longer be dismissed as a lone prophet: “Let the critics of this new

Protestantism therefore realize that Niebuhr is not a single voice in the wilderness, but that he speaks for those Christians of this generation who have outgrown (really outgrown) the concerns of liberal Christianity as well as of liberal culture, and are willing to be confronted (and to confront their age) with the challenge of prophetic religion.”27

That is not to say that An Interpretation was wholeheartedly embraced by liberal

Protestants. Edgar Sheffield Brightman, a philosophy professor at Boston University,

praised the book but lamented Niebuhr’s “almost ritualistic attacks on modernity,

liberalism, and rationalism,” a fair enough criticism. But Irl G. Whitchurch, an ethics and

philosophy professor at the Methodist Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanston, Illinois,

offered readers of the Christian Century a review that grossly mischaracterized Niebuhr’s

thesis. Making no mention of Niebuhr’s interpretation of Jesus’ ethic or his critique of

pacifism, Whitchurch suggested that Niebuhr offered only a “wholesale indictment of

reason” in preference for “a revelation that takes refuge in paradoxical obscurantism even

as it claims to be the truth of God.” Rather than praising Niebuhr for blazing new trails in

27 Wilhelm Pauck, review of An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, by Reinhold Niebuhr, Radical Religion 1, no. 2 (Winter 1935): 33-36, quote from 34.

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theology as Brightman had, Whitchurch argued Niebuhr’s “transcendental theology is a blind alley, not an adequate interpretation of experience, Christian or otherwise.” Perhaps throwing his arms up in bafflement at such a misreading rather than preparing for yet another exchange with his liberal critics, Niebuhr offered no rejoinder.28

* * *

John Coleman Bennett’s first book, Social Salvation (1935) was perhaps the most sophisticated and subtle liberal response to Niebuhr’s burgeoning Christian realism.

Although Bennett himself later appropriated the Christian realist label, in 1935 he could just as easily be described as a proponent of the Social Gospel, blurring the lines between these two supposedly distinct schools of thought. Indeed, Bennett saw himself as writing in the tradition of Rauschenbusch’s A Theology for the Social Gospel, a book which, despite its influence, had prompted few similar studies. “Too often,” wrote Bennett,

“theologians, even when they have a strong social interest, relegate those problems to an optional appendix which Christians can choose to ignore.”29

Bridging the gap between the older liberal Protestantism and the newer perspectives introduced by Niebuhr and European neo-orthodoxy became Bennett’s lifelong project. Reflecting back upon his career, Bennett very candidly admitted, “I suppose from [Niebuhr’s] point of view, or perhaps from the point of view of some external observer, I represented a dilution of Niebuhr. That is probably true—a

28 Edgar Sheffield Brightman, review of An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, by Reinhold Niebuhr, Religion in Life 5, no. 2 (Spring 1936): 307-308; Irl G. Whitchurch, “Transcendental Ethics,” review of An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, by Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Century, 1 January 1936, 19-20. 29 John Coleman Bennett, Social Salvation: A Religious Approach to the Problems of Social Change (London: Charles Scribner's sons, 1948 [1935]), xi.

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liberalizing dilution of Niebuhr.” As he saw it, they had similar perspectives though their

minds “worked very differently”: “Instead of moving from rather extreme positions on

opposite sides and finding a dialectical way of relating these extreme positions, I don’t

think I just went down the middle of the road but I was closer to the center than he was.

And I was not unhappy about the title—or rather the label—given to me often: ‘neo-

liberal,’” a label which Niebuhr could never fully embrace.30

In “After Liberalism—What?,” one of his earliest essays, which appeared in the

Christian Century in November 1933, Bennett charted the course he would take. He

recognized the “disintegration of liberalism” as the most important trend in American

theology. To be sure, liberalism had its shortcomings, but there was much in liberalism

that could be salvaged. This point was lost on those who made “rather reckless attacks”

on liberalism, many of whom “in large areas of their thought are still liberal.” Bennett

was not the sort to name names, but one suspects that most of the Christian Century’s readers would have thought Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society just such an attack.

What was worth saving in liberalism? Bennett identified four contributions or positive trends that liberalism had brought about in theology. First, liberalism was a

“cleansing force” that cleared away old dogmas, particularly those rooted in an inerrant reading of the Bible. Second, liberalism stripped power from older hierarchies and placed religious authority in the hands of the individual believer. Third, Bennett believed the attempt to recover a historical Jesus was, on the whole, beneficial. To be sure, “liberals may have distorted the portrait of Jesus,” but the attempt to connect the transcendent God

30 Bennett and Juergensmeyer, Conversations with John Bennett, 47-48.

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to human history through Jesus was a positive step that European neo-orthodox theologians undermined by stressing the otherness of God. Finally, liberalism had emphasized the “continuity of the Christian revelation with reason.” Rather than creating a bifurcation between reason and faith, liberalism had made Christianity much more palatable to the modern individual by rejecting the notion that one must choose between faith and reason.

These trends, which in moderation were positive, must be checked lest they lead to excesses. Bennett agreed with Niebuhr that liberals had all too often presented a

“sentimental and unrealistic view of man.” They did not fully appreciate the persistence of sin. Not only had Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society driven home the point, but so too did recent history. More so even than the tragedy of the World War, the Great

Depression had put American theologians on notice that the Kingdom of God was not imminent. This was not cause for pessimism; rather it should lead to a re-evaluation of faith. Liberal “complacency” must be abandoned, as should the tendency to identify God with human plans. Nevertheless, Bennett argued, “We may still believe we can get results and that some results preserve more values than others, even though the ideal society may still be out of sight.”

But liberals also needed to revive the concept of grace. In Bennett’s estimation, liberalism had placed too great an emphasis on humankind’s “search” for God, and neo- orthodoxy on God’s revelation to man. Staking the middle ground, Bennett argued that

“the contrast is overdone because there must be searching to put us in the place where we can recognize God’s revelation.” A change of emphasis, not a rejection of liberalism, was needed. Christians must continue to fight for justice in the world, but they must “put

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more emphasis upon humility of spirit and receptivity and less upon what so easily becomes self-important striving.”

Bennett recognized the value of the prophetic emphasis of early Christianity. Like

Niebuhr, he understood that the recovery of the prophetic voice was as likely to come from outside of the church as it was to come from within. Encouraged by Niebuhr to broaden his perspective, Bennett read both conservatives and radicals who challenged liberal assumptions. “As one slowly abandons the liberal view of human nature it is surprising how much meaning you can find in things which before seemed based on a false premise,” he reported back to Niebuhr in the summer of 1933 after reading Thomas

Aquinas, Marx, Irving Babbit, and Emil Brunner, among others.31 In Marx in particular, he found something of the prophets of the Old Testament, namely that “in the real world we have to do with an inexorable process which makes an unjust economic system destroy itself.” This was admittedly a “grim substitute for the optimistic faith in progress,” but it was not entirely bleak, for the process had a “fair chance . . . [of] batter[ing] down the worst obstacles to progress, though it will destroy much of the good with the evil.”

Finally, Bennett made one assertion that was entirely absent in Niebuhr’s analysis. He argued that the church, as a community of believers, may yet prove to be a powerful force in international politics. Identifying the church not only as a “guardian of a great tradition,” but also as a “living movement” uniting people all over the world, he suggested that a worldwide ecumenical movement might mitigate the growing nationalism that appeared to be leading to another world war. His ecumenical vision was

31 John Coleman Bennett to Reinhold Niebuhr, 9 July 1933, RN Papers, Box 42, “Bennett, John, 1930-1972.”

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broad and inclusive: he already spoke of Protestantism’s “common ground with

contemporary Catholicism,” even though the majority of liberal Protestants denied

Catholics had anything in common with them well into the 1960s. Bennett’s commitment to ecumenism was demonstrated by his involvement in planning the Life and Work

Movement’s conference held in Oxford, England, in 1937, an international ecumenical conference that served as a precursor to the World Council of Churches. Even in the area of ecumenism his optimism was more qualified than that of many of his fellow liberals.

“Is this merely to take refuge in a romantic view of the Christian movement because everything else has seemed to fail?” Bennett’s answer: “It may be so.” Nevertheless, he believed the church was more relevant to the world’s problems than it had been in several generations.32

In Social Salvation Bennett elaborated many of these points. He raised a few minor objections to Niebuhr’s analysis, particularly his use of terms. But ultimately

Bennett’s diagnosis of social problems and proposals for social action were hardly distinguishable from Niebuhr’s, granted they were presented in a far less somber tone.

The biggest point of divergence between Bennett and Niebuhr was the use of the term sin. Whereas Niebuhr identified sin, or human egoism, as the source of all social problems, Bennett sought to distinguish sin, which he defined as “deliberately chosen evil conduct by responsible persons,” from “social evil” (8).33 He admitted that sin—the sins

of both the present and past generations—played a role in creating social evil, but he also

32 John Coleman Bennett, “After Liberalism—What?,” Christian Century, 8 November 1933, 1403-1406. 33 This and all subsequent parenthetical references in this section refer to Bennett, Social Salvation: A Religious Approach to the Problems of Social Change (London: Charles Scribner's sons, 1948 [1935]).

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identified more than a half-dozen other factors, including the complexity of modern

society, individual “ignorance,” “stupidity,” and simple “lack of imagination” (34).

Conflating social evil with sin only led to confusion: “To pretend that there is no

difference between those who are implicated in social evil in spite of themselves and

those who deliberately perpetuate it for profit is to run the risk of unreality” (38).

On its surface, this assertion appears to be a criticism of Niebuhr, and to some

extent it was. Nowhere in Social Salvation, however, did Bennett challenge Niebuhr

directly. He cited Niebuhr often, but he always managed to incorporate quotations from

Niebuhr that ran counter to the pessimistic caricature his liberal critics created. Bennett

did not simply cherry-pick from Niebuhr’s words to support his own arguments. Rather,

he helped restore depth and nuance to Niebuhr’s thought. He sought to convince liberal

churchmen that they must take Niebuhr’s challenges seriously; they could not simply

dismiss his thought as a “philosophy of despair” as John Haynes Holmes had done.

Privately, however, Bennett did admit to disagreement with Niebuhr. But his

friendship and respect for Niebuhr, who read a draft of Social Salvation, and his

temperament, which led him to focus on points of agreement rather than areas of conflict,

prevented him from attempting to make a career of tearing down one of the giants in his

field. Yet the minor disagreements hinted at in Social Salvation persisted for decades, even as Niebuhr and Bennett worked closely together. Reflecting upon the relation of his own thought to Niebuhr’s later in life, Bennett maintained that Niebuhr’s writings

“tended . . . to overdo the idea of this unity in sin,” but he praised Niebuhr for always making the moral distinctions between people and alternative courses of action in any given political context. “So [Niebuhr] had these two sides of his thought, and I never felt

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that . . . he ever quite got them together with full clarity,” he explained. Bennett hoped that by downplaying talk of sin and emphasizing the social evils to which men contributed without their knowing, he may solve this problem.34

Bennett’s distinction between sin and social evil was not directed at Niebuhr so much as it was to those proponents of the Social Gospel who continued to believe that by working to eradicate individual sin, they could eradicate social evil. “It is one of the curious perversions of a great faith,” wrote Bennett, “that there ever arose the confusing division between personal and social Christianity” (65). He was especially critical of the

Oxford Group which continued to grow in popularity. Frank Buchman’s strategy of trying to convert people in power—Bennett listed automakers in Detroit, delegates to the

League of Nations in Geneva, and members of Parliament as the Oxford Group’s latest targets—lacked “social realism.” Such attempts were characterized by “moral superiority,” and their proponents suffered from “destructive blind spots” (56) that prevented them from recognizing that their own morality was shaped by their class interests: “Without knowing that they live in a class society they live on the side of the gulf which divides the classes. It is hard enough to see across that gulf if you know it is there, but even ‘guided’ [by God] men cannot see across it if they are unaware of its existence” (55).

Those who focused on reforming individuals to combat social injustice often turned to philanthropy, at best an “interim ethic” (28) that might temporarily assuage the problem but could never hope to solve it. Indeed, Bennett recognized, as Niebuhr had on several occasions, that philanthropy only exacerbated class inequality: “It does not

34 Bennett and Juergensmeyer, Conversations with John Bennett, 48.

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threaten the Christian’s position of dominant power but is in fact a subtle way of exercising that power in the community” (27). Feeling some sense of responsibility for the poor, many Christians practiced charity because it was “the easiest thing to do” and because it allowed them to feel as if they were doing something more than they actually were. This “premature satisfaction of the conscience” (27) led to self-righteousness on the part of those who were actually preserving an unjust order. He understood that it was not individuals of evil will who perpetuated social evil; rather it was the good, kind- hearted, middle-class individual who went to church on Sundays and sought to treat his employees fairly but refused to accept the need for more fundamental changes: “Such a man is a greater obstacle to economic change than the economic buccaneer” (33).

In effect, Bennett made the same point as Niebuhr. Both reminded liberal

Protestants that they were neither as innocent nor as righteous as they believed. But

Bennett’s distinction between sin and social evil softened the blow of the charge. “Good”

Christians could accept complicity in social evil without having to accept that they were sinners who were no better than men of evil will. Niebuhr’s refusal to distinguish conscious from unconscious evil meant that all individuals were sinners in the eyes of

God. Telling individuals who strove to act morally that they were sinners and would always be sinners may have been sound theology, but it was not the most effective approach to bringing about a change in their behavior, a fact Bennett seems to have understood better than Niebuhr. Both theologians were primarily concerned with the

“social evils” to which “good” individuals contributed, but Niebuhr’s enmity for self- righteousness prevented him from accepting Bennett’s distinction: those “good”

Christians were, in Niebuhr’s eyes, the ones most in need of contrition.

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The other minor disagreement between Niebuhr and Bennett was over the use of

“myths.” Whereas Niebuhr argued that myths were illuminating, Bennett suggested that they were “the source of endless confusion” (36). The myth might contain some truth, but one could not revive an old myth without running the risk of also reviving the many errors that came from a literal reading of the myth. Any insight that came from the revival of a myth was not inherent in the myth itself, but rather the product of the explanation of the myth’s significance. Why bother with the myth when one could simply begin with the reasoned explanation?

Bennett’s and Niebuhr’s differing attitudes toward myth mattered little in the end, at least in terms of the political consequences of their thought, but it was one of the few areas in which they never reached complete accord. Niebuhr continued to argue privately with Bennett that myths expressed truths that were rational absurdities. Indeed, as he saw it, “All theology is an effort to rationalize what can’t be fully rationalized.”35 Bennett, on the other hand, believed that as soon as one explained the significance of a myth, the idea behind the myth ceased to be a rational absurdity. Besides, as Bennett recognized in his

1938 review of Niebuhr’s Beyond Tragedy, Niebuhr was “fundamentally an empiricist rather than a traditionalist.” He only turned to myths because they “do justice to more of the stubborn facts than any rationalistic scheme.” Niebuhr’s process was rational, even if he did not recognize it as such. But Bennett feared that Niebuhr’s use of myths

35 Reinhold Niebuhr to John Coleman Bennett, 8 January [1935], RN Papers, Box 42, “Bennett, John, 1930-1972.”

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“encourages in others a traditionalism and even a form of credulity which are entirely foreign to his own spirit and his own real method of thought.”36

The two authors’ differing writing styles embody their respective attitudes toward myth and probably reveal more than their actual debates about the usefulness of myths.

Niebuhr’s prose was always rousing and poetic; he never shied away from a vivid metaphor or analogy to convey a point. Bennett, on the other hand, was a consummate list-maker, always providing outlines to make his points as clear and as precise as possible. His straightforward and simple prose in Social Salvation even won praise from

Charles Clayton Morrison for having “not a single rhetorical flourish,” something the editor would never have said of Niebuhr.37 It is little wonder, then, that Niebuhr preferred the “portrait” provided by myth and Bennett the “photograph” of clear, rational explanation.

While no one would have confused Social Salvation for a book written by

Niebuhr, many of Niebuhr’s ideas from Reflections and An Interpretation could be found in its pages. Like Niebuhr, Bennett believed Jesus’ life provided no simple ethic for the modern world: “Glib talk about applying the principles of Jesus has become unreal. . . .

The best that we can hope to achieve in this world will involve a compromise with the ideal of Jesus” (81). Although the law of love could not be easily translated into political action, it was not altogether irrelevant, but remained “the regulative ideal for every age and situation” (78).

36 John C. Bennett, “Review: Beyond Tragedy, by Reinhold Niebuhr,” Journal of Religion 18, no. 3 (July 1938): 335-37, quote from 336. See also, Bennett and Juergensmeyer, Conversations with John Bennett, 49. 37 Charles Clayton Morrison, “Religion and Social Change,” Christian Century, 12 June 1935, 795.

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In his discussion of the compromise Christians were forced to make with Jesus’ ethic, Bennett minimized the controversial issue of violence, literally relegating it to a footnote (albeit a lengthy one). Admitting that a chapter, if not a book, were needed to address the complexity of the issue, he argued, as he had during the F.O.R. debate, that violence ought to be removed from discussion of the class struggle in the U.S.. This was not a moral argument, but rather a practical one: “violent revolution in America would be the height of folly,” because it would only prompt a harsh military crackdown on the nascent revolutionary movement and would turn the large American middle class against the workers. In the U.S., if any substantial social change were to occur, the middle class would have to support it.

Bennett was not so optimistic as to believe that Christians could dismiss violence outright. Violence should not be made the platform for change, but anyone who supported labor in the struggle had to recognize that incidental violence was virtually inevitable. Even if peaceful revolution were possible, violence would be needed to protect against the counter-revolutionary actions that would likely follow. The Church must “preach in season and out of season the essential evil in all violence,” but “allowing the present victims of society to pay the real price” was not to be confused with the

Christian way (209-10n16).

Fitting Niebuhr’s criteria for a realist, Bennett understood the role of self-interest in politics. Nations would always be motivated by self-interest. There was “reason to be thankful when that selfishness turns out to be enlightened,” but “how far even a Christian statesmen should pursue a policy which involves real national self-sacrifice” remained a question without a clear-cut answer (83).

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Nor was self-interest absent in the class struggle. Although he dismissed talk of some distant “class war” as unproductive, Bennett recognized that “political struggles between economic groups . . . have become undisguisedly central in American politics”

(85). Neither sides’ motives were entirely pure, but that did not mean that both sides were morally equal. The working class may have been motivated by vengeance, but it was also

“moved by a passion for justice [and] a broader sense of human solidarity than is possible for the economic individualist” (84). More so than Niebuhr, Bennett conceded that it was possible Christians might, in good conscience, decide that protecting the current system was the most moral alternative. But if they made that choice, they must also admit that they were not “neutral,” recognize that they had compromised the pure ethic of Jesus, and accept responsibility for condoning injustice. Christians on both sides of the struggle must recognize the “tension between the Christian ideal and the best possible social good open to us” (85).

God should not be identified too exclusively with any one system or with any particular political party, but that did not mean He was irrelevant to politics. The will of

God was always behind the “next-best-thing to be done” (86). To be sure, what the next step should be was always up for debate. But Niebuhr’s guiding ethical value of justice was also vague. Neither Bennett nor Niebuhr pretended to offer a scheme which could be followed in the hopes of fulfilling the ideal, but the open-endedness of their proposals was intentional. Their contribution to Christian ethics was recognizing that while the ideal could not be achieved, Christians must always resist complacency: they had the responsibility of attempting to bring the world into accord with the ideal while remaining realistic enough to know the process could never be complete.

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Although both Niebuhr and Bennett were critics of the liberal notion of progress,

they could hardly be mistaken for defenders of the status quo or apologists for injustice.

Their grievance against liberals was that they too often assumed progress was easy. As

Bennett pointed out, one could recognize that advances were made in the areas of science and technology, and in culture and art, without assuming that these were accompanied by positive developments in terms of morality and human welfare. The World War and the

Great Depression, whose impact had been felt more sharply by Americans, had illustrated the point. American liberals needed a sense of catastrophism. This was not a pessimistic message, but a realistic and hopeful one. “Catastrophes must come,” but how we as human beings respond is up to us. Whether catastrophe resulted in “creativity” or “pure destruction” was largely determined by human actions. “What we do has significant results,” wrote Bennett. “Let us be very clear about this fact” (170).

Christians could take solace in the belief that God’s grace was at work in the world, but that was no excuse to sit back and wait for God to act. Human evil, the corruption of the freedom given mankind by God, insured crises would arise. But God’s grace also entered the world through human actions, and Christians must maintain faith in the face of these crises that He was on the side of justice. They must accept responsibility in the struggle for justice without presuming to be carrying out the will of God, for part of the mystery of God’s grace was that He often worked through groups that opposed one another: “It is the recognition that God can use us, in combination with others who seem to be working against us, which makes it possible for some of us to go on in such a time of confusion” (199).

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Christians could make no special claim to be the sole executors of God’s judgment, but they nevertheless had a role to play. The churches had the responsibility to push for social salvation as well as individual salvation, and that meant educating their members on the issues involved in political struggles. This did not mean that a preacher should stand before his congregation and tell it which policies to support. Churches should provide forums outside of the main services in which politics could be discussed.

The neutrality for which churches should strive was not an apolitical stance so much as a non-partisan one: “Blind party loyalty should be made to appear a sin to the instructed

Christian instead of being accepted as it is now as a harmless foible” (128). Churches could not afford to be aloof from politics because politics involved making moral decisions, which Bennett argued included “not those which are concerned with gambling and drinking alone but . . . any decisions which clearly affect human welfare” (127).

To be sure, church leaders did not have the technical wherewithal to devise schemes to solve society’s ills, but they did possess moral insights which experts lacked.

For instance, economists might have more authority to speak on the technical aspects of various economic systems, but Bennett believed preachers were far better equipped to answer the important moral question, “What does capitalism do to persons?” (131).

Besides, he argued, those who emphasized the technical aspects of various political proposals often did so to silence the discussion when all of society should be participating. While churches could not presume to have all the answers, they could strike a humble note and point out that the political problems society faced raised questions involving the very limits of human imagination and capabilities, questions which no individual, expert or otherwise, could presume to answer definitively.

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* * *

Social Salvation never attracted the interest outside of the churches that Niebuhr’s writings did, but within the churches it was very well-received. It even became a

Religious Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Although he wrote about a dozen other books in his lifetime, Bennett always maintained that this, his first, had the most significant and lasting impact. He may not have attained the status of Niebuhr outside of the churches, but he did help to popularize Niebuhr’s Christian realism within the churches. After the publication of Social Salvation, Niebuhr could no longer be dismissed

as a lone prophet.38

Niebuhr recognized the significance of Bennett’s work. He privately praised

Bennett for providing “a theology for the new social gospel.” Bennett was “really the first

to work out some of the systematic implications of the positions now being taken by

various schools of radical thought.”

But Niebuhr also raised some objections. In addition to defending his use of the

term sin and his own emphasis on myths, Niebuhr also argued that Bennett’s discussion

of violence was unfair to many radicals. In his private response to Bennett, Niebuhr did

more to clarify his own “revolutionary” position than he had in most of his public

statements up to that time:

You discuss revolutionary doctrine as if all revolutionaries were as romantic as Francis Henson’s R.P.C. [Revolutionary Policy Committee] crowd and preached revolutionary violence. I am not the only one who regards that kind of revolutionism as pure nonsense. . . . A decent and intelligent radical group will not use violence until it is threatened by counter violence on the part of the reactionaries. But neither can it draw the absolute distinction of saying that it will use violence only after it has gained its position through parliamentary means and to defeat counter-revolutionary efforts. As in Germany the ultimate crisis may

38 Bennett and Juergensmeyer, Conversations with John Bennett, 31.

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break down the democratic process in such a way that no one can act without violating democratic principles. Your discussion assumes an insurrectionary type of violence too unqualifiedly. To recognize the endless relativities of political situations is to remove this question from the field of theology and Christian ethics at all events and to place it purely within the realm of technical statesmanship. 39

What ambiguity remained in Niebuhr’s thought regarding violence in the class struggle

would always be there. One who renounced with equal disdain both planned violence and

absolute non-violence could offer little in the way of specifics in advance of a crisis.

The Christian Century’s Charles Clayton Morrison also praised Bennett. That the

editor’s review of Social Salvation was the only one he wrote in 1935 indicates the significance that he attached to the book’s publication. Bennett was, according to

Morrison, among the youngest and most able of a “new generation” of American theologians, a generation spear-headed by Niebuhr that was “both liberal and conservative—liberal in their method and spirit, but more conservative in their conclusions than their liberal forbears.”

Bennett’s distinction between sin and social evil pleased Morrison no more than it did Niebuhr: it was in fact a “distinction without a fundamental difference.” But whereas

Niebuhr believed all social evil could fit under the rubric of “sin,” Morrison argued that the revival of the doctrine of sin was a “dangerous novelty” in the theology of the new generation. It was not that all social evil was sin, but rather that all sin was the product of social evil. Social salvation and individual salvation could not be disentangled, not because individual salvation was necessary for social salvation, but because no individual could be saved without first reforming society. Indeed, according to Morrison, the idea of

39 Reinhold Niebuhr to John Coleman Bennett, 26 December 1934, RN Papers, Box 42, “Bennett, John, 1930-1972.”

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the “individual” was a figment: “It is a matter of common scientific knowledge

everywhere except in theology that the individual is socially conditioned, that personality

emerges in a social medium, that it is sustained and developed and modified—‘lost’ and

‘saved’—by its responsiveness to a social situation, that, in a word, there is no such thing

as an individual person without a society, while societies can and do exist in nature

without individual persons.”

The distinction did not “mar the value of the book as a whole,” because Bennett

emphasized social evil and social salvation throughout the text, leaving little room for

older notions of individual salvation. “I have been looking forward for a long time to the

appearance of a book on the social gospel which will discard at the outset the misleading

and vitiating distinction between individual sin and social sin, between individual

salvation and social salvation, between the individual gospel and the social gospel,”

wrote Morrison. On the one hand, Bennett had argued for both individual and social

salvation, leaving Morrison’s hopes unfulfilled. On the other, after making the initial

distinction, Bennett wrote as if social salvation were the only salvation that mattered,

providing Morrison with ample reason to praise Social Salvation as a book that “comes nearer to doing this than do the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr.”40

* * *

Too often glossed over by historians, the theology behind Christian realism

cannot be separated from the political actions that realists like Niebuhr and Bennett

advocated during World War II. To be sure, not all interventionists embraced, or were

even aware of Niebuhr’s theology. Conversely, one could, as Richard Niebuhr did, share

40 Morrison, “Religion and Social Change,” Christian Century, 12 June 1935, 794-95.

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many of the realists’ theological views and still oppose intervention. But any investigation of Christian realism which hopes to distinguish it from other forms of political realism must address the developments in Niebuhr’s and Bennett’s theology that occurred before the war in Europe began.

To borrow Niebuhr’s metaphor, Christian realism might best be understood as a building or structure. Niebuhr and, to a lesser extent, Bennett had already laid the foundation and begun erecting the frame by the mid-1930s. They did not wait until World

War II to begin the project. But it was only during the international crises of the late ’30s and early ‘40s that their Christian realism began to take its final shape. Only then did they erect walls and place a roof upon the frame.

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Chapter Six: Pacifism and Internationalism, 1933-1935

Although Niebuhr and other critics sought to pin the “isolationist” epithet on the

pacifists by the time war broke out in Europe in 1939, no one could have possibly

mistaken the pacifists for isolationists at the beginning of the decade. The pacifists’

internationalism was indisputable. Indeed, prior to the debates over neutrality legislation

that dominated foreign policy discussions beginning in 1935, the pacifists more often

found themselves in agreement with those who would soon become interventionists than

with leading “isolationists” in the Senate, many of whom, like Hiram Johnson and

William E. Borah, were proud nationalists.

Far more ambiguous, however, were Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s views on

international relations. When he was sworn into office on 4 March 1933, no one knew in

which direction he would take American foreign policy. His campaign had focused

exclusively on domestic reform, and the Democratic party’s foreign policy plank, which

called for arbitration in international disputes and for U.S. adherence to the World

Court’s protocols, was hardly distinguishable from the Republican party’s. Supporters of

the League of Nations, who longed for the Democratic party to reassert a now politically

bankrupt Wilsonian internationalism, were less than enthusiastic, but isolationists had no

reason to fear Roosevelt would be more internationalist in outlook than Hoover.1

Historians have long since debated Roosevelt’s true intentions in the first half of the decade. The prevailing myth following Roosevelt’s death, one which he himself helped to cultivate, was that he had always been a committed internationalist whose

1 Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-45 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 23-24.

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hands were tied by isolationists in Congress. Revisionists such as Charles A. Beard challenged this notion. Beard argued that Roosevelt signaled his “acceptance of an isolationist program” on 2 February 1932, in a speech before the New York State Grange, and that the president was committed to that position until 1939 when he began to waiver.2

Much of the confusion surrounding Roosevelt’s foreign policy in the early 1930s stems from the fact that historians have accepted the terms of the debate as they arose in the latter half of the decade. Like Beard, Robert Divine categorized individuals and policies as either furthering “collective security” or “isolationism.” These were the labels with which those internationalists who became interventionists preferred to frame the debate. For example, Secretary of State Cordell Hull suggested in his Memoirs that any individual who expressed reservations about collective security was an “isolationist.” But internationalism, especially before war broke out in Europe, involved far more than the single issue of collective security.3

As Robert Dallek demonstrated with archival evidence that was unavailable to the previous generation of historians, Roosevelt himself fit into neither the “collective security” nor “isolationist” camp during his first term. Just as he was the consummate

2 Beard included the relevant portion of the Grange address, noting that the publication of the address in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1938), omitted the section dealing with the League. Charles A. Beard, American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940: A Study in Responsibilities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), 78-77. 3 Robert A. Divine, “Franklin D. Roosevelt and Collective Security, 1933,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 48, no. 1 (June 1961): 42-59; Robert A. Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Robert A. Divine, Reluctant Belligerent; Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1948).

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operator in domestic politics, Roosevelt was non-doctrinaire in foreign policy. He spoke in generalities about international cooperation, but he refused to commit himself to collective security and instead avoided addressing specifics regarding such pressing matters as international currency stabilization or war debt repayments as long as possible.

To be sure, some of the ambiguity was simply the product of the president’s political acumen: he knew how to effectively convince groups and individuals with opposing views that he was in agreement with each of them simultaneously. Furthermore, he understood that pushing for drastic changes in American foreign policy would hinder his domestic agenda: many of those isolationists in Congress who were severely critical of him by the end of the decade wholeheartedly endorsed the New Deal.4

But Dallek convincingly argued that Roosevelt’s vagueness was more than simple political posturing. The president was personally conflicted, and this tension was reflected in his decision to rely on a mix of “internationalists” and “nationalists”—

Dallek’s preferred and more accurate terms for the two distinct foreign policy approaches of the early ‘30s—as advisors. Roosevelt understood greater international cooperation was necessary to curtail future world crises, but he also believed that the U.S. would have to first turn inward to solve its own pressing domestic crisis. He wanted to leave the door open for cooperation, but he was unwilling to commit to anything that would bind his hands in the future.

Like Roosevelt, the pacifists and liberal Protestants associated with the Christian

Century were neither collective security advocates nor isolationists. But their internationalist convictions ran much deeper than the president’s. They, too, expressed

4 Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy. On FDR’s cooperation with the progressive isolationists, see Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists.

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reservations about the League, particularly the sanctions provisions of Article 16 of the

League’s Covenant. But they were far less concerned with preserving U.S. sovereignty than they were worried that sanctions, even in non-military forms, were more likely to provoke war than prevent it.

While the pacifist World Tomorrow backed Norman Thomas, the Socialist party presidential candidate who founded the journal and remained a regular contributor, the non-partisan Christian Century endorsed President Hoover in the 1932 election. Limiting his choice to the two major party candidates, the Christian Century’s Charles Clayton

Morrison based his decision primarily on the grounds that Hoover was more internationalist than Roosevelt. Although both candidates were virtually silent on foreign policy issues during the campaign, Morrison pointed to Hoover’s record while in office: he had championed the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, taken an active part in planning multiple disarmament conferences, worked with the League during the Manchurian crisis, announced a moratorium on war debts in 1931, and encouraged European leaders to meet at Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1932 to discuss cancelling German reparations. Hoover may not have advertised his internationalism, but Morrison surmised that “in the back of Mr.

Hoover’s head there are being held in reserve certain specific and perhaps radical advances, particularly in the realm of international action, which will be set going when the present acute distress has been fairly relieved.” No longer having to concern himself with winning re-election, Hoover would be free to carry out a foreign policy agenda that

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Morrison believed would resemble the internationalist proposals that the Christian

Century had long advocated.5

Roosevelt’s silence was far more troubling to Morrison than Hoover’s. It was

“equivalent to a request that peace-minded citizens go to the polls and write him a blank

cheque.” Morrison was willing to trust Hoover based on the president’s personal virtues

and record, but Roosevelt’s record provided only “grave reasons to be suspicious of the

use to which [he] will put such a cheque.” As a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Wilson, Roosevelt seemed likely to support “big navy” policies once he took office. But his public repudiation of the League was even more worrisome, especially given that it was a calculated move to win over William Randolph Hearst.

Finally, even if Roosevelt were personally more sympathetic to internationalism than his public statements had suggested, he would be “bound hand and foot by first-term obligations and re-election politics.”6

Morrison and his contributing editors changed their tune even before Roosevelt

took office. Following his landslide victory in the election, the editors, who had nothing

but scorn for Roosevelt’s vague statements during the campaign, saw his ambiguity as his

greatest advantage: “In all the history of American politics no candidate spoke so much

and committed himself to so little as did Mr. Roosevelt. Whatever one may think of the

ethical quality of such a course, its political shrewdness cannot now be discounted.”

5 “Don't Throw Away Your Vote,” World Tomorrow, 5 October 1932, 317-18; “The Stakes in the Election,” Christian Century, 26 October 1932, 1294-98, quote from 1296. The editors were rather astute in their estimation of Hoover’s internationalism. See Joan Hoff, Herbert Hoover, Forgotten Progressive (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1992 [1975]), ch. 6. 6 “The Stakes in the Election,” Christian Century, 26 October 1932, 1296-97. See also “Mr. Roosevelt and Foreign Policy,” ibid., 5 October 1932, 1192-94.

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Their concerns about a first-term president beholden to the party line were all but washed away, for “Mr. Roosevelt is in a position re-create his party.”7

There were at least four challenges in the realm of foreign policy already waiting on the president’s desk when Roosevelt took office. The most pressing matter was the ongoing crisis in Manchuria. Roosevelt’s conference with Henry Stimson in January

1933 and his subsequent announcement that he would continue the Hoover-Stimson policy of non-recognition quickly put the Christian Century editors’ minds at ease on this matter. But they still had some concerns about his approach to the three other issues: the

European war debts, the Disarmament Conference that had reconvened in Geneva in

January 1933, and the World Economic Conference scheduled to meet in London in the summer.

Of these three remaining issues, the debts issue was perhaps the most important to the Christian pacifists in early 1933. Disarmament may have been nearer to their hearts, but debt renegotiation was something which was completely within the power of the U.S. government to accomplish immediately. The Christian Century advocated a substantial reduction in debt payments, and the socialist and pacifist World Tomorrow went even further, calling for complete debt cancellation. On one level, this was a moral issue for the liberals and socialists who contributed to the journals. They recognized the sacrifices that European nations made during the World War and argued that now it was time for

Americans to sacrifice as well. In the words of one Christian Century editorial,

America’s decision to accept or reject debt negotiation would reveal to the world

“whether we are a niggardly, avaricious and inhumane people, or a people that loves

7 “Mr. Roosevelt's Free Hand,” Christian Century, 23 November 1932, 1430-31.

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justice and is willing to bear more than its share of the burden of woe brought upon the world” by the World War.8

The Christian Century and the World Tomorrow put even greater emphasis on the political argument for renegotiating the war debts. The debt issue was for them the key to successful conferences in London and Geneva and could not be separated from the world economic crisis or disarmament. They called on Roosevelt to use debt reduction as leverage for negotiating international trade agreements and furthering disarmament talks.

They also argued that the relationship between war debts, disarmament, and the economic crisis was symbiotic. Once again championing a plan devised by Salmon O. Levinson, the “father of the outlawry of war movement,” Charles Clayton Morrison declared that if the nations meeting at Geneva could agree to a moratorium on armaments spending, all nations would benefit. Pointing out that, in every instance, the amount each Allied nation owed to the U.S. in annual debt payments was but a fraction of what each spent annually on armaments, Morrison concluded that the Allies could easily afford to pay their debts if a moratorium agreement were reached. Furthermore, the amount that such a moratorium saved the U.S. in defense spending could also be applied to the war debts, meaning the

U.S. could reduce the Europeans’ future debt payments without burdening American tax payers.9

Although he made no mention of the debt issue, Roosevelt did recognize the interconnectedness of the London and Geneva Conferences in his widely publicized message of 16 May 1933 to the leaders of the fifty-four nations participating in the two

8 “What Is America's Debt Policy?,” Christian Century, 11 January 1933, 46-48, quote from 47-48; “Confronting the Threat of War,” World Tomorrow, 10 May 1934, 220. 9 “The Debts and Disarmament,” Christian Century, 25 January 1933, 113-14.

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meetings. He raised the hopes of internationalists everywhere by calling for the nations to

“establish order in place of the present chaos by a stabilization of currencies, by freeing

the flow of world trade, and by international action to raise price levels.” He added that

these changes were to “supplement individual domestic program for economic recovery,”

but his message indicated that he was willing to go much further than he would actually

go once the London Conference began.

Most of his message was devoted to disarmament. The Geneva Conference’s

“ultimate objective” was “the complete elimination of all offensive weapons”—tanks,

aircraft, poison gas, and other mobile weapons. While this may have been a long-range

goal, there was no reason the nations could not immediately agree to the plan proposed

by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, which provided for “a substantial

reduction of some of these weapons and the elimination of many others.” Roosevelt went

further than the MacDonald Plan and called for the nations to sign a “solemn and definite

pact of non-aggression.” Revealing his confidence, shared with the pacifists, in the power

of world public opinion, he warned the nations that if any one of them forestalled the

success of the upcoming conferences, “the civilized world . . . will know where the

responsibility for failure lies.”10

The Christian Century welcomed Roosevelt’s message as “the return of the spirit of Woodrow Wilson.” “The isolationist psychology which has dominated American international attitudes since the Senate rejected the League of Nations has run its course,” proclaimed Morrison. He praised the president for being both idealistic and realistic. Not only did Roosevelt revive the “native and historic moral idealism of the American

10 Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 2, The Year of Crisis, 1933 (New York: Random House, 1938), 185-91.

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people,” but, “by his daring word, the President puts this nation in the path of

international realism where we may walk side by side with other nations in solving those

problems of world relationship in which we share whether we wish to or not, but which

we have foolishly imagined were none of our business to help solve.”11

Whereas during the campaign the Christian Century had chided Roosevelt for his vague promises unsupported by specific proposals, now that he appeared to be championing their own internationalist causes, the editors read into his message details that were never annunciated. They saw the president’s proposed non-aggression pact as a strengthening of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. While rearmament violated the spirit of that agreement, it was not illegal. But Roosevelt’s proposal would make it so. Such a pact, the

Christian Century argued, would necessarily include provisions for an international inspection committee to ensure all nations remained compliant with whatever armaments limitations were agreed upon in Geneva. The president’s proposing a non-aggression pact implied that he would agree to this minimal sacrifice of national sovereignty, a sacrifice the Christian Century was convinced the American people would welcome to preserve world peace.12

Even after both the London and Geneva Conferences ended in failure, Roosevelt’s

new image as an internationalist remained relatively untarnished in the eyes of the

Christian Century’s editors. This is all the more surprising considering that if any one

leader could be held responsible for the collapse of the London Economic Conference, it

was Roosevelt. Even before the conference, Roosevelt provoked the ire of the European

11 “America's True Spirit Finds Voice Again,” Christian Century, 24 May 1933, 675. 12 “What Is a Pact of Non-Aggression?,” Christian Century, 24 May 1933, 675-76.

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nations in April by placing an embargo on the export of gold from the U.S., declaring that

his taking U.S. currency off of the gold standard was only a temporary measure.

Furthermore, he worked to ensure that the pacifists’ proposals to combine debt

forgiveness with economic recovery and disarmament could never come to fruition by

warning the nations meeting in London that war debts were not to be discussed. Finally,

on 3 July, after the conference had been in session for three weeks, Roosevelt thwarted

the conference’s efforts to achieve international currency stabilization by delivering his

“bombshell” message. A return to the gold standard and other stabilization measures

were simply “old fetishes of so-called international bankers.” Despite his previous talk of

international measures to solve the economic crisis, Roosevelt now made clear that he

believed economic recovery was first and foremost a domestic problem. He was going to

allow his New Deal policies to work to stabilize prices at home before engaging in

substantive international negotiations. The conference continued until the end of the

month, but Roosevelt’s position assured no agreement would be reached.13

The Christian Century did not lay the blame for the failure of the economic conference on Roosevelt. Indeed, it offered no comment on his “bombshell” message at all. Two weeks prior to the president’s statement, however, the editors predicted the

London Economic Conference would succumb to “the threat of economic isolationism”

as nations tried to weather the economic storm alone. They recognized that if this were to

happen, the U.S. would probably be better off than any other nation. They did warn,

however, that “the immediate victims of such a policy . . . would of course be the peoples

of the smaller countries who could not possibly sustain themselves on a decent standard

13 Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 37, 44, 54-58.

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of living. But the distress of those peoples would eventually prove sufficient to wreck the world.”14

Reinhold Niebuhr, who was in London while the conference met, saw the failure of the conference as a foregone conclusion. The conference was for him the perfect example of the ongoing struggle between “spirit” (universalism) and “nature” (self- interest) that he addressed in Reflections on the End of an Era later that year. It was also one of the many occasions on which he reminded liberal Protestants of the Pauline confession: “The good that I would do, I do not do, and the evil that I would not do, I do”

(Rom 7:19). No matter how much internationalists wanted to believe spirit could conquer nature, the nations would be unable to transcend their own national interests:

No nation will consciously wreck the conference. But it is a fact that each nation is uncertain about the possible ultimate benefits to be derived from the sacrifices of immediate benefits in tariffs, currency advantages, etc. . . . [S]ince no one can project the international necessities without introducing the bias of the special interests of his particular nation, it is written in the stars that national particularism will triumph over the international cause.15

Niebuhr’s explanation for the failure of the London Conference was equally applicable to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. There was one clear difference, however. Whereas in the discussion of economic matters, the self-interests of all nations involved were so similar it was difficult to single out any one nation for blame, in the matter of disarmament, the Christian Century, the World Tomorrow, and even the president and his advisors, all pointed to France. In a speech before the Reichstag on 17

14 “The Threat of Economic Isolationism,” Christian Century, 14 June 1933, 771-72, quote from 772. See also “To Be or Not to Be—Asks London Conference,” ibid., 19 July 1933, 923-24. 15 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Notes from a London Diary,” Christian Century, 19 July 1933, 927-28. Niebuhr mentioned the conference again in Reflections, 15.

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May 1933, Hitler welcomed Roosevelt’s message of the previous day “with warm

thanks.” He shrewdly placed the onus for disarmament back on the other nations,

declaring that Germany was willing to accept the MacDonald plan for disarmament and

even Roosevelt’s non-aggression pact. Germany had no aggressive intentions, he

declared, only the same concerns for “security” and “defense” as France and other

nations. He did, however, demand parity, which Germany had been denied under the

Versailles Treaty. Proposing a five-year transitional period in which parity in defensive

armaments could be reached, he argued that if the other nations dramatically scaled back

their offensive armaments, Germany would seek none of its own.16

France balked at Hitler’s proposal, unwilling to agree to disarmament unless it

could obtain security guarantees from Britain and the U.S. Throughout the summer, the

Christian Century blamed France for the lack of progress at Geneva. The World

Tomorrow even echoed Hitler’s charges of French paranoia: “No nation in modern times has possessed so vast a preponderance of fighting strength as France now enjoys. . . . Yet the French people are desperately afraid!” For all of their efforts to empathize with the peoples of other nations, especially those of the “have-not” nations, neither the Christian

Century nor the World Tomorrow could empathize with the people of France. Japan’s and

Germany’s grievances were rational, but France’s fear of Germany was, in their eyes,

irrational.17

16 “Text of Hitler’s Address to the Reichstag on Armaments,” New York Times, 18 May 1933. 17 “It Is Now up to France,” World Tomorrow, June 1933, 411. See also “France Holds up Action,” Christian Century, 7 June 1933, 739; “France Must Decide,” ibid., 14 June 1933, 772-73.

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But even as they expressed sympathy for the German people and sought to

rationalize Hitler’s policy on disarmament, neither of the journals’ editors were blind to

Hitler’s anti-democratic rule. The charges of naiveté regarding Hitler leveled at the

pacifists in 1939 and 1940 were not accurate even in 1933. One editorial in the World

Tomorrow, perhaps written by Niebuhr, who was still on the editorial board, captured the

dilemma liberals and radicals faced better than any other:

The attitude of liberals and radicals toward Germany is necessarily twofold. That she was cruelly victimized at Versailles is beyond question. Her people have been subjected to excruciating indignities and appalling miseries. On the other hand, the seizure of power by her most chauvinistic and bellicose elements, and the horrible excesses committed by the Nazis, have subjected Germany to a degree of moral and political isolation now equaled only by that of Japan. Foreign sympathizers with the German masses are confronted with the unpleasant dilemma that support of Germany in the present crisis is likely to strengthen Hitler and to prolong the period of his tyrannical suppression of democratic and radical movements directed toward the creation of an equalitarian state. Whether the German people have suffered more as a result of French oppression than they are destined to endure at the hands of the Nazis is extremely doubtful.18

Despite their concerns about strengthening Hitler, pacifists continued to call for

the French government to take him at his word regarding disarmament. By October 1933,

Hitler refused to wait any longer. After months of delays at Geneva, the German

government, claiming it was apparent it would never be treated as an equal at the

Disarmament Conference or in the League of Nations, withdrew from both. Even then,

the Christian Century did not blame Hitler for the collapse of the talks. Germany’s action was “logical, natural and inevitable” given the developments of the post-war years, especially the Versailles Treaty. Indeed, the editors went so far as to declare, “Germany has been patient.”

18 “Hitler Tells the World,” World Tomorrow, June 1933, 411.

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As far as the pacifists were concerned, the Allies had no one to blame for Hitler but themselves. The pacifists had long criticized the Versailles Treaty as a betrayal of the

Wilsonian idealism for which liberals had given the war their support: the treaty was far too punitive and entirely unfair to the German people. During the 1920s, this criticism had been primarily moral. By 1933, however, Hitler had given a face to their underlying political concerns that the treaty was really a continuation of an antiquated alliance system that was likely to provoke another war. The Allies had squandered the opportunity to take advantage of the “pacific disposition of Germany induced by her defeat.” Their relentless attempt to subjugate Germany had backfired and “hardened [Germany’s] spirit into the most desperate nationalistic determination.”

Nevertheless, the Christian Century argued that war was not yet inevitable. Using theological terms, the editors suggested that an act of contrition could still save disarmament: “Europe will not be able to meet the problem presented by the new

Germany unless it sees itself as the chief cause of the new Germany. The allied powers have never been penitent for their part in the great war. They insisted upon a peace which was based on Germany’s guilt, but they themselves acknowledge none.” Germany’s withdrawal from disarmament talks gave France and the Allies yet another chance to repent, for “Hitler has revealed the folly of France in building her security on what was supposed to be overwhelming force.” Now the French government could rearm and spark a world-wide arms race for which it “will be stigmatized in world opinion for having caused it all,” or it could “come to [its] senses, abandon the folly of seeking security in military might and adopt the wisdom of seeking it in justice, good-will and disarmament.” Germany’s withdrawal from the Geneva Conference, argued the Christian

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Century, marked not the end of disarmament but rather a new beginning: “With the air cleared, and the realities bared, we may dare to hope that the long deferred disarmament process may actually begin.”19

As this editorial, like most of those in the Christian Century and the World

Tomorrow, was unsigned, it is impossible to know its author with certainty. Given its ultimately optimistic conclusion, it seems likely to have been written by Charles Clayton

Morrison, who had a penchant for finding a silver lining in even the most alarming international developments. Nevertheless, the Christian realism Niebuhr championed was evident. The author recognized that all nations were complicit in causing the world war and called for the penitence and forgiveness that Niebuhr soon argued were religion’s unique contributions to society in Reflections on the End of an Era. Even many of those pacifists and liberal Protestants who were unduly optimistic about the future exhibited realism in their analysis of the recent past.

In the face of the setbacks at London and Geneva, the Christian Century maintained its confidence in Roosevelt. The president’s actual diplomatic successes may have been meager, but his leadership and public optimism continually reassured internationalists and pacifists. In a speech before the Woodrow Wilson Foundation on 28

December 1933, Roosevelt solidified his claim to the foreign policy tradition of the organization’s namesake. He renewed his call for a non-aggression pact and expressed his hope that the nations may yet disarm. Like the pacifists, he criticized the Versailles

Treaty as “a treaty of so-called peace” that had “handicapped [the League of Nations] from its infancy.” Despite its shortcomings the League was still a “prop in the world

19 “Hitler Clears the Air,” Christian Century, 25 October 1933, 1328-29.

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peace structure,” and the U.S. should cooperate with it (though Roosevelt again denied any interest in becoming an official member). Reiterating the Good Neighbor policy that he had announced in his inaugural address, he questioned the wisdom of unilateral action in Latin America in a public expression of empathy with the people of other nations that was remarkably uncharacteristic of American presidents:

I do not hesitate to say that if I had . . . been engaged in a political campaign as a citizen of some other American Republic I might have been strongly tempted to play upon the fears of my compatriots of that Republic, by charging the United States of North America with some form of imperialistic desire for selfish aggrandizement. As a citizen of some other Republic I might have found it difficult to believe fully in the altruism of the richest American Republic. In particular, as a citizen of some other Republic, I might have found it hard to approve of occupation of the territory of other Republics, even as a temporary measure.20

This passage, in particular, impressed Morrison and the liberals at the Christian Century.

“If candor of that sort cannot purify the poisoned atmosphere of our Latin American relations,” wrote the editors, “nothing else can.”

Roosevelt’s entire message gave the Christian Century editors hope. They did not suggest that he had laid out a plan that would, once and for all, bring a permanent peace to the world, but they did believe his temporary non-aggression pact might just provide the “breathing-spell” that they thought necessary to allow tensions to cool. During such a cooling-off period, the editors hoped Germany and Japan’s leaders would “either learn from restraint in foreign relations or give way to other ruling groups.”

Despite their own rather optimistic reading of the situation, the editors’ only criticism of Roosevelt’s address was that perhaps he had raised hopes for peace a little too high. Estimating the populations of Germany and Japan to be about 10 percent of the

20 Roosevelt, Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 2:544-49.

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world population, the president declared, “If that 10 percent of the world population can be persuaded by the other 90 percent to do their own thinking and not be led, we shall have practical peace, permanent peace, real peace throughout the world.”

Although the Christian Century had emphasized the distinction between “the people” and their governments during the early months of the Manchurian crisis, the editors were slowly admitting the errors of such an oversimplification, noting that “there is even less reason to believe in a division between the German ‘population’ and its

‘leaders’ in 1934 than there was sixteen years ago.” If Roosevelt was hoping that the

German or Japanese people would revolt against their leaders anytime soon, he was

“probably doomed to disappointment.” Nevertheless, the Christian Century welcomed

Roosevelt’s attempt to marshal world public opinion against the aggressive actions of

Germany and Japan, even if they doubted it would produce any immediate result.

Although he sought to portray confidence publicly, Roosevelt’s private correspondence revealed he expected even less to come from his speech than did the Christian Century.

In dealing with the world crises, he confided to a friend in early 1934, he “felt very much as if I were groping for a door in a blank wall.”21

The war debt issue, which both the Christian Century and the World Tomorrow had hoped the U.S. government could use to further the peace cause, was finally resolved on 13 April 1934 when Roosevelt signed the Johnson Debt Default Act. Hiram Johnson, now the second-ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had headed a Finance Committee investigation of American loans abroad in 1931-32. His initial outrage resonated with populist rhetoric against “international bankers” who

21 “Mr. Roosevelt's Foreign Policy,” Christian Century, 10 January 1934, 48-49. Roosevelt quoted in Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 70.

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convinced private Americans to invest in unstable Latin American governments. By

January 1934, however, it was the European governments, who either, as in the case of

Britain, made only token payments on their debts, or, as in the case of France, refused to make any payment at all, that incited him. He proposed a bill that forbade loans from

American citizens to nations who were in default on their loans from the U.S. government.

Ironically, the greatest opposition to the bill came from the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, William E. Borah, an “isolationist” who agreed with Johnson on almost all other foreign policy issues during the decade. Like the pacifists, Borah endorsed using debt reduction to negotiate new international trade agreements and perhaps even further disarmament talks. But those who agreed with

Borah and the pacifists proved to be a small minority. The Johnson bill passed the Senate and House with little controversy, and Roosevelt expressed no reservations before signing it. Even those nations who made token payments were to be considered in default, so the act all but assured the European governments would cease their debt payments to the U.S. As the historian Wayne Cole notes, “The law was more of an angry nationalistic slap at Europeans than any real effort to win further payments.”22

The Johnson Act was also the first component of the neutrality legislation that was passed in the 1930s. Despite their vocal calls for legislation that would prevent the

U.S. from being drawn into foreign wars, this was one bill most pacifists had long opposed in principle. Yet the passing of the bill elicited little comment from either the

Christian Century or the World Tomorrow. Perhaps by spring 1934 the pacifists and

22 Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, ch. 7, quote from 94.

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liberal internationalists, who had previously believed the American people would support

debt reduction, recognized that Reinhold Niebuhr was correct when he stated, “The

President can’t accept token payments because he must defer to American opinion, which

still believes that the debts can and ought to be paid.” War debt reduction, accompanied

by a reduction in the reparation payments the Allies demanded from Germany, may have

alleviated tensions in Europe, at least temporarily. But at a time when many Americans

were suffering foreclosure due to their inability to pay their own debts, it was unlikely

they were ever going to support forgiving debts accrued by foreign nations in a war they

were increasingly viewing as a mistake, especially when they would be burdened with

additional taxes to cover the government’s losses on the loans.23

If the Johnson Act marked a setback in the peace cause, it was overshadowed by

arguably the biggest pacifist victory of the 1930s. By spring 1934, pacifists had managed

to call the nation’s attention to the practices of arms manufacturers, which they had long

despised. The ranks of pacifist organizations like the F.O.R. swelled throughout the

1920s, but it was not until the following decade that the notion that the American people

had been dragged into the Great War by propaganda and arms manufacturers received

wider acceptance. Much of this change in mood owed directly to the Great Depression.

Not only did their own precarious economic situations preoccupy Americans and cause

them to turn inward at the expense of international affairs, but many Americans,

searching for an explanation for the Depression, also came to recognize it as the

inevitable consequence of the economic boom which occurred during the war years. As

23 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Ex Cathedra,” World Tomorrow, 24 May 1934, 266. Niebuhr wrote the regular “Ex Cathedra” column, which comprised a few brief paragraphs on current events, under the pseudonym, “Pronuncio.”

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historians Justus Doenecke and John Wilz state it, Americans learned from the

experience of World War I and the Great Depression, “To avoid another bust, avoid

war.”24

In this climate, criticism of U.S. involvement in the World War resonated with

many Americans, and the late 1920s and early 1930s produced no shortage of critiques.

Professional historians were the first to question the causes of the war. Harry Elmer

Barnes’s The Genesis of the World War (1926) and Sidney Bradshaw Fay’s The Origins

of the World War (1928) both denied that Germany was any more culpable than the other

European powers in bringing about war. If the war was not the battle between enlightenment and barbarism that many Americans initially believed, then how had they been duped? The March 1934 issue of Fortune offered an answer—arms manufacturers.25

European scholars and American pacifists had been investigating the complicated entanglement of arms manufacturers and governments for several years. The Christian

Century even carried a detailed article highlighting many of the arms manufacturers’ worst practices the year before Fortune published “Arms and the Men.” But Fortune reached a much wider audience and first exposed most Americans to the argument that arms manufacturers actively thwarted peace efforts and promoted conflict. The men whose business it was to sell arms might portray themselves as patriots, but Fortune showed that arms dealers never allowed their nationalities to interfere with their sales.

During the World War, they worked to prolong the fighting by selling munitions to their

24 Doenecke and Wilz, From Isolation to War, 9. 25 Harry Elmer Barnes, The Genesis of the World War: An Introduction to the Problem of War Guilt (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1926); Sidney Bradshaw Fay, The Origins of the World War (New York: Macmillan, 1928).

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nation’s enemies through third parties. After the war, they continued to sell arms

indiscriminately, bypassing various arms embargoes and stimulating demand by reporting

their sales to neighboring nations in order to encourage them to outspend one another.

Perhaps most objectionable, the armaments men used their close connections to

governments to stall the disarmament conferences that people the world over

demanded.26

In the wake of the Fortune article, several books appeared that further documented the most objectionable practices of arms dealers and spurred a public call to action. Among them were Iron, Blood and Profits, by George Seldes, and Merchants of

Death, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection written by Helmuth C. Engelbrecht, associate

editor at the World Tomorrow, and Frank C. Hanighen. Merchants of Death went much

further than “Arms and the Men,” indicting not only armament manufacturers, but

international bankers and journalists as well, for the roles they played in propagandizing

the World War. With public sentiment aroused, Dorothy Detzer, executive secretary of

the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and secretary at the World

Tomorrow, lobbied for a Congressional investigation of American arms dealers. Senator

Gerald P. Nye, a progressive Republican from North Dakota, shared Detzer’s aims and

proposed the establishment of a Special Committee on the Investigation of the Munitions

Industry. In April 1934, the Senate voted in favor of his resolution and appointed Nye to

head the new committee. Throughout the summer, investigators scrutinized the records of

26 A. Fenner Brockway, “The Armament Makers' Conspiracy,” Christian Century, 29 November 1933, 1499-1501; “Arms and the Men,” Fortune, March 1934, 53-57, 113-20, 125-26.

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American armament manufacturers. The Nye Committee hearings commenced in

September.27

The liberal Protestants associated with the Christian Century—many of them

pacifists and all of them shaped by the reform impulse that characterized the Social

Gospel movement—praised Nye’s efforts. Charles Clayton Morrison took special care to

publicize the senator’s activities throughout 1935 and 1936. Nye not only championed a

cause the pacifists had long supported, but he also made his committee’s connection to

the Social Gospel explicit when he chose as his committee’s chief counsel, Stephen

Raushenbush, son of the eminent preacher Walter Rauschenbusch.28

The Christian Century published much of the most incriminating evidence turned up by the committee, especially those details that the editors felt other press outlets neglected. To demonstrate the economic motivations pushing the U.S. into war, the

Christian Century reprinted portions of a 1917 telegram from Walter Hines Page,

Ambassador to the U.K., to President Wilson, in which Page concluded, “Perhaps our going to war is the only way in which our present preeminent trade position can be

27 George Seldes, Iron, Blood and Profits: An Exposure of the World-Wide Munitions Racket (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1934); H. C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen, Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1934). Perhaps the most important work endorsing the same thesis on the causes of U.S. entry into World War I as those mentioned above appeared after the Senate’s investigation was already underway. See Walter Millis, Road to War: America, 1914-1917 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935). On the “isolationist” mood of the 1930s and the establishment of the Nye Committee, see Doenecke and Wilz, From Isolation to War, 6-16; Divine, Reluctant Belligerent, 10-11. 28 After World War I, Hilmar Stephen Rauschenbusch “Americanized” his name, choosing to go by his middle name and dropping the c’s from his surname.

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maintained and panic averted.”29 When Eugene M. Grace, the president of Bethlehem

Steel who had opposed the immediate payment of bonuses to war veterans, admitted

having personally received $3,669,000 in bonuses during two war years, the Christian

Century pointed out the irony, declaring it “simply too much for the national sense of humor.”30 Paul Hutchinson, managing editor at the Century, even offered readers a

twenty-page summary of the committee’s hearings. Considering most articles in the

weekly were limited to two or three pages, Hutchinson’s “summary” attests to the fact

that publicizing the Nye Committee became a pet project for Morrison.31

Although Nye seemed to some of his contemporaries—and to some later

historians—as if he were on a witch hunt to lay the blame for the U.S. involvement in the

World War on a few unscrupulous individuals, his objectives and his discoveries were

much more substantial than that. “I suppose nothing has astonished me so much,” Nye

stated in an interview for the Century, “as to discover the large amounts of evidence

which indicate that, instead of munitions makers promoting the military activities of

governments, governments—especially our own war and navy departments—have been

actively promoting the munition-makers for years.” He saw his committee’s main tasks as

unveiling this “labyrinth of intrigue” that connected government agencies to private arms

manufacturers and publicizing it to such an extent that Congress would be forced to take

29 “A Cablegram that Wasn’t News,” Christian Century, 9 January 1935, 36. See also, “More Light on the Shipbuilders,” ibid., 27 February 1935, 259-260, and “How the Munitions-Maker Garners His Profits,” ibid., 17 April 1935, 501. 30 “The Arms Inquiry is About to Report,” Christian Century, 13 March 1935, 323. 31 Paul Hutchinson, “The Arms Inquiry: A Summary of the Hearings before the Special Committee of the Senate between September 4, 1934 and March 1, 1935,” Christian Century, 15 May 1935, 643-64.

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action. He hoped Congress would go so far as to nationalize the armaments industry and

divorce it completely from the profit motive. Nye’s investigation was not a self-serving

publicity stunt, but rather an attempt to confront what he saw as “the most important of

all matters before the world’s attention—even more important than problems of domestic

recovery from the depression.”32

Morrison agreed wholeheartedly with Nye’s broader assessment, even if he did

not always agree with the senator’s approach. He recognized that Nye was “open to a

certain amount of blame for having afforded the pretext for the hullaballoo” that began to

surround the committee by early 1936 when Nye publicly impugned the reputation of the

late Woodrow Wilson. Nye argued Wilson knew about the Allies’ “secret treaties” as

early as May 1917, and he accused the president of lying to the Senate when he denied

knowing about them prior to the Paris Peace Conference. The charges created quite a

furor in the Senate and cost the Nye Committee its funding. Morrison found Nye

imprudent on this particular occasion, yet he defended the senator. He still believed that

Nye’s objective of exposing the connections between government, munitions makers, and

financiers was of the utmost importance.33

Morrison and other supporters of the Nye Committee were far more reasonable than their critics, then or since, suggested. On the one hand, phrases like “merchants of death” and “labyrinth of intrigue” were sensationalist. From the more cynical perspective characteristic of the twenty-first century, these phrases appear almost quaint and perhaps

32 Brent Dow Allison, “Senator Nye Sums Up,” Christian Century, 16 January 1935, 80- 81. For a rather dismissive account of the Nye Committee’s activities, see Divine, Reluctant Belligerent, 9-11. 33 “The Attack on the Nye Committee,” Christian Century, 29 January 1936, 180.

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even evoke a chuckle from some who encounter them. But Nye might just as easily be seen as a prophet who anticipated later social criticism. His “labyrinth of intrigue” is hardly distinguishable from C. Wright Mills’ “power elite” or even Dwight D.

Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex.”34

Even if, as critics often charged, the Nye Committee failed to “prove” that the

United States entered the World War for purely economic reasons, its investigations were nonetheless successful. While Nye was personally convinced that “merchants of death” were responsible for duping the American people, his committee was not charged with putting munitions makers on trial, but rather with looking into their business practices to determine whether or not the government should intervene. As Nye stated it, his goal was to arouse public opinion regarding the role munitions makers played in promoting war, and the evidence suggests that he succeeded. A Gallup poll conducted in January 1937, the first which sought to determine the public’s feelings about the World War, revealed

70 percent of Americans thought U.S. entry into that conflict was a mistake.35 While it is impossible to know just how much of this sentiment was attributable to the Nye

Committee’s work, particularly since developments in European politics from 1935-1937 only further increased disillusionment with the World War, the poll at the very least demonstrates that Nye’s views were shared by the public at large.

Indeed, pacifists viewed the increased public awareness of the armament business and disillusionment with the World War that followed the Nye Committee’s investigations as evidence that their own efforts to prevent war were gaining ground.

34 C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956). 35 George Horace Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971 (New York: Random House, 1972), 1:54.

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They could point to other signs of progress as well, particularly among the nation’s

college students. On 12 April 1935, more than 175,000 students across the country

participated in a one-hour student strike against R.O.T.C. on campus and pledged not to

fight in any future wars. The number of participants had increased dramatically since the

previous year, when 25,000 marched.36

Furthermore, Fellowship, the monthly journal that the F.O.R. founded in March

1935, one year after the World Tomorrow ceased publication, reported that several of

America’s intellectual leaders shared the opposition to war dramatized by student strikes.

Fellowship reprinted excerpts from a June 1935 symposium published by Modern

Monthly, whose masthead declared it “an independent radical magazine.” Asserting that it was not a question of if, but when, the United States got involved in what was shaping up to be a Second World War, Modern Monthly asked sixteen intellectuals how they would respond. As one would expect, none of the respondents demonstrated any eagerness to endorse a war before it actually began. Several, including the journalist

Walter Lippmann, the writers Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Anderson, and the historian

Charles Beard, declared that they could not state their positions until they found themselves in the actual situation. They conceded it was difficult to imagine conditions in which they would support American involvement in another war, but they recognized that the circumstances would matter. Of those intellectuals queried, only Lewis Mumford could conceive of a scenario in which he would support American involvement. In his estimation, the Nazi threat was already so serious by 1935 that the U.S. should immediately impose a blockade on armaments to Germany; if Hitler actually declared

36 Chatfield, For Peace and Justice, 260; Divine, Illusion of Neutrality, 84; Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 101.

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war on other European nations, the U.S. government should do everything within its power to stop him, even if that meant going to war.

But Fellowship did not mention Mumford’s intention to stop Germany at all costs, nor did it call attention to the other qualified statements included in Modern Monthly.

Rather it highlighted the responses of those intellectuals who unequivocally opposed involvement in any future war, including John Dewey, John Haynes Holmes, and the poet

Archibald MacLeish. All three declared their intention to speak out against war, regardless of whether the U.S.S.R. were an ally of the U.S., or whether Europe seemed likely to fall under Hitler’s control. Holmes captured the feelings of many pacifists when he declared that war against Hitler would be no more moral than was the First World War against the Kaiser. MacLeish, too, echoed pacifist sentiment when he expressed concern over the power of propaganda to persuade men to abandon the “only one possible position against the menace of militarism: absolute hostility.” MacLeish’s response proved particularly ironic when, during World War II, he was responsible for such propaganda, first as the director of the War Department’s Office of Facts and Figures, and then as an assistant director of the Office of War Information.

Despite his public disagreement with Dewey and Holmes on other matters,

Reinhold Niebuhr shared their position in his contribution to the symposium. “I do not intend to participate in any war now in prospect,” he wrote. “I take this position not on strictly pacifist grounds, for I am not an absolutist, but simply because I can see no good coming out of any of the wars confronting us. The position of Russia on the one hand and

Germany on the other hand in any of these wars would not affect my decision.” Niebuhr may have differed with many members of the F.O.R. over their absolute strictures against

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the use of violence, but, as late as June 1935, Fellowship could still point to him as one of the hopeful signs that pacifism held sway among America’s leading intellectuals.37

Agreement on the principle of non-intervention in future wars should not,

however, be confused with the triumph of the sort of internationalist pacifism

championed by the F.O.R. or the Christian Century. As Sinclair Lewis astutely observed in his contribution to the Modern Monthly symposium, opposition to war was in and of itself both “universal and banal.”38 It was therefore a much less meaningful indicator of

pacifist success than most pacifists cared to admit. Indeed, those pacifists who supported

international cooperation to prevent future wars suffered setbacks even as the Nye

Committee raised the public’s awareness of one of their chief concerns. Among the many

stumbling blocks they faced was the Senate’s failure to approve a resolution calling for

American participation in the World Court.

President Roosevelt had himself overestimated the internationalist sentiment of

the American public. In his first two years in office he avoided controversial foreign

policy legislation that might compromise his domestic agenda, but by January 1935 he

was convinced public opinion would support a move to accept the World Court’s

protocols. Democrats had gained a two-thirds majority in the Senate in the 1934 election,

and, after polling members of the Senate, Roosevelt concluded he would have little

problem securing the votes necessary to pass a resolution. But Hiram Johnson’s vocal

opposition to the bill in the Senate, coupled with a very effective nationwide campaign

37 “When America Goes to War: A Symposium,” Modern Monthly, June 1935, 199-204; “Prominent Men Forecast Stand: Magazine Poll Registers Their Action in the Event of War,” Fellowship, October 1935, 13. 38 “When America Goes to War: A Symposium,” 202.

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against American participation launched by the Hearst press and the radio priest Father

Charles Coughlin, spoiled the move. On 29 January the resolution failed to pass by seven votes.39

Pacifists did not admit defeat. A Christian Century editorial captured the ambivalence within pacifist ranks toward the vote on the court. To be sure, the success of

Coughlin and Hearst frustrated the editors. That Senator Thomas Schall (Dem-MN) took the occasion to declare, “To hell with Europe!” alarmed them, for it “reflects a state of mind which, in the long run, can produce nothing but tragedy.” But they also expressed reservations about the court, noting that its advisory opinions, such as that rendered against the proposed German-Austrian customs union in 1931, tied it too closely to the

League of Nations and left the impression that the court’s “function is primarily political.”

The failure of the Senate to accept the court’s protocols was, according to the

Christian Century and other left-leaning journals such as the Nation, not a fatal blow to the internationalist movement in the U.S. They argued it was a notice to Europe that international cooperation would have to be true cooperation, not merely a continuation of the outdated machinery of European power politics that arose out of the Versailles

Treaty. 40

President Roosevelt and the State Department did not share the pacifists’ view.

According to historian Robert Dallek, they saw the court defeat “as something of a

39 Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 95; Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 120-24. 40 “The World Court Vote,” Christian Century, 13 February 1935, 198-200; “The World Court,” Nation, 30 January 1935, 115-16.

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turning point”: they now believed that the American public was primarily moved by isolationist sentiment. During his first two years in office Roosevelt had at least voiced support for greater international cooperation, even if he had not proposed specific policy changes to further that objective. Now he feared that any move in the direction of internationalism would threaten his domestic agenda. He avoided advocating any policy that might draw criticism from Senate “isolationists.” Roosevelt’s strong desire to avoid conflict over foreign policy explains why he signed into law in 1935 a Neutrality Act which he only partially supported.41

* * *

On the most basic and general level, the need for neutrality legislation was something upon which nearly everyone could agree. If the Nye Committee had convinced

Americans of anything, it was that traditional neutrality, the maintenance of free trade with all belligerents during wars, was untenable. In 1915, propagandists had persuaded most Americans that the sinking of the Lusitania was an act of aggression committed by an immoral Germany. Although Wilson refused to seek a declaration of war on Germany following the incident, he did not heed the advice of his Secretary of State, William

Jennings Bryan, who called for a drastic revision in neutrality policy. Instead, Wilson insisted on the right of Americans to trade with Britain. For over a year and a half,

German U-boats actively sought to avoid the “neutral” ships of the U.S. By February

1917, however, the German government concluded that if it were ever going to end the stalemate in Europe, it must institute a “shoot on sight” policy toward neutral ships carrying goods to the enemy. When the U.S. government was notified of the new policy,

41 Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 95-97, quote from 96.

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Wilson severed diplomatic ties with Germany. But trade with Britain continued, and by

April, after several more American ships had fallen prey to U-boats, Wilson declared war on Germany.

Bryan, who had resigned from his post in June 1915 over his disagreement with

Wilson on the meaning of neutrality, was vindicated during the Nye Committee’s investigations. Pacifists, in particular, came to see him as something of a prophet. Many of those same Americans who were morally outraged at German U-boat attacks during the war now regarded Germany’s policy as justifiable. It was entirely reasonable to expect that Germany would use its U-boats to disrupt the transport of contraband to its enemies during a war. As unfortunate as incidents like the sinking of the Lusitania were, pacifists and other Americans came to believe they were also avoidable. To avoid being entangled in future wars, they argued, Congress needed to pass some form of neutrality legislation to keep both American merchant ships and citizens out of war zones.

While there was general agreement regarding the need for neutrality legislation, there was far less agreement on the specifics such legislation should take. Embargoes enforced on nations engaged in war were one possibility, but the issue of embargoes raised as many questions as it answered. First of all, what should be embargoed? Should the U.S. attempt to prohibit the export of all items a belligerent nation deemed contraband, or should they just prevent the sale of war materials to belligerents? What were war materials? Should oil, steel, or even cotton be included, or only actual arms and ammunition? A truly “strict neutrality” would require the cessation of all trade with belligerent nations, a virtually untenable position. The economic consequences of strict neutrality would be difficult to bear at any time, but in the midst of the Great Depression,

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no Congressman could support a law that might one day soon cut off trade with all

European nations. Even Senator Nye, who privately admitted that “a complete embargo on all trade is the only absolute insurance against the United States being drawn into another prolonged major war,” understood that the American people could never accept such a position. The cessation of trade with any single partner would hurt, but ending trade with the entire European continent would be economic suicide.42

The issue that quickly emerged as the central point of contention in the debates over neutrality was whether or not the legislation should include a discretionary or impartial embargo. Collective security advocates supported a discretionary act that would empower the president to determine which belligerents would be cut off from U.S. trade.

Advocates of an impartial embargo argued that only by ceasing the export of armaments to all parties involved in a conflict could the U.S. remain truly neutral. The State

Department studied the issue into spring and summer 1935 but remained divided, with

Secretary of State Hull supporting a discretionary embargo while many of his subordinates endorsed mandatory and impartial proposals.

Roosevelt himself had expressed a preference for a discretionary bill as early as

1933, but he continued to waiver on the issue, much to Hull’s frustration. With the

Geneva Disarmament Conference on the verge of collapse that spring, Roosevelt sought to save the talks by promising British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and former

French Premier Edouard Herriot that he would push to get an arms embargo measure through Congress. He privately assured them that if the American government agreed with the European powers in determining the aggressor in a given conflict, it would

42 Memorandum from Nye to Stephen Raushenbush, 1935, quoted in Divine, Illusion of Neutrality, 93-94.

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prohibit the sale of arms to that nation, thus insuring that the U.S. did not undermine

European collective security. In April 1933, the House passed a bill that provided for just such a discretionary embargo, but when the bill reached the Senate Foreign Relations

Committee, Hiram Johnson amended it to require an impartial embargo.

Roosevelt initially pledged to support the bill, even with the impartial embargo.

But Hull adamantly opposed the Johnson amendment. He argued that only a discretionary bill would fulfill Roosevelt’s promise to McDonald and Herriot to cooperate with any sanctions imposed by the League. Concurring with Hull, historian Robert Divine concluded, “The Johnson amendment radically altered the nature of the arms embargo resolution, proposing to transform a method of co-operating with collective security measures into an isolationist effort to avoid involvement in foreign wars.”43

The merits of a discriminatory bill were not so clear-cut to the pacifists of the

F.O.R. The editors at the World Tomorrow noted that pacifists were divided over the arms embargo legislation, a situation they attributed to the “confused character of the bill itself.” They admitted that it was possible a discretionary bill might allow the president to pursue collective actions against nations and therefore prevent or shorten wars. But a discretionary bill seemed just as likely to “bring about a situation which would plunge this country into war.” If the president called for embargoes only against one party in a dispute, then that party could reasonably argue that the U.S. was not neutral at all and declare war against it. But they also recognized that an impartial embargo presented problems of its own, namely that it would likely result in a weaker nation succumbing to

43 On the arms embargo of 1933, see Divine, Illusion of Neutrality, 47-56, quote from 53- 54; Divine, “Franklin D. Roosevelt and Collective Security, 1933,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 48, no. 1 (June 1961): 42-59; Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 42-44, 47-48.

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a stronger nation on the battlefield. Forced to choose between two imperfect measures, the pacifists backed an impartial embargo.44

Did the pacifists’ support of an impartial embargo really mark a turn to isolationism as Hull, or later, Divine, suggested? To be sure, Johnson’s amendment to the embargo bill was motivated by his personal disdain for the League, but that did not make everyone who agreed to an impartial embargo an “isolationist.” The editors of the World

Tomorrow continued to express general sympathy with both the League of Nations and the World Court, suggesting that they endorsed international cooperation, as they had since the end of the World War. They were never comfortable with the sanctions involved in “collective security,” but neither were they in agreement with those

“isolationists” who sounded the alarm at “foreign entanglements” at nearly every attempt by the administration to cooperate with international organizations. The pacifists who supported Johnson’s impartial embargo did so out of the sound convictions that the continued sale of arms to belligerents only prolonged wars and that such indirect

American involvement in conflicts would likely lead to direct participation.

Roosevelt did not share the pacifists’ fear of a discretionary measure, but his willingness to accept Johnson’s impartial embargo indicates that, in 1933, he recognized the possibility of international cooperation short of collective security. Whereas Hull adopted an all-or-none mentality in which nothing less than collective security was acceptable, historian Robert Dallek points out that it is probable Roosevelt supported the impartial embargo not out of ignorance, as Hull suggested, but rather because he saw

44 “The Complex Arms Embargo,” World Tomorrow, May 1933, 389-90.

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what Hull did not—an impartial embargo was at least “a step in the right direction.”45

Hull was correct in arguing that only a discretionary bill allowed the U.S. the freedom to actively cooperate with the League by continuing to sell arms to one belligerent while halting trade to the aggressor. But even an impartial embargo was a marked improvement over adherence to traditional neutrality, which allowed armaments manufacturers to continue to trade with whomever they wished. A mandatory and impartial embargo would deny the U.S. the ability to use its economic power to sway a conflict one way or the other, but it would at least not interfere with any arms embargo implemented by the

League. As some of Hull’s subordinates at the State Department pointed out at the time, such passive cooperation would have allowed Roosevelt to keep his promises to the

British and French governments.46

Nevertheless, by May 1933, Hull convinced Roosevelt to withdraw his support of

the arms embargo bill. The chairmen of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Sam D.

McReynolds (Dem.-TN), allowed the bill to die, and Hull announced the administration

would push for new embargo legislation at the next session. After the collapse of the

Geneva Conference in October 1933, the arms embargo bill, which the administration

had intended as an instrument to further disarmament talks, lost its urgency. Roosevelt

refrained from pressing the issue in 1934. The State Department continued to debate

neutrality behind closed doors throughout 1934 and into 1935, but as no agreement could

be reached, Department advisors preferred to keep the matter out of Congress.47

45 Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 47. 46 Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 74. 47 Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 48, 71-72; Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 74-75, 166-67.

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By March 1935, however, the publicity generated by the Nye Committee’s

investigations, Hitler’s declaration that Germany was rearming, and the international

crisis sparked by border clashes between Ethiopian and Italian soldiers compelled

Roosevelt to act. He called the Nye Committee to the White House for a meeting on 19

March. Informing the senators that “he had come around entirely to the ideas of Mr.

[William Jennings] Bryan,” he asked the committee to propose neutrality legislation. Not

only was Hull furious at the president, but so too was Senator Key Pittman (Dem.-NV),

chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who objected that the matter fell

under his committee’s purview. Undeterred, Nye and another member of his committee,

Bennett Champ Clark (Dem-MO), proposed impartial neutrality legislation before the

Senate in April that called for the prohibition of arms sales and loans to all belligerents

and forbade American citizens from travelling in war zones or on belligerent ships.48

Throughout the spring and early summer months, the Senate Foreign Relations

Committee considered the Nye and Clark bills along with several others. At the urging of

Roosevelt and Cordell Hull, who was still adamant that only discretionary measures were acceptable, Pittman held up the bills in committee and established a subcommittee to draft new legislation in consultation with the State Department.

In the meantime, pacifists grew impatient. The Nye and Clark bills had galvanized them, and they expected the Senate to act. By August, the Christian Century feared that

Congress would adjourn at the end of the month without passing any neutrality legislation. The brewing crisis in Ethiopia threatened to erupt into an all-out European war before Congress met again. “Such a war would subject the financial and industrial

48 Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 168-170, Nye quoted on 168; Divine, Illusion of Neutrality, 86-90.

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interest of this country, now frantically searching for means by which to enlarge their profits, to terrific temptation,” warned the editors. Once shipments to belligerents began, it would be too late to pass any neutrality legislation. The editors recognized that some of the components they desired, including the nationalization of the armaments industry and a bill to limit war profits, would have to wait. But they urged immediate adoption of the mandatory and impartial measures introduced by Nye and Clark.49

Convinced that editorials like the Christian Century’s reflected the sentiments of the American public, Nye and Clark forced the president’s hand by announcing their intention to filibuster until some neutrality measure was adopted. Roosevelt prepared to make a final push for a discretionary measure as Key Pittman began drafting a compromise bill. But before the president made his move, Pittman informed Stephen

Early, Roosevelt’s press secretary, that “the President is riding for a fall if he insists . . . on designating the aggressor in accordance with the wishes of the League of Nations. He had better have nothing than to get licked, and I assure you that is what he is facing.”

Roosevelt wisely dropped the matter, and Pittman presented his compromise bill to the

Senate on 20 August, just three hours after Nye and Clark began their filibuster.50

In its final form, the Pittman bill was a mixture of impartial and discretionary measures that likely pleased no one. It included an impartial embargo on “arms, ammunition, and implements of war”: American firms could not sell or transport arms to belligerents, nor could they transport arms to neutral ports for later transshipment to belligerents. It also established the National Munitions Control Board under the State

49 “What Has Become of the Peace Bills?,” Christian Century, 7 August 1935, 1005-07. 50 Divine, Illusion of Neutrality, 108-12, Pittman quoted on 110.

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Department with which all manufactures, importers, and exporters must register.

Furthermore, it gave the president the option to restrict American travel on belligerent ships by declaring that all citizens who decided to undertake such a voyage did so at their own risk. Finally, the bill provided the president with the power to close all U.S. ports and territorial waters to belligerent submarines. There was no provision for the restriction of loans. Pittman argued the matter was complicated enough it deserved further consideration during the next Congressional session; in the meantime, the Johnson Act already prohibited private loans to most European nations.

Although the president would not have the freedom to apply the bill selectively to belligerents, the Pittman bill did allow for a minimal amount of presidential discretion.

The arms embargo would not go into effect until the president formally declared that a state of war existed. The president was also responsible for enumerating what goods were to be considered “arms, ammunition, and implements of war.” The restrictions on foreign submarines and American travel were optional, and would not go into effect unless the president determined they were necessary.51

After the Senate voted in favor of the bill on 21 August, Roosevelt won one final concession before the House considered it—if passed, the neutrality act would expire in six months. Despite his desire for a discretionary embargo, Roosevelt understood that a protracted fight over the bill would jeopardize his domestic agenda. Furthermore, he recognized that in the impending Ethiopian crisis, an impartial embargo would hardly be distinguishable from a discretionary measure: Ethiopia lacked the funds to purchase arms

51 The Neutrality Act of 1935 is reprinted in U.S. Department of State, Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1931-1941 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943), 265-71.

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and other implements of war from the U.S., so an impartial embargo would really only affect Italy. He signed the bill on 31 August, but not without issuing a warning that he hoped might provide him greater leverage in the future when the act expired: “History is filled with unforeseeable situations that call for some flexibility of action. . . . [T]he inflexible provisions might drag us into war instead of keeping us out.”52

The Neutrality Act may not have included measures as strict as the Christian

Century had advocated, but the editors nevertheless hailed the passing of the bill as

“revolutionary.” The U.S. had always “regarded its commercial interests as paramount,” but the new legislation suggested that the American people had come to recognize that peace was more important than the right to earn a profit. “Peace before profits! There is the opening of a new international era in that principle,” the Christian Century declared.53

* * *

On everyone’s minds during the debates over the neutrality legislation was the pending crisis in Ethiopia that began on 5 December 1934, when Ethiopian and Italian soldiers clashed at the Italian outpost of Walwal inside the Ethiopian border. Each side blamed the other for the skirmish, and, in January 1935, Ethiopian Emperor Haile

Selassie formally appealed to the League to arbitrate the dispute.

The League moved cautiously. Mussolini’s imperialist ambitions were obvious to everyone, particularly when he began mobilizing Italian troops in Eritrea and the Italian

Somaliland on Ethiopia’s borders in the spring of 1935. Wary of pushing Mussolini into an alliance with Hitler, who by March of that year was rearming Germany and looked

52 Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 108-10, Roosevelt quoted on 110. 53 “A Great Congress,” Christian Century, 4 September 1935, 1102.

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bent on territorial conquest himself, Britain and France were reluctant to take punitive

actions against Italy.

During the spring and summer months, before the Ethiopian war began, the

Christian Century was highly critical of what it saw as the hypocrisy of both the League and the U.S. government. To be sure, the Manchurian crisis had called the legitimacy and effectiveness of the League into question, but the Christian Century maintained that the

real lesson to be learned from that crisis was that the League should confine itself to

dealing with the political situation in Europe. But the Ethiopian crisis put even this more

modest claim to the test: “If now the League proves equally unable to protect Abyssinia

against what promises to be as wretched an instance of international brigandage as the

sorry tale of imperialism affords, then indeed it will be hard to discover what important

living function remains in the body at Geneva.” Well before British Foreign Secretary

Samuel Hoare and French Prime Minister Pierre Laval devised their much-maligned plan

to cede Ethiopian territory to Italy in December 1935, the Christian Century feared that

“France and Britain are really in a tacit conspiracy with Italy to annihilate Ethiopia’s

sovereignty.” Despite their hopes for the League, it appeared to the editors that Britain

and France were determined to revert to the power politics that prevailed in Europe

before the World War.54

In July 1935, Haile Selassie, growing increasingly impatient with the League, appealed directly to the U.S. as a signatory of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. He hoped that the

U.S.—a nation far more disinterested in the conflict than were the European powers with

54 “Ethiopia—Is There a League?,” Christian Century, 29 May 1935, 717. Hull quoted in Brice Harris, The United States and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964), 33.

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colonies of their own in northern Africa—would do something about Italy’s intention to

violate the pact, which by that point was pretty clear to all parties. Hull responded with

what the Christian Century called “hypocritical evasiveness” when he announced that the

U.S. government was “loath to believe that either [Italy or Ethiopia] would resort to any

other than pacific means as a method of dealing with this controversy.” While the

Christian Century certainly did not expect or desire the U.S. to commit itself to the defense of Ethiopia, the editors did believe that the U.S. government had a “moral obligation” as the primary negotiator of the Kellogg-Briand Pact to see that the signatories remained committed to it. Roosevelt and Hull, the editors argued, should at the very least ask Mussolini what his objectives were and why, if he did not intend to flout the pact, he had amassed troops on the Ethiopian border. 55

But Hull and Roosevelt had squandered the opportunity to exercise moral

leadership. Even worse, in reassuring the American public that there was no imminent

danger of U.S. involvement in the crisis, they appeared to the Christian Century to leave

the impression that the U.S. had no particular interest in the Ethiopian crisis. The editors

warned,

We cannot be interested in general world peace without being interested in specific episodes which threaten to destroy it. We are just as little concerned about the controversy between Italy and Ethiopia as we were about the assassination of an Austrian prince in Sarajevo and the mobilizations that followed it. We tried for a long time to believe that these events were not in our world. But we ultimately learned, to our sorrow, that there is only one world, and that whatever happens in it may touch our interests very intimately.56

55 “Mussolini Presses on as Ethiopia Calls for Help,” Christian Century, 17 July 1935, 931-32. 56 “Are We Concerned About Ethiopia, or are We Not?,” Christian Century, 7 August 1935, 1003.

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As criticism of Roosevelt’s handling of the unfolding crisis, this was hardly fair: the editors knew that Roosevelt was not so aloof. But as a statement of liberal Protestant’s attitudes toward foreign developments in the middle of the 1930s, it made one point abundantly clear: Christian non-interventionism was not to be confused with isolationism.

Although the editors of the Christian Century limited their commentary to the roles the League and the U.S. were playing in the Ethiopian crisis, two leaders of the

Fellowship of Reconciliation, John Nevin Sayre, the chairman, and Harold E. Fey, the executive secretary, took the occasion to appeal directly to Haile Selassie. In an open letter, which the Christian Century published in August, Sayre and Fey praised the

Ethiopian leader’s patience and attempts to resolve the dispute through the League. They urged him to stay the course and refuse to fight, even if Italy’s armies invaded. The spears of the Ethiopians would be no match for Italian tanks, planes, and automatic rifles anyway, so why attempt to fight a war on these terms? “Could David have overcome

Goliath had he assayed to fight him with a sword?” asked Sayre and Fey.

The F.O.R. leaders called upon the Ethiopians to use a “new kind of warfare,” the non-violence pioneered by Gandhi:

If while stoutly refusing to aid, pay taxes or cooperate in any way with the aggressor, you should also refuse to kill or injure his soldiers, you would thereby deliver a most powerful attack upon the will of [Mussolini’s] army and of his people. Once his subjects see that the suffering they endure is inflicted only by their own leadership; once they feel the full condemnation of world opinion, which will increasingly favor your side, they will not long endure the hardships of sustained personal sacrifice for a universally unpopular war and will slacken in their support of this profitless and immoral military adventure. . . . [B]y constantly pressing yourself against the judgment bar of mankind as found in the League of

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Nations and the Pact of Paris, you bring the power of truth to bear in your behalf.57

Reinhold Niebuhr did not comment on this particular letter, but it serves as a prime

example of the moralism he attributed to liberal Protestants in general and pacifists

specifically. Underlying Sayre and Fey’s call for non-violence was the assumption that

Christian love would eventually enlighten the Italian people to the situation on the ground

in Ethiopia and compel them to renounce their imperialist conquest. The F.O.R. leaders

failed to account for Niebuhr’s assertion that the capacity of a social group to rationalize

its actions was virtually limitless. After the Manchurian crisis, even the Christian

Century’s editors had come to accept that world public opinion was unlikely to compel the people of any nation to turn against their government, but the F.O.R. was slower to abandon their faith.

Even more disturbing was the absolutism of the F.O.R.’s position. Sayre and

Fey’s call for non-violence implied that if the Ethiopian’s took up arms against Italy’s invading armies, there would be little moral ground between the two sides. If in such a conflict the F.O.R. could not distinguish between the aggressor and victim or recognize the relative justice on the side of the Ethiopians, then the pacifists’ position only gave credence to Niebuhr’s charges of sentimentalism and absolutism.

It was one thing to personally practice non-violence or to call on one’s own government to adopt a non-interventionist position if it was not directly involved in a conflict. It was another altogether to call on others directly involved in a conflict to practice non-violence when it would undoubtedly result in hardship and significant loss

57 John Nevin Sayre and Harold E. Fey, “To His Majesty, Haile Selassie: An Open Letter,” Christian Century, 14 August 1935, 1033-34.

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of life. The F.O.R. leaders conceded that non-violence would result in “no quick and painless affair” and that Ethiopians “would have to pay a price in blood, in suffering and endurance of hardship that only a brave and resolute people could bear.” But Sayre and

Fey maintained that “the force of time, the power of economic circumstance, the might of human sympathy and . . . the strength of man’s highest moral nature in alliance with

Almighty God will rise and fight for your cause.” Although they had the best of intentions, Sayre and Fey effectively asked the Ethiopians to play the role of “suffering servant” while they and other Americans not directly involved carried on with their daily lives.

The pacifists’ position may have been void of the insights of Niebuhr’s Christian realism, but even they had their “half truth”—armed resistance on the part of the

Ethiopians was never going to repel the Italian army, a point that was driven home when the fighting began in October 1935.

* * *

Before Italy invaded Ethiopia, there was little to distinguish the pacifists from internationalists. At times, pacifists and Christian non-interventionists even sounded like

Christian realists: the often repeated assertion that World War I was a sin for which all nations must atone was just as likely to come from Charles Clayton Morrison, or even the

F.O.R.’s leaders, as from Reinhold Niebuhr. There is no reason to suspect that Niebuhr disagreed with the Christian Century or the World Tomorrow regarding the war debts, disarmament, membership in the world court, or the Neutrality Act of 1935. He served on the editorial board of the World Tomorrow until its ceased publication in July 1934 and remained on Charles Clayton Morrison’s editorial staff at the Christian Century well into

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the middle of the decade. As fighting began in Ethiopia and war in Europe became more likely, “internationalism” became more and more synonymous with collective security and interventionism. Only then did pacifists and liberal Protestants who opposed intervention in foreign wars find themselves allied with “isolationists” whose policies they had opposed prior to 1935. Only then did Niebuhr found a new journal and begin to distinguish his “realistic” foreign policy ideas from those endorsed by the pacifists.

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Chapter Seven: Radical Religion in a Time of Crises: Ethiopia and Spain, 1935-1937

As the Ethiopian crisis unfolded in autumn 1935, Reinhold Niebuhr’s attention began to shift abroad. He did not yet disavow socialism or abandon his interest in the domestic class struggle completely, but by the middle of the 1930s, international affairs pre-occupied him.

His essays and editorials were increasingly devoted to developments in Europe and Asia. The subject matter and style of his longer works changed as well. The study of politics—the incessant power conflicts which Niebuhr argued were characteristic of all human relations—remained his central focus, but two characteristics distinguished the books that he published after An Interpretation of Christian Ethics from those that came before. First, Niebuhr placed more and more emphasis on theology as his career progressed. A realistic assessment of politics must be based on a sound understanding of the human condition, he argued, and only theology could provide such an understanding.

Second, nation-states replaced economic classes as the most important entities in his study of politics. Whereas nation-states were only mentioned in Moral Man and Immoral

Society and Reflections on the End of an Era, from the middle of the 1930s to the end of his life, Niebuhr’s political writings dealt almost exclusively with the struggle between nations. As in his earlier political discussions, Niebuhr recognized the shortcomings of all parties in a given conflict, but he did not hesitate to take sides.

That he chose to side with Britain and France—the “have” nations—marked a break from his past, but the significance of that break is up for debate. In the early 1930s

Niebuhr advocated revolutionary change in the economic system, even if the role of

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violence in bringing about that change was always ambiguous. When he called for U.S.

support of the Allies at the end of the decade, his non-interventionist critics charged him

with defending the capitalist and imperialist order he once criticized. Niebuhr admitted

that they were partially correct; as he explained, however, he supported the capitalist

nations not out of any newfound affinity for capitalism, but only because those nations

also happened to be the democratic nations and because democracy was so clearly

preferable to totalitarianism that it should be defended. In the 1970s, as Liberation

Theology gained sympathy and popularity in American seminaries, many critics

dismissed Christian realism as the “theology of the establishment” because it was

frequently used to justify U.S. hegemony.1 Those on the left who offered this critique

pointed to Niebuhr’s defense of U.S. policy during the Cold War. Because these critics

shared in the nearly universal acknowledgement that World War II was the “good war,”

they rarely questioned Niebuhr’s position during that conflict or noted that it was in the

late 1930s that he first used Christian realism to defend the liberal capitalist order. Of

course, under the Comintern’s Popular Front policy of the 1930s, Niebuhr was not the

only erstwhile radical to decide that liberal capitalism was preferable to fascism. But

1 See, for example, the debates between Christian realists and “Liberationists” published in three issues of Christianity and Crisis in autumn 1973. Although Americans who were attracted to liberation theology often rejected Niebuhr’s thought, many of the Latin American liberation theologians were themselves far less critical of him. For instance, the Brazilian theologian Rubem Alves, who called Christian realism the “theology of the establishment,” referred favorably to Niebuhr’s early work and only opposed those latter- day “realists” who dismissed all revolutionary challenges to the status quo as utopian. Thomas G. Sanders, “Theology of Liberation: Christian Utopianism,” Christianity and Crisis, 17 September 1973, 167-73; Rubem A. Alves, “Christian Realism: Theology of the Establishment,” ibid., 173-76; John C. Bennett et al., “Liberation Theology and Christian Realism,” ibid., 15 October 1973, 197-206; Thomas G. Sanders, “Thomas Sanders Replies,” ibid., 26 November 1973, 249-51.

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whereas many radicals abandoned their rapprochement policy with liberals after the

defeat of the Nazis, Niebuhr never did.

Advocating revolutionary action in one situation and siding with the guardians of

the old order in another appears on the surface to be inconsistent. Indeed, Niebuhr, who

never worried much about consistency, did little to suggest otherwise. But there was one

constant in Niebuhr’s thought that linked his seemingly irreconcilable political positions:

his emphasis on the relative value of justice.

To be sure, Niebuhr’s transition from analyzing class conflict to international conflict resulted in a change of emphasis in his politics. But the change in emphasis did not require him to completely abandon the underlying theological and philosophical perspectives that informed his politics. He applied the same Christian realist framework that he had developed in the context of the class struggle to the international realm. He now identified the same self-righteousness, egoism, and collective sin that he had previously attributed to economic classes as factors which motivated nations as well.

Neither classes nor nations could transcend their own self-interests, but that did not make all social groups morally equal. Just as he had recognized that the working class fought for a more “relative justice” than the owners of production, by the middle of the 1930s he began to argue that Britain and France—despite injustices they had perpetrated in the past and the selfish motivations that continued to determine their actions in the present—stood for a more relative justice than did Germany or Japan.

Although the framework Christian realism provided for examining problems changed very little during the 1930s, the forms of political action Niebuhr advocated by the end of the decade had changed substantially. Like all liberal Protestants reared on the

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Social Gospel, Niebuhr believed that Christians had a responsibility to take action in the world. They could, and should, bring the world incrementally closer to the kingdom of

God, but they must always bear in mind that they would never succeed in creating a perfect alignment between the real and the ideal. In the 1920s and early 1930s, he exercised this responsibility by participating in organizations, such as the Fellowship of

Reconciliation, that supported particular causes and pushed for change outside the halls of power. During peacetime, he believed such organizations could increase the number of political choices open to those in power. By the mid-1930s, however, he came to stress action in the political realm in the strictest sense. As the range of possible political alternative began to shrink in Europe with the rise of fascism, Niebuhr came more and more to appreciate the limits within which political leaders were forced to operate.

At the very moment that Niebuhr began to focus on more traditional politics, many other liberal Protestants took an opposite turn and became more disillusioned with politics than ever. In September 1935, while the League of Nations vacillated on how best to deal with the Ethiopian crisis, the Christian Century concluded, “Governments are helpless agencies in the hands of national economic self-interest. From now on, it will probably be increasingly confessed by peace lovers that their work for peace must go behind political governments and deal radically with the economic system which governs them.”2

As the previous chapter illustrates, Niebuhr was by no means the lone cosmopolitan among liberal Protestants. Although the Christian Century was the most important voice of pacifists and religious non-interventionists by the end of the 1930s, no

2 “The Collapse of Peace,” Christian Century, 11 September 1935, 1137.

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one who read the journal could have denied that it was also far more internationalist in perspective than “isolationist.” The sheer number of editorials and articles on developments in international affairs contained in its pages attests to this fact.

Nevertheless, several factors shed light on Niebuhr’s particular interest in European affairs and help to explain how he established himself as a foreign policy expert among the churchmen.

No doubt Niebuhr’s status as a second generation German-American contributed to his interest in developments in continental Europe. Richard Fox, Niebuhr’s biographer, goes so far as to argue that Niebuhr’s struggles with his own German-American identity, exacerbated by the First World War, continued well into the 1930s.3 Perhaps there is some truth to the argument that Niebuhr’s outspoken criticism of the National Socialists was overcompensation for his own insecurities, or even shame, at his German heritage, but we need not push that argument too far. Were he really attempting to prove his own

Americanness, he would not have continued to critique American culture and politics as he did. It is enough to note that Niebuhr was perhaps more sensitive to developments in post-war Germany than he would have been had Germany not been the homeland of his father.

Far more important in explaining Niebuhr’s early calls for American aid to the

Allies were the many trips he took across the Atlantic in the 1930s. Reflecting back on his friend’s career in 1972, John Coleman Bennett noted that Niebuhr’s travels abroad were perhaps the most important factor in shaping the particular form Christian realism took at any given time. Bennett explained the Cold Warrior Niebuhr of the late 1940s and

3 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 43-54, 174.

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1950s—the period in which Niebuhr’s views were most in accord with the U.S. foreign

policy establishment—as “an accident of history.” That “accident” was the stroke

Niebuhr suffered in 1952. Unlike other critics who suggest that Niebuhr’s mind simply

was not as sharp after his illness, Bennett argued that the more significant problem was

that Niebuhr’s deteriorating health prevented him from traveling abroad. Had Niebuhr

been able to visit the developing world as he had Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, Bennett

believed he would have modified some of his positions during the early Cold War.

Whether or not Bennett’s hypothesis is correct, one thing is certain: in the 1930s,

Niebuhr’s perspective bore the mark of someone who had been chastened by what he

referred to as the “brutalities” of modern civilization that were thrown into stark relief in

Europe of the interwar period.4

Niebuhr’s European travels also provided him with the opportunity to establish

himself as something of an authority on European politics among American Protestants.

Ironically, it was Charles Clayton Morrison who helped Niebuhr cultivate this image in

the early 1930s. Morrison published Niebuhr’s “diary entries” from his trips with

Sherwood Eddy in Christian Century, helping Niebuhr finance his travels and, even more significantly, exposing the theologian to a national audience in the late 1920s and early

1930s. He also appears to have allowed Niebuhr to write many of the journal’s unsigned editorials on European affairs in the 1930s. Richard Fox has noted that “Niebuhr might just have well signed his anonymous editorials,” for “his distinctive stamp could not be mistaken.” Fox surely exaggerates: many of the editorials that appeared after Niebuhr began to drift away from Christian Century still bear some elements of his style. But

4 John C. Bennett, “Realism and Hope after Niebuhr,” Worldview 15, no. 5 (May 1972): 10.

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there are certainly distinctive clues: words such as abyss, anarchy, and chaos seem far

more likely to have come from Niebuhr’s pen than from Morrison’s, whose writing was

often overly earnest and whose anonymity was frequently betrayed by his use of the

exclamation point.5

Whether or not Reinhold Niebuhr actually deserved his growing reputation as an

authority on international affairs was up for debate. Richard Niebuhr, for one, questioned

his brother’s expertise. “Reinie has been in Europe a few weeks and he thinks he knows

all about it,” Richard confided to his wife during his 1930 trip with Reinhold.

Undoubtedly the statement is colored by the jealousy of an individual who always lived

in the shadow of his more famous brother, but that hardly detracts from its truth.

Reinhold occasionally conceded as much. “I had a rare experience today which has

taught me anew how dangerous it is to generalize about the life of nations other than your

own,” he wrote in a 1933 diary entry. Nevertheless, such humble statements were vastly

outnumbered by articles in which he employed his distinctly authoritative tone. Indeed,

he made a career of setting himself up as an expert even when he had little more

familiarity or experience with subjects than those individuals with whom he disagreed.6

By the time of the Ethiopian crisis, the number of liberal Protestants with whom

Niebuhr disagreed was growing rapidly. He became convinced that American Protestants needed a more realistic, less sentimental Christianity, one which enabled them to deal with the economic crisis at home and prepared them for the impending crises abroad.

Only with such a realistic understanding of Christianity and of human behavior could

5 Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 73-74. 6 Richard Niebuhr quoted in Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 123; Reinhold Niebuhr, “Notes from a London Diary,” Christian Century, 12 July 1933, 904.

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Christians begin to distinguish between the political choices available to them, none of

which was completely in accord with the teaching of Jesus.

In his efforts to promote such realism, Niebuhr began a new quarterly, Radical

Religion, in autumn 1935. During the 1920s and early ‘30s, the F.O.R.-affiliated World

Tomorrow had served as Niebuhr’s primary outlet for commenting on political developments, but the bi-weekly magazine was forced to close shop in 1934, shortly after the F.O.R. controversy. Niebuhr did not join the editorial board of the F.O.R.’s new monthly, Fellowship, when John Nevin Sayre began it in April 1935. Although Niebuhr still held his position as contributing editor at Christian Century, that journal remained under the tight editorial control of Charles Clayton Morrison, with whom Niebuhr increasingly found himself in disagreement.7 In autumn 1935 Niebuhr, as head of the

Fellowship of Socialist Christians (FSC), an organization he formed with the aid of

Sherwood Eddy and Kirby Page in 1931, decided the time was right for the group to

publish an in-house journal.

With the FSC’s backing, Niebuhr enjoyed complete editorial control over a

journal for the first and only time in his life. Upon its inception in 1941, the bi-weekly

Christianity and Crisis (C&C) overshadowed the quarterly in terms of audience size and

influence, but according to John Coleman Bennett, Niebuhr later practiced a kind of self-

censorship so as not to upset C&C’s board of sponsors. Radical Religion, on the other

7 Determining exactly when Niebuhr left his position as contributing editor at Christian Century is difficult. His papers contain no letter of resignation to Morrison, and the table of contents of the 1935-1938 issues of Christian Century are of little help. Typically, only Charles Clayton Morrison (Editor), Paul Hutchison (Managing Editor), and Winfred Ernest Garrison (Literary Editor) are included. Occasionally the eight contributing editors, including Niebuhr, are listed. By 1938, Christian Century ceased listing contributing editors altogether.

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hand, was a “quite personal organ”: Niebuhr “said what came into his head with a minimum of inhibition,” providing his editorials with “a kind of tang . . . which

Christianity and Crisis never had with its greater formality and caution.”8

In “Why a New Quarterly?,” the opening editorial of Radical Religion, Niebuhr provided a manifesto for the socialist Christians who belonged to the FSC. The members had chosen their name carefully: they were first and foremost Christians, not members of any particular party. But the inclusion of the modifier socialist was necessary “to help divorce the Christian religion from its too intimate embrace with bourgeois society and a capitalistic culture.”

This editorial reveals the often overlooked relationship between Marxism and

Christian realism. By the early 1940s, Niebuhr completely dissociated himself from

Marxism, giving credence to the assertion, originating with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., that

Niebuhr arrived at Christian realism only after rejecting Marxism. In fact, as Niebuhr had argued in Reflections and as John Coleman Bennett reiterated in Social Salvation,

Marxist “catastrophism” helped restore the much-needed prophetic emphasis of early

Christianity that liberalism had virtually erased. This emphasis lay at the heart of

Christian realism. Niebuhr saw no contradiction between espousing his “Christian realism” and calling himself a “socialist Christian.” In the mid-1930s, he used the terms interchangeably. Indeed, he promised that Radical Religion would “clarify the affinities and divergences in Marxian and Christian thought,” so that Christians might be more

“realistic” in their responses to current social and political problems.

8 John Coleman Bennett to June Bingham, 17 December 1959, RN Papers, Box 26, “Bennett, John C.”

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For Niebuhr this was an intellectual enterprise with profound consequences. He was not merely trying to convert Christians to socialism, for he argued that “that part of the American church which takes the social and economic problem seriously has more or less drifted into socialism, simply because it became convinced that there is no hope of social justice in the old individualism.” But in their drift, many Christians had gone too far in accepting Marxism’s “too consistent materialism.” Christians could learn from

Marxism that “cultural and moral ideals are invariably conditioned by the economic and social forces which lie at their foundation.” They should also recognize with the Marxists that “all men see the problems in which they are involved from a particular perspective and rationalize their particular interests dishonestly.” Unlike Marxists, however,

Christians should understand that these tendencies were human and were in no way unique to capitalism.

Here, as in Reflections, Niebuhr argued that Christians must maintain the tension between the “liberal moralism” associated with American Protestantism and the “utopian naturalism” of Marxism. Simply trying to combine the two, as those Christians who identified with both socialism and pacifism had done, would not work. He did not call for the complete abandonment of the pacifist witness—indeed, he reported that there were

“many total pacifists” who belonged to the FSC; rather, in an uncharacteristically understated tone, he urged a “fresh analysis” of pacifism’s pros and cons in Radical

Religion:

Perhaps much of the pacifism of today is sired more by bourgeois liberalism than by Christian theology. Perhaps the view of human nature which underlies it is too

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optimistic. Perhaps the ultimate tests with which it measures political ideals are too mystical and absolute to be politically sagacious.9

Niebuhr’s temperate tone did not last long. As he turned his attention to the Ethiopian crisis in the inaugural issue’s succeeding pages, he dropped all of the qualification of the word “perhaps” in favor of the “tang” to which Bennett referred.

* * *

Although Niebuhr did not mention the F.O.R. leaders’ open letter to Haile

Selassie of August 1935, there is no doubt that he had them in mind when he wrote his first editorial on the Ethiopian crisis. The F.O.R. had urged Selassie to practice only non- violent resistance and had promised that if the Ethiopian people did so, world public opinion would turn against Italy. Yet, when the League made it clear that it opposed

Italy’s actions and discussed imposing sanctions in October 1935, those same leaders immediately denounced sanctions as likely to lead to war. Would not the British government have to use its fleet to enforce sanctions?, they asked. Would not this action likely result in a military showdown between Britain and Italy?

Not all F.O.R. leaders were on the same page. Sherwood Eddy, still active in the

F.O.R., publicly called for sanctions against Italy once the war began, forcing the F.O.R. to convene an emergency roundtable discussion to determine the Fellowship’s official position on sanctions. Of the seven leaders in attendance, all but Eddy agreed that sanctions would likely lead to war. Conceding that war was a possibility, Eddy argued that it was nevertheless preferable to Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia. But the others in the room disagreed: “A war to save the League was just another capitalist war and . . . the

9 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Why a New Quarterly?,” Radical Religion 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1935): 3-5.

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armies of the League would be in fact the armies of belligerent powers and not in any

true sense an international police force.” Some individuals like Eddy and Niebuhr may

have begun to qualify their pacifism, but the F.O.R. remained steadfast in its convictions:

war must be avoided at all costs.10

Niebuhr was outraged at what he saw as the pacifists’ duplicity. How could they

hold up the League as the closest thing to the embodiment of world public opinion—and

therefore the greatest hope for international justice—in one breath, and then strip from it

the only means of enforcing that opinion in the next? Niebuhr freely admitted that British

imperial interests were involved, but he also noted that if they were not, the League

would have remained silent:

The stability of social orders are always maintained by self-righteous robbers who have stopped robbing because they have what they want and try to prevent the hungry ‘have-not’ nations from emulating their imperialism. That means that the apostles of law and order can be supported only with moral reservations. It does not mean that they ought not be supported.

He pointed out that the pacifists might look to the Soviet Union’s support for the

League’s “imperialistic anti-imperialism” as “an instructive and typical piece of realism.”

Although the Soviet government had denounced the League as imperialist prior to

becoming a member in 1934, it recognized the threat fascism posed and now stood allied

with the capitalist nations of Britain and France in opposition to Italy. “One supports law

and order (collective security) if the alternative is worse than the injustice it maintains

and not otherwise,” explained Niebuhr. “In this case the alternative is worse.”

10 “U-Table on Sanctions,” Fellowship, November 1935, 8. See also, Arthur L. Swift et al., “Can Sanctions Bring Peace?,” ibid., November 1935, 3-4; John Nevin Sayre, “Pacifism and Sanctions: A Symposium,” Radical Religion 1, no. 2 (Winter 1935): 25- 27.

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The pacifists’ inability to recognize the relativities of justice and unwillingness to accept sanctions merely “prove[d] how impossible it is to deal with political problems from the standpoint of an absolutist credo.” The F.O.R. leaders were no more able to recognize the ubiquity of coercion in European relations than they were in domestic class relations. Chastened by the World War, liberal Protestants may have talked less of ushering in the kingdom of God on earth, but were they not still pursuing the same old

Social Gospel project when they demanded that all motives and political actions be pure?

It seemed to Niebuhr they were. He reminded the pacifists, “We are living in a very anarchic world. We are not building the Kingdom of God in it. The best we can do for the moment is to prevent the outbreak of a world war, in the hope that its postponement may increase the possibility of its prevention.”11

Whereas Christian Century advocated neutrality legislation throughout 1935,

Niebuhr appears to have remained aloof from the debate until the Ethiopian situation came to a head. For Morrison and the others at Christian Century, neutrality legislation, and especially the arms embargo component, had become something of an absolute value, a desirable end in and of itself. Niebuhr, on the other hand, came to recognize, as

President Roosevelt already had, that the value of the Neutrality Act of 1935 lay solely in its effectiveness in any given situation. “Neutrality for its own sake is probably a futile policy,” he warned. “It is becoming increasingly apparent that neutrality, in the case of a world conflict, is practically an impossibility. It is more important therefore that we seek

11 “On the Ethiopian War,” Radical Religion 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1935): 6-8.

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to avert the world conflict by such support of League sanctions as proper neutrality legislation will make possible.”12

For his part, President Roosevelt was trying to do exactly what Niebuhr argued the U.S. should do. Still wary of appearing to work too closely with the League, he invoked the Neutrality Act on 5 October, just two days after Italy invaded Ethiopia. He was stepping out in front of the League’s collective security action by placing an embargo on the shipment of American arms to Italy and Ethiopia before the League made its decision regarding sanctions at the end of the month. Although he could not legally designate an aggressor, it was obvious to all that the laws worked against Italy, which had a navy and merchant marine and could afford to purchase goods from the U.S., and had little impact on Ethiopia, which had none of these essentials for trade. Roosevelt even went beyond the provisions of the Neutrality Act, warning that “any of our people who voluntarily engage in transactions of any character with either of the belligerents do so at their own risk.” Some businessmen, particularly the importers and exporters of New

York, objected to Roosevelt’s discouraging trade with Italy and declared their intentions to ignore his warning.13

While the League deliberated over sanctions, the Christian Century attempted to find a position somewhere between the F.O.R. and Niebuhr. On the one hand, the editors, like the F.O.R. leaders, opposed sanctions, fearing that economic sanctions would necessarily lead to military action. By the end of October the League had condemned

12 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Pacifism and Sanctions: A Symposium,” Radical Religion 1, no. 2 (Winter 1935): 27-30, quote from 30. 13 “Statement by President Roosevelt,” 6 October 1935, in U.S. Department of State, Peace and War, 283. “Port Group Scores Italian Ship Ban,” New York Times, 8 October 1935; “Exporters Ignore Roosevelt Decree,” ibid., 9 October 1935.

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Italy as the aggressor, placed a ban on the sale of arms and the extension of credit to Italy,

and appeared determined to extend sanctions to include raw materials, although

discussions on that matter continued into 1936.

The Christian Century editors responded to these developments by modifying their position to include something more than opposition to sanctions. They now distinguished between the “dogmatist” and the “truly religious man.” The dogmatist viewed events unfolding in Geneva with nothing but cynicism and continued to argue that sanctions could never improve the world situation. The Christian Century’s religious

man, however, was a very Niebuhrian conception. The religious man “was always

looking for undiscovered possibilities in every complex situation. . . . He knows that his

thoughts are not always God’s thoughts nor are his ways God’s ways.” The religious

man, in other words, exercised humility and recognized the limits of his own ability to

shape any situation. Furthermore, he retained the hope that came with a firm and

unwavering belief in the mystery and grace of God: “The religious man believes that God

is working even though his working does not conform to man’s plan.”

The editors admitted that it was difficult to pray in such trying times, but they,

like Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr, urged Christians to remember that redemption often

follows destruction: “It is only as we look beyond Mussolini and beyond the league’s

blockade and its threatened war in the Mediterranean, to the God who makes even the

wrath of man to praise him, that we shall be able to pray at all!”14

Yet, unlike Niebuhr, the Christian Century never fully endorsed the League’s sanctions, leading one of its readers to accuse the editors of taking the “dogmatist”

14 “Back to 1914!,” Christian Century, 16 October 1935, 1304-6.

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position they criticized. The editors responded that “no editorial comment has appeared

in The Christian Century which has not had behind it a lively appreciation of the

difficulty of the problem with which the league has been wrestling.” The Christian

Century had, in the editors’ own estimation, dealt with the problem “both realistically and

with an open mind.” To their critics who demanded that they offer some alternative if

they were going to continue criticizing sanctions, the editors advocated only the sort of

inaction that Richard Niebuhr had urged during the Manchurian crisis:

In a period when confusion is so general, when even the chief actors in this tragic drama betray so clearly their lack of any clear principles of sound policy and their dread of the consequences of their own acts, it may be true that, having rejected one proposal as self-defeating and ruinous, the Christian lover of peace has for the moment no wiser course open than to watch with care and prayer the development of the crisis.

The Christian Century would therefore continue to watch the League’s actions “with sympathy, with good will, and with the hope that they may work out to establish precedents which will serve the cause of peace,” but they would never wholeheartedly endorse the idea of economic sanctions and would continue to reject any call for military action to stop aggressors.15

The Christian Century did, however, continue to urge Roosevelt to interpret the

Neutrality Act’s “implements of war” in the broadest possible manner. “When a battalion

of Italian airplanes, fueled with American gas and lubricated with American oil, swoops

low over an Ethiopian town and takes it with machine gun fire,” declared the Christian

Century, “it is small comfort to reflect that we did not furnish the guns and the powder.

We cannot hold ourselves guiltless if we furnish the motive power that carries the planes

15 “Halting Mussolini,” Christian Century, 30 October 1935, 1366-68.

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and tanks to the scene of carnage.” Several other press outlets, including the New York

Times, agreed.16

Privately, Roosevelt expressed his desire to extend the embargo to cover raw materials, including oil, the commodity that was most vital to the Italian campaign and which was at the center of the League’s prolonged sanction discussions. Secretary Hull and others at the State Department, however, informed him that it was clear during the debates over neutrality that Congress had never intended the law to include raw materials.

Roosevelt then suggested putting pressure on exporters by publishing a list of the names of those companies that continued to trade with Italy after the war began, but Hull again insisted that this was going too far.17

When reports on trade for the month of October indicated that American oil exports to Italy actually increased despite the president’s initial warning against the risks of continued trade, Roosevelt and Hull issued stronger statements that amounted to a

“moral embargo.” In his Armistice Day speech at Arlington Cemetery, Roosevelt criticized “those few who have placed temporary, selfish gain ahead of national or world peace.” Hull was more specific in his statement four days later, identifying specific goods—”oil, copper, trucks, tractors, scrap iron, and scrap steel”—that may not be

“implements of war,” but were nevertheless “essential war materials.” “This class of trade,” he warned, “is directly contrary to the policy of this Government as announced in

16 “Make Our Neutrality Effective,” Christian Century, 4 December 1935, 1544-45, quote from 1545; Harris, United States and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis, 78. 17 Harris, United States and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis, ch. 7; Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 110-15.

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official statements of the President and Secretary of State, as it is also contrary to the general spirit of the recent neutrality act.”18

Roosevelt and Hull were doing everything they could to indicate to the League that the U.S. would cooperate as much as possible with League sanctions short of official endorsement. But this was a delicate balancing act. Roosevelt recognized that the

American people had grown more wary of the League since the Manchurian crisis.

Whereas Hoover and Stimson arranged for the American consul general at Geneva to sit in on the Security Council’s deliberations over how to deal with Japan, Hull sought to pre-empt even the extension of an invitation to the U.S. to participate in League sanction talks, asking his delegate in Geneva to pass along the word that such an invitation was

“not only unnecessary but at this time inadvisable from the viewpoint of this government.”19

The League, led by France and Britain, continued to put off any decision regarding an embargo on oil until it knew whether or not the American government would cooperate. The British and French governments argued that a League-sponsored oil sanction would be ineffective so long as Italy could continue to import oil from non- member states like the U.S. With the American Neutrality Act set to expire at the end of

February 1936, revision of neutrality laws would be among the first items on the agenda when Congress reconvened in January. The British and French encouraged the League to wait until then to place an embargo on oil.

18 “Address Delivered by President Roosevelt at Arlington Cemetery,” 11 November 1935, in U.S. Department of State, Peace and War, 289-91; “Statement by the Secretary of State,” 15 November 1935, ibid., 292-93. 19 Hull to the United States Delegation at Geneva, 9 October 1935, U.S. Department of State, Peace and War, 283-84.

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Now fully versed in the Christian realist argument that nations, like individuals,

cannot transcend their own self-interests, the Christian Century editors viewed the delays

with a great deal of skepticism. They dismissed the British and French reasoning as self-

serving and insincere. Though acting independently, the American government had taken

the lead in responding to the Ethiopian War. Why, then, did the League insist on formal

endorsement of its policies on the part of the U.S.? The Christian Century suggested that

“the real reason why the attempt is being made to secure a formal tie between the league

sanctions and the measures taken by the United States is that, in case the league

progresses to military sanctions, the United States may then be charged with desertion if

it fails to follow suit.”20

The details of the Hoare-Laval plan, leaked in December 1935, only confirmed the Christian Century’s cynical take on British and French intentions. British Foreign

Secretary Samuel Hoare and French Prime Minister Pierre Laval sought to bypass the

League of Nations and negotiate directly with Italy. They devised a plan that would cede to Italy large portions of Ethiopia and grant the Italians a “zone of economic expansion and settlement” in much of the remaining Ethiopian territory. Although the myth that the

American government’s unwillingness to join the League’s sanction efforts doomed the

League from the beginning still persists, the Hoare-Laval plan was not a last-ditch effort that the statesmen turned to because they feared sanctions would be ineffective. Rather, as historian Brice Harris argues, Hoare and Laval created their proposal precisely because

20 “The United States and League Sanctions,” Christain Century, 13 November 1935, 1444.

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they believed that the U.S. would embargo oil and that, in response, Mussolini would take military action against Britain and France.21

The news of the plan was received with indignation in Britain, France, and the

U.S. Samuel Hoare was forced to resign from his position as foreign secretary, and

American anti-interventionists pointed to the scheme as further evidence of the League of

Nations’ corruption and hypocrisy. The Christian Century, however, did not join in the furor. After all, it had predicted something along the lines of the Hoare-Laval plan since the crisis began. The editors portrayed Hoare and Laval as realists, “responsible statesmen,” who were victims of circumstance. The British public demanded sanctions, so their government had no choice but to call for them. The British leaders, however, doubted that the people’s desire to stop Mussolini ran deep enough to support war. “The whole diplomatic fabric, with ‘collective security’ as its central pattern, has been woven of grandiose pretension and downright lies,” wrote the Christian Century. Neither

Samuel Hoare nor the British government should be blamed for their “bluff”: they had no choice but to make it and hope that it would succeed, but when Mussolini called it, they were forced to fold:

Perhaps no conception of peace is practicable within the framework of the present international economic order. There is therefore no sense in getting angry with our governments. Every government in the world would, in like circumstances, do as England has done, as France has done. Perhaps not so well as England has done. To England’s credit let it be said that in trying to live up to her league obligation she created and supported the most formidable and impressive lie which any modern government has ever projected, and confessed to it only when the interest of her imperiled empire demanded that she tell the truth.22

21 Harris, United States and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis, 101. 22 “The Collapse of Sanctions,” Christian Century, 25 December 1935, 1646-47.

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After accepting the mandatory provisions of the Neutrality Act of 1935, it was

unlikely that Roosevelt would ever be able to secure the discretionary measures he

desired. The Hoare-Laval plan shattered whatever hope for discretionary measures

remained. The bill that the State Department drafted and had Senator Pittman and

Congressman McReynolds introduce in January 1936 did not include provisions for

designating an aggressor: the only new discretionary measure was a provision that would

allow the president to limit to peacetime levels the trade of selected raw materials to all

belligerents with the use of a quota system.23

The more nationalistic of the anti-interventionists in the Senate, led by Hiram

Johnson and William E. Borah, opposed restrictions on any goods other than munitions.

Borah derided the president’s plan to restrict trade. “I do not consider that neutrality is synonymous with cowardice,” he declared, implying that the administration’s neutrality proposal was the foreign policy equivalent of cowering in a corner to avoid a fight. With two leading experts on international law, Edwin Borchard of Yale Law School and former World Court Justice John Bassett Moore, backing them, Johnson and Borah argued for the preservation of the traditional concept of “freedom of the seas.” They even opposed Roosevelt’s trade-at-your-own risk policy. “We have either got to go forward with the protection of our own people, or we have got to abandon them,” argued Johnson, who refused to consider doing the latter.24

23 On the debates surrounding the Neutrality Act of 1936, see Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 183-86; Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 117-20; Divine, Illusion of Neutrality, ch. 5. 24 Borah and Johnson quoted in Divine, Illusion of Neutrality, 148.

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Other anti-interventionists, however, supported the administration’s quota system

on raw materials. Senators Gerald P. Nye and Bennett Champ Clark, always staunch

supporters of mandatory neutrality, drafted a bill similar to the administration’s, except

that it made restrictions automatic upon the outbreak of war. Both the F.O.R. and the

Christian Century supported proposals along the lines of the Nye-Clark bill.

The Christian Century asked its readers, “Do we want to be neutral?” For the editors, the answer was an unequivocal “yes,” but they argued that debates over neutrality had once again become muddled. There was a genuine choice to be made between

“actual neutrality” and “a disguised partisanship.” Allowing any executive discretion in the carrying out of neutrality opened the door for attempts to work with the League to stop an aggressor. Although the Christian Century editors were less critical of such efforts than Senators Johnson and Borah, they nevertheless correctly pointed out that cooperation with the League should not be confused with neutrality.

The editors recognized that the near unanimous support for an arms embargo was a step in the right direction, but they argued that it hardly guaranteed neutrality in a conflict. They warned that implements of war were only “a small fraction of war trade, and one which is least likely to involve the nation in international complications.”

Morrison and his associates were candid enough to admit that no neutrality legislation would definitely keep the U.S. out of a war, for once a war began, it unleashed “forces, both economic and spiritual, which may sweep all neutrality legislation into the discard, or render it a dead letter.” Yet they also pointed out that if neutrality legislation were to have a chance at keeping the U.S. out of war, it had to restrict all forms of trade with all belligerents. What Borah and Johnson called “cowardice,” was actually sacrifice, and

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sacrifice was the price that had to be paid for true neutrality: “Neutrality legislation, it

cannot be said too often, is a self-denying ordinance—or else it is a fraud.”25

In February 1936, few Americans were willing to make the sort of sacrifice the

Christian Century demanded. The debates in Congress resolved little more than they had in the summer of 1935. Congress voted to extend the 1935 Neutrality Act until 1 May

1937 with only minor amendments. One was a change in wording regarding when the act should be invoked, which later had the unintended consequence of giving Roosevelt more discretion than Congress desired. The phrase, “upon the outbreak or during the progress of war between . . . states,” was replaced with, “whenever the President shall find there exists a state of war between . . . states,” so as to allow the president to invoke the act as soon as possible, even in cases where war was never officially declared. The other amendment was to prohibit loans to belligerents. As the Johnson Act of 1934 already

prevented Americans from lending to European nations in default on their loans, the

Christian Century and other advocates of strict neutrality hardly considered the new legislation a step forward.26

The League of Nations committee charged with drafting sanctions proposals met

again in March 1936, but by then it was too late. France and Britain were now

preoccupied with Hitler, who, taking advantage of the distraction the Ethiopian crisis had

created, sent troops into the Rhineland on 7 March. In early May, Italian troops captured

the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, and Haile Selassie fled the country.

25 “Do We Want to Be Neutral?,” Christian Century, 5 February 1936, 214-16. 26 Neutrality Act of 29 February 1936, U.S. Department of State, Peace and War, 313-14.

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The fall of Ethiopia struck a greater blow to the pacifists’ morale and confidence

in the League than did the Manchurian Crisis. The F.O.R.’s Fellowship rarely even

mentioned the League after the Ethiopian crisis, turning its attention instead to lobbying

for stricter U.S. neutrality laws and assuring its readers of the effectiveness of Gandhian

non-violence as the number of pacifists quickly dwindled in the middle of the decade.27

In July 1936, the Christian Century declared that the League met in its “funeral session.” At the outset of the crisis, the weekly had noted that this was a more significant test than the conflict in Manchuria because it directly involved the European powers who controlled the League. Furthermore, because the League had never imposed sanctions on

Japan, its supporters could maintain the belief that sanctions could stop an aggressor. But the League had designated Italy an aggressor and invoked sanctions. “Now the league is forced to confront the fact that the trusted plan has been seriously tried and found unworkable,” wrote the Christian Century. “It is easy to say that the league has failed, but it is perhaps truer to say that the nations of the world are not willing, and probably in the nature of the case will never be able, to bear the kind of responsibility which effective use of the sword as an instrument of collective security would involve.”28

It was not only the League that had failed, however. Lest pacifists and other critics of the League become self-righteous in their assessments of the League’s handling of the crisis, the editors added, “We in America will do well to remember that along with

27 On the pacifists’ recognition of their rapidly dwindling ranks, see “War Peace Poll Shows Loss: Percentage of Pacifists Smaller—Effect of League Sanctions Shows,” Fellowship, May 1936, 14. 28 “League Meets in Funeral Session,” Christian Century, 15 July 1936, 980.

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the league, the Kellogg pact and a fairly solid and strong world opinion likewise failed to

prevent the ruthless invasion of a peaceful nation.”29

The Christian Century did not entirely write off the League, however. Quoting a

Norwegian journalist whom he encountered in summer 1936 while investigating the political situation in Europe for the Christian Century, managing editor Paul Hutchison captured the ambiguity with which most of the journal’s staff likely viewed the League:

“We have lost all confidence in the league as it now is, but we dare not give up the league. For if the league goes the last hope of peace for nations such as ours goes with it.

We must, therefore, make the league over; we must make it into something in which our confidence can be restored.”30

As they had with the circulation of the Lytton Report following the Manchurian

crisis, Charles Clayton Morrison and his editorial staff found a silver lining in the

Ethiopian crisis when the League chose to accept the credentials of Ethiopia’s delegates

in September despite Italy’s protests. Italy threatened to leave the League altogether,

although they did not do so until December 1937. By choosing to sit the Ethiopian

delegation, “the league saved its own soul.” The Christian Century still held out hope that

the League could affect the course of history by both shaping and giving voice to public

opinion:

In the very hour of the league’s weakness and humiliation it has proved able to command the attention and approval of the public opinion of the world. Public opinion is a power, slow in operation but tremendous in its ultimate effects. It is, in actuality, the mill in which the gods do their grinding. In the long run, what

29 Ibid. 30 Paul Hutchinson, “Reforming the League,” Christian Century, 26 August 1936, 1126- 28, quote from 1127.

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more powerful part could the league play in human affairs than to make its task the turning of the wheels of that mill?31

* * *

For all of his earlier talk of God’s grace, in autumn 1936 Niebuhr could not share

Morrison’s resilient optimism: he made no indication that grace was anywhere to be found in the present crisis. “The whole of western civilization is sick unto death,” he declared in Radical Religion in spring 1936. “Every new contemporary event confirms this diagnosis.” More so than did Moral Man and Immoral Society or the F.O.R. controversy, Niebuhr’s reaction to developments in Europe in 1936 marked his break with Morrison and the majority of liberal Protestants.32

When Hitler occupied the Rhineland in March, the Christian Century reacted in the same manner as it did when Germany withdrew from disarmament talks in 1933. The editors reiterated their disdain for Hitler but once again argued that France and Britain had no one to blame for Hitler but themselves. The Christian Century saw little cause for alarm: “Only the most stupid diplomacy combined with a stubborn adherence to phrases that have lost their meaning can possibly bring war as the immediate result of Germany’s military occupation of the Rhineland.”33

For the first time in his career, Niebuhr took the Christian Century to task. While he often chided “liberals” for their naivety, he generally avoided naming the names of his erstwhile allies in the F.O.R. or at the Christian Century. Following the German

31 “A Turning Point for the League?,” Christian Century, 7 October 1936, 1312-13. 32 “The International Situation,” Radical Religion 1, no. 3 (Spring 1936): 8. 33 “No Present Threat of European War,” Christian Century, 25 March 1936, 451. See also “Germany Invades the Rhineland,” ibid., 18 March 1936, 422-24.

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occupation of the Rhineland, however, he explicitly directed his criticism at the Christian

Century’s editorial:

The Christian Century declares it to be defeatist to think that war is inevitable. Of course, in one sense nothing is inevitable in history. Historical events are subject to human decisions. But we ought to recognize more generously than we do that there are tides in history which move by inexorable force and there are floods which can be damned but not prevented.

Although actual armed conflict had not yet broken out, Niebuhr argued that European nations were “in a sense already at war,” for “feverish mobilization is not only a preliminary to war but actual war.”

The difficult situation in which the British government found itself following the

Rhineland occupation illustrated the “relativities of politics,” a phrase which Niebuhr now used with increasing frequency. The British government claimed to value collective security, but it was blind to the fact that collective security and neutrality were often at odds. Hitler “took a desperate gamble” when occupying the Rhineland: he suspected that the British preferred neutrality to security, and he had guessed correctly. “The fact is,” concluded Niebuhr, “that a more robust policy on Britain’s part might have brought the whole Nazi regime down in ruins at the time the Rhineland was occupied.”

Niebuhr’s emphasis on the relativities of politics in this situation provides an example of how, when analyzing specific circumstances, he overcame John Coleman

Bennett’s criticism of his tendency to place too much weight on the universality of sin. In his longer, more theoretical writings, Niebuhr repeatedly stressed that all individuals and nations acted out of their own self-interest. In his earlier political writings, like his contribution to Devere Allen’s 1928 symposium on pacifism, he suggested that this unity in sin made both sides in a given war equally culpable, a conclusion he shared with many liberals disillusioned with the injustice of the Treaty of Versailles. But the actions of 301

Japan, Italy, and Germany had since forced him to reconsider. He now recognized these nations as criminals who had threatened world order. To be sure, Britain and France were also going to act out of self-interest, but their self-interest in this instance coincided with the interests of the world. These two nations should serve as the “police court” to arrest the criminal that Germany had become, not because they were “angels of light,” but only

“because historical destiny forces them to play this role against the Nazi threat of anarchy in Europe.”

Niebuhr noted the irony in the fact that Britain and France were charged with this responsibility when it was their harsh punishment meted out at Versailles that led to the situation: “The nations which are now trying to act as the police court of Europe have done more to create the anarchy than the recalcitrant nations which must now be disciplined.” The Christian Century editors agreed with Niebuhr up to this point, but they insisted that the British and French governments must repent for their sins before they could they could condemn those of other governments. Niebuhr, on the other hand, argued that past crimes did not preclude nations from carrying out justice in the present.

Indeed, Niebuhr, who had just a few months earlier urged the British and French governments to stop equivocating over the sanctions issue and stand up to Mussolini, now went so far as to call on those same governments to forgive the Italian dictator in order to encircle Germany and halt Hitler: “Such is the state of international anarchy that you have to let one criminal out of jail in order to use his help in putting another one in.”

Niebuhr did not extend his criticism of the British and French governments to the

Roosevelt administration. He still believed in 1936 that Hitler was a European problem, and as far as he was concerned, there was little Americans could do to help solve it: ‘We

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are not a European nation and we can render very slight service in arresting the anarchy

of Europe by any kind of intervention. It is possible for us therefore in the immediate

moment to espouse both the idea of collective security and the idea of neutrality.” What

Americans could do, however, was learn from the failure of British nerve and their

ineptitude in dealing with the relativities of politics. This was a dilemma which Niebuhr

was convinced Americans would soon have to confront: “There seems no longer a

possibility of avoiding some kind of hostilities.”34

After Italy conquered Ethiopia, Niebuhr’s disillusionment with liberalism reached

its climax. When he pronounced the League dead in Radical Religion, he did not simply

question its handling of the crisis; rather, he attacked it as one of the leading symbols of

an anemic liberalism. The only question that remained was “whether the present plight of

the League represents the death of a puny child, too weak for the vicissitudes of power

politics, or whether it is the discovery of a still birth.”35

In the same issue of Radical Religion, he took liberalism to task for hardening into a “creed.” Liberalism’s “spirit” was one of “tolerance and fairness”; it was what kept civilization from devolving into a “consistent inhumanity.” Still describing himself as a radical, Niebuhr defended liberalism’s spirit, but he argued that most liberals confused that spirit with a hardened creed, the elements of which he enumerated as follows:

A. That injustice is caused by ignorance and will yield to education and greater intelligence. B. That civilization is becoming more moral and that it is a sin to challenge either the inevitability or the efficacy of gradualness.

34 “The International Situation,” Radical Religion 1, no. 3 (Spring 1936): 8-9. 35 Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Failure of Sanctions,” Radical Religion 1, no. 4 (Autumn 1936): 5.

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C. That the character of individuals rather than social systems and arrangements is the guarantee of justice in society. D. That appeals to love, justice, goodwill and brotherhood are bound to be efficacious in the end. If they have not been so to date we must have more appeals to love, justice, goodwill and brotherhood. E. That goodness makes for happiness and that the increasing knowledge of this fact will overcome human selfishness and greed. F. That wars are stupid and can therefore only be caused by people who are more stupid than those who recognize the stupidity of war.

All of these notions were contrary to the facts of human existence. But, according to

Niebuhr, liberals refused to recognize these facts:

Liberalism is in short a kind of blindness to which those are particularly subject who imagine that their intelligence has emancipated them from all the stupidities of the past. It is a blindness which does not see the perennial difference between human actions and aspirations, the perennial source of conflict between life and life, the inevitable tragedy of human existence, the irreducible irrationality of human behavior and the tortuous character of human history. . . . It is a blindness difficult to cure, because it is a disease among classes who imagine themselves particularly clear-eyed.36

Through the end of the decade, Niebuhr continued on this tack. Although he ruthlessly criticized the anti-interventionist position as the product of sentimental thinking, he rarely offered a positive argument for American intervention in the decade’s crises.

* * *

In electoral politics the Christian Century appeared more realistic and willing to choose between less than ideal options than did Niebuhr. Although the Christian Century had endorsed Hoover in 1932, by 1936 Roosevelt had begun to win over Charles Clayton

Morrison. The Christian Century admitted that it was not as “moonstruck” with the president as were many of his supporters. Still, the editors endorsed FDR’s domestic measures and defended him from conservative charges that he had become something of a dictator, a claim they found “laughable” in light of the Supreme Court’s success at

36 “Blindness of Liberalism,” Radical Religion 1, no. 4 (Autumn 1936): 4-5.

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rolling back so much of his domestic agenda by deeming his programs unconstitutional.

Roosevelt’s critics, Morrison argued, made a stronger case for endorsing the president than did Roosevelt himself:

When former Governor Smith and Senator Vandenberg base their case against Mr. Roosevelt on his refusal to be bound by his 1932 platform, we see in that evidence of the type of leadership alone which offers hope of measuring up to the requirements of a period of unpredictable crisis. When the Chicago Tribune holds that the President is guilty of ‘betraying’ the Democratic party organization in Wisconsin, Nebraska and Minnesota, we see in that promise of a political leadership which may escape from meaningless partisanship and produce political divisions honestly representative of differing social and economic interest. And when [Republican presidential candidate] Governor Landon centers his fire on the allegation that Mr. Roosevelt would like to revive the NRA, we see in that the only indication this campaign has afforded that there is one candidate alive to the necessity for dealing with the nation’s economic problems on a national scale. Charges of this nature, far from hurting Mr. Roosevelt’s candidacy, seem to us to offer independent citizens every reason to consider that candidacy worthy of support.37

Whereas Morrison’s main criticism of Roosevelt in 1932 had been the candidate’s ambiguity and failure to annunciate clear-cut proposals, he now recognized this as the president’s chief virtue.

In terms of foreign policy, Roosevelt’s opposition to mandatory neutrality legislation and his “predilection for a peace policy based on gigantic military and naval appropriations” concerned Morrison. As questions of foreign policy “may prove to be the only questions of supreme importance to the people of the United States” by the end of the next presidential term, Morrison was dismayed that neither party platform offered more than generalities in stating their opposition to war. Nevertheless, the Republican party appeared to Morrison to be both “isolationist” and “militaristic” in its emphasis on building up arms for national defense. Roosevelt may not have offered up concrete

37 “For President,” Christian Century, 28 October 1936, 1414-16.

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proposals regarding neutrality in the campaign, but the spirit of his Chautauqua, New

York, speech of 14 August—”the campaign’s high water mark”—convinced Morrison that Roosevelt was the candidate most suitable for leading the nation through international chaos.38

Passages from Roosevelt’s Chautauqua speech could have easily been mistaken with those from an editorial out of the pages of the Christian Century. Although he admitted that he was far more concerned about the international situation than the prospects for domestic recovery, Roosevelt described himself as “one who still hopes that envy, hatred, and malice among nations have reached their peak and will be succeeded by a new tide of peace and good will.” After recounting the success of his Good Neighbor policy toward Latin America and his commitment to the disarmament conference to the

“bitter end,” he allied himself with the non-interventionist internationalism typical of the pacifists when he declared, “We are not isolationists except insofar as we seek to isolate ourselves completely from war.”

Neutrality legislation alone could not prevent the U.S. from being drawn into wars. FDR decried those opportunists who, upon the outbreak of war, would place their own economic interests above the interests of the nation and who “seeking immediate riches—fools’ gold—would attempt to break down or evade our neutrality.” As he had during the Ethiopian crisis, he emphasized the moral imperative of resisting the temptation of increased trade with belligerents: “If we face the choice of profits or peace, the Nation will answer—must answer—‘we choose peace.’ It is the duty of all of us to encourage such a body of public opinion in this country that the answer will be clear and

38 “Peace in the Campaign,” Christian Century, 30 September 1936, 1280-81.

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for all practical purposes unanimous.” Short of promising to endorse mandatory strict neutrality measures, no candidate could have offered words more pleasing to the pacifists and non-interventionists at the Christian Century.39

Niebuhr was more critical of Roosevelt than Morrison. He still sounded like the radical who authored Reflections on the End of an Era when he claimed that “no real ground has been gained for social justice in [Roosevelt’s] administration.” Despite freely admitting that Norman Thomas had no chance at winning the election, Niebuhr continued to support the Socialist party candidate because he believed Thomas’s campaign played an important role in educating Americans about their economic situation. Certainly he found Roosevelt preferable to the Republicans, but he suspected there was no threat of a

Republican victory: “A plutocracy mouthing the libertarian phrases of Jeffersonianism is too obviously hypocritical in its professions to keep the allegiance of the common man.”40

Curiously, considering Niebuhr’s insistence on the “relativities of politics,” it was

Roosevelt’s refusal to commit to specific policies, the very quality that won him the endorsement of the Christian Century, which bothered Niebuhr the most. After the election, Niebuhr pointed out that Roosevelt “made no promises but only held out hopes” during the campaign, so his victory carried with it “no specific mandates.” Yes, Niebuhr admitted, Roosevelt displayed a “remarkable genius for tactical improvisations,” but he was only able to do so because of his “equally remarkable poverty in strategic

39 U.S. Department of State, Peace and War, 323-29. 40 “The Political Campaign,” Radical Religion 1, no. 4 (Autumn 1936): 6-7, first quote from 6; “The National Election,” Radical Religion 2, no. 1 (Winter 1936): 3-4, second quote from 3.

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principles.” The American people had “chosen a messiah rather than a political leader committed to a specific political program; and unfortunately the messiah is more renowned for his artistic juggling than for robust resolution.” Not until World War II began did Niebuhr fully appreciate what he later recognized as FDR’s political

“pragmatism.”41

* * *

Months before the election of 1936, another crisis had already begun in Europe.

In July, General Francisco Franco led his Moroccan-based troops in an attack on the mainland of Spain in an attempt to overthrow the Republican government that had been in power since the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931. The

Nationalists, as Franco’s rebel troops were known, were not immediately successful, but neither were the Loyalists, the defenders of the Republic, able to defeat them. The ensuing Spanish Civil War lasted three years and put collective security to the test; once again, that system was found wanting.

The Spanish Civil War is often referred to as the “dress rehearsal” for World War

II. With Germany and Italy supplying the Nationalists with arms and troops and the

U.S.S.R. and international volunteers backing the Loyalists, the description is not wholly unwarranted: the Spanish Civil War was a war against fascism. In 1936, however, it was not entirely clear what the Loyalists and their allies were fighting for. The situation was complicated by the fact that the conflict was ostensibly a civil war and that it involved

Communists, anarchists, and the Catholic hierarchy as well as liberals and fascists. In a sense, the war was an anomaly in the international crises of the 1930s. The line between

41 “The National Election,” Radical Religion 2, no. 1 (Winter 1936): 3-4. On Niebuhr’s later appreciation of FDR’s “pragmatism,” see Niebuhr, “Reminiscences,” 92-93. 308

American non-interventionists and interventionists that can be traced from the

Manchurian crisis, through the Ethiopian crisis, and to World War II was blurred during the Spanish Civil War.

For at least the first year of the war, Niebuhr’s commentary was a return to the analysis of class struggle. His editorials resembled Moral Man and Immoral Society and

Reflections on the End of an Era more than they did his editorials during the Manchurian or Ethiopian crises. The situation in which the Loyalists found themselves only confirmed for Niebuhr his belief that radicals could not renounce violence: even if violent measures were unnecessary to secure power, radicals had to be prepared to resort to violence to preserve that power from the counter-revolutionary forces that would inevitably follow a successful revolution.42

The acts of violence that the Loyalists committed against both the property and clergy of the Catholic Church illustrated his earlier assertion that even those who fought on the side of relative justice would be morally compromised by the vengeance that spurred them to action in the first place. The Catholic hierarchy publicized the Loyalists’ crimes in an effort to portray the civil war as a conflict between Christianity and

Communism and to gain the sympathy and support of American Protestants for Franco’s

Nationalists. In a handful of articles in both Radical Religion and the Christian Century,

Niebuhr criticized the Catholic hierarchy’s efforts. “The Spanish church has not only neglected the problem of justice but has been the most potent ally of the most corrupt landlordism of Europe,” he argued. Having tied itself too closely to the dying feudal order, the Catholic Church was now paying the price.

42 Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Spanish Counter-Revolution,” Radical Religion 1, no. 4 (Autumn 1936): 9.

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This was not simply an anti-Catholic polemic; rather, it was a warning to all

Christians about the dangers of using their religion to rationalize any social order. Just as the Catholic Church defended feudalism in Spain, Niebuhr argued, American Protestants were often blindly committed to the defense of capitalism:

The Protestant would do well to remember that all institutional religion is tempted to regard its enemies as God’s enemies and to forget how many people hate God because of the injustices which they suffer at the hands of those who profess to believe in him. No Christian civilization, confronted with rebels who hate both it and the God it worships, can rescue even a shred of what it calls Christian in its civilization if it does not experience a deep sense of contrition for having served the God it worships so sinfully that it has made its faith a byword and curse to multitudes, particularly to the most needy multitudes for whom the gospel has a special blessing.43

The Spanish Civil War quickly took on an international dimension, however, despite the efforts of the British, French, and American governments to keep it localized.

As the head of the Popular Front government in France, Premier Léon Blum sympathized with the Republican government of Spain. But he also understood the dangers of allying

France too closely with the Loyalists at a time when the German army was rapidly rearming. With the support of the British government, Blum proposed a non-intervention agreement in August 1936. The Italian and German governments agreed to Blum’s proposal and promised to send neither arms nor men to Spain.

Acting independently, the Roosevelt administration urged a moral embargo against sales of arms to either side in the conflict. The State Department argued that such an embargo conformed to the spirit of the neutrality laws even though the laws were not

43 “Catholicism and Communism,” Radical Religion 2, no. 1 (Winter 1936): 4-6, quotes from 5. See also “The United Christian Council for Democracy,” ibid. 2, no. 1 (Winter 1936): 47-48; Reinhold Niebuhr, “Catholicism and Anarchism in Spain,” ibid. 2, no. 2 (Spring 1937): 25-28; Reinhold Niebuhr, “Arrogance in the Name of Christ,” Christian Century, 2 September 1936, 1157-58.

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technically binding in civil wars. When, in January 1937, an American firm announced

its intentions to send aircraft materials to the Spanish government in spite of the moral

embargo, Congress passed emergency legislation to make such sales illegal.44

During the early months of the war, the Christian Century was clearly conflicted

over the role European powers should play in handling the crisis. On the one hand, the

editors argued, neutrality was “scarcely relevant” in a civil war between a “recognized

government” and “an insurrectionary party to which no other power has extended

diplomatic recognition.” It was apparent to everyone that the Germans and Italians were

shipping arms and aircraft to Franco even as they entered into the non-intervention

agreement, causing the editors to question why the British and French governments had

pushed for it in the first place: “For France to sell planes to Spain is a transaction that

infringes upon no right and violates no obligation of neutrality. For Germany to send

planes to the Spanish rebels is a hostile act toward a nation with which it is officially

friendly.” Nevertheless, the editors appreciated the effort to prevent a wider European

war and held out hope that Germany and Italy would soon live up to the agreement. As

late as spring 1937, Niebuhr shared this view.45

The Christian Century did not see any universal moral imperative at work that compelled all democratic nations take the same stance in response to the crisis. As

Niebuhr had argued during the Ethiopian crisis, historical and geographical circumstance as well as national self-interest meant that the U.S. should play a different role than

44 For a detailed account of the development of American foreign policy during the Spanish Civil War, see F. Jay Taylor, The United States and the Spanish Civil War (New York: Bookman Associates, 1956). 45 “Spanish Civil War Grows Worse, International Tension Less,” Christian Century, 26 August 1936, 1123; “Brief Comments,” Radical Religion 2, no. 2 (Spring 1937): 7.

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Britain or France. Although the editors came out unequivocally on the side of the

Loyalists, they supported the administration’s arms embargo even as they questioned the wisdom of Britain and France in following roughly the same policy.

When, in early 1937, New York Socialists began a fundraising campaign for the party’s Eugene V. Debs Column, a proposed unit of five hundred volunteers that would join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in fighting for the Spanish Republic, both the F.O.R. and the Christian Century denounced the party’s efforts. The Christian Century editors pointed out the irony of naming the unit after the anti-war Socialist leader who spent three years in prison under the Espionage Act of 1917 for impeding the war effort when he urged resistance to the draft in 1918. But their real concern was that the move set a dangerous precedent of intervention.46

The more the editors watched the European situation unfold, the more convinced they became that “the United States has one role, and one alone, to play in world affairs.

It is the duty of the United States to maintain a zone of sanity in a world going mad by keeping out of war of any description in any place.” This idea of America’s role in a world at war was a familiar one to many of the liberal Protestants who read the Christian

Century: Niebuhr had made the case for American non-intervention using similar language when, following the Manchurian crisis, he wrote that the U.S. must remain one of the “islands of sanity in a sea of insanity.” 47

46 Whether due to government intervention or an inability to raise the necessary funds, the Eugene V. Debs Column never made it to Spain. Robert A. Rosenstone, Crusade of the Left: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2009 [1969]), 89. 47 “Keep out of Spain!,” Christian Century, 27 January 1937, 104-6, quote from 106.

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When critics of neutrality like Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia

University and head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, declared that

such “isolationism” amounted to an evasion of responsibility, the Christian Century

argued that “the appeal to high morality against an American policy is both obscurantist

and dangerous.” There was little hope of bringing about peace if the U.S. entered an

international conflict, for even if victory on the battlefield could be achieved, after the

war the U.S. would find itself in an alliance with Britain and France to keep the

recalcitrant nations suppressed. So long as the underlying economic causes that led those

nations to become rebellious went unaddressed, peace could never be achieved. The U.S.

could far better fulfill its moral responsibility to the world by staying out of the war,

studying the causes of international conflicts, and then playing a leadership role in the

reconstruction process that followed.48

Recognizing that they might come off as self-righteous, the editors clarified their position and attempted to distance themselves from what today would likely be called

“American exceptionalism”:

It is not that we have discovered that other nations are bad, while we are good. No, anything but that! We have discovered that our goodness, our moralism, is in large measure the expression of our relative detachment; we have less reason than others to dissimulate. . . . We are no more virtuous than other nations. The difference is a difference of circumstance.

The editors confessed that, like all Americans, they had been “idealistic and uninformed, not to say naïve,” prior to the World War. But the intervening years had made them more realistic by forcing them to recognize that “high principles of morality do not hold in

48 “Is Neutrality Moral?,” Christian Century, 17 March 1937, 342-44.

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international relationships.” In short, the Christian Century had long since abandoned the

illusion that war could ever pave the way for peace.49

Given the Christian Century’s conception of American responsibility in foreign wars, it came as no surprise that the editors continued to insist on mandatory measures when Congress again turned its attention to neutrality legislation in spring 1937. The debates took on a familiar form: once again the administration and its backers hoped for more discretion, Nye and his supporters pushed for mandatory neutrality, and Johnson and Borah opposed both in favor of freedom of the seas. Preoccupied with the political fallout that resulted from his attempt to expand the Supreme Court (critics called it “court packing”), Roosevelt determined it was best to sit this round out.

In the ensuing debates over neutrality, the Christian Century again lamented the confusion that surrounded the whole issue. Much of the problem, the editors concluded, derived from the word neutrality itself. There was a mistaken conception—one that often seems to persist today—that neutrality legislation unduly restricted the ability of the U.S. government to act in foreign crises. But the law did not force the government into a position of neutrality in all future wars; it only demanded that as long as the government remained officially neutral, no individual could engage in activities that compromised that neutrality. The Christian Century explained:

Congress is not legislating neutrality for the nation. It still has the constitutional power to declare war: it still may commit America to one side or the other of a war. The nation’s freedom of action will not be curtailed in the slightest degree by the so-called neutrality legislation now approaching enactment. In what sense, then, does this legislation make for neutrality? The answer is that it is designed to keep private citizens neutral so long as the nation is neutral. It is directed against the merchant, the manufacturer, the banker and the

49 “A Crisis in American Peace Policy,” Christian Century, 20 October 1937, 1285-88, quotes from 1286.

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tourist, who, insisting upon their peace-time rights while a war is in progress, might involve this nation in the war. In a word, the new legislation is designed to keep the question of neutrality or non-neutrality in the hands of the nation itself, instead of letting it be determined by the interests of certain private citizens or groups.50

Unlike the Christian Century, Niebuhr was little concerned with either the morality of neutrality or whether neutrality legislation was in fact neutral. As a philosophical and political pragmatist, he evaluated the legislation only in terms of the consequences it might have. Mandatory legislation would “cut off our last chance to choose between the right or the wrong side in a European dispute,” but it would undoubtedly be more effective than discretionary legislation at keeping the U.S. out of war.

As he saw it, the question was whether or not war was imminent. It might still be possible to avoid war if Britain and France took a firm stand now, in which case discretionary measures to aid them were preferable. But if war was inevitable, then the pacifists, whose position he now unfairly described as one of “complete irresponsibility and isolation,” might be correct in pushing for mandatory legislation. Although he earlier wrote that war was inevitable, he was evidently unsure as to just how imminent it was, for he declared Radical Religion “neutral” in the debates over mandatory and discretionary measures.51

Like its predecessors, the bill that Roosevelt signed into law on 1 May 1937

contained both discretionary and mandatory elements, but overall the legislation was

moving closer to the stricter act envisioned by Nye and his committee members. The

50 “Is Neutrality Moral?,” Christian Century, 17 March 1937, 343. 51 “Brief Comments,” Radical Religion 2, no. 2 (Spring 1937): 7.

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arms embargo and loan restrictions from the previous acts were extended, and new provisions were added: in light of the Spanish Civil War, the new act covered “civil strife” as well as war between states; merchant ships engaged in trade with belligerents were prohibited from arming themselves; and American citizens, who had previously been allowed to travel on ships of belligerent nations at their own risk, were now forbidden from doing so altogether.

The most significant addition to the act was a measure that empowered the president to place trade with belligerents on a “cash-and-carry” basis. Originally proposed by financier Bernard Baruch, the idea gained the support of non-interventionists like Nye as a means of allowing the government to regulate the trade of goods not included under the arms embargo. Cash-and-carry required belligerents to pay for goods in cash immediately upon the transfer of title at U.S. ports and to transport the goods themselves. The plan was designed to minimize the risk of continued trade with belligerents by keeping American property and merchant ships out of belligerent waters.

Supporters of mandatory neutrality would have preferred combining an absolute embargo on munitions with provisions that automatically placed all other trade on a cash-and-carry basis. While the arms embargo remained intact under the 1937 law, the cash-and-carry provisions were not automatic: the president had the power to decide what items would be placed on a cash-and-carry basis and when. Although the Neutrality Act of 1937 was the first permanent neutrality legislation, the cash-and-carry provisions were set to expire on 1 May 1939.52

* * *

52 The Neutrality Act of 1937, U.S. Department of State, Peace and War, 355-65.

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Throughout the Ethiopian crisis and the Spanish Civil War, Niebuhr continued to develop his Christian realism and stress its incompatibility with pacifism. In theory, the two were irreconcilable. In terms of policy, there had been real disagreements between

Niebuhr and the pacifists and non-interventionists. More often than not, however, these disputes were over policies that other nations were pursuing, whether it was the League’s decision to impose sanctions in the Ethiopian crisis or the British and French governments’ failure to take action after Germany occupied the Rhineland. In the debates over American foreign policy, pacifists and realists found common ground, at least temporarily, in their support of the Roosevelt administration’s efforts to maintain neutrality in the face of world crisis.

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Chapter Eight: The Road to War, 1937-1939

While the war in Spain continued on, tensions between China and Japan escalated in July 1937 after a clash of troops at the Marco Polo Bridge on the outskirts of Beijing.

By August, Japan controlled Beijing and began bombing Shanghai. Once again, the world was shocked and condemned the Japanese aggression.

Unlike the Ethiopian crisis, during which neutrality legislation worked against

Italy, the aggressor, Roosevelt feared that a neutrality proclamation would hurt China more than Japan. Not only did the Japanese manufacture their own armaments, but Japan also controlled the seas. Thus, invoking the cash-and-carry provision on other goods would in effect cut off China from the U.S. As the war in the Far East was undeclared,

Roosevelt and the State Department were able to use the ambiguous wording of the law, which required that a neutrality proclamation be announced “whenever the President shall find there exists a state of war,” to their advantage: Roosevelt simply refrained from formally recognizing the war in China. In September, amid protests from Congress and peace activists, he prohibited government-owned merchant ships from carrying arms or implements of war to either China or Japan and announced that private vessels that continued to transport these materials to the region did so at their own risk. As for the question of the applicability of the neutrality law, he insisted that it was being evaluated

“on a 24-hour basis.”1

Following the resumption of war in China, Niebuhr for the first time came out unequivocally opposed to mandatory neutrality legislation. When the nation debated the

1 Statement by President Roosevelt, 14 September 1937, in U.S. Department of State, Peace and War, 380.

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issue in the months before the war broke out—when neutrality was an abstract concept— he could not choose between mandatory and discretionary legislation. But now that there was a specific case to which the law applied, he concluded, “Mandatory neutrality means complete irresponsibility toward every possible aggression in the world.” He praised

Roosevelt for his “rather ingenious logic” in taking advantage of the wording of the act to continue trade with China.2

By autumn 1937, Niebuhr was also growing weary of the British and French non- intervention policy toward Spain. With Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union continuing to send arms and men to the war-torn country, non-intervention was “wearing thinner and thinner.” He did not call for the U.S. government to change its policy, either toward

Spain or toward those nations that continued to intervene, but he did question the motives of the British government, whose responsibilities he continued to argue were much greater. Revealing the extent to which he still retained his Marxist analysis even during these international crises, he recognized that “non-intervention is on the one hand an effort to isolate the Spanish struggle. It is on the other hand a device of an aristocratic democracy which can not make up its mind whether it hates fascism more because it is antidemocratic or communism because it is anti-capitalistic.”3

The war in China placed the U.S. “in the same position in regard to Japan in which Britain finds herself in regard to Germany and Italy,” Niebuhr argued. The U.S. might be able to remain isolated from a European conflict, “but even the Pacific will not preserve our vaunted isolation” if Japan succeeded in conquering China. After a Japanese

2 “The War in China,” Radical Religion 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1937): 2. 3 Reinhold Niebuhr, “European Impressions,” Radical Religion 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1937): 31-33, quote from 33.

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victory, the U.S. and Japan might not immediately go to war, but they would “live in a relationship of uneasy tension.” In response to “real or fancied threats” from Japan,

Niebuhr predicted, the U.S. would embark on a program of rearmament that would inevitably result in war.

Although his criticism of neutrality had been primarily political up to this point, he now argued that it was morally indefensible as well. Non-interventionists accepted as axiomatic the idea that neutrality itself was moral, but Niebuhr argued the morality of neutrality could not “be decided abstractly. Both the expediency and the morality of our policy would depend on how great the risks are of aggravating the conflict or the hope of mitigating it.” By 1939, when intervention seemed likely to involve the U.S. in war,

Niebuhr rarely challenged the pacifists’ claim to the authority of Jesus, preferring instead to argue that Jesus’ teachings were irrelevant to politics. But in this instance, he invoked the parable of the Good Samaritan to support his claim to morality. By helping the man who had been attacked by thieves without knowing whether the thieves were still around, the Samaritan took a moral risk that might have involved him in a fight should the thieves have returned.

The U.S., too, had to take such a risk, though he believed the risk was “not too great.” There was no need to declare war on Japan. By abandoning the idea of neutrality in the Pacific, the government could cut off trade to Japan and continue to aid China. To be sure, such a provocative act might result in war, but it was highly unlikely Japan was capable of waging war with the U.S. at this time:

Every one of the challenging nations, Germany, Italy and Japan, are making their martial ventures on an economic shoestring. They must succeed quickly in order to succeed at all. Once they have their booty they may become invincible. But at

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the present moment they are still vulnerable and their ventures can be brought to naught by economic pressure.4

The Christian Century, on the other hand, deplored Roosevelt’s refusal to invoke

the neutrality act. The editors disagreed with Niebuhr and Roosevelt that delaying

application of the act would in any way aid China. Arguing that the precarious political

situation in China would prevent bankers from extending loans to the Chinese

government and merchants from shipping arms there, they surmised that Japan was more

likely to benefit from the president’s inaction. If Roosevelt invoked the act and its cash-

and-carry provision on raw materials, Japan, which relied on the U.S. for iron and oil,

would have to pay cash, which it did not have, for these goods. Although the Christian

Century may have been correct in its estimate of the negative impact the neutrality laws

would have on Japan, the editors were incorrect about China. The Chinese government

supported Roosevelt’s inaction and, according to State Department records, received

more than $2.5 million in munitions in the final quarter of 1937.5

The Christian Century argued that the best thing the U.S. could do in the current crisis in Asia was to stay out. This was not a selfish act, according to the editors; rather, it was an acknowledgement of the inability of the U.S. to shape history to its liking. The current conflict was clearly another incident, like the Manchurian crisis, in a long series of wars that would have to play themselves out in the Far East before any real peace could be achieved. Morrison held out hope that in the long run, perhaps as long as a century, “a new stability” could be achieved:

4 Reinhold Niebuhr, “America and the War in China,” Christian Century, 29 September 1937, 1195-96. 5 Divine, Illusion of Neutrality, 209.

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But this stability will have to be achieved by Asiatics themselves. Attempts by outside powers to intervene will only defer and make more difficult the solution of Asia’s problems. It would be folly for the United States to allow itself to become involved, now or at any later time, in the tragic events by which the Asiatic peoples will work out their fates.6

On 5 October 1937, Roosevelt delivered his “quarantine speech,” in which he at least suggested he was moving from neutrality toward some sort of action. “The epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading,” he declared. “When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease.”7

Although he spoke of “positive endeavors to preserve peace,” he proposed no specific action. During a press conference the following day, when he was asked about what steps he might take and whether this speech indicated his rejection of neutrality,

Roosevelt was characteristically evasive, saying the speech conveyed only “an attitude” and was not meant to “outline a program.” The only foreign policy development that followed in the immediate aftermath of the speech was the administration’s dispatch of a delegation to a meeting of the signatories of the Nine-Power Treaty scheduled to convene in Brussels in November 1937. Along with seven other nations, the U.S. and Japan had both pledged to recognize the territorial integrity of China when they signed the 1922 treaty. Having lost confidence in its own ability to deal with aggressor states over the

6 “Apply the Neutrality Law!,” Christian Century, 11 August 1937, 989-91. 7 Quarantine speech reprinted in U.S. Department of State, Peace and War, 383-87.

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previous year, the League hoped that a meeting of the treaty’s signatories might prove

more successful in handling the present war in Asia.8

Although the Christian Century recognized that the Brussels Conference “may

lead to nothing except a futile effusion of words,” it applauded Roosevelt for agreeing to

send a delegation, for “it is also possible that something may be done.” At the very least,

this was a necessary precursor to any further diplomatic action and seemed unlikely to

carry with it any risks.9

If the aim of the conference was really to negotiate a settlement between Japan

and China, it was doomed before it even began, because Japan (and Germany) refused to

attend. The historian Wayne S. Cole points out that the conference may have had one

benefit for interventionists: it further consolidated American public opinion against those

two countries. Commenting on the conference after it failed to produce anything more

than a condemnation of Japan, however, Niebuhr could see no such benefit: “Why that

conference was ever held is a mystery, since it is difficult to understand why the

democratic nations should desire to advertise their already well known impotence and

ineptitude in the foredoomed breakdown of a world conference.” By the end of 1937,

Niebuhr had come to see international conferences as futile ventures.10

8 Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 244-48, Roosevelt quoted on 248; Divine, Illusion of Neutrality, 211-13; Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 148-50. 9 This editorial comment may have been written by Niebuhr. Morrison was more realistic than to guarantee the conference’s success beforehand, but given his later optimism regarding conferences, it is hard to imagine him admitting that the Brussels Conference “may lead to nothing except a futile effusion of words.” “Belgium Will Be Host to Nine- Power Conference,” Christian Century, 27 October 1937, 1315-16. 10 “The International Situation,” Radical Religion 3, no. 1 (Winter 1937): 2-3, quote from 2; Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 251.

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Despite their initial approval of the immediate consequence of the quarantine speech, the Christian Century editors were quite concerned about the tone, which they argued only served to galvanize collective security proponents. By early 1938 Morrison feared that interventionists might take steps to quarantine Japan. In previous editorials concerning foreign policy, he had assumed that the American people, and Roosevelt himself, were so opposed to war that it was enough to explain why certain actions ran the risk of war. Now, however, he was no longer sure that the administration would not run that risk, and a real sense of urgency ran through his editorial.

Raising many of the issues with which the F.O.R.’s Fellowship had been preoccupied since it began publication in 1935, Morrison addressed the dire consequences war would have on domestic life. It would “impose on the nation an ironclad dictatorship,” as Roosevelt would have to use his power to forcibly unite a nation that was still opposed to war. In light of the atrocities of Hitler and Stalin, the two individuals who most readily come to mind when one now hears the word dictator, such language appears wholly sensational and unjustifiable. But Morrison and other non- interventionists had legitimate concerns based on their experiences during World War I.

They feared conscientious objectors would be arrested, literature critical of the government would be suppressed, and the nation’s industries would be converted to support the war effort—all fears which came to fruition before the U.S. even entered the war in 1941. When one considers that the House Un-American Activities Committee

(HUAC) was set up in 1938 and that the Smith Act passed in 1940—both of which were

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long used to silence “extremists” on the right and left alike—it becomes more difficult to ignore the non-interventionists’ concerns.11

More than dictatorship, however, Morrison and many pacifists feared that “the

American public would be immersed in a sea of perverted moral values.” Americans would come to see themselves as pure good and their enemies as pure evil, “for it must be so in every war; war cannot be fought on any other basis. War requires the deliberate inculcation of hate.” Morrison’s editorial was not a simple appeal to the love ethic of

Jesus. Although many absolute pacifists did make such an appeal, they also shared his call for a sober analysis of the consequences of war:

It is hard for us to see wrong being done anywhere without leaping in to stop the wrongdoer. But after the leap, what? It is time for the nation to consider that question soberly and with the utmost realism. And it is time for the churches to awake to all the moral perils which war involves.12

* * *

By spring 1938, it seemed more “wrong was being done” in the world than anyone—idealists and realists alike—could have imagined. During the previous

December, Japan had captured Nanking, Chiang Kai-shek’s capital city, and proceeded to massacre the civilian population. In Spain, both sides won victories on the battlefield, but infighting in the Republican coalition appeared to give Franco the momentum. In March,

German troops marched into Austria and staged a plebiscite in which the Austrian people, many of whom were actually Nazi supporters, “elected” to join the German Reich. Not

11 While Morrison’s and many other non-interventionists’ concerns were well-founded, some of those individuals who leveled charges of “dictator” at FDR had far more elaborate conspiracy theories in mind. See Justus D. Doenecke, Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), ch. 19. 12 “After Intervention, What?,” Christian Century, 16 February 1938, 198-200.

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content with the Anschluss with Austria, Hitler then turned his attention to the ethnic

Germans in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia.

“The world is mad,” Niebuhr declared in Radical Religion shortly after the

Anschluss. “Some day the tragedy of our era will be dramatized by an artist of sensitive insight and power and will elicit the tears of the spectator. . . . No one wants the war which is inevitable. Yet no one seems able to prevent it.” He was convinced that

“collective economic action” still might prevent the war. But the only nations that could take the lead in such action—Britain, France, and the United States—were instead determined to rearm and prepare for “the ultimate peril which immediate action might avert.” Before the heated debates over American intervention began in earnest in 1939,

Niebuhr could still sympathize with the very human desire to avoid taking risks in the hope that the danger might dissipate: “One cannot always gaze into the abyss on the edge of which one walks. One might lose one’s balance through such a gaze. On the other hand one might edge away from the abyss if one looked long enough to see how close he really is.”13

Niebuhr was at a loss as to exactly what the U.S. should do. He fit comfortably in neither the collective security nor the pacifist camps. “Pacifists accuse the collective security proponents of being allies of capitalist imperialism,” he wrote in spring 1938.

“But they themselves are forced to become allies of nationalistic isolation. The one disease is about as bad as the other.” If forced to choose, he admitted that he was more inclined to support collective security. But his conception of collective security stopped with economic sanctions. If in fact the time for successful sanctions had passed, Niebuhr

13 “Our Mad World,” Radical Religion 3, no. 2 (Spring 1938): 2-3.

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did not believe the war that was soon to come was one “which any decent person” could

support. Explaining that he arrived at his position “not as a matter of absolute pacifist

principle but as a matter of immediate policy,” he reaffirmed his opposition to American

entry into a European war.14

In summer 1938, Niebuhr’s “interventionism” amounted to little more than calls

for a revision of the U.S. neutrality policy in regards to Spain in order to allow the

Loyalists to purchase arms and for a boycott against Japanese goods. To be sure, both

measures were opposed by the most ardent pacifists. Even a voluntary boycott against

Japan prompted debate among pacifists in Fellowship. 15

But Niebuhr’s staunch opposition to American rearmament aligned him with both

Fellowship and the Christian Century against collective security proponents and even many non-pacifist non-interventionists. In January 1938, Roosevelt asked Congress to approve a one billion dollar appropriation for the navy. “The president’s billion dollar naval program is the most unjustified piece of military expansion in a world full of such madness,” wrote Niebuhr after Congress passed the Naval Expansion Act. “Our nation like England is drifting into the worst possible foreign policy. We refuse to use the non- military pressure we have to stop the fascist nations and then build up huge armaments to fight them when they have grown strong enough to throw down the gauntlet.” Even after

14 “On the International Situation,” Radical Religion 3, no. 2 (Spring 1938): 4-5. 15 “The Boycott,” Radical Religion 3, no. 1 (Winter 1937): 4; “Brief Notes,” ibid. 3, no. 3 (Summer 1938): 13; Theodore D. Walser, “Can Christians Boycott Japan?,” Fellowship, October 1937, 5-6.

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the Munich Conference, Niebuhr continued to criticize Roosevelt’s foreign policy as

“positively sinister in its navalism.”16

Just as Niebuhr was less bellicose and more confused—understandably so—than

the myth that surrounds him suggests, the Christian Century was less naïve about the world situation than is generally recognized. After the war in Europe began, Niebuhr regularly set up Charles Clayton Morrison and the Christian Century as a foil for his own views, a practice he had already begun in 1936. But at least until the Munich Agreement, the Christian Century’s editorials on European developments were often strikingly similar to Niebuhr’s in Radical Religion. Indeed, it is likely that Niebuhr was the author of many of them; the Christian Century’s continuing practice of publishing unsigned editorials makes it impossible to determine. Whether Morrison actually wrote the editorials discussed below or simply published what Niebuhr submitted is largely irrelevant: either way, Morrison had complete control over the voice of the journal and would not have published any editorial with which he disagreed.

It is highly unlikely, then, that Morrison held many illusions about Hitler. The

Christian Century recognized that Hitler desired complete domination of Eastern Europe, a point that the editors argued was stated clearly enough in Mein Kampf. Hitler wanted peace only in the sense that he hoped for the “peaceful penetration” of Europe. Moreover, he had no qualms about risking war in order to achieve his goals: “War is Hitler’s

16 “Brief Notes,” Radical Religion 3, no. 2 (Spring 1938): 7; “Brief Comments,” ibid. 4, no. 1 (Winter 1938): 8.

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acknowledged method for getting what he wants, but he wants no war that he cannot win.”17

Where Morrison and the Christian Century differed from Niebuhr was over the role of the U.S. in the crisis. If interventionists had their way, the Christian Century argued, the United States was doomed to repeat the mistakes of the First World War.

Commenting on the European situation just days before the Munich Agreement, the journal laid out the argument that united pacifists and non-interventionists at least until

Pearl Harbor, and for some, well after:

Should we step in to rescue Europe from the terror which the dictators have brought upon it? The results of our previous attempt at intervention forbid it. We know all too well that many of the very wrongs out of which have come a Hitler, and this Czech crisis, and other crises that are still to follow, resulted in large measure from our previous attempt at rescue. We see even less chance today than there was in 1917 to set up a new rule of justice and abiding peace in Europe by resort to war. We will be fortunate enough if we can preserve an island of sanity in this Western hemisphere, until the madness has burned itself out in Europe, and the dark age there passes to give birth to a new age of promise.18

For Morrison and many other pacifists and non-interventionists, the lesson of Versailles was that wars never achieved the lofty aims for which they were ostensibly fought; in the end, national self-interest trumped all universal values. No action Hitler took would erase their bitter memories of Versailles.

What, then, should the Americans do in the face of Hitler’s growing demands?

The Christian Century’s response to this question was simply to wait it out. The “dark age” of Europe would one day come to an end:

17 “Peace or War?,” Christian Century, 7 September 1938, 1054-55, quote from 1054. See also, “Can Germany Be Appeased?,” ibid., 6 July 1938, 838-39; “Hitler's Peace,” ibid., 21 September 1938, 118-19; “Hitler Bestrides Europe!,” ibid., 28 September 1938, 1150-52. 18 “Hitler Bestrides Europe!,” Christian Century, 28 September 1938, 1151.

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It is a religious conviction; not a reading of any discernible signs. The days that lie immediately ahead of Europe are dark, so dark that we cannot pretend to see through to the light beyond. But God casts nothing away; not even a continent drenched by the blood of two millenniums of warfare. Men’s madness spends itself, and the Christian evangel continues its oft-thwarted but never-ended mission to weld together the warring and hate-filled peoples into the brotherhood of the Kingdom of God. As never before, the destiny of mankind is in the keeping of the Christian church.19

With these words Morrison called for a spiritual rather than a political response to the

European crisis. He committed the Christian Century to the sort of “meaningful inactivity” Richard Niebuhr had described during the Manchurian crisis. The best course of action Christians could take was to turn to the church in self-contemplation in the hope of devising concrete proposals for dealing with Europe after the war.

Reinhold Niebuhr was never convinced there was such a thing as “meaningful inactivity.” From his decision to study ethics over systematic theology to his tireless involvement in various political organizations that eventually caught up with him when he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1952, his whole life served as a testament to his personal commitment to social action. His impatience with inaction was reflected in his understanding of the arc of justice:

Moral purists who tell us that we must not resist evil because it destroys itself in the end, really live life in eternity and not time. For they are right that unjust tyrannies do finally destroy themselves. But there must always be executors of the judgment of God upon them. If they meet no resistance, their power continues to grow. Nothing in history is destroyed merely by external enemies. If there is no decay, the enemy cannot destroy. On the other hand even the most moribund system of society continues to stand if those whose liberties it despoils and threatens do not take action against it.20

19 Ibid., 1152. 20 “After Munich,” Radical Religion 4, no. 1 (Winter 1938), 1-2, quote from 2.

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Niebuhr did not advocate any nation waging war on Germany in order to force the

German people to submit to a punitive treaty. Like the editors at the Christian Century, he agreed that the German people themselves must ultimately renounce Hitler and

Nazism. But they could not do it alone, and to wait for them to do so was futile. The democratic nations would have to stand up to Hitler and run the risk of war in order to stop his advances in Europe. Otherwise, Hitler could continue to deliver on his promises to the German people, and no effective opposition within Germany would arise.

* * *

On 22 September 1938, Hitler backed out of ongoing talks with British Prime

Minister Neville Chamberlain concerning the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Although he had earlier demanded a plebiscite in which the Sudeten Germans would determine their own fate, Hitler now announced that German troops would occupy the region on 1

October. In a last-minute effort to prevent a conflict that would likely lead to a European war because both France and the Soviet Union had defense treaties with Czechoslovakia,

Chamberlain called for a four-power conference. Chamberlain, French Prime Minister

Édouard Daladier, Mussolini, and Hitler met in Munich and, on 30 September, signed an agreement that allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland and that required the Czech government to come to terms with Hungary and Poland regarding other regions where ethnic minorities predominated. Chamberlain and Daladier informed the Czech government that it could accept the terms of the pact, which all but assured the state’s dissolution, or fight Germany alone. The Czech leaders chose a “peaceful” death.

Although Niebuhr later suggested that sentimental liberals rejoiced following the

Munich Agreement, there is very little evidence to support his claim. A British F.O.R.

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member, who arrived in the U.S. just days after the agreement was signed, reported in

Fellowship that she was “astonished by the violence of anti-German feeling amongst

many [American] peace workers of long standing, for in England . . . it is not felt with

comparable vehemence.” She was even more amazed by the criticism directed at

Chamberlain: “Opinion in the United States, dominated as it is by that tendency, to divide

into black and white, characteristic of a vital people with a passion for justice, appears to

assume that an honorable settlement could somehow have been made at a reasonable

price.”21

The Christian Century confirmed her point when it declared, “Mr. Chamberlain and M. Daladier went to Munich not to arrange a compromise, but to complete a surrender.” The editors recognized that “the vaulting ambitions of the nazi Führer are by no means satisfied.” They did, however, hope that something might come from the temporary peace: “So long as it lasts, the opportunity remains to work out by peaceful means a social and economic order in Europe which will furnish the soil out of which a true and lasting peace may grow.”22

Realizing that as soon as war broke out their indefinite period of “meaningful

inactivity” would begin, the pacifists and non-interventionists made a last gasp effort at

preventing the war. They rededicated themselves to publicizing two overlapping

endeavors to organize an economic conference that had been underway since early 1937.

The first was the International F.O.R.’s Embassies of Reconciliation tour, which sent the

internationally renowned pacifist George Lansbury to meet with European leaders and

21 Vera Brittain, “Pacifism after Munich,” Fellowship, November 1938, 3-4. 22 “Europe after Munich,” Christian Century, 12 October 1938, 1224.

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assess their willingness to join in such a conference. Lansbury, the former leader of the

British Labour Party who resigned over his opposition to sanctions during the Ethiopian crisis, met with Hitler in April and Mussolini in July 1937. He reported that both were willing to participate in an economic conference.23

The second initiative began that same spring when Britain and France commissioned the Prime Minister of Belgium, Paul van Zeeland, to conduct a study of the world economic situation with the aim of bringing the “have” and “have not” nations closer together economically. His final report identified specific economic measures that might avert war, including the lowering of tariffs and the signing of free trade agreements. Van Zeeland published his report in January of 1938. Fellowship publicized the report throughout the year and urged Roosevelt to consider it. Charles Clayton

Morrison, too, had called attention to the report in June.24

Rather than make such proposals moot in the eyes of the pacifists, the Munich

Agreement only made building upon the work of the Embassies of Reconciliation and the

Van Zeeland report more urgent. In November 1938, Methodist preacher and Social

Gospel proponent Ernest Fremont Tittle laid out a case for an international conference that was quite typical of the pacifists and non-interventionists at the time. He began with the assertion that Christians should not attempt to separate their faith in God from their politics: “Let us think of God and national policy, not of national policy apart from God.”

He then turned his attention to evaluating what he saw as the three possible courses of action the U.S. could take in the present crisis: resort to war now to prevent a wider war

23 Chatfield, For Peace and Justice, 289-90. 24 “Page the Van Zeeland Report!,” Christian Century, 22 June 1938, 781-82.

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later, use embargoes to isolate the aggressors, or call for an international economic conference along the lines of that proposed by Van Zeeland.

Tittle raised many of the moral and political issues that were involved in all wars, not just the crisis at hand. Anyone who was not of fighting age and called for the use of force to stop aggressor nations must recognize that they were “asking other men to go out and get killed or do the dirty work of killing women and children.” Those liberals who came to see the present crisis as one which warranted force should be troubled by the fact that they found themselves on the side of munitions makers and bellicose editors whom they had opposed for years, if not decades. As Morrison argued earlier, Tittle warned that war necessarily breeds tyranny: “the ‘great democracies,’ if they should go to war, would cease to be democracies.” Finally, to those advocates of collective security who tried to compare intervention in 1938 to police action, he argued that the analogy was problematic:

A loyal, uncorrupted policeman does not deliberately stir up hate. . . . He does not drop bombs upon hospitals or apartment houses or market places where women and children are gathered together. He does not shoot up an entire neighborhood in order to apprehend a gangster. When he gets his man, he does not take the law into his own hands, himself pass judgment and execute penalty.

This was certainly a more emotional and less sophisticated appeal than Niebuhr’s 1928 argument, based on the egoism of nations, that international organizations could never approximate the objectivity of domestic legal systems. But that does not make it any less compelling.

What troubled Tittle was that while virtually no Americans advocated the use of force in 1938, a growing number of liberals were moving toward the second option— using economic sanctions against aggressors. If one objected to war, argued Tittle, he or

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she should object to sanctions as well. Niebuhr admitted that non-military sanctions

carried with them the risk of war, but he had repeatedly minimized that risk. What he saw

as a minor possibility, Tittle and other non-interventionists recognized as a high probability. The nation isolated by economic sanctions would almost certainly resort to violence in very short order.

That left only the third course of action: calling an international economic conference. Tittle admitted that such a conference might not resolve the current crisis, but the political risk of a failed attempt was minor compared to those risks involved with the other two choices. Citing Lasnbury’s interview with Hitler, he argued there was reason to believe that the Nazi leader was open to a conference called by a neutral leader such as

Roosevelt. There were hopeful signs that a conference might succeed: at no point in human history had the economic causes of war been better understood or the “sane fear of war” more widely shared. But the greatest advantage of calling a world economic conference, argued Tittle, was that it involved none of the moral compromises of the first two options: “such an attempt—and no other—might confidently claim the approval and support of God.”25

Of the many pacifist and non-interventionist calls for a world economic

conference, it was Tittle’s to which Reinhold Niebuhr chose to respond. No proponent of

war himself, Niebuhr did not argue for military action but rather against the idea of

25 Ernest Fremont Tittle, “God and National Policy,” Christian Century, 30 November 1938, 1462-65. For a biography of Tittle, see Robert Moats Miller, How Shall They Hear without a Preacher? The Life of Ernest Fremont Tittle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971). Other examples of calls for economic conferences include Albert W. Palmer, “Call a World Economic Conference!,” Christian Century, 9 November 1938, 1368-69; Ernest Fremont Tittle, “The Present Crisis,” ibid., 9 November 1938, 1365-67.

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holding an economic conference. The Van Zeeland report was little more than a “counsel of perfection,” and Niebuhr found it “slightly pathetic” that pacifists and non- interventionists could still believe that it or any other proposed economic conference might solve the world’s crisis. Pacifists assumed that the dictators, as heads of the “have not” nations, were eager to meet with the heads of the “have” nations. In their estimation, it was the leaders of the well-off nations who were reluctant to agree to conferences because they were unwilling to make economic sacrifices. Van Zeeland’s assessment of the causes of economic disparity may have been true before the rise of the dictators,

Niebuhr argued, but now it was the dictators’ own efforts to militarize—not trade barriers—that kept the standard of living in their countries down. The dictators’ power rested on this militarization: they would “sign their abdication” if they sought to improve their economies through peaceful economic conferences.

Tittle and other pacifists, argued Niebuhr, refused to accept the realities of politics: “I have never read an article on the relation of Christianity to the international order which seems to me so full of the moral confusions which will probably make it impossible to save a democratic civilization from the perils of a new barbarism.” In the realm of politics, he explained, “risks have to be taken. Violence must be avoided. But there is no political struggle which does not have some risk of violence in it. That is because political arguments are never pure exercises in persuasion, but the clash of resolute wills.” Pacifism was a fine principle for individuals to uphold as individuals, but it was not a political strategy:

If any Christian wishes to say that it is incompatible with Christianity to fool with much terrible and sinful relativities of the political world, I for one will accord him my genuine respect and admiration if he leave the world of politics alone entirely and seek simply to live by the love commandments . . . Let him, in other

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words, be a pure pacifist and remind the rest of us, who fool with politics, that we are playing a dangerous game.

Not only was pacifism inadequate for dealing with politics, the attempt to mix the two easily led to moral self-righteousness. Tittle’s claim that God supported international conferences but opposed economic sanctions “literally took my breath away,” wrote

Niebuhr. Liberal moralists would do well to recall the humility of Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln, whom the Christian realists often upheld as the ideal American prophet, had recognized the tragic fact that although both the North and the South claimed to be carrying out God’s will, at least one side was wrong, and perhaps both were. Niebuhr argued that the moralists did not share Lincoln’s complex understanding of God; they were too quick to assume that all Christians who spent enough time evaluating a given situation would arrive at the same conclusion regarding God’s will.

Niebuhr was wary of claiming that any particular political position represented

God’s will, but he did not hesitate to deem certain actions counter to it: “I must confess, that the van Zeeland report is in my mind just as certainly not God’s will for us in this crisis as for Dr. Tittle it represents God’s will.” To those Christians who attempted to turn

Jesus’ love ethic into a simple moralism, he now asked, “Is it really ‘Christian,’ is it

God’s will, never to call the bluff of a bully for fear that you might be involved in violence?” If so, the future was dark indeed, and all Christians “had better prepare for the complete victory of the barbarism which is spreading over Europe.”

Perhaps recognizing that declaring a course of action was not God’s will still involved the self-righteous presumption of speaking for God, Niebuhr concluded:

On rereading my vehement tirade against my friend Tittle, I fear that the lust of battle betrays me into passions . . . I can only say that for many years I have constantly held up Dr. Tittle as an example of the kind of integrity and courage

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which saves the church from futility. I should hate to be in a church which did not include him in its ultimate communion. But the church which he has set up will exclude many of us. For we are determined upon political policies for the saving of democratic civilization: boycott of Japan, lifting the boycott on Spain, etc., which in his opinion are counter to God’s will. Perhaps the only church to which both groups could comfortably belong would be one in which there was some knowledge of the defiance of God’s will in even the best of human intentions.26

Charles Clayton Morrison attempted to mediate the dispute between Tittle and

Niebuhr, though there was no question as to with whom he agreed. Niebuhr had not been

“wholly fair” to Tittle; he ignored the insights of Tittle’s essay and focused on “the form of expression used in a single sentence.” (As Tittle’s article was titled “God and National

Policy,” this charge was itself not entirely fair.) Morrison defended Tittle’s call for a conference on the grounds that, though a conference might fail, it should at least be tried before the idea was rejected. But Niebuhr’s critique appears to have been lost on

Morrison, who wrote that the significance of Tittle’s essay was that it reminded

Christians of their special duty to “seek to know the will of God in deciding on a course of action in international affairs.” Niebuhr’s point was that such aims were fruitless, for human beings can never know the will of God. To be sure, he recognized that Christians ought to act in accordance to a set of loosely defined Christian principles, but in the realm of politics, no policy was perfectly aligned with God’s will.27

As pacifists continued their calls for a world economic conference into 1939,

Niebuhr again addressed the issue, this time in the pages of his own Radical Religion.

Once more he challenged the notion that Christianity offered any unique solution to

political problems. “There are special resources in the Christian faith for understanding

26 Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Will of God and the Van Zeeland Report,” Christian Century, 14 December 1938, 1549-50. 27 “The Case for Conference,” Christian Century, 14 December 1938, 1538-40.

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human life,” he wrote, “but it is not a fact that they lead to simple alternative political policies.” Niebuhr argued that the “true Christian” recognized not only the law of love, but also the fact that man’s sinful nature precluded him from ever being able to live up to that law. With this perspective,

true Christians can analyze a given situation more realistically (pessimistically?) because they are not under the necessity of having illusions about human nature in order to avert despair and preserve their faith in the meaning of life. On the other hand they are unable to regard any of the pragmatic policies of politics by which relative justice is achieved as ultimately normative.

The Christian realist was a pragmatist who rejected absolutes. Calls for conference might be the most just course of action in one situation, whereas the use of force to resist tyranny may be the more just course in another. Neither could be accepted as the

Christian course of action in all situations.28

Niebuhr provided his now formulaic attacks on pacifists and non-interventionists with increasing regularity, but his calls for “pragmatic policies” remained remarkably vague. By early 1939, he still had not offered a single specific step the U.S. might take to help halt Hitler; his “political policies for the saving of democratic civilization” consisted of nothing more than lifting the arms embargo on Spain and placing an embargo on

Japan. Niebuhr’s ambiguity and lack of specific proposals reveals that it was not only the pacifists and non-interventionists who were confused and impotent in the face of the world crisis.

* * *

Both Hitler and Mussolini made advances in spring 1939. In March, after

Czechoslovakia had already lost territory to Poland through invasion and to Hungary

28 “A Christian Peace Policy,” Radical Religion 4, no. 2 (Spring 1939): 10-12, quote from 11.

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through an agreement orchestrated by Mussolini and Hitler in which the Czech government had no say, Slovakia declared its independence and became a Nazi puppet state. What remained of the Czech state was annexed by Hitler. In early April, Mussolini occupied Albania.

Responding to these latest developments, Roosevelt sent an appeal to Hitler and

Mussolini that was reprinted in newspapers around the world on 15 April. If the two dictators signed a pact guaranteeing that they would not invade a specified list of

European and Middle-Eastern nations for at least ten years, Roosevelt promised to serve as a “friendly intermediary” in the European crisis. His claim to neutrality was undermined by his decision to write only to Hitler and Mussolini and to condescendingly inform them that “it is customary and necessary that [conferees] leave their arms outside the room where they confer.”

Nevertheless, Roosevelt appeared genuine in his desire to mediate talks.

Declaring that he still believed that “international problems can be solved at the council table,” he promised to organize a conference with the goal of “opening up avenues of international trade to the end that every nation of the earth may be enabled to buy and sell on equal terms in the world market as well as to possess assurance of obtaining the materials and products of peaceful economic life.” Publicly, at least, Roosevelt seemed to concur with the pacifists and non-interventionists that the root of the European crisis was based in inequality of economic opportunity. Furthermore, he agreed with them that war

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could be avoided if these economic issues were addressed: the world was not “a prisoner of destiny.”29

The Christian Century received Roosevelt’s announcement with at least as much apprehension as elation. To be sure, the editors celebrated the fact that “the President has taken a step of the sort advocated in these columns for months.” Furthermore, because

Roosevelt’s message had been widely publicized internationally, the German and Italian people might hold Hitler and Mussolini accountable if they chose to reject the proposal.

But the editors were unhappy with the manner in which the president made his appeal. It was not that of “a friendly intermediary,” but rather that of “some frontier sheriff at the head of a posse.” Roosevelt had now crossed the line of neutrality and involved the U.S. in the crisis. If the dictators agreed to his terms, he would be obligated to fight for their economic rights against those nations with which his sympathies clearly lay. If Mussolini and Hitler rejected the plan, the U.S., now acting as a world sheriff, would have a moral obligation to come to the aid of Britain and France in some form, for those nations would expect Roosevelt to back his “moral condemnation” with action.

Morrison commended Roosevelt for calling a conference that the editor still hoped might result in peace, but if his bid failed, the U.S. would be in a far more precarious position than had the president never made it in the first place: “Failing the negotiation of such a peace, Mr. Roosevelt’s intervention will accomplish no higher purpose than to make it more likely that American lives and resources will presently be flung away in another punitive war.”30

29 President Roosevelt to Hitler, 14 April 1939, in U.S. Department of State., Peace and War, 455-58. 30 “Mr. Roosevelt Intervenes,” Christian Century, 26 April 1939, 535-37.

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Niebuhr was in Edinburgh, Scotland, when Roosevelt made his appeal. He had arrived in England in mid-March and found a nation preparing for war. Shortly after his arrival, he met with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German neo-orthodox theologian who had studied at Union Theological Seminary from 1930 to 1931. Since returning to Germany,

Bonhoeffer had become active in the German resistance movement, and he informed

Niebuhr that he had heard rumors Hitler would invade Poland in September. After his encounter with Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr left London for the University of Edinburgh, where he delivered the first round of his Gifford Lectures on “The Nature and Destiny of Man” in April and May. The list of Americans who had been invited to deliver the Giffords before him was short and prestigious, including only William James, Josiah Royce, John

Dewey, and William Ernest Hocking. That Niebuhr was in Britain and that his lectures were on his mind no doubt informed his editorial on Roosevelt’s message.31

Unlike the Christian Century, Niebuhr welcomed the fact that the president’s message to the dictators at least made the U.S. the moral ally of Britain and France, even if it did not establish a formal political alliance. His objection was philosophical and dealt with the understanding of man as both “creature” and “creator” that he first began developing in his Gifford lectures. He challenged the President’s claim that we are not

“prisoners of destiny”:

31 Niebuhr delivered his first round of lectures from 24 April to 15 May and his second from 11 October to 1 November 1939. Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 178, 187-88, 191. Fearing that he might be conscripted into the German army, Bonhoeffer asked Niebuhr to help him secure a teaching position in the U.S. In June 1939, Bonhoeffer left to teach at Union, but within a matter of weeks, guilt from living in relative calm while his home country was in crisis led him to return to Germany. There he was active in the German resistance movement until his arrest in April 1943. When it was later discovered that he had been part of a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, he was executed in April 1945, just two weeks before the Allies liberated his camp. Ibid., 188.

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We are [prisoners of destiny], and we are not. History is a realm of fate and decisions. There is always an ideal possibility that human decisions will reverse the seemingly inexorable currents of world events. Yet it is a fact that they never completely reverse them, though they sometimes deflect them perceptibly. It is right that such appeals to human decisions should be made. Man could cease to be man if he submitted tamely to fate. But the modern man is partly in the predicament in which he finds himself because he felt himself too much master of his own destiny.

Humans could shape history, but only within limits, explained Niebuhr.

Inescapable human traits such as vengeance, self-righteousness and insecurity—in short, the roots of sin—motivate our actions and therefore dictate the course of events to a great extent. Individuals often assume they can act in the world free of sin, but sin “expresses itself so inevitably that it has something of the force of a ‘natural law.’” In the case at hand, moralists could come up with an endless number of “if onlies” regarding the treatment of Germany in the years following the World War that might have diminished the likelihood of war, but, as Niebuhr now recognized, it was simply too late: “the emergence of a vindictive Germany has something of the force of a natural law about it.”32

Neither Mussolini nor Hitler responded directly to Roosevelt, but both rejected his offer in public speeches that belittled his presumptuous appeal. Mussolini denounced

Roosevelt’s “Messiah-like message” and claimed that the Axis powers’ consciences were at ease, for their policies were “inspired by the criterions of peace and of collaboration.”

Likewise Hitler agreed with Roosevelt that “theoretically one ought to believe in [the]

32 “Prisoners of Destiny,” Radical Religion 4, no. 3 (Summer 1939): 4-6. The creature/creator paradox is evident in embryonic form in Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, vol. 1. Human Nature (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1996 [1941]), ch. 7, but is more fully developed in Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008 [1952]).

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possibility” of conferences to resolve differences, but he thought the president’s proposal

sounded more like a tribunal than a conference. As to assurances that Germany would not

invade any of the nations on Roosevelt’s list, Hitler stated that he would deal with the

leaders of those nations directly and offer them assurances if needed. Chiding the

American president for intervening in European affairs, he asked whether Roosevelt

would disclose American foreign policy intentions as they concerned the Western

Hemisphere, or would he instead invoke the Monroe Doctrine.33

These responses were by no means what the pacifists were hoping for, but neither

did they preclude the possibility of an international conference. Both the Christian

Century and Fellowship urged Roosevelt to change his tactics and to continue to press for

mediation. The pacifists were not the only ones who still believed differences might be

worked out at the conference table. The New York Times reported immediately after

Mussolini’s speech that the official view in Washington was that, despite his harsh words

for the president, Il Duce had at least “left the door open to discussions.”34

* * *

Even before his attempt to mediate the European crisis failed, Roosevelt had

expressed his desire to revise the neutrality laws. In his address to Congress on 4 January

1939, he questioned the effectiveness of the 1937 act: “We have learned that when we

deliberately try to legislate neutrality, our neutrality laws may operate unevenly and

33 “Text of Mussolini Speech,” New York Times, 21 April 1939, 6; “Text of Chancellor Hitler’s Address before the Reichstag on Germany’s Foreign Relations,” ibid., 29 April 1939, 9. 34 “Seek Peace and Pursue It,” Christian Century, 3 May 1939, 566-67; “The Door Is Open,” ibid., 10 May 1939, 598-600; A. J. Muste, “The Roosevelt-Hitler Exchange,” Fellowship 5, no. 5 (May 1939): 6-7. “No Reply is Planned to Mussolini Speech,” New York Times, 21 April 1939, 8.

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unfairly—may actually give aid to the aggressor and deny it to the victim.” While he recognized that Americans “rightly decline to intervene with arms to prevent acts of aggression,” he suggested there were “methods short of war”—methods which he did not specify in his address—that would allow the American people to demonstrate their opposition to aggression.35

In a confidential meeting with the Senate Military Affairs Committee at the end of the month, Roosevelt elaborated on his “methods short of war” approach, declaring his intention to do everything within his power to rearm Britain and France and to prevent weapons from going to Germany, Italy, or Japan. One of the senators in attendance anonymously reported to the press that Roosevelt had claimed that America’s first line of defense was the Rhine. Although transcripts of the meeting reveal he never used these exact words, his vision of aid short of war certainly implied this was his position.

Nevertheless, an embarrassed and angry Roosevelt lashed out at the “boob” who spread this “deliberate lie.” He always assumed it had been Nye, who denied leaking the story; the affair damaged the relationship between the president and the senator and foreshadowed the personal animosity that soon came to dominate the debates between interventionists and non-interventionists. Following this unwanted publicity, Roosevelt withdrew from the public debate over neutrality legislation, leaving Hull and Senator Key

Pittman to articulate his position.36

Hull laid out the administration’s proposals for neutrality on 27 May. In an open letter to Pittman, Hull began by asserting that international laws regarding neutrals in

35 President’s Address to Congress, 4 January 1939, U.S. Department of State, Peace and War, 447-51. 36 Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 304-9; Divine, Illusion of Neutrality, 238-39.

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wartime did not require embargoes; they only required that neutrals apply their laws impartially to all belligerents. He went further and addressed the difficulty of trying to embargo only certain classes of goods: as non-interventionists had long argued, in modern warfare, all goods, not just arms, contributed to a belligerent’s war efforts. But where non-interventionists favored restricting all trade with belligerents, Hull now suggested there should be no embargoes at all, not even on arms:

If we go in for embargoes on exports, for the purpose of keeping ourselves out of war, the logical thing to do would be to make our embargo all-inclusive. . . . I doubt whether we can help ourselves to keep out of war by an attempt on our part to distinguish between categories of exports. Yet a complete embargo upon all exports would obviously be ruinous to our economic life. It therefore seems clear that we should have no general and automatic embargo inflexibly and rigidly imposed on any class or group of exports.

The loss of American lives was much more likely to involve the U.S. in a war than continued trade per se, argued Hull. As the cash-and-carry provision of the 1937 act had expired at the beginning of the month, U.S. merchant ships would be permitted to convey non-military goods to belligerents during wartime, which put the lives of those

Americans on board at risk. Hull therefore called for the reinstatement of cash-and-carry.

The administration’s plan, then, combined the repeal of the arms embargo with cash-and-carry. It would allow belligerent nations to continue to buy arms from the U.S. during wartime as long as the transfer of title occurred on U.S. soil. As the British controlled the Atlantic, the law would favor the Allies should they go to war against

Germany. Although this neutrality revision was clearly an important step in implementing Roosevelt’s aid-short-of-war program, the administration did not advertise it as such. In fact, Hull explicitly denied that the administration’s intentions were to aid the Allies and instead claimed that adopting the plan was necessary to preserve neutrality:

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The problem for us is not whether we shall help any foreign country or any group of foreign countries. Nor is it that of passing judgment upon or interfering in other people’s controversies. Rather, it is that of so conducting our affairs and our relations with other peoples, both before and after the outbreak of war elsewhere, that we shall be more, and not less, secure; so that we shall not become parties to controversies; and so that our attitude and actions will encourage other people to avoid, rather than to become engaged in, controversy.37

If the administration thought that by combining cash-and-carry with the repeal of the arms embargo it could easily get its plan through Congress, then it had miscalculated—at least for the time being. At the end of June, the House voted in favor of an amended version of the administration’s bill, which repealed only the “implements of war” portion of the arms embargo, meaning the sale of arms and ammunition would still be prohibited. When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee met in early July, its members voted to delay talks until January 1940 when the next session was scheduled to begin.

At Roosevelt’s request, Hull sent a second message to Congress urging repeal of the arms embargo before the next session. Opponents of repeal, wrote Hull, were

“misleading the American people to rely upon a false and illogical delusion as a means of keeping out of war.” Supporters of the arms embargo were “illogical” because U.S. nationals were still able to trade in materials used in the production and delivery of weapons—namely cotton, steel, and oil. Though he did not mention the Nye Committee by name, Hull challenged one of the committee’s widely-accepted findings: “The assertion frequently made that this country has ever engaged or may become engaged in serious controversy solely over the fact that its nationals have sold arms to belligerents is misleading and unsupportable. All available evidence is directly to the contrary.”

37 Hull to Pittman, 27 May 1939, in U.S. Department of State, Peace and War, 461-64.

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Hull went even further than he had in his first message and questioned not only

the wisdom of the arms embargo, but the legality of it as well. International law required

that a neutral’s trade restrictions be impartial, and, according to the administration, the

arms embargo was not:

It is not humanly possible, by enacting an arms embargo, or by refraining from such enactment, to hold the scales exactly even between two belligerents. In either case and due to shifting circumstances one belligerent may find itself in a position of relative advantage or disadvantage. The important difference between the two cases is that when such a condition arises in the absence of an arms embargo on our part, no responsibility attaches to this country, whereas in the presence of an embargo, the responsibility of this country for the creation of the condition is inevitably direct and clear.38

With this stretch of logic, Hull not only attempted to advance the administration’s policy

of aid-short-of-war without so much as mentioning it, he also called into question all of

those efforts to legislate neutrality and restrict the sale of arms that the government had

been pursuing since it first considered an arms embargo in 1933.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was not swayed by Hull’s message.

After a tense meeting at the White House on 18 July in which Senator Borah confidently

declared there would be no war in Europe before the end of the year, Roosevelt accepted

that Congress would not budge on neutrality during the current session.39

The Christian Century welcomed the news of the impasse, believing that the best course of action was to allow the public to continue the debate over neutrality legislation while Congress was adjourned. The editors themselves needed no time for consideration.

38 “Statement on Peace and Neutrality by the Secretary of State,” 14 July 1939, U.S. Department of State, Peace and War, 468-74. 39 On the debates over neutrality in spring and summer 1939, see Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 315-19; Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 187-92; Divine, Reluctant Belligerent, 266-82.

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Since the first debates over neutrality legislation in 1935, Charles Clayton Morrison had

made clear that the Christian Century stood behind mandatory measures. Now he advocated what he assumed was the most stringent form of neutrality Congress would accept—keeping the arms embargo intact and renewing cash-and-carry. He did not accuse the administration of trying to drag the nation into war; rather, he believed there was a sincere difference of opinions. The administration still thought it could prevent a war if only it could “frighten the axis powers by making clear that the power of the

United States will be thrown against them.” But Morrison doubted that threats would deter Mussolini or Hitler. If the president were successful in revising the laws and was able to back the Allies as he desired, then when war finally came, Morrison predicted, “It will . . . prove impossible for American support of England and France to stop, as the

President has given assurance, ‘short of war.’”40

* * *

Both Borah and Morrison had miscalculated; the U.S. did not have six months to

continue the debate. The rumor that Dietrich Bonhoeffer reported to Reinhold Niebuhr in

April proved accurate: on 1 September 1939, Hitler’s armies invaded Poland. The British

and French governments, having promised to defend Poland in March, after Hitler

annexed Czechoslovakia, declared war on Germany two days later. On 5 September,

Roosevelt invoked the Neutrality Act.

By the end of the month, members of Congress had returned to Washington to

once again debate neutrality. Nearly all of them agreed that cash-and-carry needed to be

re-enacted; there had been little disagreement on that matter when they had allowed the

40 “Next Steps in Neutrality,” Christian Century, 26 July 1939, 918-19.

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provision to lapse in May. But the administration’s proposal to remove the arms embargo remained divisive. Those congressmen who favored repeal argued that the embargo aided

Germany, Italy, and Japan; those non-interventionists who vowed to protect the embargo accused the president of trying to drag the nation into war. The administration and its supporters did not attempt to argue the merits of aid-short-of-war; rather, they continued the tactic of combining cash-and-carry with repeal of the arms embargo. As historian

Wayne Cole has explained, Roosevelt successfully cited “the noninterventionist advantages of cash-and-carry in arguing for repeal of the embargo, even though the two were not directly related except politically.”41

The Christian Century saw through this ploy and believed that the American people would too. The editors criticized the interventionists’ “propaganda” and pointed out that much of it could “be traced back to sources very close to the oval study in the

White House.” No longer were disagreements over the arms embargo simply honest differences of opinion, the debates had become, according to the editors, a deliberate attempt to mislead a public that desired an arms embargo and cash-and-carry to abandon the former in order to achieve the latter. The Christian Century remained convinced that the American people wanted neither another economic “war boom” nor “to get into the business of selling the guns, planes, bombs, and shells that are going to slaughter the people of Europe”; the public preferred mandatory neutrality because if the president were forced to choose “between seeing that one side wins this war or keeping the United

41 Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 324.

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States out of it, the country is not all too sure that Mr. Roosevelt would choose the

latter.”42

The Christian Century was incorrect in its assessment of public opinion, or, at the very least, the editors framed the question differently than did the American people. If the public had moral qualms about supplying the arms that would be used in the European war, those reservations were overridden by the desire to aid Britain and France. A Gallup poll conducted in late October indicated that roughly sixty percent of the country supported Roosevelt’s aid-short-of-war proposals so long as they did not lead to

American military involvement. In the Senate, the administration’s bill calling for repeal of the arms embargo and the reenactment of cash-and-carry passed with a vote of sixty- three to thirty on 27 October. A proposed amendment to separate the two issues had failed to pass earlier in the month, a fact that might explain why some non- interventionists voted in favor of the administration’s bill. The next week the House voted approved the bill with a vote of 243 to 181. The pacifists’ and the Christian

Century’s decade-long battle for strict neutrality ended in defeat on 4 November when

Roosevelt signed the Neutrality Act of 1939.43

* * *

While Congress and the American public debated neutrality legislation in

September and October, Reinhold Niebuhr delivered the second round of his Gifford

Lectures in Edinburgh. In late September, William E. Borah famously quipped, “There is

something phony about this war,” giving rise to the term “phony war” to describe the

42 “Keep the Arms Embargo!,” Christian Century, 20 September 1939, 1126-27. 43 Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 329-30.

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period from autumn 1939 to spring 1940 during which the British and French prepared to

fight Hitler in the West. But for Niebuhr, the war was very real. He informed readers of

the Christian Century that he carried a gas mask around with him for two weeks after the invasion of Poland, as did nearly everyone in Britain. In the middle of his 16 October lecture, Germany launched its first air attack on Britain when it bombed the Rosyth naval base, a little over ten miles away from the University of Edinburgh, across the Firth of

Forth. “I was too pre-occupied with theology to hear the anti-aircraft guns, though I noticed that my audience was not too attentive,” wrote Niebuhr. Although he was able to include such understated humor in his reports, his experiencing the European crisis first- hand no doubt had a profound effect on him and on his attitude toward the war.44

While in Britain, Niebuhr was forced to confront the fact that he had long urged

Britain to risk war without calling for the U.S. to take similar risks:

When I arrived here last March the British people were still smarting from the criticism so freely heaped upon them by Americans (including myself) that they had betrayed Czechoslovakia. “It seems to me,” said a professor at Edinburgh to me, “that America wants to fight Germany to the last British soldier.” We are now in the anomalous position of wanting the defeat of the nazis even more fervently than the British ever wanted it, without bearing any special responsibility for the task.

In this entry, dated 6 September, he warned against American self-righteousness and

what he argued was a widespread tendency among American pacifists and non-

interventionists to see themselves as somehow morally superior to Europeans. Yet, he

neither conceded that Americans had been hypocritical in the past when they called upon

44 Several day’s “diary” entries were printed in each of the four installments of Reinhold Niebuhr, “Leaves from the Notebook of a War-Bound American,” Christian Century, 25 October 1939, 1298-99; ibid., 15 November 1939, 1405-6; ibid., 6 December 1939, 1502- 3; ibid., 27 December 1939, 1607-8. Reference to the gas mask is made in the 17 September entry in the 15 November issue, 1405. The quote is from the 17 October entry in the 27 December issue, 1607.

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Britain to take greater risks than they were themselves willing to take, nor did he urge any immediate action on the part of the U.S. now that the war had begun. His “realism” did not yet call for the U.S. government to exercise moral responsibility in the world; rather, it provided justification for the Americans’ lack of action:

I do not say . . . that American neutrality should be sacrificed. The British easily forget that nations do not fight battles for great ideals if the cause which transcends the life of the nation does not coincide with the self-interest of the nation. Our immediate interests are not as directly imperiled as those of Britain. It will be difficult for Britain to remember that, and the criticisms of American neutrality will undoubtedly grow more petulant.45

Although Niebuhr defended American neutrality, given his earlier calls for

“collective economic action,” it is safe to assume that his “neutrality” was closer to

Roosevelt’s aid-short-of-war policy than the strict neutrality advocated by the F.O.R. and the Christian Century. In Britain during the latest round of the neutrality debates, he did not comment on the 1939 Act either way. Nevertheless, he agreed with the non- interventionists that the U.S. should not enter the war. Despite this general agreement, he further developed his polemic against pacifists after meeting with a British pacifist who spoke of the “sins of the British empire”:

I do not find much virtue in the kind of moral sensitivity which gags at the sins of the British empire and leans over backwards to appreciate the nazis. Nothing is quite so difficult, and so genuinely Christian, as to remember on the one hand that in all political struggles there are no saints but only sinners fighting each other, and to remember on the other hand that history from man’s, rather than God’s, perspective is constituted of significant distinctions between types and degrees of sin. Whatever may be wrong with the British empire or with American imperialism or French nationalism, it is still obvious that these nations preserve certain values of civilization, and that the terror which is sweeping over Europe is not civilization. A moralism which dulls the conscience against this kind of evil is perverse. It is well to know that God judges man and that in his sight no man living is justified. But we are men and not God. We must make historic choices.46

45 Entry from 6 September, Christian Century, 25 October 1939, 1299. 46 Entry from 18 September, Christian Century, 15 November 1939, 1405-6.

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For Britain, the “historic choice” was war, but for the U.S., Niebuhr was much less clear

about what that choice should be.

Like the young pacifist with whom Niebuhr spoke, the editors at both Christian

Century and Fellowship were critical of the British empire, but they did not “lean over

backwards to appreciate the nazis.” They saw the current war as not only a product of the

unjust treatment of Germany after World War I, but also as a continuation of that war.

“When the war is stripped of its pretensions,” wrote Charles Clayton Morrison, “it stands

forth in its naked motivation as a war of empires.” The editor deplored Hitler for his

treatment of the German people, his treatment of the Jews, his flaunting of international

laws, his invading neighboring states, and his starting the war. “The wish for the

overthrow of nazism and for the protection of the world from a nazified Germany is no

more profound and hardly more passionate in the countries that are at war with her than

in the United States,” wrote Morrison. He did not call upon Americans to abandon their

hatred for Hitler; he only warned them against allowing their hatred for the dictator and

their sentimental connections to England to lead them into a war that was not their own.

Disillusioned after the First World War, Morrison vowed never to support another war

without first seeking to discover its real purpose, and he was convinced that the real aim

of this war was only to preserve the British Empire.47

Niebuhr was equally convinced that Britain and France were indeed in a battle to preserve Western civilization itself, but he too struggled with the legacy of the First

World War. In one of his published diary entries, he confessed, “I gag at the constant reiteration of such phrases as ‘the struggle for justice and liberty’ which one hears on the

47 “Not America's War,” Christian Century, 22 November 1939, 1431-33.

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radio.” Although he believed the phrase was more applicable to the present war, he

admitted that it had forever been soured by its misuse during the First World War. Even

now, it did not describe the whole situation. After hearing a chaplain use the phrase in a

sermon to soldiers, Niebuhr wrote, “I think those poor chaps are fighting for justice and

liberty . . . But any real Christian message would have to contain at least some

suggestions of the fact that the conflicts of the world are not between the righteous and

the unrighteous but between various types of unrighteous men.”48

That wars were fought “between various types of unrighteous men” was

something that pacifists refused to overlook. They continued their political action, calling

for mediation as late as February 1940 before redirecting their efforts to focus on post-

war reconstruction. But by the end of 1939, pacifists increasingly turned their attention to

the moral question of the Christian church’s role in the war.49

No pacifist provided a clearer, or less sentimental, moral case against war than the eminent Baptist preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick. He lamented his decision to invoke

Christ to sanctify the First World War and compared it to Southern churchmen who used the Bible to justify slavery before the Civil War. In case his readers had forgotten the extent to which churchmen had “put Christ into uniform,” he quoted a particularly shocking passage from Albert Dieffenbach, a Unitarian minister who served as editor of the Christian Register in 1918:

As Christians, of course we say Christ approves of the war. But would he fight and kill? . . . There is not an opportunity to deal death to the enemy that he would

48 19 September and 24 September entries, Reinhold Niebuhr, “Leaves from the Notebook of a War-Bound American,” Christian Century, 15 November 1939, 1406. 49 See for example, John Nevin Sayre, “Mediate Now,” Fellowship, February 1940, 26.

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shirk from or delay in seizing! He would take bayonet and grenade and bomb and rifle and do the work of deadliness.50

Fosdick understood the psychological need for enlisting Jesus in the cause far better than Niebuhr did. War was necessarily a horrific affair which was repulsive to the moral sensibilities of devout Christians. The only way of convincing Christians to fight was to make war sacred. Fosdick recognized that he and other preachers had sent a generation of young men off to France in 1917 and 1918 by convincing them that the answer to Charles Sheldon’s question, “What would Jesus do?,” was that He would fight for righteousness against the “evil” German empire. Would young Christians have gone to war so willingly if they were reminded by their priests and chaplains that they, like their enemies, were unrighteous?

As Niebuhr had argued since at least Moral Man and Immoral Society, human beings could rationalize almost any belief, and with large social groups, the task was only made easier. Fosdick understood that the problem with trying to follow “in His steps” was that it was too easy for man to change his interpretation of Christ to fit his needs.

“When a man deeply desires to agree with Christ,” Fosdick warned, “nothing is easier than to make Christ agree with him.”51

American Protestants, argued Fosdick, had confused the self-sacrifice required for

war with the sacrifice of Jesus. Sacrifice in and of itself was not necessarily a Christian

virtue, yet Americans had made it such. He referred to the “Battle Hymn of the

50 Fosdick did not identify the author of the quote, but Ray H. Abrams attributes it to Dieffenbach, Christian Register, 15 August 1918, 775. Ray Hamilton Abrams, Preachers Present Arms: A Study of the War-Time Attitudes and Activities of the Churches and the Clergy in the United States, 1914-1918 (New York: Round Table, 1933), 68, 264n69. 51 Fosdick, “Putting Christ into Uniform,” Christian Century, 13 December 1939, 1539.

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Republic,” one verse of which declares, “As he died to make men holy, let us die to make

men free.” Americans Protestants equated their sacrifices in times of war to Christ’s

sacrifice on the Cross. But Fosdick suggested that the hymn needed the “sentimentality

squeezed out of it.” A more “realistic” version would read: “As he died to make men

holy, let us kill to make men free.” Dieffenbach’s statement above notwithstanding,

Fosdick doubted this would hymn would have quite the same effect on Christian conscience.52

Fosdick was clearly free of the illusions to which Niebuhr frequently charged

pacifists with succumbing. Like Niebuhr, Fosdick sought to ward off the self-

righteousness of Americans. And he exhibited much less self-righteousness than was

apparent in Niebuhr’s more polemical writings. Fosdick understood that there were no

easy or automatic answers. His position was hardly the product of a “simple moralism”:

he had arrived at his opposition to war only after years of reflection. Like the realists, his

thought was rooted in experience, not dogma. He recognized that realists would

undoubtedly question his position, but he was prepared with a response:

If someone says . . . that . . . the ethic of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount applied to international relationships is visionary, idealist, and will not work, I ask if you think the opposite ethic now dominant in the world is working. With your realistic hard-heartedness do you think this present world exhibits a way of life that works?53

* * *

By the time fighting in Europe began, the pacifist and realist positions had been

laid out. Indeed, in many ways the intellectual and moral justification for intervention and

52 Ibid., 1541. 53 Ibid.

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non-intervention had changed little since they were first articulated by Reinhold and

Richard Niebuhr during the Manchurian crisis. Then, Richard had argued that God’s grace was at work in the world even in times of crises. The temptation to intervene in wars was made almost irresistible by the moral indignation felt toward an aggressor.

Christians were better off resisting that indignation and working to prepare the way for peace after the conflict subsided. Pacifists like Harry Emerson Fosdick and non- interventionists like Charles Clayton Morrison understood this, and although they despised Hitler, they sought to resist the temptation to fight him so that they might aid in the construction of a real and permanent peace after the war in Europe.

In 1933 Reinhold Niebuhr provided a theoretical defense of intervention by arguing that the Christian commitment to justice was more relevant to political situations than the absolute value of love. Convinced that the present European war was a struggle for justice, a struggle for the preservation of civilization itself, Niebuhr endorsed the

Allies’ cause. But when the war began, not even he went so far as to argue that Christian realism demanded American participation in it. His rejection of pacifism as a guide to political action and of neutrality as an absolute value provided theoretical justification for intervention; it did not, however, make intervention imperative.

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Conclusion

The debates over the role that the United States should play in the European war did not end in 1939. Indeed, the wider public debates began in earnest only in spring

1940, after German troops occupied Denmark and Norway in April and invaded the

Netherlands, Luxemburg, Belgium and France in May. With a Nazi victory appearing more likely than ever, supporters of the administration’s aid-short-of-war policies formed the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. The committee chose as their chairmen the well-respected Republican editor of the Emporia [KS] Gazette, William

Allen White. This was a strategic choice meant to indicate that the administration’s policies had bi-partisan and nationwide support, even in the non-interventionist stronghold of the Midwest. The White Committee’s non-interventionist counterpart,

America First, formed in September, after Roosevelt announced his destroyers-for-bases deal with England. By-passing Congress on the grounds that the deal was necessary for the defense of the nation, Roosevelt gave “surplus” warships to Britain in return for land in British colonies in the Western hemisphere on which American naval and air bases were established.

As Wayne S. Cole points out, however, the “debates” of 1940-1941 are better understood as smear campaigns in which each side tried to destroy the public image of the other. No longer did Roosevelt attempt to convert reluctant non-interventionists to see the situation as he saw it; rather, he sought to discredit them by portraying them as un- democratic, selfish, and anti-Semitic: if not Nazi sympathizers, non-interventionists were at least Nazi dupes. America First and other Roosevelt critics saw the president’s

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“dictatorial” tactics as part of a conspiracy determined to lead the American people into a

war that they did not want to fight.1

Like those among the wider public, the debates between Christian interventionists and non-interventionists became more heated after the war in Europe began. The rationale for the positions had long been laid out, but there was at least one new development: Niebuhr was no longer the lone Christian realist critic of non- interventionism. After the fall of France at the end of June 1940, several prominent

Christian leaders echoed his calls for realism and for aid to Britain. Among them were

Henry P. Van Dusen and Henry Sloane Coffin, both colleagues of Niebuhr’s at Union

Theological Seminary, and John Coleman Bennett, then teaching at the Pacific School of

Religion.

Van Dusen charged the Christian Century with “irresponsible idealism” and

“escapism.” Fifteen months after Roosevelt’s 1939 appeal to Hitler and Mussolini, Van

Dusen wrote that “every intelligent student of world affairs knew” that an economic conference could not prevent a war. Only “enlistment of [America’s] full national resources in assistance of Great Britain” could ensure the future peace of Europe. If the

U.S. had been willing to offer such assistance in 1939, Van Dusen now argued, the war might have been prevented. As Charles Clayton Morrison pointed out in his editorial which accompanied this essay, neither Van Dusen nor such “intelligent students of world

1 On the debates of 1939-1941, see the relevant chapters of Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, as well as Doenecke, Storm on the Horizon.

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affairs” as Roosevelt and Hull gave any indication that they “knew” an economic

conference was doomed to fail in spring 1939.2

Niebuhr took a tack similar to Van Dusen’s when, in June 1940, he called for “an

end to illusions.” Not only did he dismiss as utopian the churches’ calls for economic

conferences and “world education,” he also criticized the Socialist party, which had

officially adopted a non-interventionist stance on the grounds that the war was “a clash of

rival imperialisms.” Niebuhr announced that he promptly resigned from the party after

receiving a letter from a party official asking him to explain his views on foreign policy.

As the letter was prompted by Niebuhr’s involvement in the White Committee, he clearly

favored aid to Britain; yet he did not mention the committee in his essay and offered no

specific policy proposals to which liberals freed from “illusions” might turn.3

Coffin and Bennett were more civil in their calls for American aid to Britain than

were Van Dusen and Niebuhr. Rather than deriding liberals for their naïveté in the past,

they offered a positive argument for aiding Britain in the present. If Britain fell to the

Nazis, world Christianity, and religious freedom in general, would be struck a near fatal

blow. “As Christians, it is our duty to plead for the largest measure of assistance to our

British brethren,” argued Coffin. Like Niebuhr and Van Dusen, he did not believe that

“intervention” necessitated military action on the part of the U.S. In fact, he predicted,

2 Henry P. Van Dusen, “Irresponsible Idealism,” Christian Century, 24 July 1940, 924- 25; “Dr. Van Dusen Speaks More Plainly,” ibid., 24 July 1940, 918-20. 3 Reinhold Niebuhr, “An End to Illusions,” Nation, 29 June 1940, 778-79. Richard Fox reveals that the letter to which Niebuhr referred was from Irving Barshop, the Socialist party of New York’s executive secretary. Barshop pointed out that Niebuhr’s serving as a sponsor of the White Committee violated “party discipline.” Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, 193- 94.

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sending material aid to Britain in September 1940 meant there would be no need for

Americans to build up “a huge naval and military force.”4

More so than Coffin, Bennett recognized that even material aid to Britain might eventually lead to direct U.S. military involvement in the war. Nevertheless, he argued that pacifists and non-interventionists were too concerned about the legal status of neutrality and failed to recognize that the unique geographic location of the U.S. meant that it could afford to take steps other nominally neutral nations could not. Those who insisted that the U.S. either enter the war directly or stay out altogether were “willing to sacrifice the people of Britain and China on the altar of their own consistency.” Bennett still opposed declaring war on the Axis powers. Yet, convinced after the fall of France that something had to be done, he supported immediate aid to the Allies on the false assumption that there would still be time later to discuss the extent to which the U.S. should involve itself in the war militarily.5

In January 1941, Roosevelt outlined a specific policy initiative that Niebuhr and the Christian realists could rally behind when he called upon Congress to pass the Lend-

Lease bill. Knowing that the British government would soon be unable to pay for war material under the provisions of cash-and-carry, he asked Congress to appropriate funds to produce munitions that could be “turned over” to the Allies. In its final form, the bill empowered the president to determine which nations would receive aid and how much they would be given. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee scheduled hearings and

4 Henry Sloane Coffin, “If Britain Should Fall,” Christian Century, 25 September 1940, 1175-76. 5 John C. Bennett, “If America Is Drawn into the War, Can You, as a Christian, Participate in It or Support It?,” Christian Century, 4 December 1940, 1506-8.

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invited more than forty individuals to provide statements on the Lend-Lease bill. Among those who appeared before the committee in late January and early February were

Reinhold Niebuhr and Charles Clayton Morrison.

Morrison opposed the president’s bill on the grounds that there was “a high degree of probability” that passing it would lead the U.S. into war. Furthermore, he argued, the bill was “un-American”: it allowed the president so much discretion in the present crisis that it was “in reality . . . a blueprint for the surrender of American democracy to a dictatorship.” Informing the committee that he was not a pacifist,

Morrison said he would not hesitate to join in the war effort if the nation were attacked.

The president’s bill, however, was based on the false assumption that “we are already virtually at war.” Following Morrison’s testimony, Bennett Champ Clark, who had long been one of the most outspoken champions of mandatory neutrality legislation in the

Senate, declared, “Nobody could improve on that statement.”6

When called upon to testify, Niebuhr stated that whether or not Germany posed a direct military threat to the U.S. was irrelevant. The tyranny of Nazism was a threat to all civilization; the U.S. therefore had a moral obligation to ensure its defeat. He recognized that the bill conferred upon the president extraordinary powers, but he argued that such measures were necessary in order for democracies to act as quickly as the totalitarian dictators. It was “foolish’ to think that such temporary measures would affect democracy in the long-run, for “a healthy democracy will know how to reclaim every extraordinary authority which it entrusted to leaders in times of emergency.”

6 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, To Promote the Defense of the United States: Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations on S. 275, 77th Cong., 1st sess., 27- 31 Jan.; 1, 3-8, 10-11 Feb. 1941 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), 621-32.

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As to whether or not the Lend-Lease bill would lead to American involvement in the war, Niebuhr stated that the bill “offers us a better opportunity to keep out of war than anything else I know.” The United States could “spend a comparatively small sum” aiding Britain now or “spend many more billions preparing for the eventuality of facing the totalitarian powers alone.” As he had always maintained, such steps as those outlined in Lend-Lease carried with them the risk of war. Yet, he still appears to have thought that risk was small. When asked directly by Hiram Johnson whether he would support an

American war against Hitler, Niebuhr equivocated: “I would want to know what the circumstances and conditions are. I would rather cross that bridge when I came to it.”

Pressed twice more by the committee, Niebuhr would go no further than to admit he

“might” favor direct military involvement depending on the circumstances.7

Niebuhr’s ambiguity toward American entry into the war was also apparent in an editorial that he wrote shortly after the Lend-Lease debates in Congress. If Lend-Lease proved insufficient to stop the Axis powers, the U.S. would “face the sorry prospect of a divided nation which could achieve unity only by methods of propaganda and coercion.”

Rather than address the “circumstances” that should be weighed in the country’s decision of whether or not to enter the war, Niebuhr simply concluded, “This prospect is so dismal that one must regard helping the allies to victory without war as the best possible statesmanship under the circumstances.” Despite his unrelenting critique of pacifists,

Niebuhr still shared many of their concerns about American involvement in the European

7 Ibid., 169-75.

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war in spring 1941.8

Nevertheless, the distance between the Christian realists and pacifists continued to

grow. On 10 February, the inaugural issue of Christianity and Crisis was published.

Niebuhr had been working with other Christian realists at Union to plan for the new bi- weekly since late 1939, when he arrived home from Edinburgh. The journal was a self- conscious declaration of independence from Charles Clayton Morrison and the Christian

Century. Niebuhr had been drifting further from Morrison since the publication of Moral

Man and Immoral Society in 1932, but the war in Europe provided him with a single issue with which to demarcate his Christian realism from the older liberal Protestantism that Morrison represented.

The two journals were immediately embroiled in conflict. Christianity and Crisis endorsed Lend-Lease as the only measure that might keep the U.S. out of the European war. When it passed in March, the editors welcomed the news and dismissed its critics as

“hysterical.” Morrison and the Christian Century decried the passing of the bill and urged the president to pursue a negotiated peace, a proposal which Christianity and Crisis argued was symptomatic of its advocates’ naïve belief in Christian perfectionism. In

May, Niebuhr and his colleagues called for American naval escorts in the North Atlantic, although they still maintained that American entry into the war might be avoided. By

June, however, they unequivocally declared that the European conflict was America’s war: the United States must be prepared to take whatever steps necessary to secure an

8 “American Response to the World Crisis,” Christianity and Society 6, no. 2 (Spring 1941): 4-5. Niebuhr and the editors of Radical Religion changed the journal’s name to Christianity and Society beginning with the spring 1940 issue.

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Allied victory. In response, Morrison and the Christian Century accused Niebuhr and the

Christian realists of turning the European conflict into a “holy war.”9

The personal strife between Niebuhr and Morrison reached its boiling point in

July 1941. Each man thought the other had treated him unfairly, and both were surely

right. Niebuhr recognized that “it is practically impossible for people who hold positions

almost diametrically opposite . . . to be fair to each other or to seem fair to the other

side.” He would not, however, apologize for any of his harsh words. Morrison protested

that they could remain friends despite their disagreements, but Niebuhr would have none

of it:

You can get no moral advantage of me by generously claiming to be my friend when I say a friendship is ended. This whole business of covering up ugly realities with words is of no avail. The conflict between you and myself or between your side and mine is, in miniature, as tragic as the world conflict.10

* * *

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941, the debates between interventionists and non-interventionists came to an abrupt stop.

Congress approved a declaration of war against Japan the next day. Morrison and the

Christian Century did not dwell on the past. The editors hoped only that the war might be fought with humility; they immediately turned their attention to efforts to “win the peace.”11

9 “The Lend-Lease Bill Passed,” Christianity and Crisis, 10 March 1941, 2; “The Necessity of Decision,” ibid., 2 June 1941, 1-2; “The Crisis Deepens,” ibid., 5 May 1941, 1-2. 10 Niebuhr to Morrison, 19 July 1941, RN Papers, Box 9, General Correspondence, “Mo.” Although Richard Fox cites Morrison’s letter to Niebuhr of 16 July, I could not locate the letter in the files. 11 “To Win the Peace,” Christian Century, 24 December 1941, 1598-99.

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Niebuhr, too, stressed humility. “History (God) has overtaken us,” he declared.

“History is not as completely under the control of human decisions as either the interventionists or pacifists assumed.” In the throes of the national debate over intervention, his passion had betrayed him. Although he and his Christian realist allies had accused pacifists of self-righteousness, they, too, had become self-righteous in supposing that they alone knew how to prevent, or at least localize, the war. Even now he continued to suggest that the errors of the pacifists were greater than those of the interventionists. Yet traces of the detached, prophetic tone of Reflections on the End of an

Era were apparent in his writing for the first time in several years.

Since the crisis in Europe began, Niebuhr had placed so much emphasis on man’s sin that he had neglected the other concept central to Christian realism—God’s grace.

The realistic component of Christian realism nearly obliterated the idealism that was indicated by the modifier Christian. But now he again turned his attention to the grace of

God. Although he expressed his ideas in explicitly Christian terms, all but the most cynical secularists shared his convictions that life was meaningful and that human history served some purpose, even if that purpose was often beyond the comprehension of the individuals acting in it.

With this reaffirmation of grace, Niebuhr now called for a restoration of the tension between realism and idealism that had characterized his earlier writings. “Despair is the fate of the realists who know something about sin, but nothing about redemption,” he warned. “Self-righteousness and irresponsibility is the fate of the idealists who know something about the good possibilities of life, but know nothing of our sinful corruption in it.” The challenge was to maintain the tension between these two competing

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perspectives without allowing one to conquer the other. Preserving that tension was an ongoing struggle which even Niebuhr, the father of Christian realism, met with varying degrees of success.12

To be sure, Christian realism required the rejection of absolute pacifism. Yet not all critiques of pacifism were equally true to the principles of Christian realism. The anti- pacifist polemics of Niebuhr and Van Dusen often went too far: at times they appeared to be blaming the non-interventionists for the world conflict. In their more reflective moments, Niebuhr and John Bennett offered far more accurate representations of

Christian realism when they recognized the real tragedy of the war. They admitted that the war was unavoidable: neither the pacifists nor the Christian realists were capable of preventing it. Yet even this realization did not force Christian realists to succumb to defeatism and urge immediate American entry into the war. Accepting that the course of history was to some degree beyond their control freed them to advocate bolder political responses to the crisis while still maintaining hope that the U.S. might be able to avoid direct military involvement.

The Christian realists’ sense of tragedy has long been missing from the historical discussions of World War II. As the historian Justus Doenecke has pointed out, the majority of scholars who study the war have failed to move “beyond polemics.”

Conventional histories have regarded the war as the “good war.” In their efforts to explain why the U.S. did not attempt to stop fascism sooner, writers of these traditional narratives often single out “naïve pacifists” and “isolationists” as the culprits. Likewise, revisionist historians have continued to fight the non-interventionists’ battles. They often

12 “History (God) Has Overtaken Us,” Christianity and Society 7, no. 1 (Winter 1941): 3- 5.

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view every new foreign policy directive initiated by the Roosevelt administration from

1938 to 1941 as part of a devious scheme to lead the nation into war. Neither approach to

the war recovers the real sense of confusion that overwhelmed both interventionists and

non-interventionists at the time.13

Historians have failed to appreciate the “half-truths,” to borrow a Niebuhrian

term, of both sides. Christian realists and other interventionists better understood than did

non-interventionists the real threat that Nazism posed to civilization. They recognized

that the Second World War was something altogether different from the first: it was not

merely a war of rival imperialisms. Yet, the non-interventionists had their “half-truth” as

well. They better understood than did interventionists that every step away from strict

neutrality not only carried with it the risk of war but actually made U.S. involvement in the conflict unavoidable.

At its best, Christian realism was always an open-ended, prophetic system that provided no specific answers to political problems; it offered only a perspective, or framework, in which those problems could be analyzed. Yet the interventionist stance

Niebuhr adopted in the specific context of World War II has long been conflated with the

Christian realist perspective he used to arrive at his position. In 1972, one year after

Niebuhr’s death, John Coleman Bennett pointed out that this association of Christian realism with aggressive foreign policy had created an exaggerated image of Niebuhr during the Cold War: Niebuhr had been primarily concerned with the political and economic aspects of the Cold War, not the military aspects with which many self- proclaimed Niebuhrians were preoccupied. Yet not even Bennett recognized the extent to

13 Justus D. Doenecke, “Beyond Polemics: An Historiographical Re-Appraisal of American Entry into World War II,” History Teacher 12, no. 2 (February 1979): 217-51.

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which his analysis was equally true of Niebuhr during World War II. Although by summer 1941 Niebuhr finally advocated a tough military policy to stop Hitler, for years he had argued that political and economic measures might halt fascism’s advances without resorting to war.

By the 1970s, the tendency to equate Christian realism with the notion that the

U.S. government should intervene with military force wherever it deemed justice sufficiently threatened had grown so pervasive that Bennett accepted it was probably best to retire the label: “I have used the phrase Christian Realism many times, but now I want to be free from it because of the static stereotype that it suggests.” That stereotype has its roots in accounts of Christian realism during World War II that fail to appreciate how reluctant the realists were to finally accept U.S. military intervention in the war. In a sense, then, the prophetic philosophy of Christian realism that developed in the 1930s became a casualty of the very war it sought to justify.14

14 Bennett, “Realism and Hope after Niebuhr,” Worldview 15, no. 5 (May 1972): 4-14, quote from 11.

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“A Christian Peace Policy.” Radical Religion 4, no. 2 (Spring 1939): 10-12.

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