Christian Realism & U.S. Foreign Policy

FEATURE

CHRISTIAN REALISM & U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

JOSEPH LOCONTE

SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, WHILE AMERICA SLEPT, WESTERN CIVILIZATION WAS FIGHTING FOR ITS LIFE

n September of 1940, after occupying and enslaving most Iof continental Europe in less than a year, Hitler’s Germany turned its gaze north, across the English Channel. Beginning RQ6HSWHPEHUWKH/XIWZD̆HXQOHDVKHGDVWRUPRIGHDWKDQG GHVWUXFWLRQRQWKHFLW\RI/RQGRQWKH%OLW]7KH¿UVWURXQG RI ERPELQJ UDLGV ODVWHG ¿IW\VHYHQ FRQVHFXWLYH QLJKWV &%6 newsman Edward R. Murrow was there: “I’ve seen some hor- rible sights in this city during these days and nights, but not once have I heard man, woman, or child suggest that Britain should throw in her hand.”

Everyone in Britain, including Prime the nation’s Christian leadership: its theo- Minister Winston Churchill, expected a logians, pastors, writers, and public intel- Nazi invasion at any moment. And nearly lectuals? The lamentable fact is that most everyone in the United States, including failed to grasp the nature of Hitlerism; they President Franklin Roosevelt, tried desper- refused to contemplate the practical con- ately to put Britain’s existential struggle out sequences of a complete Nazi triumph over of their minds. “I’ll say it again, and again,” Europe. Instead, many insisted that the vowed FDR during his 1940 re-election “ethics of Jesus” demanded a U.S. foreign campaign. “Your boys are not going to be SROLF\RILVRODWLRQLVPSDFL¿VPDQGQDWLRQ- sent into any foreign wars.” al repentance. We might expect this kind of talk from “Can military force do much against dissembling politicians, but what about soul force which folds its arms and bides its

27 day?” asked Albert Palmer, president of the West are threatened by new forms of terror Chicago Theological Seminary. “Without and totalitarianism, much of the Protestant military opposition the Hitlers wither Christian church today lacks the intellectu- away.” Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of DODQGPRUDOUHVRXUFHVWR¿JKWEDFN New York’s Riverside Baptist Church and Consider the reaction of leading “pro- RQHRIWKHPRVWLQÀXHQWLDOSUHDFKHUVRIKLV gressive” Protestant ministers to the 9/11 day, was unmoved by the fate of millions al- attacks and the rise of radical Islamic ready under Nazi occupation. “I can never extremism. The Rev. Tony Campolo, the use my Christian ministry in the support self-described “Prophet of Red Letter and sanction of war,” he wrote in January Christianity,” has focused his righteous 1941. “My personal judgment is that for the rage on American foreign policy. He com- United States to become a belligerent in this pares U.S. military action against Islamic FRQÀLFWZRXOGEHDFRORVVDODQGIXWLOHGLVDV- militants to the campaign of beheadings ter.” Charles Clayton Morrison, editor of the launched by the Islamic State (ISIS) against prestigious Christian Century, denounced DOOHJHG LQ¿GHOV ³:KDW FDQ ZH GR WR VWRS $PHULFDQSDUWLFLSDWLRQLQWKHFRQÀLFWDV³D this cycle of violence?” he asks. His answer: war for imperialism,” as hateful a prospect “What if President Bush and President as a Nazi victory. “For the United States to Obama stood together at the rostrum of the make a fateful decision to enter this war U.N. General Assembly and did the biblical on the mistaken and irrational assump- thing? What if, on behalf of the American tion that it is a war for the preservation of people, they repented of what our nation anything good in civilization will be the su- has done?” preme tragedy of our history.” By the 1920s and 30s, American Soon after the 9/11 attacks, Jim Wallis Christianity—especially its liberal wing— and his Sojourners magazine produced a shared the same mental outlook as that of manifesto called “Confessing Christ in a political progressivism. In politics, both re- World of Violence.” A critique of the U.S.-led acted to the cataclysm of the First World War “war on terror,” the document was signed determined to make international peace by scores of theology professors, ethicists their supreme goal, whatever the cost. In and church leaders. Its signatories sought to matters of religion, both embraced a spirit soften what they called the “crude distinc- of disbelief and evasion: a reluctance to ad- tions” being made between radical Islamic mit the stubbornness and pervasiveness of jihad and Western democracy. They thus human evil. R̆HUHGDPLVDSSURSULDWLRQRI6RO]KHQLWV\Q “The distinction between good and evil does “In this liberalism there is little un- not run between one nation and another, or derstanding of the depth to which human one group and another,” the petition read. malevolence may sink and the heights to “It runs straight through every human which malignant power may rise,” wrote KHDUW´0RUHUHFHQWO\:DOOLV¿QGVWKHVROX- Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr tion to ISIS barbarism in tackling the “root in Christianity and Power Politics (1940). causes” of terrorism, which are economic “Some easy and vapid escape is sought from and political in nature.“ Terrorism is always the terrors and woes of a tragic era.” built on grievances—real and perceived— that are used to recruit for and perpetuate his frame of mind has returned with its ideology and violence,” he writes. “So a vengeance in the post-9/11 era, T addressing those grievances and correcting fueled by the costly and inconclusive wars course along the way is essential to defeat- in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its motive force, ing terrorism.” though, is a blinkered vision of the Christian gospel that has unwittingly debased the Stanley Hauerwas, professor of ethics Christian conscience. At the very moment at Duke University, delivered a jeremiad when the political and religious ideals of the against the United States, even as human

28 remains were being recovered from Ground Christianity and Crisis, Niebuhr reminded Zero. He saw a terrible day of reckoning his generation that Protestant Christianity ahead: “I think that when America isn’t possessed unique resources to confront the able to rule the world, that people will ex- problems and perplexities of the modern act some very strong judgments against age. America—and I think we will well deserve We need to recover something of the it.” A look at his latest book, War and the Christian realism that proved so prescient $PHULFDQ 'L̆HUHQFH, suggests that world in an era of theological confusion. As events have left his views undisturbed. Niebuhr argued, contemporary historical Hauerwas rejects U.S. military action in the HYHQWV FRQ¿UP WKH 5HIRUPDWLRQ HPSKDVLV Middle East, even to prevent crimes against on the persistence of sin at every level of humanity or genocide. “If the U.S. inter- moral achievement; there is no way to fully venes, we just reinforce the presumption, HVFDSHWKHFRUUXSWLQJLQÀXHQFHRISRZHULQ which is true, that we’re an imperial power.” any political act. To believe otherwise is to And on it goes. Religious progressives imagine that politics can transcend these are not mistaken when they discover in earthly realities if only “the ethics of Jesus” the ministry of Jesus a life devoted to the would shape our priorities and methods. love of neighbor: the unconditional love of No amount of Bible citations, Niebuhr God. Nor are they wrong to see in Jesus explained, can conceal the humanistic as- the quintessential peacemaker: the Prince VXPSWLRQVEHKLQGWKLVH̆RUW of Peace. Yet their political vision is based entirely upon the principle of non-violence. We have, in other words, reinterpret- Their politics, in all its particulars, is guid- ed the Christian gospel in terms of the ed by one rule, “the law of love.” Renaissance faith in man…We have inter- preted world history as a gradual ascent he fatal problem with this view is WRWKH.LQJGRPRI*RGZKLFKZDLWVIRU¿- Tthat historic Christianity—espe- nal triumph only upon the willingness of cially Protestant Christianity—has never Christians to ‘take Christ seriously.’ There reduced the gospel to these elements. The is nothing in Christ’s own teachings…to jus- cross of Christ cannot be comprehended tify this interpretation of world history. In without an awareness of the depth of human the whole of the New Testament, Gospels guilt and the power of radical evil. “The gos- and Epistles alike, there is only one inter- pel is something more than the law of love. pretation of world history. That pictures The gospel deals with the fact that men vio- history as moving toward a climax in which late the law of love,” wrote Niebuhr in “Why both Christ and anti-Christ are revealed. WKH&KULVWLDQ&KXUFKLV1RW3DFL¿VW´³7KH Progressive Christianity, whatever its gospel presents Christ as the pledge and merits, bases its politics on a fundamen- UHYHODWLRQRI*RG¶VPHUF\ZKLFK¿QGVPDQ WDOO\ ÀDZHG XQGHUVWDQGLQJ RI WKH KXPDQ in his rebellion and overcomes his sin.” predicament. By insisting on political out- Like no other American theologian of comes akin to the vision of life held out in the twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr the Sermon on the Mount, it promotes a for- exposed the assumptions of progressive eign policy largely detached from political Christianity that helped to create a mood reality. of political ambivalence and isolation in an age of global terror. Niebuhr’s political the- foreign policy rooted in Christian ology—what became known as “Christian Arealism, by contrast, begins with realism”—sought a more biblical view of a sober view of the exercise of power. how the Christian citizen can live responsi- Enforcing justice, punishing wrongdoing, bly within a civilization in crisis. During the building democratic institutions—all of this 1930s and 40s, through his books, articles, LV H[FHHGLQJO\ GL̇FXOW ZRUN D WUXLVP DV and the magazine he founded and edited, easily forgotten by political conservatives as

29 it is by progressives. One of the most deep- Evasive and generic references to “terrorists” ly mistaken ideas surrounding the wars in and “extremists” obscure the nature of the Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, was problem. that liberal democracies would emerge or- Even the editors at The New Republic, ganically, almost inevitably, out of the ashes hardly a source of Christian realist thinking, of decades of repression and war. nevertheless got close to the mark in an edito- In The Case for Democracy, former rial shortly after the 9/11 attacks. “No, it was Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky ar- not Islam that took the towers down. But it gued that the democratic revolutions was not Episcopalianism either,” they wrote. which toppled the Soviet Union de- “The terrorists are waging a war of ideas, pended on three key elements: enslaved and the ideas upon which they are acting are people who yearned to be free, leaders ideas in the Islamic tradition…There are those outside who believed they could be, who wish to deny the religious character of and policies that linked the world com- munity to the regime’s treatment of its Al Qaeda’s violence, so as to transform bin own people. The book was mandatory Ladenism into another variety of anti-colonial reading in the Bush White House. “It protest.” Meanwhile, Protestantism, which has will work anywhere around the world,” always cared deeply about theology - Luther’s Sharansky wrote, “including in the Reformation was, at its core, a spiritual cam- Arab world.” paign –has the necessary tools to come even How could that be true? History—es- closer to the mark. By placing the authority pecially recent history—reminds us that of the Bible above any individual or institu- there is no formula to assure a trans- tion, Protestants are less restrained than other formation from tyranny to democratic faith traditions in exposing the pretensions of self-government. political and religious leaders. They are better equipped to resist SROLWLFDO FRUUHFWQHVV LQ DQ\ The Protestant tradition, which emerged IRUP as a reaction against Catholicism’s doctrine of perfectionism, is well-equipped to defend )RU WKH &KULVWLDQ UHDOLVW WKH KRUUL¿F against this myth of progress. “The politi- acts of barbarism committed in the pursuit cal life of man,” wrote Niebuhr, “must con- of a spiritual utopia are not the result of stantly steer between the Scylla of anarchy “grievances” with Western society. Rather, and the Charybdis of tyranny.” It is for good they are the latest expression of an ancient reason that the American Founders, armed malignancy—the Will to Power—clothed in the with a strong dose of Protestant realism, robes and symbols of religion. C.S Lewis, in an- worried that factions—especially those fu- other context, described this will as the “ruth- eled by sectarian hatreds—would prove fa- less, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon tal to national unity. Thus Madison’s insight self, which is the mark of Hell.” The demonic in The Federalist: “Had every Athenian citi- vision of radical Islam is not a force that can zen been a Socrates, every Athenian assem- be bribed, appeased, accommodated, con- bly would still have been a mob.” tained, or placated into submission. Second, the Christian realist insists on Third, a foreign policy based on an honest assessment of the threats to in- Christian realism makes the defense of ternational peace and security. Let’s take Western political and religious ideals an the challenge of radical Islamic jihad. The overarching priority. Rooted in their un- claims and ambitions of al Qaeda, ISIS, and derstanding of divine grace, Protestant other terrorist groups cannot be wished reformers delivered a withering critique of away. Unlike the national security documents the entire legalistic project that had become adopted by the Obama administration, a real- “Christendom.” They laid the foundation for istic National Security Strategy would identify our liberal democratic order. Government the religious sources of the terrorist ideology by consent, the separation of powers, a that threatens the United States and its allies. constitution based on natural rights and

30 “Meanwhile, Protestantism, which has always cared deeply about theology - Luther’s Reformation was, at its core, a spiritual campaign –has the necessary tools to come even closer to the mark. By placing the authority of the Bible above any individual or institution, Protestants are less restrained than other faith traditions in exposing the pretensions of political and religious leaders. They are better equipped to resist political correctness in any form.”

human equality, freedom of conscience, fellow Christian realists would have none of free speech, freedom of assembly—all of it: “When the mind is not confused by uto- these achievements are inconceivable with- SLDQLOOXVLRQV´KHZURWH³LWLVQRWGL̇FXOW out the moral capital and spiritual insights to recognize genuine achievements of jus- of evangelical Christianity. They are the de- tice, and to feel under obligation to defend ¿QLQJIHDWXUHVRI$PHULFDQH[FHSWLRQDOLVP them against the threats of tyranny and the Yet religious progressives, when ob- negation of justice.” sessed with America’s shortcomings, lose A one-time socialist candidate for VLJKW RI WKHVH DFFRPSOLVKPHQWV 7KH\ ¿QG Congress, Niebuhr was not blind to the it hard to make moral distinctions between deep injustices—economic and racial—in American democracy and even the most American society. Yet he could no longer loathsome and oppressive dictatorships. abide the morally debased reasoning of Thus the lament of John Haynes Holmes, his fellow socialists in response to fascist a New York City minister and chairman of aggression; he resigned from the party. He the American Civil Liberties Union, so typi- then turned his mind toward combatting cal of liberal theologians in the 1940s: “Our WKHVDPHPRUDOFRQIXVLRQD̈LFWLQJOLEHUDO sins have found us out, that’s all,” he con- Protestantism: cluded. “If Hitler triumphs, it will be as the punishment for our transgressions.” We believe the task of defending the rich inheritance of our civilization to Here is the spirit of the embittered be an imperative one, however much utopian, alive and well in progressive we might desire that our social system Christianity. Recall the disturbing refrain were more worthy of defense… We do of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, President QRW ¿QG LW SDUWLFXODUO\ LPSUHVVLYH WR Obama’s ex-favorite pastor, in the wake of celebrate one’s sensitive conscience the 9/11 attack: “America’s chickens are by enlarging upon all the well-known coming home to roost…God damn America! evils of our western world and equating God damn America!” Niebuhr and his them with the evils of the totalitarian

31 The Gorgon Medusa, punished for her arrogance and for breaking her vows to Minerva, suggests the importance of KXPLOLW\DQG¿GHOLW\WR*RGIRUWKHPDLQWHQDQFHRISURVSHULW\

systems. It is just as important for Their progressive progeny are not hard Christians to be discriminating in their to identify. Duke’s Stanley Hauerwas speaks judgments, as for them to recognize the for many when he denies the need for a for- element of sin in all their endeavors. eign policy that could thwart the depraved The Christian realist can never equate ambitions of terrorist groups or rogue re- American democratic values with gospel gimes. “My only response is I do not have morality: this opens the door to Christian a foreign policy. I have something better—a nationalism, a perversion of the faith. But church constituted by people who would a posture of cynicism toward the United rather die than kill.” States and the West is no less a corruption. What are we to make of this “theology of Social perfection at home is not required ORYH´"7KHGHIDFWRSDFL¿VPRISURJUHVVLYH before attempting to check aggression and Christianity presents us with a conscience punish injustice abroad. LQVXODWHGIURPKXPDQVX̆HULQJ,WLVDFRQ- science content to ignore the neighbor in t is at this point where Christian pro- crisis—whether he’s the Jew marched to the Igressives fail most conspicuously in gas at Auschwitz, the Tutsi villagers hacked their stated objective: to demonstrate the to death in Rwanda, the girls forced into love of Christ to their neighbor. Perhaps sexual slavery by Boko Haram, the fami- the most shameful behavior of American lies hunted down and executed by ISIS, the Christians during the Second World War gays rounded up and tossed from rooftops, ZDVWKHLUSUDFWLFDOLQGL̆HUHQFHWRWKHPLO- or the Syrian refugees facing starvation or lions of victims of Nazism. extinction because of their faith. From 1938 to 1941, for example, Even secular political leaders at the American Protestant groups issued no few- United Nations have endorsed a doctrine er than 50 statements about how to achieve known as the “responsibility to protect” D MXVW DQG GXUDEOH SHDFH 1RQH R̆HUHG D when civilian populations become the ob- plan to rescue Jews from the anti-Semitic ject of genocide or crimes against humanity. hatreds unleashed by the Nazis. There was At the moment when fresh thinking about lots of talk about debt relief and economic the Christian just war tradition is desper- assistance. Yet barely a handful of these ately needed, religious progressives have manifestos argued that the defeat of Nazism abandoned the concept altogether. “Thus was essential to international justice. the Christian ideal of love has degenerated

32 LQWRDORYHOHVVQHVVZKLFKFXWVLWVHOIR̆IURP supreme malevolence of their own day. D VRUURZLQJ DQG VX̆HULQJ ZRUOG´ ZURWH Only a handful of religious leaders realized Niebuhr. “Love is made to mean not pity the demons that Nazism had let loose in the and sympathy or responsibility for the weal ZRUOG)HZFRXOGLPDJLQHWKHVDFUL¿FHVUH- and woe of others, it becomes merely the quired to meet them. And fewer still dared abstract and negative perfection of peace in to predict the consequences of shrinking a warring world.” back from the duties assigned to America, Great Britain and their allies. In this, religious progressives succumb to an old temptation. They allow their ha- The Christians who did so sought to re- tred of war to blot out all other virtues and trieve a more biblical understanding of the obligations. But the historic and orthodox gospel as the foundation for their politics. Christian church has never viewed peace— They argued that the “gentleness” of Jesus peace at any cost—as the highest good. Such ZDVQRWWKHIXOODQG¿QDOUHYHODWLRQRIWKH a peace always ends in a preference for tyr- character of God. They insisted that both anny. It always adds to the catalogue of hu- the Old and the New Testament took the PDQVX̆HULQJ wrath of God as well as the mercy of God seriously. “The divine mercy, apprehend- For the person whose life is threat- ed by Christian faith in the life and death ened by violence, servitude, or death, the of Christ, is not some simple kindness in- Christian conscience summons a full range GL̆HUHQWWRJRRGDQGHYLO´ZURWH1LHEXKU RIREOLJDWLRQVHPSDWK\FRXUDJHVDFUL¿FH “The whole point of the Christian doctrine and a determination to protect the neigh- of Atonement is that God cannot be mer- bor from great evil. Protestants have long FLIXOZLWKRXWIXO¿OOLQJZLWKLQKLPVHOIDQG appreciated the distinct role of government on man’s behalf, the requirements of divine in helping to carry out the last of these obli- justice.” gations. In his tract aimed at political leaders, On Secular Authority (1523), Martin The biblical answer to the problem of Luther explained that the sword of the State evil in human history, Christ’s death and ³LVDYHU\JUHDWEHQH¿WDQGQHFHVVDU\WRWKH resurrection, cannot separate justice from whole world, to preserve peace, to punish mercy. Thus the way of Jesus—what C.S. sin and to prevent evil.” Lewis once described as “terror and comfort intertwined”—dispels our utopian illusions. $MXVWSHDFHPD\EHWKH¿QDOUHVXOWRI +LVJRVSHOUHQGHUVDVIXWLOHRXUIDFLOHH̆RUWV these pursuits, God willing. But if peace is to create a society based on “love” while made the supreme goal, if it consumes all failing to reckon with the negation of love other obligations, it becomes an idol—and a which threatens every human endeavor. snare to the statesman as well as the saint. Here there is no place for sentimental hristian realism sets itself squarely Christianity, either in our pulpits or our Cagainst this idol, and against the politics. Here is a road less travelled. And utopian assumptions that give it life. The yet along this road lies our best hope: not post-9/11 era has exposed the resilience of for the immediate arrival of the kingdom of the utopian idea in both politics and reli- heaven, but for a greater measure of peace gion; it continues to exert a powerful hold on and justice within, and among, the nations of the earth. Q the mind of modern liberalism. Unchecked, it represents a threat to the health and even survival of liberal democracy in America Joseph Loconte is an associate professor of his- and the West. tory at the King’s College in New York City and the author of A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: Where do we begin in confronting this How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered outlook? We need to recover the wisdom Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm and resolve of those who recognized the of 1914-1918.