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Reinhold Niebuhr and the Jewish People

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Reinhold Niebuhr and the Jewish People published in VI Holocaust and Genocide Studies (1991) Is 45-61j and also as a pamphlet from Elmhurst College (1994 - In Thy Light, II, 1:11-21) Reinhold Niebuhr and the Jewish People The 1990 Niebuhr Lecture at Elmhurst College (©1990 Franklin H. Littell REINHOLD NIEBUHR AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE* From time to time we hear rumors of a "Niebuhr renaissance."^ From time to time we read tributes to him, Reinhold Niebuhr, from prominent figures in literature, politics or religion, frequently repeating the summary judgments by Hans Morgenthau or Bob Patterson. Patterson, publishing on a conservative Protestant press in 1977, esteemed him as "the greatest native-born Protestant theologian since Jonathan Edwards. "^ He was putting in print a judgment that long since had become part of the oral tradition of Union Seminary alumni. Morgenthau, himself a giant in political science, called RN in 1962 "the greatest living political philosopher of America, perhaps the only creative political philosopher since Calhoun."3 All of us see, every few days, on a calendar or greeting card, that prayer which he launched on its way in the little church at Heath, Massachusetts: "God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, the courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other."4 Even if, as frequently happens today, the classical expression is attributed to the ubiquitous "Anonymous," Niebuhr students recognize the hand of the master. In one of the flurry of articles that responded to Richard Fox's badly flawed biography5, William Lee Miller reported a finding in respect to RN's continuing appeal with which many of *By Franklin H Littell, UTS 1940 (B.D.), Yale 1946 (Ph.D.); the 1990 Niebuhr Lecture at Elmhurst College, 18 April 1990 us can concur: "There are always some, a small minority to be sure, who even yet are gripped, influenced, or persuaded, and often quite deeply..."6 In my last twenty years of teaching, one of the most impressive experiences was when a group of graduate students pressed me to take on a non-credit seminar, above and beyond my regular teaching load and their normal matriculation, which led to two semesters of work on RN's Gifford Lectures, The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941, 1943). While it is true that "one swallow does not make a Spring," and a flurry of books and articles does not make a renaissance, there is no doubt but that - to switch metaphors - RN is a hardy perennial. Many in my generation of churchmen would join George Kennan, referring to the membership of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department after the war, in calling RN "the father of us all."7 One of my most moving experiences in recent years was to participate in the International Conference on the Work of Reinhold Niebuhr, held September 1984 on the initiative of Richard Harries, then Dean of King's College London, and hear the words of British clergy and teachers of my generation. They spoke with fervor of the way in which his occasional addresses to SCM and other university groups just before the war, given while he was in the UK for the Gifford Lectures, appeared to them like the water of an oasis in a desert of political confusion. RN and the Jewish People Niebuhr: Master of Apologetic Theology Appreciated by civic activists, Christian and secular and Jewish, and by a vigorous minority of both churchmen and political leaders, RN carried the witness of his faith to the world - and the concerns of the world to the churches' centers. In this role his style was very different from that of his brother Richard, who was more removed from the political arena. Richard favored the ascetic approach, while Reinhold - after he left the Fellowship of Reconciliation and founded the Fellowship of Socialist Christians - was always critical of withdrawal which - following Troeltsch - he considered the "sectarian" strategy8. What is especially strange is the fact that his insights in correction of traditional Christian preaching and teaching about the Jewish people have yet to be given serious attention by most ( American seminary professors. The recent volume of his writings in public affairs edited by Larry Rasmussen, with a long Introduction, fails to publish any of his substantial writings on Jewry - and of course also neglects to talk about that subject in discussing RN's theological contributions.9 Yet that was one of Niebuhr's most fundamental contributions, one much appreciated by Jewish spokesmen, and one that shoots an arrow straight into the golden center of American Kulturprotestantismus. There is only one point where Rasmussen identifies a "Jewish issue" in RN, and that is a negative where he writes in criticism of what he considers RN's emphasis upon individual and heroic self-sacrifice to the neglect of mutuality and community: ' RN and the Jewish People 3 "This is doubly ironic in light of Niebuhr's deep appreciation of Judaism. He often said he appreciated the fact that Jews spoke less about salvation than about the saved society. Had Niebuhr's understanding of Jesus emphasized more the Jewishness of Jesus, with its communitarian theology, Niebuhr might have come to a different perspective on his chief moral norm, agapecic love, and perhaps on his anthropology indebted as it is even more to Kierkegaard than to Buber."10 Whether RN's doctrine of the church was deficient may be debated, and often is11. But it seems passing strange to categorize as pietistic and insufficiently "Jewish" the cardinal points in the thinking of a man who early rejected the role of a systematic theologian and affirmed that "theology is to aid 'the ethical reconstruction of modern society' by forging a religious imagination which sustains a strong commitment to public life and guides policy decisions that represent the leading edge of justice."12 Among Jewish communal leaders there has not been much doubt as to where RN stood. No other Christian theologian was so well known in Jewish circles as RN. In his memorial statement Professor Seymour Siegel of Jewish Theological Seminary concluded: "Niebuhr's great achievement was to relate the realm of the here and now to the realm of ultimate mystery. In a measure unequalled by any other man of American religion, he succeeded. He will be sorely missed."13 To cite a another illustrative case, a recent review in The Jerusalem Post discusses an autobiography just published in Hebrew by Elihu Elath, pioneer Israeli diplomat. The reviewer I RN and the Jewish People 4 notes with satisfaction that a chapter was devoted to RN, "this great man, who was a devoted friend of the Jewish people and the Zionist idea. His views were not popular in some of the most influential Protestant circles..."14 RN's views are still not popular in denominational and other establishment circles. In America, it has taken us longer to get the point of his message of crisis; in fact, there is great doubt whether our "mainline denominations" have left the comfortable repose of culture-religion - with its deeply dyed stain of antisemitism - even yet. Certainly most of the American church judicatory statements on Christian/Jewish relations, frequently avoiding altogether the two most important religious events of recent centuries (the Holocaust and a restored Israel), are still plainly pre-Niebuhr. In 1939 in Britain they were already caught up in a life and death moment of crisis and decision, and for those who listened for a message of Christian apologetic that made sense of both faith and politics, RN was a most dramatic presence. With the fogs of "non-intervention" and the illusions of "peace in our time" still swirling in British universities and parishes, RN's words cut through to the central issues in a way they still recalled - after 45 years - as most helpful and inspiring. Speaking to Britons, whose leaders a few years back had sacrificed the Spanish Republic to fascism in the name of "non­ intervention, " whose politicians and but a few months before had RN and the Jewish People 5 sacrificed the Czechoslovak Republic to Nazism in the name of "peace in our time," RN staked out the field. His choice of democracy over dictatorship was unshaken: "Whatever may be the moral ambiguities of the so- called democratic nations, and however serious may be their failure to conform properly to their democratic ideals, it is sheer moral perversity to equate the inconsistencies of a democratic civilization with the brutalities which modern tyrannical states practice. If we cannot make a distinction here, there are no historical distinctions which have any value."I5 He knew how eagerly his fellow-Americans seized upon the failures of the democracies to sit "even-handedly" between the Allies and the Axis, and he would have none of it. He would have had none of the "even-handedness" of those Americans who today find it simply too difficult to make a choice between the government of a democratic but imperfect Israel and the totalitarian regimes that rule Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya... While defending the cause of the democratic countries over against the fascist threat, RN struck powerful blows against injustices and wrong-doing at home. Not seldom, during the sometime victories of the rightwing populism of the last two decades, one of the American torch-bearers with feeling has muttered to himself or a friend, "Reinie, thou shouldst be living at this hour... Church and country have need of thee!" To some of us, his 1934 chart for a way out of the miasma of American culture-religion is as sound today as it was when he first enunciated it: I RN and the Jewish People "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 era.u1^ In 1934, that year of decision for European Christendom17, our socially established churches in America were in fact as poorly prepared for the Church Struggle as were the legally established churches of Europe.
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