Notes INTRODUCTION 1. Richard Harries (ed.), Reinhold Niebuhr and the Issues of Our Time (London: Mowbray 1986) 1. 2. Miller points to the irony in Niebuhr's celebration by these Luce publica­ tions, magazines which provide excellent examples of the cocky assurance and faith in American goodness which Niebuhr criticised so constantly. William Lee Miller, 'The Irony of Reinhold Niebuhr', Reporter (13 Jan­ uary 1955) 11. 3. William Lee Miller, 'In Strange Company', New Republic (21 April 1982) 30. 4. An observation of Arthur Schlesinger Jr, 'Prophet for a Secular Age', New Leader vol. 55, no. 2 (24 January 1972) 14. 5. Richard John Neuhaus (ed.), Reinhold Niebuhr Today (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1989) xi; Dennis P. McCann , 'The Case for Christian Realism: Rethinking Reinhold Niebuhr', Christian Century (7-14 June 1995). 6. President Clinton names Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society as a book which had a profound influence on him, along with the Bible, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, Thomas a Kempis' Of the Imitation of Christ and Max Weber's Politics as a Vocation in Between Hope and History (New York: Times Books, Random House 1996). 7. Campbell Craig, 'The New Meaning of Modern War in the Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr', Journal of the History ofIdeas vol. 53, no. 4 (1992) 687-701; see also John C. Bennett, 'Niebuhr's Ethics: The Later Years', Christianity and Crisis XLII (12 April 1985) 91-5. 8. The German Evangelical Synod of North America, later the Evangelical Synod of North America, was founded in Missouri in 1841 and reflected the 1817 union of Lutheran and Reformed (Calvinist) Churches in Prus­ sia. In 1934, it merged with the Reformed Church in the United States to form the Evangelical and Reformed Church ; in 1957, this merged with the Congregational Christian Churches to create the United Church of Christ, which has its headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. The union of Calvinism and Lutheranism gave Niebuhr a rich heritage politically as well as religiously. For politically, Calvinism departs radically from Lutheranism as regards the state. Whereas the Lutheran analysis of the state is as an 'order of necessity', Calvinism stresses the integrity of humans, the doctrines of natural justice and duties and rights and also justifiability of political revolution. 9. Reinhold Niebuhr, 'Intellectual Autobiography', in Charles W. Kegley and Robert W. Bretall (eds), Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social and Political Thought (New York: Macmillan 1961) 3. 10. Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves From the Notebook ofa Tamed Cynic (Louis­ ville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press 1990) 38. 11. Niebuhr, 'The Twilight of Liberalism', New Republic (14 June 1919),218. 154 Notes 155 12. Nathan A. Scott (ed.), The Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr (London : Uni­ versity of Chicago Press 1975) xi. 13. Lovin cites Douglas Clyde Macintosh and Walter Marshall Horton as the founders of the 'realist' theological movement in the 1930s and credits John Bennett with the term Christian Realism; Robert W. Lovin, Rein­ hold Niebuhr and Christian Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995) 1-2. 14. See Kenneth Durkin, Reinhold Niebuhr (London: Geoffrey Chapman 1989) 2-6. 15. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1932) xxiii. 16. Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems (London: Faber and Faber 1953) 119. 17. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Structure ofNations and Empires: A Study ofthe Recurring Patterns and Problems ofthe Political Order in the Nuclear Age (London: Faber and Faber 1959) 144. 18. Niebuhr, Leaves From the Notebook, 70, 103. 19. Ibid., 45. 20. Paul Merkeley comments that there was for a time something of a vogue for original sin with Niebuhr celebrated as the rediscoverer of original sin and depicted as the theologian of gloom: Merkeley, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Political Account (London: McGill-Queen's University Press 1975) 153 and 174. 21. Richard W. Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr: a Biography (New York : Pantheon 1985) ix. 22. Larry Rasmussen (ed.), Reinhold Niebuhr: Theologian of Public Life (London : Collins 1988) 13. 23. Reinhold Niebuhr, The ChildrenofLight and the Children ofDarkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of its Traditional Defense (New York : Charles Scribner's Sons 1944) 187. 24. Reinhold Niebuhr, Reflections on the End of an Era (London : Charles Scribner's Sons 1934) 209. 25. Michael J. Smith, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (London : Louisiana State University Press 1986) 2. 26. See Herbert Butterfield, 'The Scientific vs the Moralistic Approach in International Affairs', International Affairs vol. 27, no. 4 (October 1951) 411-22; Hans Rommen, 'Realism and Utopianism in World Affairs', Review ofPolitics vol. 6, no. 2 (April 1944) 193-215; Kenneth Thompson, 'The Study of International Politics: a Survey of Trends and Develop­ ments', Review of Politics vol. 14, no. 4 (October 1952); Hans J. Mor­ genthau, Scientific Man vs Power Politics (Chicago: University ofChicago Press 1946). 27. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis 1919-1939 2nd edn (London : Mac­ millan 1981) 10. 28. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations (New York: Alfred Knopf 1973) 4. 29. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 10; Morgenthau, Scientific Man, 201; Morgenthau, Politics in the Twentieth Century, vol. 3 (London : University of Chicago Press 1962) 15. 156 Notes 30. Morgenthau, Politics among Nat ions, 12. 31. Reinhold Niebuhr, Man 's Nature and His Communities (London: Geof­ frey Bles 1966) 54. Yet, in a 1967 interview, Niebuhr described Mor­ genthau and himself as sharing 'basically common ideas with peripheral differences'; see Reinhold Niebuhr and Hans J. Morgenthau, 'The Ethics of War and Peace in the Nuclear Age', War Peace Report, vol. 7, no. 2 February 1967) 3. 32. R. N. Berki, On Political Realism (London: J. M. Dent and Sons 1981) 3. 33. Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, 11. 34. A point made by Berki, On Political Realism, 37. 35. Berki writes that political realism recognises that political reality is com­ posed of 'interpenetrating opposites . of the immediately given and an underlying essence, the particular and the general, the subjective and the objective, fact and value, the lasting and the changeable, freedom and necessity, the individual and society, authority and power, justice and oppression. It reveals the identity of political reality as a welter of self­ contradictions'; On Political Realism, 69. 36. Ibid., 69-70. 37. Such an interpretation of Niebuhr as a political theorist was rejected by Tinder who views Niebuhr not as a political theorist but as a prophet. When viewed in this light, Tinder believes, the 'defects so conspicuous from a philosophical perspective largely disappear'. In particular, the time-bound character of Niebuhr's thought, and the dat­ edness of much of his political writing, no longer calls into question his greatness, for prophets are of their time, while philosophers are not; Glenn Tinder, 'The Challenge of History', New Republic (21 April 1982), 30-2. 38. A point made by K. W. Thompson, Christian Ethics and the Dilemmas of Foreign Policy (London: Cambridge University Press 1959) 28. 39. Niebuhr, 'Limited Warfare', Christianity and Crisis vol. XVII, no. 18 (11 November 1957), 146; Paul Nitze recalls that Kissinger himself misunderstood the destructive power of tactical nuclear weapons and that, as a consequence, the book was disconnected from the elemental facts of geography and nuclear weapons; Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Centre of Decision (New York: G. Weidenfeld 1989) 298. 40. A common criticism made by Bennett, Taubes and Harland, in Harold R. Landon (00.), Reinhold Niebuhr: A Prophetic Voice in Our Time (Green­ wich, Cf: Seabury Press 1962) 82-4. 41. Aristotle The Politics, intro. by T. S. Sinclair (London: Penguin Books 1981) 14-15; see also J. L. Hyland, 'Review ofa Companion to Aristotle's Politics', Philosophic Studies (1993) 119-28. 42. Morgenthau in Landon (ed.), Reinhold Niebuhr: A Prophetic Voice in Our Time, 105. 43. Sidney Hook, Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense ofLife (New York: Basic Books 1974) 184. 44. Angus Dun and Reinhold Niebuhr, 'God Wills Both Justice and Peace', Christianity and Crisis 15 (13 June 1955) 77. Notes 157 NIEBUHR'S CRITIQUE OF PACIFISM 1. Reinhold Niebuhr, 'The World Council and the Peace Issue', Christianity and Crisis vol. 10, no. 14 (7 August 1950) 108. 2. Bennett, in Kegley and Bretall (eds), Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious. Social and Political Thought, 67. 3. Tillich, in Landon (ed.), Reinhold Niebuhr: A Prophetic Voice in Our Time, 33. 4. Reinhold Niebuhr, letter in New Republic (22 February 1922) 372. 5. Niebuhr, Leaves From the Notebook, 47. 6. Ibid. 7. Reinhold Niebuhr, 'Why I am Not a Christian', The Christian Century (15 December 1927) 1482. 8. Devere Allen (00.), Pacifism in the Modern World (New York: Doubleday, Doran 1929) 17. 9. Bennett, in Kegley and Bretall (eds), Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious. Social and Political Thought , 64. 10. Reinhold Niebuhr, 'Why I am Not a Christian', 1482. 11. D. B. Robertson (ed.), Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press 1957) 245. 12. Robertson, Love and Justice, 246. 13. Reinhold Niebuhr, 'A Critique of Pacifism', Atlantic Monthly 139 (May 1927) 639-41. 14. Reinhold Niebuhr, 'Let the Liberal Churches Stop Fooling Themselves', The Christian Century 48 (25 March 1931)402. 15. Reinhold Niebuhr, 'Germany Must be Told!', The Christian Century 50 (9 August 1933) 1015-15. 16. Niebuhr, Reflections on the End ofan Era, 247. 17. Reinhold Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics (New York : Charles Scribner's Sons 1940) 31. 18. Niebuhr, 'The Churches and the War', Town Meetings of the Air (27 August 1942). 19. Niebuhr, Moral Man , Chapter 7. 20. John H. Yoder, The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press 1971) 77; also The Politics ofJesus, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1972) 106n.