James Comey’s surprising secret Twitter account—and its theological connection

Who knew?

From The Washington Post: 

Former FBI chief James B. Comey ended a months-long Twitter tease Monday when he confirmed that he is the owner of a cryptic, nature-photo-loving account with the name Reinhold Niebuhr.

Since the spring, when Gizmodo journalist Ashley Feinberg sleuthed that the account belonged to Comey, thousands of people have retweeted and analyzed the account’s nature photos and brief phrases….

…But who is Niebuhr, and why did Comey name the account after him?

 

Goodbye Iowa. On the road home. Gotta get back to writing. Will try to tweet in useful ways. pic.twitter.com/DCbu3Yvqt3

— Reinhold Niebuhr (@FormerBu) October 23, 2017

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Our best guess comes from religion reporter colleagues who after the Gizmodo reporting found Comey’s undergraduate thesis at the College of William & Mary. The paper was about Niebuhr, a prominent theologian.

Jack Jenkins wrote in Think Progress that while most Americans wouldn’t know Niebuhr’s name today, “he was once unavoidable: beginning in the 1930s and extending into the 1960s, Niebuhr’s various treatises on the intersection of Christianity and public life were at the center of innumerable public debates, and his voice was a constant in conversations about the moral dimensions of war, use of nuclear weapons, and civil rights.”

On Sunday, Comey tweeted a photo of birds, and said he was “thinking about Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer.” The prayer is one of the most famous American meditations, adopted by clergy as well as many 12-step programs. It reads: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.”

Comey, you may recall, has deep Catholic roots, though he appears to now identify as a Protestant.