Make Niebuhr Modest Again

I understand the easy target that President Trump is. But sometimes the swings boomerang, such as when Kate Massinger and Rebecca Collins assert that “Trumpian bravado and Niebuhrian sobriety just don’t seem to jibe.”

Neither does Niebuhrian sobriety jibe with claims of Reinhold Niebuhr’s greatness:

And great [Niebuhr] was. An American Conscience tells the story of this Midwestern German Protestant with care, utilizing photographs and film clips, excerpts from writings, and interviews with fans from Andrew Bacevich to David Brooks to Martin Luther King Jr. Niebuhr was an exceptional seminary student, and a talented pastor—his father’s St. Louis church grew from eighteen to six hundred families under his leadership. Over the decades of his career, Niebuhr’s thinking evolved. Once a pacifist, he eventually advocated for “moral realism,” arguing that conflict is essential to justice. He was fiercely anti-communist, joined the Socialist Party during the Great Depression, and eventually became a primary critic of the Vietnam War. His book, Moral Man and Immoral Society, became a foundational text of American ethics, and the main source for politically diverse applications of his thought. In Moral Man, Niebuhr argues that human society will never be stronger than its sins. According to Cornel West, he applies “an Augustinian sensibility” to modern American society, emphasizing fallenness. Democracy, for Niebuhr, provided “a proximate solution for [the] insoluble problems” of human pride and ignorance.

What’s good for POTUS, may also be good for the ethicist and his fans.

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