Abstract
The turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries witnessed not only the burgeoning of the Progressive Era in American and British social and political thought but also the heyday of the Social Gospel as Progressivism’s theological companion. Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, brothers, academics, and theologians who wielded enormous influence on twentieth-century Christianity and international relations, each embraced aspects of both Progressivism and the Social Gospel, but also distanced themselves from these movements in important ways. This chapter discusses both their rapprochements with and distancing from the progressivism of their times, focusing on their public debate in 1932 over the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. While H. Richard and Reinhold demonstrate significant positions in pacifist and just war/Christian realist thinking, the chapter also briefly examines the thought of other important theologians and activists of the period, in order to demonstrate the Niebuhr brothers’ limitations as well as their insights.
This chapter draws on chapter four of my book-in-progress, Wrestling with God: Christian ethics and violence in the modern west. I have also discussed the Niebuhr brothers’ debate in several other publications, including “Christian Ethics, Actors, and Diplomacy: Mediating Universalist Pretentions,” International Journal, special issue on Changing Diplomacies edited by Iver Neumann, Vincent Pouliot, and Ole Jacob Sending (summer 2011), 613–628; the book chapter of the same name in Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot, and Iver B. Neumann, eds. Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015: 168–194; and “Realism and Religion in a World Come of Age,” in Jodok Troy, ed., “Religion and the Realist Tradition,” New York: Routledge, 2013. However, this chapter differs from each in developing the relationship between each of the Niebuhr brothers and Progressive as well as Social Gospel thought.
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Notes
- 1.
R. Harries, “Introduction,” in R. Harries, ed., Reinhold Niebuhr and the Issues of Our Time, London: Mowbray, 1986:1.
- 2.
Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the necessity of following Christ even when it was unclear what Christ himself would do, in contrast, returned to Germany from the USA to take part in a plot to assassinate Hitler and was executed after spending several years in prison.
- 3.
Susan Curtis also argues that doing good was, ultimately, compatible with the material progress that Progressive, secular liberalism also promised. Curtis, A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
- 4.
The Christian Century, “About Us,” https://www.christiancentury.org/about, accessed 15.5.17. The magazine was founded in the late 1880s under a different name, taking on its current name in 1900.
- 5.
Niebuhr’s later works continued to develop these themes. See, for example, Christian Realism and Political Problems (1953).
- 6.
Gary Commins, Spiritual People, Radical Lives: spirituality and justice in four twentieth century American lives. San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1996, Ch. 1.
- 7.
Curtis, A Consuming Faith, 1991.
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Lynch, C. (2017). The Niebuhr Brothers’ Debate and the Ethics of Just War vs. Pacifism: Progressivism and the Social Gospel. In: Cochran, M., Navari, C. (eds) Progressivism and US Foreign Policy between the World Wars. The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58432-8_10
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