Reinhold Niebuhr During the Time of the White Compromise

The story of how the theological ethicist, Reinhold Niebuhr, dealt with race during the “white compromise” (from after Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement) gives us a good picture of what will work and not work in re-directing American Prosperity toward a sustainable future. In his early years, Niebuhr argued against the Ku Klux Klan in Detroit, and supported sharecropper cooperatives in Arkansas. He guided his later ethical analysis of national and international groups by what he called “Christian realism,” which assumed that groups had limited capacity for doing good. At the height of his national status, he wrote books as though American history was the same as white history. He suggested caution in applying the Brown v. Board of Education decision to white families and after the civil rights movement had disrupted the “white compromise,” Niebuhr moved somewhat closer to Martin Luther King Jr.’s view of the “beloved community.”

A Church with the Soul of a Nation

World War II generated concern for restoring values in Western civilization. The Harvard Report of 1945 urged study of the best in the West, including religious texts as one source of such values. The Truman Commission report of 1947, Higher Education for a Democratic Society, added more practical concerns for the new mass higher education. Humanists such as Robert Hutchins were appalled. The postwar era saw a broad religious revival in mainstream higher education, blending broadly Protestant, democratic, and humanistic ideals. Reinhold Niebuhr and other leading scholars provided guidance. The problem, though, was that the liberal Protestant emphasis on freedom tended to undercut any specific religious demands. Senator Joe McCarthy’s anticommunist crusade helped test the extent and limits of freedom. Leading educators often saw Catholics and their schools as too authoritarian. William F. Buckley’s critique of Yale’s claim to be a meaningfully Protestant institution should be understood in this context.

Epilogue

In the mid-twentieth century leading scholars such as Reinhold Niebuhr or David Riesman wrote off conservative evangelical education as fading. William McLoughlin also saw the new revival movements as ephemeral. Billy Graham and Carl Henry had ambitions to start a major university around 1960 but did not have the resources. Wheaton College in Illinois, the leading ex-fundamentalist college, began to rise academically despite the anti-intellectualism of its tradition. Calvin College had been an ideologically isolated Reformed school but by the 1960s had produced leading Christian philosophers. Intervarsity Christian Fellowship helped raise consciousness regarding strong scholarship, and by 2000 the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities had grown to over one hundred schools with well-trained faculties. Like-minded Christian scholars founded their own academic societies. Baylor University became an intentionally Christian research university. Evangelical Protestant and Catholic scholars often cooperated. Despite many challenges, distinctly Christian scholars could hold their own in twenty-first-century academia.

Survive, Revive, Thrive: Chapter 11—Flank Speed

Either move or be moved. - Ezra Pound, American poet, 1885–1972 Flank Speed (a ship’s maximum speed) Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. - Helen Keller, American author, 1880–1968 (she was blind and deaf from birth) I will be uncharacteristically brief: if there were ever a time for operating at maximum capacity/capability, then this is it. I ask that everyone reading this column think of 10 tasks/ideas/concepts that they can perform right now that will change their trajectory (and hopefully SPE’s as well), distill those 10 tasks to three, and commit like your life depends on it to performing at least one of those tasks in the next 6–12 months. Call it homework if you want, but every person reading this column can create, innovate, and deliver some task/idea/concept that will significantly benefit our industry. Don’t say you have more important things to do—this is your profession and your passion. Get started, push directly to flank speed, and get it done. Then move to the next idea on your list. SPE needs its member contributions as never before. SPE and You Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems. - Reinhold Niebuhr, American theologian, 1892–1971 It is very easy to sit on the fence, but sooner or later the post will hurt you where it counts. You must do something constructive in this life to be alive. More simply, in the words of the British clergyman John Henry Newman, “Growth is the only evidence of life.” SPE must grow its missions, but its missions must also include what we do now to prepare for the foreseeable future. Energy transition is not a fad; it is a critical path we as an industry and as a professional society must pursue to provide energy for all. Oil and gas are simultaneously our most secure energy resources, as well as our “battery backup” for situations where renewable options are either unavailable or impractical. Energy sustainability will evolve (I guarantee it), but let’s never forget what will pave the way to that sustainable and renewable energy future—oil and gas. Every conceivable product that is part of the energy transition is either fueled by or dependent on oil and gas as raw materials. Regardless of how you feel about SPE as a professional organization, it cannot and will not grow into what it must become without your volunteerism and your engagement. I understand that “change=pain,” but we are in a different world now. We can choose to be patient (wait and see what happens), pause (basically be in a state of paralysis), or we can pivot, which is to say that we can push or change/evolve to another path. It is complicated, because in the last year on an individual basis most if not all, of us have done all three.

Diskursus Etika Sosial bagi Kalangan Injili: Mengenal Pemikiran Reinhold Niebuhr melalui The Serenity Prayer

Etika sosial bukanlah topik utama di kalangan Kristen injili, sehingga beredar asumsi bahwa orang Kristen injili cenderung pesimis tentang situasi dalam dunia dan karena itu menghindari isu-isu dalam etika sosial. Tulisan ini menawarkan diskursus etika sosial bagi kalangan Kristen injili dengan memperkenalkan pemikiran Reinhold Niebuhr. The Serenity Prayer dipakai sebagai metode untuk membingkai pemikiran Niebuhr. Dalam pandangan Niebuhr manusia memiliki realitas paradoksal di dalam dirinya. Di satu sisi, ia adalah manusia berdosa yang memiliki keterbatasan dalam menerapkan kasih yang murni sebagaimana yang Yesus ajarkan. Di sisi lain, ia adalah gambar Allah yang memiliki kemampuan transendensi diri yang mampu berpikir kreatif untuk menciptakan kebaruan dalam hidupnya. Menyikapi realitas paradoksal ini, Niebuhr memberi saran untuk membangun landasan etika sosial yang realistis (dialektis) sehingga tidak jatuh pada sikap optimisme yang berlebihan apalagi jatuh pada sikap pesimisme yang cenderung fatalistik. Social ethics is not a major topic that is often discussed among evangelical Christians. Therefore, arise assumption that evangelical Christians tend to be pessimistic about situations globally and avoid issues in social ethics. This article offers a discourse on social ethics for evangelical Christians by introducing Reinhold Niebuhr’s thoughts. The serenity prayer is used as a method to frame Niebuhr’s thoughts. In Niebuhr’s view, man has a paradoxical reality. He is a sinful man who has limitations in exercising the pure love that Jesus taught. On the other hand, he is an image of God who can self-transcendence and think creatively to create newness in his life. Responding to this paradoxical reality, Niebuhr gave suggestions to build a realistic (dialectical) social ethics foundation that does not fall into an attitude of excessive optimism, let alone fall into an attitude of pessimism that tends to be fatalistic.

For Christ and Country

The Second World War marked a landmark moment of transition for both ecumenical and evangelical Protestants in the United States. The arrival of war in December 1941 emboldened both groups of Protestants to make the case not only for armed intervention abroad but also for spiritual intercession. The pacifist isolationism of Protestant ecumenists faded as they embraced the Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr and called for a new “American Century” of Protestant and democratic values. Meanwhile, fueled by an apocalyptic militarism, American fundmenatlists sought to use the war to reclaim a more prominent role in American politics and foreign affairs. As both groups of American Protestants mobilized “for Christ and country,” they also began to outline competing missions to remake the world, and above all Germany, out of the ruins of war.

The Problem of Paradox

Chapter 2 helps uncover why so many warfighters hold the belief that killing is wrong. It does so by linking this belief to a particular kind of ethical paradox, commonplace in Western Christianity and the wider culture. This paradox is grounded in the twentieth-century American public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr. This chapter introduces the Niebuhrian tension placed between the Christian conceptions of love and justice, sometimes cast as contradictory obligations to a law of love and a law of responsibility. This chapter proceeds in two parts. The first part illustrates Niebuhr’s view of love, which, rooted in pacifism, illuminates his belief that killing is morally wrong. The second half, however, demonstrates how Niebuhr’s commitment, rooted in realism, to responsibility leads him to willingly suspend the law of love. After showing how the Niebuhrian paradox renders warfighting inherently morally injurious, this chapter concludes by challenging it.

The Good Kill

The Good Kill examines killing in war in its moral and normative dimension. It argues against the commonplace belief, often tacitly held if not consciously asserted, among academics, the general public, and even military professionals, that killing, including in a justified war, is always morally wrong even when necessary. In light of an increasingly sophisticated understanding of combat trauma, this belief is a crisis. Moral injury, a proposed subset of posttraumatic stress disorder, occurs when one does something that goes against deeply held normative convictions. In a military context, the primary predictor of moral injury is having killed in combat. In turn, the primary predictor for suicide among combat veterans is moral injury. In this way, the assertion that killing is wrong but in war it is necessary becomes deadly, rendering the very business of the profession of arms morally injurious. It does not need to be this way. Beginning with the simple observation—recognized by both common sense and law—that killing comes in different kinds, this book equips warfighters and those charged with their care and formation with confidence in the rectitude of certain kinds of killing. Engaging with Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Ramsey, Nigel Biggar, and other leading Christian realists, crucial normative principles within the just war tradition are brought to bear on questions regarding just conduct in war, moral and nonmoral evil, and enemy love. The Good Kill helps equip the just warrior to navigate the morally bruising field of battle without becoming irreparably morally injured.