Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian realist pendulum
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088220979001 |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220979001
Journal of International Political Theory
2021, Vol. 17(2) 185 –202
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088220979001
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Reinhold Niebuhr and the
Christian realist pendulum
Vassilios Paipais
University of St Andrews, UK
Abstract
Reinhold Niebuhr is widely acknowledged as the father of Christian realism and a
staunch critic of pacifism. In a famous exchange with his brother H. Richard in The
Christian Century, Niebuhr defended the necessity of entering the fray of battle to
combat evil as opposed to opting for non-violent detachment that ultimately usurps
God’s authority to decide on final matters. Niebuhr, however, never endorsed an
aggressive Just War doctrine. Striving to reconcile the Christian command of love with
the harsh realities of power resulting from universal sinfulness, Niebuhr emphasised the
necessity of negotiating the distance between the two extremes of a pendulum swinging
from Christian pacifism to the endorsement of interventionist policies. Rather than this
being an expression of the ambiguity of his moral convictions, this paper argues that it
is a product of his sensitivity to applying contextual moral and political judgement as an
exercise of theological responsibility.
Keywords
Butterfield, Christian realism, Elshtain, Niebuhr, pacifism, Wight
Introduction
Reinhold Niebuhr is widely acknowledged as the father of Christian realism and an
uncompromising critic of political pacifism. In a famous exchange with his brother H.
Richard in the pages of The Christian Century over the issue of the U.S. response to the
1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria, Niebuhr (2012) castigated the pacifist’s detach-
ment from the affairs of the world as an expression of moral indifference and self-right-
eous purism, the kind that ultimately usurps God’s authority to decide on ultimate
matters. The fact, however, that Niebuhr himself harboured pacifist sentiments up until
the late ‘20s, and that he continued to revere at least vocational pacifism for its spirit of
self-abnegation and self-sacrifice, rather complicates Christian realism’s relationship
Corresponding author:
Vassilios Paipais, University of St Andrews, The Scores, St Andrews, Scotland KY16 9AX, UK.
Email: vp31@st-andrews.ac.uk
979001IPT0010.1177/1755088220979001Journal of International Political TheoryPaipais
research-article2020
Article
186 Journal of International Political Theory 17(2)
with pacifism. Striving to reconcile the Christian command of love with the harsh reali-
ties of power resulting from universal sinfulness, Christian realists appeared to oscillate
ambiguously between the two extremes of a pendulum swinging from Christian pacifism
(as in the case of early Martin Wight) to the endorsement of muscular interventionism (as
in the case of Jean Bethke-Elshtain’s defence of the ‘War On Terror’). Niebuhr’s own
ambivalence on the matter was not a result of the ambiguity of his moral convictions, as
is often assumed, but rather a product of his sensitivity to applying contextual moral and
political judgement as an exercise of theological responsibility. This paper will argue that
while this ambivalence has been a source of frustration for both sympathisers and critics
of Niebuhr’s Christian realism, it should primarily be recognised as an asset that accounts
for its continued strength, relevance, and revamped popularity.
The Christian realist pendulum
It could be argued that the moniker ‘Christian realism’ is an oxymoron or, to use Niebuhr’s
favourite expression, a paradox. It is not only that the Christian faith or, rather more
accurately, Jesus’ teachings are often – yet not incontestably – identified with the perfec-
tionist ethics of non-violence. It is also that early Christianity emerged as a transforma-
tive revolutionary movement bent on radically changing the relationship between the self
and the world by calling for a transition from a self-centred preoccupation with the pur-
suit of individual interest and power accumulation to a new way of life embodying and
instantiating the ethics of love and self-sacrifice. Realism, on the other hand, is tradition-
ally understood as the doctrine of compromise and pragmatic accommodation with the
realities of power, the acceptance of the world as it is, that is, a realm of competition for
survival and dominance between rapacious or, in the Hobbesian version, between equally
vulnerable and insecure human beings. For realism, the world is not amenable to salva-
tion or perfection, but rather constitutes an environment governed by contingency and
the tragic conflict of competing interests. How, then, is it ever possible to put these two
wor(l)ds together, ‘Christian(ity)’ and ‘realism’, in any meaningful way?
And yet, this paradox was embraced by a group of academics, theologians, laymen,
and policy-makers, known as ‘Christian realists’, that were pivotal in 20th-century
American foreign policy circles and public life over a period of about 30 years (roughly
from the mid-30s to the mid-60s) with Reinhold Niebuhr as their leading spokesperson
(see Epp, 2003).1 For those publicly engaged intellectuals, the crucial question was, how
can one defend a normative position in contemporary democratic politics that is rooted
in the Christian tradition while at the same time being pragmatic or ‘realistic’ about the
constraints of the existing political and social order. The standard misconception among
those on the theological side who were quick to call out Niebuhrian realism for colluding
with the forces of a largely secular and atheistic world steeped in violence and governed
by the logic of power politics, is that Niebuhr conceded too much to worldly values to
the point of coming off as less than Christian (Hauerwas, 2013; Milbank, 1997). However,
Christian realists were always adamant that their ‘realism’ had nothing to do with a neo-
pagan resignation to the tragedy or ‘necessary evil’ of worldly existence. On the contrary,
it rather issued from their adherence to the Biblical account of the human condition as
fallen, yet redeemable. In their understanding of human beings as both sinners and
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