‘The cruelty of righteous people’: Niebuhr on the urgency of cruelty
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| Author | Brent J Steele |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088221989745 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088221989745
Journal of International Political Theory
2021, Vol. 17(2) 203 –220
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088221989745
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‘The cruelty of righteous
people’: Niebuhr on the
urgency of cruelty
Brent J Steele
University of Utah, USA
Abstract
This paper responds to critics of Reinhold Niebuhr by exploring two themes important
for locating his views on cruelty’s emergence in modern society. The first relates to
his basic insight into the relationship between individual morality and group loyalty and
solidarity. Niebuhr provides a sophisticated argument for such group dynamics in his
work, issued in Moral Man, Immoral Society, as well as his essays on race. These also form
the basis for his second thematic argument regarding cruelty, the role of ‘righteousness’
as it relates to security and insecurity. Niebuhr’s views on race, I argue, need to be
considered more broadly as an example of his views on groups, power, and cruelty. The
paper concludes with some modest proposals for thinking about combatting cruelty via
Niebuhr’s counsel.
Keywords
Anxiety, cruelty, love, Niebuhr, power, race
There is no deeper pathos in the spiritual life of man than the cruelty of righteous people. If any
one idea dominates the teachings of Jesus, it is his opposition to the self-righteousness of the
righteous.
– Reinhold Niebuhr, Interpretation of Christian Ethics, 138
Following a summer when President Donald Trump’s border and immigration poli-
cies, which included family separation, ‘tender-age’ detention centres, several attempted
bans on Muslims entering the country, were brought to light, essayist Serwer (2018)
published a column titled ‘The Cruelty is the Point’. Serwer argued that attempts to make
sense of Trump’s base and their continued support of him even in light of these harsh
policies and even his rhetoric, were missing the point. His base supported Trump not in
Corresponding author:
Brent J Steele, University of Utah, 1741 S 1700 E, Salt Lake City, UT 84108, USA.
Email: brent.steele@utah.edu
989745IPT0010.1177/1755088221989745Journal of International Political TheorySteele
research-article2021
Article
204 Journal of International Political Theory 17(2)
spite of these policies and rhetoric, but because of them: ‘The president’s ability to exe-
cute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric . . . and as long as he
makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything’ (2018).
Serwer’s core argument is that cruelty serves as a bonding mechanism, it both gener-
ates and then demonstrates group solidarity. He begins his essay with examples from
lynchings throughout the United States in the early 20th Century, and the many photo-
graphs of that expression of organised terror in the US’s not-so-distant past. For Serwer,
it isn’t the ‘burned mutilated bodies that stick with me’, but rather ‘the faces of the white
men in the crowd’. Most are smiling, grinning, even laughing. These were ‘people who
took immense pleasure in the utter cruelty of torturing others to death – and were so
proud of doing so that they posed for photographs with their handiwork’ (2018).
US journalists by this time had already established a genre of stories examining
Trump voters’s continued enthusiasm for Trump (Polman, 2018), but rarely, if ever, had
they noted this dynamic in its most explicit form. In the months that followed Serwer’s
column, a few stories started to note it in more detail. One, examining Trump support-
ers’ grappling with a government shutdown (that Trump enabled over funding for his
border wall), found a voter and federal employee in the gulf area upset over the shut-
down during a time of hurricane recovery. In what would become a viral quote, the
person noted: ‘I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this . . .I thought he was
going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting’ (quoted in
Mazzei, 2019).
Once considered to be a feature of pre-modern existence, cruelty is again en vogue,
appearing more and more as a primary drive for particular groups swept up in the ‘popu-
list’ wave of the 2010s and triggering the attention of historians (Fagan, 2011), neurosci-
entists (Elbert et al., 2010), and sociologists (Kivisto, 2019) alike to explain its
re-emergence. This paper explores two themes important for locating Niebuhr’s views
on cruelty’s emergence in modern society. The first relates to his basic insight into the
relationship between individual morality and group loyalty and solidarity. As Serwer
notes, the basis for the cruelty of Trump’s most ardent supporters ‘is that they enjoy it
with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds
them to one another, and to Trump’ (Serwer, 2018). Niebuhr provides a sophisticated
argument for such group dynamics in his work, issued in Moral Man, Immoral Society,
as well as his essays on race. Those writings, and others, also form the basis for his sec-
ond thematic argument regarding cruelty, the role of ‘righteousness’ as it relates to secu-
rity and insecurity. This too is a key Niebuhrian insight – the function of moral principles
in justifying immoral behaviour.
In developing these themes, I also situate my analysis amongst recent critics of
Niebuhr who have focused on his limited and limiting approach to Christian Realism
(Gentry, 2018: esp 30–35). I argue that Niebuhr’s views on race need to be considered
more broadly as an example of his views on groups, power, and cruelty. Further, Niebuhr
was not resigned to ignore humanity’s potential for ‘address[ing] the institutions and
structures that are human made’ (Gentry, 2018: 32). For all his limitations, the urgency
of contemporary cruelty in global politics requires Niebuhr’s voice, one that remains just
as relevant and resonant now even in a global context seemingly distant from the early-
mid 20th Century in which he was writing, albeit with some updating to acknowledge the
role of social media in facilitating 21st century expressions of cruelty.
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