Ira Chernus on Obama's Semi-Niebuhrianism: Shadows and Suffering, Heading Nowhere

Ira Chernus's critique of the "semi-Niebuhrianism of Mr. Obama (and of almost all media pundits who sling Niebuhr's name around today) is brilliant.  As I've noted for some time now, the highly selective use of Niebuhr's theology to justify a principles-lite "realism" that sanctifies the status quo is a bastardization of Niebuhr's theology, which is rooted in the social gospel.  And that's to say, it's rooted in a powerful tradition of American theology that sees the status quo as always susceptible to change and always in need of reform, from the vantage point of the prophetic insights of world religious traditions.

Those using Niebuhr's theology of Christian realism selectively to argue for a pragmatism that reaffirms the status quo while tinkering with taken-for-granted and unquestioned socioeconomic systems to make them more efficient haven't really read Niebuhr.  They're playing a game--a game that happens to be congenial to those living in the inner circles of power in American political and economic life.  Who just happen to be the same people lauding Niebuhr's realism (that, is their distorted version of it) and using Niebuhrian realism (their ditto) to marginalize progressives.

What we encounter in the sanitized reading of Niebuhrian realism that prevails in the mainstream media and among many American political leaders is the self-congratulatory echo-chamber using carefully selected "theological" ideas to bless its defense of the status quo.  In the controlling economic and political centers of American life, the incessantly praised "center" is a construct of those who have economic and political power and privilege in their hands, and do not intend to share it.  Even when the future of our democracy is in peril, precisely because of this growing tendency of those at the very top of the political and economic ladder to gather all power and all resources into their own hands.

And so Ira Chernus's advice to the president, as Mr. Obama continues to struggle with the real Niebuhr in all his theological complexity: 

Until American political discourse can rid itself of the pervasive shadow of Niebuhrian “realism” and explore new, non-exploitive ways to express its uniqueness and passion for moral virtue, we will continue to muddle along through the valley of the shadow of semi-Niebuhrianism and suffer all its perils. A semi-Niebuhrian president like Obama may accomplish some genuinely good things like health care reform or clean energy technology investment, and he will deserve our thanks for it. But he will not give us the new mythology we need to replace the public infatuation with semi-Niebuhrianism. That is up to us.

Any realism, theological or otherwise, which cannot see that, as a nation, we are in very serious trouble right now, and need more than tinkering to get us out of that trouble, is a highly dubious realism, at best.  It's a realism unable to see what is right before its own face.  If you really do want a real picture of where the country is at present, you'll stop talking to the same-old same-old power mongers and ask a few people outside the power circles of D.C., New York, and the west coast what's going on out in the nation at large.  But be prepared: the realistic picture you'll get when you do that will be much more alarming than the one crafted by "centrists" intent on pursuing "civil" conversations about how to get us out of our current trouble--a picture more alarming, more realistic, and more Niebuhrian by far.

David Brooks on the Atrophy of Theology Today: A Matter of Perspective

I'm not surprised to see a number of leading figures of the American Catholic intellectual center celebrating David Brooks' recent observation that our culture has a hole in it caused by the atrophy of philosophy and theology.  My centrist brothers and sisters seem unable to understand that what Brooks persistently decries, as he decries the loss of theology in our culture, is the very backbone of theology in the Catholic church following Vatican II, and of similar strong movements in all the Christian churches in the same period: the attempt to connect the dots between abstract theological ideas and the lived experience of human beings, an attempt at dot-connecting that tries to make sense of the truth claims of religious groups by examining the effect of those truth claims on the real lives of real human beings.

And, in particular, real human beings living on the social margins throughout the world.  Whose very existence creates a profound challenge for any theology that seeks to define God as love.  It's always safe to talk about love in the abstract, and that's where the political and theological center firmly intends for that theological discussion to be confined.  But the moment we grant that Christian (or Jewish, or Islamic, or any other) doctrinal language about love makes sense only against the backdrop of the real human lives that we claim God has willed into existence and which God loves unreservedly and without distinctions as to social class, race, gender, sexual orientation, or anything else, we have a problem on our hands.

How to talk about love in a world in which many people experience precisely the opposite of being loved?  By God or anyone else?  And how to talk about love within faith communities that keep nattering on about God's loving embrace of everyone when they have no intent at all of making the all-inclusive loving embrace  of God real in their concrete decisions, actions, and behaviors, or in the life of their communities of worship?

David Brooks' observation that theology is atrophied in our culture today is a slam at the central thrust running through much of Christian theology today, which maintains that we cannot do theology adequately without connecting doctrinal truth claims to the lived experience of human beings, and, in particular, to the lived experience of human beings on the margins of societies around the world.  "Atrophied" theology commits the unforgivable sin of vulgarizing ideas, by distastefully proposing that we talk about the effect of ideas outside the polite chambers of our colleges and beltway think-tanks.  And above all, by measuring the truth of what we say about love or justice against the lives of those affected by our rhetoric about these matters.

Or perhaps Catholic centrists who applaud Brooks for decrying the atrophy of theology in our contemporary  culture understand his point very well, and they are--precisely--applauding his highly selective and denatured reading of Niebuhr, which repudiates the social gospel foundations out of which Niebuhr's Christian realism moves and develops his theology of sin and social realism.  Perhaps Catholic centrists applaud Brooks' debased Niebuhrian theology because it undercuts the movement to social analysis (and the appeal to social justice) that run through Niebuhr's theology from the social gospel tradition he both critiques and presupposes as foundational.  

A social gospel tradition that remains a dangerous memory in American culture, because--as Martin Luther King, Jr., who read social gospel theology and employed it in his movement for social transformation, demonstrates--it always has the potential to make what ministers and priests talk about from the pulpit on Sunday real in some troubling, unexpected way in the world in which we live.  And making the church and what it proclaims real, in real lives, may not be what many centrists have in mind at all, as they talk about the truth claims of religious groups.  Or God.  Or love.  Or communion, church, and so forth.

And far from having atrophied in contemporary culture, theology remains strong and vibrant, if we know where to find good theology.  For anyone who wants to read a recent first-rate, provocative, profoundly disturbing (and that's what all bona fide theology should do to us) theological essay, I recommend Mary Condren's essay last week in the Irish Times, discussing how the official theology employed by the Catholic magisterium meshes suffering, knowledge, and power in a way that makes much Catholic theological rhetoric about love a "poison container" hiding and transmitting violence (and excusing violence of the powerful against the weak).

Mary Condren is an Irish theologian.  I've recommended her powerful work before.  Along with many other women who are doing theology in the Catholic tradition today, Condren recognizes that

[e]nlightened theologians examine theologies not only for their internal logic or truth status but also for the effects of truth: the healthiness or otherwise of theological stories.

And so theologians today have no choice except to engage traditional theology, insofar as it legitimates, excuses, even glorifies violence, particularly the violence of the powerful against the weak, and insofar as it seeks to cover over much of the violence in our world with a glossy rhetoric of love--e.g., rhetoric about an all-loving Father who demands the blood of His Son because, well, He loves us so much that He wills the sacrifice of His Son to redeem us.  Condren follows the statement I have just cited above with the following:  

They [i.e., enlightened theologians] urge that we develop theologies of redemptive love rather than redemptive violence, especially in the light of the legacies of child abuse and religiously inspired political violence.

In my view, as long as theologians are writing theology like Mary Condren's--illuminating, troubling, faithful to the best instincts of a tradition while engaging that tradition critically from the vantage point of contemporary experience--theology isn't atrophying at all.  Though some of us may judge that it is, if we do not promote that engagement of the tradition and the surrounding culture by theologians who read our traditions and the world in which we live through the eyes of those living on the margins of church and society.

David Brooks on Niebuhrian Need for Renewed Sense of Sin: Where Does Incivility Arise in American Society?

Moderate conservatives like David Brooks are eager to bring civility back to American society--to retie the now-frayed ties that bind us.  And, as a critique of any theological and political analysis that might point to a progressive solution to our problem of civility, moderate conservatives like Brooks propose a highly selective reading of Niebuhr which removes from Niebuhr's theology its very foundation: the social gospel presuppositions out of which this theology moves, even as it eclipses those presuppositions with Christian realism.

Brooks and other moderate conservatives debase Niebuhr and his complex, multifaceted thinking, because they want to capture Niebuhr's insight that all social groups are sinful and all human beings have a penchant to do evil for one reason alone: they want to remind all the dispossessed of their society that rebellion fueled by utopian longing for a better life runs the risk of rebellion against God and against the limitations imposed by reality.  In the imagination of moderate conservatives, the ties that bind us are fraying because people at large--middle- and working-class people--are forgetting how to behave properly, how to be civil, how to live soberly and decently within the confines of the world as God made it.

The critique of sinful selfishness and of fraying bonds of civil society is never directed, in the selectively Niebuhrian analysis of moderate conservative thinkers like Brooks, at the tiny elite of grossly rich folks who own almost everything in our society.  This group is never accused of behaving uncivilly, of dissolving the affective and obligatory bonds that hold us together in civil society.  This group is never preached at when moderate conservatives trot out Niebuhr and talk about sin, selfishness, and sober social realism.

And so Brooks can argue--astonishingly--that here is the problem that now plagues American society and from which we must recover if we expect to overcome our addiction to violence:

The problem is that over the past 40 years or so we have gone from a culture that reminds people of their own limitations to a culture that encourages people to think highly of themselves.

In fact, in the last forty years, we have gone from a society in which the middle and working classes felt an investment in the well-being of the body politic because they had some ownership in it, to a society in which wealth is now radically maldistributed, with a tiny percentage of people owning almost everything.  The problem that confronts us now is not the incivility of the many who are struggling to make ends meet, and who are becoming selfish and losing civility.

The problem that confronts us now is the incivility of the few who own almost everything, and who are uncivil in their very approach to ownership and the social responsibility entailed by their wealth, in their assumption that they have the right to hoard the riches of the earth and not to build a humane society for everyone--and not only for themselves.  The problem of incivility in American society does not stem from the many who are dispossessed today.  It stems from the few who own the vast amount of the goods of the world, in gross excess of what they themselves need.

If preaching about sin, selfishness, and incivility is to take place now, that preaching ought to be directed to those who clutch at a disproportionate share of the goods of the world, and are increasingly unwilling to use their wealth to build a solid, healthy society in which everyone has a chance at a humane existence.  But that is not at all the tenor of Brooks' Niebuhrian preaching.

It is the working and middle classes to whom Mr. Brooks directs his message.  They are the ones who need to re-learn civility, and the old virtues of hard work and self-denial, Mr. Brooks and his moderate conservative cronies propose.  This message does not target the owners of the world, because it is, in fact, being delivered to the rest of society precisely on behalf of the owning classes, for whom Brooks and other moderate conservative thinkers speak as they preach to the dispossessed of our world about how the dispossessed need to learn to behave themselves.