The political crisis of 2016 in America has its own unique features. However, the response of H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962) to the isolationist-interventionist controversy of his day may be instructive for today’s church and its leaders.
The outbreak of wars in Asia and Europe in the late 1930s deeply divided the American people. Some favored an “America First” position and advocated strict neutrality, while others called for intervention in order to halt the advance of totalitarian aggression in the world beyond our country’s shores. Often, differences of opinion in church circles were just as sharp.
Was there anything helpful for pastors to say to their parishioners and to anyone else willing to listen? Equally abhorrent to Niebuhr was a church that either chose to retreat to the sideline of silence or to align itself with the ideology of a particular political party or faction. Instead, he argued that the “religious” issue at any critical moment was not about the content of each of the conflicting positions, but the context in which people had reached, or were justifying , their conclusions about them.
For Niebuhr, this context might be “egoistic” (what is the effect of this upon me?), or it might be “nationalistic” (what is in the best interest of America?). At the same time, the context might also be “universalistic” (what is the impact of this upon the entire human family?). This was in fact the context in which Niebuhr himself chose to operate because he believed there were no limitations that anyone could place upon the scope of God’s authority and activity. He is Lord of all!
Nevertheless, Niebuhr encouraged the church’s leadership, in any public controversy, to consider employing his paradigm. Their task, as he saw it, was to probe critically the “religious” context in which all positions on a hot-button issue were being set forth, and then in light of their faith in God, to make up their own minds regarding the one they needed to support.
See The Paradox of Church and World: Selected Writings of H. Richard Niebuhr, Fortress Press, 2015, p. 324-335.
Jon Diefenthaler 