[Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Order annuity (and R. Niebuhr)

Sat Apr 25 23:50:08 EDT 2009

Jim Wiegel here.  Not sure, Tim, if you "listened" in on the study we did via conference call of Andrew Bacevich's book, The Limits of Power, late last year.  He uses Reinhold Niebuhr in a very powerful way to deepen a sense of what is going on in our country these days.  An excerpt from the introduction:

19.	The United States today finds itself threatened by three interlocking crises. The first of these crises is economic and cultural, the second political, and the third military. All three share this characteristic: They are of our own making. In assessing the predicament that results from these crises, The Limits of Power employs what might be called a Niebuhrean perspective. Writing de cades ago, Reinhold Niebuhr anticipated that predicament with uncanny accuracy and astonishing prescience. As such, perhaps more than any other figure in our recent history, he may help us discern a way out. 
20.	As pastor, teacher, activist, theologian, and prolific author, Niebuhr was a towering presence in American intellectual life from the 1930s through the 1960s. Even today, he deserves recognition as the most clear- eyed of American prophets. Niebuhr speaks to us from the past, offering truths of enormous relevance to the present. As prophet, he warned that what he called "our dreams of managing history" — born of a peculiar combination of arrogance and narcissism — posed a potentially mortal threat to the United States. Today, we ignore that warning at our peril. 
21.	Niebuhr entertained few illusions about the nature of man, the possibilities of politics, or the pliability of history. Global economic crisis, total war, genocide, totalitarianism, and nuclear arsenals capable of destroying civilization itself — he viewed all of these with an unblinking eye that allowed no room for hypocrisy, hokum, or self- deception. Realism and humility formed the core of his worldview, each infused with a deeply felt Christian sensibility. 
22.	Realism in this sense implies an obligation to see the world as it actually is, not as we might like it to be. The enemy of realism is hubris, which in Niebuhr's day, and in our own, finds expression in an outsized confidence in the efficacy of American power as an instrument to reshape the global order. 
23.	Humility imposes an obligation of a different sort. It summons Americans to see themselves without blinders. The enemy of humility is sanctimony, which gives rise to the conviction that American values and beliefs are universal and that the nation itself serves providentially assigned purposes. This conviction finds expression in a determination to remake the world in what we imagine to be America's image. 
24.	In our own day, realism and humility have proven in short supply. What Niebuhr wrote after World War II proved truer still in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War: Good fortune and a position of apparent preeminence placed the United States "under the most grievous temptations to self- adulation." Americans have given themselves over to those temptations. Hubris and sanctimony have become the paramount expressions of American statecraft. After 9/11, they combined to produce the Bush administration's war of no exits and no deadlines. 

Jim Wiegel

If anyone tells you something strange about the world, something you had never heard before, do not laugh but listen attentively; make him repeat it, make him explain it; no doubt there is something there worth taking hold of.  --  Georges Duhamel.

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--- On Sat, 4/25/09, Tim Wegner <twegner at swbell.net> wrote:

> From: Tim Wegner <twegner at swbell.net>
> Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Order annuity (and R. Niebuhr)
> To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net, oe at wedgeblade.net
> Date: Saturday, April 25, 2009, 7:22 PM
> This is an intriguing thread. I would like to relate our
> discussion 
> here to the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr (read on).
> 
> (By the way, the thread has diverged on the two lists, so
> if you are 
> just on one list, you haven't seen all the messages.)
> 
> Susan and I didn't ever "leave the order", at
> least in terms of 
> leaving the community. We did change our financial covenant
> by ending 
> the contribution of my entire salary out of concern that
> some 
> community members had become dependent and had lost the
> capacity to 
> support themselves. We didn't feel it was ethical to
> allow the 
> dysfunctional dependency to continue. This decision meant
> (in some 
> people's minds) that we had left, so we didn't
> receive any annuity 
> money. And in any case, shortly after we changed our
> financial 
> relationship, the centralized structures of the order were
> disbanded.
> 
> I have been preparing a two-part adult class on Obama and
> Reihhold 
> Niebuhr for my church, based on the wonderful
> "Speaking of Faith" 
> program on NPR. See:
> http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/obamas-
> theologian/
> 
> The way-too-simple synopsis is that Niebuhr believed that
> we live 
> caught in a tension between, on the one hand, the need to
> respond to 
> innocent suffering, and on the other hand, our flawed human
> nature 
> which renders our well-meaning attempts open to the risk of
> counter 
> productiveness because of our flawed nature. This tension
> plays out 
> at the individual level, but Niebuhr's concern was more
> the large 
> stage on which American power is excercised.
> 
> Mary Hampton is visiting us this weekend as she is
> attending an 
> Occupational Therapy conference, and we have had some
> conversations 
> about this. I connected this "order annuity"
> discussion with the 
> themes of the Niebuhr study I am preparing, and found it
> cast some 
> interesting light. The Order certainly responded to
> innocent 
> suffering, but was certainly open to a Niebuhrian critique
> of 
> ignoring our own human flaws. Hence we experienced issues
> like sexual 
> abuse, unhealthy economic dependency, and so on (make your
> own list). 
> 
> 
> I would be curious to know if Niebuhr's thought played
> any role in 
> the early days of the Order, or was intentionally rejected
> in favor 
> of the four theologians chosen for RS-1.
> 
> Susan and I should add that we are grateful for everything
> that has 
> happened and is happening in our lives including our
> experience with 
> the Order. We certainly had some wild adventures, and seem
> to have 
> missed some of the worst problems. This appreciation
> doesn't prevent 
> me from looking at our community with Nieburian eyeglasses
> and seeing 
> a naively optimistic liberalism.
> 
> Tim
> 
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