[Peace-discuss] Obama and Niebuhr?

[E. Wayne Johnson]

The stupid and false notion that America has any sort of divine mandate 
to police the world has
done significant but not irreparable damage to the reputation of 
evangelicalism. (regardless of how one
chooses to define "evangelicalism", conservative or other).   Even the 
name of God
is blasphemed among the unbelievers because of this foolishness.  The 
leaven of the Pharisees is still
hypocrisy, and is to be avoided by all.

As it is said, "Who would Jesus Bomb?"

We often hear about the liberating quality of truth.  It's true.  But 
even the truth is ineffectual if there is no adherence
to truth and no basing of one's actions in truth.  Just appropriating 
the name of Jesus will not make the
greatest change.

Jesus said, ...If you abide in My word <hold fast to My teachings and 
live in accordance with them>,
you are truly My disciples.  And you will know the Truth, and the Truth 
will set you free.

Whether politicians  like Bush, and in all probability Obama, are true 
believers or just rather the pedestrian sort of
occasional churchgoers, their support and promulgation of the illegal, 
immoral, unconstitutional, imperialist, interventionalist
wars of American  Aggression around the world runs counter to the 
teachings of Jesus that they want us
to believe they uphold.  If indeed Bush ever asked himself the question 
"What would Jesus do?",
he must have not discovered the answer or else chose to disregard it.

Jesus is the Prince of Peace.  The word of God is loaded with at least 
hundreds of warnings and imprecatory statements
against the sorts of things that have been the bread and butter or 
rather the guns and butter of American foreign policy
for way too long. 

They first called them "Christians" [followers of Christ] at Antioch.  
One gets the idea from the depth of their
commitments that those Christians at Antioch were pretty serious about 
their living it out and holding it fast,
much more so than those that pick up the title for their resume' and 
wear "Christian" on their shirt sleeves in hope of procuring our votes.

What would constitute real hope would be a "point of reformulating for 
the departure of US foreign policy".
Of course we could do a lot worse.  I shudder when I imagine how much 
worse it could get in the near term.



Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> An interesting reflection on Rheinhold Niebuhr, Obama,  and original 
> sin. Clearly, something /has/ changed as a result of the election. 
> Maybe not enough, though. 
>
> /Published on Thursday, November 6, 2008 by The Boston Globe/
> *Evangelical Foreign Policy Is Over*
>
> by Andrew J. Bacevich
>
> With Barack Obama's election to the presidency, the evangelical moment 
> in US foreign policy has come to an end. The United States remains a 
> nation of believers, with Christianity the tradition to which most 
> Americans adhere. Yet the religious sensibility informing American 
> statecraft will no longer find expression in an urge to launch 
> crusades against evil-doers.
>
> Like our current president, Obama is a professed Christian. Yet 
> whereas George W. Bush once identified Jesus Christ himself as his 
> favorite philosopher, the president-elect is an admirer of Reinhold 
> Niebuhr, the renowned Protestant theologian.
>
> Faced with difficult problems, conservative evangelicals ask WWJD: 
> What would Jesus do? We are now entering an era in which the occupant 
> of the Oval Office will consider a different question: What would 
> Reinhold do?
>
> During the middle third of the last century, Niebuhr thought deeply 
> about the complexities, moral and otherwise, of international 
> politics. Although an eminently quotable writer, his insights do not 
> easily reduce to a sound-bite or bumper sticker.
>
> At the root of Niebuhr's thinking lies an appreciation of original 
> sin, which he views as indelible and omnipresent. In a fallen world, 
> power is necessary, otherwise we lie open to the assaults of the 
> predatory. Yet since we too number among the fallen, our own 
> professions of innocence and altruism are necessarily suspect. Power, 
> wrote Niebuhr, "cannot be wielded without guilt, since it is never 
> transcendent over interest." Therefore, any nation wielding great 
> power but lacking self-awareness - never an American strong suit - 
> poses an imminent risk not only to others but to itself.
>
> Here lies the statesman's dilemma: You're damned if you do and damned 
> if you don't. To refrain from resisting evil for fear of violating 
> God's laws is irresponsible. Yet for the powerful to pretend to 
> interpret God's will qualifies as presumptuous. To avert evil, action 
> is imperative; so too is self-restraint. Even worthy causes pursued 
> blindly yield morally problematic results.
>
> Niebuhr specialized in precise distinctions. He supported US 
> intervention in World War II - and condemned the bombing of Hiroshima 
> and Nagasaki that ended that war. After 1945, Niebuhr believed it just 
> and necessary to contain the Soviet Union. Yet he forcefully opposed 
> US intervention in Vietnam.
>
> The vast claims of Bush's second inaugural - with the president 
> discerning history's "visible direction, set by liberty and the Author 
> of Liberty" - would have appalled Niebuhr, precisely because Bush 
> meant exactly what he said. In international politics, true believers 
> are more dangerous than cynics.
>
> Grandiose undertakings produce monstrous byproducts. In the eyes of 
> critics, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo show that all of Bush's freedom 
> talk is simply a lie. Viewed from a Niebuhrean perspective, they 
> become the predictable if illegitimate offspring of Bush's 
> convictions. Better to forget utopia, leaving it to God to determine 
> history's trajectory.
>
> On the stump, Obama did not sound much like a follower of Niebuhr. 
> Campaigns reward not introspection, but simplistic reassurance: "Yes, 
> we can!" Yet as the dust now settles, we might hope that the victor 
> will sober up and rediscover his Niebuhrean inclinations. Sobriety in 
> this case begins with abrogating what Niebuhr called "our dreams of 
> managing history," triggered by the end of the Cold War and reinforced 
> by Sept. 11. "The course of history," he emphasized, "cannot be coerced."
>
> We've tried having a born-again president intent on eliminating evil. 
> It didn't work. May our next president acknowledge the possibility 
> that, as Niebuhr put it, "the evils against which we contend are 
> frequently the fruits of illusions which are similar to our own." 
> Facing our present predicament requires that we shed illusions about 
> America that would have offended Jesus himself.
>
> Obama has written that he took from reading Niebuhr "the compelling 
> idea that there's serious evil in the world" along with the conviction 
> that evil's persistence should not be "an excuse for cynicism and 
> inaction." Yet Niebuhr also taught him that "we should be humble and 
> modest in our belief we can eliminate those things." As a point of 
> departure for reformulating US foreign policy, we could do a lot worse.
>
>  
> © Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company
> Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations 
> at Boston University, is the author of "_The Limits of Power: The End 
> of American Exceptionalism_ 
> <https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805088156?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0805088156&adid=129A18YZCE5DM7F7QWNT&> 
> ."
>
>
> Article printed from *www.CommonDreams.org*
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20081107/3cb4a402/attachment.htm