Reinhold Niebuhr and Gaza

Reinhold Niebuhr is perhaps best known as the author of the 1943 Serenity Prayer:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Niebuhr (1872-1971) served for most of his career as a professor of theology at the Union Theological Seminary. His intellectual journey led him from pacifism and sympathy towards Communism in the 1930s to a clear moral stand against the Fascists in the 1940s and then opposition to the Vietnam war in the 1960s. However, because he did not shrink from the consequences of his anti-Fascist beliefs his legacy has led to a tug of war between liberals and conservatives, with both claiming him and both Barack Obama and John McCain enlisting his ideas for their purposes.

Niebuhr offends modern liberals with an underlying belief in sin, a denial of moral relativity. In considering a proper choice between the evils of tyranny and the anarchy of war he wrote:

The refusal to recognize that sin introduces an element of conflict into the world invariably means that a morally perverse preference is given to tyranny over anarchy.1

Niebuhr’s view was that sin can impose tyranny and given the choice of accepting it in the pacifist tradition or opposing it with war the preference of acceptance is perverse in acceptance of sin. Sin. A quaint notion in 2009.

On the actions to be taken Niebuhr wrote:

Whatever may be the moral ambiguities of the so-called democratic nations, and however serious may be their failure to conform perfectly to their democratic ideals, it is sheer moral perversity to equate the inconsistencies of a democratic civilization with the brutalities which modern tyrannical states practice.1

The argument is clear in an area where clarity is at a premium. There is no moral equivalence between an imperfect society and a tyrannical society. Perhaps it goes back to a belief in Sin, but if we can believe in Sin, Niebuhr’s view was that where the Sin is identified decent people hold their noses and do what needs be done to oppose it.

Yesterday the Israelis entered Gaza. The Daughter is in Israel until tomorrow on a group trip, and I fear somewhat for her safety but a good deal for the boys and girls her age who have gone into the battle.

The trick in the Serenity Prayer is to identify the Sin. There is little to be done about Muslim hatred for Jews, but there is a lot to be done about rockets fired into Israel, and in this case the Israelis can tell the difference and do something about it. I see no difference between today’s Gaza and Afghanistan after 9/11. I pray for the IDF and the boys' and girls’ safe return.
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1. Quoted in The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr Edited by Robert McAffee Brown Yale University Press 1956