Abstract
Humility is a defining attitude of Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian realism.
His formal writing asserts humility as a divine grace that transforms the
Christian's personal life and as a political virtue essential to meeting
Christian social responsibilities. If the formal work develops the theological
framework of humility his prolific incidental work illumines its operation
within the exigencies of political life. Over his lifetime Niebuhr penned
thousands of essays, articles and editorials on the issues of the day. For
many American Christians and public intellectuals this body of his work
provided insights of faith through which they read the signs of the times.
This dissertation examines the incidental writing from 1941-1952 to
discern the relevance of humility in guiding American power during the
20th Century's most tumultuous era. From the incidental writing of this
period four case studies are drawn in which we examine the operation of
humility and its attitudes upon Niebuhr's insights into American power and
international responsibility. In the first study humility is examined for its
insights into Christian responsibility and the conduct of war. In the second
we examine insights of humility that informed Niebuhr's understanding of
the relationship between US power and the United Nations. The third case
study examines the operation of humility in his account of the development
and implementation of the Marshall Plan. And in the fourth the lens of
humility is applied to the relationship between democratic self-criticism
and the just use of power. The purpose of the case studies is not to claim
that humility provides Christian realism a theological formula or policy
blueprint for political action. Rather the cases demonstrate the operation of
humility and its attitudes in Niebuhr's understanding of the facts,
circumstances and foreseeable consequences necessary to discern a just use
of American power in particular contexts
The discernments of humility reflected in the case studies are then applied
to issues of contemporary America power. Here humility and its attitudes
provide a lens through which we examine elements of the 2002 National
Security Strategy, a document that embodies the Bush Administration's
vision for the international role of American power today. Elements
examined include the document's assertion of a distinctly American
internationalism and its embrace of a preventative war doctrine. The
conflict in Iraq provides the immediate context in which the lens of
humility is applied to the National Security Strategy.
The dissertation concludes that Niebuhr's insights regarding the operation
of Christian humility upon Christian responsibility inform a relevant
Christian realism and enable it to speak truths of faith to American power
today.
