Moral Man and Immoral Society

I must confess that it took me 75 years to finally get around to reading Reinhold Niebuhr's now classic work on human behavior, "Moral Man and Immoral Society." Written during the Great Depression in 1932, it turned out to be a very timely read in 2008. During his lifetime, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) was perhaps the best-known Christian theologian in America. In 1915, he became minister of Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit. From then until 1928, he personally witnessed the hardships of auto workers. This exposure made Niebuhr very critical of capitalism. In 1928, he began a long career with Union Theological Seminary in New York, serving first as professor of Christian ethics (1928-1960) and then Dean (1950-1960). Niebuhr thought of himself as a preacher and social activist, but his theological writings on social ethics made him an important intellectual figure nationally. An early advocate of socialism, he eventually supported FDR's New Deal because he thought it was more just and more realistic than either Marxism or laissez-faire capitalism. A prolific writer and a popular, engaging lecturer, Niebuhr's influence was felt by Martin Luther King, policy makers in John Kennedy's administration, and even a young Barack Obama. In 1964, Niebuhr was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. An outspoken progressive and reformer from the beginning, Niebuhr was also a keen observer of human behavior. Niebuhr was critical of the pacifism that permeated the social programs of mainstream liberal Protestantism (the "Social Gospel") that sought to correct political and social injustices mainly through appeals to "reason." Niebuhr did not believe "reason" worked. In "Moral Man and Immoral Society," Niebuhr makes the case that man is basically selfish and that those who have power do not listen to "reason" - that they will never surrender power if it is not in their own self-interest. He wrote, "reason is always the servant of [self-] interest in a social situation." Niebuhr insists that "power" (e.g., armies, laws, trade unions, etc.) is the only method that can affect change and correct injustice in settling the competing claims of nations, races, and social classes. At the beginning of the 21st century, Niebuhr may seem to be out of fashion. This is unfortunate because his writings and observations about human nature are still as relevant today as they were in 1932. Consider these passages, for example: "No personal whim, which a human being might indulge, is excluded from the motives, which have prompted [rulers] to shed the blood of their unhappy subjects. Pride, jealousy, disappointed love, hurt vanity, greed for greater treasures, lust for power over larger dominions, petty animosities between royal brothers or between father and son, momentary passions and childish whims, these all have been, not the occasional but the perennially recurring, causes and occasions of international conflict. The growing intelligence of mankind

The principles in this book are as pertinent today as it was 75 years ago. "The individual or the group which organizes society, however social its intentions or pretension, arrogates an inordinate portion of social privilege to itself." The author warns against religious patriotism because the natural impulse of christians is to love their fellow man, but the patriot nationalist leads them to selfishness and love of country more than people. Every page has something of value. Anyone with even a passing interest in political science, or sociology for that matter would view him important. "Social intelligence may prompt disillusionment without the immediate lesson of complete disinheritance. But the degree of anti-nationalism among workers will always depend somewhat upon the measure of social injustice from which they suffer.

At first glance, Reinhold Niebuhr's (1892-1971) book "Moral Man and Immoral Society" (New York:Scribners, 1932, 1960), still relevant today, could seem to breed a cynical future "from the perspective of those who will stand in the credo of the nineteenth century," ". . . enmeshed in the illusion and sentimentalities of the Age of Reason." (xxiv) Niebuhr was a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and previously pastor during the Great Depression of a small congregation in or near Dearborn, Michigan, many of whose parishioners worked for Ford Motor Company's factories. Niebuhr, having lived through the frustrations and hypocrisy of the Victorian era and economic depression and two World Wars, assessed people in group types of church denominations, nations, privileged classes, the middle class, blue-collar working classes, and mobs. He lamented the necessary time restraints that representative democracy requires and that permit self-interest to misuse information and lapse into greed. The theme of Niebuhr's text is that sometimes more or less those persons who look and act morally, quickly revert to immoral behavior in the face of the crowd. This is a special, powerful, deceptive influence of emotional "contagion." He expands upon Lord John Acton's (1834-1902) famous sentence, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." (Letter to Bishop Creighton, April 5, 1887; Niebuhr, 6) "The Liberal Movement both religious and secular seemed to be unconscious of the basic difference between the morality of individuals and the morality of collectives, whether races, classes or nations." (ix, xi, xxv, 257f., 262, 1960 edition) He elaborates on the crowd's collective original sin powerful to influence others. Religious insights, Niebuhr wrote, powerfully make people "conscious of their preoccupation with self." (54) "The disrepute in which modern religion is held by large numbers of ethically sensitive individuals, springs much more from its difficulties in dealing with those complexities [--ethics and politics (257) and economics (5, 15, 142)--] than from its tardiness in adjusting itself to the spirit of modern culture." (63, 75f.) And about psychology, "There is nothing, that modern psychologists have discovered about the persistence of ego-centricity in [hu]man[ity], which has not been anticipated in the insights of the great mystics of the classical periods of religion." (54) Niebuhr's ten chapters then continue to illustrate and explore his theme as basic to human nature, in a rich multiplicity of historical events: religion, politics, socialism, justice, wars, hypocrisy, and so on. Niebuhr cautions about blind belief in governments: "The creeds and institutions of democracy have never been fully divorced from the special interests of the commercial classes who conceived and developed them." (14) "Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy. We have noted that

This book was written in the 1930's, but the ideas in it are absolutely fresh. This is a well-thought-out Christian response to the fact of evil in the world. It says the Christian must be "in the world" and use power to confront evil, but at the same time be held personally accountable to the highest ethical standard. This is for anyone who wants to work for social justice while avoiding anarchy, relativism, and divisive identity politics. Those who still want to stand for something in a postmodern age should start here.