(Recently my friend John Shelton found this amusing exchange in Reinhold Niebuhr’s correspondence at the Library of Congress. Apparently Newsweek declined to publish an article the weekly news magazine had solicited from him. Niebuhr writes about the upsurge in 1950’s religious life in America. Naturally Niebuhr found this upsurge to be filled with ironies and paradox, but he hoped it would result in more charity and humility.)

September 26, 1955

Miss Terry Ferrer

Newsweek Magazine

152 West 42nd Street

New York, N. Y.

Dear Miss Ferrer:

I enclose the first draft of the little article you asked me to do. I would welcome suggestions and criticisms if it doesn’t meet with your requirements.

Sincerely yours,

Reinhold Niebuhr

—

November 16th, 1955

Miss Terry Ferrer

Newsweek Magazine

152 West 42nd Street

New York, N. Y.

Dear Miss Ferrer:

Dr. Niebuhr is anxious to know, not being a subscriber to Newsweek Magazine, whether you have ever published his article sent to you on September 26th, “The Revival of Religion in America”, as he has never heard anything about it.

Sincerely yours,

(Mrs.) Nola E. Meade

Secy. to Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr

—

A historical phenomenon of such vast proportions as the upsurge of religious life, if not of religious faith, in our nation must necessarily have many and complex causes. A few of these causes may be enumerated with the understanding that any delving into historical roots necessarily involves much guess work.

The most immediate cause of the revival of the traditional Christian and Jewish faiths only a century after these faiths were proclaimed as rationally untenable by many philosophers and scientists, is that the alternate secular schemes of salvation and the secular explanations of the meaning of existence have been refuted by our tragic contemporary history. The “idea of progress” was such a faith; but history continues to develop potentialities of both good and evil, as for instance, the possibility of mutual annihilation through nuclear weapons and the possibility of harnessing nuclear energy for human welfare. Thus the present situation contains the refutation of the secular dream in a nutshell. It is unnecessary to point out that another dream, the Marxist one, has turned into the nightmare of cruelty which has spread terror through the earth. Historical destiny is not as rationally comprehensible as the 19th century had believed, and life is more filled with both beauty and terror than have been dreamed of in our philosophies. The refutation of alternative secular faiths, which have eliminated mystery from the meaning of human existence, do not make the historic faiths with their emphasis upon a meaning of existence which transcends the actual course of history, true, or even convincing. But it has given these faiths a new relevance, and that is partly responsible for the revival of religion.

Another reason for the revival is the paradoxical situation in which we stand as a nation. We live in a paradise of comfort and prosperity, but this paradise is suspended in a hell of global insecurity. This contrast is a parable of the entire human situation, suffering from ultimate insecurity whatever its immediate securities. This situation is acknowledged by the classic faiths and has been denied by the secular alternative faiths.

A third reason may bring us close to the enigma, why our nation is regarded by foreigners as at once the most secular and the most religious of nations. We may be more religious

because we are more secular. We are secular in the sense that we have concentrated on one of the immediate rather than ultimate ends of human existence, the end of technical efficiency. The ingenuity of industrial enterprise in America produces ever new marvels of prosperity. But the individual with his private hopes and fears, his ambitions and dreams, is hardly significant within the system of technical efficiency, except perhaps as the reluctant consumer of goods. The individual expresses himself in terms of his unique individuality, of his freedom and with his sense of guilt (for guilt is the concomitant of freedom) in religious terms. The American needs religious life more than any other national, precisely because we are more consistent in the pursuance of the technical goals of life. Furthermore the individual can not be a true person except in community, and the religious faiths have succeeded In building integral communities in the anonymity of our urban centers. Perhaps that is why, contrary to previous trends, religious life flourishes in the cities while it is less robust in the countryside.

One of the ironic aspects of the religious revival is that much of it is prompted by false hopes, not very different from those which gave plausibility to the previous success of alternative secular faiths. Some times religion is desired to give peace or happiness or power or success in any enterprise in which the devotee may be engaged, though it must be obvious that the classical forms of faith promise no simple peace or obvious happiness; and they certainly do not give any countenance to the utilitarian “use” of God for the attainment of our ambitions.

Sometimes perfectionist forms of the Christian faith promise that religious conversion will result in a form of pure goodness which will deliver the nations from the moral dilemmas of atomic warfare. Yet there is no human virtue which can deliver this nation from the moral perplexity of being involved prospectively in the guilt of atomic war, if it takes its responsibilities to a common and cherished civilization seriously. The historic faiths affirm, rather than deny, the ambiguity of all human virtues and the insecurity of all human achievements. But it would be foolish for religious believers to deny that the forms of faith may be used to sanctify and glorify all kinds of pretensions and illusions, which have been overcome in principle by these faiths. There is therefore no cause for complacency in the current revival of faith, for those who take the criterion of Christ seriously, “By their fruits shall ye know them.” Insofar as the revival results in a larger measure of charity and humility among men and In patience with the frustrations of life, the revival may be hailed as the end of a night of madness in the name of reason and of pretensions in the name of modernity.

But if the revival does not bear these fruits, it may merely replace a sophisticated with a traditional obscurantism.

Reinhold Niebuhr