Christian Realism

This perceptive article written by Henry P. Van Dusen during World War II conveys the import of Christian solidarity to help secure an Allied victory and overcome the deeper cultural and social issues that they face.

This provocative article written by Donald H. Stewart in the heat of World War II calls on the American Church to guide America toward a responsible patriotism which jettisons hatred and self-righteous aggrandizement while remembering “judgment belongeth unto God.”

This article about the religious roots of American Nationalism was originally published in Christianity and Crisis on June 29, 1942. Tracing the spirit guiding American Nationalism from the Mayflower to the Founders, editor Howard C. Robbins argues the importance of a nationalism that acknowledges the profoundly Christian nature of the American Founding.

Against pacifist sentiment and calls for isolationism, Reinhold Niebuhr insisted on a realistic Christian response to political crises, one willing to dirty its hands to avoid catastrophic evil. However, his dialectic between love and justice produces a catastrophic paradox.

Christian pacifism became untenable for me because the God who punished, killed, and destroyed in the Old Testament remains the God of the New Testament.

In a world where might makes right, it is the U.S. military—not international treaties, presidential speeches, UN resolutions, protest marches, Wall Street, or Wal-Mart—that protects us from enemies who would either stamp out all faiths or force submission to one faith.

This article about the viewpoints of Christians & the Church in response to World War II was originally published in Christianity & Crisis on June 15, 1942.

In light of Reinhold Niebuhr’s writings, a realistic idealism can provide a basic approach to the refugee and migration crisis in Europe.

With his novel concept of sovereign obligation in A World in Disarray, Richard Haass makes an important advance in the search for peace in a disoriented world. But its advances fall short, unable to grasp the essential moral quality of world order.