H. Richard Niebuhr

From 1945 to 1947 as the United States and Soviet Union moved toward the Cold War, Christian realists writing for Reinhold Niebuhr’s journal, Christianity and Crisis, responded to global dilemmas. Here are five impressions of those articles, along with lessons for today.

In this sense it is proper to pursue such proximate goals as expressions of Christian duty. Christianity should not be utilitarian, but it must be practical.

In religion, to which we want to direct our attention, the growth of the utilitarian spirit is an alarming phenomenon. Utilitarianism seems to mark not only the attitude of the political powers that use religion for the sake of social control and transform it to suit their purposes, but also the attitude of many who oppose them.

The realism in Christian Realism lies in the tension between the redemption and hope that the Gospel brings for a world ensnared in sin and cynicism, and the reality that sin and its effects are still pervasive and will continue to cripple and limit the possibilities for justice this side of paradise.