The latest in an occasional series of prayers by Christians of ages past. Previous entry here; complete list of entries here.

An appropriate prayer for those who are heading back to work this Monday morning:

Grant us grace, our Father, to do our work this day as workers who need not be ashamed. Give us the spirit of diligence and honest enquiry in our quest for the spirit of charity in all our dealings with our fellows, and the spirit of gaiety, courage, and a quiet mind in facing all tasks and responsibilities. Amen.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971),
Professor of Applied Christian Ethics,
Union Theological Seminary, New York

Reinhold Niebuhr was one of the most important, influential, and widely recognised public intellectuals in the United States from the 1930s into the 1960s. Today, he is best remembered as the author of the so-called "Serenity Prayer"; but during his lifetime he was known for such political-theological treatises as Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944), and especially his magnum opus, The Nature and Destiny of Man (2 volumes, 1941-43).

After serving as a Lutheran pastor at a Detroit church for thirteen years, Rev Niebuhr joined the faculty of Union Theological Seminary, where he taught Christian ethics until his retirement in 1960. As a young man in the post-World War I era, he, like many young radicals of the time, espoused pacifism. But as Hitler rose to power in Germany, he was persuaded that pacifism was inimical to political and social well-being and, beginning in 1934, became a leading spokesman for political realism, which he understood as "the disposition to take into account all factors in a social and political situation which offer resistance to established norms, particularly the factors of self-interest and power". This perspective thus emphasizes sober assessment of things as they really are–a stark contrast to pacifism and other manifestations of political idealism.

From a Christian theological perspective, Niebuhr's concerns focused on the operations of sin and grace in secular society and politics. Recognising that the power of sin prevents man from actualising ultimate meaning in secular life, he emphasized the impossibility of fully realising norms and ideals. He often spoke about the inevitability of social conflict. Because the behaviour of human collectives consistently tends toward the brutal, he argued that attempts to implement idealistic secular political schemes must always eventuate in oppression, if not totalitarianism. He also believed that secular authorities tend to undermine themselves by their own claims to self-righteousness.

For these reasons, Niebuhr was considered, and considered himself, an Augustinian in his political philosophy.

Niebuhr built his argument for democracy on his understanding of human sin. This is the thought behind his famous aphorism: "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."

Although Niebuhr's recognition of the flaws of pacifism helped turn the tide of intellectual opinion in the U.S. in favour of joining the war against fascism, his own view was not without its problems. His thought was very influential among the top foreign policy experts of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, whose most prominent foreign policy "achievement" was the Vietnam War. Perhaps they forgot or turned away from Niebuhr's realist emphasis on the potential for self-deception and abuse of power. Or perhaps the flaw was in Niebuhrian realism itself. In any event, his attempt to apply Christian theology across the spectrum of practical politics, from socialist to liberal to conservative, proved too volatile to outlive the man himself. Sadly, I think, his political thought is largely forgotten today.

Reinhold Niebuhr's daughter Elizabeth Sifton talks about her father and his famous prayer in her 2003 book, The Serenity Prayer. Here's an in-depth review, which I highly recommend. It turns out that the currently popular version has been altered so as to undermine the emphases that Rev Niebuhr intended. In another of the many ironies that surround Niebuhr's life, his prayer has become quite un-Niebuhrian.