With this blog, I’m jumping into water over my head. I may need someone to rescue me, or set me straight.
I want to say something about Reinhold Niebuhr and Walter Rauschenbusch (about whom I am in no way specialized, whereas two of my colleagues here at Union, Jim Cone and Gary Dorrien, are) and about Buddha (about whom I know a little more).
What triggered these reflections was an article in today’s New York Times titled “God and Politics Together Again.” The author, Sam Tanenhaus, notes that President Obama has been influenced not by liberation theology (as Glenn Beck has been proclaiming) but by the Social Gospel of Rauschenbusch, which calls on Christianity “to add its moral force to the social and economic forces making for a nobler organization of society” in which “the burden of poverty” would be lifted from the back of millions.
But Tanenhaus immediately adds that Obama has also been strongly influenced by Niebuhr’s Christian Realism which recognizes “that there’s serious evil in the world and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief that we can eliminate those things.”
Tanenhaus draws the insightful conclusion that “the tension between these two religious ideas – one wedded to progress, the other mindful of the limits of worldly activism – reflects the broader tension in Mr. Obama’s liberalism, itself divided between an enthusiasm for bold policy initiatives and a pragmatic understanding that some things can’t be fixed or even changed through politics.”
To many of us (yes, especially us liberals), it sure seems that Obama’s tension is tilting toward Niebuhr. Recently, the President’s words and actions, especially in confronting Republican intransigence, have slipped from “bold policy” to the “pragmatic understanding that some things just can’t be fixed.”
Here’s where I think that Buddha might offer Mr. Obama – and posthumously, Mr. Niebuhr –a helping hand. Gautama the Buddha also recognized the tension between the “realism” of suffering (dukkha) that is caused by greed (tanha) on the one hand, and the “bold policy” of transformation through enlightenment, on the other.
But he placed his money (so to speak) and devoted his full energies to the transformation of individuals and of society that can come through awakening to our true nature, our Buddha-nature.
For Buddha, the reality of evil and the promise of awakening did not have a 50-50 chance. Albert Nolan has said somewhere in his Jesus before Christianity, that anyone who believes that good and evil have a 50-50 chance is an atheist. In this sense, Buddha was no atheist.
So I think Buddha would walk a middle path between Rauschenbusch and Niebuhr. (Okay, with a tilt toward Rauschenbusch.) He would hold up the promise, calling for our full commitment, that the individual and society do not have to stay the way they are; they do not have to be caught in the “poisons” of ignorance, greed, and hatred. But at the same time, he would tip his hat to Niebuhr in recognizing that we have to be mindful of the realities of ignorance and greed and hated. “Being mindful” means we have to be fully aware of them, analyze them carefully, engage them through “skillful means” (upaya) – in the assurance that they can be – yes, they can be – changed.
Why would Buddha be so sure that things can be different than what they are now? I think for two reasons:
1) Because of impermanence (annica): everything changes, nothing – neither the human heart nor the capitalist system – has to stay the way it is. As one Buddhist saying has it: “Impermanence makes everything possible.”
2) Because of our inherent Buddha-nature: In our deepest reality — even though that reality is covered over by ignorance and all kinds of “causes and conditions” – we are Buddhas, inherently connected with all beings in mutual goodness and mutual compassion.
What Buddha discovered is in no way contradictory to what Jesus discovered. For me, it offers the possibility of a deeper grasp of St. Paul’s announcement that “where sin abounds, grace does more abound” (Rom. 5:20) – that is, sin and grace do not have a 50-50 chance. And when Buddhists affirm that we are all called to be Buddhas, Christians affirm that we are all called “to put on Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:27)
Rather than Christian “realism,” maybe we are closer to Jesus and to Buddha if we talk about a Buddhist-Christian “mindful optimism.”
Thank you for this reflection. I’ve been looking at Niebuhr and Buddha from a different direction most of the summer. I think, however, that even Niebuhr is closer to “mindful optimism” than he’s often portrayed. I offer this extended quote which closes out “Moral Man and Immoral Society”:
“In the task of that redemption the most effective agents will be the [people] who have substituted some new illusions for the abandoned ones. The most important of these illusions is that the collective life of [humanity] can achieve perfect justice. It is a very valuable illusion for the moment; for justice cannot be approximated if the hope of its perfect realization does not generate a sublime madness in the soul. Nothing but such madness will do battle with malignant power and ‘spiritual wickedness in high places’.”
Of course, invoking “illusions” in a conversation with Buddhism is a tricky business. I look to this quote–especially coming as it does as the coda to a sometimes brutally pessimistic look at the intersection of politics and ethics–as an expression of mindful optimism. The madness of which Niebuhr speaks is akin to a sort of karma yoga: we understand that the work will not be completed by us, yet we strive for justice/equanimity/salvation/enlightenment as if we would attain it tomorrow.
Thank you, Peter. As I said, I may have to be saved, or at least helped, by those who know Niebuhr better than I … But I have a grammatical question on the citation: When Niebuhr writes “…the most important of these illusions,” is he referring to the “new illusions” or to the “abandoned ones”??
On your reference to the Gita’s understanding of karma yoga, I think that it is precisely because, as you note, “the work will not be completed by us” but by the Power that works through us that we can dare to hope that we might attain it [our goal of a more just society] tomorrow….Maybe we’re not as mad as Niebuhr thinks.
“But I have a grammatical question on the citation: When Niebuhr writes “…the most important of these illusions,” is he referring to the “new illusions” or to the “abandoned ones”?? ”
The new illusions. That is, we need to be divested of our old illusions (the category into which he tosses Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel)–and he spends a good while doing just that throughout the volume–but that these can and will be replaced by other illusions. The illusion that we might achieve perfect justice in our day is held out as a particularly helpful one (and the most important of the new ones): the proverbial carrot as opposed to the stick.
Peter, I think you’re right about Niebuhr misrepresenting himself as something outside liberalism’s project for human progress. Though he fights against it, he’s in the liberal camp; Richard Fox makes that point almost every other page in his biography of Niebuhr.
In this case of ‘new’ and ‘old’ illusions, it becomes an issue of semantics for Niebuhr, in my opinion. I’m not sure I see a difference between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ illusions. The old ones (the Kingdom ideal of Rauschenbusch), which Niebuhr belittles as hopeless, seem quite close to, if not the same as, perfect justice. The crux for Niebuhr seems to be in seeing these virtues as ultimately illusive for humans without some other force. Ultimate justice or the Kingdom for Niebuhr seem to be in the same vein as recognizing the myths of the Bible as potent poetry – that which urges one to dig their fingers into the soil of justice making.
And don’t you think that illusion and God’s place in it has as much stick as carrot for Niebuhr? The man loves some judgment with his beneficent God.
David and Preston,
thanks so much for these clarifying comments. Both of you have read Niebuhr more deeply and more recently than I. … One comment: if as you say Preston, the reason why Niebuhr claimed visions of “Ultimate justice or the kingdom of God” to be illusive is that they lacked “some other force,” then I’m entirely on the Niebuhrian train!
I still don’t like the word “illusions,” even though it has resonance for Buddhists. I would much prefer to call justice and the reign of God a “never fully achieved but always possible vision.”
The impossible possibility then.
Touché!
It is neither a question of being a moral force nor the elimination of evil. Nor is it about Buddhism or Christianity. The starting point has to be that the U.S. is a Christian country and the President is a Christian and the U.S. Banner simply says – “In God We Trust”.
Accordingly the President whether he or she be Obama or otherwise should act without the President or the Nation having a self-ego before God to have His trust; practise Universal Love and Compassion to all like a Good Samaritan as God has instructed; and for the President and the Nation to be humble to all other nations [like Jesus washing the feet of the Apostles]. The greater or exalted we are the more humble we should be. Note by that the Good Samaritan was not a Christian, yet he is in God’s Heaven! There is a deep message in this. Like Jesus, the President and the Nation should not be served but stand to serve the U.S. people and the rest of humanity!