Ponderings

Of late I’ve been longing for a conversation with the Niebuhr brothers, influential theologians in the middle of the past century. H. Richard and Reinhold were lifelong Americans of German ancestry.

I first encountered the brothers as a student at Calvin College, long after their deaths. I was exploring the gospel imperative to social action with H. Richard’s pivotal work “Christ and Culture.” Later I was introduced to Reinhold’s “Moral Man and Immoral Society,” also compelling. But even more than these two treatises, the real life drama of the two brothers moved me. The intrigue of this drama intensified when I moved into the land of their youth, just down the road from their alma mater, Eden Theological Seminary. When H. Richard came home briefly to teach at Eden, he served as the Sunday School Superintendent at the church I now serve, Evangelical United Church of Christ. Now I’m living and working where they once worked—and their spirit looms ever larger.

Both boys, which they must surely have been at the beginning, came of age during WWI. This war to end all wars didn’t, but its killing fields haunted the world with the help of photojournalists and Life magazine. Out of the carnage came renewed commitment to pacifism, and organizations like the Fellowship of Reconciliation gained strength. Both young men were deeply passionate both about justice and about peace. This passion was tested with the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party in their German homeland and their response divided.

Although their respect for one another apparently never wavered, they publicly shared their differences in a series of articles in the Christian Century in the early 1930s. Of specific concern was an appropriate response to Japanese aggression. Although both ultimately distanced themselves from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, their struggle demonstrates the immense challenge of forging a faithful response to warring madness. And though their story and their writings are illustrative, I’m finding a need to have one more conversation.

Although of German ancestry and clearly very knowledgeable about the ground upon which Nazism flourished, both H. Richard and Reinhold were lifelong Americans and could watch the rise and fall of the Third Reich with a particular detachment. Their discussion was on the role we ought play when our neighbor’s house is on fire. But what about when it’s our own?

Last weekend we began to hear more about a story that really should have been told last October when our president signed the “John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007.” This legislation was signed into law on the same day as the more widely publicized “Military Commissions Act” which defined the legally acceptable parameters for the use of torture and denies habeas corpus to ‘aliens’ suspected of being ‘enemy combatants.’ Undoubtedly the Military Commissions Act deserved every bit of scrutiny given to it and more, but that doesn’t explain the silence around the Defense Authorization Act. That the Warner piece didn’t get more press is probably in no small part that the details were not, and still have not, been fully disclosed. The details we do have, however, are chilling. The conversation on Diane Rehm last Monday morning (with Bruce Fein and Lee Casey) talked about the Defense Authorization Act’s effective nullification of the Posse Comitatus Act. The issue at hand is the expansion of executive privilege allowing the president to define the conditions under which martial law may be declared. All in all, it’s tough for a paranoid person not to smell a rat.
Now, more than ever, I pray, “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
This classic American prayer known as the serenity prayer was purportedly written by Reinhold Niebuhr half a century ago. Even as I pray Niebuhr’s words I find myself longing for even a few minutes with the brothers to ask about wisdom and knowing. From their public disagreements, we know that wisdom was hard to come by when the aggressor was across the ocean. Even more elusive is wisdom when we sit in the midst of a nation with slowly eroding civil liberties and growing international aggression. What do we do when we discover that we are becoming the enemy?
The Niebuhrs were spared this question, but many in their generation were not. Martin Niemoller was a German pastor directly facing Hitler’s reign of terror. Niemoller was an ordinary pastor, neither a renowned scholar nor saint. Despite the skeletons hiding in his closet, he worked with the likes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to raise his voice bringing international attention to the abuse of power in Germany 75 years ago. Without great theological fanfare, Niemoller said, “No. Not in my name.” Specifically Niemoller took issue with the state’s use and control of religious institutions. He questioned the explicit and illicit ties between the administration and the church. And for his questions he spent eight years in the death camps. It is Niemoller who is credited with the haunting poem “When they came:”
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
I may not have the wisdom to know what can and cannot be changed, but I do have a voice and I cannot remain silent. In honor of the Niebuhr brothers, I add my name to Niemoller’s saying, “Not in my name.”