Obama Misread Reinhold Niebuhr

Barack Obama, as quoted in a widely cited New York Times column by David Brooks, called Reinhold Niebuhr one of his "favorite philosophers." When Brooks asked Obama what he had learned from Niebuhr, he answered, "the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction." Obama is the most recent in a long line of liberal American leaders, ranging from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Jimmy Carter, who have noted Niebuhr's influence in their attempt to do good in the midst of evil without, as Obama put it, "swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism." Yet to Jason Stevens, a professor of English at Harvard University, the traditional portrait of Niebuhr as the sad-eyed sage of the Cold War, a "courageously dissenting voice," is a hagiographic cliché that whitewashes his disregard for racial and socio-economic injustice and his apologies for "American imperialism." Reinhold Niebuhr, in short, was canonized for all the wrong reasons.