It has become rather fashionable to hurl criticism at the theological and political legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr, not least by my friend Stanley Hauerwas. He, along with John Milbank, have questioned the theological authenticity of Niebuhr's ethics, saying that "his ethics is designed to be an ethic for anyone," which amounts to little more than a form of "ethical naturalism," and "Stoicism restated in Christian terms."
But I disagree. For while I have learned more from Karl Barth than I have learned from any other Christian theologian - ancient or modern - as a Jew born in 1941, I might very well owe my life to Reinhold Niebuhr and those who were so influenced by his public theology. For Niebuhr was better able than someone like Karl Barth to counter the ethical temptation of Christians of his time and place to be passive in the face of Nazi injustice - let alone the ethical temptation to actively endorse that injustice.
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