ecclesiology 11 (2015) 371-412
ECCLESIOLOGY
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Book Reviews
∵ Scott R. Erwin The Theological Vision of Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History: ‘In the battle and above it’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 185 pp. isbn 978-0-19-967837-2 (hbk). £50.00.
I enjoyed reading this book. It is clearly written, thoroughly researched, and has an important thesis. Erwin’s theme is that Niebuhr’s theological vision was fundamental to his analysis of events, even when he did not make that vision explicit, and that it has been ignored by a number of recent writers on Niebuhr. The shorthand for that vision is, ‘In the battle and above it’, which is the subtitle of the book. This phrase comes from what Erwin maintains is a frequently overlooked article of Niebuhr’s, published early in World War II. What that article argues for is even more powerfully and succinctly expressed in the prayers that Niebuhr wrote at the time, later collected together by his wife Ursula, which Erwin does not in fact refer to. For example, part of one prayer reads: We pray for the victims of tyranny that they may resist oppression with courage. We pray for wicked and cruel men, whose arrogance reveals to us what the sin of our own hearts is like when it has conceived and brought forth its final fruit. We pray for ourselves who live in peace and quietness, that we may not regard our good fortune as proof of our virtue, or rest content to have our ease at the price of other men’s sorrow and tribulation. We pray for all who have some vision of your will, despite the confusions and betrayals of human sin, that they may humbly and resolutely plan for and fashion the foundations of a just peace between men. As that prayer reveals, Niebuhr all his life fought on two fronts. One was against those who refused to take a stand on current issues. He argued that despite the confusion and complexity of events, despite the fact that there might be faults on both sides, we had a moral responsibility to make proximate decisions and back them with action. So it was that during the 1930s, early recognising the evil of Nazism for what it was, he tirelessly urged America to resist isolationism and support the allies. The other front was against any tendency to self-righteousness and complacency, illusion and self-deception. One of © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/17455316-01102013