Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war
With the cross of Jesus going on before
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe
Forward into battle see his banners go!
Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war
With the cross of Jesus going on before

We begin with Jesus’ parable of the dishonest manager, found in the 16th chapter of Luke’s gospel.  The fellow had been skimming money from the business.  When the owner demanded an accounting, the manager made some side deals and managed to land on his feet.  And this is where the parable gets really interesting.
Instead of coming down hard on the manager, the business owner commends the slime-ball for acting “shrewdly.”  Moral of the story, according to Jesus: “The children of this age (call them the children of darkness) are more shrewd in dealing with their generation than are the children of light.”

 In 1944, with America at war in Europe and Asia, Reinhold Niebuhr would use this enigmatic text as the title of one of his most influential books:  THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT AND THE CHILDREN OF DARKNESS, subtitled A Vindication Of Democracy And A Critique Of Its Traditional Defense.  Niebuhr’s take:  Jesus is saying children of light should be as shrewd and passionate in the pursuit of godly ends as the children of darkness are ruthless in their ungodly agendas. 

I like to watch the news talk shows, variously checking in on MSNBC, FOX & CNN.   If I’m still awake at 10:00, I may tune into THE DAILY SHOW.  On the evening of December 10, I was remoting back and forth between the various stations to hear what pundits were saying about President Obama’s speech in Oslo, Norway.
 

There had been considerable controversy as to whether a president yet to complete his first year in office had any business receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.  Added to the controversy:  sandwiched between the announcement of the award and the actual ceremony itself, President Obama had announced he was sending thirty thousand more troops into Afghanistan.  How was the President going to square the escalation of war with acceptance of the Peace Prize?

 I tuned into the talk shows expecting to find the usual storm of anti-Obama/pro-Obama and was surprised that the talking heads were relatively even-tempered in their analysis.   Particularly interesting was a conversation between James Carville and William Bennett on CNN.   Bennett is an outspoken conservative culture warrior; Carville was one of the architects of the Clinton White House.   These are guys who make a living talking political crossfire.  But on this evening, they seemed in general agreement:  The President had made a forceful case for an expanded American role in Afghanistan, and both men explicitly referenced a linkage between the president’s speech and the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr.

 If that name is new to you, it won’t be after this morning.  In an era before the television preacher, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was among the most influential voices in his generation of America.  When TIME MAGAZINE published its 25th Anniversary edition in 1948, Reinhold Niebuhr was on the cover.  This was the caption:  Man’s Story Is Not A Success Story.

How many of you know this prayer, perhaps even have it embroidered in a frame at home?

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

 You may know that as The Serenity Prayer.  America first prayed it in 1951, published in a column by Reinhold Niebuhr.  

 I downloaded a copy of the Obama speech and underlined passages that struck me as particularly Niebuhr-esque.  I’ve asked Dr. Joe Scahill to read excerpts….
 
I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility.  It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations—that for all the cruelty and hardship of the world, we are not mere prisoners of fate.  Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.

And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated…. Compared to some of the giants of history who’ve received this prize….my accomplishments are slight…. But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding the receipt of this prize is that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.  

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth:  We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.  There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago:  ‘Violence never brings permanent peace.  It solves no social problem.  It merely creates new and more complicated ones.’ ….  I know there is nothing weak—nothing passive—nothing naïve—in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone.  I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.  For make no mistake:  Evil does exist in the world.  A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies.  Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.  To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism—it is a recognition of history; the imperfection of man and the limits of reason. 

So yes, the instruments of war do have a role in preserving the peace.  And yet this truth must coexist with another—that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy.  The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms.  But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.

So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable truths—that war is sometimes necessary and war at some level is an expression of human folly….

William Bennett and James Carville were hardly alone in making a linkage between that speech and Reinhold Niebuhr.  The NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER offered a feature article titled Niebuhr Lives In Oslo. 

I was intrigued.  I went to my bookshelves and dusted off a 25-year-old Niebuhr biography by Richard Wightman Fox.  The book read like a not-so-distant mirror of issues I think about a lot in 2010.  I believe there is much to be learned from the lives of believers who have gone before us.  So let me tell you about the life and times of Reinhold Niebuhr   

 First thing you need to know:  Reinhold Niebuhr and I are from the same county:  Warren County in Missouri.  I went to high school in the county seat town of Warrenton.  Seven miles east is Wright City and that’s where Niebuhr was born, year of our Lord 1892. 

His daddy Gustav had immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1881.  Gustav was a pastor in what was called the German Evangelical Synod.   He was serving the Wright City church when Reinhold was born.
Even in my years there, Warren County was thick with Germans.  Warrenton had been the site of a German Methodist College.  The Warrenton Methodist Church was populated by families named Schultz, Meine, Bolm, Jurgensmeyer, Bebelmeyer, Josselmeyer, Leutkemeyer.   If they’d had automated answering machines in Gustav Niebuhr’s time, the caller would have been told to Press 1 for English, Press 2 for German, though perhaps not in that order.  
 

Reinhold Niebuhr was born in the USA, but grew up speaking Deutsch.  When he enrolled at Eden Seminary in St. Louis, 1910, most of the courses were still being taught in German. 
I might add that Nancy is a graduate of Eden Seminary.  She was the first United Methodist to receive that school’s Most Likely To Succeed Award.  By her time, of course, the classes were being taught in English, but Nancy’s maiden name is Groseclose, so she fit in real well with the German heritage.      
Niebuhr was still struggling with the English language when he went off to Yale Divinity School for post-graduate work.   It was at Yale that he decided to “cast my lot with the English.” 

His first church assignment was a German-speaking congregation in Detroit—Bethel Evangelical.  Young Niebuhr ruffled feathers by starting an English language worship service.   That sort of thing will ruffle feathers.  Ask any pastor who has been assigned to a traditional Methodist church and has tried to start a new contemporary service.   How many Methodists does it take to change a light bulb?  WHAT DO YOU MEAN, CHANGE!

This was 1915.  Germany had recently invaded France.  The United States had not yet joined the war effort, but German patriotism was very much at issue in some places, much like Muslim patriotism in the America of post 9/11.  Just whose side were these people on?  

This sermon got started in the shadow of the latest terrorist attacks:  The Christmas Day airplane bombing attempt, the massacre at Fort Hood.  Fort Hood struck me as particularly awful.  It’s hard enough that we’re asking American troops to risk their lives fighting ruthless people in the Middle East; to have them massacred by one of their own, a doctor who was supposed to be caring for their needs, wielding a rifle, shouting Allah Akbar—the idea was so awful as to fill me with rage.  
It may be just a short step from that kind of rage to hate for anyone praying to Allah in America.  
 

Reading the Niebuhr biography, I found it helpful to remember that a hundred years ago we were dealing with a very similar dynamic:  A German immigrant population that clung to German culture even as America was at war with Germany.  We worked through it then and I want to believe we’ll work through it now.

I was fascinated to read, in the Christmas Day airplane plot (Merry Christmas everyone!), that the Nigerian father of the would-be terrorist had gone to the CIA warning that his son had been radicalized.   That took some character.  I found myself wanting to shake that man’s hand.  It occurred to me, he and I might have a lot in common.  At the very least, that dad and I can surely co-exist.  
As I understand the gospel of Jesus Christ, a characteristic of children of light is looking for light in the hearts of others.  To reflexively assign darkness to people who may want the same things for their children that I want for me is not shrewd—not shrewd at all.  Though it may indeed be shrewd to pay particular attention to young Muslim men paying cash for airline tickets…. 

Pastor Reinhold Niebuhr was among the German-Americans in an America at war with Germany insisting that there could be no identity-hyphen, no German-American.  He was an American.  His church was American.  His church was going to worship in the American language.  

Recall the line from the Obama speech:  The soldier’s courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms.   That’s classic Niebuhr.  As a young pastor, Niebuhr had thought a lot about men at war.  At Yale, he wrote of “The Paradox of Patriotism”:  Pacifists failed to understand:  “despite its undoubted brutality, war answered an ineradicable longing in the human heart—for service, sacrifice, and heroism.”
 

Earlier we sang, ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS.  A lot of Methodists in my generation have wanted to delete that song from the hymnal, as it is thought to glorify war.  In fact, it comes from an era when Christians like Niebuhr were wanting to offer “moral substitutes for war.”  The human longing for service, sacrifice and heroism would be met, not through force of arms, but via the church, marching as an army of love, causing hell to quiver and Satan to flee before us.  
Niebuhr was anything but a war-monger.  The life of the individual was of eternal significance; war claimed those lives for ends that have no eternal value.  
But then Woodrow Wilson took America into the European war under the banner of “war to end war.”  Here was war fought for matters of genuine significance, and Niebuhr counted himself as a Wilson man.
 One could argue there’s been a certain Wilsonian-idealism in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  That’s all I’ll say about that.

 Reinhold Niebuhr spent the war years balancing two jobs.  He was Executive Secretary of the Evangelical Synod’s War Welfare Commission, an outreach ministry to Synod soldiers and their families.  He was also giving pastoral leadership to the congregation in Detroit.  Even after the United States declared war against Germany, Bethel Evangelical didn’t want to give up the German language, but did agree to spend “five dollars for an American flag to be displayed in the church.”  

Bethel had been at the bottom of the denominational food chain when Niebuhr was sent there, but young Reinhold began drawing a crowd.  His preaching style was shaped by experience at a Billy Sunday revival.  Billy Sunday was a former baseball player known for over-the-top preaching antics.  Most conventional preachers derided Billy Sunday, but Niebuhr was fascinated.  
Niebuhr took to melding a solid message with Billy Sunday-influenced presentation, and the effect was electric.  Niebuhr’s reputation was enhanced by articles in the influential magazine CHRISTIAN CENTURY.   The crowds grew.  Bethel built a new state-of-the-art house of worship.  

Niebuhr was a good solider in what’s remembered as The Progressive Movement.   (It’s fascinating in 2010 to hear people who used to self-identify as liberals going under the banner now of Progressive.)  The great causes of Niebuhr’s era included Women’s Suffrage—the Right to Vote--and Prohibition.  
I have great respect for the old Prohibitionists.  Methodists were big time into the movement.   America’s saloon culture was poisoning the working class and working class families.  Scientific studies linked the narcotic of drink to poverty, crime and mental illness. 
Prohibition was a particularly touchy issue among German-Americans.  Germans had a long tradition of going to church then having a beer.  Reinhold Niebuhr insisted that the German identification with the brewer’s art made it all the more imperative that patriotic Americans of German ancestry put their steins away.  
These days, of course, you hear politicians and preachers pandering to their “base.”   That takes no moral courage.  Niebuhr had the moral courage to challenge his base. 
If the Progressives had stuck to closing saloons and prohibiting hard liquor, the 18th Amendment might never have been repealed.  But taking beer away from the Germans and wine from the Roman Catholics was really just too much....

But Reinhold Niebuhr was growing disillusioned.  Having bought into President Wilson’s idealism as a cause for war, he was frustrated that the armistice terms seemed to be about revenge rather than reconciliation.   Then the United States Senate killed Wilson’s cherished idea of a League of Nations.

Niebuhr was doing ministry in Henry Ford’s Detroit and saw himself as an advocate for the working class.  The Progressives were greatly concerned about the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few.  In Detroit, the “few” was Henry Ford.  It struck Niebuhr as objectionable that one man should have so much power over so many.  
Niebuhr’s theology at this time was heavy on “personality”—the uniqueness of the individual.  Ford’s assembly-line process seemed to threaten the individuality Niebuhr held so dear.  To Niebuhr’s further dismay, people in his congregation didn’t seem to share his concern and objected to his objections about the assembly line.  Lots of them worked for Henry Ford and valued their jobs.  
Niebuhr mused in a Methodist magazine, “Was it possible to even to preach the Gospel in America, where ‘happiness is gauged in terms of automobiles and radios,” where ‘the love of possessions controls our home life,’ where in Emerson’s words, ‘things are in the saddle and ride human kind.” 

It was time to move on, and Niebuhr accepted an offer to teach at Union Theology Seminary in New York City, New York, where he quickly emerged as the faculty star.   The biographer tells us students “flocked to chapel to hear him roar and watch him gesticulate:  his words rolled down like waters, his ideas like a never-ending stream.” 
That said, I don’t think I would have liked Niebuhr much at this point in his life.   He wrote dismissively of working class people who were “too stupid” to understand their own interest, and was well on his way to becoming one of those smug types who are all about “the people” writ large, but don’t seem to have much regard for flesh-and-blood human beings. 

And there was a really bad episode having to do with the church he’d left behind in Detroit.   Like so many industrial cities of the north, Detroit had experienced an influx of blacks migrating from the southern states.  The pastor who followed Niebuhr at Bethel wanted to integrate the congregation—and Niebuhr actually undercut the effort. 
It wasn’t that Reinhold Niebuhr was a racist, necessarily—at least not of the conscious variety.  In fact, Niebuhr had been on an interracial task force that raised consciousness as to the problems of “The Negro In Detroit.”  But trying to actually integrate Bethel Church struck Professor Niebuhr as overly ambitious—and he let that be known.
It was only when the congregation went so far as to fire the new pastor and actually voted to bar blacks from membership that Niebuhr realized he’d made a mistake.  It’s difficult, folks, to overestimate the depths of racism in America in the Time Between the Wars.  

At Union Seminary, Niebuhr got into politics, actually running for office as a member of the Socialist Party.  The administration was appalled, but Niebuhr’s stature as a cutting-edge theologian had grown to the point that the school probably needed him more than he needed the school.  

Then a series of events changed the direction of Reinhold Niebuhr’s thinking.  He got married, at age forty, to an exceptional woman named Ursula, and they started a family.  According to the biographer, family life had a profound impact on Niebuhr.
It occurs to me that if Hollywood in our time was making a movie of Niebuhr’s life, it might be titled: The 40-Year-Old Virgin Goes To Seminary.   That’s the part we’d be interested in.  What was really going on with Reinhold Niebuhr’s sexuality?  The likeliest answer:  Nothing much.  Believe it or not, folks, there was a time in America, not so long ago, when not everything was viewed through the prism of sexuality; when people weren’t made to feel weird if they weren’t sexually active.  
Niebuhr came of age in a pre-hyper-sexualized America.   Later in his life, he would be appalled by the Kinsey Report on sexual behavior.  The effect on American culture may be compared to the snake giving the apple to Eve, saying:  Try this; you’ll like it!       

And in 1932, the Japanese invaded Manchuria.   The shock waves were felt around the world.  Hadn’t we just fought a war to end war?
Part of the Socialist creed was a pacifism bordering on the absolute.  Niebuhr wasn’t advocating a military response at this point, but surely an economic embargo was in order.  His fellow socialists took the position that even economic sanctions were an act of hostility, forbidden by their creed. 
And then came the rise of Adolph Hitler in Germany….

At Union Seminary, Niebuhr had befriended visiting German theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer, and got a first hand account of the darkness descending on his ancestral homeland.  Niebuhr would be among those who urged Bonheoffer to stay in the United States.  Don’t go back to Germany.  But Bonheoffer believed his place was among the German people, and was among the pastors who died in Nazi concentration camps.

Reinhold Niebuhr’s mind was changing.  His intellectual journey took him back to the Bible.  In Genesis, three narratives cut to the heart of what he would call “The Nature And Destiny Of Man.” 

• First Narrative:  Creation.  Genesis chapters 1 and 2.  Human beings are created in the image of God, given freedom of choice.  

• Second narrative:  Genesis chapters 3 & following:   The choice of sin.  The fall of humankind.  The descent into violence and murder.   “Sin is expressed,” writes Niebuhr, “not in making the self the center of the self, as in animal existence, but in…making the self the center of the world.”  

• And then, Genesis 11. The Tower of Babel.   We’ll build this thing and be gods ourselves!  Niebuhr:  “Human pride is greatest when it is based upon solid achievements ….Thus sin corrupts the highest as well as the lowest achievements of human life.”
 
Bottom line: Man is mortal.  That is his fate.  Man pretends not
to be mortal.  That is his sin.

Niebuhr’s position, recently restated by President Obama,
eventually looked like this.  I’m going to meld some Obama/Oslo language with it.  The Gandhi/King example is clearly the ideal, but while Children of Light are clinging to their ideals, there are Children of Darkness putting Jews in gas chambers and plotting to blow up commercial airliners on Christmas Day.   “The main issue…in the social struggle” is “to defend the relative justice of (democratic) society against ‘barbarians’ in the international arena.”  
At the same time:  The defenders of democracy, even as we’re defending it, must be aware of our own fallen-ness, our own potential for sin and error.  The biographer summarizes it this way: 

The Judeo-Christian tradition compelled people to strive to do good and warned them to be aware of the evil they would inevitably do in the course of doing good. 

 This is the Protestantism I grew up with, heavy on the teachings of the Apostle Paul:  We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Reinhold Niebuhr would have been saddened, but hardly surprised by Abu Ghraib.

 Niebuhr’s was not classical “Just War” theory.  War is never just.  But it may be tragically necessary.

 Niebuhr’s evolving position alienated him from former friends who held fast to pacifism, even as Hitler was blitzkrieging Europe.  Others however applauded him for reintroducing the concept of sin as a factor to be taken seriously in human events.  

The book we’ve mentioned before, THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT AND THE CHILDREN OF DARKNESS, was published in the middle of World War 2, and contained this most famous of his formulations:

Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. 

It’s interesting to think about the timing of the TIME magazine cover, 1948.  The Word War was over.  America had won.  But the price had been terrible, including the introduction of Atomic Warfare.  Even as the wars in Europe and Asia were ending, new battle lines had been drawn.  How soon would the democracies be at war with the Soviet Union or China, if not both?   No, the human story is not a success story.  

The Serenity Prayer was published in 1951.  Life for Reinhold Niebuhr at this point was not necessarily serene.  His health had begun to fade.  He was just a year away from the first in a series of strokes. 
Niehbur had come under the watchful eyes of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy of the House Un-American Activities Committee.  Never mind that Niebuhr had been a forceful supporter of the war against Hitler and Japan, and spoke with admiration for “the open society of America, which, with all its faults, has the capacity to release the hidden potentialities of its children and of its immigrant’s children.”  Hadn’t he once been a (gasp) SOCIALIST!
 

Niebuhr took a dim view of this new kid, Billy Graham.  As Niebuhr saw it, Graham was repositioning sin back to the realm of individual vice.  Writes the biographer, “Niebuhr proposed to Graham that he make his appeal a shade tougher to accept, make his Christ as critic as well as a celebrator of culture.”  Niebuhr was reminded that he had admired Billy Sunday, and Graham was cut from Billy Sunday cloth--but Niebuhr was getting grouchy as he got older.  It happens.  Still Niebuhr preferred Graham to mainstream preachers he dismissed as “religious therapists”--as bland as the Eisenhower administration itself.   

He died, June 1, 1971, just short of his 79th birthday.  He and Ursula had been married 39 ½ year.  She lived until 1997.

Like a mighty army moves the church of God
People, we are treading where the saints have trod
We are not divided all one body we
One in hope and doctrine, One in charity
Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war
With the cross of Jesus going on before    

I’d like invite you join our little army here at St. Andrew’s.  We’re not really what you’d call a Current Events church.  Our ranks include people of many diverse ideas, across the political and cultural spectrum.  There’s no opinions test to sign up here.  We want to enlist everyone who desires to live as a child of the light, even as we confess the shadow of darkness over all things human, including our own souls. 

We’re a Jesus people.   He himself was a member of no political
party.   He wasn’t into the various “isms” of his time.   His agenda:  You shall the love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself.
 

 And so, for instance, up here yesterday, you found people of various generations and surely various opinions joined shoulder-to-shoulder working on Health Kits for Haiti, in obedience to the teachings of Jesus who said that as we do unto the least of these
--the poor, the desperate, and such--we are doing unto him.   We had enough Christian soldiers up here that it took about ten minutes to do what we’d thought would take two hours.
Make no mistake about this:  We have some great passions in this congregation.  These include teaching children and youth that light is in fact a choice; encouraging people in marriage and family; helping rebuild lives devastated by disasters such as divorce and grief; welcoming strangers, turning them into friends; preaching and teaching the timeless truths of scripture—and always, always, singing songs of joy and hope and faith.    
And like I said, we’d love to enlist you.

 We close with more Niebuhr via Obama at Oslo…

We do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.  We do not have to live in an idealized world to reach for those ideals that will make a better place.  The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached—their fundamental faith in human progress—that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.  

For if we lose that faith—if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace—then we lose what’s best about humanity.  We lose our sense of possibility.  We lose our moral compass.

Let us reach for the world that ought to be—that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.    

Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng
Blend with ours your voices, in the triumph song
Glory, laud, and honor, unto Christ the King
This through countless ages, Men and angels sing
Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war
With the cross of Jesus going on before

BENEDICTION:  THE SERENITY PRAYER
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.  Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next.
Amen.