Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Mr. Swaim,
Thank you for your essay in The Washington Free Beacon on Reinhold Niebuhr. Your implication is accurate: there is nothing at the center of it. Rheiny himself admitted that, as Tillich said of him, he (paraphrasing) had not learned his theology very well.
My father was Rheiny’s student assistant at Union. When I was at Union (’65-’69), he was retired except for graduate seminars but asked to see me, which I did, late and reluctantly, which he did not appreciate and so told my father.
In my senior year at university I requested and was granted to do an honors project on Niebuhr. I read almost his entire oeuvre and wrote upon it, feeling finally that I was reading — and had heard about all my life growing up, in glowing terms — a man without appreciation for depth Christian theology or the USA. And at Union I found the atmosphere stifling by way of shrugging off anything not chic du jour as “well, what can you do, man is a sinner?” and forgetting that banality when the chic is in sight. Which came from Rheiny and the institution’s Christo-Communist legacy.
When I read years ago that The Fraud (I will not speak or write his given name) likes Niebuhr, I thought, “Yeah, figures, one air-head subversive ideologue to another.”
I give Rheiny this: he was a compelling orator and interlocutor. And his influence is very strong across a very large array of enterprises, especially anti-American and anti-Christian ones.
Paul Lehman said to my class in Systematic Theology (our textbook was Calvin’s Institutes and here) that every faculty member at Union excepting he opposed Bonhoeffer’s final return to Germany.
I have written about him, including my personal experience with him, in my blog, which is an internet non-entity, so to speak, but pleases me to do:
Tom Driver on Tillich but with lots, tellingly, on Niebuhr as well:
Along the lines of your thinking, this may be of interest, although I suspect you know of it long since:
One anecdote, told me by our Modern Church History Professor, Robert Handy:
One day, before my years at Union, the faculty and their spouses gathered for luncheon in Union’s upper refectory, as was their wont, to hear a VIP, in this case Henry Luce, publisher of Time Inc. and member — and maybe Chairman, I forget — of the Union Board of Directors. I suspect this incident occurred after WWII. Luce discoursed on Americanism and American Patriotism. When he concluded and was applauded, Niebuhr turned to Ursula, his wife, and said in a stage whisper (and I am quoting Bob Handy), “Wasn’t that the biggest pile of bullshit you’ve ever heard?” Handy, who attended the luncheon, said the faculty erupted in gales of laughter, approving Rheiny’s response.
Luce was no saint, but my soul recoils at this story as it did when first I heard it, and for so many reasons, none favorable to Rheiny.
Again, thank you for your essay on Niebuhr. You have done a good service for our country, for humanity and for the truth.
Please accept my warmest well-wishes for you and yours!
David
The Rev. David R. Graham
Update 1: Niebuhr was a great orator (bullshitter) but essentially a cipher … a communist cipher.
With Hubert Humphrey — POTUS Johnson’s VP and POTUS Nixon’s opponent in 1968, came out of Minnesota Farm Labor Party (communist and still main party there) — Niebuhr and other lefties founded Americans For Democratic Action.
My father idolized Niebuhr. Which is why I asked to do the honors project on him at Redlands. That plus my experience at Union got me to see the emptiness at the center of the man. Not so Tillich, a truly great man whom Niebuhr brought to Union … so there is that for Niebuhr.
Niebuhr said he renounced his early communism. In fact he did not, he just used a patina of Christian theology to double-bind two or three generations of clergy and theologians in leftist intellectual immobility and political chaos-making.
I went to work for Bob Theobald (1968, a year before graduating Union), a genuine communist, Cambridge/Fabian (pleasing shape) variety, to escape the double-binding Niebuhr influence at Union, which really was stifling. Stepping stone to walking away from the entire lot of lefties, and at that point I got the call to Puttaparthi (November 1971). Then things gradually got straightened out in my life, not without some high drama! 🙂
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA