Facs
Transcript
It is the special American type of relating the problems of ultimate concern to the preliminary concerns which are politics. And I think that the political realm [being] taken so seriously by American Christianity is one of this country's greatest assets, and is something of which Europe should be envious. Perhaps America should be envious about the seriousness of the philosophical and even more the theological problems [which] are taken in Europe. But the other side is that Europe doesn't take the political problems, in the name of religion, as seriously as it was done and is being done in this country. So I don't say that in terms of a criticism but in terms of a description.
Then you all know what has happened with this movement. It was destroyed both by Hitler and Stalin. I remember how Dr. Niebuhr's criticism of religious pacifism went hand in hand with the increasing aggressiveness of Hitlerism, then with the alliance of Hitler and Stalin, and then with the beginning of the Second World War. In these fires of history, Niebuhr’s understanding of the relation of Gospel and power politics was carried through in millions of American minds. You in your development, mostly younger in this room, have not experienced, as we older ones, the radical change which happened both by theological reflection and by the historical powers which are always more convincing than discussions.
Now what is behind this development? Here again the peace which is the ultimate unity of the disrupted elements of reality in the kingdom of God – which is the symbol for this unity – was applied to history not as a criterion, but as a law. One was asked to be a pacifist,