Word: niebuhrs
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What is the basic issue between Christianity and Communism? A correspondent asked Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: "Is it not quite simply that the Christian faith values the individual and respects his dignity, while Communism values the state and subordinates the individual to the collective...
Last week, in the Niebuhr-edited fortnightly Christianity and Crisis, Protestant Theologian Niebuhr gave his answer: no. The point of view held by his questioner, Niebuhr points out, represents "a most pathetic perversion of the Christian faith and a serious misinterpretation of Communism." Far from being a Christian concept, says Niebuhr (who is a left-of-center Democrat in politics), the value and dignity of the individual is a Renaissance notion which infiltrated Christianity in opposition to the Christian doctrines of providence...
...Such charges have recently been made, notably by Roosevelt-hating pamphleteer John T. Flynn, whose book, The Road Ahead, brought the Federal Council of Churches out fighting with a special pamphlet to refute its numerous misstatements. Last week, in his biweekly journal, Christianity and Crisis, anti-Communist Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr swun, some haymakers at right-wing critics on Protestant social thinking...
...Niebuhr notes that the Detroit Conference in the Church & Economic Life (TIME, Feb. 27), which came out in favor of a middle way between socialism and laissez-faire capitalism, confirmed a consensus already established by Protestantism in its conferences at Stockholm (1922), Oxford (1937) and Amsterdam (1948). "This consensus of Protestant thought is the more remarkable," writes Niebuhr, "in that it closely approaches the main emphases in the social teachings of the Catholic encyclicals since Rerum Novarum [1891]. Whatever may be the differences in Catholic and Protestant social policy . . . the similarities are more striking than the differences...
Protestants, says Niebuhr, should beware of denying authority to such a consensus of church thinking. "Protestantism is inclined to vaunt itself because of its liberty, as distinguished from Rome's authoritarianism. We fear that Roman Catholicism deifies the church. [But] does not Protestantism deify the individual conscience to an extent which gives men a sense of security about the 'dictates' of their conscience and no sense of repentance about the mixture of interest and self-seeking in the ideals of conscience...