The Review of Politics
- The Review of Politics / Volume 36 / Issue 04 / October 1974, pp 467-491
- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1974
- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0034670500024232 (About DOI), Published online: 05 August 2009
Research Article
Reinhold Niebuhr's Critique of Pacifism
James F. Childress
Abstract
Most of the recent attempts to demonstrate the poverty of liberalism and political realism have accepted the realist interpretation of violence with few reservations. For example, few political theologians, theologians of hope, and theologians of revolution have reconsidered or modified this component of the realist perspective even as they have tried to dismantle realism. It is now time to splash what Holmes called “cynical acid” on this assumed orthodoxy, especially but not only in Protestantism. The pacifist perspective on war and violence deserves a hearing which this stacked jury of realists and their critics have refused to grant. This refusal results in part from Reinhold Niebuhr's critique of pacifism, widely considered even by pacifists to be trenchant and compelling.
