Niebuhr

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In Love and Justice, Niebuhr adds, when it became obvious that problems of social justice are not solved in terms of pure moral suasion, but that the establishment of justice always involves a certain degree of pressure, of claims and counterclaims, of pushing and shoving, a portion of the church decided to allow for such pressure but to insist that it never lead to violent conflict. Whether the task of reconciliation is conceived in terms of pure moral suasion or whether it recognizes the inevitabilities of conflict in society and only seeks to avoid violence in such conflicts, it is interesting that the consequence of such conceptions is to create moral idealists who imagine that they are changing the world by their moral ideals (p.38). The …show more content…
Moral idealists are incapable of recognizing that fact. The church would do more for the cause of reconciliation if, instead of producing moral idealists who think that they can establish justice, it would create religious and Christian realists who know that justice will require that some men shall contend against them (p.39). If the Christian church is not to be “blown up” by the political conflicts that threaten the Western world, it will have to add religious depth to its moral idealism. Pure morality divides people and does not untie them. Moral idealism can live with other people only if their ideals are identical with their own …show more content…
The passionate interest of many in the beliefs which have been the food of their spiritual life for years creates a social resistance to change in religious thought. The Methodist Church has charged its Articles of Religion not to revoke, alter change or establish any new standards or rules of doctrine contrary to our present existing standards of doctrine (p.10). Rauschenbusch draws a similarity to Niebuhr’s idea of selfishness in the church. He states, theoretically the Church is the great organization of unselfish service. Actually the Church has always been profoundly concerned for its own power and authority. But its authority rests in large part on the stability of its