Moral Man, Moral Society

Social Gospeller Josiah Strong argued for a vigorous US foreign policy, but insisted it had to be carried out on a proper basis. He rejects Machiavelli whose disciples “tell us that the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount have nothing to do with politics, either national or international.”

Then this pre-Nieburhian swipe against Niebuhr: “As if the conscience of the private citizen must be supreme thought it lead him to the stake, while that of the state official must often be subordinated to expediency; as if a Christian statesman needs be a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; as if the principles might bind men individually and yet not collectively; as if God might be the Ruler of nations, while yet nations are independent of His law; as if nations might be and must be supremely selfish, while individuals are bound to be altruistic!” On the contrary, “the individual conscience is the germ which, with the development of organization and of communication, grows into the national and ultimately into the world, conscience.”

I’m hardly a Nieburhian, but it’s impossible to read Strong’s breezy expansionist political theology within wincing, and without concluding that Niebuhr was both inevitable, and in many ways welcome.