In Review
The Children at 80
Reinhold Niebuhr argued that democracy needs to be reaffirmed and reinvigorated.
Reinhold Niebuhr portrait by Ernest Hamlin Baker, 1948. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Time magazine.
By Bradley Shingleton
When Reinhold Niebuhr approached the podium to deliver the Raymond F. West Memorial Lectures at Stanford in January 1944, the world was in a perilous state. The Nazi regime dominated the European continent, D-Day was still six months away, and the war was to continue for more than another year and a half. Nevertheless, many were hopeful the end was in sight and were turning their thoughts to the postwar future and what it might be like for the United States.
Niebuhr was one of them. He foresaw that the US would emerge from the war as the dominant world power, saddled with new global responsibilities. Anticipating that the US was ill prepared to shoulder these demands, he believed it was necessary to closely examine the complexities of America’s future. But he also wanted to look back at what the world had been through, with democracy succumbing in Germany to totalitarian fascism, and with the Soviet Union promoting communism as an alternative to decadent capitalism and its democratic trappings. Democracy had found itself in a vise between these two antidemocratic movements; it needed to be reaffirmed and reinvigorated. It required a better “vindication”—not in traditional terms, but on the basis of a deeper understanding of what made it both necessary and possible. And that meant developing a more thorough understanding of capabilities and constraints of individual selves in political community.
Niebuhr’s lectures, titled “Foundations of a Democratic Civilization,” were well received; he expanded them that spring and summer, and they were published in December 1944, in the same year as his The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. The book attracted reviews across disciplines. A political scientist, John Hallowell, found it to be “one of the most profound and helpful discussion of democratic theory and practice to appear in recent years” and declared that it “penetrated to political realities in a manner that political science, as a strictly empirical and descriptive study, has overlooked and often obscured.”1 Historian Henry Bamford Parkes declared it to be “a brilliant political analysis, in the best American tradition.”2 Some religionists were more guarded in their assessment, one (Edward Heerema) concluding that Niebuhr’s analysis was confined to a horizontal, relativistic plane that gave short shrift to divine law and human accountability.3 Other commentators questioned the basic polarity represented by the respective groups of children. One of Niebuhr’s fiercest adversaries, Morton White, complained that the children of light and of darkness were caricatures, because they suggested “all rationalists and naturalists said that men were gods, while their extreme opponents maintained that they were devils, and only Niebuhr knew the middle way.”4 White’s criticism is rather unfair to Niebuhr, who never claimed such a proprietary insight, but it is an example of the criticisms his typology received.
Eighty years later, The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness remains in print.5 Democracy, and particularly American democracy, again finds itself troubled by doubts about its viability and fears of its co-optation by authoritarianism. What, if anything, can Niebuhr’s book say to us now? Reading it today is to be reminded of the differences between the circumstances it describes and those of the present day. Yet it is also to be struck by the durability of its analyses. To be sure, the political and cultural world of 1944 is not our world. But the contemporary resonance of The Children of Light owes more to its effort to develop an adequate understanding of the interaction of human conduct and democratic order than to its analysis of the historical context of its composition.
Democracy as a political and social order needed more than a defense, it required a vindication. Its traditional justification was based on an unwarranted optimism about human capabilities and the inevitability of progress; it was oblivious to self-interest and the pursuit of power.
The book’s subtitle—“A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense”—evidences Niebuhr’s conviction that the conventional attitudes about democracy were insufficient, and worse, misguided. Democracy as a political and social order needed more than a defense, it required a vindication. Its traditional justification was based on an unwarranted optimism about human capabilities and the inevitability of progress; it was oblivious to self-interest and the pursuit of power. These failings flowed from an unrealistic and shallow assessment of human nature. They riddled the idea of democracy with the “foolish” (10) and “stupid” (30) illusions of the idealistic children of light. They wrongly assumed that reason and historical progress could create social harmony, that society and human beings were continually improving, and that democracy was essentially a project of promoting the ideals of cooperation, education, and consensus. Instead, the sentimental illusions of the children of light rendered democracy vulnerable to the political pathologies of fascism in its effort to secure unity through coercion and of communism in its attempt to coerce equality.
The cynical children of darkness, in contrast to the children of light, were clearer-eyed in their recognition of the importance of self-interest and wiser in their conviction that political arrangements reflect the interests of the stronger at the expense of the weaker. Power to assert and realize self-interest: that is the coin of the realm for the children of darkness.
How, then, did Niebuhr believe that democracy was to be vindicated? Not by history, even though democracy arose historically in connection with the economic ascent of bourgeois classes, in the course of their emancipation from feudal orders. History, he thought, is too contingent and conditional to justify democracy; it is too ambiguous, and its meaning is too elusive (5).6 Besides, Niebuhr believed bourgeois civilization was declining, enervated by the specters of fascism and communism. If history was the vindication of democracy, then to Niebuhr, democracy’s future appeared not only tenuous but bleak.
Nor, Niebuhr contended, is democracy vindicated by clinging to liberal optimism. Its idealistic assumptions about the capabilities of human beings in political community are at best wishful illusions and at worst willful self-deception. The traditional defense of democracy relied heavily on a blithe confidence in humans’ reasonableness and their aptitude for self-improvement, abetted by a disregard of the role of self-interest. As champions of liberal optimism, the children of light held, simplistically, that humans are capable of overcoming selfishness through their rational capacities. This would allow humanity to eventually overcome its limitations and actualize a just and harmonious society. Niebuhr instead emphasized that the historical record did not bear out these claims, and further it reflected a shallow view of humanity. Its fatuous, free-floating confidence in human rationality and virtue had been contradicted by recent events, especially fascism. Niebuhr agreed with W. H. Auden’s remark in his review of Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man: “It has taken Hitler to show us that liberalism is not self-supporting.”7
Illustration by Sara Wong.
The children of light contended that politics is subject to a higher law that transcends self-interest. They were not wrong, Niebuhr thought, to speak of a higher law; the problem was their exaggeration of its influence and their simplistic expectation of its realization. They also deceived themselves about their own purity and self-interest. Self-interest was present in their notion of a higher law, but they were blind to it (10–11).
The children of darkness were also guilty of exaggeration in contending that self-interest is the only motivation and goal in political life. They were not wrong to acknowledge self-interest; their error was to reduce everything to it. Each group of children was correct in its initial conviction and wrong in its excessive emphasis of it. In both cases, their errors resulted in malign consequences. An inordinate politics of the children of light tended to a laissez faire confidence in the individual and an unwarranted expectation of social harmony and order. The cynical children of darkness gave rise to coercive, authoritarian regimes that imposed order to contain the chaotic pursuit of self-interest. The Manichaean differentiation between the groups of children derives from Luke 16:8 (“And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light” [NRSV]). To Niebuhr, it symbolized the ambiguous character of human conduct with its capacity for pursuit of self-interest in disregard of the whole (which Niebuhr defined as “evil”) as well as for seeking the harmony of the whole (which he defined as “good”) (9).
In 1944, Niebuhr considered the idealistic children of light to be the bugbear of American democracy, and he aimed many, if not most, of his criticisms against them. They drew his ire because they had built our democratic civilization and given it a sentimental taint (10–11). In their unrelenting cynicism, the children of darkness also threatened the viability of democracy by undermining confidence in the individual’s commitment to the common good. But, as heirs of the Enlightenment’s confidence in rationality and liberalism’s assurance of the progress of history, the children of light exerted an influence over the political and religious thinking of the day that Niebuhr viewed with special concern. While he sympathized with their idealistic aspirations, he was dismissive of their lack of realism. They exhibited an obliviousness to the tenacity of self-interest and the practical circumstances of political life that had rendered their ambitions feckless (10–15).
Niebuhr thought a more adequate vindication of democracy would acknowledge certain characteristics of political life and of human nature overlooked by each group of children. He stated the central thesis of The Children of Light in a foreword to a subsequent edition (1960): “A free society prospers best in a cultural, religious and moral atmosphere which encourages neither a too pessimistic nor too optimistic view of human nature.”8 At its heart, the book is concerned with advancing a deeper understanding of human beings and of the political arrangements that can accommodate it.
For Niebuhr, an element of that understanding envisioned the political community as both organism and artifact (65). It is an organism in the sense that individuals are inherently social, are shaped by social experience, and are dependent on communities for many of their needs. Political community is also a moral and historical artifact: moral in its management and mitigation of conflict among individuals, and historical in being created and shaped over time by “we the people.” Of course, defining the “we” is one of the fundamental challenges of any democratic system. Racism, misogyny, and various kinds of prejudice and injustice have constrained and distorted that definition. This is to say that politics takes place at the intersection of culture, economics, history, geography, power, ethnicity, and religion. The Children of Light is not concerned with political anthropology or ethics per se, but with the implications of a holistic anthropology in the domain of the political (79–85).
Now, eight decades after its appearance, the book continues to draw attention. Contemporary analyses understandably ask about its relevance. The international order has moved beyond the American Century into a fluid, multipolar landscape; it has become more deeply ensnared in the nuclear era. America continues to bear global responsibilities, yet its leadership is complicated by global phenomena beyond its control, among them environmental degradation, mass migration, technological upheavals, religious and ethnic conflict, and globalization. Domestically, the connective tissue of American democracy seems to be seriously fraying. Partisan vitriol, legislative gridlock, misinformation and conspiracy-mongering, diminishing trust in government: These are some of the indicia of a polity under stress.
The children of light have been in retreat for decades, victims of eroding trust in government, bitter political divisions, and an ideologically fragmented, post-truth information environment.
If Niebuhr were surveying our contemporary situation, his assessment of democracy’s status would most likely be quite different. The children of light have been in retreat for decades, victims of eroding trust in government, bitter political divisions, and an ideologically fragmented, post-truth information environment. Skepticism about the efficacy and legitimacy of some of government’s fundamental activities—elections, legislation, adjudication—has increased among parts of the citizenry, spurred by partisan animus. Some long-observed norms of democratic behavior have been spitefully ignored, particularly those involving the electoral process, acceptance of its results, and the peaceful transfer of power.
To the current descendants of the children of darkness, democratic regimes seem to be largely ineffective in responding to these challenges. They appear to the cynical to be riven by factionalism and indecision, unwilling and unable to confront long-term problems, hindered by the erratic whims of ill-informed electorates. We have become, as Joshua Mauldin remarks, more Niebuhrian than Niebuhr; the children of light exude a much fainter light, and the children of darkness seem to represent a deeper darkness than they did in Niebuhr’s day.9 The illusory idealism of the children of light appears to be less of a problem than the ruthless competition of electoral politics and the amorality of the power-hungry. Niebuhr might chide us for having become too pessimistic, too fixated on the seeming insolubility of our problems, and too dismissive of the political accomplishment that proximate solutions represent.
Were he to try to vindicate democracy today, Niebuhr would likely have more to say about the role of individual citizens.10 He consistently distinguished between the individual and the community, believing that the individual, given “the indeterminate character of human vitalities” (48) and the self’s capacity for transcendence, can never be subsumed by any collective (79–83). If The Children of Light was more concerned with the institutional aspects of democracy, a contemporary vindication of democracy would emphasize the importance of the office of citizen, especially the duties to be appropriated and responsibly informed in public affairs, to engage in public discussion, to participate in elections, and to practice tolerance and maintain concern for the common good. In some of his later writings Niebuhr came to stress the importance of the citizen’s democratic responsibilities. In The Democratic Experience, a book that resulted from a course Niebuhr co-taught at Harvard in the 1960s, he rather darkly declared: “Naturally, a viable democracy presupposes the intellectual competence of the voter, that he will have the ability to guard and cherish common interests of the community above and beyond the parochial economic, ethnic and other interests that divide the community. Without this competence and common loyalty, free governments cannot be rendered viable.”11
Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.
Among citizen duties, tolerance has a special role. While Niebuhr devotes a chapter to democratic tolerance in The Children of Light, he tends to emphasize the importance of tolerance in promoting integration of subgroups (ethnic, religious, economic) into the political community. This remains an important task in light of the reality that our society is more religiously and ethnically pluralistic than it was in 1944. While what counts as integration is a complex question, the fact remains that, as a civic practice, tolerance as a facilitator of integration is more necessary than ever.
In his writings prior to The Children of Light, Niebuhr envisioned tolerance as more broadly rooted in a recognition by the self of a bias for its own preferences.12 This bias arises out of an anxious concern of the self for its survival and because of the elusiveness of the meaning of its existence. It recognizes the partiality of its perspectives through a capacity for self-transcendence. Recognition by the self of this self-preferential inclination yields a broken confidence in one’s grasp of the truth and leads to “an intolerance of intolerance.” Niebuhr investigated these intricate dynamics of selfhood most tellingly in The Nature and Destiny of Man, and they form the backdrop to The Children of Light.
Niebuhr related tolerance ultimately to humility, which he described in The Children of Light largely in religious terms. Humility encourages people to moderate their natural pride and “to achieve some decent consciousness of the relativity of their own statement of even the most ultimate truth” (135). Although Niebuhr spoke of religious humility as being in “perfect accord” with the presuppositions of democratic society, he also considered it a rare achievement that requires “a very high form of religious commitment” (134). He therefore seemed to suggest that humility is a spiritual insight that transcends the political realm, with tolerance doing the work of encouraging citizens to endure their political differences and submitting them to the democratic process. But tolerance of this kind requires civic education and encouragement, and Niebuhr would likely cast a searching gaze on the failure of civil society to adequately provide that support.
One wonders how Niebuhr would view the present-day prospects for tolerance and humility in democratic life. He would likely be dismayed by the practice of aligning moral imperatives derived without hesitation from religious beliefs with partisan political agendas. He was skeptical of deducing proximate solutions from ultimate premises. He also predicted that if religious groups lacked humility and claimed an official sanction for their views, “the national community will be forced to save its unity through either secularism or authoritarianism” (137–38).
Niebuhr related tolerance ultimately to humility, which he described in The Children of Light largely in religious terms.
Niebuhr also disdained political dogmatism. Rigid political convictions conflict with what he considered the provisional character of democracy. He thought that any unqualified, nonnegotiable commitment to a political ideology or program could have ruinous effects. “Every absolute devotion to relative political ends (and all political ends are relative),” Niebuhr declared, “is a threat to communal peace” (151). Like Learned Hand’s dictum that “The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too sure it is right,” Niebuhr saw tolerance as requiring modesty about our grasp of truth. But Niebuhr did not think this modesty should lead us to renounce our convictions; rather, it should discipline our claims and grant us a degree of patience when we are offended by the views of others.13
Polarization, as Niebuhr might view it, is a sharp warning about a political community’s health. He saw the integration of subgroups—ethnic, religious—as a continuing challenge for democracy. Partisan rejection of the political opposition signals a disturbing level of social animosity and a belief that one’s own ideals are perfect (151–52). Long before Rawls, Niebuhr spoke of the need for an “overlapping of our diversities by our unities.”14 Not that these unities are seamless; they are not. But they include, importantly, systemic allegiance to the democratic process as preferable to coercive tyranny or unbounded libertarianism.
Niebuhr would also likely see the rejection of factual objectivity in public discourse and the rise of siloed sources of information and disinformation as a particularly malignant development. Not only does this phenomenon render democratic discussion and deliberation increasingly difficult, if not unmanageable, but it fosters demonization of political opponents. He believed that if one political faction refused to view its opponents as legitimate and instead saw them as a danger to the political community, then the community itself was endangered. He sensed this danger in 1954 in mounting partisan attacks on the Roosevelt era as “twenty years of treason.” He wrote in response: “Whenever the followers of one political party persuade themselves that the future of the nation is not safe with the opposition in power, it becomes fairly certain that the nation’s future is not safe, no matter which party rules.”15
Every democracy, in Niebuhr’s eyes, must manage its competing needs for both order and openness, for stability and creativity, for liberty and “working principles of justice,” including “a transcendent principle of equality” (73–74). While securing these necessities results in some restraints on individual freedom, they should not be oppressive, for the welfare of both the community and its members depends on the vitalities of individual selves (63–64). This requires a delicate and continuing balancing of collective and individual interests (78).
One particular field in which this balancing is necessary is environmental protection. The environment was a fairly distant concern in the 1940s, and Niebuhr did not mention it directly in The Children of Light. But he did devote a chapter to the concept of private property and its social function (86–118). He argued for a social understanding of property over an individualistic one; he saw property as a form of power that can be used as “an instrument of particular interest against the general interest” (106). The environmental crisis, by endangering the common goods necessary for physical life, has intensified the challenge of appropriately guarding private property rights while protecting the collective good. As with the other topics he addressed in the book, this requires political mediation between individual and collective interests, a task complicated by the fact that every balance struck between the two is not fixed but proximate, constantly subject to revision by changes in, for example, technics, economics, and public opinion. Niebuhr also noted the presence of a libertarian strand in the American political tradition that is solicitous of individual rights, and it also complicates this task of balancing.16
Both the idealism of “a higher law” and a recognition of the political role of power are necessary, but not one at the expense of the other. Democracy is a matter . . . of combining elements of both in a coherent politics of realism.
In general, Niebuhr sought a democratic politics that mediated the extremes of an unrealistic and irresponsible idealism and a cynical infatuation with power. Both the idealism of “a higher law” and a recognition of the political role of power are necessary, but not one at the expense of the other. Democracy is a matter not only of balancing them, but of combining elements of both in a coherent politics of realism. Although the children of light and darkness of 1944 are no longer with us, the tendencies they represented remain. Idealism, though more sober and restrained now than it was then, is still a potent and necessary political impulse. Viewed eight decades later, Niebuhr’s criticism of the children of light seems a bit too harsh. Nevertheless, he rightly faulted them for their obliviousness to self-interest, including their own. His critique of the children of darkness was somewhat less severe, partly because he expected less of them. They are cynics, and they know it, and Niebuhr’s concern was less to wean them from their cynicism than to constrain them.
Niebuhr’s vindication of democracy depends crucially on his understanding of the anthropological dimension of politics. Today some, and perhaps many, consider the concept of human nature to be too speculative or contested or abstract to be useful. Given his belief that the notion of politics in the social sciences was too limited, Niebuhr felt it necessary to emphasize the human element. His universal claims about humanity have been justifiably criticized as too ambitious, essentialist and indifferent to the contingencies of history, culture, and gender; nevertheless, they remain illuminating for many. In Niebuhr’s account, human beings and their communities require freedom and order. Democratic institutions seek to secure both by ensuring that power is dispersed. Though essential, institutional structures alone are not sufficient to secure a proper balance of individual and collective needs. They are historically contingent in their design and operation, as is evident in certain institutional arrangements of the US Constitution, such as the electoral college and the apportionment of the US Senate.
A mature and realistic sense of the human dimension of democracy is also necessary. Though few nowadays may see liberal sentimentality as a pressing problem for democracy, Niebuhr’s identification of persistent inclinations toward idealism and cynicism in political thought and action, and his recognition of self-interest as a pervasive element in political life, remain valuable. His searching account of the impact of our understanding of the effect of human infirmities and capabilities on our politics, of the persistent tensions between the individual and society, and of the corrigibility and contingency of political orders transcends the mid-century context of The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. The ways we understand ourselves as persons affect the ways we understand ourselves as citizens, and for that reason the book continues to be relevant to our thinking about our democratic selves.
Notes:
- John Hallowell, review of The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, by Reinhold Niebuhr, American Political Science Review 39, no. 3 (June 1945): 579–81, at 579.
- Henry Bamford Parkes, “Democracy and Freedom,” The Sewanee Review 53, no. 3 (Summer 1945): 476–86, at 484.
- Edward Heerema, review of The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, by Reinhold Niebuhr, Westminster Theological Journal 7, no. 2 (May 1945): 193–98, at 198.
- Morton White, Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism, 2nd rev. ed. (Beacon Press 1957), 257.
- Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense, with a new Introduction by Gary Dorrien (University of Chicago Press, 2011); pages appear in parentheses within the text.
- Niebuhr’s reflections on history appear in many of his writings, such as The Nature and Destiny of Man, Volume II: Human Destiny (Scribner, 1943), esp. 68–95, 299–314, and Faith and History: A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of History (Scribner, 1949).
- W. H. Auden, “The Means of Grace,” The New Republic, June 2, 1941, 766.
- Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (Scribner, 1960), xxvii.
- Joshua Mauldin, “The Children of Light in the Twenty-First Century: Global Conflict, Democracy, and the Politics of Despair,” in The Future of Christian Realism: International Conflict, Political Decay and the Crisis of Democracy, ed. Dallas Gingles et al. (Lexington Books, 2023), 161–70, at 161.
- I have dealt with this in Bradley Shingleton, “Toward a Niebuhrian Ethics of Democracy,” Theology Today 80, no. 3 (October 2023): 273–84 and “Reinhold Niebuhr and the Epistemics of Tolerance,” Theology Today (forthcoming).
- Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Sigmund, The Democratic Experience: Past and Prospects (Praeger, 1969), 81.
- For example, see Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol. 2 (Scribner, 1943), 213–43, and his “Christian Faith and Political Controversy,” in Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr, ed. D. B. Robertson (Peter Smith, 1976), 59–61, 66–72.
- “The Spirit of Liberty Speech by Judge Learned Hand, 1944,” thefire.org; Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny, vol. 2, 217.
- Reinhold Niebuhr, “Balanced Judgment and the Democratic Life,” Library of Congress, Reinhold Niebuhr papers, Box 15, 1.
- Reinhold Niebuhr, “Democracy and the Party Spirit,” in Love and Justice, 66–72, at 66.
- See, for example, Niebuhr’s observations in “Rationing and Democracy” (1942) in Love and Justice, 62.
Bradley Shingleton, MTS ’78, is an attorney based in the Washington, D.C. area and author of Modern Protestantism and Positive Law (Wipf and Stock, 2019).
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