Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr.: Christian Realism, Pacifism, and the Beloved Community

Reinhold Niebuhr’s intellectual journey in the 1930’s away from the idealism of liberal Protestantism and the optimism of the Social Gospel toward the more sober understanding of Christian realism involved, among other things, a rejection of pacifism. While conceding that the use of force in international relations is morally perilous, Niebuhr saw the utopianism of the pacifist position “to be nothing more than a capitulation to tyranny”. Martin Luther King Jr. encountered Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society and other works in seminary a generation later. While he found much to praise in Niebuhr’s analysis, ultimately he rejected Niebuhr’s critique. Nevertheless, in spite of King’s very public embrace of Gandhi’s pacifism, one finds in King’s practice of non-violent resistance substantial engagement with Niebuhr’s ideas.