When I was in junior high, I got into a war of wills with my mother. She was a hardcore Episcopalian, and was hellbent, no pun intended, on me getting confirmed in the church.
At the time, I had just emerged (mostly) from my nihilistic juvenile delinquent phase but had no interest whatsoever in religion
We butted heads but eventually struck a deal: I’d go to confirmation classes with Father Bill Kirkland, the new priest at St. Timothy’s in Hurricane, and then make my own decision.
Kirkland was one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever known, although I was slow in recognizing it. He was raised in rural Georgia as a severe fundamentalist, attending a very strict Baptist college with the original John Birch, for whom the hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory-believing John Birch Society was named.
Kirkland eventually moved on theologically but didn’t give up on religion. After serving in WW2, he studied theology at Edinburgh and at the famous Union Theological Seminary in New York. He taught philosophy at what would become the University of Charleston.
After a few classes, I began to conclude that this whole thing might not be as dumb as I thought. It apparently stuck, despite my best efforts to escape.
Kirkland was active and unafraid to speak out for social justice, but mostly he attended to priestly duties, celebrating sacraments, visiting congregants, comforting the sick, putting the dead to rest. After he retired, his ministry consisted of walking the dogs at the local animal shelter.
The course of my life would probably have been very different without his influence. He reminds me of a cryptic line from Psalm 110 about a mysterious holy man who blessed Abraham in Genesis: “Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”
I didn’t realize for years that he was a direct student of one of the greatest and most influential theologians of the 20th century, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), who left his mark in the halls of congress and on the picket lines of the labor and Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of Niebuhr’s “unswerving devotion to the ideals of freedom and justice”
I’d heard about Niebuhr for years, but my interest peaked years ago after reading Parting the Waters, the first volume of Taylor Branch’s powerful study of America in the King years. By then, I’d been working for the American Friends Service Committee for a few years, an organization that had close ties to Dr. King and others in the movement. I learned from Branch that Niebuhr was a major influence on King and many others. He has been claimed by people across the political spectrum—even people who weren’t religious.
Naturally, Kirkland was glad to share his memories of Niebuhr. I also took a l deep dive into his writings.
Niebuhr took the concept of sin seriously, but not the way we often use the term. He thought of it less as this or that misdeed but rather the all-too-human tendency to put ourselves and especially the groups we identify with (ethnic, racial, religious, national, political, etc.) at the center of the universe. If we all have this tendency as individuals, it is multiplied when we come to group behavior and social systems. Most individuals have consciences, but often the closest thing to the conscience of a group is its persecuted and despised minority.
He was fond of quoting St. Augustine (354-430) as saying that “Without justice what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers? And what is a band of robbers but such a kingdom in miniature?”
He also reminded us that we are often most dangerous when we think we’re the most righteous. You can call it human weakness, original sin, or evolutionary baggage, but ignore it at your peril. Many of the worst atrocities in history have been committed by true believers of one stripe or another who were sure they were right.
In Niebuhr’s view, there is no such thing as absolute purity. Human motivations are always ambiguous, and the conflicts of the world are between sinners, not between the totally evil and the totally righteous. That view may seem grim, but it’s a pretty good antidote for self-righteousness.
But if all are sinners, all haven’t done the same amount of damage. He called this “the equality of sin and the inequality of guilt.” There is a huge difference between the Roosevelts and the Hitlers of the world, one that matters.
This assessment of human nature challenges the ideas of inevitable progress or utopias, but the news about human nature wasn’t all bad. In addition to original sin, we’re also gifted with “original justice.” These views have profound political implications: to paraphrase a famous Niebuhr quote, our capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but our capacity for injustice makes it necessary.
For Dr. King, his theology was an antidote to “the false optimism characteristic of a great segment of Protestant liberalism” and “a persistent reminder of the reality of sin on every level of man’s [sic] existence.” According to Branch, King “came to describe Niebuhr as a prime influence on his life, and sometimes referred to Gandhian nonviolence as “a Niebuhrian stratagem of power.’”
In 1965, King invited Niebuhr, then 73, to participate in the famous march on Selma. He replied with regret that “Only a severe stroke prevents me from accepting … I hope there will be a massive demonstration of all the citizens with conscience in favor of the elemental human rights of voting and freedom of assembly.”
I’m grateful that, thanks to Kirkland, Niebuhr is part of my lineage. I learned this from him: a good society or group is one that is structured in such a way as to limit the amount of damage we can do to each other.
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