ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the critique Reinhold Niebuhr's understanding of Christian Realism as a politics. It also explores the implications of Niebuhr's realism for his understanding of the role of the church. The chapter shows how Niebuhr's account of realism provides more a legitimating ideology for America's political arrangements than it does a faithful explication of a political theology rooted in Scripture. Niebuhr's realism and his correlative understanding of the place of religion in liberal societies we think can be illumined by comparing his views with those of two of the key interpreters of liberalism for the American republic, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. It also shows that the irony of Niebuhr is that it is precisely his antiliberal social criticism that turns out to provide a justification of liberal politics. Niebuhr's ahistorical account of politics blames the violence of modern nation-states on the timeless nature of social groups.
