Christian Realism in the New American Century

This essay provides a novel history of Christian Realism, its key themes, and the persistence of this analytical framework for nearly a century. Christian Realism is a community of discourse associated with scholars and foreign policy observers like Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey, but lives on today in the writings of Christian just war thinkers, international relations scholars, ethicists, and policy experts. Three generations of Christian Realism focus on anti-utopianism, anti-totalitarianism, and similar perspectives. Christian Realists share a continuity of approach to policy analyses from a distinctly Augustinian perspective. Both the theological themes--sin, human potential, limits and restraint, neighbor love--and the major foreign policy questions of war, security, and peace, have a certain perennial quality, whether the theorist is of the first (1932-65), second (1965-90), or the contemporary third generation (1991-present). This essay looks at the theological themes, the perennial questions Christian Realists address, and the increasingly orthodox theological commitments of today’s Christian Realists as compared to the theological liberals of Niebuhr’s era.