THE OTHERS

Christians have always been somewhat at a loss when confronted with people who share their world, but not their faith. They tend to suffer from what W. H. Auden called “the conceit of the social worker: ‘We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don't know.’ ”

The puzzle becomes acute in politics. Here, the others tend to stick to their own opinions and to demand a voice in the choice, rather than passively submitting to “help” administered according to Christian insights. They insist on squabbling over details, rather than attending to the main point with meek heart and due reverence.

What are we to make of this intransigent otherness, which will not even submit to become the Other with a capital “O” – a conceptual otherness that can be located within my own horizon of meanings – but insists on being some particular other, a different point of view, or a different set of interests? In politics, I must respond to this other in some concrete way, modifying my practices and maybe even my beliefs in ways that take this specific otherness into account.

Politics seems not so much a field in which Christianity can be applied as one in which it is inevitably lost. The compromises and the preoccupation with mundane details that inevitably mark political solutions often seem poor soil for spiritual growth. Politics, like the theater, has been an occupation that Christians are counseled to avoid.

Reinhold Niebuhr, the pre-eminent Christian Realist, was also, however, eminently political. He was active in political organizations, civic commissions, and partisan politics.