I want to begin by telling you how deeply this essay moved me.
You brought me back to my seminary days — to a worn paperback copy of The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness that I underlined within an inch of its life. I can still remember the jolt of recognition I felt the first time I read Niebuhr’s famous line: “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” It rearranged my thinking. It cured me, in one stroke, of the last vestiges of political romanticism.
Reading your essay, I felt that same jolt.
You retrieve Niebuhr with seriousness and sobriety. You refuse sentimental optimism. You refuse the illusion that norms enforce themselves. You insist that power must meet power, and that democratic conflict is not an aberration but a permanent condition of political life. That clarity is bracing — and needed.
And yet the very book you so skillfully retrieve presses me toward a further implication — one that feels especially urgent in our polarized moment.
Niebuhr’s categories of “children of light” and “children of darkness” are not tribal designations. They are not permanent identities affixed to one party or another. They describe tendencies that run through every movement — and through every human heart.
The children of light are not simply “the good guys.” They are those tempted toward naiveté — toward believing their virtue guarantees their righteousness. The children of darkness are not cartoon villains. They are those who understand power but sever it from moral restraint. And Niebuhr’s tragic insight is that both tendencies are perennial and universal.
Which means the most dangerous misreading of his framework would be to equate:
Right = darkness
Left = light.
The will to power does not respect party lines.
Collective egotism is not ideologically exclusive.
Moral self-deception flourishes wherever human beings gather.
Authoritarian energy on the right is real and must be resisted — I share your alarm. But if those who oppose it assume themselves immune to the same temptations of tribal absolutism, they risk drifting toward the very darkness they resist.
Niebuhr did not give us a map of good people versus bad people. He gave us an anthropology.
And that anthropology leads me toward something concrete.
If light and darkness run through all of us, then democracy will not be preserved merely by defeating one faction. It will be preserved by forming citizens capable of recognizing and restraining their own darker impulses while organizing effectively against injustice.
This is where I see enormous, often overlooked potential — in churches, synagogues, mosques, sanghas, temples, and other grassroots spiritual communities.
Yes, many congregations are struggling. Some have been captured by tribal dynamics we lament. But at their best, these communities remain among the last institutions that openly confess what Niebuhr knew: even the faithful wrestle with pride, wrath, envy, greed, fear.
They name the darkness within before denouncing it without.
And they do so not merely to shame, but to hold it in the presence of grace.
Here, I think, is something politically revolutionary.
The antidote to the Seven Deadly Sins — the Lively Virtues — is not simply moral exertion. It is Grace. A power that makes people new creations. A power that frees communities from the illusion that universal victory is required in order to live faithfully.
Jesus did not found a movement on guaranteed political triumph. He inaugurated a concrete way of life — communal, embodied, resilient — capable of remaining life-bearing even in the ashes of defeat.
That is not quietism. It is durability.
This is why I’ve begun imagining what I call Communities of Courage — interfaith, locally rooted networks where:
• Spiritual formation trains us to see the darkness in ourselves, not only in our opponents.
• Concrete economic solidarity restores dignity where humiliation has taken root.
• Cross-tribal civic engagement interrupts reflexive moral binaries.
• Disciplined, nonviolent counter-power is cultivated — because democracy does require organized strength.
Such communities would build countervailing power, yes. But they would also cultivate humility. They would resist authoritarianism without sanctifying themselves. They would organize courageously without surrendering self-critique.
In this sense, they would embody the full Niebuhr equation: capacity for justice and inclination toward injustice — in everyone.
You’ve been laboring in this space for years through Homebrewed Christianity, cultivating precisely the kind of theological realism and cross-boundary conversation this moment requires. I’m grateful for that long faithfulness. In my own smaller way, I’m in the process of reviving the Converging Paths Podcast — quiet for some years, but relaunching shortly — as a complementary space for spiritually serious, interfaith conversation in light of our present crisis. Not punditry, but formation. The kind that prepares people to live democratically, not merely vote democratically.
Your essay strengthens the realism we need. It reminds us that power must be met with power.
My hope is that alongside that necessary work, we will also build communities resilient enough to outlast our victories and our defeats — communities that take sin seriously and grace even more seriously, that resist without self-righteousness, organize without absolutizing themselves, and remain faithful even when outcomes are uncertain.
Democracy does not endure because one side finally wins.
It endures when its citizens are formed in ways that restrain their own certainties.
Thank you for sharpening the stakes.
Now the work before us is not only to contest the moment — but to cultivate the kind of people who can carry it.
Like, perhaps, Eric, this brilliant essay took me back to seminary days, and I recall debating with classmates and faculty whether Niebuhr was ONTOLOGICALLY characterizing the respective "children". My belief was - and still is - that he was speaking of DIRECTIONALLY or BEHAVIORALLY: Who is acting on their belief in TIKKUN OLAM as the outflow of Christian commitment, and who is acting as an outflow of the deeply human drive for power, domination, accumulation and exclusion. just a thought...
OK...I just left a comment about "what should we do," then I read your comment, Eric.
Great to see it and hear from you.
I'm getting to a very similar place. It seems to me re-building the trust of hyperlocal communities is a huge part/thing we need. I love your communities of courage ideas....
Not even sure it has to be interfaith...it feels like we need then inside each faith community. (Although I'm loving our own CLEARDFW clergy group...which is decidedly interfaith...)
as one long in recovery from blind idealism, you help explain the architecture of my rose colored glasses and how that idealism in the church has been manipulated by coercive power.
Grateful for you, your dedication to the difficult task of discipleship
Thank you so much you got me thinking. I struggle with Niebuhr's dualism of good vs. evil, but I also struggle to find a name for what is going on other than evil. I pray and I act in the midst of the struggle. We need to become wise and sly as Jesus' commanded. God bless you all.
Jesus H. Christ, Tripp, (to suddenly find my WW II Navy dad's turn of phrase when even HE was completely astonished):
This essay of yours curdled the cream still in my fridge. Absolutely solid work. You are reflecting and refining the works I've been reading into for the past two years (open heart surgery provides incentive for digging into life a little more deeply...) including Sarah Kendzior (The View from Flyover Country), Rachel... (This Woman Votes substack), Iain McGilchrist (The Master and His Emissary), Paul Kingsnorth (Against the Machine), Su Lin (Accelerationism meets Authoritarianism substack), Simone Weil (The Need for Roots) and, naturlich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
I am left thinking I need to review my stock of canned goods (I'd share...) and firewood. You've here provided a lens by which the pending collapse of the big, old, mainstream (if Episcopalians are that..) church I attended for ten years, and 'church' and its role in general. It's very, very necessary role that it appears to be intentionally avoiding, to my eyes, in its efforts to just get more seats into seats for ASA and pledge numbers.
More to follow. I'll be using your analysis here for the grid of assemblage of my own findings to share with, I dunno - somebody else who might have ears for grasping just how awful a corner we've been backed into by the greedy, grasping Bannons of The World. I'm also considering simple non-destructive means to deflate the tires of the ICE troopers. Nothing like needing to walk to your next "mission' to bring a tinge of humility.
Much to think about. After decades in journalism and progressive activism and Democratic politics, I don't disagree. I have known progressives who followed this advice -- my friend Cecil Richards, born of labor organizing, was one of them. She never looked for celebrity and focused on the unglamous work of respecting power and organizing it from the ground up. Did I mention celebrity? One of the developments that sidelined contemporary progressives was the celebrity canonization of elite consultants. This kind of worship happened in many fields. In progressive politics in led folks into cul de sac. I could go on. And I will later. But this is a brief comment so I'll leave you with a thank you.
I am deeply thankful to have listened tonight. I wish I had heard this earlier on. Now I must read some of Neibuhr's work just I started my journey with Bonhoeffer because of your on line discussions.
Excellent description of what we face. I have not read Niebuhr's book. But I have read most of Dr. Cornel West's work, and he advises a similar attitude, one of "tragicomic hope." But certainly, it is a good season for liberals to repent of our sins of omission.
Thanks SO much, Tripp! I can't wait to share this with about 50 of my current conversation partners< every one of whom I'm hoping will find their way to K.C. in October.
Solid precis on the issue. I think Niebuhr’s framework was a bit limiting, but that’s a personal quibble that doesn’t take away from your excellent analysis.
I'm thinking about Neibuhr almost daily...meditating on just how wise he was.
The thought behind all this which I keep coming to is that he was a theologian who took seriously AMERICAN sin and hubris...not just Nazi sin and hubris.
That's what, to me, makes him so relevant for today...and you've drawn some brilliant parallels.
The piece I still struggle with in our context is:
1. You are right: Too much resistance from Dems is still frames within a "fact checking" or trusting in truth/logic.
2. But, there is a growing movement of political leftists who see through that and seek to fight back more forcefully...but....
3. It seems they need the leaven of a spiritual discipline that is very Niebuhrian....but they see all religion/Christians as hopelessly helpless and unable to help them in any way.
So....I get stuck in my own "what should we be doing" meditation.
I came here tonight because I was meditating on the dangers of Christian innocence, which led to me a favorite old song (Henley's "end of innocensce") which led me here...
Interesting, thought provoking. The problem is that Steve Bannon (nor Reinhold Niebuhr) doesn’t speak for those of us (many more than the narrator/author knows). Only a Biblical-theistic worldview holds the truth about society and culture. Only a spiritual awakening and revival will “solve” the division and chaos of the “children of light” and “children of darkness”. Niebuhr had little understanding of the Biblical definition of the two “children”. His treatise is an adequate but incomplete treatment of the effects of the Fall in Genesis 3.
Great essay Tripp. I'm really enjoying these longform essays that you're putting out recently. They're so good that I'm I'm going to the substack after listening to them on the pod to reread.
While this is all true, as I see it, the problem we can't escape is that the whirlpool (neoliberialism) is not slacking but speeding up (Rosa) and it's going to take us all down.
I'm reading Sean McGrath's work on Political Eschatology and it's resonating. It would be awesome to hear you and him in conversation.
Dear Tripp,
I want to begin by telling you how deeply this essay moved me.
You brought me back to my seminary days — to a worn paperback copy of The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness that I underlined within an inch of its life. I can still remember the jolt of recognition I felt the first time I read Niebuhr’s famous line: “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” It rearranged my thinking. It cured me, in one stroke, of the last vestiges of political romanticism.
Reading your essay, I felt that same jolt.
You retrieve Niebuhr with seriousness and sobriety. You refuse sentimental optimism. You refuse the illusion that norms enforce themselves. You insist that power must meet power, and that democratic conflict is not an aberration but a permanent condition of political life. That clarity is bracing — and needed.
And yet the very book you so skillfully retrieve presses me toward a further implication — one that feels especially urgent in our polarized moment.
Niebuhr’s categories of “children of light” and “children of darkness” are not tribal designations. They are not permanent identities affixed to one party or another. They describe tendencies that run through every movement — and through every human heart.
The children of light are not simply “the good guys.” They are those tempted toward naiveté — toward believing their virtue guarantees their righteousness. The children of darkness are not cartoon villains. They are those who understand power but sever it from moral restraint. And Niebuhr’s tragic insight is that both tendencies are perennial and universal.
Which means the most dangerous misreading of his framework would be to equate:
Right = darkness
Left = light.
The will to power does not respect party lines.
Collective egotism is not ideologically exclusive.
Moral self-deception flourishes wherever human beings gather.
Authoritarian energy on the right is real and must be resisted — I share your alarm. But if those who oppose it assume themselves immune to the same temptations of tribal absolutism, they risk drifting toward the very darkness they resist.
Niebuhr did not give us a map of good people versus bad people. He gave us an anthropology.
And that anthropology leads me toward something concrete.
If light and darkness run through all of us, then democracy will not be preserved merely by defeating one faction. It will be preserved by forming citizens capable of recognizing and restraining their own darker impulses while organizing effectively against injustice.
This is where I see enormous, often overlooked potential — in churches, synagogues, mosques, sanghas, temples, and other grassroots spiritual communities.
Yes, many congregations are struggling. Some have been captured by tribal dynamics we lament. But at their best, these communities remain among the last institutions that openly confess what Niebuhr knew: even the faithful wrestle with pride, wrath, envy, greed, fear.
They name the darkness within before denouncing it without.
And they do so not merely to shame, but to hold it in the presence of grace.
Here, I think, is something politically revolutionary.
The antidote to the Seven Deadly Sins — the Lively Virtues — is not simply moral exertion. It is Grace. A power that makes people new creations. A power that frees communities from the illusion that universal victory is required in order to live faithfully.
Jesus did not found a movement on guaranteed political triumph. He inaugurated a concrete way of life — communal, embodied, resilient — capable of remaining life-bearing even in the ashes of defeat.
That is not quietism. It is durability.
This is why I’ve begun imagining what I call Communities of Courage — interfaith, locally rooted networks where:
• Spiritual formation trains us to see the darkness in ourselves, not only in our opponents.
• Concrete economic solidarity restores dignity where humiliation has taken root.
• Cross-tribal civic engagement interrupts reflexive moral binaries.
• Disciplined, nonviolent counter-power is cultivated — because democracy does require organized strength.
Such communities would build countervailing power, yes. But they would also cultivate humility. They would resist authoritarianism without sanctifying themselves. They would organize courageously without surrendering self-critique.
In this sense, they would embody the full Niebuhr equation: capacity for justice and inclination toward injustice — in everyone.
You’ve been laboring in this space for years through Homebrewed Christianity, cultivating precisely the kind of theological realism and cross-boundary conversation this moment requires. I’m grateful for that long faithfulness. In my own smaller way, I’m in the process of reviving the Converging Paths Podcast — quiet for some years, but relaunching shortly — as a complementary space for spiritually serious, interfaith conversation in light of our present crisis. Not punditry, but formation. The kind that prepares people to live democratically, not merely vote democratically.
Your essay strengthens the realism we need. It reminds us that power must be met with power.
My hope is that alongside that necessary work, we will also build communities resilient enough to outlast our victories and our defeats — communities that take sin seriously and grace even more seriously, that resist without self-righteousness, organize without absolutizing themselves, and remain faithful even when outcomes are uncertain.
Democracy does not endure because one side finally wins.
It endures when its citizens are formed in ways that restrain their own certainties.
Thank you for sharpening the stakes.
Now the work before us is not only to contest the moment — but to cultivate the kind of people who can carry it.
With gratitude and friendship,
— Eric
That's awesome Eric!
Incredibly insightful Eric, thanks for these thoughts. Tripp has a way of instigating the deeper thinking parts of our brain! :)
Thanks Lori!
Like, perhaps, Eric, this brilliant essay took me back to seminary days, and I recall debating with classmates and faculty whether Niebuhr was ONTOLOGICALLY characterizing the respective "children". My belief was - and still is - that he was speaking of DIRECTIONALLY or BEHAVIORALLY: Who is acting on their belief in TIKKUN OLAM as the outflow of Christian commitment, and who is acting as an outflow of the deeply human drive for power, domination, accumulation and exclusion. just a thought...
OK...I just left a comment about "what should we do," then I read your comment, Eric.
Great to see it and hear from you.
I'm getting to a very similar place. It seems to me re-building the trust of hyperlocal communities is a huge part/thing we need. I love your communities of courage ideas....
Not even sure it has to be interfaith...it feels like we need then inside each faith community. (Although I'm loving our own CLEARDFW clergy group...which is decidedly interfaith...)
Glad to find you comment....
Thanks, Eric. And amen to communities of courage springing up within specific faiths and faith communities as well as interfaith contexts!
Tripp,
as one long in recovery from blind idealism, you help explain the architecture of my rose colored glasses and how that idealism in the church has been manipulated by coercive power.
Grateful for you, your dedication to the difficult task of discipleship
Thanks for reading Christopher
Tripp,
Thank you so much you got me thinking. I struggle with Niebuhr's dualism of good vs. evil, but I also struggle to find a name for what is going on other than evil. I pray and I act in the midst of the struggle. We need to become wise and sly as Jesus' commanded. God bless you all.
Peace,
Fr. Isaac Martin
Thanks Isaac!
Jesus H. Christ, Tripp, (to suddenly find my WW II Navy dad's turn of phrase when even HE was completely astonished):
This essay of yours curdled the cream still in my fridge. Absolutely solid work. You are reflecting and refining the works I've been reading into for the past two years (open heart surgery provides incentive for digging into life a little more deeply...) including Sarah Kendzior (The View from Flyover Country), Rachel... (This Woman Votes substack), Iain McGilchrist (The Master and His Emissary), Paul Kingsnorth (Against the Machine), Su Lin (Accelerationism meets Authoritarianism substack), Simone Weil (The Need for Roots) and, naturlich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
I am left thinking I need to review my stock of canned goods (I'd share...) and firewood. You've here provided a lens by which the pending collapse of the big, old, mainstream (if Episcopalians are that..) church I attended for ten years, and 'church' and its role in general. It's very, very necessary role that it appears to be intentionally avoiding, to my eyes, in its efforts to just get more seats into seats for ASA and pledge numbers.
More to follow. I'll be using your analysis here for the grid of assemblage of my own findings to share with, I dunno - somebody else who might have ears for grasping just how awful a corner we've been backed into by the greedy, grasping Bannons of The World. I'm also considering simple non-destructive means to deflate the tires of the ICE troopers. Nothing like needing to walk to your next "mission' to bring a tinge of humility.
Tim Long, Just Up the Hill from Lock 15.
Thanks Tim
I'm thinking that my fifty year old Triumph Bonneville could get me to Kansas City in October. It's still warm enough...
Tim
Much to think about. After decades in journalism and progressive activism and Democratic politics, I don't disagree. I have known progressives who followed this advice -- my friend Cecil Richards, born of labor organizing, was one of them. She never looked for celebrity and focused on the unglamous work of respecting power and organizing it from the ground up. Did I mention celebrity? One of the developments that sidelined contemporary progressives was the celebrity canonization of elite consultants. This kind of worship happened in many fields. In progressive politics in led folks into cul de sac. I could go on. And I will later. But this is a brief comment so I'll leave you with a thank you.
I am deeply thankful to have listened tonight. I wish I had heard this earlier on. Now I must read some of Neibuhr's work just I started my journey with Bonhoeffer because of your on line discussions.
Thanks Barbara:)
Stellar essay Tripp! I can only add I absolutely agree with Eric's comments.
Excellent description of what we face. I have not read Niebuhr's book. But I have read most of Dr. Cornel West's work, and he advises a similar attitude, one of "tragicomic hope." But certainly, it is a good season for liberals to repent of our sins of omission.
Thanks Marg!
Thanks SO much, Tripp! I can't wait to share this with about 50 of my current conversation partners< every one of whom I'm hoping will find their way to K.C. in October.
Awesome!! Real friends invite friends to Theology Beer Camp!
If you lure a few into it, email me and I can grab a discount code. I remember there being something for friend group recruitment.
Brilliant - wish there was some way for it to gain more hearing and understanding.
Solid precis on the issue. I think Niebuhr’s framework was a bit limiting, but that’s a personal quibble that doesn’t take away from your excellent analysis.
I am suprised you didn’t put DB’s complaints about RN in your response :)
That is a true sign of your maturity.
I confess I have an unholy love of both men, particularly DB (he was my academic focus.)
But I do try to act my age. It's incredibly difficult. Lol.
I'm thinking about Neibuhr almost daily...meditating on just how wise he was.
The thought behind all this which I keep coming to is that he was a theologian who took seriously AMERICAN sin and hubris...not just Nazi sin and hubris.
That's what, to me, makes him so relevant for today...and you've drawn some brilliant parallels.
The piece I still struggle with in our context is:
1. You are right: Too much resistance from Dems is still frames within a "fact checking" or trusting in truth/logic.
2. But, there is a growing movement of political leftists who see through that and seek to fight back more forcefully...but....
3. It seems they need the leaven of a spiritual discipline that is very Niebuhrian....but they see all religion/Christians as hopelessly helpless and unable to help them in any way.
So....I get stuck in my own "what should we be doing" meditation.
I came here tonight because I was meditating on the dangers of Christian innocence, which led to me a favorite old song (Henley's "end of innocensce") which led me here...
This is how my brain rolls.
"Be shrewd as serpants and innocent as doves"
Thank you so much for this beautiful, brilliant and truly insightful essay. Blown away. Again, thank you !!
Interesting, thought provoking. The problem is that Steve Bannon (nor Reinhold Niebuhr) doesn’t speak for those of us (many more than the narrator/author knows). Only a Biblical-theistic worldview holds the truth about society and culture. Only a spiritual awakening and revival will “solve” the division and chaos of the “children of light” and “children of darkness”. Niebuhr had little understanding of the Biblical definition of the two “children”. His treatise is an adequate but incomplete treatment of the effects of the Fall in Genesis 3.
Great essay Tripp. I'm really enjoying these longform essays that you're putting out recently. They're so good that I'm I'm going to the substack after listening to them on the pod to reread.
While this is all true, as I see it, the problem we can't escape is that the whirlpool (neoliberialism) is not slacking but speeding up (Rosa) and it's going to take us all down.
I'm reading Sean McGrath's work on Political Eschatology and it's resonating. It would be awesome to hear you and him in conversation.