Realism is a political theory that views politics as a realm shorn of all moral and ethical constraints. Sometimes called "power politics", a realist politics is not motivated by concerns for the common good or virtue, but rather by self-interest, necessity, and most of all, maximization of power. According to realism, politics is seen as limited only by power constraints, not by ethical constraints about what may or may not be just. Realism can be summed up as "they that have odds of power exact as much as they can, and the weak yield to such conditions as they can get".
Some big names are attached to a realist ethos: Thucydides -- who wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War -- Thomas Hobbes and Machiavelli. In some ways, realism is a kind of pre-Christian philosophy. It's the politics of Athens and Sparta and Rome, not of Jesus. In fact, pre-modern and modern advocates of reviving realism have seen Christianity as a threat. Rousseau, for example, said that Christians were wretched citizens, that politically, they were like lambs being led to the slaughter. In the public square, Rousseau wanted Christianity replaced with a hearty civic religion, which espoused virtues more in line with a realist agenda than a Christian one. Christian virtues, of which Nietzsche was so critical, were effeminizing virtues that encouraged citizens to be weak, passive, and unfit for civic life or political leadership.
(As an aside, we've done that very public religion thing in the US. But that's for another day.)
So how do we get from Christianity being the enemy of realism, to a political theory called "Christian realism"? The first place to look is in the political theory and public theology of Augustine. According to Augustine, the moral vision of Jesus couldn't provide the basis for a viable political and social ethic. Rather, Augustine argued that the gospel ethic such as found in the Sermon on the Mount (love of enemies, non-resistance, etc.) were rather intended for an interior ethic that would no doubt influence Christian behavior but not wholly dictate Christian participation in the world. In other words, Christian morality sets certain limits on behavior, but the moral vision of Jesus was considered an impossible ideal, not achievable in this world.
The place we see this form of Christian realism playing itself out is in the doctrine of just war. Although it seems as if Jesus' ethic, and Paul's as well, would prohibit Christians from participating in war, or any form of violent resistance, Augustine argued against the pacifists of his day that Jesus was actually only talking about one's inner intention, not one's behavior when he said to "resist not an enemy". Augustine thought that Christians could participate in war and kill enemies of Rome, but they had to do so with a inner disposition of love, not of revenge or hatred. Christian realism thus becomes a kind of "ethic of compromise" between the strong realism of the secular order and the non-violent perfectionist ethic of Jesus.
In the contemporary period, the phrase "Christian realism" immediately brings to mind the Protestant Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. According to Niebuhr, conflict and violence are pervasive features of human life. The ethics of Jesus, what Niebuhr called an ethic of agape or Christian love can never provide the basis for a political or social ethic, but an ethic of agape can inform the social and political realm, curbing the inevitable conflict and violence and providing the baseline for a minimal ethic of justice. Like Augustine, Niebuhr thought that Christian ethics could set limits on a stronger realist ethic based solely on power, but Christian ethics could not expect to totally obliterate violent struggles for power. In fact, Niebuhr strongly supported certain struggles for power, such as those between the USSR and the USA as the "lesser of two evils".
Christian realists are unanimously convinced that Jesus' standard of morality is an impossible ideal. You simply cann't love your enemy, resist all evil, or go the extra mile in our sinful world. Moreover, Christian realists are unanimously terrified that if Christians did try and live out Jesus' ethics, the consequences would be horrible. Luther thought, for example, that if Christians tried to live as pacifists, the "ravenous wolves" of the world would take over the Christian church and herald in the reign of Satan. Augustine was terrified of the chaos that accompanied war and other social upheaval and considered such chaos to be antithetical to the Christian life. Thus it was better for Christians to compromise their ethic in order to prevent the greater evil of social chaos than it was for them to live out the moral vision of Jesus. Reinhold Niebuhr was a little more fatalistic. He thought that human beings simply couldn't live as Jesus had commanded them and to try to do so, like the liberal Protestant followers of the Social Gospel in his day were doing, were setting themselves up for disaster.
President Obama always supports the idea that you cann't rid the world from evil, but you also can't be afraid of getting your hands a little dirty. So fight what evil you can. Moral compromises are necessary if you expect to achieve any sort of moral victory, however small it might be.
It all sounds well and good, with just one small problem: It doesn't sound like Jesus.
Reading the Sermon on the Mount, for example, I don't get the impression that Jesus was laying out an impossible ideal for Christian morality, but really and truly telling his followers how to behave. Moreover, Jesus seems to acknowledge that his ethic, while not impossible to live out, will not be an ethics of power, that is, a realist ethic. We see this especially in the reading from Mark 8.27-9.1 where Jesus asks the question, "Who do men say that I am?" Peter gives the correct answer, that Jesus is the Messiah, but errs in assuming that Jesus will be a powerful Messiah, indicated by Jesus' harsh rebuke to "Get behind me, Satan. For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things". As Stanley Hauerwas, one of the most famous Christian advocates of non-violence alive today, writes, "Jesus insists it is possible, if God's rule is acknowledged and trusted, to serve without power".
The coercive struggles for power that form the status quo for the world's political activity, which we have defined here as realism, are not the ways of the Christian. Rather, the cross is the only basis for a Christian realism. The cross reveals the reality of the world -- namely, that sin is real and that sin has usurped the rule of God. And the cross also reveals what Christians can expect from the world if they are faithful to their call of discipleship. Faithful Christian disciples have to be prepared to sacrifice themselves, to stretch out their arms and say "Father forgive them, they know not what they do".
Compare that to President Obama's words when he received the Nobel Peace Prize:
[A]s a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by [Gandhi and King's] examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason. So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another -- that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause and to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.I understand why the President doesn't want to accept Jesus' non-violence on the surface. But I do think Jesus' non-violence is the only cure for the realism that so embraces Christians. Love and evil aren't opposing forces. Because Christian love overcomes evil, not by force, but by imagination and inspiration. Christian love provides a witness -- not to the truth of violence -- but to the best and noblest in humans. In the wake of such love, evil is impotent because it is exposed as the cancer it is.
Obama seems to think that if good is to overcome evil, force will be necessary. Jesus disagrees.
As Stanley Hauerwas rightly notes:
Jesus' cross ... is not merely a general symbol of the moral significance of self-sacrifice. The cross is not the confirmation of the facile assumption that it is better to give than receive. Rather, the cross is Jesus' ultimate dispossession through which God has conquered the powers of this world. The cross is not just a symbol of God's kingdom; it is that kingdom come.Jesus doesn't play power politics. He doesn't fight the evil of the world on evil's terms. He doesn't use violence, power, and coercion to fulfill his mission. Nor does he expect his disciples to. Jesus invites his disciples to his own non-violent love, a love that will indeed overcome the powers of the world, but not through coercion and force.