Barth, the Niebuhrs, and Other Demons: The American Evangelical Problem with Evil in the Twentieth Century

The problem of evil is, at root, the problem of a benevolent God’s immanence and authority in the world. If this question has preoccupied Christians since the birth of the church, the debate over divine authority and justice reached a frenzied peak in the mid-twentieth century. World war, the Holocaust, and the nuclear age bankrupted liberal theologians’ optimistic ideas about humans’ capacity to collaborate with God to perfect society, while cultural and political upheaval challenged the Bible’s traditional hold on modern life. No three individuals did more to set the terms of these debates in the Western world than Karl Barth and the Niebuhr brothers, H. Richard and Reinhold. Through trenchant critique of liberal Protestantism and modern culture—and sheer force of personal charisma—these men wielded wide influence even among conservative American evangelicals, a subculture often thought to be largely dismissive of theological ideas outside their own circles.

This paper combines a “Great Man” approach to history with consideration of grassroots cultural trends to analyze American evangelicalism’s complex relationship with three of the twentieth century's greatest theological personalities--and their notions of evil and God's action in the world. Evangelicals in communities ranging from Billy Graham’s coterie to Holiness churches and the Mennonites wrestled with these three thinkers as they grappled with the problem of evil and divine authority. Some loathed these icons of “neo-orthodoxy,” others admiringly drafted them into evangelical ranks—but none could ignore the Niebuhrs’ and Barth’s ideas as they debated the problem of evil, divine authority, the nature of sin, and cultural change in a broader context of the Cold War intellectual climate, disputes over biblical inerrancy, missionary efforts in the post-colonial world, a rising tide of religious enthusiasm in the charismatic renewal movement worldwide, and the culture wars at home.