A basic starting point for the combination of Christianity and IR’s theory of realism must be that Christianity has influenced realism, or that they share some fundamental assumptions about the world, so much so that a combination is justified. We refer here to what can be considered Christian based on biblical scripture, exegesis, and revelation, and its combination with the specific IR theory of classical realism, as opposed to other theoretical branches of IR realism. In recent years, a renewed interest for Christian realism and its core scholars can be observed (Polinder 2024; Moore 2020; Troy 2018). We also see how the powers that be, from Trump to Putin, use the church for their worldly purposes. There is thus a need for an analysis of what Christian realism means. This article will try to make sense of this theoretical combination and identify core commonalities and shared assumptions – but argue that Christian realism rests on unstable foundations as what separates Christianity from realism seems to be greater than what warrants a combination. Besides, the theoretical insights that Christian realism offers are not so different from classical realism that it justifies a new moniker.
The strongest theoretical connection between Christianity and classical realism lies in moral imperfection. Classical realism refers to the problem of human nature (Morgenthau 1946, 1948), and Christianity refers to sin as the fundamental problem of man. Human nature is self-interested and power-seeking vices such as covetousness, hubris, vainity, and recklessness push human beings and states into reoccurring conflict and strife, war and misery. There are further commonalities in the cyclical understanding of how political kingdoms, or great powers, rise and decline through wars, and how they impose transient hegemonic rule over their subjects – from Egypt to Babylon and Rome, from Russia to the United Kingdom and the United States. Utopian schemes of various kinds have been implemented but they invariably fall short due to moral decay and unrighteousness. First-order sin thus aggregates and becomes second-order “social sin” (Niebuhr 2013).
Another reflection offers further similarities between the utopian skepticism prominent among classical realist thinkers and the truth that Jesus speaks to power. The example of Jesus forgiving a woman taken in adultery illustrates what I mean. Let us start with the text:
The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’… Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’… At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there (John 8:3-9).
If we look at the intricacies of the biblical pericope, it is revealed that it is hard, if not impossible, to implement a utopian order without turning against your own principles (here exemplified by adultery vs murder, 6th vs 5th commandment). Neither would a utopian project be able to transcend power, as the necessity of force will always be there in the very implementation of the utopian scheme (here exemplified by stoning in order to implement Mosaic Law). In addition, utopia is related to some kind of perfection, which is not attainable (here exemplified by the fact that none is without sin). We are, in some sense, destined to live in a fallen world. Yet here the similarities stop, and the contradictions ensue.
A central point of contention concerns the worldly realm. As Jesus put it, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Based on this scripture, Swedish priest and Professor in theology, Gustaf Wingren, preached 1943 in Motala, as the Second World War was tearing Europe apart, that “no kingdom on earth, no political kingdom, will ever be part of Jesus kingdom,” while firmly distancing himself from racial and nation-based claims to loyalty (Wingren 2010: 15-18). This is firmly at odds with the realist perspective. Nowhere better expressed than in the instruction by Kwamee Nkrumah to his fellow nationalists: “seek ye first the political kingdom” (Nkrumah, 1963: 50). Nkrumah’s contention captures the radical opposition between the Christian and the realist kingdoms, between the realist focus on state sovereignty and the Christian insistence on divine sovereignty.
Like Melchizedek, King of Salem, who gave Abram bread and wine and blessed him in the name of God Most High (Genesis 14:17-24), Jesus severed the blood tie by welcoming the gentiles into the Kingdom of God. For Christians, “there is only one way to the kingdom of Christ: to receive in faith and obedience the word of Christ, to carry our cross and to live in love” (Wingren 2010: 16). Whereas for realists, the national political community – most often based on blood – remains sovereign and demands our loyalty. As Robert Gilpin (1984: 290) puts it:
The building blocks and ultimate units of social and political life are not the individuals of liberal thought nor the classes of Marxism…Realism, as I interpret it, holds that the foundation of political life is what Ralf Dahrendorf has called ‘conflict groups.’This is another way of saying that in a world of scarce resources and conflict over the distribution of those resources, human beings confront one another ultimately as members of groups, and not as isolated individuals. Homo sapiens is a tribal species, and loyalty to the tribe for most of us ranks above all loyalties other than that of the family. In the modern world, we have given the name ‘nation-state’ to these competing tribes and the name ‘nationalism’ to this form of loyalty.
A Christian that disobeys the legitimate cause of the political kingdom because his loyalty resides in the heavenly realm is simply put an apostate for the realist. The only acceptable political theology is a Christianity that fights for the political kingdom, like Evangelicals supporting the Trump administration or the Russian Orthodox church supporting the war in Ukraine. This is further revealed in the clear opposition between core moral tenets. As Jesus put it, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also” (Matthew 5: 38-40). This Christian stance is juxtaposed to the political stance, best expressed by Max Weber in his lecture “Politics as a Vocation”:
Take the example, ‘turn the other cheek’: This command is unconditional and does not question the source of the other’s authority to strike… for the politician the reverse proposition holds, ‘thou shalt resist evil by force,’ or else you are responsible for the evil” (Weber 1946, emphasis added).
The difference here further concerns how to solve the perennial problem of war and conflict. Christian pacifists do not only regard “turning the other cheek” as morally right but also as the best conflict resolution mechanism. One that rejects instinctive retaliation and revenge, and through moral courage, humility, and love opens for reconciliation while breaking the cycle of violence at an inter-personal level. Realists, on the other hand, emphasize the national interest and the pragmatic need to take the balance of power into account when exercising power at the inter-state level. To this end, politicians should pursue the virtue of prudence over lofty normative goals such as naive Christian convictions.
Apart from distinguishing between a Christian deontological logic-of-appropriateness and a realist utilitarian logic-of-consequence, which becomes a partial exercise since both logics in fact applies to both perspectives, yet in different ways, there is nonetheless a clear difference in the emphasis on different levels of analysis. As expressed in Book of Acts, the Christian message is primarily about following “The Way” in everyday life, whereas the realist message is primarily about edifying statesmen about virtues and vices in the international realm of power politics.
One could disagree by claiming that the Christian perspective is very much in line with the realist emphasis on political order. God’s moral law applies to civil polities, we have a duty to obey worldly authorities, and wars can be just, as articulated by Apostle Paul in Romans 13 and beyond (Patterson 2020). Yet, the sovereign state equality demands a rejection of universalism, and nationalism establishes the dignity of the citizen (Greenfeld 1993), while Christian universalism rejects this state partiality and establishes the dignity of the individual as a responsible human being imbued with agency and worth – covering citizens and non-citizens alike. Whereas the state ultimately can demand that their bureaucrats become informers of undocumented migrants, they are safe in the church, at least until the state by force violates the holy covenant.
Let me illustrate further by quoting Gustaf Wingren’s sermon in Motala at greater length. The passage displays a fundamental opposition to three core realist assumptions –
self-help, statism, and distrust – and to willful exercise of power:
A true disciple of Christ is on guard against his selfishness, he is willing to serve his neighbor… Christ’s commandment is the commandment of love, which demands that every person, even the poor and terminally ill, must be granted the right to life and must not be handled carelessly by the strong and rich… [People] have fallen into a rampant idolatry of the earthly good, a worship of the money, the colonies, the standard of living, the “living space”… (Wingren 2010: 18, emphasis added).
Realism postulates self-help as the only viable strategy in a hostile a world, Christianity preaches other-help. Realism postulates that states are distrustful of their neighbors, as captured by the concept of the security dilemma, Christianity urges us to serve our neighbors. Christianity teaches us to be vigilant against state idolatry, realism reveres the state and the positional goods it seeks to acquire – wealth, territory, status. That Christ commands us to help the weak, the sick, to defend the oppressed, and to support widows and the fatherless (Isaiah 1:17), stands in opposition to the Darwinian realist dictum that “might makes right” – what counts is power, not morality. Even if we observe the world and think the latter sadly makes empirical sense, normative obligations aside from raison d’etat are foreign to realists.
Despite commonalities in terms of a cyclical understanding of how political kingdoms rise and fall, there is a Christian eschatological perspective that realists do not share. For realists, the recurrent struggle between great powers will, in principle, continue forever, whereas for Christians it will only last until The Second Coming. The political theology of liberalism (“end of history”) and Marxism (“classless society”) bear closer resemblance in terms of eschatological thought. Realists would further emphasize the transient nature of hegemonic rule, whereas as the Book of Revelation emphasizes a system logic that covers all irrespective of great power – think of American credit rating agencies as “marks of the beast”. Those who are imprinted with the mark are devoted to the beast – let’s say, to capitalism – in both deed and belief, which resembles world systems analysis more than realism. The fact that the Christian message is “foolishness” to the world (1 Corinthians 1:18) should be enough to caution against such a combination of terms as the contradictions are greater than the similarities – and therefore do not warrant a combination.
References
Gilpin, Robert G. ”The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism”. International Organization 38, nr 2 (1984): 287–304.
Greenfeld, Liah. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Moore, Gregory J., och Gregory J. Moore. Niebuhrian International Relations: The Ethics of Foreign Policymaking. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Morgenthau, Hans J. Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1948.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics. 2nd edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013.
Nkrumah, Kwame. Africa Must Unite. New York: International Publishers, 1963.
Patterson, Eric. ”Eight Principles for Christian Realism” Providence, 23 september 2020. Available at
Polinder, Simon. Towards A New Christian Political Realism: The Amsterdam School of Philosophy and the Role of Religion in International Relations. Oxford, 2024.
Troy, Jodok (ed). Religion and the Realist Tradition: From Political Theology to International Relations Theory and Back. 2018.
Weber, Max. Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by Gerth and C. Wright Mills. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1946.
Wingren, Gustaf. Postilla: Gustaf Wingren predikar. Artos & Norma Bokförlag, 2010.
