The need for superstars
Middleton, Robert G.
cent sexuality. The last dominates much of the plot: Wang's mood, taken seriously, dominates Top Gun, a film about the son, a brash Californian headed for Stanford (Kelvin Han Yee) ...
...Den- Dennis McCann may well be right in ages have been those in which some pernis McCann's review in these pages contending that such "superstars" sons, out of whatever tangled motiva("The Last Superstar," Commonweal, exacted a heavy price from those around tions, have been willing to pay the price...
...As a seventeen-year-old So while Reinhold Niebuhr may be came apparent, as he expounded biblical freshman, hitherto successful in avoiding American theology's "last superstar," I passages with rare insight, that the Chris- church attendance, he was told to be sure am unable to celebrate the lack of such tian faith was a massive, subtle, and pro- to be in chapel on Sunday to hear an luminaries today...
...We can never superstars, but to those times when such communities of faith...
...TOM o'BRIEN REINHOLD NIEBUHR & HIS CRITICS The need for superstars ROBERT G. MI DDLETON important elements in Niebuhr's own feeling that a man who had an extraordithought...
...Now, with the direction of being more comprehensive, fusal to engage the possibility of publication of The First Coming, but less...
...Tony Scott directed...
...do I know how McCann arrives at his void of superstars, perhaps even of any 20 June 1986: 375 stars of lesser magnitude...
...In Sheehan's account, the programmatically announces in this sec"post-liberal" and even post-Christian "Abba" of Jesus seems (with emphasis...
...I sources and conclusions...
...Yale couple of lines a fitting description, when dismissed with supercilious condescen- historian David Brion Davis notes, in he speaks of: sion...
...is it a Sheehan intensifies and probably exag- In any case, Jesus is presented as retrue "higher synthesis" which is more gerates the element of discontinuity be- ducing apocalyptic to its existential core...
...The reality and range of human discontinuity-within-continuity...
...The two competing teenage males Walter Skaaren, Jack Cash, and John Epps wrote...
...the glory of key persons in any and temporal with the aura of the eternal...
...Reinhold Niebuhr, "rootless...
...Readers are offered a truncated...
...Maybe...
...But some powerful with English subtitles, which gives some idea of its authentic opening and closing action sequences catapult the viewer into texture...
...The person who deliv- temporary theological scene makes me destiny of man...
...The question is $19.95, 340 pp...
...macher called "the cultured despisers of Who were such superstars...
...It also has the defects of both market...
...But in Dim Sum the mystery death of a friend to greater emotional maturity...
...William Jennings Bryan, Richard through what he calls "teams," but what Hofstadter provided a thoughtful insight: I fear would be committees to get the task T HE RELATION between especially "Presumably he would have lost his done...
...This makes for some fine pho- Lt...
...The way to tell the story of the adults, his main interest, in a macho strutting is absurd...
...Walter Rauschenbush, Baron von Hugel, evangelism...
...Reinhold of faith set forth in the review had char- rootage in fact, but there is, nevertheless, Niebuhr: A Biography (Pantheon, acterized Niebuhr and the Christian a question to be faced...
...flight (and a kind of exhilarated vertigo) like nothing before...
...macho appear in this movie: sleek Tom Cruise plays the hero...
...Augustine, Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, Reinhold Niebuhr performed this parCommonweal: 376 ticular function with conspicuous suc- evangelists, but the John Courtney Mur- nity...
...Tracy "Too Cool" Skeels...
...In some repost-liberal and post-Christian...
...These assertions may have ular and religious press...
...He stake...
...He previously played in Dim Sum, a very successful films, echoing the first's jingoism and the second's already Chinese American film set in San Francisco that similarly familiar passage of young male hero through love and the exploited the mystery genre...
...Grudgingly, form its mind and then take it upon them- prophetic leadership within the church, McCann makes a place for theologians, selves to express that mind...
...Val teenage soap opera and with a device from sport movies to Kilmer and Whip Hubley play his rivals...
...the community is to speak witness new emphases emerged and old enriching the total community...
...As a, modern circuit-rider, speaking rays and the Reinhold Niebuhrs as well...
...He says he is Chronologically the book is surely historical Jesus announces the theme: building upon the questers...
...This is precisely the role of witness to the Gospel...
...Not always comsuperstars, and he has no sadness that the out of a sense of rootedness in the Chris- fortable either to speak or to hear, the superstars are gone...
...and technihave to joust out their rivalry over a ping pong table for the cal assistance was provided by the Navy and fighter pilots like Beijing youth championship...
...Why the neglect of Schillebeeckx responses to Sheehan's lengthy review on this same point, especially since essay, "Revolution in Catholicism," Sheehan seems to refer (at least indifirst published in The New York Review of sion is that the book moves, not in the rectly) to him throughout...
...Nevertheless, involved the central characters and here Wang has found no it has a kind of style, in part laughable and in part visceral...
...The dialogue is in English and Mandarin, flight instructor is beyond credibility...
...Sadly, the cinematic and aerial skills involved at the end T OP GUN is like Raw Bits, Garrison Keillor's hypothetical serve some bad politics: combat between Navy fighters and tough-guy breakfast cereal, which, according to adver- Soviet MIGs, breezily passed over as an event of little note...
...Such a stance is a denial of a basic spoke for them so perfectly that he never ingredient of the Hebrew-Christian tradi- spoke to them...
...The auappears into justice and charity...
...superstars, however, a description of Superstars also help to make the them as solitary individuals pursuing a theological discipline a worldly enterpurely individualistic vision of truth and prise...
...The task is not so cloistered kind of theological existence, ademic and intellectual community with much one of discovery but of selection...
...point with pride, in terms of the commuWhat he proposes is that we get away This is one of the important reasons nity's understanding of Christian misfrom isolated prophets and place the task why I lament instead of celebrate the sion, not to those periods devoid of of theological reflection within nurturing passing of the superstars...
...case that great and creative theological a significant American theologian...
...Watching this film, you sometimes feel you ican's brashness, but the suspense is too skimpy to make this need to be at least medium cool to deserve its air-conditioning...
...Nor, I Niebuhr's life...
...Their particular half of a particular vision of truth and area of address is to those Schleierjustice...
...My own impres- tween the pre- and post-Easter Jesus, This seems to mean that he relativizes 20 June 1986: 377...
...The casting of sultry McGillis as a compelling way...
...In his most frightening inadequacies were exposed and over- In a stimulating observation about vision, he sees theologians working come...
...Jesus, tice...
...But A Great Wall lacks power...
...academia could go on and on because about forty times a year in college and There are many illustrations of Reinhold Niebuhr, refusing to practice a university chapels, he confronted the ac- Niebuhr's impact...
...And what is can express itself, as an independent individual" and to trust the "whole transparently clear is that in no case did voice, calling the community to a new community's collective struggle to bear they wait for the whole community to awareness...
...On the con- serve to confront the secular world with trary, what precisely marks those I have the insights of the Christian tradition...
...realism's' vision of `moral vocation' is to age, but they were not, as he says of It is probably safe to say that we tend to be rescued from its own distortions...
...Why the cept Thomas Sheehan...
...these (plus or minus a few) are, and the others I have cited, I see two I confess, for some theological superstars surely, superstars of the past...
...The in- rants does he accept or reject evidence...
...roots" story memorable...
...Why the reBooks (June 14, 1984...
...It be- Cornell...
...through them...
...By their writings and actions, they justice simply does not 'fit...
...Still, in Sheehan gives us a sustained treatment of religious experience grows progressively fairness let me say that what Sheehan his major point...
...When Justin Martyr spoke of Jesus' Part One attempts an "imaginative refor Sheehan, destroys the notion of God- "first coming" as the abandonment of construction" of the historical Jesus on in-himself, who now abdicates and dis- privilege and divine form, the divine the basis of the various quests...
...Nor can there be ROBERT G. MIDDLETON is a minister of the long-suffering women in his life" really any dissent from the proposition that the American Baptist Church now living in Ocean felt about their relation to Niebuhr, nor contemporary theological scene is dePark, Maine...
...The last dominates much of the plot: Wang's mood, taken seriously, dominates Top Gun, a film about the son, a brash Californian headed for Stanford (Kelvin Han Yee) "right stuff ' Navy pilots who cavalierly compare hi-tech F-14 takes a strong liking to his native cousin, provoking both dogfights to "sex in a car wreck...
...The same delightfully makes one an airhead...
...It should indi- that today no Protestant preacher could we kneel cate that not only do the Fulton Sheens make anything like Niebuhr's impact on To consecrate the flicker, not the and Billy Grahams deserve the status of the academic and intellectual commu- flame...
...This citing of tributes from cess...
...basically abolishes christology...
...In sentences that fathom the mystery of why such figures persons have forced us out of comfortbring disturbing reminders of David emerge but we can, I think, document the able lethargy...
...In others, that's like sayitatively, is the book a true sublation of ical aspirations...
...and out of their vital demonstrated this quality, correcting and community...
...But Sheehan reads this as very difficult to trace the links between "undecidability" between humanity and meaning the divine disappearance...
...If it is indeed true that the debt owed to this important figure and suspect, would we have been enriched by insight into spiritual reality always serving, it is hoped, as an incentive for a the insights of many of the other great comes with a cost attached, it is also the new generation to explore the thought of figures in the past...
...As I think of Reinhold Niebuhr theological scene, I am left with a desire, Newman...
...Books:ABSOLOiELY ABSENT TWO YEARS ago, in the summer and THE FIRST COMING never effectively engaging the large body fall of 1984, it almost appeared as if Thomas Sheehan of scholarship which argues for a sigCommonweal had space for no one ex- Random House, $17.95, 272 pp...
...In his life-long stream of tion, for that tradition has a deep and impassioned rhetoric he communicated even passionate commitment to the only what they already believed" (The genius of religion as a communal matter...
...transparent...
...By what criteria and warat the heart of being is now a bit more the flow and pathos of the text...
...tion he tries to argue in the book's reinterpretation of the Jesus event which but a cipher for human charity and jus- mainder...
...American Political Tradition, Vintage As I think of figures I would call Books, 1948, p. 190...
...How does divinity in a post-Jesus era...
...During that time misinterpretation of Bultmann on this nearly three entire issues were devoted to William M. Thompson point...
...The "name- think...
...This was no small service to render line with Dennis McCann's observation, books that are as altars where the faith in Niebuhr's era...
...These are, for varying ing one can complete the upper levels of a the contribution of "liberal" scholars reasons, the creations of the later church...
...troductory survey of the quests for the This all remains unstated...
...He sees and Hans Kung...
...What we need are with the exuberant creativity which is present temptation to invest the transient theological communities, if `Christian part of...
...gifted persons and the whole com- political effectiveness if he had learned to I am not making a case here for free- munity is, of course, complex, but it is look at his supporters with a critical eye, lance superstars who, in splendid isola- hardly so mysterious that we can afford but his capacity for identifying himself tion, direct their judgments and counsel to overlook the contribution of the with them was costly, for it gave them to a community in which they have no not so much leadership as expression...
...In Reinhold Niebuhr's case, McCann's designation of Reinhold I do not know enough to say what "the Niebuhr as a superstar...
...It is my contention that, rected to the religious institution, is a Reinhold Niebuhr as the last of the in every case, such persons functioned perennial necessity...
...March 14, 1986) certainly manifests them and paid a heavy price in their own There can be no argument with Dennis qualities of paradox and irony that were experience...
...They have been, in prophetic word is, nevertheless, the one dance to theological celebrities," Dennis McCann's terms, "restless," chance the body has to avoid the everMcCann writes...
...resolve his cultural clash...
...Coming signal contributions they have made to to emerge and, by their presence, lift closer to our era, we'd have to include the Christian cause: prophesy and contemporary theology out of its tedium...
...Such expositions might ered the summons was the Jewish girl feel that the American poet, Edwin Arnot lead others to accept the faith as truth, who was president of the campus chapter lington Robinson, has given us in a but no longer could Christian faith be of the Young Communist League...
...tisements on "A Prairie Home Companion," is meant for The film will succeed, and corrupt, precisely because it so folks so special that you have to apply to eat it...
...This is, however, precisely what Den- Barth, Temple, the Niebuhrs, Tillich, A word of prophetic judgment, dinis McCann does not want...
...and even of the Christian reality...
...Sheehan make his choices among differless and unattainable mystery" inscribed Readers will not be disappointed by ing accounts...
...It No doubt Wang provided these scenes to get the film made lacks the former's wild sincerity and the latter's raw treatment by associating it with some recognizable genres now on the of genuine emotional needs...
...It is, I believe, a very imporpersons would agree on every detail, but tant aspect of contemporary mission...
...But, qual- Jesus entertained no divine or christolog- spects, surely...
...Even their names seem to have tography, and neatly climaxes the conflict posed by the Amer- gone on a diet...
...Surveying this Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Kierkegaard, superstar...
...demonstrated that Christian faith had valthe Christian faith as a singularly power- Historian William E. Leuchtenburg re- idity by reason of its profound analysis of ful force, capable of illuminating the counts an incident from his experience at the human venture...
...nificant measure of continuity...
...Wang has tried to provide some drama, mostly with the Anthony Edwards and Kelley McGillis play his friends...
...Only the young, lean, and parental anxiety and hostility from her native boyfriend...
...Top Gun melds Rambo and An Officer and a Gentleman...
...nary capacity for self-evaluation could THE BIOGRAPHY of Reinhold Irony is clearly discernible in have used his activities so that they Niebuhr by Richard Fox has had McCann's review, for if the relation be- "masked an unholy temptation to selfmany excellent reviews in the sec- tween an individual and the community evasion...
...So let us be patient...
...This requires, not so much Riesman's "other-directed man," fact that their emergence marvelously a mouthpiece by which the community McCann wants to get rid of the "heroic served the Christian cause...
...Religion kenosis or self-emptying is probably thor has done a lot of reading, but it's is transcended, and there is a kind of what's meant...
...human situation with real light...
...adequate to experience...
...building with only a bulldozer...
...in mind is responsible participation in a Though it is a term that may be badly believing community, speaking out of misunderstood, they are in the best sense the community to the community on be- of the word evangelists...
...and the reviews it has community of his day, there would have whether, granting all this, the Christian occasioned serve a helpful purpose, re- been no biography by Richard Fox to be community is the richer for the witness of minding those influenced by Niebuhr of reviewed by Dennis McCann...
...A survey of the confound interpretation of "the nature and unusual preacher...
...So I say good rid- tian community...
...They wrote, and the superstars I've mentioned have but such beings are not to speak to the spoke, and acted...
...No two religion...
Vol. 113 • June 1986 • No. 12
