This thesis comprises a re-evaluation of the feminist theological critique, as given by Valerie Saiving, Judith Plaskow, Daphne Hampson and Susan Nelson Dunfee, of Reinhold Niebuhr's doctrine of sin. The re-evaluation proceeds from a contextual interpretation of Niebuhr's theology in general and a contextual reading of his doctrine of sin in particular. My argument is that Niebuhr is deliberately and consistently a contextual theologian. I locate his contextual methodology in the open-ended approach of Christian realism. / The feminist critique is based on the assumption that Niebuhr universally defines the primary sin as pride. It is argued that pride is in fact a distinctly male characteristic, and, while quite plausibly the primary sin for men, is clearly not the primary sin for women. Niebuhr is guilty, that is, of confusing male reality with human reality in the doctrine. Saiving and Plaskow then develop a definition of women's sin which they correspond with Niebuhr's sin of sensuality. This type of sin, rather than being self-aggrandizing, is characterized by inordinate and destructive self-effacement. Their subsidiary argument is that Niebuhr erroneously treats sensuality, which should be equal but opposite to pride, as a secondary form of sin. / My argument in this thesis is that the critique rests on a mistaken assumption about the universality of Niebuhr's claim. His concerns were with the powerful. The contextual claim that pride is the primary form of sin in those who are empowered is being mistaken for a claim that pride is the primary sin for all people, regardless of gender or context. My subsidiary argument is that the correlation of women's sin with Niebuhr's understanding of sensuality is mistaken. What the feminists refer to as women's sin is in fact not sin at all for Niebuhr but evidence of injustice. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Boston University Includes bibliographical references (leaves 287-293). Abstract: leaves 294-301.

While few would deny America is the most powerful nation on earth, there is considerable debate, and controversy, over how America uses its foreign policy power. This is even truer since the “unipolar moment,” when America gained sole superpower status with the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. In the Cold War Reinhold Niebuhr was the main theological voice speaking to American power. In the Unipolar world, the Religious right emerged as the main theological voice, but instead of seeking to curb American power the Religious right embraced Neoconservatism in what I will call “Totemic Conservatism” to support use of America's power in the world and to triumph Manifest destiny in American foreign policy, which is the notion that America is a chosen nation, and this legitimizes its use of power and underpins its moral claims. I critique the Niebuhrian and Religious right legacies, and offer a classical realist strategy for theology to speak to America power and foreign policy, which avoids the neoconservative and religious conservative error of totemism, while avoiding the jettisoning of Niebuhr's theology by political liberals, and, the political ghettoizing of theology by his chief critics. This strategy is based on embracing the understanding of classical realism, but not taking the next step, which both Niebuhr and neoconservativism ultimately do, of moving from a prescriptive to a predictive strategy for American foreign policy. In this thesis, I argue that in the wake of the unipolar moment the embrace of the Religious right of Neoconservatism to triumph Manifest destiny in American foreign policy is a problematic commingling of faith and politics, and what is needed instead is a strategy of speaking to power rooted in classical realism but one which refines Niebuhrian realism to avoid the risk of progressing a Constantinian theology.