Theological Middle Names: Barack Reinhold Obama

Out of the blue I asked, “Have you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr?”
Obama’s tone changed. “I love him. He’s one of my favorite philosophers.”
So I asked, What do you take away from him?
“I take away,” Obama answered in a rush of words, “the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away … the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism.”
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Suddenly the old Niebuhr v. Yoder matchup becomes relevant (if only someone had recently written a book about Yoder, and if only it could get some attention in the blogosphere!) … in shorthand, working from my memory of a Yoderian “pamphlet” on Niebuhr:  while Niebuhr admits that the explicit Christian ethic is nonviolence, he affirms that this is unrealistic for “real” practice, whereas Yoder insists that a properly eschatological horizon makes nonviolence the condition of the real, rather than something conditioned by the real.  (Feel free to instruct me in the comments.)
 
So, let’s say one wants to criticize Obama on the basis of his Niebuhrianism — is this possible, without lapsing into so-called sectarianism?  That is, even if one wants to take Obama to task on “Christian” politics, does this have any meaning for the question of politics “as such”?  One ought not to lapse into a strong separation between Christian politics and a politics of nature, because: 1. this implies a false “safe haven” of church, 2. one must always talk about nature, 3. Yoder himself claims Jesus’s was a “secular” task.
 
I think it’s possible to affirm a “cell” politics, and concomitantly not to expect Obama (as “public” politician) to conform to the logic of such a cell, without resting at a sharp division between cell and public.  What is necessary is to think about how a “cell” might exert force on, how it might pressure, the public.  (And indeed, this is one reason to bless Obama:  we have a figure for whom pressure is not immediately/cynically brushed aside.)
 
The key is to have an ontology of forces, one in which nonviolence is not a reflection of nature, but rather a construction of nature.  If there’s anything intrinsically wrong with Obama’s citation of Niebuhr above, it’s that it claims to reflect nature — certain ideals are of value, but cannot be expected to be actualized (thus Niebuhr on Jesus’s nonviolence).  Nonviolence, then, is ontological, but as construction rather than reflection of being.  Importantly, the same holds for “rights”.  Rights, like nonviolence, do not preexist, they are created.  A state must be forced to enforced rights.  And this force comes not from natural rights, but from a (cell) politics that makes this force felt by the state.
 
A relation between cell politics and Obamian state politics requires, then: 1. the primacy of the cell politics, with its own immanent practice, but also with an eye to exerting the force of its construction on the state; 2. appreciation of the opportunity, with Obama, of a public that is relatively more malleable to such forcing; 3. insistence on the separation between cell and Niebuhrian-Obamian public, in virtue of the latter’s generic claim that certain goals are worthy yet not entirely possible — without being forced, such a claim justifies the state of the present, the state in its primacy.