Article
To discuss nonviolence in 1976 seems insane. We dare not cry peace, for there is no peace on earth today — and there shouldn’t be any. Our planet is lurching toward a nuclear Armageddon. The superpowers are armed with thousands of megaton weapons, each of which has a greater destructive power than all conventional explosives …
Article
Few moral and theological positions are as deeply cherished by their adherents, yet so quickly dismissed by their opponents, as pacifism. The moral legitimacy of using violence is among the most urgent issues of our time, and yet its discussion slips quickly into an exchange of stereotypes. Pacifists are to be commended, even admired—runs the …
Article
Desmond Tutu makes headlines, and often changes hearts and minds. In the fall of 2005, the headlines were made in Belfast, where Tutu, former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, was filming Facing the Truth, three programs for the Northern Irish BBC that aired in Britain on three consecutive days in March of this …
Continue reading “A Televised Reconciliation in Northern Ireland”
Book
Article
Regardless of what one thought of the legal and moral justification of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, or of the prudence of that action, now that the U.S. is there it has moral and legal obligations to Iraq, to the region and to its citizens. Many of these obligations are clearly delineated in international law. …
Article
Many critics of the U.S. plans for going to war in Iraq point to oil as a motive. If that is true, it is worrisome indeed. But the policymakers who have long demanded this war are more concerned with ideological and strategic considerations than economic factors. The Bush administration is loaded with policymakers who have …
Article
Book Review: The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents. By John Dinges. New Press, 288 pp. The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. Edited by Peter Kornbluh. New Press, 528 pp. Visiting Villa Grimaldi in Santiago, Chile, left me with much the same chill I …
Article
Book Review: Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence. By Stanley Hauerwas. Brazos Press, 252 pp. Stanley Hauerwas and I first met at a conference at Bethel College in Kansas in the early 1980s. I had spent a semester at Bethel some years before when I gave the Menno Simons lectures there (The …
Article
When Martin Luther asked "Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved," he was struggling to find a theologically defensible balance between two competing demands. As he penned the 1526 essay, he was feeling the force of the New Testament’s condemnation of violence and Christ’s exhortation to nonresistance of evil. But Luther also faced the demands of …
Continue reading “Can Christians Serve in the Armed Forces?”
Article
The bomb paradoxically represents both humanity’s limitless ingenuity and its all too-limited ability to protect itself from the effects of that ingenuity. Perhaps this accounts for the strange things that many people do and say regarding nuclear weapons. It is strange that military strategists try to be sane and sober about the business of building …
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Article
There are two typical approaches to this conflict, one coming from business and one from the churches. Unfortunately, both reflect what John Gardner, the late novelist, called a kind of fundamentalism, with its “secure closing of doors and permission not to think.” The business approach has been articulated, for example, by Edson Spencer, Honeywell’s chief …
Continue reading “Christian Conscience and Nuclear Escapism”
Article
Three elements of the Christian message should continually illuminate the mind of Christians as they deal with the problems of world politics. (1) Each nation is under the judgment, providence and mercy of God. This is a corrective for the most common temptation of any nation—to make itself absolute. But the mere affirmation of an …
Continue reading “Christian Ethics and International Affairs”
Article
In his definitive work The Destruction of the European Jews (Quadrangle, 1961), Raul Hilberg presents some insights that are as relevant to the United States today as they were to Nazi Germany a half-century ago. If we believe that we must remember the tragedies of history so that we will not repeat them, we ought …
Article
Book Review: The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response. By Peter Balakian. HarperCollins, 475 pp., $14.95 paperback. A Red for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis. By David Rieff. Simon & Schuster 400 pp., $15.00 paperback. During the 1890s, almost 200,000 Armenians were murdered on the orders of the sultan of Anatolia, in what …
Book Chapter
Anybody who knows Al Winn will know to expect a book on peace that is honest, trenchant, evocative, and energizing. And that is exactly what this book is. The thing about Al Winn is that he cares so much and knows so much — rare combination! He cares so much because there resonates in his …
Article
Nothing compares to the rush. No other pursuit could be so exhilarating and meaningful, so loaded with the paradoxical sensation of being entirely alive yet also careening out of control on the edge of death. For those who taste its deliciously deadly nectar, there is usually no turning back. This gripping potion, according to author …
Article
While “American Imperialism” has been a catchphrase on the left for a long time, people on other parts of the political spectrum are only now beginning to accept the idea that we have entered the age of the American Empire. How well is America prepared to sustain an empire? Not very. Indeed, the deep hostility …
Article
As a high school sophomore I was told: “If you wait until you are in the back seat of a car to figure out your sexual ethic, it is probably too late.” In other words, moral issues are best addressed not in the passion of the moment but as part of an ongoing formation in …
Article
The “grave and gathering danger” hanging over the world is not so much the danger that Saddam Hussein presents (as President Bush insists) but the danger of American preemptive war against Iraq. The Bush administration believes that such a war is necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power, thus preventing him from acquiring nuclear capabilities …
Book Chapter
Article
In politics, as in medicine, a cure based on a false diagnosis is almost always worthless, often worsening the condition that is supposed to be healed. The United States, today, suffers from a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse of …
Continue reading “Is Imperial Liquidation Possible for America?”
Article
Human rights have recently been extended far beyond their earlier connotation as duties “owed” to individuals by a national government or, at least, by the community. Such rights are normally enforceable if and when they are violated by authority or by other individuals. In short, a human right is a legally enforceable claim. International lawyers, …
Article
Jean Bethke Elshtain began her career by challenging traditional gender roles — the assumption that the public realm is primary and belongs to men, and that the private realm is secondary and belongs to women. Characteristically, she applied her analysis in unpredictable ways, as indicated by the title of one of her early books, Women …
Continue reading “Jean Elshtain On Mothering and Other Duties”
Article
Speaking at the U.S. Military Academy in June, President Bush offered an expansive statement articulating a doctrine of preemptive action against rogue states and terrorist groups. Iraq was not mentioned, but subsequent statements suggest the West Point speech laid the foundation for war against that nation. If the president moves ahead with these plans, Christians …
Continue reading “Just War Divide: One Tradition, Two Views”
Article
Public dialogue in the U.S. about the Persian Gulf war has drawn heavily on the language of the just war tradition—more so than has been the case with any war since at least the 1860s. The tradition has been appealed to by journalists and politicians, as if it were common knowledge, as a basis for …
Article
The preacher at the Religious Broadcasters Convention on January 28, 1991 was not Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson, but George Bush. After citing Matthew’s reminder that "the meek shall inherit the earth," the president proceeded, not so meekly, to offer a rousing homily on the righteousness of the Gulf War. The pivotal sentence …
Article
Book Review: Morality and Contemporary Warfare By James Turner Johnson. Yale University Press, 256 pp. It is a truism that generals always prepare to fight the previous war. The memory of the past so shapes military thinking that the new challenges of future conflicts are frequently obscured. In a similar way, moral thinking about war …
Article
It is not a propitious time to be a pacifist in the United States. Polls indicate that over 90 percent of Americans continue to support the military campaign in Afghanistan. Indications of such support are everywhere, as are the warnings — like the ubiquitous and vaguely threatening "Americans Unite" bumper stickers — that this time …
Article
Philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that it is always wrong to treat a person or a people purely as a means to an end. According to Kant, to say nothing of common moral sense, human beings are subjects and as such should never to be treated as mere instruments or objects. And yet it seems that …
Article
What does nuclear deterrence have in common with (1) pacifist idealism, (2) the modern notion that warfare must be total, and (3) romanticism’s vision of history? According to Oliver O’Donovan, the common denominator is that all of these hope to suspend or close ordinary history through the impending advent of the Absolute. They long for …
Continue reading “Nuclear Absolutism and the Quest for Certainty”
Article
I was entranced the first time I looked down a gun-sight with a finger on the trigger. It seemed to me the most private, the most intense moment of conversation with oneself, so to speak, with all that split-second of right decision coming and going all the time, almost answering the movements of one’s mind. …
Continue reading “Peace and Reconciliation: A Theological Reflection”
Book Chapter
Article
Army sergeant Kevin Benderman, 40, faces a military trial for refusing to return to Iraq for a second tour of duty. The trial is scheduled for May 11 at an army base in Georgia. A Tennessean of Southern Baptist background, Benderman joined the army in 1987, was honorably discharged in ‘91 and re-enlisted in 2000. …
Article
In the months before he ordered the invasion of Iraq, George Bush and his senior officials spoke of preserving Iraq’s “patrimony” for the Iraqi people. At a time when talking about Iraqi oil was taboo, what he meant by patrimony was exactly that — Iraqi oil. In their “joint statement on Iraq’s future” of April …
Article
Tucked away in an account of the Jewish resistance to Antiochus Epiphanes is the story of a hero’s sacrifice. The Book of I Maccabees describes the prebattle scene, Jewish forces are encamped at Bethzechariah with the enemy directly opposite them, fully armed and ready to fight. As the Jewish soldiers watch, their counterparts prepare elephants …
Continue reading “Suicide Bombers: The ‘Just War’ Debate, Islamic Style”
Article
Moral Challenges By Martin L. Cook Martin L. Cook is professor of military studies and ethics at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The United States is said to be "at war." There is no question that it has been viciously attacked on its own soil; there is no question that it is …
Article
No peace without justice: no justice without truth (Noam Chomsky) Introduction: Predominantly the ideologically driven world of the 20th century, as it made its way on to the 21st century, seems to have given way to a more ‘religion accommodating’ world. In fact, the last decades of the 20th century already experienced a phenomenal revival …
Article
Book Review: Rethinking Humanitarian Intervention: A Fresh Legal Approach Based on Fundamental Ethical Principles In International Law and World Religions. By Brian D. Lepard. Pennsylvania State University Press, 496 pp. A decade ago humanitarian intervention, defined by Brian Lepard as “the use of military force to protect the victims of human rights violations,” seemed …
Continue reading “The Dilemmas of Humanitarian Intervention”
Article
The Bush administration’s grand design for foreign policy, spelled out last September in a document titled “The National Security Strategy,” declares that the U.S. will exercise the responsibilities of the dominant power in international politics in order to resist terrorism and rogue states and to shape a global ethos of human dignity and prosperity. The …
Article
As a commissioner to the 1980 General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, I was convinced that the church’s new peacemaking efforts needed “a good dose of Niebuhr.” I saw “The Call to Peacemaking” document as pacifistic and deficient in its failure to affirm the “just war.” In a brief speech to the Peacemaking Committee, …
Continue reading “The Nuclear Reality: Beyond Niebuhr and the Just War”
Article
Books Reviewed Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana. By Gary Dorrien Routledge, .336 pp. Saving Christianity from Empire. By Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer Continuum, 192 pp. Anxious About Empire: Theological Essays on the New Global Realities. Edited by Wes Avram. Brazos Press, 224 pp. American Providence: A Nation with a Mission. By Stephen H. Webb. …
Article
He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. John 1:11 Søren Kierkegaard is widely acknowledged today as one of the most insightful philosophical and religious thinkers of western history. Although he was ignored in the 19th century, he has become a widely read, if not widely understood, contributor to 20th …
Continue reading “Toward a Kierkegaardian Understanding of Hitler, Stalin, and the Cold War”
Article
Jessica Lynch resists America’s desire to call her a war hero. "They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff," Lynch told Diane Sawyer during a television interview on Veteran’s Day. "It’s Wrong" Lynch grew up in Palestine, West Virginia, a town of 330 people with only one place to shop: "The What-Not …
Article
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used to say that he liked to pay taxes because he felt he was buying civilization. One wonders how the good justice would react to the civilization we are purchasing with today’s federal taxes, of which, in 1974, 46 per cent went for current military operations and another 7 per cent …
Article
John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus surely would be an odd choice for a classic. As a fairly recent book (1972), it has not had a chance to prove its staying power. For that matter, it does not now command great attention in contemporary discussions of theology or ethics. To be sure, most mark …
Continue reading “When the Politics of Jesus Makes a Difference”
Article
History tells us that one of the most unstable political combinations is a country — like the United States today — that tries to be a domestic democracy and a foreign imperialist. Why this is so can be a very abstract subject. Perhaps the best way to offer my thoughts on this is to …
Article
Peace movements thrive, an English writer has observed, when there is both optimism and pessimism: optimism, because there must be hope that shooting can be averted, that steps can be taken toward a more peaceful world; pessimism, because there must be clouds of war to spur interest in peace issues, to move us out of …
Article
You’re going to Germany? Sweet!” That was how news of my deployment was greeted by more than one member of my Air National Guard unit — the 181st Fighter Wing of the Indiana Air National Guard. In the military, the initial criteria for evaluating whether an assignment is a good one include its opportunities for …
