Military, War, Armed Conflict

Book Review: Ryan P. Cumming. The African American Challenge to Just War Theory: A Christian Approach. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013, 235 pages, $65.33

Preston, Andrew (2012-02-28). Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[1] Asymmetric warfare involves, by definition, conflict between weaker and stronger antagonists—strength here as denominated in the quantity of material resources and the quality of technological sophistication that can be brought to bear against the enemy. The strong—the United States, preeminently—are tempted to deploy overwhelming force against opponents who lack the capacity to respond in […]

Note: the typical civilian practice is to use all lowercase letters in the word “soldier.” However, in military contexts and writings, the Army now requires the use of “Soldier” instead as a sign of respect. The author uses this capitalized version throughout the article. [1] According to the ELCA Social Message on The Body of […]

The preponderance of the papers in this month comes from the 2012 Lutheran Ethicists Gathering. This year’s gathering was an extremely fruitful conversation between military chaplains and ethicists, focused on the question of “The Challenges of Asymmetrical War to Just War Theory: Conversations between Ethicists and Military Chaplains.” Gilbert Meilaender gave the keynote presentation on facing ambiguity in warfare, David Baer spoke on developments in international law and combatant distinction, Wollom Jensen sought new language for just war, and Stewart Herman spoke to vulnerability in their supporting panel presentations. The report from the conference shows the breadth and depth of the conversation.

This paper was first given as a talk at the Lutheran Ethicists’ Gathering in January, 2012. I have, therefore, left it in the somewhat more casual form of a talk, unencumbered also by footnotes. — GM [1] My assignment, as I understand it, is to try to say something helpful about the fact that soldiers […]

[1] A military response to global terrorism raises challenges to the existing moral and legal framework for conduct of war. Indeed, some might argue that the so-called war on terror requires adopting an altogether new framework for thinking about the conduct of war. The older framework, anchored in the 1949 Geneva Conventions, presupposes an antiquated […]

[1] General Carl von Clausewitz said, “War therefore is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will” (Clausewitz, 1976). Stated a little differently, the intention of war is the destruction, in the most literal meaning of the word, of the enemy. The issues facing combat soldiers, military commanders, and chaplains […]

[1] Silence. My important memory of September 11th was the silence that fell over Canada in the wake of the horrific attacks. It was not a quiet silence, but rather the very veneer of a people who with their U.S. neighbors were silenced by the dark mystery of evil, by a world they no longer […]

[1] Why this book? As professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, Gary Simpson is not your typical “ivy halls” academic. With a rich background in parish and chaplaincy work – none of it transpiring in traditional Lutheran territory, (California and Oregon were his mission field) – he has brought to […]