Military, War, Armed Conflict

[1] The wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 has been marked by approaches to law and justice on the part of the United States government which have the potential for profound adverse effect. Domestic and international legal orders; conceptions of human and civil rights; and the balance of relationships among states, citizens […]

[1] The current threat of war against Iraq is very troubling and possibly very ill-advised. Religious communities are right to be questioning this course of action for the United States. However their ability to play a helpful role will depend especially on making that case without dismissing the possible threat from Saddam Hussein and his […]

Preaching has not changed at all [1] As Craig Satterlee and Trish Madden recently reaffirmed, the core of Lutheran preaching has been and always should be centered on one thing, and one thing alone: the Gospel of Jesus Christ.[1] If we continue to hold that “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today” (Hebrews 13:8 […]

[1] Allow me to try to state the situation in which I think we find ourselves, since our perception of our situation governs our praying. I think there’s a sense in which the current war began on September 11, 2001 when attacks on the World Trade Center precipitated a “war on terrorism” with far-reaching consequences […]

[1] There was a time when being a pacifist was something brave and bold-a stand of nonconformity over and against a church that had grown complacent in its assimilation of Western culture through the doctrine of “just war.” In the past few years, though, a revolution has occurred among the mainline churches, to the extent […]

This essay results from a war-long discussion by an ethics class that met during winter and spring 2003, sponsored by the Alaska Lay School of Theology and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, and under the direction of Larry Jorgenson. A Nation Still at War [1] Our Vice President predicted that the Iraq war’s duration would be […]

The just-war tradition differs from pacifism in assuming that killing can sometimes be justified, e.g., in defense of the innocent. But just-war criteria also assume that war can be so destructive that the burden of moral proof is on those who would wage war. A basic distinction in the tradition is between jus ad bellum […]

The author argues that the U.S. and its partners have rightly arrived at war on Iraq as a just and necessary last resort. The potential problems with the just-war case are notable, particularly concerning the after-effects of the war, but they do not incurably undermine the case for going to war. Instead, both supporters and […]

Copyright © 2001, Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism, and Conflict. Used with permission. [1] If their discourse on the Persian Gulf War is any indication, Muslims are hopelessly divided on the Islamic ethics of war and peace. One graphic indication of this division is found in the deliberations of the People’s Islamic Conference, a […]

[1] A note on comparative approach is appropriate in a study which, like this one1, attempts to identify common ground on a particular issue shared by the Western monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Comparative studies in religion have been generally criticized for oversimplifying the complex and intricate variations and divergences within each tradition […]