just war

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Thinking about an ancient question that's back in the news: 'Terrorist' or 'freedom fighter'?

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Thinking about an ancient question that's back in the news: 'Terrorist' or 'freedom fighter'?

What we have here is a news-you-can-use explainer on a controversial topic that comes from a source that, for some readers, will automatically be controversial.

The headline: “Why terrorists aren’t freedom fighters.” The source is the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest non-Catholic religious body.

Ah, but if you follow SBC politics, you know that many on the political and cultural right now believe that the ERLC is kind of “woke” when it comes to issues of this kind. For other readers, the SBC is the SBC and that is that. I would suggest that it helps to contrast the ERLC staff’s material with, let’s say, “just war” thoughts from the Catholic left (care of the Jesuits at America magazine).

Also, the “one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” debate looms over the results of this year’s “top stories” poll from the Religion News Association (Bobby Ross, Jr., summary here).

Here a view clips from the ERLC thinker. It’s always interesting when Southern Baptists get involved in debates that include Latin terms (“jus ad bellum”). Thus, let’s jump down to the section on the “moral requirements for going to war.” This isn’t the whole list of conditions, of course:

The primary difference is how they align with the criteria of the just war tradition. First, let’s measure them against the jus ad bellum, the moral requirement for going to war:

1. Just Cause: Like nation-states, non-state actors may have just and proper reasons for going to war. For example, they may be acting in self-defense to prevent genocide or acting to restore human rights wrongly denied.

2. Proportionate Cause: Again, like established nation-states, non-state actors could go to war to prevent more evil and suffering than their warfare is expected to cause.

3. Right Intention: Non-state actors may also have the right intentions for going to war. They could, for instance, be motivated by Christian love and pursuit of justice instead of an illegitimate intention to go to war, such as revenge.


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Centuries of theology loom over this newsworthy question: Is Ukraine a 'Just War'?

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Centuries of theology loom over this newsworthy question: Is Ukraine a 'Just War'?

QUESTION:

Is Ukraine a “Just War”?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The good news for Russia’s Vladimir Putin: A significant national leader announces that his invasion of Ukraine is a “just fight” that will end with “a great victory in the sacred struggle.”

The bad news: The speaker is  North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, so what’s “just” is defined by probably the most despised despot on the planet and what’s “sacred” by an atheist who works to exterminate all  religion.

Each international conflict raises the matter of what constitutes a “just war,” the theory by which Christians over centuries have sought to define what reaasons make the destruction of war morally acceptable. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman asserts that Ukraine presents “as obvious a case of right versus wrong, good versus evil, as you will find in international relations since World War II.”

Except for Putin allies who head the huge Russian Orthodox Church, Christian leaders agree that Russia’s war is unjust and Ukraine’s response is justifiable. If for no other reason, in the 1994 pact when Ukraine surrendered its Soviet-era nuclear weapons Russia pledged “to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.”

As we’ll see, there are complications and hesitations on the Catholic left since the invasion in February, 2022. The Catholic discussion on war-making is particularly notable due to the church’s global reach and the history of saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas formulating the “just war” doctrine.

Most early Christians were de facto pacifists who opposed military participation, both extending Jesus’ “blessed are the peacemakers” teaching from interpersonal relations into national and international affairs, and shunning pagan oaths and rites that Rome imposed upon soldiers. But Christians began gaining responsibility for setting defense policy after the Roman Empire granted their faith legal toleration during the 4th Century.


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No longer a Ukraine news sidebar: Pope Francis asks if combat can ever be moral

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No longer a Ukraine news sidebar: Pope Francis asks if combat can ever be moral

As Russia's invasion sought to erase Ukraine from the map, Moscow's Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, a key ally of dictator Vladimir Putin, met via video last week with Pope Francis.

The Religion Guy had planned to propose a wartime sidebar about the theological justifications for combat that could run any time, but suddenly the theme has gained timely mainbar status.

That's because an official Vatican release reported that Francis stated this at the meeting: "There was a time, even in our churches, when people spoke of a holy war or just war. Today we cannot speak in this manner. A Christian awareness of the importance of peace has developed. Wars are always unjust, since it is the people of God who pay."

Francis' 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti declared similarly that "it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a 'just war'."

Francis deplores the bloodshed in Ukraine, but did not publicly castigate Putin or Russia by name, presumably in case a neutral papacy could help negotiate an end to the conflict. (That argument is used to explain Pope Pius XII's silence during Nazi Germany's Holocaust against European Jewry.)

Journalists can, at this point, ask several logical questions:

* Is Francis declaring dead the church's "just war" teaching, first formulated in the 5th Century by St. Augustine?

* Should 1.36 billion Catholics shift to pacifism, which excludes support for all wars?

* Is Ukraine wrong to take up arms to defend its existence as a sovereign and democratic nation?

Nearly all Christian commentators agree that Russia's aggression is evil and Ukraine's military defense against it is justified.


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Where does the Catholic Church stand on the death penalty and war?

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THE QUESTION:

Where does the Catholic Church stand on the death penalty and war?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Pope Francis’s encyclical letter Fratelli Tutti (“Brothers All”), issued October 3, reinforces his profile as a socio-political liberal and idealist. Employing this the highest vehicle for authoritative papal teaching, he addresses racism and rampant nationalism (which some say especially targets the current U.S. situation), and yokes concern for the poor with a semi-socialistic view of private property. His views perhaps reflect the culture of economically troubled Argentina as much as teaching by previous popes.

In terms of church history, Francis’s most important innovations here are total opposition to the death penalty and, regarding warfare, nudging of the church toward full-blown pacifism. We can predict many lay parishioners will dissent, as with papal decrees on such matters as birth control. Francis wants the church to upend centuries of teaching by pontiffs and theologians. It seems probable that pressure for abortion and mercy-killing in secular culture has strengthened “pro-life” zeal on these other matters of life and death.

With the death penalty, biblical tradition reaches back to primeval times. God protects the life of the first murderer, Cain, but later gives this commandment: “Anyone who sheds the blood of a human being, by a human being shall that one’s blood be shed, for in the image of God have human beings been made”(Genesis 9:6).

This is interpreted to say that, paradoxically, death by execution upholds respect for life by making murder so abhorrent. At face value, the statement seems not only to allow but to require the death penalty. However, the Jewish Publication Society’s Genesis commentary says ancient rabbis shied away from execution and sought “every mitigating factor in the laws of evidence” to avoid imposing it for killing or other misdeeds.

Most Christians endorsed the practice across the centuries. As recently as 2018, the Catholic Catechism was still saying that though government should avoid the death penalty if “bloodless means are sufficient,” a society can claim legitimacy when execution is necessary to “defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons.”

However, Pope John Paul II had stated in a 1995 encyclical that though the death penalty seems a “legitimate defense” of society, we can effectively suppress crime without killing criminals.


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Covering Robert Jeffress and Kim Jong Un: Some media shone, while others flailed

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It certainly made for a lot of waves on the internet: The Rev. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas, describing how America's chief executive has authority from God to kill off North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

I’m still waiting for Pope Francis to come up with a statement to refute that one. But first things first: On Tuesday, Jeffress’ remarks were released to the Christian Broadcasting Network, an odd alliance if there ever was one. CBN is very oriented toward the Pentecostal-charismatic side of things and Jeffress most definitely is not, as an old-guard leader on the Southern Baptist right.

But politics always makes for strange bedfellows and with its superior contacts within the Trump administration, CBN has found itself in the unusual role of breaking national stories lately. David Brody’s three-paragraph story was part news, part editorial:

Sometimes you've got to stop evil. It's biblical. In North Korea, it's pretty clear that their dictator is downright evil. So tonight, Pastor Robert Jeffress, a longtime evangelical backer of Donald Trump, just released a statement saying the president has the moral authority to take out Kim Jong Un. This comes after Trump said today that if North Korea continues to threaten the U.S. then they will “be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen."
“When it comes to how we should deal with evil doers, the Bible, in the book of Romans, is very clear: God has endowed rulers full power to use whatever means necessary -- including war -- to stop evil. In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong-Un. I’m heartened to see that our president -- contrary to what we’ve seen with past administrations who have taken, at best, a sheepish stance toward dictators and oppressors -- will not tolerate any threat against the American people. When President Trump draws a red line, he will not erase it, move it, or back away from it. Thank God for a President who is serious about protecting our country.”
Folks, get ready. I've warned for a long time that North Korea was the biggest problem all along. Memo to North Korea: with Trump as president, you really don't want to mess with America. This could get real ugly real soon. Trump won't tolerate this for too much longer.

Later, CBN did follow up with something more nuanced from other evangelicals. 


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Off to war again. But a just one?

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Everyone ready for another war? Ready or not, it appears that we are about to go to war with Syria. Or, as the Washington Post says:


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Ghosts crowding in on drone stories

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If I weren’t so sick I would have already done this but in the days to come, I hope to mark our anniversary by reviewing some of my work over 2012. But if there’s one thing I already know, it’s that I wish we’d focus more on what news isn’t covered as opposed to critiquing what’s there. When you look at some of the reader reflections Bobby solicited in recent days, many are wondering how wise it is to focus on areas where the actual coverage has faltered the most (as opposed to spreading it around more). I think that’s always a difficult balance.


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What has God got to do with drones?

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“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,”a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong. 


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