Search

How will historians and theologians remember the summer of 2020? This article leverages a socio‐ethical analysis and response to twenty years of sacralized and sacrificial U.S. war‐culture, and the meaning of this history, given the shifting cultural tectonic plates in the summer of 2020, and intersecting social ills of climate crisis, racism, inequality, and pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article first proposes definitions and raises questions about what it means to be a nation. I then analyze the national imaginary of the United States, and suggest that at its deepest core we find "substitute ultimates" regarding America's sacrificial war‐culture. This cultural violence perpetuates destructive consequences, including the phenomena of "U.S. war‐culture," and "moral injury" among military servicemembers and veterans. But widespread legitimation of the imaginary largely inhibits citizens from awareness about their own reality. Lastly, I inquire about the role of prophetic public theology to address nationalism, and engage in a thought experiment with an imagined community of diverse partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this multi-book review article, the author examines three new texts that make the case for a deeper, richer understanding of the Christian tradition of nonviolence. All three authors argue that traditions of nonviolence, and misgivings and suspicion regarding the sanctioned shedding of blood, are central to the understanding and practice of Christianity, and deserve to be taken more seriously by researchers and practitioners alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article digs beneath the surface of American assumptions regarding war to explore the ethical interconnections between national identity, war, and religion. Striking differences emerge between the dynamics of religion and politics with regard to war and peace in presidential speeches regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the analysis of war from an earlier generation, encapsulated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'Beyond Vietnam: A Call to Conscience,' from 1967. Study of this political discourse helps us better understand our own reality in the United States, and the moral consequences of our beliefs about war, sacrifice, the human character, and the identity of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

: First, I summarize the major findings of a new comprehensive resource, Torture and Democracy, by Darius Rejali, as corrective for the current state of confusion and concealment in United States with regard to the persistence of torture. Second, I respond theologically to the insights from this scholarship through a) reflection on victims of torture as ‘nonpersons’ in light of theological anthropology, and through exploring the role of Christians in the public square, and b) addressing the problem of sacrificialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]