Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 48:3 (Sep 2005)
Article: Just-War Moral Reflection, The Christian, And Civil Society
Author: J. Daryl Charles

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JETS 48:3 (September 2005) p. 589

Just-War Moral Reflection, The Christian, And Civil Society1

J. Daryl Charles

J. Daryl Charles is associate professor of ethics and culture at Union University, 1050 Union University Drive, Jackson, TN 38305.

It is a sign of our time that either radical relativism or segregation and withdrawal characterize how we as a culture face pressing moral dilemmas. Presupposing the possibility that civic virtue and moral reasoning might constitute domestic life and public policy, Christians struggle, as did prior generations, to know their proper place in the social-political context to which they have been called by the Almighty. This struggle, rooted in the twin Augustinian convictions of human frailty and justly ordered peace, permits that American Christians may be patriots, but distinctly chastened patriots. That is, they are men and women who are in conversation with the past and who have learned from it.2

Civic life that is so "chastened" bears directly on how we think about issues of peace and war. With the collapse just over a decade ago of the Soviet empire, many—from average lay person to the policy-maker—considered the use of military force as a question lacking urgency. But it is precisely those developments since the end of the Cold War that invite a reexamination of the merits and moral substructure of armed conflict.

In the few years since 1990 it has been impossible to close our eyes to the gravity of geopolitical developments around the world—among these, Iraq's occupation of Kuwait and genocidal treatment of its own people, notably the Kurdish population, the starvation of civilians in Somalia, exile and enslavement of Coptic Christians in Sudan, the talibanization of portions of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern and western portions of Africa,3 the slaughter of between half a million and a million people in Rwanda,4 genocide in Bosnia/Kosovo, the need for massive humanitarian efforts in Burundi, Rwanda, Liberia, Sudan, and Afghanistan, the chemical and biological weapons program of Libya and Iraq inter alia, drug-trafficking on several

JETS 48:3 (September 2005) p. 590

continents, and the breathtaking rise of maturing international terrorism on several continents. All told, the social, political, and moral challenges before us are daunting, revealing our biases against the need for military intervention to be naive.

These diverse crises, with repercussions for Americans both at home and ...

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