War, Memory, and Myth-Making in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus

For many years now the questions of memory and the healing of its traumas have preoccupied me, especially in Catholic-Orthodox relations, but also more generally across cultures. In our forthcoming book on remembering the Ps-Sobor of Lviv of 1946, I briefly discuss some of the challenges posed by competing memories and competing historiographies of the post-World War II world in Ukraine and Russia. A recent and substantial collection carries this discussion further and broadens it out to include a third country: War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, eds. Julie Fedor et al (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), ‎506pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This edited collection contributes to the current vivid multidisciplinary debate on East European memory politics and the post-communist instrumentalization and re-mythologization of World War II memories. The book focuses on the three Slavic countries of post-Soviet Eastern Europe – Russia, Ukraine and Belarus – the epicentre of Soviet war suffering, and the heartland of the Soviet war myth. The collection gives insight into the persistence of the Soviet commemorative culture and the myth of the Great Patriotic War in the post-Soviet space. It also demonstrates that for geopolitical, cultural, and historical reasons the political uses of World War II differ significantly across Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, with important ramifications for future developments in the region and beyond.

Orthodox Perspectives on War

I had known for some time that this collection was in the works, but it was only late last week that the University of Notre Dame Press put into my hands a copy of Orthodox Christian Perspectives on War, eds. P.T. Hamalis and V.A. Karras (2018), 384pp.

About this book the publisher tells us the following:

Many regions of the world whose histories include war and violent conflict have or once had strong ties to Orthodox Christianity. Yet policy makers, religious leaders, and scholars often neglect Orthodoxy’s resources when they reflect on the challenges of war.

Through essays written by prominent Orthodox scholars in the fields of biblical studies, church history, Byzantine studies, theology, patristics, political science, ethics, and biology, Orthodox Christian Perspectives on War presents and examines the Orthodox tradition’s nuanced and unique insights on the meaning and challenges of war with an eye toward their contemporary relevance. This volume is structured in three parts: “Confronting the Present Day Reality,” “Reengaging Orthodoxy’s Tradition,” and “Constructive Directions in Orthodox Theology and Ethics.” Each exemplifies the value of interdisciplinary reflection on “war” and the potential for the Eastern Orthodox tradition to enhance ecumenical and interfaith discussions surrounding war in both domestic and international contexts.

The contributors do not advance a single account of “the meaning of war” or a comprehensive and normative stance purporting to be “the Orthodox Christian teaching on war.” Instead, this collection presents the breadth and depth of Orthodox Christian thought in a way that engages Orthodox and non-Orthodox readers alike. In addition to offering fresh resources for all people of good will to understand, prevent, and respond faithfully to war, this book will appeal to Christian theologians who specialize in ethics, to libraries of academic institutions, and to scholars of war/peace studies, international relations, and Orthodox thought.

Contributors: Peter C. Bouteneff, George Demacopoulos, John Fotopoulos, Perry T. Hamalis, Valerie A. Karras, Alexandros K. Kyrou, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Elizabeth H. Prodromou, Nicolae Roddy, James C. Skedros, Andrew Walsh, and Gayle E. Woloschak.

In Praise of Oubliance

It was some 20 years ago, through a combination of reading Alasdair MacIntyre and William Cavanaugh, that I came to realize how much the structures of modernity are hidden from us, how much the liberalism of modern nation-states disguises itself as a neutral mechanism for the pursuit of competing visions of the good life--if, indeed, there even is such a thing as a good life, on which liberalism purports to take no position, though of course it does. Liberalism created, or certainly made more acute and problematic, the categories of "secular" and "sacred" and in so doing pretended to the former state while also privatizing and attempting to control the latter. Thus the ringing declaration of John Milbank's Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason: "Once, there was no 'secular'."

In light of Milbank, Cavanaugh, and MacIntyre, it became obvious to me that the idea of "religion" is also a modern construct designed, in part, to try to domesticate and control transcendence, and also to disguise the theological claims made by "secularists." Cavanaugh's article "A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House: the Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State" was pivotal here in pulling the mask off and showing that the post-Reformation "religious" conflicts that devastated parts of Europe were, in fact, much more properly considered as the bloody birth of the nation-state. He would develop this argument in much greater detail in his extremely valuable 2009 book The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. 

I mention all this to sketch the context for considering a new book by Andrea Frisch, Forgetting Differences: Tragedy, Historiography, and the French Wars of Religion (Edinburgh, 2015), 208pp.

About this book we are told:

This study argues that the political and legislative process of forgetting internal differences, undertaken in France after the civil wars of the sixteenth century, leads to subtle yet fundamental shifts in the broader conception of the relationship between readers or spectators on the one hand, and the matter of history, on the other. These shifts, occasioned by the desire for communal reconciliation and generally associated with an increasingly modern sensibility, will nonetheless prove useful to the ideologies of cultural and political absolutism.

By juxtaposing representations of the French civil war past as they appear (and frequently overlap) in historiography and tragedy from 1550-1630, Andrea Frisch tracks changes in the ways in which history and tragedy sought to 'move' readers throughout the period of the wars and in their wake. The book shows that a shift from a politically (and martially) active reading of the past to a primarily affective one follows the imperative, so clear and urgent at the turn of the seventeenth century, to put an end to violent conflict. The emotions that neoclassical tragedy and absolutist historiography sought to elicit were intended above all to be shared, and thus a medium via which political and religious differences could be downplayed or forgotten. The book aims to illuminate some of the ways in which the experience of the wars of religion, as registered in tragedy and historiography, contributed to a restructuring of the ever-vital relationship between emotion and politics, and thereby to historicize the very concept of 'esmouvoir'.

The book begins by asking what difference the Edict of Nantes made to French historiography and history more generally--what, that is, was different after the edict called for the deliberate "forgetting" of the events that had taken place up to the start of Henri IV's reign: depuis le commencement du mois de mars mil cinq cens quatre vingtz cinq jusques à nostre avenement à la couronne. Thus the edict begins what Frisch calls a politics and a policy of oubliance, calling for a deliberate forgetting of the previous Catholic-Protestant conflict, which is to be regarded as estaincte et assoupie, comme de chose non advenue.

The author notes that the effect of a policy of oubliance was "overwhelmingly negative" on French theatre, literature, and other areas. She notes, further, that there were differences in how oubliance was understood theologically by Catholics and Calvinists.

From here much of her book becomes very narrowly focused on the effects of this policy in French theatre and literature. But to my mind there is room to consider the utility of something like a new edict of Nantes today in such seemingly intractable conflicts of Eastern Christian historical memory as the Union of Brest and the Pseudo-Sobor of Lviv of 1946, about which more another time.

Historical Atlas of the Middle East

With renewed fighting in, and thus attention on, Israel and Gaza, a book set for release this fall may help those new to the age-old conflicts of the region's Eastern Christians, Jews, and Muslims better appreciate their geography: Ian Barnes, Crossroads of War: A Historical Atlas of the Middle East (Harvard UP, October 2014), 288pp. + 130 colour maps + 40 images.

About this book we are told:

From the Bronze Age to the twenty-first century, vying armies have clashed over the territory stretching from the Upper Nile to modern-day Iraq and Iran. Crossroads of War captures five millennia of conflict and conquest in detailed full-color maps, accompanied by incisive, accessible commentary.
The lands of the Middle East were home to a succession of empires—Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Persian—that rose and declined with the fortunes of battle. Kings and generals renowned in history bestrode the region: Nebuchadnezzar, David, Alexander the Great, Saladin, Napoleon. The religions of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were born here and from the beginning became embroiled in conflicts ranging from the Maccabean Revolt to Muhammad’s Arabian conquests to the Christian Crusades. In the twentieth century, the Middle East witnessed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and played a role in the grim dramas of two world wars, as T. E. Lawrence helped spark the Arab Revolt and General Bernard Montgomery defeated Hitler’s Desert Fox, General Erwin Rommel, at El Alamein.

From the Yom Kippur War and Operation Desert Storm to a Global War on Terror that still looms over the twenty-first century, the Middle East continues to be shaped by the vagaries and vicissitudes of military conflict. Crossroads of War offers valuable insights into the part of the world that first cradled civilization and then imagined its demise in a final clash of armies at Armageddon.

"Religion," Ethics, and War

It is a happy development that as more and more publishers bring out "dictionaries of" or "companions to" various topics, or encyclopedias on them, they are no longer able to act as though the Christian East doesn't exist. A hefty new collection, released only last week, continues this trend, with a chapter on Orthodox views of Religion, War, and Ethics: A Sourcebook of Textual Traditions (Cambridge UP, 2014), 748pp.
Edited by by Gregory Reichberg and Henrik Syse, this volume is, the publisher says

a collection of primary sources from the world's major religions on the ethics of war. Each chapter brings together annotated texts - scriptural, theological, ethical, and legal - from a variety of historical periods that reflect each tradition's response to perennial questions about the nature of war: When, if ever, is recourse to arms morally justifiable? What moral constraints should apply to military conduct? Can a lasting earthly peace be achieved? Are there sacred reasons for waging war, and special rewards for those who do the fighting? The religions covered include Sunni and Shiite Islam; Judaism; Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant Christianity; Theravada Buddhism; East Asian religious traditions (Confucianism, Shinto, Japanese and Korean Buddhism); Hinduism; and Sikhism. Each section is compiled by a specialist, recognized within his or her respective religious tradition, who has also written a commentary on the historical and textual context of the passages selected.

Just and Holy Wars?

I'm told that a new book, edited by Perry Hamalis and titled Orthodox Perspectives on War, was supposed to be published this fall by the University of Notre Dame Press. While searching for signs of this, none of which were forthcoming, I came across a recent related text that treats Eastern Christian realities in such places as Syria, the Byzantine Empire, and later the Ottoman Empire: Sohail H. Hashmi, ed., Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Encounters and Exchanges (Oxford UP, 2012), 456pp.

About this book we are told:

Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads explores the development of ideas of morally justified or legitimate war in Western and Islamic civilizations. Historically, these ideas have been grouped under three labels: just war, holy war, and jihad. A large body of literature exists exploring the development of just war and holy war concepts in the West and of jihad in Islam. Yet, to date, no book has investigated in depth the historical interaction between Western notions of just or holy war and Muslim definitions of jihad. This book is a major contribution to the comparative study of the ethics of war and peace in the West and Islam. Its twenty chapters explore two broad questions:

1. What historical evidence exists that Christian and Jewish writers on just war and holy war and Muslim writers on jihad knew of the other tradition?

2. What is the evidence in treatises, chronicles, speeches, ballads, and other historical records, or in practice, that either tradition influenced the other?

The book surveys the period from the rise of Islam in the early seventh century to the present day. Part One surveys the impact of the early Islamic conquests upon Byzantine, Syriac, and Muslim thinking on justified war. Part Two probes developments during the Crusades. Part Three focuses on the early modern period in Europe and the Ottoman Empire, followed by analysis of the era of European imperialism in Part Four. Part Five brings the discussion into the present period, with chapters analyzing the impact of international law and terrorism on conceptions of just war and jihad.

Whom to Kill....

Though, for the moment, the threat--absurd, useless, and repugnant as it was--to attack Syria seems to have abated for the time being, the questions raised by that prospect--as well as other recent US military endeavors in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere--are major questions of lasting significance. They are not new questions as Christians have grappled with them from the beginning. One answer to them has already been suggested by Stanley Hauerwas, who used to keep on his door at Duke a poster which read: "A Modest Proposal for Peace: Let the Christians of the World Agree That They Will Not Kill Each Other."

Last year Ron Sider put together a collection of texts from various early Christian and patristic sources on the uses of violence. Sider seems to be one of those evangelicals who, in the last three decades, has, to some extent, "discovered" the Christian East, as this collection suggests: The Early Church on Killing: a Comprehensive Sourcebook on War, Abortion, and Capital Punishment (Baker Academic, 2012), 224pp.

About this book we are told:

Noted theologian Ron Sider lets the testimony of the early church speak in the first of a three-volume series on biblical peacemaking. This volume offers a thorough, comprehensive treatment on topics of perennial concern--war, abortion, and capital punishment--providing English translations for all extant data directly relevant to the treatment of these issues by the early church until Constantine. Primarily, it draws data from early church writings, but other evidence, such as archaeological finds and Roman writings, is included. The book contains brief introductions to every Christian writer cited and explanatory notes on many specific texts. The Early Church on Killing will be a helpful text in courses on ethics, theology, and church history.

We are also given the table of contents: 

Introduction
Part 1: Christian Writers before Constantine

1. Didache

2. The Epistle of Barnabas

3. First Clement

4. Second Clement

5. Apocalypse of Peter

6. Justin Martyr

7. Tatian

8. Irenaeus

9. Athenagoras

10. Clement of Alexandria

11. Tertullian

12. Minucius Felix

13. Didascalia apostolorum

14. Julius Africanus

15. Origen

16. St. Cyprian

17. Gregory Thaumaturgus

18. Dionysius of Alexandria

19. Archelaus

20. Adamantius, Dialogue on the True Faith

21. Arnobius of Sicca

22. Lactantius

Part 2: Church Orders and Synods

23. Apostolic Tradition

24. Three Later Church Orders

25. Synod of Arles

Part 3: Miscellaneous Items

26. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas

27. Paul of Samosata

28. The Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena

Part 4: Other Evidence of Christian Soldiers before Constantine

29. "The Thundering Legion"

30. A Third Century Christian Prayer Hall Near a Military Camp

31. Epitaphs

32. Military Martyrs

33. Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History

34. An Early Christian Kingdom?

Afterword

Indexes

Warfare in Eastern Europe

For the military historians among us, and those interested in pivotal events that shaped many of the homelands of Eastern Christians, a recent book edited by Brian L. Davies, Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500-1800 (Brill, 2012), 364pp.

About this book we are told:

This volume examines continuities and new developments in the conduct of warfare in early modern Eastern Europe from the early sixteenth century, when Ottoman imperial expansion reached the Danube and Crimea, to the late eighteenth century, when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned out of existence and Russia rolled back Ottoman power from Ukraine and Moldavia. Contributors include specialists in Russian, Polish, Ottoman, Habsburg, Cossack, and Crimean Tatar history. The essays engage military history understood in the broadest sense and treat such subjects as taxation, recruitment, the sociology and culture of officer corps, logistics, command-and-control, and ideology as well as technology and tactics. The volume aims at facilitating comparative study of Eastern European military development across Eastern Europe and its points of divergence from military practice in the West.

Contributors are Virginia H. Aksan, Brian J. Boeck, Peter B. Brown, Brian Davies, Dariusz Kupisz, Erik Lund, Janet Martin, Oleg Nozdrin, Victor Ostapchuk, Geza Palffy and Carol Belkin Stevens.

Faith and Fear in the Middle East

It is hard sometimes to avoid despair when thinking about that region we usually call the Middle East and its complicated intersections of various religions, politics, and long histories. A new book looks as all this: Phil Karber,  Fear and Faith in Paradise: Exploring Conflict and Religion in the Middle East (Rowman and Littlefield, 2012), 368pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

From life along the Tigris River in the 1970s to the ongoing Arab Spring uprisings, Phil Karber has witnessed decades of change throughout the Middle East. Fear and Faith in Paradise draws on his wealth of experience to sketch a timely and compelling portrait of the region throughout history. Going beyond the endless images of terrorism and war, he challenges pervasive stereotypes of Muslims and delves into the living history and cultures of Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Persians, Jews, Tunisians, Moroccans, Armenians, and others.

Seamlessly moving between past and present, Karber skillfully develops two overarching themes: How America's footprint can be shifted from a military to a humanitarian emphasis and how fear is used as a cudgel by today’s monotheistic leaders to sacrifice the faithful. Whether Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, they all invoke their own vision of paradise, often as incentive, in hopeless conflicts that seem doomed to be repeated. Karber’s down-to-earth writing vividly conveys the region’s charm and beauty against a backdrop of power struggles among competing faiths, nationalisms, and outside forces.

New Series on Orthodoxy in the 21st Century

The World Council of Churches has just announced the publication of a new series of books, "Doxa and Praxis: Exploring Orthodox Theology."

The first two publications will be released later this summer. The first is by the well-known Orthodox theologian Metropolitan Kallistos Ware and is titled Orthodox Theology in the Twenty-First Century. The second book is by the series editor, Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Orthodoxy and Political Theology.

The WCC has also recently published several books of interest to Eastern Christians, including the edited collection of essays, Just Peace: Orthodox Perspectives (WCC Publications, 2012).

About this book the publisher tells us:

Despite their largely pacifist origins, Christianity and Christian traditions can claim only limited success in their efforts to conciliate conflict, avoid violence, and stop war. The eminent contributors to this deeply reflective book believe it is time to look to the East, to the very different perspectives among Orthodox Christians, on issues of war and the justice that must undergird peace. From Europe and Russia, as well as the Middle East and Asia, two dozen Orthodox theologians and church people cast the classic dilemmas of war and peace, military service, just war, and religious nationalism into a deeper theological framework. The book examines: the historical characterizations of Orthodoxy in a variety of settings and nations (Greece, Oriental Christianity, Bulgaria, Armenia, Western Europe, etc.); dilemmas of nationalism for the churches; the Russian Orthodox Church and the military; the invasion of Iraq; globalization; fundamentalism; interreligious tensions; the ecclesial vocation of peacemaking.

Also just released in January of this year is another edited collection,  Building Bridges: Between the Orthodox and Evangelical Traditions (WCC Publications, 2012), 268pp.
About this book the publisher tells us:

In recent decades, Evangelicals and Orthodox Christians have encountered each other more widely than ever before. Relationships have often been difficult and dogged by misunderstanding. How can two Christian traditions, which seem so different, begin to understand each other and find common ground? Is it possible for Orthodox and Evangelical Christians to move from competition to co-operation and develop relationships marked by mutual respect? What are the key theological issues between them which need to be faced? And what might these two traditions be able to offer together to the whole church? Building Bridges presents papers, reports, and reflections from a remarkable series of seminars, bringing together representatives of these streams of Christianity. Held at Bossey, Switzerland, between 2000 and 2006, the seminars built on earlier consultations and brought together theologians and church leaders from a wide range of Evangelical and Orthodox churches. The topics explored include the nature of salvation, the role and place of Holy Scripture, the nature and purpose of the church, and what it means to be human. Building Bridges will be a stimulus to further dialogue between two traditions of considerable theological and demographic significance.

Finally, released last November is a third collection of essays, Many Women Were Also There: the Participation of Orthodox Women in the Ecumenical Movement (WCC Press, 2011), 244pp. About this book the publisher tells us:

In this book, the distinctive voices of Orthodox Christian women wrestle with the realities of their lives and contexts - but also of their faith - within the long and ambiguous legacy of the Christian tradition for women. Keenly aware of the insights and shortcomings of Orthodox Christianity, they reflect the historical, theological, and practical aspects of women's experience. Drawing especially from North America, Europe, and Greece, the book includes noted theologians and biblical scholars, as well as women in ministry, counseling, political science, and public service. Together they envision a future in which Christian life delivers on the promise of those early days when "many women were with him."

Everlasting Memory!

On this Remembrance Day (as Her Britannic Majesty's Canadian Dominion calls it) or Veterans Day (as the American Republic styles it), our thoughts turn to those who have lost their lives in the many heinous conflicts of the last 100 years especially, beginning with World War I, on which myriad histories have been written, but some of the best that I have read include John Keegan, The First World War (Vintage, 2000); Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History (1994); and, of course, Winston Churchill's six-volume history-cum-memoir, The World Crisis, 1911-1918, of which one of his detractors rather archly said that "Winston has written an enormous book about himself and called it The World Crisis." Arthur Balfour, sometime British prime minister and sometime nemesis of Churchill, said of The World Crisis that he was reading Churchill's "autobiography disguised as a history of the universe."

Another fascinating study, about one of the bloodiest and most baffling of battles, is that of Christopher Duffy, Through German Eyes: The British & The Somme 1916 (Phoenix Press, 2007).

Duffy unearthed from Bavarian military archives German views of the British, whom many Germans held in condescending contempt as the "poor little men of a diseased civilization." Time and again, in the amusing records Duffy found, the German interrogators, confronted with British prisoners of war, could not believe that the former might lose the war to the latter's army of men of "crooked legs, rickety, alcoholic, degnerate, ill-bred, and poor to the last degree."

Centuries before the chimes of Big Ben in August 1914 signaled the commencement of hostilities between Britain and Germany, and so unleashed the one event that arguably more than any other shaped the rest of the century, many Christians had set themselves to asking if and when, and under which circumstances, lethal force might be used, or at least tolerated, by Christians. That gave rise to what came, in the West, to be known as the Just War tradition, of which today James Turner Johnson is perhaps the leading scholar in several books, including Ethics and the Use of Force (Justice, International Law and Global Security, Ashgate, 2011); Morality and Contemporary Warfare (Yale, 2001); Can Modern War be Just? (Yale, 1986); and Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry (Princeton, 1984). Others who have thought deeply about these issues, and helped Christians to do so today, include Michael Walzer, Just And Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations (Basic, 2006); and Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War Theory (Readings in Social and Political Theory) (NYU, 1991).

Much of the Just War tradition is traced back, of course, to Augustine of Hippo (on whom the study by John Mark Mattox, St. Augustine and the Theory of Just War [Continuum, 2009] is the most recent). Many Eastern Christians have felt uneasy about Augustine for many reasons, some serious and some not--as I noted before. But whatever you think of him and his influence, it cannot be denied that Augustine gave rise to a very long, serious trajectory of intellectual work thinking through the hard problems of war and peace. Not as much work has been done in an Eastern Christian context, though Alexander Webster's two books, The Pacifist Option: The Moral Argument Against War in Eastern Orthodox Theology (ISP, 1999); and Virtue Of War: Reclaiming the Classic Christian Traditions East and West (2007) are notable exceptions.

Now, however, we have a very welcome new contribution to the discussion, published in September of this year: Hildo Bos and Jim Forest, For the Peace from Above: An Orthodox Resource Book on War, Peace and Nationalism (ORI, 2011).

About this book, the publisher tells us:

Since the early days of the Church, Christians have struggled to come to terms with Christ's words of peace and His example of peace. In Christ's life, as recorded in the New Testament, it is striking that He neither killed anyone nor summoned any of His disciples to kill. Indeed, the final miracle Christ performed before His execution was to heal an enemy's wound, an injury caused by the Apostle Peter in an attempt to defend his master. Yet, in the course of more than twenty centuries of Christian history, we see Christians often involved in war and, in surveying the calendar of saints, find not only those who refused to take part in war but also those who served in the military, though no one has been canonized due to his skill as a soldier. Besides the millions of Christians who have fought in armies, often against fellow Christians, we also find many priests, bishops and theologians who have advocated war and blessed its weapons. Our subject is an urgent one. Many people today live either near conflict areas or are directly touched by war or in areas where terrorist actions may suddenly occur. Everyone on the planet is in some way affected by wars in progress or wars in the making as well as the consequences of wars in the past. Every day thousands of Christians struggle in thought and prayer with some of the most difficult of questions: May I fight injustice by violent methods? Am I allowed to kill in combat? Are there limits on what I can do in the defense of my country? Am I as a Christian allowed to disobey demands that I believe are unjust or violate the Gospel? When the demands of my country seem at odds with the demands of the Kingdom of God, how do I respond to this conflict? Rarely do we find easy answers to these and similar questions.

Those of us in the Orthodox Christian tradition search for help in Holy Scripture, the canons provided to us by ecumenical councils, the witness of the saints, the writing of the Fathers of the Church as well as theologians of recent times. Imitation of saintly forebears alone, however, will not solve our problems. Different eras have adopted different attitudes. Also many of today's problems never existed before, not least the changed character of war in an era of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and mass propaganda. Yet knowledge of the thought and action undertaken by the Orthodox Churches on the issues of war and peace in recent decades surely can help us find ways out of the dead ends that many communities are experiencing today. This is the aim of this book.

Stanley Hauerwas on War

Stanley Hauerwas is one of the most important theologians in America today, famously put on the front cover of Time in its 11 September 2001 edition (planned and published before the attacks) for his views on war and peace, which are heavily influenced by the "pacifism" of the so-called peace churches of the so-called radical Reformation--the Mennonites in particular, whose best-known theologian in this country is the late John Howard Yoder, whose thought has heavily influenced Hauerwas, as the latter has regularly made clear for many years now. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Hauerwas's views attracted even more criticism than they usually do, not least because he refused to go along with the idea that going to war first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq was something a Christian could or should support.

Hauerwas's essay "To Love God, the Poor, and Learning: Lessons Learned from St. Gregory of Nazianzus" was published in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies in 2006 and remains one of the most insightful commentaries on the connections between academic life in a university and the Christian call to serve the poor; I regularly have my students read it. 

While apart from that essay Hauerwas does not often treat explicitly Eastern Christian themes, nevertheless much of what he has to say is enormously important for Eastern Christians in North America to hear for we live here in the same context and are confronted with many of the same issues as Western Christians. Only the most querulously sectarian Eastern Christian would refuse to hear what wisdom Hauerwas may offer (and such a refusal itself would, of course, be a very "un-Eastern" kind of stance to take). Those who have read him, as I have been doing for nearly two decades now, know that a very great deal of Hauerwas's thought inclines in a direction that a Catholic or Orthodox Christian would immediately recognize and strongly affirm, not least his overwhelming emphasis on the centrality of the Church qua Church, that is, as the Body of Christ that sacramentally brings everyone into communion together. This is a long-standing concern of Hauerwas to overcome the individualism of American culture in general and American Christianity in particular.

One of his other long-standing concerns, and closely tied to his ecclesiology, remains the question of violence, whether by religious people or agents of what Alasdair MacIntyre, long an enormous influence on Hauerwas, has called that "most dangerous and unmanageable institution, the modern nation-state" (see MacIntyre's essay "Poetry as Political Philosophy" in Idem, Ethics and Politics: Volume 2: Selected Essays).

Hauerwas has a new book just published that treats of these questions: War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity (Baker Academic, 2011), 224pp.


About this book, the publisher tells us:

How are American identity and America's presence in the world shaped by war, and what does God have to do with it? In this compelling volume, Stanley Hauerwas helps readers reflect theologically on war, church, justice, and nonviolence, exploring such issues as how America depends on war for its identity, how war affects the soul of a nation, the sacrifices that war entails, and why war is considered "necessary," especially in America. He also examines the views of nonviolence held by Martin Luther King Jr. and C. S. Lewis, how Jesus constitutes the justice of God, and the relationship between congregational ministry and Christian formation in America. Students and teachers of Christian theology and ethics, American church history, and American cultural studies will value this work.

The Crimean War

Who remembers the Crimean War today--apart, perhaps, from a few scattered verses, diffidently recalled from one's childhood, of Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade"? The Napoleonic wars before it, and the world wars in the century after it, seem to have completely overshadowed this conflict. And yet a new book out argues that this was at once a:
(i) war of immense slaughter (c. 800,000?);
(ii) religious war in which Catholics (France) and Protestants (Britain) joined with Muslims (the Ottomans) against an Orthodox Christian power (Russia) to prevent the latter from expanding too far into southern and central Europe and Asia Minor;
(iii) a precursor of modern warfare in many of its methods; and
(iv) "the last crusade" as "Holy Russia" sought to prove its theory of being the Third Rome by capturing Hagia Sophia,  dominating all Orthodox Christians, and ruling over the Holy Land after having driven Islam into the sea (Black, Mediterranean, etc) .

Orlando Figes is a somewhat controversial historian, but this looks like a fascinating book.