Category: Pondering Peace
Moral Injury and U.S. War Culture – Part II
Moral Injury and U.S. War Culture – Part II
(View Part I here)
The development of U.S. war culture has been going on since World War II and has greatly accelerated since 9/11. To a large extent, U.S. churches’ accommodation and support of the military has been longstanding. There has been significant critique of the embrace of Christian nationalism by many churches, even mainline churches, but not enough attention has been focused on its historic and ongoing acceptance and support of national military violence. Instead it has often been accepted as inevitable and necessary to protect the nation.
Perhaps now is a time for moral clarity as we see a reckless and self-serving president and secretary of war, both with an extreme disregard for human life, use the military to launch needless wars, align itself with regimes that engage in massive civilian deaths, use military action to kidnap a president and control another country, and blow up small boats that they assume, without evidence, are carrying drugs. Violence and violations that may have been occurring covertly in the past, are now celebrated in public view. The secretary of war is clearly focused on building the military as a lethal force that is not constrained by “rules of war” or efforts to avoid war crimes. And those who are in the military are in the position of having to carry out their orders.
So what should be our response as Christians and communities of faith? First, it is important to recognize what is going on and to oppose U.S. war culture. As communities of faith, we need to expose it and disentangle ourselves from it. This will require opportunities within faith communities for serious theological reflection on our traditions and theological assumptions and how they may be supporting the violence of militarism and war. Since Scripture is often used to justify and sacralize military violence, serious Scriptural study is called for. Whatever we are doing as communities of faith that provides support and justification for war and military dominance needs to be recognized and removed from our worship and community practices.
Having been a pastor, I know how easily U.S. war culture and the sacralizing of military service can seep into church life. It requires sensitivity and thoughtfulness to address this cultural propensity. One practice that needs attention is the honoring of veterans by lifting them up in worship as heroes in a laudatory and unqualified way that implicitly expresses support for U.S. war culture. Some veterans are proud of their military service and may appreciate this recognition. Perhaps, they did not engage in actual combat, or they are older and were not as subjected to military practices that set them up for moral injury. Others, however, who have experienced moral injury and inwardly struggle with what they have done, may find such adulation uncomfortable and distressing, as it awakens the dissonance they are experiencing inside.
Unfortunately, the practice of honoring servicemembers and veterans in worship also provides the religious context for young people to consider enlisting for military service. They do so not realizing the moral contradictions they will face and the soul-killing training and experiences they may go through.
As Christians, we are called to live out the values and teachings of Jesus. I believe that involves returning to the practice of the early church during its first three centuries of existence before it became aligned with the Roman empire. Christians did not join the military because they held on to Jesus’ words that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Instead they were to love their enemies. We are called to care for our young people, giving them the understanding and resources to live out their faith with integrity in just and nonviolent ways.
Those who like Andy have experienced moral injury can be helpful. In one last desperate effort, he enrolled in a moral injury support group that provided the safe space for him to talk about his military experience for the first time and to understand it within the larger context of structural and cultural violence. He was provided opportunities to move from being a “patient” to being a “prophet,” with a message that others in American society needed to hear. He started talking about his experience of war and moral injury. In the past, being lauded and held up for his military service had only increased his sense of shame, but telling the truth and sharing the suffering that military service had brought started to diminish his depression, hopelessness, and shame.
We need to listen to veterans who have gone through war. They have truth we need to hear. We can recognize their good intentions when they joined the military and seek ways to support them now as they deal with its effects. We need to pay attention to their suffering, not only from physical and mental injuries but also from moral injuries. We need to acknowledge the church’s complicity in their joining the military, because it did not adequately teach the Christian message of nonviolence and instead implicitly supported war culture. Many veterans find meaning and a way to counteract the violence they experienced through participation in Veterans for Peace, an organization that engages them in serving the cause of world peace.
I believe we also need to counsel our young people not to enlist in the military. The values and moral teachings that they have spent their childhood and youth learning in church will be dramatically assaulted in war. We must resist letting our young people become sacrifices for the maintenance of U.S. global military dominance. Since only the adventure and benefits of enlistment are being touted by recruiters, young people need caring adults who will listen to them, counsel them regarding the realities of war, and explore the options they have in life. They can be introduced to and get to know those who chose to be conscientious objectors in past wars, offering them another life path.
As faith communities we must work to protect conscientious objector status, should it be threatened. If a national emergency is declared and the draft is reinstated, we should counsel those drafted to seek to be conscientious objectors, as Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated during the Vietnam War. The Center on Conscience and War has many resources regarding how to apply to become a conscientious objector. They also offer assistance to those wanting to do so who were already in the military and then realized they morally could not do the work of killing.
In And Then Your Soul is Gone, Denton-Borhaug summaries Gandhi’s analysis of violence with these words. “Violence is brutalizing to the human spirit, both for those who implement it, and those on the receiving end. Violence degrades the dignity of human beings and human community” (173). We need to understand the hidden harms that come from devoting so much of our national resources to military violence. Instead of using tax dollars to provide for the betterment of life, they are being used to kill hundreds of thousands of people and destroy other countries. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death” (Beyond Vietnam).
Instead of military violence, as people of faith, we are called to embrace the beloved community of nonviolence as a witness against a culture of war and advocate for nonviolent ways of dealing with conflict. Instead of agreeing to the use of violence to protect national boundaries and retain global dominance, we are called to nourish the bonds of a love that embrace all, even as Jesus did, and build a flourishing world community.
Rev. Ruth Rosell, Ph.D.
Director of the Buttry Center for Peace and Nonviolence
Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology Emerita
Central Seminary, Overland Park, KS
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.