Two of the nation’s foremost advocates of the Christian just war theory locked horns with one of the nation’s leading Christian pacifists at a National Press Club debate in Washington, D.C. The question addressed by all was the relationship between just war theory and the current U.S. war against terrorism.
"Now we are reminded of what governments are for," said panelist Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago, about the September 11 attacks. "It puts the debate over a prescription drug plan in perspective," she noted with irony.
Elshtain was one of two dozen religious leaders to meet with President Bush for prayer in the wake of the September 11 attacks. A Lutheran, she outlined traditional Christian teachings, dating back to St. Augustine, that justify war in some circumstances.
"It would be irresponsible and a dereliction of duty to fail to respond [to September 11]," Elshtain said. "Government is instituted by God. It has a responsibility to tend to the common good."
Elshtain explained the difference between a U.S. military response and the terrorism that provoked it: "We [the United States] don’t threaten to kill 6,000 civilians. We put soldiers into combat rather than unleash terrorists. Just punishment is very different from revenge."
Punishment observes restraints, she stated. It also does not target a whole people. In contrast, terrorists simply murder. Their goal is the "obliteration" of their perceived enemies.
No war is waged without putting non-combatants at risk, Elshtain admitted. War is therefore not ethically pure. But it is still ethically defensible if fought within the limits of just war theory.
"We will put our combatants in harm’s way to interdict those who put our noncombatants in harm’s way," Elshtain said of the U.S. response to terrorism. The International Criminal Court and other international forae will not defend us from terrorism, she observed. So the U.S. must act.
"We are called to life," she concluded. "The call to live demands action against those committed to death."
Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University Divinity School offered a pacifist response to Elshtain. He was this year declared by Time magazine to be America’s foremost theologian.
"How do you square the ability to fight war justly when you presuppose a world order where justice doesn’t exist?" he asked rhetorically. Just war theory assumes that pacifists are not just "confused" but "immoral," Hauerwas complained.
The disciples of Jesus should have started a "Galilean Liberation Front" to save Jesus from the cross, Hauerwas opined, if the followers of Jesus were to justify violence to pursue a just end.
Innocent people will suffer under just war theory and innocent people will likewise suffer under pacifism, Hauerwas observed. For this reason he opposes all violence.
Hauerwas cited the British bombing of German cities and the U.S. bombing of Japanese cities during World War II as "something other than war" and more akin to murder. He asked whether the American people would have tolerated a U.S. invasion of Japan in place of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to comply with the restrictions imposed by just war teaching.
"Are Americans prepared to sacrifice lives in order to fight justly?" Hauerwas asked. During worship services Christians typically offer each other the "peace of Christ" as a greeting, he noted. He then wondered whether adherents of the just war theory should add a clause – "except in cases of just war" – to the greeting. Hauerwas charged that this kind of exception would be a moral compromise equivalent to opposing adultery in some but not all circumstances.
Just war teaching forces Christians to "cross their fingers" when they say they desire peace, Hauerwas concluded. This attitude turns God into a strictly spiritual being, he alleged, rather than the corporeal Christ whom Christians worship. "Just war always leads to the spiritualization of the Christian faith," according to Hauerwas.
Responding to this allegation of Gnosticism, James Turner Johnson said the just war teaching is based in Scripture, not neo-Platonic speculations. Johnson, a professor at Rutgers University, also took issue with Hauerwas’ adultery comparison. "It’s not violence that’s wrong," he said. "It’s the reasons behind it that are wrong."
Although Hauerwas argued for a police instead of military reaction against terrorism, Johnson contended that "morally there is no difference" between the two. The real issue is the private versus the public use of force. Just war teaching says public use of force, when employed by legitimate authority, can be morally acceptable when the "protection of the political community is at stake."
We have to be "morally discriminating between human imperfection and evil," Johnson said in response to apologists for Osama bin Laden, who claim U.S. foreign policy mistakes provoked the terrorism.
Johnson pointed out that St. Augustine made clear that what is most evil in war is not the killing of people who will eventually die anyway. But the real sins of war are the lust to dominate, cruelty, vengeance, and implacable animosity.
Hauerwas responded to Johnson’s use of Augustine by saying that Augustine believed no society was just that did not worship the "true God." Therefore how could any liberal society claim the teaching of just war for itself? Elshtain replied that just war teaching simply "presupposes a community of shared belief that brings us together in civic affection." But Hauerwas persisted: "I believe Christians are the only people who know how to use violence. But we’re not allowed to use it."
Although Hauerwas professed to want police action against terrorism, it is not clear what actions his pacifism would allow even police to undertake. "I want to work for a social order in which police don’t have to carry weapons," he said. "I want more just societies in which Christians could be police. Police are not about killing but preventing it."
Elshtain complained that in much of religion’s response to September 11, "We have emphasized counseling, psychobabble, theological slackness. We’re not able to come grips with the seriousness of it."
Hauerwas agreed that there is a lot of "liberal sentimental sh-t that passes muster as Christianity. The present church has lost hold of Christology." As an example, he cited the presence of a military color guard at a memorial service for the victims of the World Trade Center collapse held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. That "should not happen," Hauerwas insisted. "That’s not Christianity."
Mark Tooley is the executive director of UMAction, a committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.