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13 Whether (Modern, American) Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved Christian ethics has, in recent decades, generated a large body of excellent scholarly work on the theory and application of just war theory. Similarly, recent literature is rich in discussions of violence—both the literal kind, and the extended sense of institutional and structural violence. Amidst this literature is a rather notable lack of attention to the moral concern most typical of the early Christian literature: the personal ethical issue of the legitimacy of military service. This is all the more surprising when one thinks of the tens of thousands of Americans who call themselves Christians now serving in our armed forces. In the contemporary American political context, the lack of attention to this question is especially remarkable for at least two reasons. First, for several decades now, our armed forces have relied entirely on volunteers to fill their ranks. When there was a military draft, all able-bodied men were eligible and expected to be willing to serve. In that historical context, individuals who decided that military service was incompatible with their religious convictions had only the options of attempting to establish themselves as conscientious objectors, attempting to register for noncombatant military service, or, failing that, fleeing the country or serving time in prison. But in the era of entirely voluntary military service, doubts about military service need not rise to the level of universal conscientious objection in order to guide any individual’s choices without fear of repercussion. At this juncture of history, an individual is free not to enter military service on the basis of mere taste and preference. It therefore is even more true that if Christian conviction, whether for an individual or for a Christian community or denomination, raises doubts about the moral legitimacy of military service in the contemporary American military, those doubts may be expressed and acted upon freely. John Howard Yoder eloquently and consistently charged that nonPacifist Christian traditions lacked moral credibility in their advocacy of the just war position.1 He pointed out that, if just war were the morally 157 158 Issues in Military Ethics serious matter those traditions claimed in the official just war positions, time and energy might reasonably be expected to be placed in educating and training members of those traditions to apply just war precepts with precision and clarity. Further, one might expect that those traditions would provide political and moral support for individuals who engaged in selective conscientious objection to particular military engagements. In the absence of those outward and visible signs of inward moral seriousness, Yoder suggested , supposedly “just war” traditions came to look suspiciously as though they were mere verbal smoke screens, behind which really lurked essentially amoral national interest convictions and practices. In a similar way, given the generally antimilitary ethos of at least “mainline” Protestant traditions and clergy2 and many Roman Catholic intellectuals in the United States, one might reasonably expect time and energy to be spent on instructing the faithful of the supposed moral failure that permits individuals to volunteer for military service. If that ethos is grounded in serious moral conviction (rather than mere prejudice or distaste ), one would expect mainline traditions to articulate those convictions for the instruction of their adherents. The often uncritical nationalism of much of the evangelical American tradition combines with the often uncritical antimilitary sentiment of many of the mainline traditions (and perhaps especially of the theological academics of those traditions)3 to create a situation of virtually no serious dialogue concerning the legitimacy of Christian military service. Anyone familiar with the culture of the American military knows that the ranks of the officer and enlisted corps contain large absolute numbers and also large percentages of individuals who identify themselves as very pious Christians. To a degree that would be amazing to many civilians and appalling to vigorous guardians of separation of Church and State, many military organizations are awash in frequent, public, and (often) quite conservative evocations of Christian religious ideas, themes, and values. Although military piety naturally borrows much from civilian evangelical culture, the fact that many military personnel live out their religious lives almost entirely within military religious culture further exacerbates the lack of civilian-military religious dialogue. For career military people, it is not only possible, but common, for them to live out their religious lives almost entirely through the institutions of the base or post chapel program, in dialogue with military chaplains, and in the prayer breakfasts and other religious...

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