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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2015
In this article, I intend to explore the normative relation(s) between “God” and “war.” A bit more precisely, I intend to explore the normative relevance of theistic conviction to the proper employment of military violence. Even more precisely, I intend to explore the relevance of theistic conviction to the proper employment of military violence as judged by the so-called Just War Tradition (JWT). Properly interpreted, I take the JWT to provide the best available account of the morality of war. The JWT is not perfect and is bedeviled by serious problems, but it is the best available nonetheless. So, when I reflect on the morality of war, and thus on the normative relation(s) between religion and war, I do so from the perspective of the JWT.
Now this might seem to portend a very brief discussion. As we will see in detail, contemporary adherents typically construe the JWT in resolutely secular terms. Perhaps in order to compensate for its religious prehistory, most insist that the JWT has outgrown its religious provenance and may not be used to legitimate a crusade, a jihad, a holy war, or anything of the sort. In so doing, they align the JWT with the commonplace, endemic to contemporary liberal democracies, that religious wars and religious justifications for war lay far, far beyond the moral pale.
1. Augustine's position on religious coercion is (in)famously complex. For helpful discussion, see Brown, Peter, St. Augustine's Attitude Toward Religious Coercion, 54Google Scholar J. Roman Stud. 107(1964).
2. Aquinas: political writings 268 (R.w. Dyson ed., Cambridge Univ. Press 2002).
3. See Tuck, Richard, The Rights of War And Peace 70 (Oxford Univ. Press 1999)Google Scholar.
4. Gentili, Alberico, The Advantages of Preventive War, in the ethics of war: Classic and Contemporary Readings 375 (Reichberg, Gregory M., Syse, Henrik & Begby, Endre eds., Blackwell Pubi'g 2006)Google Scholar.
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8. Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical illustrations 62 (Basic Books, 3d ed. 2000)Google Scholar.
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10. See generally Fotion, Nicholas, War and Ethics: A New Just War Theory 72 (Continuum Books 2007)Google Scholar.
11. Kimball, Charles, When religion Becomes Evil 168–69 (HarperCollins Pub. 2008)Google Scholar.
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13. Id. at 260.
14. Johnson, James Turner, The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions 14–15 (Penn. State Univ. Press 1997)Google Scholar; see also id. at 31, 47, 59, 133, 174 n3.
15. Orend, Brian, The Morality of War 10 (Broadview Press 2006)Google Scholar.
16. Id 73.
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18. This is a simplification that plays no crucial role in my argument. Of the various options, see Childress, James F., Moral Responsibility in Conflicts: Essays on Nonviolence, War, and conscience 82 (La. State Univ. Press 1982)Google Scholar.
19. Having just run across Bartholomeusz, Tessa J., In Defense Of Dharma: just-war Ideology in Buddhist Sri Lanka (Routledge Curzon 2002)Google Scholar, I would very much like to extend this discussion to non-theistic religions. I am unsure how to do so and yet retain a sufficiently disciplined conception of the religious. I take it that this problem is both venerable and nearly impossible to avoid. On the relation between this definitional issue and familiar conceptions of religious war, see, e.g., Cavanaugh, William, The myth of religious violence (Oxford Univ. Press 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20. For an excellent explication of this claim, see Thomas, Scott M., The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The struggle for the soul of the twenty-first century 33, 47–63 (Palgrave MacMillan 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21. See, e.g., Cook, Martin L., The Moral Warrior: Ethics and Service in the U.S. Military 44–45 (State Univ. N.Y. Press 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Donnelly, Thomas, A Question of Faith: Conflicts Driven by Religion Can Be Long and Bitter, Armed Forces J. (10. 2006), http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/10/2085245/Google Scholar; Lilla, Mark, The stillborn god: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West 52 (Alfred A. Knopf Pub. 2007)Google Scholar; Micklethwait, John & Wooldridge, Adrian, God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World 300–01 (Penguin Press 2009)Google Scholar.
22. Philpott, Daniel, Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations 82 (Princeton Univ. Press 2001)Google Scholar.
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24. Some seem to have drawn an even more capacious moral from this standard liberal narrative, viz., that religion must not play any role in the formulation or justification of a nation-state's foreign policy. So W.E.H. Lecky, praising the secular consequences of the Peace of Westphalia:
It was in this way that, in the course of a few centuries, the foreign policy of all civilized nations was completely and finally secularized. Wars that were once regarded as simple duties became absolutely impossible. Alliances that were once deemed atrocious sins became habitual and unchallenged. That which long had been the center around which all other interests revolved, receded and disappeared, and a profound change in the actions of mankind indicated a profound change … [of] belief.
Quoted in Micklethwait & wooldridge, supra note 21, at 301.
If Thomas F. Fair is correct, the conviction that foreign policy should be resolutely secular prevails in the United States foreign policy establishment and powerfully shapes the priorities pursued by career officials at “Foggy Bottom.” See Farr, Thomas F., World of faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty is Vital to American National security (Oxford Univ. Press 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. If he is correct about current realities, then the contemporary American foreign policy establishment has broken with centuries of practice in which religious considerations played a crucial role in shaping alliances, determining objectives and so on. See Preston's, Andrew fascinating and encyclopedic Sword of the spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (Alfred A. Knopf 2012)Google Scholar.
25. Housley, Norman, The Later Crusades, 1274–1580: From Lyon to Alcazar 311 (Oxford Univ. Press 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26. On the claim that religion often provides “markers” that help to identify “the enemy” without thereby causing war, see Martin, David, Does Christianity Cause War? (Oxford Univ. Press 1997)Google Scholar. That religion often provides ideological cover for naked economic and political aggrandizement is widely recognized and provides excellent reason to be wary of religiously justified warfare. No doubt exactly the same point is true of secular justifications for waging war, not least those which appeal to the JWT. Indeed, secular rationalizations for waging war can, and have, masked causally effective religious motivations. For one case, see Housley, Norman, Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400–1536, at 194 (Oxford Univ. Press 2002)Google Scholar.
27. This claim is substantiated even in the apparent exception. So, for example, Peter Russell portrays Prince Henry the Navigator as an exceedingly rash and inconstant executor of the crusading mission and associates the crusading ideology with Henry's lack of realism and pragmatism: because Crusades were a matter of faith, the success of a Crusade was a matter of faithfulness to God rather than human ingenuity and planning. But it is quite clear from Russell's account that even Henry did not disregard garden variety concerns about troop strength, logistical support, popular opinion and the like. See Russell, Peter, Prince Henry ‘The Navigator’: A life 50 (Yale Univ. Press 2000)Google Scholar.
28. Wheatcroft, Andrew, The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe 192 (Basic Books 2009)Google Scholar.
29. Thomas, supra note 20, at 56.
30. Quoted in Parker, Goeffrey, The Thirty Years War 184 (Routledge 1997)Google Scholar. See Thomas, supra note 20, at 54–55.
31. That the familiar Westphalian narrative needs to be rendered at least somewhat more complex than popularly understood is indicated by the title of a recent publication: War and Religion After Westphalia 1648–1713 (David Onnekink ed., Ashgate 2009).
32. See generally Barker, Thomas M., Double Eagle ad Crescent: Vienna's Second Turkish Siege and Its Historical Setting (State Univ. N.Y. Press 1967)Google Scholar; Stoye, John, The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial between Cross & Crescent (Pegasus Books 2001)Google Scholar; Wheatcroft, supra note 28.
33. As Wheatcraft described:
In the seventeenth century the emergencies of 1664 and 1683 revived the idea of a holy war on land. It was perhaps the last act of a temporarily united Christendom, for both Catholics and Protestants … participated actively against the common enemy. It was papal money that provided the essential lubricant of these occasional alliances, and Pope Innocent XI was prepared to lavish huge amounts on the war to expel Islam from formerly Christian-ruled lands.
Wheatcroft, supra note 28, at 190. As Norman Housley demonstrates in painstaking detail, the role of the Papacy in organizing and advocating for a defense of Christendom against Muslim aggressors was a venerable one. See Housley, supra note 25, at 147 and throughout.
34. Bass, Gary J., Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention 47–151 (Alfred A. Knopf 2008)Google Scholar.
35. So far as this novice can tell, each of the belligerents party to the Crimean War—British, French, Russian and Ottoman—took their participation in the Crimean War to be justified by religious considerations, though particularly the Russians:
The Tsar of Russian addressed his people in a manifesto: “England and France have sided with the enemies of Christianity against Russia combating for the Orthodox faith … Russia fights not for the things of this world, but for faith … let all Russia exclaim, ‘O Lord our Redeemer! Whom shall we fear? May God be glorified and His enemies dispersed.’” On 11 April, Russian formally declared war on France and Britain.
Troubetzkoy, Alexis S., A Brief History of the Crimean War: The Causes and Consequences of a Medieval Conflict Fought in a Modern Age 161 (Carroll & Graf Pub. 2006)Google Scholar. Of course, we do not need to take such un-Westphalian ejaculations at face value, or as providing the whole motivational/causal story, in order to credit religious considerations with some non-negligible explanatory role. See generally, Figes, Orlando, The Crimean War: A history (Metropolitan Books 2011)Google Scholar.
36. See, e.g., Akcam, Taner, A shameful ACT: the armenian genocide and the question of turkish responsibility (Bessemer, Paul trans., Metropolitan Books 2006)Google Scholar; Balakian, Peter, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response (HarperCollins 2003)Google Scholar.
37. Thomas, supra note 20, at 9.
38. See Jok, Jok Madut, Sudan: Race, Religion and Violence 79–80 and throughout (Oneworld Press 2007)Google Scholar.
39. The most prominent treatment of this claim is in Huntington, Samuel P., The clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order 54, 209–18 (Simon & Schuster 1996)Google Scholar. For a more popular treatment, see Micklethwait & Wooldridge, supra note 21, particularly at 297–321.
40. Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity 163–64 (Oxford Univ. Press 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Griswold, Eliza, The Tenth parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2010)Google Scholar.
41. I should note that the various examples I have provided of religious wars, both past and present, could be amplified further were we to understand religion in a broader and more amorphous manner, say, as an element of national identify or as comparable to political ideologies like Nazism or Communism. My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for the Journal of Law and religion for this reminder.
42. For an elaboration and defense of a similar version of this principle, see Audi, Robert, Liberal Democracy and the Place of Religion in Politics, in Audi, Robert & Wolterstorff, Nicholas, Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate 25 (Rowman & Littlefield Pub. 1997)Google Scholar.
43. See, paradigmatically, Rawls, John, Political Liberalism xviii, xx (Colum. Univ. Press 1996)Google Scholar; Rawls, John, The Idea of Public Reason Revisited, in The Law of Peoples 131 (Harv. Univ. Press 1999)Google Scholar.
44. Blake, Michael, Reciprocity, Stability, and Intervention: the Ethics of Disequilibrium, in Ethics And Foreign Intervention 55, 56–57 (Chatterjee, Deen K. & Sheid, Don eds., Cambridge Univ. Press 2003)Google Scholar. See also Larmore, Charles E., Patterns OF Moral Complexity 40–68 (Cambridge Univ. Press 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Larmore, Charles E., The Morals of Modernity especially 134 (Cambridge Univ. Press 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45. I think worthy of further reflection the striking parallels between the manner in which the secular, natural and universal have been arrayed in one phalanx against the religious, sectarian and particular both by so many theorists of the morality of war and by advocates of (PSR). These binary oppositions are deeply entrenched in the culture of Western liberal democracies.
46. Norman, Richard, Ethics, Killing and War 109 (Cambridge Univ. Press 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47. Vitoria, supra note 9, at 313.
48. What I mean by “otherwise just wars” in this context are those wars that satisfy (JWT)—they have a just cause, they are waged on legitimate authority and with right intention though they cannot be justified to those against whom they are waged. In effect, the argument from respect implies a very demanding constraint on how the more familiar JWT constraints must be satisfied, and this demanding constraint cannot be satisfied in the actual world.
49. On just war pacifism, see Fiala, Andrew, The just war myth: The moral Illusions of War (Rowman & Littlefield 2008)Google Scholar.
50. The reader might espy an irony in this response: we might think that the commitment to human dignity and human rights that I take to be central to the JWT played an important role in the very secularizing process at which my main arguments are directed. But I do not believe that there is any necessary relation between commitment to human dignity, human rights, and secularization. Much to the contrary, I know of no adequate secular account of human dignity. Consequently, incorporation of a commitment to human dignity into the JWT might constitute one of the main ways in which religious commitment helps to shape the JWT. For a detailed argument, see Eberle, Christopher J., Basic Human Worth: Secular and Religious Perspectives, in New Waves in the Philosophy of Religion (Weilenberg, Eric & Nagasawa, Yujin eds., Palgrave MacMillan 2009)Google Scholar. My thanks to an anonymous reader for this point.
51. This is just a reformulation of the claim that all religious wars violate Vitoria's dictim.
52. James Turner Johnson has specified ten distinct conceptions of what makes for a “holy war,” Johnson, supra note 14, at 37–42. There are various importantly different understandings of what makes for a “crusade.” Disagreement about what makes for a “jihad” (in the sense that involves the use of military violence) is widespread. So I grant from the outset that my understanding of what makes for a religious war is substantially stipulative, though I hope not such as to prejudge substantive matters. Perhaps most helpful to me has been in Kolbaba, Tia M., Fighting for Christianity: Holy War in the Byzantine Empire, 68 Byzantion 194–221 (1998)Google Scholar, which exemplifies in detail just how complex can be the ways in which religion can shape war.
53. A war of conversion will also almost always, though not invariably, be understood to be a religiously justified war. That is, C likely employs military violence to impose R on some unwilling population because the relevant members of C believe that R is normatively superior to the targeted population's extant religion (and because they believe that it is very important for the targeted population to “accept” R). In this case, C's just cause for war is supposedly the wrongful repudiation of R. As a consequence, a war of conversion clearly violates the core holding of Vitoria's Dictum.
54. See Russell, Prince Henry ‘The Navigator’ supra note 27, at 135–66, 264–90.
55. Russell, supra note 27, at 239–63.
56. Quoted in Rivera, Luis N., A Violent Evangelism 34 (Westminster Press trans., Westminster Press 1992)Google Scholar; see also id. at 104–08.
57. See Housely, supra note 25, at 310.
58. In order to appreciate the complexity of the issues involved here, note that some conversionary wars need not differ from hegemonic wars in the respects that I have just indicated. How so? Some wars have been fought not to force the recalcitrant to convert, but to remove unjust impediments to conversion. See Housley, supra note 25, at 381.
59. Kelsay, John, Arguing the Just War in Islam 37 (Harv. Univ. Press 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60. Id. at 102. See a somewhat fuller statement in Kelsay, John, Islam and War: A Study in Comparative Ethics 34–35 (Westminster/John Knox Press 1993)Google Scholar. See also An-Na'im, Abdullahi Ahmed, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari'a 129 (Harv. Univ. Press 2008)Google Scholar; Cragg, Kenneth, The Arab Christian: A History in the Middle East 56–57 (Westminster John Knox Press 1991)Google Scholar; Esposito, John L., Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam 33 (Oxford Univ. Press 2002)Google Scholar; Orlando Figes; Finkel, Caroline, Osman's Dream: The Story of The Ottoman Empire 1300–1923, at 322 (Basic Books 2005)Google Scholar; Johnson, supra note 14, at 51; Neff, Stephen C., War and the Law of Nations: A General History 40 (Cambridge Univ. Press 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tibi, Bassam, War and Peace in Islam, in The Ethics of War and Peace: religious and Secular Perspectives 130 (Nardin, Terry ed., Princeton Univ. Press 1996)Google Scholar; Wheatcroft, supra note 28, at 85.
61. Kelsay, supra note 59, at 119.
62. Esposito, John, Islam: The Straight Path 35 (Oxford Univ. Press, rev. 3d ed., 2005)Google Scholar.
I am skeptical of Esposito's characterization of the options offered to targeted communities as “peaceful.” Given that they are backed up with the threat of armed attack, the offer of conversion or subjugation was no more “peaceful” than the “money” option offered by the robber who demands “your money or your life.”
63. Lincoln, W. Bruce, Red Victory: a History of the Russian Civil War 81 (De Capo Press 1999)Google Scholar.
64. Of course, I grant that it will sometimes, perhaps often, be very difficult to determine whether a given war is a war to protect religion, for religious hegemony or to compel conversion. Almost always will it be the case that those who wage a war of conversion will help themselves to the claim that they are merely protecting the True Faith. In this respect war to protect the True Faith is similar to other kinds of defensive war; war is proclaimed to defend the homeland when in fact war is waged for some less than entirely defensive aim.
65. See Herrin, Judith, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire 83–97 (Princeton Univ. Press 2007)Google Scholar. According to Norman Housley, the conquest of Constantinople was the central aim of Ottoman ideology and for “centuries … the highest goal of the mujahid.” Housley, supra note 25, at 96 (emphasis original).
66. Crowley, Roger, 1453: The holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West 106–07 (Hyperion 2005)Google Scholar.
67. Runciman, Steven, The Fall of Constantinople, 1453, at 130 (Cambridge Univ. Press 1965)Google Scholar.
68. Stoye, supra note 32, at 190.
69. Id 71.
70. Id. at 138. On the complexity of Christian attitudes toward the threat posed by the Ottoman Empire, see Housley, supra note 26, at 131–59.
71. Barraclough, Geoffrey, The Origins of modern Germany 252 (W.W. Norton 1984)Google Scholar. See also Fletcher, Richard, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to christianity 445 (Univ. Cal. Press 1999)Google Scholar.
72. Quoted in Brown, Peter, The Rise of Western Christendom 433 (2d ed., Blackwell Pub. 2003)Google Scholar. For a description of that subjugation, see fletcher, supra note 71, at 213. Suffice to say that, as described in the “Saxon Capitulary,” which records various measures taken to Christianize Saxony, refusal to be baptized, cremation of the dead, meat consumption during Lent, attacking churches, killing clergy and participation in pagan rituals were capital offenses.
73. So, for example, the Hussite civic authorities in Prague depicted their military response to the crusade waged against them in 1420 as a just defense of “the truth of the Gospel”; “the defense of the truth of the Gospel in the face of every evil, and against all who attack us when we advocate it, is enjoined on everybody, both through the duty of the Gospel calling and through the investing in us of the secular arm: we must resist [Sigismund] to the end as a tyrant and as a most cruel Antichrist.” Quoted in Housley, supra note 26, at 50.
74. On these last, “secular” wars on religion, see Burleigh, Michael, Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe from the French Revolution to the great War (Harper Collins 2005)Google Scholar; Burleigh, Michael, Sacred Causes: the Clash of Religion and Politics from the Great War to the War on Terror (Harper Collins 2007)Google Scholar.
75. Otherwise put, C1 demands that C2 acquiesce to live in a polity in which the members of C1 and C2 cannot relate to one another as political equals where the basis for unequal status is a function of religious commitment. See An-Na'IM, supra note 60, at 128–31.
76. In the extreme, it is possible that the policies the victors in a hegemonic war impose on the subject population are sufficiently burdensome that certain hegemonic wars do not differ in any morally relevant respect from certain conversionary wars.
77. I am well aware that my skepticism on this very point runs counter to the dominant understanding of the JWT as it has developed in the modern world, as has been documented in detail by James Turner Johnson. Most particularly, see Johnson, supra note 12. But I take Johnson's main effort to be explication, rather than vindication. He does not show that religious considerations cannot decisively justify war, so much as explain why so many theorists became disenchanted with religiously justified war—often with religious war on some very particular construal.
78. Recall the admonition of the last Byzantine Emperor, cited above, who admonished his subjects to fight for faith, city, and people. This is a very familiar phenomenon. So, for example, Roland Bainton notes that preachers during the English Civil War “not uncommonly declared that they were fighting for religion, liberty and laws.” Bainton, Roland H., Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-evaluation 149 (Abingdon Press 1960)Google Scholar.
79. Once again, a position regarding the proper justificatory role of religious considerations in the international context is strikingly similar to a parallel position regarding the proper justificatory role of religious consideration within a liberal democratic polity. Here, for example, is Jurgen Habermas's variation on our theme.
It is unclear why under this premise the political community should not at any time be in danger simply of disintegrating into religious struggle. Certainly, the usual empiricist reading of liberal democracy has always construed majority decisions as the temporary subjection of a minority to the actual power of a numerically prevailing party. But this utilitarian theory explains the acceptance of the voting procedure by the willingness of rational choosers to compromise; it reckons with parties who concur in their preference for the largest possible share of basic goods such as money, security or leisure time. The parties can conclude compromises because all of them aspire to the same categories of divisible goods. Yet precisely this condition is not met as soon as the conflicts no longer flare up over the share in the same kind of material goods, but on competing values and mutually exclusive “goods of salvation.” The conflict on existential values between communities of faith cannot be solved by compromise.
Haberman, Jürgen, Religion in the Public Square, 14 european J. phil. 12 (2006)Google Scholar.
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83. Pauletta Otis, Religion and Security: The New Nexus in International Relations, The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (11. 10, 2004), http://pewforum.org/events/?EventID=63Google Scholar.
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86. Bainton, supra note 78, at 148.
87. This is not merely a theoretical possibility. There is no doubt that some who have waged a religious war have been led by their religious convictions to do so with punctilious commitment to proper conduct. This is a major sub-theme in Housely, supra note 26, at 2, 161–70, as well as in Johnson, supra note 14, at 102–09, 130–46.
88. Aslan, Reza, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization and the End of the war on terror 84 (Random House 2009)Google Scholar. Here is one variation on Asian's argument, articulated by President Obama on the occasion of his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:
89. Bainton, supra note 78, at 49.
And most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint—no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or the Red Cross worker, or even a person of one's own faith.
President Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech: A Just and Lasting Peace (Dec. 10, 2009), available at http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/10/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5961370.shtml.
President Obama's argument is no less fallacious than Asian's. If you believe that waging war carries out the divine will, and if you believe that the divine will requires you to spare the pregnant mother, medic, etc., then there is need for restraint. What matters is not the mere fact that you believe that using violence furthers the divine will, but what you believe that the divine will requires. On President Obama's conception of the proper relation between religion and war, see Carter, Stephen L., The Violence of Peace: America's Wars in the age of Obama 86 (Beast Books 2011)Google Scholar.
90. Parker, supra note 30, at 138. One of the central theses of Peter Wilson's monumental The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy, is that the Thirty Years War was not primarily a religious war. This thesis, if correct, seriously complicates any appeal to that conflict as exemplifying the claim that religious war must be a moral horror! See Wilson, Peter, The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy 4–10 (Belknap Press 2009)Google Scholar.
91. I am not unmindful of the very significant religious rhetoric employed to justify the participation of belligerents in WWI. So, for example, according to Richard Gamble, for many progressive clergy,
The Great War was the final battle of light against darkness, of Christianity against paganism, of democracy against absolutism, and of progress against decay. It was the future arrayed against the past. … The great irony of the war was that, in the very name of perpetual peace, the Protestant liberal clergy rationalized and legitimized the mass destruction of the first total war of the twentieth century, and demanded that it be carried to a decisive victory.
Gamble, Richard, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation 178–79 (ISI Books 2003)Google Scholar. The proliferation of messianic and eschatological rhetoric in favor of WWI exemplifies the difficulty of showing that religiously justified wars are particularly or distinctively brutal. It is clear that both religious and secular legitimation pervaded the unimaginably brutal “War to End All Wars,” but it is doubtful in the extreme that we are able to specify the particular quantum of brutality lent to WWI by religion. Consequently, it is doubtful in the extreme that we are in any position to compare the amount of religiously engendered brutality attendant to WWI with the amount of religiously engendered brutality lent to any other war—even the Thirty Years War, where we undoubtedly face exactly the same problem.
92. Eberle, Christopher J., Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics 156 (Cambridge Univ. Press 2002)Google Scholar.
93. Id. at 157.
94. I am currently at work on a manuscript length treatment of my topic.
94. I am currently at work on a manuscript length treatment of my topic.