Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church Rather Than the State
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Overview
This provocative and timely primer on the just war tradition connects just war to the concrete practices and challenges of the Christian life. Daniel Bell explains that the point is not simply to know the just war tradition but to live it even in the face of the tremendous stresses and difficulties associated with war.
Just War as Christian Discipleship recovers contexts and specifics of the just war tradition that have been widely forgotten. Instead of seeing the tradition as a checklist to complete that justifies a proposed or ongoing war, Bell looks back to the aspects of the tradition that were about forming, supporting, and holding accountable Christians as just warriors. He shows how just war practice, if it is to be understood as a faithful form of Christian discipleship, must be rooted in and shaped by the fundamental convictions and confessions of the faith. The book includes a foreword by an Army chaplain who has served two tours in Iraq and study questions for group use.
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- Recovers lost and little understood aspects of just war theory
- Applies the principles of just war theory to contemporary society
- Shows that just war theory sought ways to define appropriate and restrain brutality in war
- Love and Evil in the Christian Life: The Emergence of Just War
- Can War Be Just? A Brief History of Just War
- Just War as Christian Discipleship: Presuppositions and Presumptions
- Who’s in Charge? Legitimate Authority
- Why Fight? Just Cause
- Why Fight? Right Intent
- When Fight? Last Resort and Reasonable Chance of Success
- How Fight? Discrimination and Proportionality
- Conclusion: Spirituality and Just War
By reframing just war as a discipline of Christian discipleship, Bell has breathed new life into the discussion surrounding this important topic. He has done so, moreover, in a manner that makes this book accessible to those well versed in the debates as well as those who are confronting these issues for the first time.
—Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics, Duke Divinity School
Bell has written a book that I wish I'd had during my deployments. Just War as Christian Discipleship addresses the just war tradition in a way that not only adds to our knowledge of the historical roots of the tradition but also contributes to the Christian soldier's desire to embody the principles as lifestyle.
—Lt. Col. Scott A. Sterling, chaplain, United States Army
This groundbreaking book synthesizes the writing style and substance of just war ethicists Paul Ramsey and Oliver O'Donovan with that of pacifist ethicists John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas. Bell’s Just War as Christian Discipleship will become a standard resource for helping Christians who espouse the just war tradition to adhere to it in a way that, as John Howard Yoder would put it, is honest and has teeth.
—Tobias Winright, assistant professor of Christian ethics and director of Ethics Across the Curriculum, Saint Louis University
Daniel M. Bell Jr. is professor of theological ethics at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina. He is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and the author of The Economy of Desire: Christianity and Capitalism in a Postmodern World.
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