war
Let's not help ISIS create chaos
As Rusty Foster would say, the takes are in. Everyone’s got something to say about global terrorism, ISIS, and refugees, and some of it is even worth reading.
If you’re only going to read one longer piece, I recommend this one by Scott Atran and Nafees Hamid.
Afterwar, by Nancy Sherman
Nancy Sherman's message is clear: society must understand the totality of human experiences of war, including their moral dimensions.
reviewed by Zachary Moon
Seventy years since the war ended—and continued
The current issue of the Century features a remembrance by my mother of my grandfather’s terrifying war experience and its unfolding consequences. Tomorrow the world marks the 70th anniversary of V-E Day, when the world-shaping trauma of the war halted in Europe. My grandfather’s story is only a tiny fragment of the war, his decades of agony only a ripple in its billowing aftershocks. But it is the kind of story that is easily lost as the war recedes from living memory.
Religious violence? The politics of a higher law
Throughout history, people loyal to a higher law have been responsible for much violence. Should we reject appeals to a higher law?
by Ted A. Smith
Presidents and the moral accounting of war
Holidays evoke moments of reflection. Americans just celebrated Memorial Day, a time to honor those who have fought and died in wars for the nation. Traditionally, people hold parades, gather in cemeteries and rally around monuments to fallen soldiers.
Perhaps it was fitting, then, both that President Barack Obama delivered a signal speech on the war on terror last week and that Google bestowed the honor of “Google doodle of 2013” to Sabrina Brady, a Wisconsin teenager who depicted her father’s return from a tour of duty in Iraq.
Amy Blumenshine: Welcome Them Home, Help Them Heal
This podcast is an excellent resource as you think about worship this Memorial Day weekend. I learned so much as Derrick Weston talked with Amy Blumenshine. She has incredible wisdom as she navigates a pastoral response to service and honoring soldiers when we have ethical problems with war.
When patriarchy trumps theology
If life is the most important thing in a political and theological belief system, then why would a person support the death penalty, back wars and oppose gun violence prevention?
Longing for home
When Peter Jackson plays up the theme of home, it's a loving riff on Tolkien. But why must he make war the driving engine of the The Hobbit?
Prayer concern: Remembering all the victims of war
Each week my church includes a prayer for the families of American soldiers who have died. As the names are read, I try to hold them in prayer. But I have wrestled with these prayers.
What war does to warriors
Karl Marlantes's new book is not fiction, but it develops the idea of his novel Matterhorn: that war provides a
sense of transcendence that can be found nowhere else.
A proper patriot
We owe our homeland patriotism, but not just any kind of patriotism—because just as we don't choose our parents, neither do we choose our country of origin.
by Rodney Clapp
"No one talks about what happens to the people nothing happens to"
Via Rose Berger,
the summer issue of Portland magazine
includes an essay by Portland editor
and Century contributor Brian Doyle,
in which he quotes at length a conversation with a young U.S. war veteran named
Jackie. She paints a striking picture.