“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good,” declared Jimmy Carter when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. “We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children,” he lamented.
I am not quite a pacifist, but I am close to being one. I can imagine circumstances where it would be justified to take up arms, but I cannot think of a single war during my lifetime that can be clearly demonstrated to have been worth the terrible cost. I readily concede that, just as individuals may need to defend themselves from bullies, nations may need to defend themselves from aggressors, but a righteous defence doesn’t justify the war itself, even if it’s a legitimate reaction to aggression. Every war in human history has had at least one side – and often both – that cannot claim to have been justified in their actions. And while it seems true to say that passive inaction in the face of grave evils and injustices may be an even worse injustice than war, that doesn’t obviate the fact that war is always evil.
So it seems to me that we should strive to be a peacemakers, and work quietly for peace in whatever ways are available to us, since pacifism seems to be a luxury that the world allows only to those who live far from the world’s conflict zones. I hadn't thought much about this until I was studying at Menno Simons College and one of my professors shocked his class, which consisted primarily of Mennonites and me, by declaring that he was not a pacifist. Growing up on the Ukrainian steppes as World War II raged back and forth across the Mennonite settlements, there were times when pure pacifism just wasn't an option. But he had committed himself to being a peacemaker. And so he was. I admired his honesty about the moral ambiguity of warfare, coming as he did from one of the historic peace churches. And I appreciated that he was willing to concede that he didn't always live up to their professed doctrine.
Living in Canada, we have become accustomed to thinking that, whenever our own nation has found itself drawn into war, we’ve at least been on the side of the good guys. And while our neighbours to the south may have sometimes gotten it wrong, we’ve generally found a way to see why they might feel justified in their foreign misadventures, even if we were doubtful about their merits. But that has changed in recent decades – and it changed dramatically during the past year or two. In hindsight, it is easy to see that America and its allies, including Canada, were misled into the Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan, even though the justifications may have seemed reasonable to most people at the time.
During the past couple of years, though, we have seen Western powers stand mostly silent in the face of Israel’s military excesses in Gaza, we have seen U.S. forces storm the capital of Venezuela to kidnap its president, who is admittedly a thoroughly unlikable fellow, bomb boats in the Gulf of Mexico for alleged (but undocumented and doubtful) criminal activities, and most recently, attack Iran without provocation. The United States has crossed the line from somewhat overzealous defender to an outright aggressor, seeking to impose the will of its leaders (if not necessarily its citizens) onto other countries through the raw exercise of military power. The masks are off. The alliances are tattered and hanging in threads. The pretexts of decency are gone. The belligerence is on full display for all to see.
And we have witnessed the spectacle of Vice President JD Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson, both professed Christians, invoking just war theory in support of the Trump administration’s reckless actions without having any real clue about what it means. But why should they? As part of the perverse political movement known as Christian nationalism, they seem equally clueless about the teachings of Jesus. They use their faith to try to justify their actions after the fact, as opposed to drawing on the teachings and traditions of their faith to inform their actions beforehand. It’s all window dressing, not conviction.
Meanwhile, America’s self-styled secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, describes existing rules of engagement as “stupid,” revealing the naked aggression behind that window dressing. With their roots in just war theory, rules of engagement seek to define the standards by the military conducts war, and Hegseth seems them as “stupid” because they set limits to what the military can do in combat as well as expectations for war’s aftermath – and such limits are inconvenient to brutal men like him. From the president on down, the U.S. administration teeters on the brink of war crimes waiting to happen.
Their exploitation of doctrine as a convenient excuse did draw some momentary media attention to just war theory, an ancient religious principle honoured more often in the breach than in its observance. Simply put, just war theory seeks to articulate the conditions under which war may justly be waged – that is, the conditions under which war may be justified. Now, in absolute sense, the notion of a just war is an illusion. There is no such thing as a just war. There may be a more just side in a war, but war itself is never just. It is always an evil.
Many of us who can’t quite bring ourselves to completely embrace pacifism have a complicated relationship with war because we have loved someone who has served in the military with honour and devotion – sometimes many such loved ones – and in some cases, they may have paid the ultimate sacrifice. And if we haven’t enjoyed a personal connection with a soldier, we may have admired a political leader or historical figure who distinguished themselves in wartime. We naturally admire their service and their dedication, and this may lead us to be circumspect about what we say, even if we may detest the fact of war itself. It’s complicated. Indeed, it’s more complicated than simple labels allow.
Looking back in history, it’s possible to find discussions of just war, or righteous war, in the philosophies of China and India, but our modern ideas of just war, which inform international humanitarian law, can be traced back primarily to the teachings of the saints Ambrose, Augustine, and Thomas Acquinas, who were, in turn, influenced by the Greek and Roman philosophers before them, especially Aristotle. That’s pretty august company for to argue with this morning, so I will restrain myself. It was Aristotle who argued that war must always be a last resort, which seems sound to me, and that its sole legitimate purpose was defensive, aimed only at restoring peace. Later Roman thinking expanded the understanding of defence to include retaliation for pillaging or the violation of treaties.
Building on the philosophers, Ambrose limited war to defence and the punishment of wrongdoing, while maintaining that enemies should always be treated with mercy. Augustine went further by articulating four conditions that must be met for a war to be considered just. Firstly, there must be a just cause, which includes defence, protection of others, or redress of serious wrongdoing. Secondly, those waging war must have legitimate authority – that is to say, only the civil authority may wage war, not private individuals or groups. Thirdly, war must be pursued with the right intention – that is, guided by goodness and proportionality, not revenge, anger, or greed. (Imagine sitting down leaders at the table or pushing them into the corner and saying, ‘You know what? If you’re going to go to war, that’s fine, ut do it after you've gotten over your anger.’ I wonder how many wars would begin in such a circumstance?) Finally, war must be a last resort, and its ultimate goal must be the restoration of peace. This is the paradox of just war theory. Thomas Aquinas refined Augustine’s conditions further, presenting them more systematically, while emphasizing the need for restraint in the use of violence.
The Renaissance scholar and humanist Erasmus considered just war theory to be a smokescreen, believing that the princes of his era invoked it to try to justify their oppression of others while extracting resources from their own subjects. And that’s precisely how it’s being used today. Erasmus believed that war is inherently wrong, that it is forbidden by Christian teachings, and that because “just cause” is inevitably claimed by both sides in an armed conflict, the theory is functionally worthless.
“In order for us human beings to commit ourselves personally to the inhumanity of war, we find it necessary first to dehumanize our opponents, which is in itself a violation of the beliefs of all religions,” according to Jimmy Carter. “Once we characterize our adversaries as beyond the scope of God’s mercy and grace, their lives lose all value. We deny personal responsibility when we plant land mines and, days or years later, a stranger to us – often a child – is crippled or killed. From a great distance, we launch bombs or missiles with almost total impunity and never want to know the number or identity of the victims.” This is modern warfare, a kind of coward’s game.
The cynical and calculated decision to attack Iran sought to take advantage of such great distance, both geographically and philosophically. We’ve spent decades dehumanizing the Iranian People. It’s easy to loathe the heavy-handed, theocratic regime that has dominated Iran for most of our lifetimes, and it’s not hard to imagine that Donald Trump, a supreme narcissist, didn’t compare that regime’s unpopularity with his own.
Credible reports in the media suggest that Benjamin Netanyahu tried to bait previous presidents into joining him in a war against Iran, but it took someone as vain, as ignorant, and as foolhardy as the current president to do so. It was going to be two weeks long. Remember that? Eight weeks ago. Or is it nine? Two weeks long because everything in Donald Trump's life is two weeks from now – the current episode of a reality TV show and the next episode. That is his attention span. Yet here we are.
The United States currently has a president whose sole familiarity with war – and life in general – comes from the movies, and he is currently pursuing his war with Iran, which seems clearly illegal under both international law and the laws of the U.S., as though it were some idiotic reality TV show. But there’s nothing that’s realistic about reality television, although the consequences for the people at the other end of the bombs is very real. The president and his cronies deal in dehumanization of others on a daily basis, and they value life so little that they seem to think it’s worth going to war not for a just cause, but to boost popularity ratings. It hasn’t worked.
It’s easy enough to get just war theory wrong – or allow it to separate us from our humanity. A couple of years ago, I heard an eminent theologian in this city, whom I like and admire, profess an understanding on Augustine’s position that struck me as pure sophistry. While dancing around the question of whether or not what was then happening in Gaza could be called a genocide, a bit of needle-threading that was hard to square with the sheer carnage, he suggested that a proportionate response was defined not by its proportionality to the original offence, but by its relationship to the military goals of the side that imagines itself to be fighting for the just position. While that may appear to fit Augustine’s theory on the surface, I’m confident that the saint himself would protest, if he were around to do so, since the military goals cannot exceed the other limits he articulated. The extermination of the enemy is not a legitimate goal, for if it were, it would mean there’s literally no limit to war. And just was theory says there is.
Unitarian Universalism is not one of the historic peace churches, like the Quakers or Mennonites, but just war theory likely isn’t limiting enough for us today. Just as during the First World War, when there was serious dissent within our movement about the advisability and the ethics of participating in that war, there is among us today division and dissent about war in general. But for the most part, if you look at our Unitarian Universalist history, we have tracked pretty close to a very narrow reading of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas' notions about just war. We've almost followed them to the letter. We can see it, war after war, in Unitarians’ and Universalists’ responses to armed conflict. There were really only two that Unitarians and Universalists seemed to embrace wholeheartedly: the Civil War and the Second World War were the two that found a large measure of support in our tradition. Well, I suppose three – they mostly supported the Revolutionary War. Every other war has been, to some degree or another, beyond the pale.
Umberto Eco said that, “War cannot be justified, because – in terms of the rights of the species – it is worse than a crime. It is a waste.” That’s not a rule, it’s not a limit – it just strikes me as common sense. Warfare is the height of folly, yet we cannot point to any time in history when war wasn’t raging somewhere on earth. So it is evidently a fact of life. We would put an end to it altogether, if we could.
Eleanor Roosevelt advised us that, “It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.” And so that is the work we find ourselves engaged in, at this moment: seeking to create a world at peace, even while the world is at war; seeking to impose limits upon those who believe that war can be justified, to draw people back from their worst instincts and encourage them to follow their best. It isn’t enough to talk about peace, as we have been doing this morning, even while talking about war. We must work at it. And so that is the work we find ourselves engaged in at this moment: seeking to create a world at peace, even while the world is at war; seeking to impose limits upon those who believe that war can be justified, to draw people back from their worst instincts and encourage them to follow their best. It isn't enough to talk about peace, as we have been doing this morning, even while talking about war. We must work at it.
A sermon delivered at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg.
Works Cited
Jimmy Carter, The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (Simon & Schuster, 2002).
Umberto Eco, “Reflections on War” in Five Moral Pieces, trans. Alastair McEwen (Harvest Books, 2002).
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