What happens when you begin to parse, from a biblical Christian context, the bumper-sticker thinking that pleads, “Support our troops”? Troops John the Baptist tells soldiers to do no violence to anyone. But that is what troops do. Their very job is to enforce by physical means the will of some person or group of [...]
Yesterday was December 7, which we are all supposed to remember as “Pearl Harbor day,” or, as the then president called it, the “day that will live in infamy.” Yes, it will. But evidence is abundant that Roosevelt had labored long and hard to bring us to that day. The president was anxious to get [...]
Whatever one may think of Hauerwas, he has a point: Who has the infinite duty to honor the infinite claim of every person to the pursuit of happiness? The answer of the eighteenth century, and of those who have followed, is familiar: it is the nation-state. The nation-state replaces the holy church and the holy-empire [...]
