As might be the case for so many of us, a significant portion of my past ten years have been consumed by the burning question, “How in the world did we get here?” The two sides of the political and religious aisles have never appeared so far apart. I have watched friends and family drift into belief structures that seem entirely foreign to me. Personally, I have not spoken with the Best Man in my wedding (and I in his) in 8 years after he chose to end our relationship over differences in politics. In these moments, I find myself grasping for any insight into what they are seeing that I do not.
Entire new forms of media delivery have arisen attempting to make sense of the societal upheaval that we are experiencing. While I find some real insights from the myriad investigations into the roles that fear and uncertainty, economic hardship, and charismatic strongmen have played, there is one aspect of our current landscape that I have found strikingly missing – appeals to the spiritual.
Given the limitations of this current discussion, I will focus on one aspect of this current division, which in turn will help make sense of the remainder. War. As a Catholic Theology professor, one of the more perplexing questions that I face in attempting to make sense of the current religious landscape is how are there so many millions of people in United States who claim to follow the same Christ that I do but then appear to see no conflict in their support of our country’s military policies. On a constant basis, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showers the American public with an array of carefully curated scripture passages contorted to champion the interests of the strongest country on Earth over and against the poor and marginalized.
According to the newly christened “Department of War,” the requested military budget for the 2027 fiscal year is a record setting $1.5 trillion (DoW Defense Budget). While there is currently a significant resistance to the current administration’s war in Iran, support for the US military and its interventions, in general, remains high. This is especially true for Christian Evangelicals and, to a slightly lesser degree, Roman Catholics depending on the justification for military action offered. (Guth & Nelson).
Why?
Despite the common Gospel refrains of “blessed are the peacemakers,” “turn the other cheek,” and the like, US Christians not only overwhelmingly support military intervention but oftentimes have linked military action to our obligation as Christians (see Celestini and Deters). Having been raised within Christian fundamentalism, I believe I can explain why.
As a child, I was a voracious reader of fiction. I breathed C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L’Engle. And while the local library did much to feed my imaginative appetite, my very well-meaning parents quickly found a way to support my love of fiction while also reinforcing what they believed was a morally safe worldview through the employment of our local Christian bookstore.
It was here that I discovered the fantasy worlds of Stephen R. Lawhead and the apocalyptic “fiction” of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. The author that has stayed with me most throughout my journey from Evangelical fundamentalism into something akin to a more progressive Catholicism, however, is Frank E. Peretti.
A New York Times bestselling author, Peretti is most well-known for his This Present Darkness and its sequel, Piercing the Darkness. Here, a small-town young woman and a local pastor stumble upon a great conspiracy that would explain why the life of the everyday Christian often feels so difficult. What begins as an account of a fight between the common person and local politics, quickly unveils a spiritual battle between the forces of good and evil itself.
As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that their small town had become the center of a cosmic battle between good and evil in the form of spiritual warfare. The chapters of the book begin to alternate between a description of the human activities of a period of time and a subsequent chapter highlighting the spiritual dimension of those very same events. The reader is introduced to the angels fighting alongside the Christian protagonist as well as the actual demons who are manipulating and controlling those foolish enough to stray away from the very narrow path of Christian goodness.
As a child the story enraptured me. The Bible that my family read together are celebrated at Church did, after all, offer that “…our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens” (Ephesians 6:12, my emphasis). What if, just like in Peretti’s story, there really were demons lurking behind every corner?
What if life was so confusing and so difficult because we stand at the center of some cosmic conspiracy that divides every aspect of reality into theological categories of good and evil?
As much as This Present Darkness and its sequel encouraged me to explore the notion of a very literal spiritual warfare constantly taking place in the world around me, it was the echo of this possibility in the rhetoric of the spiritual leaders of my community that solidified this truth for me. In the southern evangelical world in which I was raised, abortion, for instance, was not just morally wrong, it was demonic. The dual threats of liberalism and relativism were not merely the confused worldviews of those who had lost their way, but rather the tools of Satan and his minions to ensnare and entrap the Christian faithful.
At the age of 17, still very much a conservative evangelical, young-earth creationist, I remember the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore being described by Church leaders as a battle between good and evil. I sat through several sermons in which election debates from the previous week were cast as epic conflicts between the angel who rode President Bush’s shoulder and the very real demon that possessed Vice-President Al Gore.
As is often the nightmare scenario of conservative Christianity, as I entered college later that year, my fundamentalist world began to collapse. I moved from a tiny town outside of Savannah to living within the city limits of Atlanta. I was introduced to philosophy. I traveled. I met people from all different walks of life.
Most importantly, however, I was forced to recognize the humanity of those that I had been taught literally to demonize throughout my life.
In 2005, I converted to Catholicism and began to learn about the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching and, particularly, the theory of Just War. It turns out, almost a millennia ago, St. Thomas Aquinas had laid out for the Church just what would qualify as a morally justified war. Moreover, I learned that the contemporary Catholic Church largely held that no modern, preemptive military conflict could be considered morally or theologically justifiable.
And I also discovered that despite that reality, even in the progressive Catholic community of which I was a part in the heart of downtown Atlanta, the vast majority of parishioners, just like the vast majority of Christians more broadly, continued to support massive defense budgets and US military intervention.
Where did St. Aquinas go wrong? Why was his celebrated logic failing to connect with the average Christian in their moral evaluation of military conflict? How had the Catholic Church spent so much time advancing calls for peace and yet, many of its US parishioners were unable or unwilling to connect this teaching with the military industrial complex of their own backyard?
As I have written elsewhere (American Pope), the massively popular Catholic public theologian, Scott Hahn, provides a clear answer to this question for us. In his The Lamb’s Supper, of which well over 600,000 copies sold, Hahn implores his readers to recognize that the beasts summoned by the great dragon in the New Testament book of Revelation must be seen as “real spiritual beings, members of the satanic ‘lowerarchy,’ demonic persons who have controlled and corrupted the political destiny of nations” (p. 80.) He goes on to suggest that those demons remain still very active in our world today.
The reason, I contend, that the prominent Christian and Catholic teaching concerning the immorality of modern military conflict has largely gone unheard by US Christians, is for the exact reason Frank Peretti and Scott Hahn offer.
In our “Present Darkness”, wars are not against human persons and human communities, but rather against “terrorism,” “radical Islam,” and “our very way of life.” That is, our conflicts are “…not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.”
If we raise our children to believe that the United States is categorically “good,” something to which we can safely and confidently pledge our allegiance, then our enemies must not just be bad, but evil. And with Evil, surely there can be no quarter, there can be no rules, there can be no measured response. In the face of evil, no defense budget is too massive and all wars are just.
In the wake of all of this, however, I am reminded of the final contribution of the great Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (MLK). In the years of turmoil that I have experienced recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, January 6th, endless wars, etc., I find myself turning back again and again to King’s simple, but bold call “… for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation [that] is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all [people]” (p. 201).
While such a lofty and poetic goal strikes me now as far out of reach and beyond the scope of my little place in the world, it begins with you and me. The most liberative, revolutionary, and Christian act is to sit in peace and community across a dining room table or around a backyard fire with those with whom we do not completely agree or even understand, in celebration of our shared humanity.
In the words of the Savior, “Go and do likewise.”
