In the article I linked to the other day, David B. Hart takes issue with the interpretation of just war theory I’ve been discussing that counsels Chrisitians to abjure self-defense: [I]t is strange to see Cole attempting to reconcile the developed Thomistic language of charity as a virtue with the older, somewhat more implausible belief…

Probably no one did more, at least in Protestant circles, to revive just war thinking in the 20th century than Methodist ethicist Paul Ramsey. Ramsey explicitly defends just warfare as an act of “social charity,” or what I’ve been calling a neighbor-love oriented approach. In his essay “Justice In War” (first published in 1964) Ramsey…

In talking about war and the question of what attitude Christians in particular should take regarding the use of force, it might be helpful to distinguish two traditions or strains of just war thinking. These two strains are distinguished, I think we could say, by what they judge to be the paradigm instance of a…

Let me just say, for the record that I always liked Howard Dean. I mean, not that I voted for him (as an independent I am not eligible to vote in party primaries in Pennsylvania, and anyway, by the time we had our primary it was a done deal), but he always came across as…

Inspired by Arthur Paul Boers I decided that a good Lenten discipline for me would be to try to improve my shockingly bad practice of prayer by praying a regular daily office. I’m using a version put out by the Society of Saint Francis (Anglican) called Celebrating Common Prayer. The offices are keyed to the…

Michael Bowen of the Gutless Pacifist has been posting some thoughts on Orwell on his blog A Minority of One. Here he quotes Orwell’s well-known argument that pacifism is “objectively pro-fascist”: Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the…

In comments to this post, “Joshie” (who is much better read theologically than I am) criticized (rightly, I think) any doctrine of vocation that would encourage us “to stay in our little corners of the world and ‘do our thing.’” Part of the problem is that I don’t think I adequately presented Forde’s position, which…

Hugo Schwyzer on moving towards veganism as part of a consistent ethic of life. Jim Henley on why he’s still a libertarian: What I come back to everytime is that I am viscerally anti-bully and government still seems like the biggest bully around. I don’t believe government is inherently a force for good. I do…

GO EAGLES!! UPDATE: Dammit…

Here’s another nugget from Fr. Jape on “practicing the discipline of place”: It is the idea that to suffer one’s place and one’s people in the particularity of its and their needs is the only true basis for finding love, friendship, and an authentic, meaningful life. This is nothing less than the key to the…