Abstract
This paper makes the case that to the extent that churches and military chaplains leave the command-obedience relationship of soldiers and the state unchallenged they are complicit in structures that put their care to potentially abusive ends. The paper provides an analysis of the civil-military distinction, in light of which soldiers are subject to patriarchal dynamics by the state. Thomas Aquinas’s moral psychology is used to argue that the command-obedience relationship of soldiers and the state is deeply problematic. Moral injury phenomena are perhaps best understood in this context. Churches and chaplains are unwittingly caught up in the command-obedience dynamic and potentially reinforce its abuses. This paper presses pastoral caregivers to acknowledge their fraught position and provide a prophetic witness that prioritizes obedience to God.
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Notes
Theodore Roosevelt’s (1910) “Man in the Arena” speech is a quintessential example.
I am drawing on unpublished drafts of Parsons’s work in order to outline the relationship between the marriage contract and the enlistment contract and, later, the relationship between the good soldier and the good wife. Any success I have in making this argument is owed to him; any failure is my own.
We should be highly suspicious, however, of defense as a matter of the rhetoric or propaganda of war. America preemptively invaded Iraq as a matter of “defense.” Here, it seems, the wisdom of high school coaches won out over the just war tradition: “the best defense is a good offense.” Except, in the case of Iraq, we forced a country to play a deadly game of war they did not want to play. This is not the place to suss out the underlying motives of American foreign policy and war-making since World War II, but suffice it to say that it has not simply been a matter of defense of the homeland.
Goldstein sees a feedback loop between the socialization of gender roles and war (2001, p. 410).
Of course, as Goldstein (2001) points out, it is impossible to tease out causality.
This is very queer. Soldiering is a site of the performance of both masculine and feminine gender norms.
The shift to an all-volunteer military has led to the charge that those with fewer economic opportunities are incentivized to join (military service as a “poor tax”). Studies are largely inconclusive (Kleykamp 2006; Korb and Duggan 2007; Lutz 2008). The military does not track the income of the parents of recruits. Other less reliable data points are used to tease out the socioeconomic status of recruits. One fact all seem to be able to agree on is that the rich are underrepresented. Unsurprisingly, the Heritage Foundation finds no evidence of the overrepresentation of the poor (Watkins and Sherk 2008). Another study finds Black women overrepresented (MacLean 2018).
Soldiers do return to civilian life at the end of their enlistment contract or retirement. Prior military service remains a powerful credential for public and political life.
This designation intentionally calls to mind Margaret Atwood’s (1986) novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood tells the story of a postapocalyptic return to patriarchal structures of domination. In this imagined world, most women are mysteriously rendered infertile. In the midst of this crisis, women who remain fertile are forced into the service of Gilead, the new state, as handmaids. Like good soldiers, their fundamental orientation is obedience. The handmaids are subjected to re-education to ensure obedience. Once properly formed, they are sent to serve in elite households as surrogate mothers. They are raped by the “commanders” and abused by both commanders and their wives. Out of the violence of this new civil order, Gilead gives birth to itself. I would suggest that, in a similar way, soldier are instruments and subjects of the violence that gives life to the state. To make this case would extend beyond the scope of this paper. I think it is instructive that in Atwood’s novel the guardians, like the handmaids, have no political voice and are not usually allowed to marry. They, too, are handmaids of Gilead, but of a different order. They are handmaids of the oikos of the polis.
The question on war is located between articles on schism and strife. Thomas starts with a strong presumption against war but carves out the exception and criteria for it.
Thomas writes that one is not required to obey “in matters touching the nature of the body. .. the support of his body” (ST II-II 104.5). The obedience of a soldier extends precisely into matters that violate the nature of the body (wounding and death). Does this not point to a serious problem with this hierarchical order?
Thomas does allow for corporeal punishment of children and servants/slaves (presumably soldiers as well). Pain can be used for correction (by striking someone), but no damage should be done to the “body’s integrity” (ST II-II 65.2).
Thomas allows for external disobedience if one is being force to marry or have sex against one’s will (ST II-II 104.5). Again, bodily integrity is very much at stake for soldiers.
N.B.: The United States does not recognize selective conscientious objection.
Elsewhere, I have offered a theological account of moral injury as a soul wound (Tietje 2018b). My intent in this article is not to offer an account of moral injury per se. Rather, my interest is to set moral injury within a wider context and show how soldiering is ripe for moral injury from the outset. The psychological and pastoral literature largely proceeds as if one could examine moral injury as such apart from a moral account of human life generally and war specifically. This, of course, is Warren Kinghorn’s critique (2012). My purpose in this article is to show how soldiers serve within the state oikos. As such, certain oppressive and potentially morally injurious dynamics are in play. As I have already alluded to, the analogy with traditional marriage is instructive. Not all women in traditional marriages understood/understand their role as oppressive or, even if they do, would name their suffering in terms of moral injury. But, I contend that it is precisely the patriarchal context of sacrifice and obedience that frames any such understanding of marriage as oppressive or morally injurious. One important distinction between the two is the extent to which the wife (or soldier) believes the rhetoric of the patriarch (or state) that frames their sacrificial role and obedience.
Soldiers are trained so that they are able to perform soldierly tasks and obey orders under fire reflexively, i.e., as a matter of reflex and not reflection. An example of one such reflex is that soldiers are trained to take cover and return fire when fired upon. Reflection under fire can be deadly. Soldierly formation is a process of bodily habituation so that soldiers can act decisively under the intense stress of combat.
Patterson remains defiant, but he was ultimately fired (Shellnut 2018).
Many evangelicals affirm both a patriarchal (“complementary” or “biblical manhood and womanhood”) household and a sense of horror at abuse. To them, domestic violence is a transgression at the fringe, something clearly contrary to Scripture. Of course, domination enforced with violence is at the heart of all hierarchical relationships, whether that violence is enacted or not. It is the threat of violence that enforces the order. The eruption of violence may be the exception, but it is the exception that enforces the rule. This is the standard feminist critique (Adams and Fortune 1995; Bettman 2009; Brown and Bohn 1989). For the evangelical objection, see Tracy (2007).
Miller-McLemore defines the additional functions in this way:
Compassionate resistance requires confrontation with evil, contesting violent, abusive behaviors that perpetuate underserved suffering and false stereotypes that distort the realities of people’s lives. Resistance includes a focused healing of wounds of abuse that have festered for generations. Empowerment involves advocacy and tenderness on behalf of the vulnerable, giving resources and means to those previously stripped of authority, voice, and power. Nurturance is not sympathetic kindness or quiescent support but fierce, dedicated proclamation of love that makes a space for difficult changes and fosters solidarity among the vulnerable. Liberation entails both escape from unjust, unwarranted affliction and release into new life and wholeness as created, redeemed, and loved people of God. (1999, p. 80, emphasis in original)
This, of course, echoes how LaMothe (2017a) defines care following feminist care theorists.
Of course, this is not precisely speech in the space of appearances in Arendt’s (1958) sense, but it is a place where the military structures of domination are suspended.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Barry Lam for connecting me with Graham Parsons and especially grateful to Graham Parsons for sharing his manuscript. I also want to thank David Cho, Chris Clements, Robert Dykstra, Danjuma Gibson, Jaco Hamman, Philip Browning Helsel, Jay-Paul Hinds, Jim Horsthuis, Youn Deuk Jeong, Ryan LaMothe, Hyon-Uk Shin, and Phil Zylla for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article. Finally, I want to express my sincere gratitude to Amy Laura Hall, who worked with me as these ideas took shape and provided critical feedback.
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Tietje, A.D. War, Masculinity, and the Ambiguity of Care. Pastoral Psychol 70, 1–15 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-020-00932-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-020-00932-3