Force is always only the form love takes against terrible evil in the last resort when nothing else will protect the innocent, restore justice, and bring about the conditions for peace. The old Chestertonian nugget remains: “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

Can a Christian support using sleep deprivation against known terrorists to gain valuable intelligence that could save lives?

In this military vignette, originally published in Christianity and Crisis on April 19, 1943, John Joseph Stoudt depicts the religiosity of men confronting their own mortality. The Chaplain employs the clearest ritual means of communicating the weight of their task, the nature of their profession: Communion. In taking up the body and the blood, the gathered soldiers experience camaraderie in a common meal, and unanimously acknowledge of the enduring, indisputable value of sacrifice; both God’s and their own.

In this article, originally published in Christianity and Crisis on April 19, 1943, F. Ernest Johnson illuminates the twin wartime concerns of brutality and cynicism. Johnson illustrates the importance of maintaining public morality; losing compassion for the enemy will scuttle the peace and instigate the next war, while ignoring social influence in determining personal ethics invariably corrodes society on a more insidious level. To paraphrase John 17: 14-19, we must be in the world, but not of it.

Almost all nations field armies; fewer, even in 1943, retained a warrior caste who dominated nearly every facet of political and cultural life. In this incisive article, originally published in Christianity and Crisis on March 8, 1943, Robert E. Fitch argues that winning the War and achieving peace stems from breaking the feudal martial classes of Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Tojo’s Imperial Japan.

Are we, in fact, seeking through foreign policy to protect ourselves from a pre-millennial apocalypse—or, perhaps, to bring about a post-millennial one? The intellectual and spiritual resources of Protestant Christianity have a great deal to add to this debate. But up until now, I haven’t seen much evidence that these resources have yet been brought to bear on these questions.

Foretelling a time of cultivation, Isaiah prophesies, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” One cannot plow a field with a sword, nor prune a tree with a spear. In this article, originally published in Christianity and Crisis on March 8, 1943, John Knox contrasts the promotion of good with the destruction of evil, particularly in conflict. Promoting good is insufficient; the conduct of war and the creation of peace are distinct phenomena to be pursued with discrete tools.

Too often in our contemporary discussions about justice, Christians have turned to the idea of the “image of God” as the grounds for our social and political ethics.

This essay examines the perspectives of three eminent Christian leaders—Ambassador Charles Malik, Father Richard John Neuhaus, and Reverend Dietrich Bonhoeffer. They were shaped by different theological traditions (Greek Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran, respectively), but each wrestled with the political, cultural, and moral crises of their times according to their Christian convictions.