Sometimes one encounters a piece of writing which cannot be easily sampled. That is, it is so complete, so tightly woven together, that offering a couple of paragraphs to illustrate its cogency does it weak if any justice.
And sometimes a piece of writing is by an author almost uniquely suited to be offering commentary on the subject it addresses.
I am going to suggest to you that in today's Boston Globe you can encounter a piece of writing that cannot be easily sampled, by an author uniquely qualified to offer such remarks. It is by James Carroll, and it is entitled War Room is no place for Bible Study.
Please indulge me and go read it. Then you can rejoin me below the fold.
Let me begin my remarks by informing you of Carroll's background, in case you are not already aware of it. Carroll's father. Joseph, began his career as an FBI agent, and was seconded to the military upon the outbreak of World War II as an intelligence officer. After the war he rose to the position of an administrative assistant to J. Edgar Hoover, until he was requested for reassignment to the Air Force by its first Secretary, Stuart Symington, to establish an office to address investigative and counterintelligence functions. Joseph Carroll served as the first director of the Office of Special Investigations. His later positions included Inspector General of the Air Force, and then in 1962 as the first director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a position in which he served until his retirement in 1969. His education had begun by graduating from a Catholic seminary and he also had a law degree
James Carroll had a substantially Catholic upbringing including a high school run by monks in DC, attendance at Georgetown University, from which he departed to enter seminary at St. Paul's College in Washington DC, a Paulist Brothers Seminary from which he received bachelors and masters degrees. He was a priest from 1969-1974, serving as chaplain at Boston University. leaving both to become a full-time writer. His work as a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter overlapped the end of his tenure as a priest. In the subsequent 3+ decades he has written about religion and also about the military, and had associations with academic institutions ranging from Harvard Divinisty School, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Brandeis University.
Carroll's background, both that of his father and his personal experiences, probably equips him as well as anyone to comment about the intersection of military and religion. While he himself never served in uniform, his understanding of the functioning of the military was greatly enhanced as a result of his researching and writing a book released in 2006 entitled House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power.
Perhaps it is not necessary to offer the foregoing background. Perhaps Carroll's words should be able to stand on their own. And concerns about the inappropriate entanglement of religion and the military are issues about which many here are already aware, because of the work of Mikey Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the diaries of Chris Rodda and others, and Robert Draper's recent article in Gentleman's Quarterly about Rumsfeld's "inappropriate" (I am being tempered in my description) use of religion in in his memoranda to President Bush.
I am aware of all these. And yet . . . I read the "biblical seven reasons" Carroll offers as the heart of his column and I think that perhaps we should ensure that every Representative and Senator see them, that Secretary Gates be inundated with copies.
The word "jihad" means struggle. The lesser jihad is the external one in which force including military is applied. The "Greater Jihad" is the internal struggle for spiritual purity, perhaps best understood by Christians as a parallel to their own struggle against sin. In both of these daughters of Abraham there can be real temptation to focus on the external which is in some ways far easier, to purify the external world of the occasions of sin and temptation, as one might put it.
To purify ... in Western Christian terminology to go on a Crusade. A Crusade is led by a cross, but in ways that are inimical to the real message of both religions.
I am not responsible for the (mis)use of military force for ostensibly religious purposes by other nations. The military of the United States should, however, be a tool to protect this nation. Originally our army was in the Department of War. Since 1947 we have relabeled our military as the Department of Defense. That name change should remind us that our intent should not be aggressive, even as we hope to be strong enough to deter those who might act aggressively towards us or our interests.
One of Carroll's 7 reasons stands out for me:
A bifurcated religious imagination, dividing the world between good and evil, can misread the real character of an "enemy" population, many of whom want no part of war with us.
Religion is too often misused by those who wish to suppress critical thinking so that the weaknesses of their points of view are not exposed. In situations in which military conflict is possible, it is exceedingly dangerous to suppress anyone's critical faculties. There is severe danger in allowing one's rhetoric to blind one to the risks posed by one's opponent. It is equally wrong to overestimate his intentions and capabilities as it is to underestimate them. In either case people will die.
Let me offer Carroll's final paragraph, and then a few concluding observations of my own. Carroll ends like this:
The Pentagon is the wrong place for unbound Christian zealotry, not just because it violates the separation of church and state (and the rights of non-believers in the chain of command), but even more because it is inimical to the prudent use of force. When the history of America's failures in Iraq, and now Afghanistan, is written, expect to find that US military decision-making was made blind by faith.
Today is Memorial Day. This day's importance began with a simple act - the decoration of the graves of Civil War dead, Union and Confederate, what one might consider a very human act of honor and of healing. If we consider how brutal our own experience of internecine violence was perhaps we can step back and consider that the use of religious language to advance a proposition of moving towards violence is more than obscene.
One need not be religious oneself to understand the need for solace, for wrestling with one's own impulses towards unrestrained violence, as an important tool in maintain some semblance of humanity towards one another. When the power of a modern state is unleashed against others, it is horrific in its effects, no matter how narrowly tailored its applications. Euphemisms like "collateral damage" do not come close to erasing the suffering and destruction experienced by those on the receiving end who may not have been our intended targets. And even those against whom we justify such application, one has to wonder our reactions were the roles reversed.
Today is a day for remembering those who died in service to this country. I have read many Memorial Day speeches. For myself, I am about to honor someone who died long after his own service in World War II. My uncle passed on Wednesday. He was in his 90s, and his service in Europe represents a small part of the life we will commemorate as we sit Shiva with his family. I mention him because he was one of the few Jews on general staff, the only Jewish officer in his immediate unit. He requested a forward position just in time to get caught in the German onslaught we call the Battle of the Bulge. Then, as in any combat situation, it did not matter the religious orientation or lack of one of those alongside whom one fought - you lived and died, killed and got killed, irrespective of any religious symbol on one's dogtags.
Our military represents our entire nation. We are diverse, religiously, racially, economically, and in sexual orientation. No one part of any of those dimensions should dominate, suppressing those who differ on that dimension but are fully American, willing to serve on behalf of us all.
Perhaps the most cogent expression of this occurred in a setting one might consider our first true Memorial Day, at the dedication of sacred ground, on a November day in Pennsylvania, in 1863. Carroll has offered us cogent words about the dangers of mixing a narrow concept of religion with our military. Lincoln offered us a sweeping understanding of the true purpose of our military, and in embracing all - including the Confederate dead - in his remarks, pointed us to a vision of healing.
Perhaps the only appropriate conclusion to the thoughts I offer today, in this far from cogent expression, is to return to the simplicity and power of Lincoln. So let me end with his words:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth
Peace.