Story available at http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/02/13/news/local/65-war.txt

Published on Tuesday, February 13, 2007.
Last modified on 2/12/2007 at 11:47 pm

By MARY PICKETT
Of The Gazette Staff

Christian ethicist and pacifist Stanley Hauerwas proposed a Christian alternative to war Monday night at the opening of Rocky Mountain College's symposium on religion and culture.

This is the third year that Rocky has drawn scholars to Billings to discuss a religious topic. This year's theme is "Religion in America."

Hauerwas, the Gilbert T. Rowe professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School, spoke on "Sacrificing the Sacrifices of War."

Speaking to an audience that filled 260-seat Losekamp Hall, Hauerwas said he is deeply appreciative of people who go to war, but wanted his presentation Monday to give voice to the challenges that people who have gone to war face.

Everyone says that war is horrible, yet wars continue, he noted.

One reason we can't get rid of war is because it captures the habits of imagination and we can't imagine a world without war.

Hauerwas said war can be addictive, as it was to foreign correspondent Christopher Hedges, author of "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning."

War forms its own culture and is a drug peddled by war makers, correspondents and filmmakers, according to Hedges. War dominates culture and perverts everything around it.

One of war's enduring attractions is that it gives us purpose, a meaning in life and "allows us to be noble," Hedges said.

Another attraction of war is how it gives shape to a country's identity.

The United States depends on stories of war to narrate our history, Hauerwas said.

Hauerwas also raised the issue of why it is so hard for politicians to admit that they were wrong about a decision of war. That is because to acknowledge a mistaken policy is thought to betray the sacrifices that already have been made.

The greatest sacrifice of war is that soldiers have to overcome their natural unwillingness to kill, Hauerwas said.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who has studied killing in war and the psychological cost of war, has written that the average person, even in war, is resistant to killing another person.

When soldiers have killed during war, it is difficult to get them to talk about it because of the deep guilt and shame that it causes. "Killing creates a world of silence and isolates those who have killed," Hauerwas said, referring to Grossman's research.

Those feelings remain long after the conflict that generates them is over. World War II veterans still are being treated for psychological problems at a Veterans Affairs hospital near Duke University.

What replaces war?

"Christians' alternative to war is worship," Hauerwas said. "The church is the alternative to war in a war-weary world."

Humans are created to be at peace with God, not to kill one another.

"Through forgiveness of the cross, we're no longer condemned to kill," he said.

Jonathan Ebel, an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Illinois, was scheduled to speak after Hauerwas on "Sparta and the New Jerusalem: Religion, Violence and American Redemption."