Offering Hospitality: Questioning Christian Approaches to War

Gentry (Mothers, Monsters, and Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics, with Laura Sjoberg) challenges modern just-war theologians to move beyond abstract notions of the “state” to embrace both the new realities of global warfare and the eternal reality of agape love. According to the author, in working from a WWII/Cold War paradigm that understands most warfare as between states rather than—as is now the case—within failed states, theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Stanley Hauerwas miss the crucial importance of concrete, preventive interventions that value people more than abstract ideas. Further, she argues, such theologians have insufficiently critiqued their own privilege in the face of violence. Only out of a deep willingness to become vulnerable, to listen, and to offer disinterested, nonimperialistic aid—i.e., hospitality—can the world’s more powerful nations hope to prevent war. Gentry’s book contributes an informed feminist and postmodern critique to the just-war conversation. She does a fine job of outlining gaps in current just-war theorizing and begins to scratch the surface of envisioning new answers. (Sept.)