War, Masculinity, and the Ambiguity of Care
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War, Masculinity, and the Ambiguity of Care Adam D. Tietje 1 Accepted: 26 October 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
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. Keywords Political pastoral theology . Pastoral care . Masculinity . Moral injury . Military chaplains One leading edge in the field of pastoral theology is the emergence of a discourse of political pastoral theology. The work of Ryan LaMothe (2017a) in Care of Souls, Care of Polis has opened up this discussion in helpful and surprising ways. LaMothe develops care as a hermeneutical framework that locates the care of souls within the context of the care of the polis. LaMothe, with the help of various care theorists, reads care as a political concept that promotes the survival, flourishing, and liberation of individuals, families, and communities. LaMothe offers up an ethics of care not primarily by way of contrast but as a complementary approach to an ethics of justice and political theology. He grounds his analysis in Hannah Arendt’s notion of the space of appearance as the landscape of politics, the space for speaking and acting together (2017a, pp. 12–16; see also Arendt 1958). Power is exercised in the space of appearances by those granted access. Violence and coercive force guard and limit this space in oppressive regimes. Yet, even in democracies, this space and access to it are not static but dynamic realities, always subject to attenuation. The tasks of the political pastoral theologian include providing critical analysis of political and economic structures through the lens of care, * Adam D. Tietje [email protected]
1
Duke Divinity School, 407 Chapel Drive, Durham, NC 27708, USA
Pastoral Psychology
attending to the space of appearances and its attenuation as a decline in care, and offering concrete proposals for individuals and communities. LaMothe worries that without attending to the political and economic forces that lead to harm, churches and pastors may unwittingly collude with such forces rather than resist or help change them. In this paper, I shed light on one such blind spot. In the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, much attention has been paid to the care of soldiers who c
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