Kelly Denton-Borhaug
Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA
Abstract
This article investigates the language of “sacrifice” used
in official U.S. government communications to build up support for the Iraq war
in the American public. Drawing on
the rhetorical analysis of victimage rhetoric and framing, and feminist
theological criticisms of Christian atonement metaphors in popular American
culture, I argue that in the wake of 9/11, the familiar religious connotations
of sacrificial language created a frame with deep emotional resonance that
encouraged quietistic support for war, manipulated self-sacrificial identity
inculcation in the American military, and enabled a comforting interpretation
in the face of what seemed an incredible event. My analysis will demonstrate the importance of inclusion of
theological inquiry as a part of a broad multi-disciplinary approach to
adequately understand the dynamics of the present political and cultural
moment.
Victimage
Rhetoric, Framing, and the Language of Sacrifice
[1] Over fifteen
years ago, biblical theologian Elsa Tamez articulated a critique of the
devastating consequences of the discourse of “sacrifice” within neoliberal
economic systems of Latin America. In her analysis, Tamez demonstrated that popular Christian understanding
and devotional language of sacrifice was manipulated in the economic rhetoric
of the Latin American context to manufacture a mystification of economic
demands that were placed on the poorest of the poor, including austerity
measures often imposed by global bodies such as the IMF to service foreign
debt.[1] According to Tamez, the result was an
economic reality in which ever-larger sectors of humanity increasingly were
excluded from access to having basic needs met; most perversely, sacrificial
language assigned responsibility for the cost of the economic system to those
who did not have the means for participation in the market economy and were
most injured by it.
[2] Given the
powerful resurgence of the language of sacrifice in the U.S. in the period
since 9/11 and the inauguration of the “war on terror,” Tamez’s analysis takes
on renewed significance and is well worth reexamination. This article explores just these
dynamics of sacrificial language in the wake of 9/11. Specifically, I argue that U.S. political rhetoric
emphasizing familiar religious elements of sacrificial language was
intentionally utilized to create a frame with deep emotional resonance, a frame
that encouraged quietistic support for war, manipulated self-sacrificial
identity inculcation in the American military, and enabled a comforting
interpretation in the face of what seemed an incredible event. Awareness of this manipulation
underscores the reality of ambiguity residing in the communicative dynamic of
primary religious symbols and metaphors themselves such as “sacrifice.” In the case of our own post-9/11
period, sacrificial language proved all too vulnerable to misuse and even abuse
in the service of political (and commercial/economic) goals.
[3] The discourse
of sacrifice was pushed to the forefront of political discourse in the United
States following the attack on the Trade Towers to operate as a leitmotif of
the Bush administration. For
instance, in remarks addressing military families in Idaho, August 2005, the
president said, “A time of war is a time of sacrifice, and a heavy burden falls
on our military families . . . And America appreciates the service and the sacrifice
of the military families.”[2] He continued a bit later in his speech,
“In this time of call-ups and alerts and mobilizations and deployments, your
employers are standing behind you, and so is your government. The country owes you something in
return for your sacrifice.”
[4] Bush’s stump
speeches on the campaign trail before his re-election regularly featured
sacrificial discourse:
The American spirit of sacrifice and
service and compassion and love is alive and strong and therefore, I boldly
predict that out of the evil done to America will not only come a more peaceful
world, but out of the evil done to America will be a more compassionate
America, where the great hope of this country, the great vibrancy of the
American Dream, will be alive and well in every corner, in every neighborhood
here in America.[3]
As the war in Iraq has continued
and an end or exit strategy has retreated further and further into the
distance, Bush has said, “the war on terrorism will take time and require
sacrifice. . . yet we will do what is necessary.”[4]
[5] Of course, Communications
Studies scholars emphasize that sacrificial discourse is almost compulsory in
times of war. “Victimage rhetoric”
is based on a series of binaries portraying the enemy as savage and
uncivilized, aggressive and irrational, contrasted with the image of the U.S.
as rational, tolerant of diversity and peace-and-freedom loving.[5] For instance, in the Revolutionary war,
the British were described as “monstrous savages breathing out thirstings for
American blood”; Roosevelt described the war effort against Germany as the
“victory of the forces of justice and of righteousness over the forces of
savagery and barbarism”; Polk’s war message of 1846 included such language as
description of Mexico as “a system of outrage and extortion . . . shedding the
blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil.”[6] The emphasis in victimage rhetoric is
Manichean division of the entire world into enemy and friend. Such division perhaps is most aptly
summed up in the phrase we all have heard spoken by the president and members
of his cabinet more than once since 9/11: “whoever
is not with us is against us.”[7][m1]
[6] In fact, the
logic of victimage rhetoric works in the following way, precisely focusing on
the irrationality, the savagery, and the primitive, uncivilized depiction of
the [8]enemy
in order to make coercive and violent response “necessary.” Moreover, not only does victimage
rhetoric have strong historical continuity, appearing regularly at times of
potential or actual war, but the words themselves are “highly salient” in the
culture, that is, “noticeable, understandable, memorable and emotionally
charged.”[9] As a result, this is rhetoric that is
quickly and easily assimilated, moves quickly between groups, and generates powerful
emotional responses. The use of
“necessity” in victimage rhetoric is something I will return to later when I
discuss the religious significance of sacrificial discourse.
[7] The key point
of victimage rhetoric is that it releases guilt people otherwise might feel
regarding causing the death or injury of the other; any potential culpability
is mitigated through laying all responsibility squarely at the feet of the
enemy. Ironically, though this
same rhetoric assigns the U.S. the role of victim (or protector of other
perceived victims in the world), in other words, as the put-upon, maligned and
abused object of the enemy, or as the heroic guardian of order, in reality
victimage rhetoric creates the groundwork for the elimination of the enemy
through the suggestion inherent in the rhetoric. As communications scholar Robert Ivie describes it, “by
sacrificing the savage, the representatives of civilization simultaneously
cleanse their world of sins that have caused their fall from the Eden of peace
and redeem themselves as defenders of freedom and reason.”[10] In this way the aggressive and hostile
response of the U.S. is disguised by emphasizing the role of the nation as
victim. Although Ivie wrote his
analysis in 1980, his words eerily foreshadow key words and phrases that have
become commonplace in U.S. political discourse since 9/11.
[8] Investigation
of the use of “framing” as a rhetorical strategy moves the analysis of
victimage rhetoric one step further. Framing is that creation of a simple, readily understandable and
accessible narrative, drawing upon familiar cultural symbols, understandings
and forms of discourse to assert a kind of control over understanding and
interpretation; in other words, framing is “the central process by which
government officials and journalists exercise political influence over each
other and over the public.”[11] In the case of the wars against
Afghanistan and Iraq, the dominant frame Americans easily recognize includes
four simple steps. First, the
stage was set by September 11 and the deaths of thousands of citizens. Second, terrorists are to blame. Third, a moral judgment ensues: the
agents of assault are evil. Fourth, the remedy to this problem: war against the perpetrators.[12] Framing takes place through the intentional
selection and underscoring of particular events or issues, while equally
intentionally leaving out or dismissing others, and then connecting those same
events so as to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation or solution. Moreover, words and images are chosen
for their “cultural resonance” and achieve magnitude through the regular
prominent repetition of the narrative.
[9] Through such framing as that described
above, communications scholar Robert Entman asserts, “the attacks of Sept. 11
gave the second President Bush an opportunity to propound a line designed to
revive habits of patriotic deference, to dampen elite dissent, dominate media
texts, and reduce the threat of negative public reaction, (in other words) to
work just as the Cold War paradigm once did.”[13]
[10] The
sacrificial mandate in this language has multiple targets. First, as I have already emphasized,
victimage rhetoric demands the destruction of the enemy to restore order. Second, this same language lays weight
on the necessity of the sacrifice that those fighting will need to make in
order to vanquish this same evil. However, as in the speeches of Bush quoted above, while there has been
little hesitation in the framing of war regarding the necessity of sacrifice
for those in the military (and remember that we still have to define exactly
what this sacrifice entails), further exploration of the discourse of sacrifice
as a lead-up to the Iraq war throws into relief an altogether new twist in this
rhetoric.[14] This twist is particularly significant
in terms of understanding our current moment.
[11] Studies of
rhetoric demonstrate that in order to be successful, the rhetor must adjust his
or her style and content to meet the expectations of the audience. Moreover, the rhetoric employed must
resonate with the values of the public even as it works to shift them in
alliance with the rhetor’s own intent.[15] In the case of the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq, the rhetoric of sacrifice was shaped in a purposefully strategic
fashion so as to coincide with perceived American cultural values and
expectations, in particular, with an eye to understanding the limits of
American acceptance of the hardships and challenges that very well would
accompany any such action as long-term war. As a result, the specific victimage rhetoric was framed so
as to emphasize that the sacrifice to restore the order disrupted by terrorists
would not be demanded from the American public at large. Communications scholar Timothy Cole
writes, “The president did not call for sacrifices from the civilian
population, propose tax increases to cover costs, or bolster the Veterans
Administration, but he did the opposite–urging Americans to consume more,
asking Congress to cut taxes and VA services.”[16] In speeches to military audiences Bush
regularly emphasized their sacrificial action, as in a speech to Westpoint
graduates when he said, “you will stand between your fellow citizens and grave
danger.” However, when speaking to the American public, in response to a
question regarding how the public should honour the memory of those who died in
9/11, the president replied, “Americans should return to their lives, be
resolute and live the values that exemplify American exceptionalism . . . Live
your lives and hug your children. . . be patient in what will be a long
struggle, keep praying for the victims of terror and for those in uniform.”[17]
[12] This is
perhaps the most surprising and even cynical aspect of the frame for war in
Afghanistan and Iraq. For while
one would expect pro-war victimage rhetoric and equally a strong call for
military readiness and sacrifice, is it not also expected that the public would
share some part of the burden? Cole suggests that the decision not to
call for public sacrifice was strategic on the part of the administration,
which focused instead on an appeal for public support and quiescence. Why? And how does the very language of sacrifice itself play into
such an appeal?
[13] One answer to
the questions posed above concerns the element of frame control. In the case of the period leading to
the Iraq war, public relations skill and power accessible to government structures
made it possible to dominate public communications, including in this case the
power asserted by the current administration to create a Pentagon unit to
produce intelligence findings more supportive of the Iraq-terrorism link than
the CIA had offered.[18] Is it possible that the same attention
to controlling the frame extended to a realistic assessment of just how far the
public would go to support these efforts, and an according adjustment of the
frame to match that assessment? It
has been suggested that the government was all too aware of the reality of
public wariness regarding pro-war sentiment that is a legacy of the “Vietnam syndrome,”
and the considerable difficulties experienced with nation building in previous
recent administrations. In
addition, such a definition of sacrifice would find congruence with American
popular cultural values promising results “. . . without cost, effort or
sacrifice.”[19] Also important to underscore is the way
the emphasis on military sacrifice plays into a frame that discourages
questions regarding the inevitable cost to the American public (such as through
loss of funds that might otherwise be allocated in the national budget, the
costs associated with needs of wounded veterans, etc.). Spotlighting sacralized military
sacrifice has had the intended consequence of veiling, discouraging or
mystifying hard questions about the true nature of these decisions and their
impact on the nation as a whole.
[14] Thus, the
clear request made of the public was quietistic submission to the fatherly
authority of a president who would “protect us” as we were admonished as a
“traveling public” to “get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida.”[20] Such overt paternalism in
presidential admonition only serves to underscore the awareness of feminist
political scientists regarding the tendency of state violence to result in a
reproduction of masculinist subjectivities and values.[21]
Analyzing
the Specifically Religious Content in this Discourse
[15] Following
9/11 in the United States, however, this same rhetoric of sacrifice was
employed by a “born again” president well-versed in the intentional utilization
of religious language to “signal” and rally evangelical American
Christians. Helpful and
fascinating though a communications/rhetorical analysis is to help us
understand our current moment and how we got here, there tends to be
insufficient analysis from religious studies and theological perspectives
regarding the religious content and connotations of the discourse of sacrifice
in the political scene and American public. Journalism scholars have pointed out that while we live in a
country with a majority of people who acknowledge deep religious commitments,
journalists and media scholars too often are ill-equipped to deeply investigate
or understand the inner workings of religious doctrines, collective
understandings and practices as they collide with politics and society.[22] Why? Surely part of the reason has
to do with journalism’s focus on the empirical, on “objective reality,” and on
the practical need to get a story out immediately–both of which tend to
be difficult to connect to the complex and intricate, seemingly more “static” inner
workings of religious faith in the lives of individuals and communities. Making matters more difficult, there
are too few investigative reporters assigned to a “religion desk” and those who
are find themselves required to cover too much territory. Additionally, while in the U.S. many of
the most energetic American currents of religion may be located within the
evangelical movement, which in a 2002 Gallup poll included 46 percent of
Americans, journalists too frequently tend to lump all evangelicals together,
and fail to understand complex makeup. Finally, religious language itself can be a kind of code difficult to
decipher or translate.
[16] Religious
studies scholars have noted, however, that it is perhaps more important in the
current political moment to investigate the role religion and religious
language are playing in politics than at many other times in the past. For instance, Bruce Lincoln examines
President Bush’s own commentary regarding his religious conversion and practice
in the president’s campaign autobiography, A Charge to Keep: My Journey to
the White House.[23] At an early moment in his own political
development, when the president was assigned by his father to serve as liaison
with the Christian Right, George W. Bush received critical religious/political
coaching from Rev. Doug Wead that has continued to influence his political
activity throughout his entire presidency. According to Bush’s own account, Wead not only introduced
him to powerful people within the Christian Right but counseled him regarding
his own speech patterns, “. . . to win their support by showing he shared their
values and spoke their language.” “Signal early and signal often,” Wead encouraged. Lincoln writes,
“Although the elder Bush demurred from such practice, the younger took the
lesson in earnest.” One may not
miss the frequent biblical allusions and other religious symbolic language with
which Bush peppers his speeches and public statements, his Texan drawl
oftentimes thickening just at such moments. According to Lincoln, this is a key way Bush “signals his
core constituency,” and is an example of what Lincoln calls, “double
coding.” The religious language,
in other words, acts as “the linguistic equivalent of winks and nudges.” Lincoln writes,
If
such things please you, he (Bush) wants you to know he is a faithful servant of
Christ, acknowledges himself as same, and feels himself accountable to no Law
save God’s, no court save the Last Judgment. But if such things make you uneasy,
he would prefer the question never arise. [24]
In this way such “double-coding”
offers a way to convey a privileged relation to the base of the Christian Right
while holding off those who might be offended by such language because of
Constitutional propriety.
[17] In his book, Religion,
Politics, and the Christian Right, Mark
Lewis Taylor puts all this into the larger perspective of a growing national
“religious romanticism.” He
writes, “The Christian Right is better understood as a powerful romanticist
movement in the revolutionary mode that has new powers in federal government
and has created well-funded structures that affect federal policy.”[25] Taylor would have critics of the
religious aspects of the current administration focus less on George Bush’s
personal piety and more on the influence of the Christian Right as an organized
and dynamic social force. Religious romanticists, Taylor asserts, “seek to bring back notions of
the United States of America not just as an exceptional nation but also as what
historian Martin Marty has analyzed as ‘righteous empire.’” Through use of the bible
as a “guidebook,” semi-compulsory weekly bible studies in the White House, revival
meetings held by senior officials such as John Ashcroft, the use of religious
symbols in government documents, symbolic representation of religious leaders
at key political moments, and regular meetings with religious leaders across
the country, the current administration has crafted what Taylor calls a
“Christian ritualized ethos in governance.”[26] The aspect of such governance most
pertinent to this investigation has to do with the use of religious language as
one part of this overall structure. Taylor writes,
It
is important to see that when a Christian ritualized ethos is marked at as many
points as it is in the Bush regime, it lets loose into government culture
one of the most powerful traits of religious symbols: their active
power, in anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s language, to ‘establish
powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations’ in
people.[27]
[18] To
summarize thus far, the use of sacrificial discourse must be analyzed not only
in terms of the way it plays into a political frame dependent on victimage rhetoric,
but also in terms of its specifically religious content. This means investigating the
multivalent religious threads residing in the language of sacrifice that
operate with “active power” to establish moods and motivations in both
religious and non-religious peoples’ psyches, lives, understandings and
practices. Political theorists
have long been aware of the potency of religious images and discourse; for
instance, “Leo Strauss, one of the theorists informing several key
neoconservative Bush appointees, in fact, encouraged wise rulers to deploy
strong doses of state-oriented religion to unite the polis, even if the
virtuous leaders of that polis do not themselves believe in that religion.”[28] The thesis I advance is this:
consistent and repetitive use of sacrificial language within the larger
discourse of “the war on terror” let loose into the wider culture a kind of
power to shape the mood, motivation and response of the general public,
encouraging a disposition of public acquiescence to a paternal authority to act
on its behalf, a disposition mystified and justified by a shield of religious
sanctity, and assured by a subtext that the sacrifice to be taken on would
execute righteous punishment “far from home,” as opposed to any that would
require hardships on the part of the American public at large.
[19] In his book, Holy
Terrors, Lincoln analyzes the double-coded
religious language in President Bush’s speech to the American people following
9/11 that alerted the public to the onset of war in Afghanistan, yet Lincoln
fails to highlight the significance of the discourse of sacrifice in this
important speech.[29] Toward the end of this very brief
address, the president remarks on the “patience” that will be required of the
American people, including “. . . patience in all the sacrifices that may
come.” But specific sacrifice from
the American non-military citizenry is left undefined. Instead Bush moves immediately to
discussion of the military: “Today those sacrifices are being made by members
of our Armed Forces who now defend us so far from home (italics mine), and by their proud and worried families.” He closes his speech with the story of
a 4th grade girl who tells him that though she does not wish for her
military father to fight, nevertheless, she is “willing to give him” to the
president for this battle. Bush
concludes by saying, “. . . an entire generation of young Americans has gained
new understanding of the value of freedom, and its cost in duty and in sacrifice.” If the story about the little girl is
meant to pull at the nation’s heartstrings, this also is language that is very
carefully crafted to encourage trust in a president who will keep the sacrifice
far from the American homeland, execute righteous punishment to restore order,
and limit any national sacrificial mandate to a military community that has
been trained to accept and prepare for such sacrifice as its reason for being.
Sacrificial
Identity Formation in U.S. Military Culture
[20] If the analysis thus far provokes
questions regarding what seems a careful political strategy to avoid assigning
sacrificial action to the American public at large, it also raises questions
about the dynamic of sacrificial identity formation in U.S. military culture. In fact, Jean Bethke Elshtain has
argued that “the will-to-sacrifice” may be constitutive not only of military
identity, but of our very civic selfhood, male and female alike.[30] She writes,
The
Spartans, the model for later civic republicans and early modern state Builders,
honored but two identities with inscriptions on tombstones – Men
who had died in war and women who had succumbed in childbirth: Both
embodied the sacrificial moment of civic identity.
Moreover, in Western Christianity
at least, religion inextricably is bound up with this development, as the
Christian virtue of caritas increasingly
over time is applied to sanctify and justify death for “the fatherland.” There is a certain “slippage” that
takes place in understandings of sacrifice, the model of the Christian martyr
who died for his faith morphing into the image of the soldier faithful to
death, “the model of civic self-sacrifice.”[31] Without such self-sacrifice, Elshtain
claims (quoting Weber as a source in this regard), the state rests only on the
power of coercion. In this way
full devotion to the political community is demonstrated through love enacted
as self sacrifice on behalf of the fatherland.
[21] The point to
emphasize here, Elshtain’s highlighting of the slippage of sacrificial
discourse from religious to civic interpretations, brings to mind my own visits
over two years to a military ethics course at the Naval Academy. Listening in to midshipmen’s class
discussion, I heard a word repeated over and over again: “honour.” At one point I raised my hand to ask
for a definition of the word which clearly, more than any other, defined both
the method and goal for the ethical task being deliberated by the class, i.e.,
how to conduct and participate in warfare without losing one’s soul. My question was met with laughter from
class members and professor alike. The professor noted, “Well, we have talked a lot about this word and
struggled to define it for ourselves without much success. What we can say is, we know it when we
see it!” I understood further the
discursive world of this environment when the students in the course made their
own oral presentations investigating warrior ethics. Almost without exception, the theme of the free
self-sacrifice of the warrior was predominant, symbolized most powerfully for
me by a powerpoint presentation offered by one group of students (all male, I
might add), who included a slide portraying one of their members kneeling, as
if in prayer, head bowed and holding a samurai sword in his hands, in front of
an Academy wall decorated in a way very much resembling an altar, inscribed with
the names of all the Academy graduates who have been killed in wars since the
Academy’s beginning.[32] Whether the kneeling student was
praying for himself, or for the country, or worshiping at the feet of those who
had died was a question I did not ask in that setting; nevertheless, the
unconscious and unquestioned interplay of religious and nationalistic
self-sacrificial expression was an illustration of exactly that slippage noted
by Elshtain in her work.
[22] In fact, the
virtue of self-sacrifice for the formation of members of the military such as
these midshipmen and women appears predominantly in texts of military
ethics. Shannon French’s The
Code of the Warrior emphasizes the need for
leaders to be aware of the depth of military members’ sacrifice, the importance
for warriors themselves to be clear about the purpose and need for their
sacrifice, and the corollary demand for the state to demonstrate concern to
care for warriors in the aftermath of battle. She concludes,
A
mother and father may be willing to give their beloved son or daughter’s life for their country or cause, but I
doubt they would be
as willing to sacrifice their child’s soul.[33]
Clearly, the quasi-religious
language of sacrifice on the part of the U.S. administration, redirected away
from a wary American public out of fear of their resistance, meshed all too
easily with sacrificial self-understandings in military culture and practice.
[23] Moreover,
“communal ecstasy” develops in times of war among members of the military as
universal dreams of human longing for communion with others intertwine with
self-sacrificial understandings of virtue including dying for others, colouring
self-sacrifice with willingness and even a mystical quality. Herein lays the connection between the
self-sacrifice of soldiers and the willingness of martyrs to die for their
faith.[34] Such communal ecstasy easily
degenerates into abuse, such as the historical example of the thousands of
“Hitler children” who died in martyrdom operations and last-ditch stands in
Germany at the end of World War II, and who “. . . had been fed on legends of
heroism for as long as they could remember.”[35] Finally, in addition to growing out of
heroic notions, sacrificial self-identity in military culture indelibly is
linked with the value of unit cohesion, as stated in the Soldier’s Handbook of the U.S. Department of the Army: “The greatest
means of accomplishing selfless service is to dedicate yourself to the teamwork
that is the underlying strength of the Army.”[36] In our own time, the motives behind the
actions of the terrorists who attacked the Trade Towers have been analyzed as
“intensely and profoundly religious . . . as revealed by the instructions that
guided their final days.”[37] While much attention has been focused
on an assumed “irrational” or “evil” mentality inducing suicide-bombers to
sacrifice themselves, far too little analysis has addressed the trajectory of a
communal ecstasy embedded in sacrificial self-understandings justified through
the values of heroism and unit cohesion, slipping easily between roots in
religion and roots in patriotism and nationalism, that in fact might link the
suicide bombers’ motivation to self-sacrifice with the experience of soldiers
fighting through more regularized, nationalized forms of warfare.
What’s Wrong with
All This? Getting to a Theological
and Ethical Critique of the Way This Sacrificial
Discourse Works
[24] Feminist analyses of sacrifice
address a variety of issues. First, feminists trace the inequalities that are imposed on various
populations via sacrificial demands in religious doctrines and systems
(including inequality related to gender, class, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation,
disability and more). Second, they
articulate suspicions regarding self-sacrificial notions of self-identity. Third, they question connections
between sacrifice and virtue, especially practices of virtue linked to
suffering. Fourth, they investigate links between religious doctrines of
sacrifice and their broader social effects. Finally, feminists work to unmask the cover of quasi-religious
sanctity, glorification or mystification that frequently shrouds sacrificial
mandates of varying kinds. As
Rebecca Parker writes,
Christian
theology presents Jesus as the model of self-sacrificing love and persuades
women to believe that sexism is divinely sanctioned. (Women) are tied
to the virtue of self-sacrifice, often by hidden social threats of punishment. We keep silent about rape, we deny when
we are being abused, and we
allow our lives to be consumed by the trivial and by our preoccupation with
others. We never claim our lives
as our own. We live as though we were
not present in our bodies.[38]
While traditionally theologians
have tended to shape their work for audiences that share their religious
heritage, feminist theologians work to attend more fully to the multivalent
social and cultural layers comprising those same traditions and
communities. In other words,
feminists try to identify the multiple levels operative in religious doctrine,
community, practices and language, and equally strive to describe their diverse
consequences. As Linell Elizabeth
Cady puts it, “religious ideas are strategies with identifiable social
effects.”[39]
[25] With these
motives in mind, feminist interrogation of the reemphasis on sacrifice in our
current political climate, therefore, must lead to the following questions:
whatever one’s position regarding the war in Iraq, what are we to say about the
sheer costs of sacrifice laid so directly on one group of our citizens, i.e.,
the military and reservists? The inequitable distribution of costs leads one to
suspect the rationalization behind the “necessity” for sacrifice in the first
place–if the rationalization was more convincing, would there be less
hesitation and cynicism regarding bracing the American citizenry as a whole to
bear their fair share?
[26] Moreover, how are we to understand
the communal ecstasy of excited self-sacrifice that may emerge as a
psychological reaction when those whose sacrifice is demanded find themselves
in a marginalized place of extremity and danger? The groundwork is laid for communal ecstasy through a
discourse that emphasizes self-sacrificial military identity. Furthermore, honest questioning of the
motives behind sacrificial mandates and self-sacrificial acculturation is
inhibited due to a cover of quasi-religious glorification that mystifies a
practical analysis of the issues at stake and the costs involved in such an
endeavour. Pushed to the side at
best, completely repressed at worst, are analysis of the costs and rationale behind
military sacrifice, the moral as well as financial/material cost to the nation
as a whole (despite insistent repetition that the sacrifice will take place
only “far from home”), and finally, and far from least important, the
consequences resulting from a supposedly righteous demand for sacrifice of the
enemy to execute punishment and restore order.
[27] Elsa Tamez
writes the following regarding the use of sacrificial discourse in her context:
If
the inequitable economic system has used sacrificial language to accomplish its
goals, there is something perverse or ambiguous in that language. It is
therefore crucial to take up again the theme of sacrifice in order to reread it
from another angle.[40]
An important clue to this dangerous
use of sacrifice emerges in connection with the ideology of “necessity.” Tamez writes, “. . . the death of Jesus
is not necessary in order to accomplish a particular purpose but rather is the
inevitable result of a specific cause.”[41] The problem lies in the way the
language of sacrifice was colonized by the economic system in Latin America,
drawing upon specific understandings of Christian atonement to emphasize the
ideology of a “necessary sacrifice” in order to demand the self-sacrifice of
innocent people. In Christian
theology one finds the wording of “necessity” most often connected to Christian
atonement images of penal satisfaction, sacrifice and christus victor. We
should question this language of “necessity,” according to Tamez.
[28] Penal
substitutionary interpretations of Christian salvation in particular emphasize
retributive notions of justice. Jesus, the innocent one, is identified by God the Father to freely take
on punishment in the place of sinful humanity. “Necessity” here is in the insistence that such punishment
may not be avoided; the price must be paid. In this way, penal substitutionary understandings utilize
the same thought patterns as victimage rhetoric, demanding the sacrifice of
“the enemy” (or the enemy’s substitute) to restore order. This same mechanism may be linked to
military identity development; just as Jesus freely offers himself in place of
sinful humanity, so the soldier offers himself, “without thought of recognition
or gain,” as the handbook states.[42] Moreover, one frequently finds such
patterns embellished with christus victor imagery, so that the portrait of Jesus “paying the price” occurs on the
battlefield as Jesus wages war against sin and the devil. Feminists have raised criticisms of all
these images of Christian atonement. Penal substitution leads to images of God as an abusive father ready to
strike out against his innocent son; sacrifice reifies obedience as primary
among the virtues and places greater value on the need to achieve purity than
on the existence of the sacrificial victim; christus victor plays into the creation of a binary world that sees
everything in Manichean terms, as either “good” or “evil.”[43]
[29] The ideology of “necessity”
has linked together Christian atonement theory with
just war ideology at least since the time of Augustin in Christianity.[44] While, in the United States, we
have heard our government officials making just this same link between
sacrifice and necessity (recall President Bush’s words in this vein, “The war
on terrorism will take time and require sacrifice. . . Yet we will do what is
necessary”), an important part of the framing of sacrificial discourse in our
context has been to discourage citizens from questioning this necessity too
deeply. One wonders, for instance,
about the refusal of the president over many months to meet with Cindy Sheehan,
mother of deceased soldier Casey Sheehan, killed in Iraq. In an email to her supporters from the
summer of 2005, Sheehan outlined the topics she wished to raise in a private
meeting with the president, topics which clearly disrupted the streamlined,
unquestioned link in the ideology of sacrifice and necessity:
1) What is the noble cause that everyone is dying for?
2) If it is so noble, do you encourage your daughters to enlist?
3) Stop using the name of my son to continue the killing.
. . . God bless,
Cindy Sheehan
[30] However, even
this act on the part of one citizen did not escape the powerful force of
framing to prevent any possible disruption of an uninterrupted ideology,
according to various editorialists in the United States. Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote,
The hope (of the administration) this
time was that we’d change the subject to Cindy Sheehan’s “wacko” rhetoric and
the opportunistic left-wing groups that have attached themselves to her like
barnacles. . . (in order to silence) her message of unequal sacrifice and fruitless
carnage.[45]
[31] The abusive
potential inherent in sacrificial identity formation is sufficient to make one
wonder if sacrifice ever may be justified ethically. Thus, various feminist theologians reject any positive or
normative portrayal of sacrifice within Christianity on the grounds of just
such potentially dangerous application to any marginalized collective. At the same time, however, other
evidence such as Bruce Chilton’s anthropological and textual studies of
sacrifice reveals surprising insights. Chilton is doubtful that we ever may arrive at a definitive theory of
sacrifice because it operates in such varying ways in different cultures and
epochs, and because it is impossible to recreate the internal mechanics in
particular of ancient sacrificial practices. Nevertheless, at the very least, anthropologically speaking,
we can describe various factors involved in sacrifice as they emerge in
different contexts. In his study
of sacrifice in the ancient world Chilton identifies three such descriptive
elements; sacrifice is (1) pragmatic, (2) affective, and (3) sacrifice involves
some sort of ideological transaction.[46] As opposed to the punitive and
destructive sacrificial discourse we find current in our own
political/religious/cultural moment, Chilton highlights the virtue of
generosity that may both compel and emerge from sacrificial practices, as he
writes,
Communities that practice sacrifice
understand themselves to exist within
a sacrificial compact, such that their generosity within rituals is met by the
generosity they desire . . . the generosity that sacrifice demands is worthwhile. . .[47]
One example of such sacrificial
activity described by Chilton takes place in the chapel at the college where he
teaches, when a group of Guatemalan women gather together to eat tortillas and
drink wine in a room that has been adorned with photographs of dead relatives
who were victims of state terror. As they eat, they sing together in the mood of a family reunion. Chilton writes,
What
is done provides a paradigm of the value of certain elements and
gestures, the pragmata of sacrifice: the
foods, their preparations, things
done at the time and in the space of the meal. Emotions are engaged,
often in an ambivalent manner . . . the Guatemalan dead join
the living only in song. Presence
and absence are balanced through a
ritual exchange which is as affective as it is pragmatic. . . ideology and affect
and pragmatics are united in any sacrificial moment.[48]
What is so surprising in Chilton’s
description is the mutuality, the give and take, the sense of communion and
generosity that may emerge in the sacrificial action taking place, a
sensibility altogether unlike the connotations surrounding contemporary
discourse of sacrifice in our society at the current time.
[32] I contend
that the current sacrificial political discourse we have experienced in U.S.
culture since 9/11 derives not a small amount of its resonance from having
collided with certain widespread atonement images that dominate the popular
American religious scene, not only the image of sacrifice, but sacrifice
conflated with christus victor and penal
substitutionary understandings of Christian salvation. Scholars have noted that a vast amount
of Christian practice in the U.S., including preaching, liturgy, hymnody and
catechesis, illustrates the meaning of Christian salvation through such images
as these.[49]
[33] Yet in
addition to specifically Christian practice, these images are a part of popular
culture; one only has to think back to the widespread popularity of Mel
Gibson’s film, The Passion, to see such
resonance at work in the American public. The film’s images of punishment beyond one’s wildest imaginings,
conflated with sacrificial and cosmic battleground imagery, all combined to create
an effect that deeply resonated with a significantly large swath of the
American public, if movie box-office totals are to be believed. The punitive, grotesquely violent,
Manichean, sexist and anti-semitic tones in Gibson’s film have been thoroughly
analyzed by a host of religion and film scholars.[50] Nonetheless, we dare not
compartmentalize these specifically religious images of sacrifice from the
political discourse of sacrifice that likewise has become a deeply embedded
part of our cultural moment. In
fact, a 2005 study analyzing the fourth quadrennial National Survey of Religion
and Politics demonstrated that “religious traditionalists” were most more
inclined to believe the Iraq war is justified as opposed to centrist or
modernist mainline Protestants, Jews, Catholics, other faith groups or non-
religiously affiliated people in the U.S. Moreover, the religious traditionalists also demonstrated higher levels
of support for the doctrine of pre-emptive military action. At the same time, while most members of
the same mainline groups and non-Christian religious groups demonstrated a
higher level of support for human rights than the average American voter,
evangelical centrists fell far below the mean.[51] It likewise has been noted that
Evangelical Christians and conservative or “traditionalist” Catholics were the
most ardent supporters of the Gibson film, though it also found a highly
receptive audience far beyond these specific groups.[52]
[34] Thus, when
President Bush calls on sacrificial language to describe the meaning of the war
in Iraq, not only does he “signal his base,” he additionally dips into an
enormous, partly conscious and perhaps even more largely subconscious pool of
resonance in the American public at large. “Cultural Congruence” describes “. . . the ease with
which–all else equal–a news frame can cascade through the different
levels of the framing process and stimulate similar reactions at each step.”[53] Cascading here refers to the transfer,
the movement of any given political message through a variety of groups,
including the administration, other elites, the media and the public. The most powerful frames are those that
move most easily across groups; moreover what makes such movement possible is
that “. . . the most inherently powerful frames are fully congruent with
schemas habitually used by most members
of society.”[54] September 11 is an example of such
congruence, in that in the American public consciousness the 9/11 terrorists
quickly “assimilated to the common schema of Islamic terrorism.” On the other hand, an example of
a lack of congruence may be seen in the 1988 downing of an Iranian civilian
airliner by a U.S. naval vessel, killing 290 people. “Research shows the media frame discouraged any dissonant
interpretation–one holding the U.S. as morally culpable. . .”[55]
[35] What we see
in our own moment is a dynamic in which, I assert, a number of different forms
of sacrificial discourse have come together, each in its own way a familiar,
resonant part of American culture. We live in a cultural moment in which these discourses are colliding and
blending with one another, creating a deeply congruent field ripe for the abuse
of notions of sacrifice. To
summarize, this abuse may be seen in the following:
- an ideology of victimage rhetoric that overtly
demands the destruction of the enemy to restore order; as well as
justification of the violence/killing that will ensue; colliding with a
discourse of sacrifice drawing on highly resonant and habitual images in
religion and culture at large, based on penal substitution, sacrificial
and christus victor atonement
metaphors, stressing punitive, hyper-violent, polarizing and binaried
heuristic methods for understanding and interpreting events;
- the creation through such rhetoric of an affect
surrounding this sacrifice that is based on anger toward and fear of the
enemy, combined with a righteous move to retributive action; perhaps the
complete opposite of the affect of generosity Chilton notes in his study
of ancient and contemporary sacrificial practices, though one must
recognize that anger, fear and retribution have the potential to unify a
population over against the enemy just as much or even more than the
practice of generosity;
- the pragmata of this sacrifice, not the practical, everyday elements of food and drink
and implements to prepare and share them, as we see with the example of
the Guatemalan women, but highly evolved, technological weapons of war
capable of wreaking almost unimaginable damage on people, their property
and the environment at large;
- a purposefully veiled communication regarding the
costs of such sacrifice, laying the heaviest part of the burden on the
American military and their families; taking advantage of inculcated
sacrificially-oriented formation and identity within that military
population, and cynically protecting the administration from a potential
public outcry, loss of votes and money through the careful message that
the American public at large will not bear any of these costs; and one
might add to this a class analysis underscoring the largest portion of
members of the military forces coming from the middle and working classes
of the United States;
- the religious valences in the discourse of sacrifice
shrouding an administration initiative with a mantle of glorification,
creating a frame with religious connotations that makes it emotionally
compelling and understandable; and simultaneously a frame powerful enough
to subvert, divert, and dilute important questions that need to be asked
and considered, a frame that encourages quietistic response to a paternal
authority.
Signs
of the Frame Interrupted
[36]
And yet. . . there are signs indicating that the depth and breadth of the cultural congruence of the current
frame are on the wane. One might
point to some early signs in 2005, including the indictment of Scooter Libby
and the actions of the Congress to insist on hearing a report regarding
possible manipulation of pre-war intelligence, as signs of a weakening frame. At the time of this writing, the 2006
mid-term election has resulted in democratically-controlled House and Senate,
and coincided with the departure of Donald Rumsfeld, even as many voters
declared their opposition to the Iraq war as a primary rationale behind their
vote. An important part of this
growing change has to do with asking those hard questions discouraged and dissimulated
by the sacrificial frame. These
questions have been increasing in both number and scope, particularly in the
campaigns leading up to the mid-term elections, and represent nothing less than
a sea change from earlier responses such as those from a group of “just war
against terror scholars,” including Elshtain, whose insistence on the
unrelenting evil of terrorists and necessity of a violent response contributed
not only to public fear but to a hesitancy to ask probing questions to give us
more and better information for our deliberation about the best way forward.[56] “Necessity” played into this dynamic as
well, insisting that something must be sacrificed, and someone must be punished,
instead of focusing on how and why things went so wrong in the first
place.
[37]
An additional insistent challenge to the current frame is the growth of signs
that the military may be at the breaking point, the notion of the self-sacrificing
warrior culture moving to a level of crisis. In November 2005, the top general in the Army Reserve
described his troops as “degenerating into a broken force” as a result of the
“demands placed on the Reserve by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.” A former army lieutenant outlined the
situation with the following words: “[Soldiers] feel like they’re the only ones
sacrificing . . . they’re starting to look around and say, ‘You know it’s me
and my buddies over and over again, and everybody else is living life
uninterrupted.’” Increasingly it
is becoming a greater part of public awareness that the military is paying the
cost not only through loss of life and horrific injuries, but in rising divorce
rates, financial problems, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a host of other
ills.[57]
[38]
Finally, even in the popular culture of Doonesbury, questions regarding the
discourse of sacrifice are emerging with greater force. In a cartoon in which a news
commentator questions the president regarding the expected duration of the war,
Trudeau emphasized the familiar rationale, quoting the president’s answer to
questions such as these: “We must remain in Iraq to ensure that those who’ve
given their lives didn’t die in vain.” But the fictional newsperson keeps the question going: “What if our
troops are still dying at the current rate a year from now? What about two years? Five years?” The presidential voice from the TV remains constant: “Again,
we’ll stay the course. We cannot
dishonor the upcoming sacrifice of those who have yet to die. . .”[58]
[39]
Nevertheless, in late November 2005, his approval ratings severely declining,
President Bush gave a major speech to announce a new document, available on the
official White House website, called “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.”[59] In the title and 16 subtitles of the
document alone, the word “victory” appeared no fewer than eight times. The New York Times noted in its December 4, 2005 report that in his
speech, the word “victory” was repeated like a mantra by the president no fewer
than fifteen times and appeared also in a visual backdrop with the words “Plan
for Victory.”[60] It soon became apparent that while the
administration had touted the new thirty-five page document as a policy
statement from the Pentagon to outline its strategy for fighting the Iraq
insurgency, the obvious goal of both document and speech was to sway American
public opinion, to create a new frame that might have the chance of disrupting
a growing disapproval (up to 65%, according to a Newsweek Poll) in the American public regarding the war and
the president’s leadership as commander in chief.
[40]
With a bit of investigative digging, the true author of the report, Dr. Peter
D. Feaver, a Duke University political scientist, was discovered. The Times reporter wrote that Feaver specifically was recruited
because of his polling research which indicated that Americans might support
mounting causalities if they believed the war ultimately would succeed. Dr. Feaver’s research on public opinion
regarding the Iraq war is readily available. In an article printed in The Weekly Standard, “Casualties are the First Truth of
War,” Dr. Feaver reacts strongly to what he describes as the common post-Desert
Storm political/military philosophy that “. . . higher causalities will
translate into a precipitous decline in public support.”[61] On the contrary, according to Feaver’s
own research of polls from the first two years of the war “if political leaders remain calm and
convey confidence that the mission will be successful, then the price (i.e.
high causalities) can be paid.” Thus the new and almost overwhelming focus on “victory” (the State of
the Union Address in January 2006 likewise parroted the word incessantly). To add to the impression of an attempted
public opinion coup, it might be noted that Dr. Feaver joined the N.S.C. staff
as a special adviser in June 2005; while Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the top
American military official in charge of training Iraqi troops, told a surprised
group of reporters that he had never seen or heard of the document before its
public release. Such blatant
attempts at framing to influence public opinion are enough to encourage one to
transpose a few of the words in Dr. Feaver’s Weekly Standard article to create an alternate title, “Truth is the
First Casualty of War.”[62]
[41]
At the same time, and most unfortunate, the move from an emphasis on
“sacrifice” to “victory” still makes it possible for this language to operate
under the same mantle of religious sanctification/glorification, given the
popular American interpretation of Christian salvation. Religion scholars have long suggested
that christus victor salvation
metaphors, with their cosmic battleground imagery and dualistic division of the
world into evil and good, as well as their unrelenting focus on “victory” as
the ultimately assured and unassailable single goal and definition of
salvation, are portrayals that Christians must critique with greater self
awareness. Especially in the lives
of privileged Christians living in “first-world” nations, these images contain
great capacity to bless war-making, alienate and demonize groups perceived as
“different” and encourage abandonment of any methods that promise less than
absolute certainty. Without deeper
awareness and analysis, we are vulnerable to just such manipulation and
simplistic thinking and judgment as this latest frame of “victory” encourages.
Contest
and Reframe the Framing of the Question
[42]
Christian ethicist Larry Rasmussen suggests that we adopt different language to
shift the terms of the conversation about war and non-violence in our
society. He writes, “following
Jesus as ‘premeditated reconciliation’ would be more accurate than ‘nonviolence.’”[63] He continues,
Pacifist practices are not just a
firewall for containing conflict. They are
the evangelical practices these traditions see as a whole way of
life. Just peacemaking is the hard
task of developing these as civic
practices and not only ecclesial ones.
Searching for the “civic counterpart”
of rendering equality through baptism; defining the possibility of “eucharistic
economics”; developing methods for “binding and loosing through forgiveness” to
move past retribution–Rasmussen would have us bring these religious
images, metaphors and practices imaginatively into the civic realm to seek out
parallels appropriate to a pluralistic and troubled world. This is the “hard task” facing people
of religious faith and other advocates of non-violence who resist the kind of
conflation of religious language and images with the practices and tools of war
that are so very much a part of our cultural moment.
[43]
Perhaps Rasmussen’s proposal is not unlike theologian Denny Weaver’s exercise
in imagination, when he responds to the “ultimate question” consistently thrust
in the face of advocates of non-violence, i.e., “What would you do about
Hitler? Or–What would you do if a crazed person came after your
mother/father/wife/child with a gun?” The question Weaver raises on an individual level may be compared to the
collective threat posed by “mushroom cloud” imagery used to heighten fear in
the American public about possible weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Weaver’s response is to highlight the
patent unfairness of such questions. The “ultimate” question itself is unfair on at least two grounds; first,
it places pacifists in the position of being responsible for the long build-up
of frustrations that produce “people who do terrible things”; and second, it
assumes that there are insufficient numbers of pacifists in the world to make
any measurable difference anyway. In response, Weaver writes,
For the “What-about” question to be
fair, pacifists need equal time to prepare
and equal numbers of people involved–say three peace academies
(parallel to the Naval Academy, West Point, and the Air Force
Academy) graduating several hundred men and women each year highly
trained in nonviolent techniques, plus standing reserve companies of
thousands of men and women trained in nonviolent tactics, all of whom have
access to billions of dollars to spend on transportation and the latest communications
equipment . . .[64]
[44]
I find much to appreciate in the imaginative thrusts of both Rasmussen’s and
Weaver’s proposals. However, the
gist of my argument in this essay moves in a different direction, to throw into
greater relief the ambiguity residing in the communicative dynamic of primary
religious symbols and metaphors themselves. This very ambiguity, I argue, creates the capacity for
misuse and even abuse of these images in the service of political (and
commercial/economic) goals. Because images and practices of “sacrifice” communicate so profoundly
both at communal and individual levels, they embody transformative and manipulative capacity. In addition to the proposals of Rasmussen and Weaver, an
equally hard task in the present moment involves encouraging greater public
analysis and awareness regarding the multivalent operations of the ambiguous
symbol, “sacrifice.” How can such
a task be accomplished? An
indispensable step lies in something very simple: that is, demonstrating that
“the emperor has no clothes.” In
other words:
- pulling back the veil of religious mystification and
glorification that so neatly has swathed administration admonitions, justifications
and explanations regarding “the necessity of sacrifice”;
- shining a harsh light on the crude and even cynical
practice of the use of religious language for the purpose of framing to
manipulate public interpretation and approval;
- encouraging greater public and ecclesial debate
regarding an ethically justifiable role for religion in the political
public square;
- demonstrating the importance of deeper theological
interpretation of primary religious symbols beyond popular cultural
understandings;
- deepening the analysis of these symbols in military
acculturation and identity formation;
- promoting increased awareness of the ways the
discourse of sacrifice or victory may be manipulated in the public realm.
All of these emphases constitute
indispensable steps we must encourage if we are to adequately understand, much
less respond to our current political and cultural moment in history.
[45]
Also ahead is the task of more substantive investigation into the links between
“necessity” in just war ideology and in the atonement metaphors of penal
substitution, christus victor and
sacrifice in Christian history and theology. Such examination, I suspect, will reveal another kind of
“slippage,” similar to the one we
discover between the self-sacrificial identity of the martyr and that of the
soldier, so that the “necessity” of war becomes a buttress supporting the
“necessity” of Christ’s suffering and death and vice versa.
[46]
Is it possible to imagine discourse and practices of sacrifice that compel and
produce generosity? Chilton’s
description of the Guatemalan women’s practice of sacrifice, singing
ambivalently with the memories and spirits of those killed by the state,
sharing food, drink and grief, and searching for hope, is one such image of generosity. In this political and cultural moment,
five years after 9/11, with new awareness regarding the fragility of human
institutions, their capacity to manipulate and our hope that they will promote
human flourishing, in a world that feels not safer, but only more polarized and
fearful, such (re)discovery is more urgent than ever.
Notes
[1] “The
traditional concept of death as necessary for the salvation of all translates
the economic claim that people need to accept sacrifices, in the hope that at
some future time they will manage to obtain the goods and services necessary
for life.” Elsa Tamez, The Amnesty of Grace: Justification by Faith from a
Latin American Perspective, trans. Sharon
H. Ringe (Nashville, Abingdon, 1993): 157.
[3] Quoted in
Stuart Taylor Jr., “How Bush Can Save International Law, Not Sacrifice It,” National
Journal, 35.16 (4/19/2003): 1207-9.
[5] Robert Ivie,
“Images of Savagery in American Justifications for War,” Communications Monographs, 47
(November 1980): 281.
[8] A paraphrase
of Matt. 12:30; cf. Mark 9:40; Luke 9:40.
[9]Robert M.
Entman, “Cascading Activation: Contesting the White House’s Frame after 9/11,” Political
Communication 20 (2003): 417.
[12] Of course
the majority of the perpetrators of 9/11 were Saudis, though this fact was
intentionally obscured and links were manufactured to connect the 9/11
terrorists to Iraq.
[14] Timothy
Cole, “The Rhetoric of Sacrifice and Heroism and U.S. Military Intervention,” Bring
“Em On: Media and Politics in the Iraq War,
Eds. Lee Artz and Yahya R. Kamalipour (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005).
[17] As quoted
by Cole, 148.
[20] As quoted
in Cole, 148.
[21] This was a
recurring theme in many papers, presentations and general discussion at the UK
Political Studies Association Women and Politics Annual Conference, February
11, 2006, University of Edinburgh that focused on the theme, “Feminist Ethics,
Feminist Politics and the States We’re in: Critical Reflections in Uncertain
Times.”
[23]Bruce Lincoln, “Bush’s God Talk: Analyzing the
President’s Theology,” Christian
Century, 121,20 (2004): 22-29. George W. Bush and Karen Armstrong, A Charge to Keep: My
Journey to the
Whitehouse (New York: Morrow, 1999).
[24] Lincoln,
“Bush’s God Talk,” 23.
[25] Mark Lewis
Taylor, Religion, Politics, and the Christian Right: Post-9/11 Powers and
American Empire (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 2005), 52.
[29] The speech
is reproduced in its entirety in Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about
Religion after September 11 (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 2003), 99-101.
[30]Jean Bethke
Elshtain, “Sovereignty, Identity and Sacrifice” in Gendered States: Feminist
(re)Visions of International Relations Theory,
Ed. V. Spike Peterson (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992), 144.
[32] This
particular group of midshipmen had focused on samurai warrior ethics in their
presentation: thus the sword. While there was a small number of midshipwomen in the class each time I
visited, I noted that they mostly were silent and were not scheduled to make
their oral presentations on the specific days I visited with my students.
[33] Shannon E.
French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 10.
[36] Soldier’s
Handbook, Department of the Army
(Alexandria: Bryyd Enterprises, 1998), 3-3.
[38] Rita
Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Proverbs to Ashes: Violence,
Redemptive Suffering and the Search for What Saves Us (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 36.
[39]Linell
Elizabeth Cady, “Identity, Feminist Theory and Theology,” Horizons in
Feminist Theology: Identity, Tradition and Norms (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 30.
[42] Soldier’s
Handbook, 3-3.
[43] Among the
many recent works exploring feminist critiques of Christian atonement, see:
Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence,
Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us (Beacon Press, 2001); Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Jesus:
Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet (Continuum, 1994); Flora A. Keshgegian, Redeeming Memories: A
Theology of Healing and Transformation (Abingdon Press, 2000); Carol Delaney, Abraham on Trial: The Social
Legacy of Biblical Myth (Princeton
University Press, 1998).
[44]“Augustine
on the ‘just war,`” R.A. Markus, The Church and War (Ecclesiastical History Society: Great Britain,
1983), 10-11.
[45] Frank Rich, “The Swift-Boating of Cindy Sheehan,” NY
Times, August 21, 2005, op ed., p.
11.
[46] Bruce
Chilton, The Temple of Jesus: His Sacrificial Program Within a Cultural
History of Sacrifice (University Part, PA:
PA State University Press, 1992), 39-41.
[48] Chilton,
“Sacrificial Mimesis,” Religion 27
(1997): 225-230, 227.
[49] See, for
example, the work of New Testament scholar Joel B. Green: Recovering the
Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and Contemporary Contexts (London: Intervarsity Press, 2000); Green and Jon
Carroll, The Death of Jesus in Early Christianity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995).
[50] See After the Passion Is Gone: American Religious
Consequences, eds. J. Shawn Landres
and Michael Berenbaum (New York: Altamira, 2004). Also, Denton-Borhaug, “A Bloodthirsty Salvation: Behind the
Popular Polarized Reaction to Gibson’s The Passion,” Journal of Religion and
Film, 9,1 (April 2005); http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol9No1/DentonBorhaugBloodthirsty.htm.
[51]James L.
Guth, John C. Green, Lyman K. Kellstedt, and Corwin E. Emidt, “Faith and
Foreign Policy: A View from the Pews,” Faith and International Affairs, 3,2 (Fall 2005): 5-6.
[52] See Julie
Ingersoll, “Is It Finished? The
Passion of the Christ and the Fault Lines
in American Christianity” in After the Passion is Gone.
[57] Bob
Herbert, “An Army Ready to Snap,” New York Times, November 10, 2005, A29.
[58] Gary Trudeau, Doonesbury, Oct. 9, 2005, New York Times.
[59] The
Whitehouse, “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq,”
http//:www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_strategy_nov2005.html.
[60] Scott
Shane, “Bush’s Speech on Iraq War Echoes Voice of an Analyst,” New York
Times, December 4, 2005. Also available at
www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/politics/04strategy.html.
[61] Peter
Feaver, “Casualties are the First Truth of War,” Weekly Standard, Vol. 008,29, April 7, 2003.
[63] Larry Rasmussen,
“In the Face of War,” Sojourners Magazine,
Jan. 2005, http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0501&article=050110.
[64]Denny
Weaver, “Responding to September 11–and October 7 and January 20: Which
Religion Shall We Follow?” Conrad
Grebel Review, 20,2 (Spring
2002): 79-100, 92.
