Abstract
James McCarty, Matthew Tapie and Justin Bronson Barringer (eds),
The Business of War: Theological and Ethical Reflections on the Military–Industrial Complex
(Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020); 276 pp.: 9781532641053, $53 (hbk); 9781532641046, $33 (pbk)
I am aware of a small amount of writing in Christian ethics on the international arms trade, but not of anything on this impressive scale. It is a tour de force. At the outset this collection states: Since at least World War II, war has become big business, and addressing this problem is what inspires and charts the course for this book. War as business is a moral problem that has largely gone underexplored in Christian theology and ethics. We call this the problem of ‘the business of war.’ There have been important works on the theology and ethics of modern economic systems, and the ethics of war and peace have expanded into many subdisciplines in the last century. However, very few people have explored the theological and ethical aspects of the intersections of contemporary global capitalism and modern warfare. (p. xv)
This collection has essays exploring a number of significant themes: on the dissonance between parts of the Old Testament, with promises of God’s support for wars of conquest and then God’s promise to the Israelites of the vanquished enemy’s land, and the New Testament with neither; on the build-up of American arms in Latin America and, particularly, in South Korea; on the (highly questionable) private military and security contractors who have increased exponentially; on the military–educational complex; and, finally, on strategies for resisting the business of war. The last of these is very helpful, adding both jus ante bellum (justice when war is threatened but might still be averted) and jus post bellum (justice in the wake of war in order to avert it being rekindled) to the more usual principles of jus ad bellum (justice for going to war) and jus in bello (justice within war). Peacemakers such as Martin Luther King Jr, his mentor the Quaker Bayard Rustin and, especially, the Southern Baptist theologian Glen Stassen (editor of the seminal Just Peacemaking) are deservedly much praised. Seriously thoughtful.
Gilbert Meilaender,
Bioethics: A Primer for Christians
, 4th edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020); 156 pp.: 9780802878168, $19.99 (pbk)
First published in 1996, this new edition takes into account recent developments such as the CRISPR/Cas9 method of gene editing (which he accepts for use only to develop somatic rather than embryonic therapies). His overall (cautious) ethical/theological judgements remain largely unchanged. In every fresh edition he has assured readers that ‘this is a book written by a Christian chiefly for other Christians, but that all are welcome and invited to “listen in”’ (p. x).
Jeff Levin,
Religion and Medicine: A History of the Encounter Between Humanity’s Two Greatest Institutions
(New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020); 324 pp.: 9780190867355, £22.99 (hbk)
Like Meilaender, Jeff Levin makes his religious commitments clear from the outset – in his case that he is an observant Jew from a distinguished line of rabbis. However, unlike Meilaender, he is emphatically not writing chiefly for his co-religionists; he is less interested in ethical issues; and, as the subtitle indicates, he is attempting a historical overview of the long and varied relationship between religion and medicine across many different cultures. This is a hugely ambitious project and some topics are thinly spread, but it still yields some important insights. Perhaps the most important of these is that human beings have long mixed up, argued about and, sometimes, reconciled religion and medicine. His understanding of the contested concept of ‘religion’ is largely conventional: namely, a select group of so-called world religions. Yet he does make a serious attempt to outline some of their resonances (and discontinuities) with medicine – again broadly conceived. Much of this is intelligent but essentially amateur. Where he becomes fully professional is in Chapter 5, where he demonstrates his expertise as a Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health at Baylor University. Here he shows direct and detailed knowledge of the many late twentieth- and twenty-first-century empirical studies of data about religious belonging (and sometimes belief) and health. He rightly commends the astonishing bibliographical research of Harold Koenig and others in their seminal Handbook of Religion and Health (2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2012). Yet he also sets this research into an independent and highly judicious context. He starts by considering the cardiologist Randolph C. Byrd’s highly contested 1988 article ‘Positive therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care unit population’ (Southern Medical Journal, Vol. 81, no. 7, pp. 826–9), which claimed that intercessory prayer could be a statistically significant variable even when patients were unaware that they were being prayed for. Sceptics naturally scoffed and produced an empirical study that seemed to disprove it. Levin, in turn, explains why the sceptics’ preferred study was in fact flawed and why Byrd’s study was rather better. And yet, despite making these contentious epidemiological points, he argues that this line of study is finally unhelpful since it crowds out the much less contentious evidence that religiosity can be significantly beneficial in quite a number of areas of medicine, including heart disease, hypertension, cancer morbidity, pain and somatic symptoms, physical disability, depression and anxiety. He insists that none of these prove that God exists (an absurd conclusion) or that belonging should be prescribed by doctors, regarding such claims as the product of religious fundamentalists. He is fully aware that these empirical benefits may result from, for instance, the healthy behaviour of the religiously active, their mutual social support, their positive emotions, their healthy beliefs, their salutary thoughts, or the healing states of consciousness. By setting out and explaining the evidence in this way, he establishes his worth and the value of this book. He does it well. His conclusion is judicious: The intersection of religion and medicine is not newly discovered territory. Nor is it a conceptual space that implicitly connotes whatever disreputable images may be conjured by readings (or misreadings) of religious fundamentalists or New Agers, images that many within Western medicine find distasteful. Religious people, organizations, and institutions have worked hand in hand for hundreds of years … it is in our best interest that this work continue and flourish. (p. 215)
Joe Aldred and Keno Ogbo (eds),
The Black Church in the 21st Century
, 2nd edition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2020); 250 pp.: 9780232527926, £14.99 (pbk)
It is good that this pioneering book, first published in 2010, has now been reissued with a new Preface, albeit with the articles themselves showing few signs of having been updated. For example, the very balanced article on the health benefits derived from BAME church involvement, written by a consultant in public medicine, has no discussion of the current Covid-19 context in which BAME doctors have experienced so many fatalities (some 90 per cent of front-line doctor deaths). The focus of this collection is specifically on the British Black Pentecostal Church – a collection of churches with African or Caribbean roots that have experienced significant growth over the last few years and also quite a number of tensions and divisions. Articles cover some of the distinctive theological themes evident in Black Pentecostalism, community and political engagement, and, of course, gospel music. Some of these articles are descriptive and others more aspirational. The editors acknowledge frankly that there are gaps – notably on gender and sexuality – but they are right to regard this as a collection that remains significant and informative.
Ian G. Wallis,
Monotheism and Faith in God
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); 100 pp.: 9781108970440, £15 (pbk)
‘Short notices’ last March (Theology Vol. 123, no. 2, p. 158) reviewed a number of short books in the Cambridge Elements series ‘Religion and Violence’. Ian Wallis’s book is in the parallel Cambridge Elements series, ‘Religion and Monotheism’, edited by Paul Moser and Chad Meister. It looks carefully at faith in God within Judaism, Christianity and Islam, distinguishes between faith and belief, and sets out different academic ways of analysing each of them and then adding what Wallis depicts as ‘a phenomenology of monotheistic belief’. As an introductory book it makes a welcome addition to the growing academic literature on so-called Abrahamic faiths (see also Theology Vol. 119, no. 3, p. 237 and Vol. 120, no. 6, pp. 462–3).
Stephen Platten,
Pilgrims: Pathways of Christian Life
, 2nd edition (Durham: Sacristy Press, 2020); 200 pp.: 9781789591323, £12.99 (pbk)
This thoughtful and energetic book, for and about Christian pilgrims and their various tracks around Britain, first published in 1996 by HarperCollins, has now been revised and reissued. In 1996 Bishop Stephen Platten was Dean of Norwich, but now he writes in retirement from Berwick-upon-Tweed – just 12 miles from his (and my) beloved Lindisfarne. Each chapter – variously on both Irish-Celtic and Roman pilgrimages – ends with a prayer, having evoked their spiritual and aesthetic qualities.
K. K. Yeo and Gene L. Green (eds),
Theologies of Land: Contested Land, Spatial Justice, and Identity
(Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020); 156 pp.: 9781725265073, $40 (hbk); 9781725265066, $25 (pbk)
This stimulating book is part of the series ‘Crosscurrents in Majority World and Minority Theology’, also edited by Yeo and Green – a series that ‘promotes engagement with the best resources from World Christianity, bringing the current and next generation of Majority World and Minority scholars into dialog with each other’. The bulk of this book is written by four theologians – a Palestinian, a South African, a Latin American and a First Nation American – all concerned to address land injustice (political and environmental) from a postcolonial or de-colonial perspective. Important links are made between their various presentations, and there is also a shrewd conclusion by Yeo on differences of context between them and on his own differences as a Malaysian now living in the USA. Who should ‘own’ land and how does the Bible condone or challenge notions of ownership of land are questions raised variously by the contributors in their different contexts. The veteran Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann introduces the whole with an artful meditation on Psalm 74. A very thoughtful and interesting book.