Abstract
William A. Walker III’s, A Theology of the Drug War, offers a theological response to the drug war waged along the US–Mexico border. Walker is a lecturer in theology and ethics at Baylor University and director of vocation at Christ Church in Austin, Texas. As a work addressing a pressing contemporary issue, the book is a valuable resource to theology students, researchers, and church audiences interested in liberation theologies, critical engagements with globalization, drug-related conflicts, and US–Mexico relations.
The primary concern of the book is to show the “mutual constitution” of the social context of the US–Mexico drug war and the doctrinal question of salvation (4). Walker insists that it is necessary to ground soteriology in the social context of globalization, which he does by drawing from Latin American liberation theology and ethics, particularly in Enrique Dussel’s work. The book further offers a reading of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics to speak of the paradox of the “beauty of the tortured and innocent victim,” particularly the victims of the drug war (5).
The book is divided into five chapters. First, Walker situates the drug war in the context of globalization, US–Mexico trade agreements, and Mexican politics. Admittedly, the historical, political, and economic roots of the drug war are wide and deep and cannot be exhausted in a single chapter, but Walker’s presentation offers a competent summary of the origins and development of the drug war. Chapter 1 also sets the stage for his discussion by describing our planet as a “neighborhood,” a motif that Walker will develop throughout the book. For him, the Christian doctrine of salvation offers promises to deliver a “theology of neighborhood without borders, even as borders continue to function as significant sites of political friction” (17).
Chapter 2 investigates Enrique Dussel’s ethics of liberation and his “alternative historiography” for the formation of the colonial modern world system. With Dussel, Walker claims that the conquest and subsequent colonization of the Americas ought to be thought of as the origin of modernity. This historical exposition informs an ethical and political position that Walker names, alongside Dussel, transmodern. The third chapter offers a political theology that connects the drug war to von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics. Walker distills a transmodern impetus in von Balthasar that can “resource and kindle subversive, political-theological energy” (73). The ugly reality engendered by the drug war is analogous to the scandalous reality of the cross, which is where von Balthasar locates salvation in his theo-dramatic aesthetic.
Walker’s goal in the fourth chapter is to develop a theory of atonement politically attuned to the oppressions suffered by the victims and the need for redemption for perpetrators. Walker’s theory of atonement embraces a paradoxical political theological stance that affirms the political force of the victims’ weakness. As readers are likely to notice, this is the most ambitious chapter of the book as it engages figures like Alan Badiou, Jürgen Moltmann, Jon Sobrino, Søren Kierkegaard, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Ignacio Ellacuría. Due to the scope of the chapter, the exposition loses some of the clarity found in other chapters as well as failing to capture the complexity and nuances of these thinkers.
The final chapter closes the book with a case study of the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity, a movement that sought to name and honor the victims of the drug war, hold government authorities in both Mexico and the USA accountable, and denounce economic forces that benefit from drug-related violence. For Walker, this movement epitomizes a political theology that “derives its political significance” from concrete experiences of suffering and solidarity, “and from a true display of neighborliness” (132). Summarizing the theological and ethical stance adopted by the book, Walker calls upon the church to a faith and ethical practice that “dramatically accentuates the beauty and the goodness of the divine, which is the hope and source of salvation for victims, but also for everyone else” (145).
A Theology of the Drug War should be considered an important advancement in liberation theologies due to its attention to the drug war as a site that amalgamates myriad oppressive forces. The book contributes to ongoing dialogues that seek to tease out political implications of theological aesthetics, especially in von Balthasar’s work. For theology students, religious leaders, and activists the book offers a good theological perspective to thinking about the drug war and conflicts along the US–Mexico border.