Abstract
Starting with clashes between Western and Ukrainian feminists, this article discusses basic questions from an intersectional perspective on the relation between gender, war and religion. In the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, how should a gender-sensitive peace ethics look? Among feminists, as in religious communities, we find radical pacifist positions next to and sometimes conflicting with approaches that draw on traditions of “just war” and/or “just peace.” After discussing the different approaches in Christian tradition, including Eastern traditions, and describing the imperialist nature of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the author highlights the importance of engaging feminist theories of war and militarism in the analysis and how they resonate with practices on the ground in Ukraine. The feminist lens demands attention for the full reality of war, for women’s multilayered agency in war, and for the genderedness of discourses and practices surrounding war heroism and war traumas. Based on such considerations and arguments, the article proposes five “principles” for a feminist political theology on war and peace, as a contribution to the ongoing scholarly debate. Markers on a feminist-theological pathway to just peace may include: reconsidering the notion of sacrifice; fearlessly bringing theology into religious diplomacy; nothing for Ukraine without the voices of Ukrainian women; embracing a paradigm of human security instead of state security; and the remaining challenge to imagine a common future with the enemy beyond the current evil of destruction.
Keywords
Key note at the conference “Braucht der Krieg das Patriarchat? Protestantische Perspektiven auf die Wechselwirkungen von Krieg und Geschlecht,” organized by Evangelisches Zentrum Frauen und Männer, 27 November, 2023 in Kassel, Germany. Also presented in the REGENN study conference in Helvoirt, 11 January, 2024 (https://regenn.nl/). Not yet published.
Being a part of the peace movement of the 80s of the last century, I was convinced that I was a true and principled pacifist. However, since the Russian occupation of Crimea in March 2014 and the Russian-backed military takeover of the eastern Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, I know that I am not. Not only did I understand the Ukrainian government’s decision to actively defend the country by the Armed Forces, but I wholeheartedly welcomed it as the only way left to restrain the evil of destruction of a nation, a society, a culture, a nascent democracy, and of its fundamental right to exist.
In face of the destructive war in Ukraine, and of other wars such as in Gaza, the questions have become urgent. Many women, living in Europe, engage with people in these contexts. How do feminists position themselves in the ethics of war and peace? Among feminists, as in religious communities, we find radical pacifist positions next to and sometimes clashing with approaches that draw on traditions of “just war” and/or “just peace.” In dialogue with feminist peace ethical theories and with practices on the ground in Ukraine, I will reflect on the basic questions that should be asked from an intersectional perspective on the relation between gender and war. Does war need patriarchy? Does patriarchy need war? How are women represented and their voices heard and included in accounts of war and in negations for peace? Should women join the military in certain situations? Can supporting the supply of weapons to another country be considered, under certain conditions, a morally justifiable choice from a feminist perspective?
I will pose the questions of gender, war, and religion in the context of Russia's war against Ukraine, that began in 2014. My reflections on gender-sensitive peace ethics relate to this particular context. Taking into account all differences as to context, historical background and situatedness, some insights might possibly be translated into the context of other current wars as well, however, I will not venture into that. First, it is beyond the scope of my expertise, and second, we will have to make every effort to try to understand what is going on in the war on the eastern borders of Europe and to find a gender-critical approach to it. As for my own position, I will ask the questions as a feminist theologian, and as an insider-outsider to the Ukrainian context over almost two decades. 1 In the end, I will propose five “principles” for a feminist political theology on war and peace, as a contribution to an ongoing scholarly debate.
Feminist Clashes
I seldom read a more down-to-earth description of what war is about than this one by Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain (1985): Injuring is, in fact, the central activity of war. Visible or invisible, omitted, included, altered in its inclusion, described or redescribed, injury is war’s product and its cost, it is the goal toward which all activity is directed and the road to the goal (. . .). But whether a boy announces that he is going off “to die” for his country or going off “to kill” for his country, he is saying that he is going off “to alter body tissue” (either his own or another) for his country, and the eventual destination here is to understand the structural logic of an event in which alterations in human tissue can come to be the freedom or ideological autonomy or moral legitimacy of a country.
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If this is what war is about, what is our position, as feminists? What is our peace ethical stance? How do we listen to and account for women’s experiences and women’s choices during war?
Let me start with an incident during a conference of feminist scholars, in the beginning of September 2023. We were with about ten women on the campus of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. All were Ukrainians, except me. Online we were connected with about 60 participating women from Europe, Israel and South Africa. It was a conference of the European Society of Women in Theological Research (ESWTR) 3 on the theme “Imperial Powers and Women: Trauma, Resilience and Resistance.”
Sociologist Tamara Martsenyuk from the Kyiv-Mohyla University gave a lecture on the position of women in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. She and her team have been researching this since 2015 in a project called Invisible Battalion. Invisible Battalion (Ukrainian: Невидимий Батальйон) is a Ukrainian advocacy campaign, a sociological research group, and a civil rights project for gender equality in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Women make up a fifth of the Armed Forces of Ukraine; it is among the highest percentage in the world. The researchers and activists have achieved important results in the field of gender justice and women’s safety in military structures.
Her presentation provoked discussion among the feminist theologians of ESWTR: should women join the army and should feminists support that? Isn’t that in fact supporting a patriarchal, militaristic, and capitalist institution?
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Isn’t it just another step toward militarization and escalation? Tamara Martsenyuk replied that pacifist principles are wonderful in an ideal world, but unfortunately the reality in Ukraine is different: It is an incredible privilege to talk about the theoretical possibilities of a world in which there is no longer an army and in which criticizing the logic of victory is a feminist act. But we are dealing with a neighboring country that aims at our destruction. If women choose to take up arms, they deserve support and advocacy, including from feminist scholars.
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After closing the online connection, the Ukrainian women burst into applause for Tamara. She had exactly expressed what each of them was thinking.
This tension-filled confrontation shows that there is quite a gap between women in the war-torn Ukrainian reality and staunch supporters of pacifism in the West, whether they are feminist, Christian or both. The question at stake is: are the women, who join the army, evidence of how male-dominated state leadership cleverly coopts women into their militarized schemes? Or, alternatively, should we see the women joining the military as one more feminist advance in dismantling patriarchy? 6
The feminist clash occurred also in public manifests. On 17 March 2022, a month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a group of Western feminists published Feminist Resistance Against War. A Manifesto.
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After condemning the military invasion into Ukraine, they reject the positions issued in recent days that deepen the warmongering spiral. We reject the decisions that involve adding more weapons to the conflict and increasing war budgets. We reject security narratives that reinforce authoritarian logic and militarization. Not in our name.
In the end they call for “a redirection of the situation to break the militaristic spiral initiated by Russia and supported by NATO.” The feminist authors claim that they echo the call launched by Russian feminist groups.
If we take, however, a closer look at the Feminist Anti-War Resistance manifesto, authored by an anonymous Russian feminist group on 27 February 2022, 8 we notice that the text addresses and condemns Putin’s “war of aggression and military occupation,” and calls the whole world to support Ukraine in this critical moment and not to engage with Putin’s regime. There is no demand to stop the supply of weapons to Ukraine, there is no accusation that NATO would have provoked this, there is no condemnation of armed defense. Also the ideological justification of the war is addressed, how it is fought “under the banner of the ‘traditional values’ ideology, values that Russia allegedly decided to promote as a missionary throughout the world, using violence against those who refuse to accept them or hold other views.” The manifesto is sharply regime-critical and lacks the “both-sideism” that characterizes the Western feminist manifest, or in a similar vein the German Manifest für Frieden authored by Alice Schwartzer und Sahra Wagenknecht, 9 and the position paper of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), by Nela Porobić. 10
It is this “both-sideism” that irritates Ukrainians immensely. They feel misunderstood, their traumatic past under Russian imperialism is denied, and Westerners demonstrate once and again their complete ignorance of what has been at stake in Ukrainian civil society over the last two decades now: the fight, led by spontaneous grassroots revolutions, to defend primary human and European values: human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law, and human rights.
Ukrainian feminists, among them Tamara Martsenyuk, responded to the Western feminist manifesto in a sharp tone. “The right to resist.” A feminist manifesto, 7 July 2022. 11
In their statement, they claim the freedom of Ukrainian women to decide for themselves, and their right to resistance including with weapons. They hit the hammer on the head by defining feminist solidarity as a political practice to listen first to the voices of those women directly affected.
The manifesto reads We, feminists from Ukraine, call on feminists around the world to stand in solidarity with the resistance movement of the Ukrainian people against the predatory, imperialist war unleashed by the Russian Federation. War narratives often portray women as victims. However, in reality, women also play a key role in resistance movements, both at the frontline and on the home front. (. . .) The authors of the Feminist Resistance Against War manifesto deny Ukrainian women this right to resistance, which constitutes a basic act of self-defense of the oppressed.
Finally, they reject the type of pacifism that Western feminists put forward: We call for an informed assessment of a specific situation instead of abstract geopolitical analysis which ignores the historical, social and political context. Abstract pacifism which condemns all sides taking part in the war leads to irresponsible solutions in practice. We insist on the essential difference between violence as a means of oppression and as a legitimate means of self-defense.
Here, we have in a nutshell the majority position of Ukrainian feminists on peace ethics: because of the specific context of imperialist aggression, armed defense is morally legitimate.
The authors point to gendered risks for women in wartimes: mass rape and other forms of gender-based violence, criminalizing LGBTIQ people in the occupied territories, the problem of domestic violence, the intensifying gendered division of labor, further shifting the work of social reproduction in difficult and precarious conditions onto women, the vulnerable position of the many women as war refugees. Notably, they do not mention the gendered inequality between citizens under martial law: Men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not permitted to leave the country except under very specific exemptions. The latter issue, however, is addressed by “Five theses on war, nationalism and the feminist movement,” authored by Marta Havryshko and Jana Radchenko.
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The text states that the gender politics in war has reinforced the patriarchal discourse: a “real man” fights, and a “real woman” cries, waits and cares. Also, the authors warn against “the romanticization and heroization” of military service: Opinion leaders often say that “the best went” to the army. In fact, different people went there: both domestic abusers, sexists, former prisoners, and others. (. . .) Despite the fact that the army is currently the hope and support of the Ukrainian people, we should be critical of such statements, and not blindly support the militaristic androcentric discourse.
Ukrainian Churches and the War
The moral stance toward armed self-defense of the feminists concurs largely with that of the churches, religious communities (including Muslim and Jewish), and wider civil society. Ukrainian church leaders speak of a sacred duty to defend one’s neighbor, one’s people, against evil and aggression. In this moment, Ukraine is fighting for its survival. For the Ukrainian churches, it is not a holy war. Patriarch Epiphanius of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church emphasized this in a sermon on Palm Sunday 2023. This war is not dedicated to God in any way. There can be no ideology that can justify the destructive nature of war. War is a terrible sin and crime against humanity. The church does not bless weapons. However, the church can bless soldiers. Ukrainian soldiers are defenders who put themselves in danger to protect others. The church must always be in defense of truth, peace, and neighbor.
And the truth, adds Patriarch Sviatoslav (Shevchuk), head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, is a person: it is Christ crucified again in the suffering of the Ukrainian people. Bearing witness to the truth means addressing injustice, standing up for human dignity, and healing wounds now and in the future.
It is striking that Baptist and Pentecostal churches in Ukraine who traditionally objected against military service, now call on believers to help defend the country, including armed defense. They also facilitate military chaplains for spiritual support at the frontline.
Ukrainian churches pray for their Armed Forces and for victory. That is: being able to live in peace and freedom within the borders of one’s own country. For them, the victory, which will ultimately come from God, means: withdrawal of the Russian army behind the borders of Ukraine; the trial of Putin and his associates before an international tribunal for war crimes; public repentance of the Russian people, the vast majority of whom support the war; and effective security guarantees and effective mechanisms to prevent further wars from the side of Russia in the region and in the world. Ukrainian intellectuals and activists, including some theologians, have drawn up a Sustainable Peace Manifesto. Never Again 2.0 describing these conditions. 13
How to situate the Ukrainian churches regarding ethical traditions of war and peace? In Eastern Orthodox teaching, to kill is always a sin. Yet, under certain circumstances, a defensive war might be inevitable. Unlike in the “just war” tradition of Western Christianity, there is no further specification as to what these situations might be. For patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, the war on Ukraine is legitimate because Russia is defending the Christian civilization of the “Russian World” against the sinful West. For the Ukrainian churches and religious communities, defensive war is legitimized in order to protect one’s neighbors, homeland, and the rule of law against the imperialist aggressor. In the aforementioned Sustainable Peace Manifesto we can detect elements of the “just war” tradition as well as of the “just peace” approach. Great attention is paid to reconstruction and restoration of justice after the war, and securing peace with Russia in the long term.
Ethical Approaches to War and Peace
In ethics of war and peace in the (Western) Christian tradition, three approaches can be distinguished. The just war tradition(s), the just peace approach, and pacifism.
The notion of “just war” refers to a tradition that began with Saint Augustine. 14 The intention was never to justify war as such. Augustine was quite clear on that: war is evil, a sin. Yet, under certain conditions, defensive war can be legitimized. The just war approach is not a theory or a doctrine, that could be applied to a situation, but can be more adequately called a tradition. The tradition is varied, multilayered and has been dynamic throughout history. It seeks to answer the core question: how to act rightly and justly in the midst of the reality of war in the world?
In the tradition of just war, six criteria or principles are usually identified as part of the consideration process:
War having a just cause.
War being a last resort (ultima ratio).
War being declared by a proper authority (such as the UN in the modern world).
War possessing a right intention (not to enlarge territory by invading another country).
War having a reasonable chance of success.
The end being proportional to the means (the military violence) used.
Morally, the aim of armed combat should be the restoration of law and order. That is why the just war tradition also pays attention to the ius post bellum, the just peace.
While just peace may find a place in the just war tradition, it is the sole aim of the just peace approach, in which a strong influence can be recognized from the historic peace churches, such as the Mennonites, and from the German peace ethics after World War II. The “just peace” approach is also embraced and advocated by the World Council of Churches. The main principle of the just peace approach is that peace is the fruit of justice. The focus is on peace education: “To achieve peace, learn peace.” Advancing social and economic justice is an essential part of conflict prevention. Also post-conflict the focus is on justice: ius post bellum. Different dimensions of justice (retributive, procedural, restorative, and distributive justice) need to be adjusted to the context of transition from conflict to peace, to achieve a stable and sustainable peace.
The boundaries between a just war and a just peace approach are not fixed. A just peace moral approach may be combined with elements of just war tradition, which is for instance the case in the “responsibility to protect” concept. 15 This concept pertains to the commitment of the international community to intervene in case of grave violation of human rights, such as genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. New challenges such as hybrid warfare, geopolitical relations, and climate justice urge that just peace frameworks should be updated, as we see in the current reflection process in the “Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland” (EKD). 16
The (religious) pacifist approach ranges from radical pacifism, that rejects any form of violence for religious reasons, to a lighter version in which nonviolence (negotiations, round tables, humanitarian aid) is part of a broader peace strategy. In the Christian tradition, radical pacifists refer to the example and teaching of Jesus, in particular the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). The position is morally attractive, yet the question that remains unresolved in this approach is: how about moral responsibility if evil has struck your neighbors?
Pacifism has hardly any adherence in Ukraine today. The organization called Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, founded in 2019, is a handful of people around Yurii Sheliazhenko in Kyiv. 17 Because international networks such as World Beyond War 18 endlessly multiply his manifestos, and because Western peace organizations eagerly take them on without checking, the “movement” reaches an unprecedented size and can easily become a tool in the propaganda war. Rather, the people who in recent years pioneered Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and provided training and conflict resolution between opposing groups in Ukrainian society, now openly support the armed defense of their country. 19 I think of the women of Dialogue in Action. These experts in Nonviolent Communication continue to recognize the significance of nonviolent conflict resolution. They practice self-reflection in person and in small groups to engage in deep and extensive internal conversations in which to evaluate the good and bad, and to reset the moral and spiritual compass from deeper sources. 20 But they acknowledge that nonviolent resistance as a political strategy is context-dependent. It doesn’t work when missiles are fired at your country day and night. One of these women is now raising money for drones for the military. Her husband serves in the army.
Many theologians attribute to Eastern Christianity a more pacifist tradition based on the writings of the Eastern Church Fathers. But that is too generalizing. The Byzantine tradition, from Emperor Constantine to the end of the Byzantine Empire in the fifteenth century, is much more nuanced. The Byzantine tradition varies from “war is sometimes inevitable” to “it is legitimate to wage war for Christian aims, such as to protect the Empire.” Recent Orthodox ethics of war and peace are developed in “The Basis of the Social Concept of the Moral Teaching of the Russian Orthodox Church” (2000). 21 The Russian Orthodox Church clearly adapts the Byzantine framework, as does Putin in his legitimation of the “Special Military Operation” as a defense of the Russian Christian World (Russkiy Mir). An alternative Orthodox approach is presented in “For the Life of the World. Towards a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church,” drafted by Western Orthodox theologians and adopted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (2021). 22 This retrieves the more pacifist Eastern tradition and combines elements of the just peace and nonviolence ethical frameworks.
Women’s War
Nobel prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich from Belarus stated, “All that we know about war is told by male voices.” As she wanted to write a truthful account of war, she sat down to listen to female survivors of World War II and gathered their voices in the polyphonic testimony The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II, published in the Soviet Union in 1985.
She writes, “Women’s” war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. Its own words. There are no heroes and incredible feats, there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things. And it is not only they (people!) who suffer, but the earth, the birds, the trees. All that lives on earth with us. They suffer without words, which is still more frightening.
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Cynthia Enloe, renowned expert of women and militarism, emphasizes that it is a matter of being realistic about war. She insists that if we don’t pay careful attention to gender different experiences of war, to all sorts of women, their complex multilayered lives and agencies, we won’t be realistic, we contribute to myths about war that serve to sustain it. 24
How is it possible to describe ‘women’s war’ truthfully?
First, to account for women’s agency in war involves acknowledging that warzones are everywhere and that there are many kinds of warzones. The separation between a battle front and a home front only exists in ideology, as Enloe highlights. In the all-encompassing hybrid war that Russia wages against Ukraine a warzone is every residential area, every once-safe-home, it ranges from the frontline to the hospitals where medics fight for the lives of the injured, to the bodies of girls and women that became a warzone of utmost violence, to a marriage that may have turned into a warzone when living with a returned traumatized serviceman.
Second, feminist activist-scholars warn: Wartime narrative tends to feature women as victims, for billing human interest: The women featured are usually crying. They are crying over the dead body of a husband or son. Or they are standing stunned in front of rubble that was their home. Rarely are they portrayed as having full lives. Even more rarely are they interviewed and asked for their ideas about the war.
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To avoid the trap, feminist scholars call for using the two perspectives. 26 Besides women’s victimhood we need the lens on women’s agency.
On one hand, women are victims of the situation, suffer from war and, due to gender inequalities already existing before the war, belong to vulnerable groups. In Ukraine, women’s overall care burden has increased, they are affected by lack of secure housing, of medical care, of income. Elderly women suffer from the pension pay gap (32%). Women and girls suffer from increased domestic violence and lack of shelters for battered women. Women and children make up about 90% of the 8 million people that have fled the country and the 5 million that are internally displaced. 27
On the other hand, women are instigators and actors of survival and resistance. Ordinary women are constantly making choices in situations of utmost crisis and permanent stress. They face complex constellations of moral responsibility toward children, husbands, elderly parents or other persons who are dependent on their care. In a documentary on women in besieged Mariupol, it struck me how these women navigated through conflicts of responsibility between caretaking for family members and bringing them into safety, and professional calling to help defending the city, as a medic or in active combat. 28
Women are in the words of Alexievich “busy doing inhumanly human things” 29 that do not make headlines. They participate as volunteers or professionals in a range of activities: food distribution, medical care, emergency housing to the most vulnerable people, collecting protective gear for the army, including the logistics of all that. They lead NGOs. They organize fundraising in support of the resistance effort. They serve as journalists, psychologists, lawyers. They document war crimes. They create art in war. They continue teaching online the school children spread over Europe. They organize online conferences to raise international solidarity.
Women who shy away from the label of “feminist” have readily joined or established humanitarian aid work when full-scale war breaks out. Their spontaneous grassroots activities in providing food, shelter, giving medical care, doing emotional care work at the kitchen table, goes rather unnoticed, but has increased their skills of speaking and organizing, forced them to negotiate with local and regional administrators, made many of them politically aware of “how it works up there” and how to fight the battle with power structures. In grassroots organization, in reaching out through media, and in negotiating with government structures new partnerships between women across boundaries have been created. 30
In the third place, critical attentiveness is demanded for what is seen as heroic in wartime, what are considered as wounds of war, and the genderedness of these discourses and practices. There is gendered inequality in whose deaths, whose wounds, whose losses and whose achievements are officially counted. Who is listed among the war wounded and who gets financial compensation and the proper care? Who is celebrated and memorialized in the official Telegram posts of the Ukrainian government as a war hero? And for post-war times: Why is it that if women do appear in wartime monuments, they are most likely to be portrayed as nameless grievers or mythical goddesses of victory, and seldom appear in the list of names commemorated? 31 Ukrainian feminist scholars critically analyze visual representations of women on social media, for example, pictures of female soldiers as “young, insolent, armed, dangerous and eroticized.” 32 However, as tough, they represent the resistance of the whole nation.
Gender-sensitive approaches are needed in treating traumatized people. While the war is going on, Ukrainian civil society is already aware of the traumatizing effects that will last for generations. Practitioners, psychologists, spiritual caregivers, and clergy try to respond on the spot and increase their professional skills in trainings and webinars, by engaging international experts. Gender-sensitive approaches are required, in working with both civilian and military populations. Research among military veterans from the US army post 9/11 has indicated gender differences in moral injury. 33
Churches do bring attention to women’s traumas caused by war, including sexual violence. It was a novelty in the Ukrainian context that a church leader, in this case Patriarch Sviatoslav of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, publicly spoke about sexual violence after the horrors of Bucha. However, in addressing women’s traumas and women’s roles in the resistance, the churches are largely impeded by traditional gender norms and patriarchal assumptions about mothers, wives, and warriors. Women are very present in the hands-on work of the church, in social and diaconal ministry, but they are absent in church hierarchies. Their voices are hardly represented at the decision-making levels.
Feminist-Theological Reflections on Pathways to Peace
On the bases of the previous considerations and arguments, I propose five “principles” for a feminist political theology on war and peace, as a contribution to the ongoing scholarly debate. The order in which I discuss them is random, and the list is not meant to be exhaustive.
Reconsidering the Notion of Sacrifice
Militarism and warfare feed on the notion of sacrifice. The theologians Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells in their article “Breaking Bread: Peace and War” make a theological case for radical pacifism. 34 They contend that war is to be understood in terms of sacrifice and always implies “a liturgy of sacrifice.” The system of militarism encourages us to believe that war is about something that is worth more than life. Soldiers are drawn into a larger national myth. The narrative includes that soldiers who return are received as heroes and celebrated in “liturgies of praise and assurance.” But the sacrifice of war, the authors argue, can never be an atoning sacrifice. The death of Jesus is the final sacrifice: the war is over. The only sacrifice required of us is to give up the need for violence. With the religious trope of “sacrifice” Hauerwas and Wells introduce a crucial concept which is also worth a gender reflection.
Sacrifice in war is highly gendered. 35 The “patriotic sacrifice” is usually constructed as male. Their decision to join the armed forces is seen as the “ultimate sacrifice.” 36 Mothers who send their sons of to war are also acknowledged for bringing a sacrifice. However, men’s sacrifices are likely to be characterized as “glorious” while women’s tend to be described as “selfless.”
In a feminist-theological approach to peace and war there is an urgent need to revisit the notion of sacrifice. Can we still use the notion with its deeply rooted patriarchal legacy, or would it be better to replace it by a different term? Can sacrifice as a concept still have its place in a transformed understanding?
A minimum requirement, in my view, for a feminist use of the notion of sacrifice should be that something called a sacrifice must fit the task of theology that is “always, if implicitly, a recommendation for life.” 37 By this I mean: does the “giving up” and “letting go” inherent in sacrifice serve the life, future and well-being of a concrete community, and not just a lofty ideal, a myth, an ideology? African theologian Mercy Amba Oduyoye pleads for such a transformed understanding in which sacrifice and the life-enhancement of the community are connected. 38 Critiquing the forced, unilateral sacrifice of African women for the well-being of the whole, she calls attention to the necessity of making a distinction between making a sacrifice and being sacrificed as a victim. For her, sacrifice, in its true Christian understanding, connotes giving life in order to assure life or at least for the sake of assuring life, and is only truly effective if it is conscious and consensual. Those who stand in the midst of an oppressive situation in solidarity with others who suffer offer a positive form of sacrifice. “Conscious self-sacrifice,” she writes, “which is related to resistance, embodies the hope of redemption and may even bring joy to the one who does the ‘letting go’.” 39
From women’s perspective in conflict situations it is further suggested to reconsider sacrifice through the prism of the “seemingly paradoxical stream of everyday practice” and the struggle “to live the best life possible.” 40 Sacrifice then comes close to actions that strengthen social cohesion in utmost challenging conditions. It highlights the everyday care, compassion and courage of women which tend to disappear from heroic narratives of the war. 41
Another inspiration might come from French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943). Her philosophy, born in the shadows of economic crisis and war, centers around sacrifice conceived as “decentering” and “decreation” of the self. It is the human response to God’s love. By withdrawing him/herself, God made existence possible for creation. The human being returns God’s sacrifice in a “decreation” of the self. For Weil, sacrifice is a human’s sole purpose.
I am the abdication of God. The more I am, the more God renounces his throne. Therefore, if I choose the cause of God above my own, I must regard my existence as becoming less, a decrease. Christ comes to dwell in the soul that is capable of it.
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Weil is averse to a political system that imposes self-sacrifice on its subjects. Decentering of the self is an act of free consent in which the person turns inside out to the world, in an “ecstatic,” loving identification with the universe. Genuine self-sacrifice equals for Weil attentiveness (French: “attention”), being fully with the world and others. Such a person participates in the transcendent truth of the universe.
Ukrainian theologian Mykhailo Dymyd reflects on the sacrifice of parents in war.
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His eldest son was killed in the defense of the country in June 2022. “The violent death of every soldier for the freedom of our Motherland is a common wound for all,” Dymyd states; therefore, to understand the parental ministry in war as a sacrifice is a spiritual struggle. He refers, among other things, to the Holy Eucharist in which Christ offers his sacrifice until the present time and makes us partakers of the Resurrection. Those who defend the lives of others partake in the sacrificial ministry of Christ. So do the parents who join the fight against evil by giving the most precious: In our devotion to relatives, we meet on the one hand the mystery of pain for the martyrdom of a son (daughter), and on the other hand, the inner confidence that this death can no longer be called death, because it has lost the properties of destruction, and has turned into “the victory of the spirit over the body.”
Dymyd speaks of a “Eucharistic spirituality,” meaning that the spiritual consciousness of a person is expressed in sacrificial service to others in need, in order to save their lives, in the trust that the consequences, whatever they may be, lead to eternal life. His sense of Eucharistic spirituality comes close to Weil’s decentering of the self, both intending to serve the fullness of life for all.
Fearlessly Bringing Theology Into Religious Diplomacy
International religious actors, from Pope Francis to the World Council of Churches, 44 have responded to Russian military aggression in public statements, using terms that seek to save the relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church. They shy away from addressing the banner under which the war is waged: to protect a “Christian civilization” and its “traditional values.” Especially as religious actors, I contend, one cannot leave the religious ideology of war untouched when seeking pathways to peace. 45 In the churches’ diplomacy the religious dimension of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the totalitarian ideology of “Russkiy Mir,” must be addressed and condemned as anti-Christian. Churches have to be clear about this: defense of the “traditional gender order” and an aversion against LGBTQI + can never be used to justify a military invasion in another state.
Nothing for Ukraine Without the Voices of Ukrainian Women
International religious actors, such as ecumenical organizations, tend to ignore the peace initiatives of Ukrainians themselves. A principle of any pathway to peace should be: Nothing for Ukraine without Ukraine and Ukrainians. Here we can further specify: Nothing for Ukraine without participation and representation of Ukrainian women. 46 Ukrainian women clearly demonstrate their readiness to play a crucial role in shaping the public life of the country and to ensure that their lived experiences and challenges on the ground are recognized and accounted for. Women representing civil society, together with intergovernmental organizations and the national government, have promoted UN Security Council Resolution 1325, known as the Women, Peace and Security Agenda (WPS), in Ukraine. 47 It aims to recognize and redress the disproportionate effects of armed conflict on women and girls, as well as recognize and facilitate their crucial role in conflict prevention, management, and resolution. In Ukraine, the first National Action Plan (NAP) on WPS (2016-2020) was developed and implemented during the localized military conflict in Donbass. The second NAP (2021–2025) was updated in the realities of the full-scale war. The impetus to revise the NAP even during the full-scale war originated from grassroots women’s organizations, in strategic partnerships with officials on the governmental level who prioritize feminist perspectives.
Against this background, a feminist political theology on war and peace should prioritize listening to Ukrainian women’s voices and amplify their voices where possible. Are their concerns in the context met? How can we strengthen their efforts to create conditions for equal participation of women and men in conflict resolution, peace negotiations, and post-war reconstruction, in addressing multiple security challenges, and in generating comprehensive responses to gender-based and conflict-related violence? How can we support women in churches and religious institutions to gain a stronger voice, and be represented in the structures of religious diplomacy, in order to bear for a more just peace in future?
Embracing a Paradigm of Human Security Instead of State Security
Human security is a multi-sectoral approach to security that gives primacy to people. It is increasingly endorsed by international foreign policy, in particular by feminist foreign policy, 48 and also in a narrower sense by NATO. 49 Human security approaches and policies focus on the physical and material safety and dignity of people globally, and not primarily on the military and strategic interests of individual states, which is the case with traditional security policies. It aims at securing human rights, specifically those of vulnerable people such as women and marginalized minorities. Defending human life is seen as more important than defending states and should be integrated into military security policy. Feminist foreign policy (FFP) is divided over the question of militarism and human security. 50 In the current German public discourse three “camps” can be distinguished. There are those who advocate an inherent pacifism and stress the incompatibility of any form of militarism with feminist foreign policy. There is a more pragmatic camp that considers feminist foreign policy compatible with measures such as arms delivery for acute defense but is critical of unchecked militarization and rearmament. And there is the skeptic camp that rejects feminist foreign policy as ridicule and utopic.
My position is that feminist foreign policy with its focus on human security instead of state security is a promising, comprehensive approach. Feminist foreign policy is, however, not identical with a principled antimilitarist stance. As for the Ukrainian case, it remains key to differentiate between the management of an acute, existential crisis: the nation’s self-defense against Russia’s armed aggression, and times of stability/peace in which long-term human security goals of disarmament and demilitarization can be pursued.
Love of the Enemy as a Continuous Reminder of a Common Future
Ukraine is in a situation of self-defense and in a determined fight for survival. Queer philosopher Judith Butler is critical of the notion of self-defense. Often self-defense is regarded, she writes, as the justifiable exception to the norms guiding a nonviolent practice.
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She questions the “self” in self-defense. Who is the “self” that I or we defend? Who counts as such a self and how encompassing is the self of self-defense? Does it include one’s family, community, religion, nation, customary practices? Whose lives are valuable to defend? Are the lives of some more grievable than others? She asks this in relation to the North American and European political discourse on migrants and on queer people. Since this is about a powerful majority that is in “self-defense” against a perceived dangerous “other” it is not transferrable to the Ukrainian context. However, what might be relevant is how Butler defines and grounds nonviolence. It reminds me of key insights of feminist theology. Nonviolence, for Butler, is not an individual moral position or individual consciousness. It is the quality of interdependency of all life. The self is conceived as relational. She writes If one self is vitally connected to a set of others and cannot be conceived without them, then when and where does that singular self start and end? The argument against violence, then not only implies a critique of individualism, but an elaboration of those social bonds or relations that require nonviolence.
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There is an overarching sense of the interrelational which makes nonviolence an ethical obligation and the affirmation of our ontological state of being. In this she echoes profound biblical and religious truths: The obligation not to destroy each other emerges from, and reflects, the vexed social forms of our lives, and it leads us to reconsider whether self-preservation is not linked to preserving the lives of others. That self of self-preservation is defined, in part, by that link, that necessary and difficult social bond.
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Against this backdrop I formulate as my fifth principle for a feminist-theological pathway to just peace: The challenge remains to imagine, however difficult it may be, a common future with the enemy beyond the current evil of destruction. 54 I realize that it is asking much, perhaps too much, of a traumatized person. Trauma impedes a person’s capacity for imagining a future, let alone with the enemy. Then, for the time being, preserving one’s own humanity, not to let hatred rule your inner life, could be the highest moral goal.
Today in Ukraine, in manifold artistic expressions and from rich treasures of religious tradition and liturgy, women and men continue to create, design, depict, and symbolically enact imaginary worlds “to live by.” Precarious, afflicted human beings struggle to preserve their own humanity, build new communities of hope against destruction, and demonstrate their spiritual resilience and unbrokenness. Feminist theology that is committed to promoting just peace would do well to engage these struggles and stay attentive to the testimonies.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
1.
Since 2005, I have been affiliated as a visiting lecturer to the Institute of Ecumenical Studies, at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. As a program manager of Kerk in Actie, the diaconal and mission organization of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, I cooperated with partner organizations all over Ukraine, and built a network within churches and civil society. In January 2014, I took part in the Maidan Revolution, and over the years I followed closely the developments in politics, society and the religious sphere.
2.
Scarry E (1985) The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 81.
4.
Compare Megan MacKenzie and Nicole Wegner, “(. . .) we understand war to be a complex failure that is the product of an international system shaped by patriarchy, militarism, white supremacy, and capitalism”. MacKenzie M and Wegner N (2021) Feminist Solutions for Ending the War. London: Pluto Press, 1, 9.
5.
Notes on presentation, taken by the author of this article.
6.
This is the way Cynthia Enloe phrases the “feminist puzzle.” Enloe C (2023) Twelve Feminist Lessons of War. London: Footnote Press, 53.
8.
https://transversal.at/transversal/0422/feminist-anti-war-resistance/en; 
(accessed 10 June 2024).
10.
12.
14.
Vos P (2022) Van rechtvaardige oorlog tot vredesethiek. Theologisch-ethische bronnen voor protestantse geestelijke verzorging bij de krijgsmacht. Kerk en Theologie 73(4): 375–392; van Iersel F (2022) ‘Rechtvaardige oorlog’. Een morele traditie onder druk. Kerk en Theologie 73(4): 357–374; Vos P (2023) De oorlog in Oekraïne. Een ethische reflectie vanuit de traditie van de rechtvaardige oorlog. Handelingen 3: 7–1.
15.
The concept was endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly at the 2005 World Summit. The international community declared itself to be prepared to take collective (military) action when authorized by the Security Council.
16.
The EKD approved several documents on just peace (German: ‘gerechter Frieden’): 2001 Friedensethik in der Bewährung. Eine Zwischenbilanz; 2007 Friedensdenkschrift Aus Gottes Frieden leben—für gerechten Frieden sorgen; 2019 EKD Synode: Kundgebung: Kirche auf dem Weg der Gerechtigkeit. Currently, the EKD is in a process called ‘Friedenswerkstatt: Auf dem Weg zu einem neuen friedensethischen Grundlagendokument’ to update its peace ethical position and argumentation. (accessed 10 June 2024).
19.
20.
Tetiana Kalenychenko witnesses to this in the webinar “The Russia-Ukraine war: women voices,” 31 March 2022, organized by the Eastern European Institute of Theology. (accessed 10 June 2024); see also Gopin M (2012) Bridges Across the Impossible Divide: The Inner Lives of Arab and Jewish Peacemakers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
23.
Alexievich S (2017) The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II. New York: Random House, xiv.
24.
Enloe C (2023) Twelve Feminist Lessons of War.
25.
Enloe C (2023) Twelve Feminist Lessons of War, 7.
26.
Phillips SD and Martsenyuk T (2023) Women’s agency and resistance in Russia’s war on Ukraine: from victim of the war to prominent force. Women’s Studies International Forum 98: 3.
27.
UN Women & CARE International (2022), Rapid Gender Analysis of Ukraine. https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2022-05/Rapid-Gender-Analysis-of-Ukraine-en.pdf (accessed 10 June 2024); CARE International (2023), Rapid Gender Analysis of Ukraine. (accessed 10 June 2024).
28.
Mariupol—The People’s Story. A documentary directed by Robin Barnwell (2022). BBC One - Panorama, Mariupol: The People’s Story (accessed 19 May 2024).
29.
Alexievich S (2017) The Unwomanly Face of War, xiv.
30.
31.
Enloe C (2023) Twelve Feminist Lessons of War, 18.
32.
Phillips SD and Martsenyuk T (2023) Women’s agency and resistance, 6.
33.
McGuen S, Griffin BJ, Copeland LA, et al. (2020) Gender differences in prevalence and outcomes of exposure to potentially morally injurious events among post-9/11 veterans. Journal of Psychiatric Research 130: 97–103. Female veterans suffer equally as their male colleagues from moral injury caused by perpetration of violence (18.8%), but they report more frequently the types of witnessing- and betrayal-based moral injuries.
34.
Hauerwas S and Wells S (2011). Breaking bread: peace and war. In Hauerwas S and Wells S (eds) The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 415–426.
35.
Holt M (2018) Everyday practices of sacrifice: a case study of Palestinian women. Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research 19: 2–25.
36.
37.
Coakley S (2013) God, Sexuality and the Self. An Essay “On the Trinity”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 18.
38.
Oduyoye MA (2001) Hospitality and spirituality. In Oduyoye MA (ed.) Introducing African Women’s Theology. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 90–109.
39.
Oduyoye MA (2001) Hospitality and Spirituality, 106.
40.
Jean-Klein (2001) Nationalism and resistance: the two faces of everyday activism in Palestine during the Intifada. Cultural Anthropology 16(1): 83–126, 83, quoted in Holt M (2018) Everyday practices of sacrifice, 3.
41.
See for a critical discussion of heroism also: Zorgdrager H (2016) Does hope need heroes? Towards a feminist political theology in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict. Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research 24: 81–105.
42.
Weil S (1951) Intuitions Pré-chretiennes. Paris: La Colombe, 44.
43.
44.
45.
See Elsner R (2023) ‘First to suffer, last to be heard.’ The role of women in Christian religious diplomacy during Russia’s war in Ukraine,” keynote at the conference of the European Society of Women in Theological Research in Lviv, Ukraine, September 2023.
46.
See Swaine A (2018) Pursuing gender security. In Davies SE and True J (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace and Security. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 765–778, about the Women, Peace and Security Agenda calling for “women’s full and meaningful participation and leadership in the efforts to maintain peace and security.”
47.
Manoilenko H (2024) National action plan on UNHCR 1325 ‘Women, Peace and Security’ in Ukraine. Meeting the Context of a Full-scale War. In Shevtsova M (ed.) Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine. Hear our Voices. London: Lexington Books, 199–224.
48.
The concept of feminist foreign policy was coined by the Swedish minister of Foreign Affairs, Margot Wallström. Lunz K and Bernarding N (2019) Feminist foreign policy: Imperative of a more secure and just world. (accessed 10 June 2024). Countries that have adopted a program of feminist foreign policy include Canada, the UK, France, Luxembourg, Spain, Mexico, Chile, Libya, the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, Scotland, and Colombia.
49.
50.
Santoire B (2024) Loud and uncomfortable silences: Ukraine and the challenges, limits, and possibilities of Western Feminist Foreign Policies. In Shevtsova M (ed.) Feminist Perspective on Russia’s War in Ukraine. Hear our Voices. London: Lexington Books, 225–251.
51.
Butler J (2021) The Force of Non-Violence. An Ethico-Political Bind. London/New York: Verso, 11.
52.
Butler J (2021) The Force of Non-Violence, 15
53.
Butler J (2021) The Force of Non-Violence, 148.
54.
Lederach JP (2005) The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace. Oxford: Oxford University Press.