With issues of war and peace at the forefront of current events, an informed Christian response is needed. This timely volume answers 104 questions from a just-war perspective, offering thoughtful yet succinct answers. Ranging from the theoretical to the practical, the volume looks at how the just-war perspective relates to the philosopher, historian, statesman, theologian, combatant, and individual—with particular emphases on its historical development and application to contemporary geopolitical challenges. Forgoing ideological extremes, Charles and Demy give much attention to the biblical teaching on the subject as they provide moral guidance. A valuable resource for considering the ethical issues relating to war, Christians will find this book's user-friendly format a helpful starting point for discussion.

This book explores a new way for students of International Relations to look at war, peace and world orders throughout European history. The contributors argue that the predominant 'realist' paradigm that focuses on states and their self-interest is not applicable to the largest period of European history, because states either did not exist or were only in the making. Instead, they argue, we have to look through the eyes of historical entities to see how they understood the world in which they lived, The authors use a wide range of case-studies, focusing on subjects as diverse as the ancient Greek concept of honour and persecution under Communist regimes during the Cold War to explore the ways in which people in different societies at different times perceived and felt about war and peace in the world around them.

In "Conflict, Peace, and Prosperity in the Name of God," Murat Iyigun explores how longer-term developments influenced the spread of monotheistic religions and how these trends affected other societies and religions. He explores with the statistical methods of economics the way religions shaped the development of societies and framed the conflicts between and within them. Specifically, he asks why and how political power and organized religion became so swiftly and successfully intertwined, and then examines the role of religion in conflict historically, as well as the sociopolitical, demographic, and economic effects of religiously motivated conflicts." Conflict, Peace, and Prosperity in the Name of God "breaks exciting new ground in our understanding of religion and societies, and the conflicts between them."

Looking at topics across the spectrum of America's wars, religious groups, personalities, and ideas, this volume shows that even in an increasingly secular society, religious roots and values run deep throughout American society and are elevated in times of war. There is a long and deep relationship between religion, politics, and war in U.S. history. While there is a constitutional and legal separation of religion and the state in American society, religion has been and remains a potent force in American culture and politics affecting many aspects of life, including perspectives on war and peace and the experience of war in U.S. history. From the American Revolution to the wars of the 21st century, religious values have informed and influenced American attitudes toward war and peace and have provided rationale for support and non-support of American participation in conflicts. An overview essay surveys the background and significance of religion in American culture and provides historical context for discussions of contemporary topics. A timeline highlights key events related to wars and conflicts. The volume then includes more than 50 topical essays that discuss specific wars as well as religious themes within culture and politics, ultimately providing a detailed overview of the intersection of religion, war, and politics in contemporary America.

Conflict and war were common during the Reformation era. Throughout the sixteenth century, rising religious and political tensions led to frequent conflict and culminated in the Thirty Years' War (1618-48) that devastated much of Germany and killed one-third of its population. Some of the warfare, as in central and southern Europe, was between Christians and Muslims. Other warfare, in central and northwestern Europe, was confessional warfare between Catholics and Protestants. Religion was not the only cause of war during the period. Revolts, territorial ambitions, and the beginnings of the contemporary nation-state system and international order that emerged after the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) also fueled the trauma and tragedy of war. In many ways, the world of the Reformers and Protestant Reformation was a violent world, and it was within such a sociopolitical framework that the Reformers and their followers lived, worked, and died. This book introduces the teachings of the Protestant Reformers on war and peace, in their context, before offering relevant primary source readings.

There is an increasing amount of literature on various aspects of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. While appreciating this scholarship, this volume highlights some of the omissions and concerns to make a quality addition to the ongoing discourse on the intersection of gender with peace and security with a focus on 1325. It aims at a reality-check of the impressive to-dos list as the seventeen years since the Resolution passed provide an occasion to pause and ponder over the gap between the aspirations and the reality, the ideal and the practice, the promises and the action, the euphoria and the despair. The volume compiles carefully selected essays woven around Resolution 1325 to tease out the intricacies within both the Resolution and its implementation. Through a cocktail of well-known and some lesser-known case studies, the volume addresses complicated realities with the intention of impacting policy-making and the academic fields of gender, peace, and security. The volume emphasizes the significance of transforming formal peace making processes, and making them gender inclusive and gender sensitive by critically examining some omissions in the challenges that the Resolution implementation confronts. The major question the volume seeks to address is this: where are women positioned in the formal peace-making seventeen years after the adoption of Resolution 1325?

Every Athenian alliance, every declaration of war, and every peace treaty was instituted by a decision of the assembly, where citizens voted after listening to speeches that presented varied and often opposing arguments about the best course of action. The fifteen preserved assembly speeches of the mid-fourth century BC thus provide an unparalleled body of evidence for the way that Athenians thought and felt about interstate relations: to understand this body of oratory is to understand how the Athenians of that period made decisions about war and peace. This book provides a comprehensive treatment of this subject. It deploys insights from a range of fields, from anthropology to international relations theory, in order not only to describe Athenian thinking, but also to explain it. Athenian thinking turns out to have been complex, sophisticated, and surprisingly familiar both in its virtues and its flaws.

This volume provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary account of the scholarship on religion, conflict, and peacebuilding. Looking far beyond the traditional parameters of the field, the contributors engage deeply with the legacies of colonialism, missionary activism, secularism, orientalism, and liberalism as they relate to the discussion of religion, violence, and nonviolent transformation and resistance. Featuring numerous case studies from various contexts and traditions, the volume is organized thematically into five different parts. It begins with an up-to-date mapping of scholarship on religion and violence, and religion and peace. The second part explores the challenges related to developing secularist theories on peace and nationalism, broadening the discussion of violence to include an analysis of cultural and structural forms. In the third section, the chapters explore controversial topics such as religion and development, religious militancy, and the freedom of religion as a keystone of peacebuilding. The fourth part locates notions of peacebuilding in spiritual practice by focusing on constructive resources within various traditions, the transformative role of rituals, youth and interfaith activism in American university campuses, religion and solidarity activism, scriptural reasoning as a peacebuilding practice, and an extended reflection on the history and legacy of missionary peacebuilding. The volume concludes by looking to the future of peacebuilding scholarship and the possibilities for new growth and progress. Bringing together a diverse array of scholars, this innovative handbook grapples with the tension between theory and practice, cultural theory, and the legacy of the liberal peace paradigm, offering provocative, elastic, and context-specific insights for strategic peacebuilding processes.

In the period between 1575 and 1625, civic peace in England, Scotland, and Ireland was persistently threatened by various kinds of religiously inspired violence, involving conspiracies, rebellions, and foreign invasions. Religious divisions divided local communities in all three kingdoms, but they also impacted relations between the nations, and in the broader European continent. The challenges posed by actual or potential religious violence gave rise to complex responses, including efforts to impose religious uniformity through preaching campaigns and regulation of national churches; an expanded use of the press as a medium of religious and political propaganda; improved government surveillance; the selective incarceration of English, Scottish, and Irish Catholics; and a variety of diplomatic and military initiatives, undertaken not only by royal governments but also by private individuals. The result was the development of more robust and resilient, although still vulnerable, states in all three kingdoms and, after the dynastic union of Britain in 1603, an effort to create a single state incorporating all of them. R. Malcolm Smuts traces the story of how this happened by moving beyond frameworks of national and institutional history, to understand the ebb and flow of events and processes of religious and political change across frontiers. The study pays close attention to interactions between the political, cultural, intellectual, ecclesiastical, military, and diplomatic dimensions of its subject. A final chapter explores how and why provisional solutions to the problem of violent, religiously inflected conflict collapsed in the reign of Charles I.