Wrestling With God: Ethical Precarity In Christianity And International Relations

305 Pages·2020·1.5 MB·English

by  Cecelia Lynch

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Wrestling with God
Contrary to charges of religious “dogma,” Christian actors in inter-
nationalpoliticsoftenwrestlewiththelackofaclearpathindetermining
what to do and how to act, especially in situations of violence and when
encountering otherness. Lynch argues that it is crucial to recognise the
ethical precarity of decision-making and acting. This book contextualizes
and examines ethical struggles and justifications that key figures and
movementsgaveduringtheearlymodernperiodofmissionaryactivity in
the Americas; in the interwar debates about how to act vis-à-vis fascism,
economic oppression and colonialism in a “secular” world; in liberation
theology’sdebatesabouttheuseofviolenceagainstoppressionandblood-
shed; and in contemporary Christian humanitarian negotiations of reli-
giouspluralismandchallengestotheassumptionsofwesternChristianity.
LynchexploreshowthewrestlingwithGodthattookplaceineachofthese
periods reveals ethical tensions that continue to impact both Christianity
andinternationalrelations.
cecelia lynch is a professor of political science at the University of
California,Irvine.HerbookBeyondAppeasement(1999)wontheMyrna
BernathBookPrizeandtheEdgarFurnissBookPrize.Sheistherecipient
of the J. Ann Tickner Award (2014) and was recognised as the Inter-
national Political Sociology Distinguished Scholar (2019), both awarded
byISA.
Cambridge Studies in International Relations: 152
Wrestling with God
Editors
EvelynGoh
ChristianReus-Smit
NicholasJ.Wheeler
Editorial Board
JacquelineBest,KarinFierke,WilliamGrimes,YuenFoongKhong,
AndrewKydd,LilyLing,AndrewLinklater,NicolaPhillips,Elizabeth
ShakmanHurd,JacquieTrue,LeslieVinjamuri,AlexanderWendt
CambridgeStudiesinInternationalRelationsisajointinitiativeofCambridge
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TheseriesseekstobringthelatesttheoreticalworkinInternationalRelations
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CambridgeStudiesinInternationalRelations
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RestraintinInternationalPolitics
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WorldOrdering
ASocialTheoryofCognitiveEvolution
149 BrianC.Rathbun
ReasoningofState
RealistsandRomanticsinInternationalRelations
148 SilviyaLechnerandMervynFrost
PracticeTheoryandInternationalRelations
147 BentleyAllan
ScientificCosmologyandInternationalOrders
146 PeterJ.KatzensteinandLuciaA.Seybert(eds.)
ProteanPower
ExploringtheUncertainandUnexpectedinWorldPolitics
145 CatherineLu
JusticeandReconciliationinWorldPolitics
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HierarchiesinWorldPolitics
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Wrestling with God
Ethical Precarity in Christianity and
International Relations
cecelia lynch
UniversityofCalifornia,Irvine
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Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9781108483377
DOI:10.1017/9781108649599
©CeceliaLynch2020
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for my parents

Contents
Acknowledgments page viii
1 Wrestling with God in the Modern West 1
2 Understanding Christian Wrestling about Ethics 38
3 Wrestling with the Violence of Conquest 70
4 Wrestling with Warin aModern World 107
5 Wrestling with the Violence of Oppression 147
6 Wrestling with Violence and Injustice Abroad and atHome 187
7 Has Anyone Prevailed? 234
Bibliography 243
Index 273
vii
Acknowledgments
GrowingupinthereligiousMidwestoftheUnitedStates,Iknewonly
Christians (though I’m sure they also included budding agnostics and
atheists) until I was in my late teens. While our Catholic community
was fairly tight, the Protestants were even closer knit. I often wonder
what the parents of our neighborhood friends would have done had
they known that one of my sisters tried to baptize their children with
holy water and a rosary.As I grew older, lived in Paris for two of my
university years, and later began to conduct research on social forces
andinternationalpolitics,mychildhoodexperiencesappearedincreas-
inglynarrow.Atthesametime,thenew,moreglobalandmuchmore
worldly communities I interacted with frequently displayed what
seemedtomeanastonishinglackofknowledgeandadeterminedlack
ofconnectionwithreligionorspirituality.Narrownessandworldliness
werenotsoeasytodefineafterall.Bytheyear2000,Ihadbecomepart
ofthechallengetothesecularistassumptionsofinternationalrelations.
I have wrestled with Christianity, religion in general, secularism,
“faith,”“belief,”“pluralism,”andspirituality,andIprobably always
will. Fortunately, I have been accompanied by wonderful friends and
mentors of all kinds. Michael Loriaux’s self-avowed “premodern”
interrogations never cease to be enlightening, and Siba Grovogui’s
stories of his Jesuit education in a dynamic postcolonial society have
eachmademethinkinnewways.MarcosScausoandTanyaSchwarz
are not only former students but also valued friends and colleagues.
Thisbookcouldnothavebeenwrittenwithouttheperceptiveinsights
and comments of Jason Springs and Atalia Omer, who have become
indispensableandincrediblygenerouscomradesinsideandoutsidethe
academy. I also had the good fortune to become neighbors for a
semester with the wonderful Slavica Jacelik, who challenged and
deepened my understanding of secularisms in incomparable ways.
Each of these – in addition to David Blaney, Andrea Paras, Gina
Giliberti, and Hafsa Oubou – very generously read and perceptively
viii
Acknowledgments ix
commented on more than one chapter of the book. Erin Wilson, Jack
Miles, Keith Nelson, Stan Bailey, Maria Birnbaum, Olivier Roy,
MartinHeisler,TarakBarkawi,AmyRoss,BethHurd,ScottAppleby,
Mark Juergensmeyer, Bogdan Radu, Mona Sheikh, Brent Steele,
Dvora Yanow, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, the late Fr. Dean Brackley,
and Craig Calhoun, among others, also provided valuable comments
and/oropportunitiestoengagewithaudiencesinarangeofinstitutions
atvariousstagesalongtheway;RanjitMathewsintroducedmetothe
work of Christopher Duraisingh. The seeds of the project were
developed even earlier, during a Social Science Research Council–
MacArthur Foundation Fellowship on Peace and Security in a
Changing World, which provided the luxury of exploring theologies
and ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School. In particular,
I want to thank Dwight Hopkins, Susan Schreiner, and the late Jean
BethkeElshtainforverydifferentinsightsintoChristianityduringthat
period and my interlocutors in San Salvador for their time in gener-
ously meeting with me to explaintheir experiences with base commu-
nities.IconductedresearchforChapter3attheHuntingtonLibraryin
San Marino, California, enabled by funding from an Andrew
W. Mellon Huntington Library Fellowship; the American Association
ofUniversityWomen’sAmericanPost-DoctoralFellowshipmadepos-
sibleearlydraftsofthatchapteraswellasseveralarticles. Ialsowant
to thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a “New Directions”
fellowship that enabled me later to conduct research in many parts of
Africa (among other places), informing Chapter 6, although most of
the product of that grant will be published in a separate book. It is
worthrepeatingthatitistheseassociationsandfoundationsthatmake
the difference for so many scholars, including myself; they are invalu-
able assets to critical scholarship of all kinds. Former undergraduate
studentswhoprovidedexcellentresearchassistanceincludeLeslieMay
Legaspi (especially for the IRFA discussed in Chapter 6) and Yesenia
Gutierrez,whoprovidedtranslationsformaterialsinChapter3aswell
as indispensable assistance in the final stages. Portions of the project
were presented at the University of Chicago, European Institute in
Florence, Normative Orders project in Frankfurt, University of Notre
Dame, University of Kansas, Northwestern University, University of
Utah, Socio-Legal Workshop at UC Irvine, Religious Studies Seminar
atUCIrvine,WellesleyCollege,UniversityofGroningen,Universityof
California, Santa Barbara, University of Hamburg, University of