Abstract
Pastoral theological scholarship on moral injury has not yet fully metabolized the liberative trajectory of pastoral theological discourse. To date, the care of those who come home from war remains largely depoliticized. This article argues that the wounds of war are personal and political and that care requires attending to the political dimension. The first section of the article sets the current pastoral theology conversation around moral injury within the historical context of the field around the care of veterans and the depoliticized nature of the clinical literature. The second section of the article argues the liberative trajectory of the field provides not only a basis for a robustly political response but also sets of relevant conceptual categories and care resources for veterans. The third section takes up Ryan LaMothe’s concept of “unconventional warriorism” as a basis for reimagining the political agency of soldiers and veterans. The article concludes by sketching out a broad proposal for the integration of politics and care for veterans.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
We use the term soldiers throughout this paper to refer to current U.S. service members of any branch, including those in the National Guard and Reserves. We use the term veteran to refer to service members who have separated from service in any branch or component and under any condition of discharge.
The authors are all VA providers/researchers, with the exception of William Nash, who at the time was a psychiatrist in the United States Marine Corps.
This avoidance of context is surprising as Graham (2015) states, while summing up his career, “[A]s pastoral theologians, we are already well aware of the physically embodied and socially embedded nature of our lives. To a greater or lesser degree, all of our pastoral theological paradigms are sensitive to the embodied and embedded character of human life in the world” (p. 177).
Of course, the equal and opposite point can be forcefully made. Not taking a stand against a particular war can also be costly. We suspect this would be the rejoinder of the likes of Rita Brock and Gabriella Lettini (2012).
It is almost impossible to overstate the social, cultural, and political impact of the Vietnam war, even well into the 1980s. While there was never a true political reckoning over Vietnam, there was certainly an ongoing and evolving cultural reckoning, which was well underway in the 1980s. The blockbuster war films of the era are illustrative. The most famous line from First Blood (Kotcheff, 1982) was Rambo’s question: “Sir, do we get to win this time?” In Uncommon Valor (Kotcheff, 1983), one of the characters says to a team of fellow veterans on their way to rescue some MIAs: “No one can dispute the rightness of what you’re doing.” Platoon was released in 1986 (Stone) and Full Metal Jacket in 1987 (Kubrick). These films provided a forum for both re-narrating a win (First Blood, Uncommon Valor) and recognizing the profound immorality and suffering of the war (Platoon, Full Metal Jacket). Throughout the 1980s, the “Vietnam vet” also emerged in film and other media as a trope, someone deeply wounded psychologically and often physically unkempt and unfit for society. Further cultural markers of the salience of the war and its ongoing impact on veterans can be seen in the inclusion of PTSD in the DSM-III (1980) and the completion of “the Wall,” the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in 1982. Again, with all this as backdrop, the lack of engagement by pastoral theologians at the time is surprising.
And yet, Litz himself describes his adaptive disclosure method as “ill advised” for chaplains, who are not psychotherapeutically trained, to utilize as it is an “intensive, totally secular, step by step manualized psychotherapy” (personal communication, February 2016).
Elsewhere, Graham (2015) notes that the clinical pastoral paradigm “is still the default paradigm organizing pastoral theology and care” (p. 174). We agree—especially as it relates to moral injury—and this is problematic.
We suggest that the challenge for military chaplains is exacerbated by the fact that they function within the very system that both valorizes its warriors while both medicalizing and individualizing their maladies (as precisely their maladies). There are legal, political, and biopolitical regimes that all but guarantee military chaplains provide pastoral care that brackets out any wider moral and political questions about war. Thus, it must be acknowledged up front that the care of soldiers and veterans (properly inflected by the wider moral and political context of America’s wars) remains a tall order. The very institutions where pastoral caregivers most directly attend to the soul care of America’s soldiers and veterans—the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and the United States Department of Defense—are the very institutions in which such care will be least welcomed. We believe that churches and other religious bodies bear much of the blame for having de facto ceded responsibility and authority over their clergy to the state.
This phrasing comes from the theological fragments of Dietrich Bonhoeffer during the early days of his imprisonment, possibly in late 1942. In an unfinished paragraph, Bonhoeffer (1997) writes: “We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled—in short, from the perspective of those who suffer” (p. 17). This quote represents a rather significant turn in 20th-century theology. We do not mean to read Bonhoeffer or this quote as the sole fulcrum that turned theology in a new direction. But, this quote does capture a shift that was already well underway. Bonhoeffer is indeed influential among early Latin American liberation theologians in this regard (Gutiérrez, 1983/2004; Weidersheim, 2021). Below (and above) are prepositions. They orient something (or someone) in relation to something else (or someone else). In this quote, below is an orientation in relation to history, privilege, and power. Those below are those crushed rather than propelled by the forward march of history: “outcasts, suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled.” Theology “from below” is theology “from the perspective of those who suffer.” The important work of liberation theologies has been to show that in Jesus God turns history on its head. The crucified God is at the heart of history. Salvation, then, is not an escape from history but God’s solidarity within history with the “crucified peoples of history” (Ellacuría & Sobrino, 1993; Sobrino, 1994). Theologies “from below” begin from the perspective of those who are oppressed and suffering.
The terminology “from below” is technically anachronistic as applied to early pastoral theologians, Boisen in particular.
We recognize that “from below” has largely been jettisoned in favor of “from the margins” or “from the periphery” because it is hierarchical imagery. With respect to the situation of soldiers, we think below is actually the most apt preposition precisely because soldiers are subject to patriarchal dynamics of subordination within the military hierarchy.
Of course, so have all American citizens, whether they know or acknowledge it or not.
Of course, womanism is focused not only on survival but also on well-being and thriving. Melanie Harris (2010, pp. 114–123) highlights seven virtues that promote survival, well-being, and thriving that women of African descent embody: generosity, graciousness, compassion, spiritual wisdom, audacious courage, justice, and good community/good accountability.
Smith’s work is thus a clear antecedent of Bonnie Miller-McLemore’s later “living human web.”
We recognize though, that many women were already at work shaping pastoral theology and practice. The literature in pastoral theology, as in any field, recognizes those who have the positions, power, and influence to publish. There are always others doing important work “from below.”
Further, building on our previous note, a potential frustration with any trajectory are those critical voices that are omitted. We are beginning with Miller-McLemore as she pulls our liberative threads in complementary ways, especially with respect to Smith. However, the groundbreaking work of Peggy Way should be acknowledged. We recognize her influence on the entire field and especially on Miller-McLemore.
This is done to create a more robust vision of care, not eradicate Hiltner’s work.
The U.S. Army’s Warrior Ethos is “I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade.” LaMothe (2017b) contends that warriorism is a kind of masculine ideal in a warrior society. The sociological evidence suggests the connection between masculinity and war runs much deeper. Warrior society or not, men have traditionally filled the role of warrior in times of war (Goldstein, 2001).
References
Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Trans: Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1995)D. Heller-Roazen.
Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception (K. Attell, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 2003)
American Psychiatric Association (1980). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., rev.).
Boisen, A. (1971). The exploration of the inner world: a study of mental disorder and religious experience. University of Pennsylvania Press. (Original work published 1936).
Bonhoeffer, D. (1997). Letters and papers from prison. Touchstone.
Bretherton, L. (2019). Christ and the common life: political theology and the case for democracy. Eerdmans.
Brock, R. N., & Lettini, G. (2012). Soul repair: recovering from moral injury after war. Beacon Press.
Currier, J., Drescher, K. D., & Nieuwsma, J. (Eds.). (2021). Addressing moral injury in clinical practice. American Psychological Association.
Dulmus, C. N., & Hilarski, C. (2003). When stress constitutes trauma and trauma constitutes crisis: the stress-trauma-crisis continuum. Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention, 3(1), 27–36.
Ebel, J. (2015). GI messiahs: Soldiering, war, and american civil religion. Yale University Press.
Ellacuría, I., & Sobrino, J. (Eds.). (1993). Mysterium Liberationis: fundamental concepts of liberation theology. Orbis Books.
Fox, N. A. (2019). Aretē: “We as black women. Journal of Veteran Studies, 4, 58–77.
Goldstein, J. (2001). War and gender. Cambridge University Press.
Graham, L. K. (2015). Just between us: big thoughts on pastoral theology. Journal of Pastoral Theology, 25(3), 172–187.
Graham, L. K. (2017). Moral injury: restoring wounded souls. Abingdon Press.
Gutiérrez, G. (2004). In R. Barr (Ed.), The power of the poor in history. Trans.). Wipf & Stock. (Original work published 1983).
Harris, M. (2010). Gifts of virtue, Alice Walker, and womanist ethics. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hunter, R. J., & Ramsay, N. J. (2017). How it all began and formative choices along the way: personal reflections on the Society for Pastoral Theology. Journal of Pastoral Theology, 27(2), 98–109.
Jinkerson, J. (2016). Defining and assessing moral injury: a syndrome perspective. Traumatology, 22(2), 122–130.
Kinghorn, W. (2012). Combat trauma and moral fragmentation: a theological account of moral injury. Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, 32(2), 57–74.
Kotcheff, T. (Director) (Ed.). (1982). First blood [Film]. Anabasis N. V. Cinema 84; Elcajo Productions.
Kotcheff, T. (Director) (Ed.). (1983). Uncommon valor [Film]. Brademan-Self Productions; Sunn Classic Pictures.
Kubrick, S. (Director) (Ed.). (1987). Full metal jacket [Film]. Warner Brothers; Natant; Stanley Kubrick Productions.
Lartey, E. Y. (2013). Postcolonializing God: an african american theology. SCM Press.
LaMothe, R. (2017a). Care of souls, care of polis: toward a political pastoral theology. Cascade Books.
LaMothe, R. (2017b). Men, warriorism, and mourning: the development of unconventional warriors. Pastoral Psychology, 66, 819–836.
Lifton, R. J. (2005). Home from the war: learning from Vietnam veterans. Other Press. (Original work published 1973).
Litz, B. T., Stein, N., Delaney, E., Lebowitz, L., Nash, W. P., Silva, C., & Maguen, S. (2009). Moral injury and moral repair in war veterans: a preliminary model and intervention. Clinical Psychology Review, 29, 695–706.
Loveland, A. (2014). Change and conflict in the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps since 1945. University of Tennessee Press.
Mahedy, W. P. (2004). Out of night: The spiritual journey of Vietnam vets. Radix. (Original work published 1986).
McGarrah Sharp, M. (2019). Creating resistances: Pastoral care in a post-colonial world. Brill Press.
Miller-McLemore, B. (1993, April 7). The human web: Reflections on the state of pastoral theology. Christian Century, 110, 366–369.
Miller-McLemore, B. (1999). Feminist theory in pastoral theology. In B. Miller-McLemore & B. Gill-Austern (Eds.), Feminist and womanist pastoral theology (pp. 77–94). Abingdon.
Miller-McLemore, B. (2018). The living human web: a twenty-five year retrospective. Pastoral Psychology, 67, 305–321.
Melin, J. (2016). Desperate choices: why black women join the U.S. military at higher rates than other racial and ethnic groups. New England Journal of Public Policy, 28(2), 1–14.
Monroe, R. (2022, April 26). The National Guard soldiers trying to unionize. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-national-guard-soldiers-trying-to-unionize. Accessed April 28, 2022.
Moon, Z. (2015). Coming home: Ministry that matters with veterans and military families. Chalice Press.
Moon, Z. (2019). Warriors between worlds: Moral injury and identities in crisis. Lexington Books.
Moon, Z. (2020). Moral injury and the role of chaplains. In B. Kelle (Ed.), Moral injury: a guidebook for understanding and engagement (pp. 59–69). Lexington Books.
Morris, J. (2020). Veteran solidarity and Antonio Gramsci: Counterhegemony as pastoral theological intervention. Journal of Pastoral Theology, 30(3), 207–221.
Morris, J. (2021). Moral injury among returning veterans: from thank you for your service to a liberative solidarity. Lexington Books.
Ramsay, N. J., & Doehring, C. (Eds.). (2019). Military moral injury and spiritual care: a resource for religious leaders and professional caregivers. Chalice Press.
Rogers-Vaughn, B. (2014). Blessed are those who mourn: Depression as political resistance. Pastoral Psychology, 63, 503–522.
Rogers-Vaughn, B. (2015). Powers and principalities: initial reflections toward a post-capitalist pastoral theology. Journal of Pastoral Theology, 25(2), 71–92.
Sobrino, J. (1994). Principles of mercy: taking the crucified people from the cross. Orbis.
Scott, W. (1990). PTSD in DSM-III: a case in the politics of diagnosis and disease. Social Problems, 37, 294–310.
Shatan, C. (1972). May 6). Post-Vietnam syndrome. New York Times.
Shatan, C. (1973). The grief of soldiers: Vietnam combat veterans’ self-help movement. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 43, 640–653.
Shay, J. (1994). Achilles in Vietnam: Combat trauma and the undoing of character. Scribner.
Shay, J. (2014). Moral injury. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 31(2), 182–191.
Smith, A. Jr. (1982). The relational self: Ethics and therapy from a Black church perspective. Abingdon.
Stone, O. (Director) (Ed.). (1986). Platoon [Film]. Hemdale Film Corp. Cinema 84.
Tietje, A. (2018). The responsibility and limits of military chaplains as public theologians. In S. D. MisirHiralall, C. L. Fici, & G. S. Vigna (Eds.), Religious studies scholars as public intellectuals (pp. 91–108). Routledge.
Tietje, A. (2021). War, masculinity, and the ambiguity of care. Pastoral Psychology, 70, 1–15.
Watkins Ali, C. (1999). Survival and liberation: Pastoral theology in african american context. Chalice Press.
Weidersheim, K. A. (2021). Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ideology, praxis and his influence on the theology of liberation. Political Theology, 23(8), 721–738. https://doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2021.1925438.
Wiinikka-Lydon, J. (2017). Moral injury as inherent political critique: the prophetic possibilities of a new term. Political Theology, 18, 219–232.
Wimberly, E. (1979). Pastoral care in the Black church. Abingdon.
Winkie, D. (2022, January 25). Guard troops can unionize on state active duty, DoJ says. Army Times.https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2022/01/25/guard-troops-can-unionize-on-state-active-duty-doj-says/. Accessed April 4, 2022.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Tietje, A., Morris, J. Shifting the Pastoral Theology Conversation on Moral Injury: The Personal Is Political for Soldiers and Veterans, Too. Pastoral Psychol 72, 863–880 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-023-01059-x
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-023-01059-x