Just and Holy Warfare

The previous chapter demonstrated the inner workings of providentialism as partisans strained to hear God's voice. One conclusion reached through military providentialism was the belief that killing was godly. Focusing on how beliefs about divine involvement were formed opens new vistas for understanding justice and holiness in war, with implications for understanding historical and modern violence in God's name.

Early modern just war thinking was far more ‘religious’ than many scholars acknowledge. Similarly, ‘holy war’ thinking usually made more robust appeals to justice than is often credited. At the time, theories of politics and religion were in flux. Rather than pitting the theories against each other, each case study evidences the interplay and overlap between justice and holiness in partisan's minds. I have called this ‘godly violence’. Much more can be said about possible relations between justice, holiness and providence.

Scholars across many disciplines devote great energy towards comprehending and preventing violence done in the name of God. Their work on modern violence shapes the questions I ask. Although I aim to avoid explaining the past through the lens of these disciplines, they influenced my approach to religion and violence – most notably my resistance to reductionism. Elsewhere I pushed for a complex understanding of violence in the name of God – and this complexity in three areas: ‘religion’ as a cause of violence; the relationship between readers, beliefs, texts and violence throughout history; and the complex relationship between justice and holiness in conflict.

The relationship between Christianity, violence and just war tradition is long and complex. One part of that story is important for understanding modern views about violence involving religion, and that relates to an important turn in thinking about the just war tradition. The main scholarly bifurcation between ‘just war’ and ‘holy war’ came through Roland Bainton's influential 1942 paper that formed part of a 1960 book. In Bainton's section on the English Civil War, he wrote the oft-quoted lines: