The American Religion of Violence

Laurence Vance has coined the word “warvangelical” to describe so-called evangelical Christians who are obsessed with supporting all of the state’s wars and all of the death, destruction, and mayhem that they entail. They ignore the ancient just war tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas, among others, and simply support all war and all military aggression – as long as the U.S. government is the aggressor.

These are the people who booed at Ron Paul when he reminded them at one of their conventions that Jesus is known as “the Prince of Peace.” These are the people who became quite hysterical (and hateful) when Ron Paul quoted the Biblical admonition, “live by the sword, die by the sword” in response to a question about a U.S. Army sniper who had written a book boasting of murdering hundreds of Iraqis after he was murdered after returning to civilian life.

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