Sacrifice and U.S. War-Culture

Authors

  • Kelly Denton-Borhaug Kelly Denton-Borhaug is Associate Professor of Religion, Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA. She can be reached at: kdenton@moravian.edu

Abstract

What would we say about the losses associated with war if we did not describe them as sacrifices? What would we say about Jesus’ life and death if we did not associate the gospel narratives with a cosmic framework of sacrificial self-giving? The “the necessity of sacrifice” operates as an electrical exchange between the institutionalization of “war-culture” in the United States and the understandings and practices of popular Christianity. This leads to an important and difficult question: is there any way to rehabilitate understandings of sacrifice for
Christianity without at the same time aiding and abetting war?

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