AFTER WAR: SEEKING PEACE

Frontiers in Communication

Despite increases in technical capacities for communication, contemporary society struggles with a persistent inability to effectively engage in collective action around a growing number of existential challenges manifesting in local, national, and global contexts. Confronted with environmental deterioration, economic disruptions, wars, and civil unrest, we are challenged to engage in coherent conversations that could lead to collective action, based on a shared understanding. Instead, we are enmeshed in polarized narratives, competing agendas, and emotional conflict. The uneven response to the global COVID-19 pandemic is but the most recent example of this lack of unity. As we seek to find our way in this increasingly complex social landscape, one of the best potential sources for learning about social systems and communication in conflict has gone largely unexamined. For nearly two decades, Military veterans of many nations have struggled while returning from wartime service in Af...

Close Encounters in War Journal, 2020

Spiritual Care

To better understand how deployment in war zones and/or combat may inflict emotional wounds upon veterans, researchers, clinicians, and caregivers it was recently started to focus on the concepts of moral and spiritual injuries. Such injuries may remain undiscovered during psychiatric screening for posttraumatic stress disorder. What is often missing, however, is a conceptualization of the part of the self which is implicitly related to emotional wounds caused by moral and spiritual injuries. This article utilizes a number of historical and contemporary conceptualizations of what is called the soul, and their implications for pastoral and spiritual care of emotionally wounded veterans. Moreover, it explores the use of biblical stories in pastoral and spiritual care among veterans suffering from moral and spiritual injuries.

Tikkun Magazine, 2013

Each generation grapples with the enduring trauma of war. As more warriors survive severe physical injuries, there is increased awareness of the immense spiritual toll inflicted on warriors, veterans and their families by wounds to the spirit and soul. In the face of high suicide rates in both warriors and veterans, the concept of moral injury has emerged as this generation' s contribution to the challenge of healing these men and women. This paper will review the definition of moral injury, the metrics developed to measure it, the social work role and programs to address it, spiritual implications, and ongoing research. The particular spiritual and professional relevance of this concept to social work and the integration of faith and practice is discussed.

Christian Scholar's Review , 2016

A Review Essay of Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini, Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2013); Robert Emmet Meagher, Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014); Nancy Sherman, Afterwar: Healing the Wounds of Our Soldiers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Bill Russell Edmonds, God Is Not Here: A Soldier's Struggle with Torture, Trauma, and the Moral Injuries of War (New York: Pegasus Books, 2015).

Violence in Extreme Conditions: Ethical Challenges in Military Practice. , 2023

Experiences of trauma not only shed light on a person’s mental injuries themselves, but also bring to the surface several broader tensions and vulnerabilities underlying these injuries, which normally remain hidden This is especially true for moral injury, which refers to the lasting psychological impact of tragic dilemmas and moral transgressions. This chapter considers moral injury in this sense. First, it explains moral conflict as inherently part of human nature. Next, it shows how veterans’ stories of moral injury offer important insights into violence, human nature and military ethics, at the level of the individual soldier’s psyche, the relationship between soldier and society, and society. Finally, it reflects on the implications of these insights for military ethics.

Psychology in Society, 2010

is a psychotherapist who has been working with veterans for some 30 years. He is also an authority on Greek healing rituals and warrior cultures, including the Greeks and Romans, Zulus, Celts, Norse, and especially, the American Plains Indians. He is an ordained interfaith minister and a recognised healer by traditional Native Americans on the northern plains. Tick writes with a deep understanding of the calling to be a warrior and love for the men and women who respond to that call, even as he has been a peace activist all his adult life. This tension-love for the warrior and peace activism-is one of the moving strengths of the book.

2018

Traumatology, 2011

It is widely recognized that, along with physical and psychological injuries, war profoundly affects veterans spiritually and morally. However, research about the link between combat and changes in morality and spirituality is lacking. Moral injury is a construct that we have proposed to describe disruption in an individual's sense of personal morality and capacity to behave in a just manner. As a first step in construct validation, we asked a diverse group of health and religious professionals with many years of service to active duty warriors and veterans to provide commentary about moral injury. Respondents were given a semistructured interview and their responses were sorted. The transcripts were used to clarify the range of potentially and morally injurious experiences in war and the lasting sequelae of these experiences. There was strong support for the usefulness of the moral injury concept; however, respondents chiefly found our working definition to be inadequate.