So many clergy members and theology nerds messaged me after JD Vance told the Pope to dial back the theology talk that I had no choice — I called my friend Kevin Carnahan, co-editor of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics and author of an extremely technical book on just war theory that he will tell you not to read. Kevin teaches at Central Methodist University in Missouri and he showed up having apparently thought about all of this in serious depth while the rest of us were just screaming into the void. What followed was one of the best episodes we’ve done. We traced the actual history of just war theory from Aquinas through John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris— which moved the Catholic Church so close to pacifism in practice that nearly no war could satisfy its criteria — through the moment nuclear weapons broke the entire framework, through drone warfare and AI targeting that’s broken it further, and right up to a Trump administration that dismantled the actual government office dedicated to minimizing civilian harm and then had the audacity to invoke just war theory as a fig leaf. Kevin’s read on the papal conflict: the Pope knows exactly what he’s doing and is faithfully representing a tradition that JD Vance passed through on Peter Thiel’s E-Z Pass lane. We also got into the three streams of Protestant ethics on war — peace churches, just war thinkers, and crusaders — why Hegseth fits cleanly into the crusader category, why Trump fits none of them, why the Lord of the Rings is the best undergraduate ethics text available, and what Bonhoeffer’s prayer for his own country’s defeat sounds like in 2026. Tripp eventually brought up Tolkien. Bo noted it took an hour and eleven minutes. Bonhoeffer was invoked. John Cobb got in at the end. The trifecta complete.

For those regular Homebrewed Christianity listeners, this is an episode of another weekly podcast Theology Nerd Throwdown that I do with Bo Sanders and our (nonviolent) army of theology nerds in the chat. If you enjoy it, subscribe to the TNT feed and feel the lure to join live most Friday mornings.

Kevin Carnahan is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri, and co-editor of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. He is the author of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey and From Presumption to Prudence in Just War Rationality, and has written extensively on Christian ethics, just war theory, and political theology. He went to grad school at Southern Methodist University and has somehow managed to teach his whole career without ever having to go to Oklahoma, which he considers a significant professional achievement.

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Just War for People Who Actually Know What It Means w/ Kevin Carnahan