The Bomb and Vietnam

Abstract

After the Second World War, Elizabeth Anscombe continued strong, arguing against giving an honorary degree to atomic-bomb-dropper Harry Truman. With the Cold War now begun, worries about the Bomb continued to trouble Christians and were a major concern of Methodist theologian Paul Ramsey. Then the horrors of the Vietnam War started to predominate, leading to a return to just war theorizing, especially by Michael Walzer, a Jew and hence non-Christian although sympathetic to Augustinian thinking. The American Catholic bishops also got involved, inveighing against nuclear weapons. Pacifist voices like those of Stanley Hauerwas (Methodist) and John Howard Yoder (Mennonite) started to rise. Some, like philosopher Robert L. Holmes, worried that perhaps the Augustinian emphasis on original sin makes one almost complacent about the probability of war.