TCCW 3: Moral Agency and Selective Conscientious Objection

*Originally published by Sojourners on October 31, 2010. It has since been removed.

This entry for Sojourners' Truth and Conscience in War series will deal with moral agency. Moral agency, simply stated, describes the ability one has to freely choose in accord with their morals. A moral agent is free, and freedom is the basis for all moral reasoning. If someone is not fully free, they are not full agents; their agency has been inhibited in some way.

Conscience, in its most basic form, is what guides our moral choices. We rely on our conscience to inform the most difficult choices we make. In each case, it ultimately is not Sojourners or Al Gore who were the catalyst, but their effects on our individual conscience.

The most recurrent objection to SCO that I hear in talking to other conscientious service members is the obligation a service member has to their enlistment contract. I do not disagree with this sentiment, and ideally, SCO would not be grounds for discharge, but merely reassignment to noncombatant duties.

Turning from a kind of legal perspective to a more religious one, you will find that Christian theology has consistently described conscience as a channel through which God self-expresses. C.S. Lewis wrote "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain."

Originally published in Sojourners. Archived at https://civilianally.com/vita/20101101-sojo