Current Season Pass: WhatAboutUS

The earliest Christian attitudes to military service, written in public, one chapter at a time.

In Luke 3, soldiers walk up to John the Baptist and ask the question everyone else in the crowd is asking: “And what about us?” Two thousand years later, soldiers, veterans, and their families are still asking the Church the same thing, and still getting answers from people who never wore the uniform.

What About Us? is my attempt at an answer. It’s a season of chapters, released in the open, from a book about what the earliest Christians actually said and did about soldiers.

What it’s trying to do

Audit the experts. For a century, the standard books on “early Christian attitudes” to war have shaped how churches think about military service. I read them from the artillery observation post. How do they treat the soldiers in the New Testament, and do their conclusions follow from the evidence?

Go back to the text. Before the Gospels, there’s the Hebrew Bible, the Second Temple world, and a Roman army that looked nothing like the one we imagine. I’ll start there.

Meet the GI Gospel. The New Testament is full of soldiers: the ones John baptized, the centurion Jesus marveled at, Cornelius, the jailer at Philippi, Julius, even Timothy and Philemon. Each gets their own chapter, because every grunt deserves their moment in the sun.

Who it’s for

Military families first: soldiers, veterans, and the people who love them. If you’re a civilian believer who wants to know your military neighbors better, you’re welcome in the formation. You’ll be asked to leave some assumptions at the door.

A draft in public

I’m going to be wrong in places. The whole book is about what happens when people claim to know what they don’t. If you served, or live with someone who did, and I get something wrong, tell me.

Start here

The intro chapter, (We) Know Not What “We” Do, is free to read as part of my vocation of Public Writing. Read it, and if it lands, subscribe with your email address to follow the season;