U.S. War-culture, Sacrifice and Salvation appear in the Equinox “religion and violence” series edited by Lisa Isherwood and Rosemary Radford Ruether. Denton-Borhaug's volume argues that Christian theological understandings of redemptive blood sacrifice have been used by the United States government to legitimate war. She opens, “The purpose of this book is to expose and analyze the enduring and destructive relationship between U.S. War-culture, and frameworks and practices of sacrifice” (1). Denton-Borhaug concentrates throughout the volume on the “use and abuse of sacrifice that has electrified war-culture's growth” (11). Her intent is to remove this “transcendental” authorization for war and to identify elements of Christian theology that encourage peace-making. Early on she quotes Traci C. West to suggest that the book is a social ethics project, intended “to specify how those practices should be transformed to provide or support socially just and spiritually nurturing relations among us” (8).

Denton-Borhaug sets several tasks for herself. She begins by defining “U.S. War-culture” as “the normalized interpenetration of the institutions, ethos and practices of war with ever-increasing facets of daily human life, economy, institutions, and imagination in the United States” (8). She then argues that governmental and military leaders employ sacrificial rhetoric in the service of “masking and sacramentalizing war-culture” (8). She analyzes specific case studies (e.g., post-9/11 political speeches), identifying where sacrificial imagery is used to valorize death and destruction. She argues that sacrificial rhetoric is part of a broader “logic of masculine protection” that draws on the Just War tradition to justify military action. Finally, she identifies less well-known Christian soteriologies and images that promote peace-making rather than violence. Ultimately, her goal is to “detranscendentalize” war, “taking up intellectual work and activism to detach Jesus' death on the cross from the powerful national narrative of Christ's death as the archetype for the necessary sacrifices made in war” (193).

Denton-Borhaug's general point is irrefutable: religious imagery (including, but not limited to sacrifice) has been used by governments (including, but not limited to the United States government) over the ages to legitimate violence and military action. The volume reviews important scholarship regarding the use of religious language and imagery to justify war as well as Christian theological approaches that promote peace-making. Unfortunately, certain elements weaken the book's overall impact. First, Denton-Borhaug presents the United States government as a “straw man” figure, without nuance or complexity. For example, she describes “tentacles of militarization that reach into the entire realm of our culture, resulting in ‘the quasi-militarization of everyday life’” (16). Similarly, the nameless “we” of the American public is also one-dimensional, repeatedly characterized as “oblivious.” According to Denton-Borhaug, “we” are easily duped and fundamentally passive with regard to our own government's activities: “our leaders decide to go to war … the American public is aroused to support war” (181–182). Many readers will find this characterization unsatisfactory.

Second, it would be interesting to hear Denton-Borhaug discuss a point her argument suggests, but never develops explicitly. Her focus is on “the actual operations and engine of sacrificial rhetoric, practices and dynamics themselves” (12). She argues that sacrificial rhetoric has shaped American understandings of war. This raises the question, has the rhetorical influence gone both ways — do we focus on bloody and destructive dimensions of sacrifice because of its historic association with military violence? How has our understanding of Christian sacrifice been shaped by being so intimately entwined with war-culture? Denton-Borhaug's argument prompts these questions, but she never asks how this rhetorical dynamic may have influenced perspectives on sacrifice.

This question is relevant because once Denton-Borhaug has demonstrated the rhetorical impact of associating redemptive blood sacrifice with war, she considers rehabilitating sacrifice as a useful theological image to support peace. In the Introduction she refers to possible “articulations of sacrifice in Christianity that can provide resistance to the sacred canopy over war-culture provided by sacrificial metaphors” (10), and her entire fourth chapter explores this possibility. Ultimately, however, she relinquishes this possibility and recommends turning to other “images, theories and metaphors for salvation in Christian history and tradition” to advocate for peace (184). Denton-Borhaug never asks whether Christian sacrifice has been impoverished as a metaphor by being invoked to transcendentalize war-culture. As a result, she doesn't “close the loop” on the conversation regarding the relationship between sacrificial rhetoric and nationalistic militarism. Exploring this line of thinking would round out her rhetorical study.

Denton-Borhaug's priority is to articulate a Christian anti-war position. The book's opening paragraph states, “the rhetoric and practices of sacrifice animate U.S. War-culture, and we must understand this relationship more clearly if we are to develop resistance to the dynamics of increasing militarization in the United States” (1). Later Denton-Borhaug writes, “we must promote wiser and more life-giving ways forward as communities of faith and as a nation. . . . so that we more insistently question the energetic impulses between Christian notions of salvation and sacrifice, and our political, economic, cultural and military sacrificial frameworks and practices. This book is one step toward the development of such an ethic” (11). The volume is largely normative, geared to work with other volumes in the series to challenge U.S. militarism. Denton-Borhaug effectively demonstrates how governmental and religious groups have drawn from Christian sacrificial theology to justify and find meaning in war. She provides a useful overview of key scholars who have examined the link between religious imagery (including sacrifice) and violence/war (e.g., Robert Bellah, William T. Cavanaugh, René Girard, Stanley Hauerwas, David W. Ingle, Bruce Lincoln, Carolyn Marvin). Denton-Borhaug effectively draws on these scholars to illustrate how sacrificial imagery has been invoked to hallow United States military activity. She also describes the work of scholars who have offered alternative Christian theologies that promote peace-making (e.g., Wendell Berry), and she identifies alternative Christian soteriologies and imagery that could be invoked in support of peace-making. This volume is a helpful reference for readers committed to Denton-Borhaug's social ethics project, and it would be a useful text in upper-level courses regarding war and sacrificial rhetoric.

George Soroka currently serves as the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Government Department at Harvard University, where he is also completing his PhD in political science. He holds a master's degree in Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies from Harvard, as well as a master's in Liturgical Studies from Drew University. Geographically, his research focuses on Poland, Russia and Ukraine; thematically, he is interested in the intersection of religion and politics, as well as the uses contested historical memory is put to in structuring contemporary foreign policy discourses in the post-communist zone.