John Heathershaw is a professor of international relations at the University of Exeter, UK. He is also an English Baptist, with Anabaptist leanings. He brings theology and politics together in his book Security After Christendom.[1] He builds on ‘social scientific and historical evidence’, but his arguments ‘are driven by theological reasoning.’[2] He is immersed in global politics, has worked on the issue of kleptocracy (rule by (billionaire) thieves) in the former Soviet Union, and is part of the leadership team in his local Baptist congregation. He is currently doing a PhD at Bristol Baptist College. Whilst his Christian convictions are potentially annoying to atheists and secularists, his work is nuanced, illuminating, open to dialogue with others of different faiths, and including of those with non-Western perspectives. It is unusual for someone to be both a political scientist and competent theologically. He thus invites serious consideration.
In this short essay I seek to summarise Heathershaw’s book Security After Christendom so that a wider audience can benefit from his main line of arguments. I also add my own reflections.
Defining Christendom and Security
John Heathershaw defines Christendom as a ‘partnership of church and government, with the church legitimizing government and government securing the church.’[3] He goes onto say there are many kinds of Christendoms: the Holy Roman Empire, Anglican England, Putin’s Russia, and the quest by the Christian Right in the secular USA. However, Heathershaw is writing about security after Christendom, as church attendance ebbs away in Europe and elsewhere, to be replaced by secularism. Post-Christendom is a secular development out of Christendom and is also entwined with post-imperial, post-national and post-western trends.[4] At the same time Christendom is resurgent in Eastern Europe, threatening again in the USA with Mr Trump’s third bid at the presidency, and there are possibilities of Christendom projects in the Global South of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Heathershaw, befitting a Baptist with strong Anabaptist leanings, is critical of Christendom, the partnership of church and government, and its violence that included persecution of dissenting Christians, Jews, and the launching of the crusades. Anabaptists emerged in 1525 in Switzerland out of the German Peasant Revolt, were radical Protestant groups that sprang up all over Europe. With an exception, Muenster, Westfalia 1532-35, they were pacifists and the first to argue for separation of church and state. They suffered martyrdom for their position, illustrating Christendom’s intolerance of diversity of faiths, and any other model of church and government. Christendom, Catholic and Protestant, was exported by European Empires.
To come to the focus of Heathershaw’s particular interest he defines security as follows:
Security, or “the absence of fear” has three elements: (1) inclusion (who is to be secure); (2) protection (from threats to security), and (3) provision (to live life securely).[5]
This definition of human security I find very helpful and a new way for me of looking at violence, both direct (war, terrorism, and crime), and indirect (economic, legal, political, institutional).
Four Positions on the Quest for Security
Heathershaw outlines four possible positions for us to consider in the quest for security.
1. Christendom security (Christian Realism).
The Just War tradition has dominated Christendom thinking since Augustine (354-430CE). This tradition continues to have its supporters. Heathershaw is critical of this tradition, as are many others, as not being realistic enough.[6] It is easily abused, for example Iraq 2003, or the mass bombing by the Allies in World War II of civilian areas in Germany and Japan, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How does one assess British responsibility for the Bengal Famine in 1943 in which around 3 million died?
The very influential Christian Realism position of Reinhard Niebuhr (1892-1971) is taken seriously by Heathershaw. Niebuhr’s arguments helped politicians in the USA and Britain deal with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Neibuhr was realistic about human sin and fallenness. He urged that the responsible thing for Christians to do was to support the lesser evil over the greater evil. Thus democracy, although far from perfect, was better than Fascism or Soviet Communism. Power is important in addressing wrong and war is sometimes necessary to contain and defeat a greater evil. A former pacifist, Niebuhr came to believe pacifism was naïve, idealistic, ineffective, and irrelevant in the real world. Niebuhr was a robust voice of late Christendom. Yet how realistic is Niebuhr today when Climate Change is perhaps humanity’s biggest threat, and most conflicts are civil wars in which civilians, women and children are by far the greatest victims?[7] Many people are more threatened by the rich elites and the security forces of their country than by foreign armies.[8] Political realism does not take account of this either. Heathershaw wants to create an alternative Christian Realism which he describes in his later fourth position using the tools of social science and historical evidence.
Political realists argue that it is the state that is the focus of security - from the attacks of other states, and to be able to grow economically.[9]
2. National Security (Secular Realism). This is a secularized position. Charles Tilly has stated that “war made the state and the state made war;” it is a “protection racket”.[10] A state is defined by “others” and fear of them. These “others” may include minorities, other races, immigrants, and refugees as well as other states. The state is not about protecting its human inhabitants but its corporate and national identity. This identity reflects the interests and values of an elite who in the West are mostly white, male, and very wealthy. Insecurity and fear are essential. It resulted in World War I, World War II. Such states have killed millions. They also steal through corruption and can be ruled by thieves (kleptocracies) as in Russia. But sometimes they also ‘cure.’ The economic rise of China has lifted millions out of poverty.[11]
3. Human Security (Secular Liberalism). The individual, not the state is the focus of this position. It lifts up the security of the individual person, thus the idea of human security. The United Nations in 1990s defined human security to include human rights and human development. Human security arose out of the work of liberal peace-studies scholarship that looked at the effect of poverty and armed conflict particularly in the poorer countries of the Global South.[12] Human security includes in one version ‘”freedom from want”: economic, environmental, health, and food security, noting that poverty kills far more than war.’[13]
More broadly liberal peace argues that security for individuals and states comes from international law, international organisations and trade.[14] However, human security rhetoric has often been co-opted by national security in individual countries, giving them a cloak of respectability.[15] Responsibility to Protect (R2P) vulnerable populations from peril like genocide is an imperative, but UN armed peacekeeping missions have not been particularly successful.[16]
Human security lifting up the well-being of the individual person is a secularized version of individual rights that developed in late Christendom. In the liberal world order led by the USA, both human rights and neoliberal economics go together. There is a tension between the equal worth of each person, and an economic system which is significantly widening the gap between rich and poor.[17] Recent Oxfam reports document this wealth gap vividly.[18] In a secular world view equality does not have to be a paramount value. In contrast, for a Christian, equality is sacrosanct, we are to love not only God, but also love our neighbour as ourself.[19] Our neighbours are also made in the image of God.[20]
4. Post-Christendom Security (New Christian Realism). Having reviewed the above three positions, New Christian Realism is Heathersaw’s alternative and preferred position. Heathershaw critiques Niebuhr’s earlier Christian realism, but also wants to have a new robust Christian realist position. To repeat his methodology, he builds on ‘social scientific and historical evidence’, but his arguments ‘are driven by theological reasoning.’[21] He is informed by the work of scholars like Mennonite theologian and historian John Howard Yoder[22], French Catholic anthropologist René Girard, New Testament scholar Walter Wink and the recent work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, among others.
How does a new Christian Realism address security?
How does a new Christian Realism address security in terms of inclusion, protection and provision?
1. Radical Inclusion. Anthropologist René Girard’s work helps us understand the victim mechanism at work in human societies, how vulnerable minorities are scapegoated to ease tensions of conflict between competing individuals and prevent the eruption of violence of all against all. He discovered that the Hebrew prophet’s loud advocacy for the poor, the stranger, the widow and the orphan disrupted the victim mechanism. In the story of the crucifixion of Jesus the victim mechanism is fully exposed enabling people to see, understand, and resist it. Christendom sacrificed Jews and heretics and crusaded against Muslims. New Christian Realism resists the victim mechanism operating, for instance, against immigrants and refugees who have only recently been made into a security threat, and in reality are not.[23] The work of human rights organisations like Amnesty International are secular disruptors of victim mechanisms at play.
2. Protection. Protection from violence is the main task of security. According Johan Galtung, Swedish peace studies pioneer, there are three kinds of violence (i) personal or direct as in a criminal attack or war; (ii) structural or indirect – like institutions and economic systems ; (iii) cultural justifications for personal or structural violence through religion, ideology, language, art, law and science.[24] Heathershaw calls direct and indirect violence with cultural justifications an expression of the “powers”, a reference to the term used in the New Testament by Paul and expanded on by Walter Wink and Sergius Bulgakov.[25] Negative peace is preventing personal attack or war. War is not good for civilians and children who today suffer the most. Positive peace is addressing social injustices by investing in education, healthcare, social security, reducing social conflict and promoting integration.[26] Cultural peacemaking is challenging racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, in religion, ideology, language, art, law and science.
How can civilians, often in the context of civil wars be protected? Heathershaw points to the success of civilian accompaniment by unarmed civilians who may be local or international. This has been pioneered by for example Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT) in Columbia, in Iraq among Kurds, and in Hebron, Palestine.[27]
He also lifts up the important, evidence-based work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan. They have done the largest study on nonviolent civil resistance compared with violent resistance, 325 campaigns for the period 1900-2006. They found that nonviolent civil resistance is twice as effective, and much more likely to lead to democratic government. Why? Nonviolent resistance can mobilise far more people. People can change sides more easily and safely, and there is more talking and negotiation – skills essential in democracy.[28]
Policing can also be unarmed and communal as in Britain. One can also add community organising by Citizens UK, and Outreach International working among the poor in the Global South. In the Philippines community organising was a deliberate alternative to both armed insurrection during the Marcos era and welfare/charity.
One can point out that the nonviolent commitment of Quakers and Anabaptists, arose in part, out their experience of war. Anabaptists emerged out of the destructive and failed German Peasant’s Revolt in 1525. Quakers emerged in 1652 at the end of the English Civil War when the death rate was higher than World War I.[29] Both movements, birthed from first-hand experience of violence, expressed a form of Christian realism about the terribleness of war. In returning to the words and spirit of Jesus, both traditions suggested that Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount might be right.
3. Provision. Economics, societal cohesion, and a bearable climate are important in provision. The widening wealth gap between rich and poor since the 1970s in a neoliberal world economy is a big issue. Off shore accounts and tax shelters further increase economic inequality and reduce public finances.[30] Climate change is considered by many to be the biggest security threat the earth has ever faced.[31] Economic growth, extraction industries and oil maybe good for the economy, but may be disastrous for environmental security. Climate change migration may threaten societal cohesion.[32] I think economist Kate Raworth’s ‘doughnut economics’ is one well thought through vision of an economy that ensures enough for all but living within the carrying capacity of the earth.[33]
The Role of History
Honest history is foundational to new Christian realism. Historical evidence is part of Heathershaw’s methodology. History seems to be often forgotten or misused whenever we face new wars. Remembrance ceremonies every November do us no favours. The following are my candid perspectives on recent history, beginning with World War I.
“The First World War was a tragic and unnecessary conflict…” are the first and poignant words of British military historian John Keegan in his book The First World War.[34] Other historians, both left and right, now see the First World War as a terrible mistake.[35] World War I was ‘a mindless catastrophe unleashed by anywhere between 14 and 45 men.’[36] It was a crisis for Christendom Europe as Catholic shot Catholic and Protestant bayonetted Protestant. Promised by President Wilson (echoing H. G. Wells) as the war to end all wars, World War I actually created more violence in its widening turbulence in the 20th century. It led to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the rise of Hitler, WWII 1939-45 and the Holocaust, the Cold War 1946-1989, and 9/11 in September 2001.
The story of Britain and the USA in the nineteenth and twentieth century is usually sanitized. Honest history reveals imperial ambitions, exploitive greed, competing empires, and the slaughter of many civilians and indigenous peoples. In World War II the deliberate bombing of civilians in German and Japanese cities, culminated in the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Political geographer Professor Nick Megoran has written an incisive critical account of World War II and the competing imperial historical background.[37] Professor Mary Kaldor recently said the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal in 1945-46 was victor’s justice that ignored the crime of allied bombing of civilians.[38] Bombing of civilians therefore has continued with impunity, for instance in Vietnam or recently in Gaza.
War was declared against Iraq in 2003 on the pretext the nation had nuclear weapons. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found, but it is responsibly reported by the Iraq Body Count Project that a total of 300,000 people have died since the 2003 invasion, two thirds of whom were civilians.[39] This is probably an underestimate.[40] According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, the wider USA led war on terror, twenty years after 9/11, has cost $8 trillion, over 940,000 deaths due to direct war violence, plus an estimated 3.6-3.8 million indirectly, with 432,000 civilians killed. The number of war refugees and displaced persons totals 38 million. At least four times the number of US soldiers killed in combat have sadly died from suicide[41] with great emotional cost to their families.
Around 3,000 people died in the 9/11, tragedy. The American led coalition of revenge has inflicted a far greater human cost. At the same time USA gun deaths, American on American, in the period 2001-2021 has totaled 722,320 and has not been addressed.[42]
American led revenge for 9/11 unleashed massive human insecurity for millions, whilst ignoring the crisis of gun deaths, poverty and police racism at home.
Informed by the cross, and honest history, Christians should have a hermeneutic of suspicion about violence. This means we should be always suspicious about violence. The claims by many of the necessity and effectiveness of violence can be disputed by candid historical realism. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan’s findings of the superiority of non-violent resistance in the 20th century have already been referred to.[43]
Ukraine
In a separate essay Heathershaw has addressed Ukraine.[44] His essay replies to Joshua Searle’s paper in Anabaptism Today titled “Putin has cured me of my pacifism.”[45]
As background it is helpful to understand that Russian President Vladmir Putin has a vision of ‘Russia as the guarantor of Christian Faith and the Russian World (Russkii Mir) as the one true Christendom.’ His Russian World Ideology globalizes American culture wars that includes rejecting secularisation, permissive liberal values, and democracy. Putin and Trump are allies, as are Russian Patriarch Kirill and American Christian Right leaders. Putin’s Russian World ideology is an idolatry.[46] Idolatries practice human sacrifice. Putin sacrifices soldiers and civilians, Russian and Ukrainian, to unite by force the two countries in a larger Russian World.
In the realities of the Ukrainian invasion Joshua Searle rejects idealistic pacifism, considers just war seriously, and adopts a Christian realist position.[47]
In this crisis, surely Niebuhrian Christian realism is valid and helpful? NATO countries should support Ukraine so that Russia is not successful in its invasion, and then contained so other countries are not invaded. Will not Idealistic pacifist appeasement only make the situation worse?
Heathershaw points out many pacifists are neither liberal nor idealist. Mennonite John Howard Yoder, for instance, suggested limited “police action” by the UN could be justified when under international law. Yoder also challenged those holding a just war position to take the criteria seriously and rigorously to diminish and limit war. Nigel Biggar, Anglican priest and Oxford ethicist and theologian has said the 2022 Ukrainian defense is just, but he also argued that the 2003 Iraq war was just, and demonstrates the point Yoder is making.[48] So, there are pragmatic and realist nonviolence positions.[49]
Heathershaw is critical of the just war position. He asserts it is not helpful politically and lacks faith theologically.[50] He argues for hope, but hope is not pacifist, nor Ukrainian victory, but ‘the breaking of Christ into the world to defeat the raging nations and reveal their vanities.’[51]
How would Heathershaw’s neo-Christian realism address the Ukrainian war? He argues that Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP), nonviolent resistance, humanitarian aid by churches, and NGOs can create pockets of ‘peace’ within war. These can be expanded and create conditions for peace. Mass nonviolent resistance has a participant advantage over armed rebellion, demonstrated by the research of Chenoweth and Stephan already referred to.[52] Nonviolent resistance would not stop invasion, but it can make it very difficult for an occupying force to govern. The cost of such a conflict in lives, destruction, and economy would be far less.
It is important to count the cost. 315,000 Russian soldiers have died fighting in Ukraine according to USA defense sources[53] and 500,000 are now disabled.[54] It is difficult to find information on Ukrainian deaths, although President Zelensky has reported 31,000[55], but this is probably an underestimate. Then there are civilian casualties. There are huge economic costs, and the threat of wider war, even World War III. Individual and collective sin, ego, is responsible for so much pain. Violence compounds the pain of conflict.
Note also non-cooperation and protest. There are 100,000 Russian conscientious objectors and deserters in neighbouring Georgia,[56] and 20,000 Russian war protestors in prison.[57]
Facing the Apocalypse
Heathershaw is proposing apocalyptic realism as a new Christian realism position.[58] We face the end of the world as we know it: the breakdown of the present economic order through the inevitable conflict between the haves and the have nots, global heating disrupting agriculture, causing rising sea levels, and stampeding migration for survival. We should add cyberwarfare,[59] and possible nuclear Armageddon also. We are living in extraordinary times of polycrisis.[60] Polycrisis is another way of describing the coming Apocalypse. We do not know the day and the time, but our children and grandchildren will know. Yet most of us – citizens, consumers, voters, business leaders, politicians, parents and grandparents – are in denial. We are not facing the truth realistically, yet it is already being told by the testimony of victims, and sciences and history. What can we do?
The truth shall set us free said Jesus.[61] Grassroots communities, including congregations can be arks of help and resistance.
Nonconformist Christians including Anabaptists, Baptists, Quakers and Methodists have a history of communal solidarity with congregations making decisions together. They have a democratic, mutual help, grass roots culture, the fruit of Christ-centred discipleship. Historically British socialism owes more to Nonconformity than to Marxism,[62] and succeeded in bringing the welfare state in 1945. Congregational life can be an ark of salvation, materially, socially and spiritually. Old monasticism welcomed the stranger as they were Jesus himself, providing any who knocked food and shelter for the night. Informed by expressions of New Monasticism congregations can welcome any who knock on their door for help, and this can include sanctuary for the migrant and refugee. Such congregations have a future in mediating the realities ahead. There are also secular versions and Heathershaw refers to the Transition Town Movement.[63]
Government
We should be realistic about government. Government is fallen and does not serve all with fairness and dignity. Biblically there are three models of the relationship of God’s people to the state:
1. Sometimes the state can restrain evil. This is Paul’s argument for obedience to government in Romans 13:1-7.[64] However, Paul’s obedience to government is conditional. This passage is set in a wider context of love your enemies (Romans 12:14-21) and love your neighbours (Romans 13:8-10).
2. Sometimes the state is the beast as in Babylon and Rome (Revelation chapters 12-13).[65] Is Empire always the beast[66], whether Russian, Chinese, or American? The worship of God dethrones every emperor, king, president and ruler, and judges the political economy of empire.[67]
3. Prophetic. Not partnership but judgement, prophetic criticism, civil disobedience, and protest, when government is not on the side of the most vulnerable, not on the side of justice for the poor, and seeking war not peace.[68]
Christians can be informed by these three perspectives. However, old or new Christendom, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, is a betrayal of Jesus and the kingdom.
Conclusion
Old Christian Realism and much of the academic work in International Relations has been carried out by white males. Research on nonviolence and its practice is often carried out by women.[69] Old Christian realism was dominated by Western white males and Niebuhr, for instance, was criticised by women, Black, and ‘Third World’ theologians .[70] It is time, says Heathershaw, to ‘“decolonize” the debate.’[71]
In the darkness and terror of Crucifixion Friday Christians can have no illusions, about sin, individually and collectively, no illusions about war and empires. Yet in the early morning light of Easter Sunday, and an empty tomb, we can have hope. Heathershaw ends with his political theology: ‘… the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For hope is a theological and therefore a political virtue.’ [72]
And it was brown women, in a brutally colonized land, who first found an empty tomb.
ENDNOTES
[1] John Heathershaw, Security After Christendom: Global Politics and Political Theology for Apocalyptic Times (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2024)
[2] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 24.
[3] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 10.
[4] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 12-14.
[5] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 15.
[6] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 105.
[7] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 24.
[8] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 179.
[9] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 15.
[10] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 105.
[11]Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 152-158.
[12] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 164.
[13] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 164.
[14] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 15, 163.
[15] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 165.
[16] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 254.
[17] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 183.
[18] For instance Oxfam, Inequality Kills, 17 January 2022. https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/inequality-kills
Climate Inequality: A Planet for the 99%, 20 November 2023. https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/climate-equality-a-planet-for-the-99-621551/
[19] Matthew 22:38–40.
[20] Genesis 1:27.
[21] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 24.
[22] Heathershaw is fully aware of the ambiguity of Yoder in terms of his sexual abuse of women, Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 258–261.
[23] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 226–246.
[24] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 251.
[25] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 206, 207 and Ephesians 6:12.
[26] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 251.
[27] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 257–258.
[28] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 256. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011) 6-7
[29] Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature – Why Violence has declined (New York: Penguin Books, 2011) 142.
[30] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 277.
[31] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 279.
[32] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 276.
[33] Kate Raworth, Donut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. (Dublin: Penguin, Random House Business, 2022).
[34] John Keegan, The First World War (London: Hutchinson/Random House, 1998), 3
[35] Michael Clinton, “War against War: A Conversation with Michael Kazin,” Peace & Change 42, no. 4 (October 2017): 485
[36] Sandi E. Cooper, “Book Review”, Peace & Change, Vol. 44, No. 4, October 2019: 577. See also Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (London: Allen Lane (Penguin), 2012)
[37] Nick Megoran, Warlike Christians in an Age of Violence (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017, 130-197.
[38] Book Launch: ‘Global Activism and Humanitarian Disarmament’ – featuring reflections by Professor Mary Kaldor (SOAS – University of London, 6 March 2024).
[39] Iraq Body Count https://www.iraqbodycount.org.
[40] See ‘Costs of War Project’ at the Brown University in Rhode Island for an update. Crawford, Neta C. “Blood and Treasure: United States Budgetary Costs and Human Costs of 20 Years of War in Iraq and Syria, 2003-2023.” Costs of War Project, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA. (March 15, 2023). 1-27. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2023/Costs%20of%2020%20Years%20of%20Iraq%20War%20Crawford%2015%20March%202023%20final%203.21.2023.pdf.
[41] Costs of War Project, ‘Summary’. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/
[42] Britannica ProCon.org https://gun-control.procon.org/us-gun-deaths-by-year/. This total includes firearm suicides (426,241), homicides (274,802).
[43] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 256. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011) 6-7
[44] John Heathershaw, “Theological Responses to the War against Ukraine: A Reply to Joshua Searle” Anabaptism Today 5.2 (January 2024) 56-66.
[45] Joshua Searle, ‘”Putin has cured me of my pacifism”: Ethical Issues Confronting Mennonites in Light of the Russian War against Ukraine’, Anabaptism Today 5.1 (2023)
[46] Heathershaw, “Theological Responses to the War against Ukraine”, 57.
[47] Heathershaw, “Theological Responses to the War against Ukraine”, 59.
[48] Heathershaw, “Theological Responses to the War against Ukraine”, 61-62.
[49] Heathershaw, “Theological Responses to the War against Ukraine”, 60.
[50] Heathershaw, “Theological Responses to the War against Ukraine", 56.
[51] Heathershaw, “Theological Responses to the War against Ukraine”, 57.
[52] Heathershaw, “Theological Responses to the War against Ukraine”, 61.
[53] Noah Robertson, ‘Ukrainian war has cost Russian upto $211 billion, Pentagon says’ Defense News 16 February 2024 https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2024/02/16/ukraine-war-has-cost-ru…
[54] Bruno Waterfield, “Cost of Putin’s war in Ukraine is half a million disabled Russians.” The Times & The Sunday Times April 4, 2024. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/vladimir-putin-cost-war-ukraine-disa…
[55] BBC News, ‘Ukraine War: Zelensky says 31,000 troops killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion’ 25 February 2024 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68397525
[56] Communication with “Misha” working for a German NGO serving Russian and Ukrainian COs in Georgia, Feb 2024.
[57] Paul Sonne and Josh Holder “Russia’s Brutal War Calculus” New York Times Feb 23, 2024 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/24/world/europe/russia-war-…
[58] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 24-25, 281-289.
[59] Nicole Perlroth, This is How They Tell Me the World Ends – A True Story (London:Bloomsbury, 2021).
[60] Simon Torkington, “We’re on the brink of a ‘polycrisis’ – how worried should we be?” World Economic Forum, Jan 13, 2023. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/01/polycrisis-global-risks-report-c…
[61] John 8:31-32.
[62] Quoted in James Callaghan, Time & Chance (London: Fontana 1987), 36. See also Peter Catterall, “The Distinctiveness of British Socialism? Religion and the Rise of Labour, c. 1900-39” in Matthew Worely (ed), The Foundations of the British Labour Party – Identities, Cultures and Perspectives, 1900-39 (Farnham UK: Ashgate 2009) 131. A chapel upbringing was as important for British trade union leadership as a private school education was for the ruling class (132). The struggle for economic rights was a continuation of Nonconformist centuries struggle for liberty (134). Human life was sacred, not property rights (138). Nearly half of Labour MPs between 1918 and 1939 were Nonconformist (139). ‘Changing social systems was never enough, hearts needed to be changed as well.’ (150). ‘It was simply that social and individual salvation went together… Socialist doctrines are Christianity applied to economic life.’ (152).
[63] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 289-293.
[64] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 220.
[65] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 279.
[66] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 216, 222.
[67] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 217.
[68] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 302.
[69] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 270-271, 307.
[70] Larry Rasmussen, Reinhold Niebuhr – Theologian of Public Life (London: Collins, 1989), 33.
[71] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 307.
[72] Heathershaw, Security After Christendom, 307.