NJIKO: A Multi-Disciplinary Journal of Humanities, Law, Education and Social Sciences

War is the gravest danger that has always faced the survival of humanity as a species. For instance, in the past three years, over two million people have been killed in the two global high intensity wars between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Palestine. If these numbers are added to the numbers that have died in other low intensity conflicts around the world, it will likely exceed half the total number of people that have died in the world within the same period making war the greatest cause of human death. Importantly, most wars are inspired by religious beliefs. Even, when the cause of a particular war is not directly religious, people’s willingness to fight or support the war effort is to a large extent determined by religious beliefs on rightness and wrongness of killing. Therefore, Christianity being the most populous religion in the world has had and will continue to have serious impacts on wars. What this means is that Christian teachings have the capacity to encourage or discourage war around the world. Consequently, using the documentary method, historical and conceptual analysis, this study investigates how Christian teachings have influenced Christian attitudes to war down the ages and the consequences these has had on peace and stability in the world. The paper discovered that Christian tradition has espoused three attitudes on war and peace, namely, pacifism, crusade and just war approaches. Focusing specifically on the just war (the latest approach), the study highlights that current Christian attitude to war is informed by the false belief that war can be used to fight evil and achieve peace and justice. Contesting this espousal, the study argues that war exacerbates injustice, increases evil and makes the situations worse. It therefore calls for a return to pragmatic pacifism as the only responsible, reasonable and defensible position for a Christian.

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