Eric D. Patterson is an American political scientist whose work focuses on international relations, just war theory, and the intersection of religion and public policy. His advanced degrees are from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. He serves as President & CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, DC. He worked for five years as Executive Vice President and President at the Religious Freedom Institute in Washington, DC, and previously served as Dean and Professor of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA. Before that he worked at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs in Washington, DC. His government experience includes service as an Air National Guard officer, in a White House Fellowship, and time as a William C. Foster Fellow working at the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. His academic articles have appeared in Public Integrity, Journal of Military Ethics, Survival, International Studies Perspectives, International Journal of Religious Freedom, Democracy and Society, Journal of Human Security, International Journal of Applied Philosophy, International Politics, Foreign Policy Journal, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Journal of Political Science, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Security Studies.
Books
A Basic Guide to the Just War Tradition: Christian Foundations and Practices. (Baker Academic, 2023).
Military Necessity and Just War Statecraft: The Principle of National Security Stewardship (War, Conflict, and Ethics). Co-edited with Marc LiVecche (Routledge, 2023).
James Turner Johnson and the Just War Tradition: Selected Essays. Co-edited with Gina G. Palmer and Timothy J. Demy (Stone Tower Press, 2023).
Power Politics and Moral Order: Three Generations of Christian Realism (A Reader) Co-edited with Robert Joustra (Wipf & Stock, 2022).
Just War and Christian Traditions. Co-edited with J. Daryl Charles (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022).
Just American Wars: Ethical Dilemmas in U.S. Military History(War, Conflict and Ethics). (Routledge, 2019).
Philosophers on War. Co-authored with Timothy Demy (Stone Tower Press, 2019).
The Reagan Manifesto: “A Time For Choosing” and Its Influence. Co-edited with Jeffry H. Morrison (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016).
The Ashgate Companion to Military Ethics: (Justice, International Law and Global Security). Co-authored with James Turner Johnson (Routledge, 2016).
Military Chaplains in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Beyond: Advisement and Leader Engagement in Highly Religious Environments (Peace and Security in the 21st Century). Editor (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).
Ethics Beyond War’s End. Editor (Georgetown University Press, 2012).
Ending Wars Well: Order, Justice, and Conciliation in Contemporary Post-Conflict (Yale University Press, 2012).
Politics in a Religious World: Building a Religiously Informed U.S. Foreign Policy (Continuum, 2011).
Debating the War of Ideas. Co-authored with John Gallagher (Palgrave MacMillan, 2009).
Christianity and Power Politics Today: Christian Realism and Contemporary Political Dilemmas (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008).
Just War Thinking: Morality and Pragmatism in the Struggle against Contemporary Threats (Lexington Books, 2007).
Latin America’s Neo-Reformation: Religion’s Influence on Politics(Latin American Studies). (Routledge, 2005).
The Christian Realists: Reassessing the Contribution of Niebuhr and His Contemporaries (University Press of America, 2003).
Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective. More narrowly it is the study of the nature of the divine. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the supernatural, but also deals with religious epistemology, asks and seeks to answer the question of revelation. Revelation pertains to the acceptance of God, gods, or deities, as not only transcendent or above the natural world, but also willing and able to interact with the natural world and to reveal themselves to humankind.
International relations theory is the study of international relations (IR) from a theoretical perspective. It seeks to explain behaviors and outcomes in international politics. The four most prominent schools of thought are realism, liberalism, constructivism, and rational choice. Whereas realism and liberalism make broad and specific predictions about international relations, constructivism and rational choice are methodological approaches that focus on certain types of social explanation for phenomena.
The just war theory is a doctrine, also referred to as a tradition, of military ethics that aims to ensure that a war is morally justifiable through a series of criteria, all of which must be met for a war to be considered just. It has been studied by military leaders, theologians, ethicists and policymakers. The criteria are split into two groups: jus ad bellum and jus in bello. The first group of criteria concerns the morality of going to war, and the second group of criteria concerns the moral conduct within war. There have been calls for the inclusion of a third category of just war theory dealing with the morality of post-war settlement and reconstruction. The just war theory postulates the belief that war, while it is terrible but less so with the right conduct, is not always the worst option. Important responsibilities, undesirable outcomes, or preventable atrocities may justify war.
Bassam Tibi, is a Syrian-born German political scientist and professor of international relations specializing in Islamic studies and Middle Eastern studies. He was born in 1944 in Damascus, Syria to an aristocratic family, and moved to West Germany in 1962, where he later became a naturalized citizen in 1976.
International security is a term which refers to the measures taken by states and international organizations, such as the United Nations, European Union, and others, to ensure mutual survival and safety. These measures include military action and diplomatic agreements such as treaties and conventions. International and national security are invariably linked. International security is national security or state security in the global arena.
Realism, a school of thought in international relations theory, is a theoretical framework that views world politics as an enduring competition among self-interested states vying for power and positioning within an anarchic global system devoid of a centralized authority. It centers on states as rational primary actors navigating a system shaped by power politics, national interest, and a pursuit of security and self-preservation.
Mark Andrew LeVine is an American historian, musician, writer, and professor. He is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine.
Christian realism is a political theology in the Christian tradition. It is built on three biblical presumptions: the sinfulness of humanity, the freedom of humanity, and the validity and seriousness of the Great Commandment. The key political concepts of Christian realism are balance of power and political responsibility. This political-theological perspective is most closely associated with the work of the 20th-century American theologian and public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr argued that the Kingdom of God cannot be realized on earth because of the innately corrupt tendencies of society. Due to the injustices that arise among people, we must be willing to compromise the ideal of Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Niebuhr argued that human perfectibility was an illusion, highlighting the sinfulness of humanity at a time when the world was confronted by labor disputes and race riots in industrial hubs like Detroit, Michigan where he pastored, the horrors of the Second World War, the Communist and Fascist totalitarian regimes, and the Holocaust. Christian realism was in part a reaction to the 20th-century Social Gospel movement. Numerous American political figures have been influenced by Christian realism, among them Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jimmy Carter.
Thazha Varkey Paul is an Indo-Canadian political scientist. He is a James McGill professor of International Relations in the department of Political Science at McGill University. Paul specializes in International Relations, especially international security, regional security and South Asia. He served as the president of the International Studies Association (ISA) during 2016–2017, and served as the founding director of the McGill University – Université de Montreal Centre for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS).
John Kelsay is an author and a Research Professor and Richard L. Rubenstein Professor of Religion at Florida State University. He received his Ph.D. in 1985 in Ethics from University of Virginia. He mainly focuses on religious ethics, particularly in relation to the Islamic and Christian traditions. His research interests include comparative religious ethics, political ethics, and religion and war.
Graham John Ward is an English theologian and Anglican priest who has been Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford since 2012.
Glen Francis Newey was a political philosopher, last acting as a Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Leiden. He previously taught in Brussels at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and until 2011 was Professor in the School of Politics, International Relations & Philosophy at Keele University, Staffordshire, England. He was a prominent member of the "Realist" school of political philosophers which also includes such figures as Bernard Williams, John N. Gray, and Raymond Geuss. Newey also wrote extensively about toleration, casting doubt on whether it remains a coherent political ideal in modern liberal-democratic societies.
Christians have had diverse attitudes towards violence and nonviolence over time. Both currently and historically, there have been four attitudes towards violence and war and four resulting practices of them within Christianity: non-resistance, Christian pacifism, just war, and preventive war. In the Roman Empire, the early church adopted a nonviolent stance when it came to war because the imitation of Jesus's sacrificial life was preferable to it. The concept of "Just War", the belief that limited uses of war were acceptable, originated in the writings of earlier non-Christian Roman and Greek thinkers such as Cicero and Plato. Later, this theory was adopted by Christian thinkers such as St Augustine, who like other Christians, borrowed much of the just war concept from Roman law and the works of Roman writers like Cicero. Even though "Just War" concept was widely accepted early on, warfare was not regarded as a virtuous activity and expressing concern for the salvation of those who killed enemies in battle, regardless of the cause for which they fought, was common. Concepts such as "Holy war", whereby fighting itself might be considered a penitential and spiritually meritorious act, did not emerge before the 11th century.
Joseph Camilleri is an Australian citizen of Maltese descent. He is a social scientist and philosopher. In philosophy he mostly specialised and interested in international relations.
Raffaele Marchetti is an Italian political scientist and editorialist.
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, FBA is the Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University. His research focuses on Indian religions – Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – and comparative phenomenology, epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of religion. His studies include the conceptual roots of contemporary beliefs, politics and conflict in religious context, and the religious identities of South Asian diaspora in the United Kingdom. He was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2017.
Kelly James Clark is an American philosopher noted for his work in the philosophy of religion, science and religion, and the cognitive science of religion. He is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute and Professor at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids Michigan.
Gerard Mannion was an Irish theologian. He published extensively in the fields of ecclesiology, ethics, and public theology, as well as on other subjects in the area of systematic theology and philosophy.
Clair Susan Linzey is a British theologian and ethicist, editor and writer. She is the Frances Power Cobbe Professor of Animal Theology at the Graduate Theological Foundation, Deputy Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and the director of their annual summer school, as well as a Research Fellow in Animal Ethics at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. Linzey is also co-editor, with her father, of the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series and the Journal of Animal Ethics. She specialises in animal theology, animal ethics, environmental ethics, systematic theology, feminist theology and Christian moral thought.
John Wall is an American educator and theoretical ethicist who teaches at Rutgers University Camden. He is Director of the Childism Institute and Co-Director of the Children's Voting Colloquium.
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