WAR AND PEACE by Chaplain David Thompson
This post is from a retired Free Methodist Military Chaplain:
Chaplain (CDR) David Thompson, CHC, USNR (Ret.)
Retired Elder/North Central Conference/FMC (USA)
On Sunday our pastor made the statement that our nation has been at war for 93% of our nation’s history since 1776, computing as of 2015 (222 years out of 239 years… so that in our history we had only 21 years of peace). I was astounded with that above-mentioned statement and so I looked it up after church with my friend “Google” (see: https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/5565946 ). And there it was: The numbers were correct… and most of these wars were wars of choice or conquest rather than wars of deep moral conviction, like the Civil War or WW II…and for the most part, we as people faith went along with all this national warlike activity down through our history…just keeping “praising the Lord and passing the ammunition.” I then came across in The Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine (the Journal of the Navy & Marine Corps) an article written by Navy Captain John Byron, USN (Ret.) in the August 2017 issue entitled “We Have Been at War a Long Time” that speaks to this issue (see: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-08/we-have-been-war-long-time ). The author leaves hanging the question of “what do you make of all of that? We really are a warlike people just looking at the hard numbers,