Just War for People Who Actually Know What It Means w/ Kevin Carnahan

About this episode

The episode explores just war theory with Kevin Carnahan, tracing its historical development and contemporary implications.

So many clergy members and theology nerds messaged me after JD Vance told the Pope to dial back the theology talk that I had no choice — I called my friend Kevin Carnahan, co-editor of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics and author of an extremely technical book on just war theory that he will tell you not to read. Kevin teaches at Central Methodist University in Missouri and he showed up having apparently thought about all of this in serious depth while the rest of us were just screaming into the void. What followed was one of the best episodes we've done. We traced the actual history of just war theory from Aquinas through John XXIII's Pacem in Terris— which moved the Catholic Church so close to pacifism in practice that nearly no war could satisfy its criteria — through the moment nuclear weapons broke the entire framework, through drone warfare and AI targeting that's broken it further, and right up to a Trump administration that dismantled the actual government office dedicated to minimizing civilian harm and then had the audacity to invoke just war theory as a fig leaf. Kevin's read on the papal conflict: the Pope knows exactly what he's doing and is faithfully…

People in this episode

Host: Dr. Tripp Fuller

Guest: Kevin Carnahan

Topics covered

• just war theory
• Christian ethics
• theology
• war and peace
• Protestant ethics
• nuclear weapons
• drone warfare

Keywords

• just war theory
• Christian ethics
• theology
• nuclear weapons
• drone warfare
• Protestant ethics
• peace churches

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Central Methodist University

More episodes of Homebrewed Christianity

• There Was a Time When God Was Gods with Ilia Delio · June 9, 2026 · 1h 27m
• Religion Has a Physiology: Ilia & Tripp on Why Rituals Come Before Beliefs · June 2, 2026 · 1h 21m
• The Machine Is a God Image with Ilia Delio · May 30, 2026 · 1h 30m
• The Problem Is Not Poverty. It Is Wealth. w/ Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty · May 28, 2026 · 1h 21m
• Preaching in the WTF Zone: Leah Schade on Saying Something True When the News Will Not Stop · May 25, 2026 · 1h 10m
• The Darkly Radiant Struggle with Gary Dorrien · May 23, 2026 · 1h 27m