NASHVILLE (BP) – The U.S. military’s strikes against Iran are morally justified, says a Southern Baptist ethicist and former Department of Defense official.
“Is there a sufficient just cause to warrant the action taken? I think there is, although it is a bit complex,” said Daniel Heimbach, senior research professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for the George H.W. Bush administration. The strikes are “warranted by a 47-year war with Iran, not of our choice, that has been perpetrated by them. You can characterize the attack last week as an effort to end it.”
An Iranian graduate student at Mississippi College (MC) called the American soldiers fighting in his country “brothers forever” because of their efforts to help the Iranian people. Hamid Tabrizi, who arrived in America last year to study at MC’s Center for Counterterrorism Studies, said he witnessed the Iranian regime murder peaceful demonstrators and torture Christians.
Meanwhile, the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) urged Southern Baptists to pray and evaluate the military strikes using just war theory, a centuries-old Christian framework for determining whether a war is morally justified.
“Southern Baptists have historically affirmed, in Article XVI of the Baptist Faith and Message, the principles of the just war tradition – a tradition rooted in Christian theology and an important ethical framework for evaluating modern armed conflict,” ERLC interim president Gary Hollingsworth said. “As Jesus’ words in Matthew 26 remind us, wars will take place, a heart-wrenching reminder of the consequences of the Fall. Because we live in a fallen world, affected by sin, armed conflict and wars are an unfortunate reality.”
Just war theory is a conglomeration of ideas articulated in the fifth century by North African theologian Augustine of Hippo and developed in the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas and others. The theory claims a war is morally justified if it is waged by a legitimate government for a just cause and with the aim of peace. War also must be a last resort and have a reasonable probability of success, according to just war theory.
Once a just war has begun, militaries must grant immunity to noncombatants and refrain from using inhumane weapons designed to cause unnecessary suffering, just war theory states.
SBC resolutions have addressed war and peace dozens of times, stretching from the Civil War to Israel’s war against the terrorist group Hamas. A 2024 resolution “on just war and the pursuit of peace” affirmed “the historic, Christian principles of the just war tradition.”
Affirming the Iran military strikes with just war theory runs contrary to some assessments from the evangelical left. The social justice advocacy group Sojourners opposed the Iran campaign under the headline, “Kings start wars. Christians stop them.” A leader of the group Red Letter Christians posted on Facebook that “attacking Iran is terribly wrong.”
But Heimbach says the Iran military campaign aligns with multiple tenets of just war theory. Strikes by the U.S. and Israel have a just cause because Iran has sought to annihilate both nations since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, he said.
Operation Epic Fury also is justified to end Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons and missiles that can deliver those weapons to the U.S., Heimbach said. American strikes were “a last resort aimed at reducing a national threat that was also an international threat.”
The war effort has utilized an appropriate level of force, aimed at restoring peace, and possesses a high probability of success, he said. Some opponents of the military campaign claim the Feb. 28 bombing of a girls’ school in southern Iran violates the principle of noncombatant immunity, but Heimbach disagrees.
“That’s a terrible tragedy, but it was not the intention of either Israel or the United States to target a girls’ school,” he said. The bombing could have occurred as unintended collateral damage, because of dated intelligence about bombing targets or from an Iranian weapon.
Tabrizi is glad someone stood up to the Iranian regime.
“I admire the American soldiers who have been with us in this fight,” he said, “in blood and sweat. We understand this is not an easy job, and we will be brothers forever in our blood.”
For Tabrizi, government oppression intensified some 20 years ago after he came to faith in Christ. One night secret agents infiltrated the underground church he attended and arrested the believers. “They were tortured,” he said, “especially the people who were the leaders of the church. Some of the people were tortured badly.” Providentially, Tabrizi was absent that night.
On another occasion, Tabrizi participated in a demonstration. “A very young guy next to me got shot in the head,” he said. “I have seen a lot of stuff like that.”
Still, Tabrizi has a “very contradictory feeling” about the current military conflict “because you are so happy that finally somebody has stood up to fight against them. But to the contrary, you are so concerned about what will happen next to your country.”
Douglas Carver, the North American Mission Board’s executive director of chaplaincy, agrees the conflict should be evaluated with just war theory. Yet even more important than evaluation, he said, is prayer.
“The first thing that always comes to my mind when our troops deploy into harm’s way is how we can pray for those directing a military campaign,” said Carver, a retired U.S. Army major general and chief of chaplains. “Pray for our national leaders, our congressional leaders, our commander-in-chief and all of his advisement capabilities.”
Believers also should pray the conflict will end quickly with minimal casualties, he said. Prayer is needed for American troops and their families, U.S. allies including Israel, the Iranian people, noncombatants in harm’s way and that American troops would be “moral and ethical in the decisions they are required to make in a combat situation.”
As reports of casualties emerge, Carver said, “I’m hoping and praying our chaplains are near those sites where they can offer our troops words of encouragement and enduring hope, pray with those who are wounded or struggling with combat and honor the fallen. Pray for our chaplains, who may be the last voice and prayer our troops hear as some of them go into eternity.”
The ERLC’s Hollingsworth echoed the call to prayer.
“The conflict developing in Iran over the past few days reminds us of the divisions and brokenness that surround us on this side of Heaven. Likewise, the 47 years of pain inflicted on the Iranian people and their Middle Eastern neighbors by the Islamic Republic’s regime remind us of the forces of evil at work in this world,” he said.
“We pray for the safety of our service members overseas and those living in the region. We pray the Lord would provide a hedge of protection around civilians and our brothers and sisters in Christ in the region, including our missionaries on the ground,” Hollingsworth said. “We ask the Lord to give our nation’s leaders wisdom as they discern how to proceed. We also pray for a lasting peace in the Middle East and an end to all conflicts, and that the Prince of Peace will be glorified in the region and all over the world.”
This story was originally published by Baptist Press.
