This primer on war and the Christian conscience, begins in an imaginary college classroom as students react to news that the draft has been reinstated. Why can't I finish college? asks one student. Why do I have to go? These urgent and personal questions, offer the entry to a clear and comprehensive outline of the basic Christian responses to the problem of war. As Fahey shows, the Christian tradition has supplied a variety of answers, including pacifism, just war teaching, the ethic of total war, and the vision of a world community. In the face of these different approaches, how are we to decide which one is right? And more basically, how does one go about forming one's personal conscience?
