Book Review: To Stop a Slaughter: Just War and the Book of Mormon
An intriguing entry in the ongoing conversation about Just War Theory
While I don’t fancy myself an expert reviewer, I can appreciate good scholarship when I see it. I’d like to offer a review and endorsement of a worthy entry in the ongoing debate in the field of just war theory. The book is To Stop a Slaughter: Just War and the Book of Mormon.
The author is Morgan Deane. Morgan Deane is a free-lance author, military historian, and former US Marine. He earned a Bachelors degree from Southern Virginia University, a Master of Arts from Norwich and studied in the War Studies PhD program at Kings College London. Proficient in Chinese, he is the author of many texts about the Book of Mormon, Chinese history, and military theory. His latest book is Beyond Sun-Tzu: Classical Chinese Debates on War and Statecraft. You can find his commentary and analysis in Real Clear Defense and Religion, The Washington Examiner, Strategy and Tactics Magazine, and many more.
A brief summary of just war theory and why it matters is appropriate. In a nutshell, Just War Theory (bellum iustum) is a doctrine that seeks to justify the morally ethical use of war, or provide a set of ethical criteria for elucidating when war is morally just. It is situated in the larger framework of international law, and it is a doctrine that is vociferously debated among experts, ethicists, theologians, and policymakers. It is a significant subject of study for military leaders. Significant questions include: When is it morally permissible to go to war (jus ad bellum)? What is the proper way to conduct war itself (jus in bello)? As you can see, these are important questions.
It’s interesting to see that a modern volume of scripture offers substantive answers and insights into these moral questions. I refer to the Book of Mormon, which is the flagship, central scripture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Rather large portions of the book detail war and conflict between competing societies or factions, and the details found in these chapters of the book offer some approaches and doctrines that directly touch on the concept of the Just War. Because of its extraordinary relevance, it’s not at all unreasonable to study the Book of Mormon’s contribution to Just War Theory.
As the footnotes attest, Morgan Deane is steeped in all the philosophical and academic foundations needed to understand Just War Theory. The roots of the issue go back to antiquity, as Deane shows us with citations to St. Augustine and then moving on to Thomas Aquinas. He ties it all together with citations to modern philosophical scholars such as Michael Walzer.
But intriguingly, Deane uses his Chinese language background to share some ancient Chinese wisdom that directly bears on the topic, showing us Westerners that we were not the only ones with a monopoly on either war or fathoming the idea of a just war. Why is this important? It shows that ancient societies — which are reflected in the Book of Mormon if you accept its central premise that it is a record of a long-lost and fallen people from antiquity — grappled with most, if not all, of the same issues that we moderns do. We can learn from the ancient Chinese as well as from scripture.
The relevance of all this should be obvious to any of us that pay the slightest attention to the news. The shocking barbarity of Hamas on 10/7 of 2023, the ongoing meat grinder of the Ukraine/Russia conflict, civil wars raging in Sudan and in Myanmar, etc., show us that there is very little “peace on earth.” Many in Europe, for instance, are sounding the alarm that the world is, at this very moment, lurching toward World War III. If that’s true, then we should understand what would make a just war appropriate, and if waging just war is vital, then we should understand what modern scripture has to say about our very modern dilemmas.
Please go to Amazon and check out Morgan Deane’s book.