BOB ABERNETHY, host: In Pakistan, the U.S. government’s use of armed drones to target militants continues to strain relations between the countries. In the past, the administration has avoided talking about its drone program, but on Monday (April 30), a top White House official strongly defended use of the controversial technology. At the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, called weaponized drones both legal and ethical and said their use is consistent with the country’s right to defend itself:

John Brennan: “There is nothing in international law that bans the use of remotely piloted aircraft for this purpose or that prohibits us from using lethal force against our enemies outside of an active battlefield.”

ABERNETHY: For more on this, Kim Lawton is here. She is managing editor of this program. We are joined by Stephen L. Carter, a professor at Yale Law School and author of The Violence of Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama. He joins us from New Haven. Professor Carter, welcome to you.

PROFESSOR STEPHEN CARTER (Yale Law School): Thank you.

ABERNETHY: John Brennan said that the use of drones is legal, perfectly legal. You agree with that?

CARTER: I think the administration is right. We’re a nation at war, and in time of war a belligerent certainly has the right to target the leaders of the other side who are in the chain of command, and that’s what we are doing.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: But if the battlefield in essence here has become the entire globe, how does that change the moral calculus of when and how the U.S. uses force justly?

CARTER: Well, I think you’re right that the more important questions are the ethical ones, and one of the ethical questions is how big the battlefield is, because the administration claims the right to target leaders wherever they may show up in the world. A second moral problem that arises is the problem of civilian casualties. Even if we have the right to go after leaders of Al Qaeda, we have to do it, both as a matter of law and as a matter of ethics, in a way that minimizes civilian casualties. The administration doesn’t actually count civilian casualties, so we don’t know how many there have really been. Mr. Brennan says that there have been times that they haven’t actually taken the shot because civilians have been in the line of fire, and if so, I’m glad to hear that, but I still think that we’d be better off if we could have a conversation in which we could talk more about the civilians who are killed. And there’s another ethical problem that we don’t spend enough time thinking about, and that’s the way that the drone war goes away from the front pages. It’s not on the evening news. In Iraq, we’re on the evening news. In Afghanistan, it’s on the evening news. With the drone war, it’s done in secret, it’s clandestine, it’s hard to keep track, and we really should know what’s being done in our name.

LAWTON: What kind of moral oversight would you like to see taking place surrounding this?

CARTER: At minimum, we members of the public ought to demand as much disclosure as possible from both our government, and also that the media cover the drone wars as closely as we cover other wars. There’s no greater and more difficult moral decision a nation makes than killing other people, and it’s quite important, if we are going to do that, that it remain in the forefront of our consciousness, that we not be distracted by other issues.

ABERNETHY: How do we know how many civilian casualties there are? Isn’t that a big danger, that this—that the use of drones will spill over and there will be a lot of civilian casualties?

CARTER: Because the administration doesn’t tell us when there are civilian casualties, or how many, it’s very difficult to keep track. We tend to rely on sources on the ground, some of whom have their own agendas and want to exaggerate it for one reason or another. But if we don’t know how many civilians are dying, we really can’t give a good assessment of the ethical principles that are underlying these attacks.

ABERNETHY: Professor, just very quickly, why now? Why did the administration come out with this now?

CARTER: There have been a lot of voices, including my own, that have been urging an open discussion of this. Because the administration has not acknowledged in the past that this drone program even exists, it’s hard to have public conversation about it. Now we can have an ethical conversation about it, and it’s high time that we do so.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to Kim Lawton of Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and to Stephen Carter of Yale University Law School.

Rev. Fred Luter, Jr., pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, is expected to become the first African-American president of the Southern Baptist Convention this June. R & E managing editor and correspondent Kim Lawton will be doing a profile of him in the next few weeks. During her interview with him on March 24, she asked Rev. Luter, specifically in the wake of the Trayvon Martin case, how he assesses race relations in America. Here is an excerpt from their conversation:

KIM LAWTON: How do you look at the state of the racial situation in America?

REV. FRED LUTER: No, you wouldn’t have thought that when President Obama was elected as president of the United States of America, you would have thought that that would have ended the racial divide in our country. But unfortunately what it has shown is that in some cases it’s widened the racism in our country. There are a lot of situations just happened here not too long ago here in the Louisiana area of, there was an art project at a local school, and they have these pictures of hunting season, and there was a duck on one side, I think a deer on one side, and in the middle was a picture of President Obama with a hole in his head. And that was in a local high school. And stuff like that just shouldn’t happen. And you know I don’t agree with all the president’s politics, I don’t agree with all the decisions that he made, but one of the things that bothers me as Americans is that the disrespect that this president has had to deal with. It should not be. It should not be. You know, we’ve had presidents, you know, from Reagan to Clinton to Bush Sr. to Bush Jr., to Clinton, we don’t always agree with them. I mean, that’s just a given. But there has always been a respect for the office. This is the first time that I can remember a president was giving a speech, State of the Union speech, and someone shouts out from the gallery “you lie!” That has never happened, never with all the presidents, with all the lies that all of them have told. That has never happened. But it’s happened with this president, and so things like that reminds me that, you know, we’ve come a long way as a nation where there’s a racial issue, but we still have a long, long, long way to go. A lot of the things that this president has faced has not necessarily been because of his politics or his decisions, but unfortunately it’s just only been because of the color of his skin, and that’s what lets me know that we have a long, long way to go in America as far as racial reconciliation.

LAWTON: And as far as non-African American people are concerned, I mean do you run into white people who want to think, well, it’s all done now? It’s over with? You know, whatever happened in the past is done and don’t really want to confront what might still be bubbling there?

LUTER: Sure, sure, and if that was true across the board then I say fine, let’s do it. But there’s so many instances that are coming up, like yesterday here in Louisiana one of the Republican candidates for president was at a shooting range shooting. I don’t know if you all saw this on the news like that, but as he’s shooting at these targets, someone yelled out from the gallery, “Look at one of them as President Obama.” Come on y’all. This is just, that shouldn’t be. Not in America. He’s our president. I don’t agree with everything he says, don’t agree with all his decisions, but respect the office. And so if we didn’t have those kind of instances, those kind of situations, I would say, yeah, come on, let that go, it’s time to move on. But as long as those kind of things keep happening, and the Trayvon Martin thing in the Florida situation like that, we have to deal with it.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Familiar social issues led the religion news this week. In Washington, the Obama administration made a significant change in its policy on insurance coverage of contraception by religiously affiliated organizations. Any employer with a religious objection will not be required to offer or pay for contraceptive services but insurance companies would have to offer those services to women free of charge. This change follows a huge controversy over the administrations original plan which US Catholic bishops and several other religious groups said would have violated their constitutionally-guaranteed religious freedom. Republican candidates for president also weighed in on the controversy. Mitt Romney became the latest GOP candidate to accuse the president of waging “an assault on religion”. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have launched similar attacks. On Tuesday, support from religious and social conservatives helped Santorum win the Missouri primary and caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado. Following those victories, Santorum traveled to Texas where he spoke to more than 100 Christian ministers about his Catholic faith.

We want to explore the contraception debate further. Kim Lawton our managing editor has been following the issue which produced for many people Kim, as you know, this terrible bind between having to obey the law on the one hand or follow their churches’ teachings and their own consciences on the other.

KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor): Well, that’s what the big debate was. The original policy allowed exemptions for most churches, but for these religiously affiliated institutions like hospitals or Catholic universities or charitable organizations—they felt like they were being forced to pay for something that their church says is wrong, and so they did feel that there was this bind, which is why there was this outcry.

ABERNETHY: And so what does the compromise say?

LAWTON: And with this solution, as the Obama administration calls it, they say they’re accommodating two core principles, the core principle of giving women access to affordable preventative health care, which they say includes contraceptive services. That was a core principle for the administration. But it also, they say, now accommodates religious liberty concerns so…

ABERNETHY: They also called it a public health issue.

LAWTON: Yes, and they say that, you know, they want women to have access to these contraceptive services as a matter of public health, so now the insurance companies will directly offer those to the employees, and the religiously affiliated institutions won’t have to provide those or pay for it.

ABERNETHY: Or refer?

LAWTON: Or refer people to it. It would be the responsibility of the insurance company, and so, you know, this is their way of getting around it. There were a lot of people in the religious community, especially in the mainline Protestant community that said they supported the original mandate, but for, you know, some people, including moderate to liberal Catholics, they had a problem with it.

ABERNETHY: And so is it all solved now? Is everybody happy?

LAWTON: Well, there were a lot of hard feelings that were generated in all of this—and again this notion that the Obama administration is in some way at war with religion or at war with the Catholic Church. That was the slogan that was out there. As we’ve reported, a lot of the Republican candidates certainly jumped on that some might say, the president says, you know, cynically for political gain. That issue’s still out there. Is there some sort of, you know, growing secularism or attack on religious exercise in this country? And so I think the administration does have, you know, some repairing to do. A lot of moderate and liberal Catholics who supported this president, who supported the health care bill when it was going through Congress, they felt a little betrayed. I’m hearing from people who say, you know, yeah, the majority of Catholic women may use birth control, and yeah, a lot of people disagree maybe with the church’s policy, but this issue is bigger than that in their view. And so, you know, for them they were pleased that the administration made this compromise, but there was some damage that was done.

ABERNETHY: And we will be hearing more about this as the campaign goes on.

LAWTON: Well. certainly I think a lot of the Republicans aren’t going to let this go. They are going to keep at it. They see it as a good issue, a good issue to battle the president with.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.

Should the American people harness their admiration for the military to revitalize the virtues of democratic engagement? Can we harness this admiration without undermining our ability to keep our militaristic overconfidence in check, especially in the face of increasing economic and military competition from China and beyond?

President Obama’s State of the Union address frames his understanding of the challenges and opportunities we face with the suggestion that emulating the virtues of America’s armed forces would enable us to become a more cohesive and mission-focused community. The challenges he notes are well-known—economic stagnation, declining standards of living, gross inequality, and decreasing confidence in our power both to improve our lot at home and maintain our influence abroad. For the president, however, America’s economic and geopolitical prospects are better than many believe. What we should really worry about is the increasingly prominent role that political cynicism and cultural and religious difference-mongering play in our political life. As the president rightly understands, cynicism about Washington rarely translates into energetic local efforts to address the inequalities in our midst or to put constructive pressure on our representatives for “nation building” here at home. With noteworthy understatement, the president suggests that our tendency to “obsess over [our] differences” is undermining our ability constructively to confront our challenges and opportunities. The problem is as much about our political culture as it is our political policies. The president suggests that the military provides the nation and its leaders a much-needed example of joining together in trust to accomplish a common mission.

What are we to make of this claim? To an extent, President Obama is simply calling for more cooperation in American politics. This is a valuable point, as far as it goes, but is uninteresting. If we take President Obama to suggest something bigger, then we may understand him as echoing ideas from the roots of American progressivism and replaying some of its dilemmas. John Dewey once argued that Americans were the inheritors of a democratic faith in our ability to redress social problems through conversation and cooperation. This faith, Dewey argued, is implicit in our very way of doing things, despite the still-powerful, obfuscating influences of superstition, moralism, and ideological rigidity. What we need, Dewey claimed, is to make this faith “explicit and militant,” to embrace it self-consciously as a source of our common resolve (John Dewey, A Common Faith (Yale University Press, 1934, p. 87)). Made militant, democratic faith can propel what William James once called “the moral equivalent of war”—the marshaling of civic passions for a cohesive social effort against the sorts of inequality, hopelessness, and degradation many Americans now face. For Dewey, however, democratic militancy was deeply distrustful of American militarism. War, Dewey recognized, can lead to forms of social and political discipline that are antithetical to democratic cooperation and exchange. For the democratic tradition descended from Dewey, therefore, the challenge of American life is to identify forms of democratic solidarity that do not feed off militarism abroad.

President Obama plays on these ideas—with a twist. For the president, the end of the war in Iraq, and our decreasing commitment in Afghanistan, provides more than a much-needed infusion of investment dollars that we could turn toward more productive purposes. It allows the nation to turn its militant energies from imperial policing abroad and refocus them at home. By nursing our admiration for our military’s virtues, he suggests, we can transform our beleaguered democracy into a more cohesive and mission-focused political community. Further, we can transform our admiration for the military vocation into a greater estimation of our own vocation as citizens.

The realism of this suggestion is immensely attractive. Rather than condemning the militaristic energies that got us into Iraq and Afghanistan, the president attempts to redirect those energies to more democratic purposes. William James would have been proud. Yet there are dangers here. The president’s vision of a militantly democratic community—a community characterized by at least some of the martial virtues—depends implicitly on the very militarism that the president was widely admired for criticizing. The mission-focused social cohesion that he seems to propose is fed on a diet of military exploits, of Navy SEALs working as a team to kill terrorists in far-off places.

Unless the president is merely cheerleading for more “teamwork” in American politics—an idea scarcely worth hearing—he is suggesting we buy an expanded sense of and passion for citizenship with the coin of militaristic enthusiasm. Instead of taking the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an opportunity to rethink the vice of militaristic overconfidence, President Obama proposes simply to reduce American military action to a minor drama that gives the larger drama of domestic democracy its energy. As long as the military drama remains minor—for example, with small special operations units engaging in targeted strikes—it provides the necessary thrill without provoking the more destructive forms of solidarity to which militarized societies are prone.

The problem with this view, as I see it, is that, once the bitter lessons of the Bush-era wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are old news, there will be little to prevent an American society fed by militaristic enthusiasm from giving in to the temptations of military power. Especially in future periods of uncertainty and threat, a political society that sustains itself through an embrace of martial valor will seek to discipline itself in ways more in keeping with war than democratic ideals.

Democratic citizenship undoubtedly requires courage, selflessness, and teamwork. It takes courage to make yourself vulnerable to viewpoints with which you seriously disagree. It takes selflessness to make the care and upkeep of the community a priority alongside the demands of earning a living for oneself and for a family. It takes teamwork to organize people effectively to make a difference in the life of a community, especially in the face of entrenched interests. But one may well question whether it is plausible or desirable to promote these virtues by harnessing the nation’s admiration for the military.

Howard Rhodes has taught at the University of Iowa and is currently is a J.D. candidate at Duke University School of Law. His research interests include the ethics of war, international humanitarian law, and religion and international relations.

One of the more boisterous moments of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech came when he stated his belief in what Abraham Lincoln believed before him: “That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” The House chamber erupted with applause and shouts of approval—none louder than from the mouths of Republicans.

But this moment was little more than another lesson in party difference. The speech actually confirmed Obama’s belief that there is a lot people cannot do better by themselves. They cannot fund massive and necessary public works projects; they cannot fund equally massive research breakthroughs like those connected to natural gas extraction; they cannot be counted on to levy fair taxes; and, as he observed several times, they cannot be trusted to uphold sound financial rules and practices.

In contrast, the GOP response from Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels confirmed that Republicans believe there is little government can do better than the individual: “government is meant to serve the people rather than supervise them.” This is Party Politics 101. To borrow from Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, Democrats have faith in the “better angels” of the federal government while Republicans trust in the “better angels of our nature.”

Both parties trust in the better angels of the military. Obama opened and closed the speech with resounding praise for the military’s teamwork and self-sacrifice, and he called for Congress and America to emulate both traits. There is much to admire about the armed forces and the veterans who serve in them. Yet we should honor their service without elevating them beyond reproach. Otherwise we patronize our veterans—as Obama did when he said, “they exceed all expectations;” lack “personal ambition”; “don’t obsess over their differences.” We neglect the reality that “war is hell. ” And we obscure the undemocratic nature of the military. The democratic system may at times feel like hell, but it is one made from the luxuries of debate, disagreement, compromise, and representative government, not chain of command and direct orders.

By Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, after four years of bloody civil war, he no longer spoke of the “better angels of our nature.” Instead he asked for “malice toward none” and “charity for all” in an effort “to bind up the nation’s wounds” and establish “a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Our crisis is ideological civil war, and like his predecessor Obama urged the nation toward political cooperation in service to an “America built to last.” But he argued that its longevity depends upon whether we “settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well while a growing number of Americans barely get by” or for a country “where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.” This economic wound will not heal without profound disagreement—that is the nature of democracy—but Obama hopes that we might bind it charitably and without malice.

Our disagreements about it and the other major issues of the day have devolved, however, into silliness, even absurdity. We are a nation of finger pointers, unrelenting, disingenuous, and uncharitable in laying blame at the feet of others for the political and economic disarray of our times. But, as Obama has argued throughout his presidency, if Democrats and Republicans see angels when they look in the mirror and demons when they look at each other, then we cannot expect that the “state of our Union will always be strong.”

The scariest commentary on our natures is that there are national leaders and everyday Americans who believe in political angels and demons, and there are those who do not but allow the charade to go on anyway.

Andrew Finstuen is director of the Honors College and associate professor of history at Boise State University.

President Obama’s State of the Union speech marks a major shift in strategy for the Democratic Party. During the 2008 campaign, Democrats caught the religion bug from the GOP. Apparently they have finally killed it. Obama is back on message. Echoing Franklin Roosevelt, he preached economic liberty to the poor and justice to the oppressed without pandering to religious prejudices. For decades Republican leaders have used faith to cloak exploitative economic policies that favored the rich and the powerful. No more. I am encouraged that going into the 2012 campaign the president is not going to let them set the terms of the debate.

Matthew Avery Sutton is an associate professor of history at Washington State University and the author of Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Harvard University Press, 2007).

BOB ABERNETHY, host: All week, financial experts in and out of Washington warned of the catastrophic consequences if Congress does not raise the country’s debt ceiling by August 2. After that deadline, the government would not be able to pay all its obligations for the first time in history. Officials warned that that could trigger financial chaos and vast hardship. By week’s end, there were signs of a temporary fix to the debt ceiling problem, but no agreement on a long-term deal on spending and taxes, which many had wanted, including the president.

President Obama: And I think it’s important for the American people that everybody in this town set politics aside, that everybody in this town sets our individual interests aside, and we try to do some tough stuff.

ABERNETHY: In the midst of the financial debate, where are the churches? Can religious leaders influence the politicians? Author and activist Reverend Jim Wallis is the editor of Sojourners magazine. His is a leading religious voice in political debate. Jim, welcome.

JIM WALLIS (President, Sojourners): Thanks, Bob.

ABERNETHY: There are two big questions that people have been arguing about in this town. One is the debt ceiling. The other is long-term. The debt ceiling is something has to be done now, but long term, how do we bring the country’s spending and taxes in line? You’ve been working very hard lobbying to protect government programs that help the poor. How are you doing?

WALLIS: Well, I think I’m happy with what we’ve seen so far. We started with a provocative question: What would Jesus cut? That got attention to the question. Then we fasted for almost a month in Lent. That brought more attention to it. Then we formed a “circle of protection”: Roman Catholic bishops, Salvation Army, National Association of Evangelicals, many people, not the religious left here, almost everyone saying that you can’t balance the budget on the backs of the poorest people. And I think that voice is now being heard. We’ve talked to Republicans, Democrats, and the White House right along on this.

ABERNETHY: You are trying, I think, to get a meeting with a lot of the players in this?

WALLIS: We have been meeting right along.

ABERNETHY: Well, what do you say to them?

WALLIS: We say, you know, there are principles here, that a budget is a moral document and must be evaluated by those from the bottom up. That’s our point of view. And the common good has to outweigh ideological political battles in this town. But we also ask them what their faith means. If they are people of faith, and many say they are, what their faith means, their moral compass, how they decide things.

ABERNETHY: You take that argument, what does your faith mean, to Republicans in the House who insist on no compromise?

WALLIS: We sure do. The Catholics, evangelicals, Republican side, Democratic side. Now we don’t get involved, Bob, in which bill we are going to support. We don’t lobby for bills. But we say there are principles here. You can’t just have the benefits all go to corporations and wealthy people and nothing for those who are most vulnerable.

ABERNETHY: But the common good. This idea of the common good, very important in religious and ethics. How do you define it, and who says what the common good is?

WALLIS: Well, this week we’ve organized 5,000 pastors to say let’s look at the real people in our congregations and our communities, what’s going to happen to them, as opposed to the Washington, D.C. question, who’s up, who’s down, who’s going to be the Speaker of the House next time, who’ll win the next election. The common good is about the real people, the people we have to always take into account. And pastors, I think, I wanted to talk to people whose job it is to have re-read the Bible to get to the focus on who the real people are here.

ABERNETHY: But this argument about how to cut spending, what could be cut, how to raise income, this is a very technical, very political argument. How do people, how do religious leaders feel? Do you feel that you have the ability to get in and be influential in something as technical as this debate?

WALLIS: You know, the details are technical and not difficult, really. Once you agree to some principles, the details can be worked out by the politicians. We say “let justice roll down like waters.” Let the politicians work out the plumbing here. You know, we don’t get into all the details. We’re saying there are principles here. If this is going to focus on targeting poor people, we say that’s wrong. It’s got to be shared sacrifice here. How you do it, this really isn’t rocket science. We could solve this if the principles were clear from the start.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine.

WALLIS: Thank you, Bob.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops gathered in Seattle this week for their annual spring meeting. A key part of the agenda was reviewing sex abuse prevention policies they adopted in 2002. The bishops passed minor revisions but said overall the guidelines have “served the church well.” Still, there are lingering questions about compliance and accountability.

Joining me now is Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program. Kim, are the bishops really following those 2002 guidelines?

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: Well, they say the majority of bishops are following the guidelines, but there are a couple who are not, and that has lead to some pretty high-profile scandals—one in Philadelphia, another one most recently that, last couple weeks in Missouri, where the local bishop had to apologize for a priest that was arrested on child pornography charges.

ABERNETHY: And whether a bishop has to follow those 2002 guidelines is up to the bishop. There’s no way that the other bishops can make him do that, right?

LAWTON: Well, they are nonbinding, and the bishops say that they don’t have the authority to discipline or impose penalties, that only the pope can discipline a bishop. So therefore they say this has to be part of the “fraternal correction,” and it is sort of voluntary.

ABERNETHY: The Southern Baptists, Southern Baptist Convention, also gathered this week in Phoenix and took steps to make their denomination more diverse, more ethnic diversity. It elected an African American from New Orleans as a first vice-president, on track to become perhaps the president of the Southern Baptist Convention in a year.

LAWTON: Perhaps.

ABERNETHY: Perhaps. So there’s something going on there.

LAWTON: Well, they are trying to reach out, I think. There has been some apologies for racism in the past. But they are trying to reach out as well. There was some concern that they have been declining in baptisms and even a slight decline in membership. They’re still the largest Protestant denomination, of course.

ABERNETHY: Sixteen million, is it?

LAWTON: Sixteen million.

ABERNETHY: I was thinking about this Libya thing and the Congress putting pressure on the president. There’s a relationship, isn’t there, to a religious tradition?

LAWTON: Well, the political debate is whether or not the president has the authority to authorize and continue the military effort in Libya without congressional authorization, and the just war tradition also says that in order for military action to be just it has to have the sanction of the proper authorities, and so there is that moral connection that the political debate is also sort of tied to, and there’s been another debate in the religious community I’ve been watching as well. I’m seeing increasing numbers of religious conservatives raising concerns about the Libya action. Many of them had been supportive in other military efforts, but on this one raising concerns on moral issues, economic moral issues, raising questions about whether or not it’s moral to spend that much money—over $700 million dollars—on this effort.

ABERNETHY: Kim, many thanks.