"Does the public really understand in a deep way what the moral burdens of war are? I don't think so," says philosopher, ethicist, and psychoanalyst Nancy Sherman.

"Soldiers carry all the moral weight of war, and we carry very little, and we need to share that moral burden by realizing that they are our surrogates," says the author of "The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers."

"I think King would make a case for the principles and practices of nonviolence even in settling disputes between nations," says Cheryl Sanders, professor of Christian ethics at Howard University School of Divinity and senior pastor at Third Street Church of God in Washington, DC.

Revisit our November 2007 Web-only essay on the spiritual and moral pain of war. "My sense is that this is a fundamentally religious issue," says clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, a combat trauma expert.

At the memorial for the American dead of Vietnam, writes Lorrie Goldensohn, we meet as a community and are made to see that "we are always at one with the living and the dead."

Heschel is widely considered to be one of the greatest American religious figures of the last century - a rabbi, theologian, social activist and mystic admired by Christians as well as Jews. He would have been 101 years old this month.

Benedicta Cipolla writes about the emotional, psychological, and spiritual battles soldiers in war must fight in addition to the physical dangers of combat.

As chaplain of Yale University in the '60s and '70s, Coffin be came one of the best known -- and most controversial -- figures not only against the war, but also in the civil rights movement and the campaign for a freeze on nuclear weapons. Throughout his life, Coffin preached that social justice was central to Christianity.