The Work of Kelly Denton-Borhaug

The Sacrificial Metaphor at the Heart of War:
The Work of Kelly Denton-Borhaug

Essays, presentations and videos by or about Kelly Denton-Borhaug appear below. Each can be accessed by clicking the title.

Kelly Denton-Borhaug

The sacrificial war narrative, Denton says, is our “national story.” Sacrifice and the American state are “inseparably intertwined.” The sacrificial metaphor at the heart of citizenship—inextricably tied to war—has incredible power, all the more so because most citizens are “unconscious of its active impact on our lives.”

According to Denton, most citizens are “blithely unaware” of the sacrificial war culture that shapes our understanding of citizenship. The extent to which the sacrificial metaphor pervades our thinking makes it so ubiquitous as to reside largely “off the radar screen of overt awareness and consciousness.”

But off the radar screen no more. The purpose of Library of Social Science’s “space of freedom” is to provide a place where it is possible to know what previously had been unknown. We can breathe a sigh of relief, and begin re-writing history.

Political forms of violence are not evolutionary adaptations, nor expressions of an aggressive instinct or even of a “death drive.” Rather, as Denton has discovered, warfare revolves around worshipping the ideal of sacrificial death; attachment to the idea that a nation becomes transcendent to the extent that human beings are willing to die for it.

Rev. Kelly Denton-Borhaug, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. She holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. Her teaching and scholarly interests include Christian theology and ethics with a particular focus on the ethics of models of redemption in liberation theologies. She is the author US War-culture, Sacrifice and Salvation.

Essays and Presentations by Kelly Denton-Borhaug

• Sacrificial “Linguistic Subterfuge,” and the Times We’re In
  (Guest Newsletter)
  In our time, it seems that the only words we have to speak about the wounds of war are steeped in sacrifice. Our forgetful era is characterized by seemingly unaware repetitions of what poet Wilfred Owen described as ‘the Old Lie.’ We should stop and think about the spectacle of these sacrificial rationalizations that mostly are met with a resounding lack of critical appraisal. Is there really nothing more to be said after hearing for the millionth time, ‘it is sweet to die (or be wounded) for one’s country?’
• Sacrifice, American Exceptionalism and War-Culture
  (Review Essay of Hauerwas, War and the American Difference)
  Why are Americans “so easy with war”? In War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity, Stanley Hauerwas takes up the challenge to probe and analyze this conundrum, and set forth an alternative. Here I lay out the argument of Hauerwas’ book and highlight how and why so much of this is compelling and timely; but I also will discuss why I take a different path in terms of Hauerwas’ theological response to the reality he describes.
• U.S. War Culture, Sacrifice & Salvation (Video)
  Lecture given at The 1st Annual IntelliGen Conference on Religion & Violence, April 11, 2015 at Moravian Theological Seminary.
  
  

Review Essay of Denton-Borhaug’s Book
U.S. War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation

• Call for Review Essay of Kelly Denton-Borhaug’s book U.S. War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation
  Denton-Borhaug states that “blood sacrifice is at the heart of war culture’s and the warrior’s religiosity.” Yet—the human resort to sacrifice is so ubiquitous as to reside “largely off the radar screen of awareness and consciousness,” making the analysis of sacrifice more difficult, yet all the more important.
• What Should We Call Fallen Warriors? Review Essay of Kelly Denton-Borhaug’s book U.S. War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation by David Weddle
  Denton-Borlaug argues that references to combat deaths as “necessary” sacrifices are drawn from centuries of Christian interpretations of the death of Jesus as required for salvation, and transform war into a sacred enterprise devoted to saving the nation from its enemies. She believes that until such language is replaced by more neutral rhetoric, we will never escape the delusion that war is the necessary, even “transcendental,” means to ensure national security.