Meanwhile : Holy war revisited

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Meanwhile : Holy war revisited

Published: 08 Apr. 2026, 00:05

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Shin June-bong

The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo.

Umberto Eco (1932-2016), the Italian novelist and polymath, argued in an essay published by The New York Times in 2015 that many of the world’s major wars have originated from monotheistic religions. Reflecting on the medieval Crusades, he noted with irony that “European barbarians” who had converted to Christianity launched wars to convert Muslims who worshiped the same God. The essay, also published in full by the JoongAng Ilbo on April 8, 2015, was written in response to the terrorist attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo by Islamist extremists earlier that year.

Officials and media representatives gather around the damaged building of the Shahid Beheshti University following a strike in Tehran on April 4. U.S.-Israeli strikes have hit more than 30 universities across Iran since the war broke out in late February, Iran's science minister said on April 4. [AFP/YONHAP]

Eco’s warning about the entanglement of faith and violence has regained relevance as the Iran war, now in its sixth week, is increasingly framed in religious terms by figures within the U.S. defense establishment.

Christian history has not been devoid of peaceful periods. Early Christians, persecuted under the Roman Empire, emphasized peace in accordance with the New Testament. However, after Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in A.D. 313 through the Edict of Milan and Emperor Theodosius declared it the state religion a few decades later in 380, pacifism gradually gave way to the doctrine of the “just war.”

This theory holds that participation in war can be morally justified if the cause is legitimate and unavoidable, and it emerged after Christians, under imperial protection, could no longer remain detached from the state’s military actions. Notably, Augustine, a foundational thinker of the Augustinian order to which Pope Leo XIV once belonged before his election last year, systematized this doctrine.

More controversial is the concept of “holy war,” which asserts that war may be waged for a higher cause, even in the absence of direct aggression. The Crusades are often cited as the clearest example of a holy war.

Within Protestant traditions, the just war theory is generally regarded as the most widely accepted position among pacifism, the just war doctrine and the concept of a holy war. The Catholic Church, through its catechism, also recognizes the legitimacy of self-defense under strict conditions, such as the risk of clear and lasting damage and the exhaustion of all other means, and places it within the framework of the just war theory.

The difficulty lies in the blurred boundary between a just war and a holy war. Conflicts are rarely the result of unilateral fault. Against this backdrop, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s remark that “America is facing a crusade moment” risks encouraging interpretations that verge on a holy war.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.