Drawing on resources from pragmatist thought allows religious ethicists to take account of the central role traditions play in the formation and development of moral concepts without thereby espousing moral relativism or becoming traditionalists. After giving an account of this understanding of the concept of tradition, I examine the ways in which understandings of tradition play out in two contemporary examples of tradition‐based ethics: works in comparative ethics of war by James Turner Johnson and John Kelsay. I argue that a pragmatist approach to tradition‐based ethics allows for a nuanced and flexible understanding of moral traditions, and one that holds great promise for international consensus‐building around shared ethical norms for the use of armed force.

Contemporary analyses of moral injury in war focus on its occurrence in American veterans who commit or witness acts contrary to their deeply held moral beliefs. Moral injuries suffered by noncombatants are largely absent from this discourse. I advocate for greater inclusion of the victim‐centered perspective in studies of moral injury in war. This perspective conceptualizes moral injury as the specific harm suffered when one's moral humanity is not recognized. Given that susceptibility to moral injury is part of moral personhood, failure to acknowledge noncombatants' moral injury represents failure to recognize their full and particular personhood and thus may inflict further moral injury. Centering noncombatants' moral injury strengthens the critical power of moral injury, enabling the identification of specific steps toward establishing just relationships and social trust to repair and prevent moral injury in noncombatants and combatants alike.

Timothy Fitzgerald's recent Discourse on Civility and Barbarity, represents an important development in his work. In this book he attempts to introduce a new argument into his overall project, illustrating a connection between the invention of "religion" that he has described elsewhere and a particular (English) colonial discourse. Th is essay argues that while Fitzgerald's argument shows promise, he has not yet fully succeeded in making this connection explicit. Confusion over his accounts of Locke's colonial interests, as well as the supposed universality of the discourse of civility and barbarity, indicate that Fitzgerald has more work to do. other prominent fi gures in the academic study of religion have made well-known the argument that "religion" and its attendant categories are invented and constructed rather than natural and self-evident. Th ese scholars have made strong arguments that binaries associated with the category of religion, such as religious/secular, religion/state and private/public, have become part of popular discourse as a result of such constructions, and have off ered varying analyses of the consequences of the widespread acceptance of these categories. Timothy Fitzgerald continues this project in his latest book, Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History of Religion and Related Categories (2007).

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Feminist critiques of intention challenge some aspects of traditional just war reasoning, including the criteria of right intention and discrimination (particularly as interpreted using the doctrine of double effect). I take note of these challenges and propose some directions just war reasoners might take in response. First, right intention can be evaluated more accurately by judging what actors in war actually do than by attempting to uncover inward dispositions. Assessing whether agents in war have taken due care to minimize foreseeable collateral damage, avoided intentional targeting of noncombatants, corrected previous mistakes in their later actions, and taken responsibility to repair unintended damage they cause are examples of ways in which just war reasoners can evaluate intention by looking at actions.