Christian ethics, actors, and diplomacy: Mediating universalist pretentions

While the theme of this issue of International Journal is the future of diplomacy, indicating new trends and the instantiation of new forms, actors, and issues, the relationship between Christianity and diplomacy is anything but new. Peeling back the secularist assumptions of international politics demonstrates the degree to which religious and in particular Christian actors, ignored for much of the 20th century, have always been and continue to be part and parcel of diplomatic practice. Nevertheless, it is still extremely important to ask what types of religious diplomatic practices are occurring currently as opposed to the past. Christianity’s legacy forms a prominent, though relatively unexamined, component of the history of western diplomacy. It also has a historically complicated relationship with state sovereignty, the foundational international institution that makes modern diplomacy possible. Christian guidelines have long helped to construct the foundation for western understandings of the goals to be achieved in diplomatic practice, including the legitimate use of violence and forms of international intervention. Augustinian formulations shaped modern definitions of jus ad bellum and jus in bello, the laws of war and laws in war, respectively. Christian ethical debates, divisions, and actions shaped the creation of the nation-state system and the ideas of the United States’s “founding fathers,” as well as supranational and international forms of governance. In other words, Christian debates about the nature of sovereignty versus universalist projects address the essence of traditional diplomacy: the question of how “estrangement”—or the inside-outside problem of world politics—is mediated.