What we have here is a news-you-can-use explainer on a controversial topic that comes from a source that, for some readers, will automatically be controversial.

The headline: “Why terrorists aren’t freedom fighters.” The source is the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest non-Catholic religious body.

Ah, but if you follow SBC politics, you know that many on the political and cultural right now believe that the ERLC is kind of “woke” when it comes to issues of this kind. For other readers, the SBC is the SBC and that is that. I would suggest that it helps to contrast the ERLC staff’s material with, let’s say, “just war” thoughts from the Catholic left (care of the Jesuits at America magazine).

Also, the “one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” debate looms over the results of this year’s “top stories” poll from the Religion News Association (Bobby Ross, Jr., summary here).

Here a view clips from the ERLC thinker. It’s always interesting when Southern Baptists get involved in debates that include Latin terms (“jus ad bellum”). Thus, let’s jump down to the section on the “moral requirements for going to war.” This isn’t the whole list of conditions, of course:

The primary difference is how they align with the criteria of the just war tradition. First, let’s measure them against the jus ad bellum, the moral requirement for going to war:

1. Just Cause: Like nation-states, non-state actors may have just and proper reasons for going to war. For example, they may be acting in self-defense to prevent genocide or acting to restore human rights wrongly denied.

2. Proportionate Cause: Again, like established nation-states, non-state actors could go to war to prevent more evil and suffering than their warfare is expected to cause.

3. Right Intention: Non-state actors may also have the right intentions for going to war. They could, for instance, be motivated by Christian love and pursuit of justice instead of an illegitimate intention to go to war, such as revenge.

4. Right Authority: There is nothing inherently special about a nation-state that gives them a special status as the right authority. However, this criterion poses a special hurdle for non-state actors since what would constitute a right authority for them is often unclear. …

5. Reasonable Chance of Success: This is the primary criterion that works against the modern terrorist engaging in a just war. The use of terrorist tactics tends to lower the chances of success in warfare and offers specific challenges to establishing a just peace once the war is over.

This next section pivots, in today’s debates, on two terms — “target” and “intentionally kill.”

Thus, the ERLC team notes:

The jus ad bellum by itself offers distinctions between terrorists and freedom fighters. …

The criterion of discrimination includes two key components: “innocence” and “deliberate attack.” The first rule of just warfare is that we do not target or intentionally kill the innocent. “Innocence,” says just war theorist Michael Walzer, means those non-combatants who are not materially engaged in the war effort. “These people are ‘innocent’ whatever their government and country are doing and whether or not they are in favor of what is being done.” Walzer explains that, “The opposite of ‘innocent’ is not ‘guilty,’ but ‘engaged.’ Disengaged civilians are innocent without regard to their personal morality or politics.”

This is precisely what makes terrorism wrong, since it is defined, says Walzer, as the random killing of innocent people, in the hope of creating pervasive fear. 

One more clip:

Sadly, modern warfare almost always leads to innocent civilian casualties — especially in urban environments. The key distinction, therefore, is that terrorists target the innocent for deliberate attack while “freedom fighters” — and anyone else engaged in just warfare — never do. This provides both a moral and strategic challenge for nations fighting against terrorists, since we do not want to become like the evil we are opposing.

Ah, a big word — “never.”

Read it all, and focus on some of the background I cut for reasons of length.

Readers: What other URLs would you offer for alternative answers to these questions?