By George Conger, Anglican Ink. (Photo: Christian Chomiak/Unsplash)
Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical Magnifica Humanitas is ostensibly about artificial intelligence and the human person, but its most arresting claim comes in a section on war. “Today, more than ever,” Leo writes, “without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated”.
An evangelical Anglican can grant much of Leo’s warning. Modern war is increasingly mechanized, opaque, and dehumanizing. Leo is right to warn that autonomous weapons make war “more feasible” and “less subject to human control,” and he is right that “No algorithm can make war morally acceptable”. AI targeting, cyberattacks, propaganda, surveillance, and automated decision-making can all blur responsibility and hide the human face of the victim.
But Leo’s conclusion does not follow. If just war theory has been abused, the answer is not to declare it obsolete. The answer is to teach it more rigorously, apply it more severely, and refuse to let states baptize their ambitions in Christian language.
The Anglican formularies begin with a firm premise. Article XXXVII of the Thirty-Nine Articles says that lawful civil rulers may “restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evil-doers,” and then adds the sentence pacifists cannot easily assimilate: “It is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons, and serve in the wars”. That is not a reluctant modern concession. It is part of Anglicanism’s Reformation settlement.
The point is not that war is good. The point is that military service is not inherently sinful. Article XXXVII rejects the claim that Christian discipleship requires pacifism as a universal rule. It also rejects private violence and freelance vengeance, because the authority to bear the sword belongs to the magistrate and not to the individual.
Evangelical Anglican commentary has normally read the Article in precisely this way. Church Society’s exposition quotes Article XXXVII’s statement that Christian men may “wear weapons, and serve in the wars,” and explains that military personnel “do not exercise authority in their own right” but act under lawful public authority. The same commentary stresses that civil authority remains “subject to the critical authority of the word of God,” which is exactly why the Article is not a blank check for the state.