About the Book
The concept of moral injury emerged in the past decade as a way to understand how traumatic levels of moral emotions generate moral anguish experienced by some military service members. Interdisciplinary research on moral injury has included clinical psychologists (Litz et al., 2009; Drescher et al., 2011), theologians (Brock & Lettini, 2012; Graham, 2017), ethicists (Kinghorn, 2012), and philosophers (Sherman, 2015). This project articulates a new key concept—moral orienting systems— a dynamic matrix of meaningful values, beliefs, behaviors, and relationships learned and changed over time and through formative experiences and relationships such as family of origin, religious and other significant communities, mentors, and teachers. Military recruit training reengineers pre-existing moral orienting systems and indoctrinates a military moral orienting system designed to support functioning within the military context and the demands of the high-stress environment of combat, including immediate responses to perceived threat. This military moral orienting system includes new values and beliefs, new behaviors, and new meaningful relationships. Recognizing the profound impact of military recruit training, this project challenges dominant notions of post-deployment reentry and reintegration, and formulates a new paradigm for first, understanding the generative circumstances of ongoing moral stress that include moral emotions like guilt, shame, disgust, and contempt, and, second, for responding to such human suffering through compassionate care and comprehensive restorative support. This project calls for more effective participation of religious communities in the reentry and reintegration process and for a military-wide post-deployment reentry program comparable to the encompassing physio-psycho-spiritual-social transformative intensity experienced in recruit-training boot camp.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Foreword
1. Introduction
2. Diagnosing Moral Injury
3. Moral Orienting Systems
4. Moral Mutations
5. First Life
6. In The Military Now
7. (Re)Turning Warriors
8. Conclusion
References
About the Author
About the Author :
Zachary Moon is assistant professor of practical theology at Chicago Theological Seminary and author of Coming Home: Ministry That Matters with Veterans and Military Families.
Review :
As a practical and pastoral theologian and former military chaplain, Moon’s work has critically and insightfully advocated for reimagining how the church serves veterans within our congregations. . . . There is little space to speak a prophetic truth into the system that continues to deploy service members at an alarming rate. The tension, then, is how might we, as caregivers, remain staunchly anti-war and yet conceptualize our caregiving practices and moral injury support as political? Moon’s text is indispensable in how we might live in this tension. Both veterans and those caring for veterans will benefit from this text.
An important, insightful new work on moral injury—Zachary Moon offers all who care about veterans deep knowledge of the transformative power of military service and an invitation to accept responsibility for the wars waged in our name by supporting the complex transition to civilian life of all who serve.
Moon adds texture and nuance to conversations about moral injury, focusing on 'moral orienting systems' to highlight society's obligation to help veterans rescript values and commitments before we send them back to families and communities. The book advocates a clearer vision of moral identity, attending to the role of relationships and communities in shaping and sustaining veterans and reducing severe moral stress. An excellent if prohibitively expensive text for students, pastors, clinicians, and hurting people.
As an interdisciplinary scholar of military moral injury and a Marine Reserves chaplain, Zachary Moon writes compellingly and compassionately about how veterans’ post deployment struggles are shaped by their military moral orienting systems—the values, beliefs, and ways of coping instilled in basic training. Moon draws upon six military veterans' stories of how their military values and ways of coping helped them thrive during deployment and also made post deployment extraordinarily challenging. Warriors between Worlds is an interdisciplinary resource for spiritually oriented care of veterans: a must-read for clinicians, religious leaders, and chaplains, as well as veteran groups, religious communities, and non profit organizations.
Zachary Moon draws on his expertise as military chaplain and practical theologian to offer a valuable new contribution to the literature shaping care for combat veterans affected by Moral Injury. Drawing on the lived experience of six veterans, Dr. Moon develops strategies for supporting veterans’ re-entry into civilian life and the work of reconstructing their moral orienting systems following the life changing experiences of military combat. He offers specific resources for religious leaders and faith communities who seek to participate in veterans’ reentries, recognize the strengths they offer, and walk beside them as support is needed.
In Warriors Between Worlds: Moral Injury and Identities in Crisis, Zachary Moon offers an important exploration of the “moral” in moral injury which draws on not only key interdisciplinary concepts and conversations in the field, but, crucially, sensitive engagement with veterans themselves. His work demonstrates the limitations of addressing moral injury as a question of individual trauma and the necessity of taking into account the broader impact of military training as socialization into particular values and relationships. An exemplary text in practical theology, this book will be of great use not only to religious leaders seeking to offer care to veterans but also to military personnel concerned for the well-being of veterans and, indeed, to veterans themselves as they navigate between the moral worlds of military and civilian life.
Warriors Between Worlds is an insightful deep dive into the lived experience of people entering the military and then re-entering civilian life. Moon models valuable practical theological research in drawing on multiple sources, especially the voices of those affected, in order to understand the moral challenges they have faced and are working through, and in order to develop appropriate ministry responses. The book points to the nature of compassionate understanding that will help foster creative and courageous post-traumatic growth. It is relevant for military members and veterans, chaplains and other caregivers including heath care workers and concerned faith community leaders.
