Contours, Care, and Community

Moral Injury's Emergence and a Potential for Solidarity

Abstract

After two decades of sustained combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, do our religious communities better understand the lived realities and experiences of U.S. servicemembers and veterans? Utilizing the burgeoning trauma framework of moral injury, I argue that religious communities can take practical steps to understand the betrayal implicit in moral injury as an equalizing critique to understand our corporate betrayals emerging from COVID-19. It is that equalizing potential that opens opportunities for deep solidarity beyond the military and civilian—or healthcare worker and non-healthcare worker—distinction.