Saint Augustine was very different from President Barack Obama; but what Augustine’s “Just War” doctrine accomplished for the Roman Empire has secular parallels to what President Obama said in accepting his Nobel prize last week.

When Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the early 300s, many in the empire followed his lead, but this presented a serious problem for young men who really believed in the gospel of peace; in not killing your neighbors be they nearby or in another land. Half a century earlier, Christians could be thrown to the lions in the arena just for being Christian. After Constantine’s conversion, martyrdom resulted when some young men refused to join the emperor’s far-flung military forces.

Not then a saint, Augustine penned a scholarly thesis about just wars to assure his generation that under certain conditions, Christians could join the Roman legions and kill while keeping the faith. This was the subject of my editorial in this North Texas e-News, October 2, 2008: “Not just a war but a strikingly an unjust one—to our economy and to our principles.”

Augustine exemplified the way that people of faith have almost always identified with their contemporary social, political, and economic order, catering to the centers of power, money and profit. What else could Augustine say at that time?  If Augustine was the church speaking to Rome; President Obama is his secular parallel today redefining his “peace-prize-but-send-more-troops” dilemma in political and theological language that adjusts to needs that empires have for war. Those who have the power to end war and encourage a better economic life for the majority are the very ones that profit from the status quo. What else can we expect them to say?

One thing I can expect the president to say at the end of the Copenhagen climate conference this week will be the reminder: “There can be no peace on earth without peace with earth—and vice versa!”  But every war with their human and economic costs diminishes the prospect of any sort of peace with justice.