Veteran Solidarity and Antonio Gramsci: Counterhegemony as Pastoral Theological Intervention

ABSTRACT In the current political theater of the United States, one in which the de rigueur is partisan deadlock and a refusal to ‘reach across the aisle,’ nothing brings both major political parties together like war. At the center of this theater is the heroic veteran. This reification overlooks the lived experience of veterans. For some veterans, their experience has entailed multiple combat deployments, frayed relationships, and moral injury. Veterans deserve to see creative change in the support given them. This essay in pastoral theological intervention explores one possibility. Borrowing from Antonio Gramsci, I will argue for the positionality of military chaplains to stand in as Gramscian organic intellectuals in order to accompany veterans through trauma and to move toward not only their own liberation but also an end to these, our longest, wars.