Borderline: Reflections on War, Sex, and Church

by Stan Goff

Overview

In his sharp, observant book, Stan Goff grapples with a problem crucial to modern Christian values. The sanctification of war and contempt for women are both grounded in a fear that breeds hostility, a hostility that valorises conquest and murder. In 'Borderline', Goff dissects the driving force behind the darkest impulses of the human heart. The un-Christian history of loving war and hating women are not merely similar but two sides of the same coin, he argues, in an 'autobiography' that spanstwo millennia of war and misogyny. 'Borderline' is the personal and conceptual history of an American career army veteran transformed by Jesus into a passionate advocate for nonviolence, written by a man who narrates his conversion to Christianity through feminism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780718894078
Publisher:	The Lutterworth Press
Publication date:	07/30/2015
Pages:	470
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x (d)

About the Author

Stan Goff spent most of the final three decades of the twentieth century as a soldier—most of that in what is euphemistically called "special operations". He is sometimes a writer, sometimes an "activist", sometimes a husband, dad, and granddad, and sometimes a gardener.

Table of Contents

"Foreword by Amy Laura Hall
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 - Introduction
2 - My Acquaintance with a Christian Soldier and Serial Rapist
3 - Forest Troop
4 - Body Counts
5 - Ontology of the Witch Hunt
6 - Ecologies of Power
7 - The Rise of the Lawyers
8 - Misbegotten Man
9 - Eros and War
10 - Practice Makes Perfect
11 - The Masculine Fortress
12 - Torture and Redemption
13 - The Pope’s Army
14 - Sleepwalking
15 - Genealogy
16 - Bodies and Objects
17 - Contagious Prefix
18 - Just, Civil, and Total War—Sanctification of State
19 - A Bodyguard of Lies: Girl Story and Boy Story
20 - Origin Myths
21 - Paradox of Domination
22 - Disgust, Transgression, and Sex
23 - Respectability
24 - Progress and Fear of the Feminine
25 - Shell Shock
26 - Nation, Race, and Hygiene
27 - The Art of Depression
28 - Homos and Harlots
29 - Second World War
30 - Bombs, Babies, and ’Burbs
31 - The Herd
32 - Taboo
33 - Consent
34 - Clarifications
Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Biblical References "

Editorial Reviews

"Goff's unique experiences enable him to narrate this story (often with lurid details and 'salty' language that may make some readers uncomfortable) from a rare perspective that few civilians could access on their own. It cannot be easily dismissed as a flaccid, pacifist indulgence in an over-realised eschatology. Rather than relegate justice to the 'sweet by and by', Goff's account gives Christians sufficient cause (and the tools with which) to interrogate contemporary accounts of gender and warfare."-Shawn Aghajan, Studies in Christian Ethics, Vol. 29 No. 3, August 2016"Stan Goff's striking book - part memoir, part theological investigation of masculinity, part psychodynamic analysis of sex and war - .... is a relentless take-down of belief in redemptive violence, and war's ennobling character. .... [It] deserves a place on Christian Ethics, Feminist Studies, and War Studies courses."-The Revd Rachel Mann, Church Times, February 2017

From the Publisher

A health warning: this is not a book for the squeamish. Stan Goff is a former American soldier and Vietnam war veteran. He served in the airborne Rangers and Special Forces Groups. He is very frank about his experiences during this time, admitting to terrorizing and brutalizing the weak and poor, burning houses, killing livestock, maiming people and exploiting women for sex. He describes himself as a divorced alcoholic who left a damaged trail that involved the suffering of his own daughter, 'avery young witness to this insanity' (p. xvii). And he took a human life.

Vol. 119 No. 3, May/June 2016 - Alan Billings