Both Sides Now

Before and after. With and without. Life can be an exercise in compare and contrast. While comparison can be the death of joy, it can also be revelatory in appreciating one’s own blessings or establishing common ground.

As an associate professor of religion, that comparative relationship forms the crux of Rosemary Kellison's research into religious ethics — she studies religious traditions surrounding morality, examines the intersection between religion and violence, and seeks to understand how religious communities justify their views and answer ethical questions over time.

“Many religious scriptures were written hundreds or thousands of years ago, so it’s quite interesting to see how different communities balance fidelity to these texts with emerging moral issues, which are, in some ways, completely new,” Kellison said.

Her interest in the field arose in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, while Kellison was still a junior in high school. She double-majored in comparative and international studies at Ohio State University before going on to earn a master’s and doctorate from FSU’s Department of Religion in 2009 and 2013, respectively.

“I had always been interested in comparative religion and learning about different religions, so that — plus 9/11 — made me want to think more about those questions and try to make sense of the world around me,” said Kellison, who returned to FSU in 2023 as a faculty member after serving as a tenure-track professor at the University of West Georgia and a visiting research fellow at the University of Notre Dame Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

The concept of moral injury, often associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, is present in much of Kellison’s work. Moral injury is the social and spiritual distress individuals can experience after betraying their own deeply held moral beliefs, usually in high-stakes, life-or-death situations.

It’s widely understood that veterans have returned from war with anxiety disorders known by a variety of names over the last century — shell shock, battle fatigue, PTSD. Only more recently have mental health clinicians, chaplains, and philosophers, among others, recognized moral injury as another way experiencing war may impact veterans’ lives. Moral injury includes feelings of guilt, shame, and a general sense of emotional discomfort resulting from wartime experiences. According to Kellison, moral injury can manifest even when someone follows the law and orders from their chain of command.

“The experience of war is a big burden to ask someone to carry,” she said. “Even if you are not personally involved in war, we all have a civic responsibility to learn from instances like moral injury not only to have a better relationship to our service members and veterans but also to consider how their experiences can teach us about war and its impact.”

Kellison is also interested in how religious traditions and views on gender roles intersect with war, themes explored in her expanded doctoral thesis, “Expanding Responsibility for the Just War: A Feminist Critique,” published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press.

“These are real life and death issues for real human beings. I try to keep in mind that I am working in an area that impacts real people, whether that is service members who are going to war or civilians living where war is being fought,” she said. “I try to think about these sometimes-abstract ethical questions in a way that puts those human beings first.”

Before and after also means something personal for Kellison: continuity. The mentorship she relied on as she completed her education and established her research career — she was encouraged by Distinguished Research Professor of Religion John Kelsay to come to FSU for graduate school and he eventually became her doctoral major professor — was a key driver in her return to Tallahassee.

“I am proud Dr. Kellison is back at FSU, but more than that, I am grateful to continue conversations with a colleague I respect for her knowledge about our shared interests,” said Kelsay, with whom Kellison co-instructs an undergraduate course on the foundation of human rights. “She always works in a way that is organized, fair to the views of others, and with a positive outlook.”

The opportunity to guide both undergraduate and graduate students through their own research is something Kellison finds immensely rewarding, and she believes those opportunities will create a well-roundedness that will benefit them in the future as professionals and citizens.

“I want my students to think deeply about the factors that contribute to the way people think about ethics,” Kellison said. “Understanding this can help you, as a person living in a democratic society, develop a nuanced way of thinking and engage with the world more respectfully and more critically.”