Description
Book SynopsisWhen is a war a holy crusade? And when does theology cause Christians to condemn violence? In American Crusade, Benjamin Wetzel argues that the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I shared a cultural meaning for white Protestant ministers in the United States, who considered each conflict to be a modern-day crusade.
American Crusade examines the holy war mentality prevalent between 1860 and 1920, juxtaposing mainline Protestant support for these wars with more hesitant religious voices: Catholics, German-speaking Lutherans, and African American Methodists. The specific theologies and social locations of these more marginal denominations made their ministries highly critical of the crusading mentality. Religious understandings of the nation, both in support of and opposed to armed conflict, played a major role in such ideological contestation. Wetzel''s book questions traditional periodizations and suggests that these three wars should
Trade Review
This well-written, powerfully argued book demonstrates the almost incestuous link between politics, power, and religion.
* Choice *
American Crusade is a fascinating history about how Christian duty and patriotic citizenship became intertwined during the three major wars between 1860 and 1920. It is a multisided history that draws on counterexamples to show that while these were prevailing ideas of the time, they were also challenged and shaped by marginalized groups within the United States.
* H-net *
Overall, though, Wetzel's engaging book makes a convincing case that this was a distinctive era of Protestant thought, one in which the mainline sanctified the nation's military endeavors, but in the process, spurred other Christians to offer new visions of the nation.
* AMERICAN CATHOLIC STUDIES *
