American Crusade : : Christianity, Warfare, and National Identity, 1860–1920 / / Benjamin J. Wetzel.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2022
• VerfasserIn: Wetzel, Benjamin J.,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (228 p.) :; 10 b&w halftones

When 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 1860-1920, 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 much more 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 work questions traditional periodizations and suggests that these three wars should be understood as a unit. Grappling with the views of America's religious leaders, supplemented by those of ordinary people, provides a fresh way of understanding the three major American wars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Christianity, Warfare, and National Identity, 1860–1920 -- 1. “The God of Justice Is the God of Battles”: Northern White Protestants and the Civil War -- 2. “Heavy Is the Guilt That Hangs upon the Neck of This Nation”: The African Methodist -- 3. “A War of Mercy”: White Mainline Protestants and the Spanish- American War -- 4. “I Look upon This War as an Impudent Crime”: Roman Catholicism, Americanization, and the Spanish-American War -- 5. “A Louder Call for War”: The Protestant Mainline and the Twentieth-Century Crusade -- 6. “There Will Be a Day of Reckoning for Our Country”: Missouri Synod Lutherans Face World War I -- Conclusion: The Mere Echo of the Warring Masses -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index