Benjamin J. Wetzel, an assistant professor of history at Taylor University, has written an engaging monograph centered on examining how leading white mainline Protestant ministers viewed questions of war and peace from the American Civil War through World War I. Focusing principally on the writings of Lyman Abbott, Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Bushnell, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Newell Dwight Hillis, American Crusade maintains these ministers embraced a militant Christian God of war. All these clerics saw the American republic as sanctified, and they called on their compatriots to fulfill God's providential plan by supporting a crusade against white southerners in the American Civil War, Spaniards in the Spanish-American War, and Germans in World War I.
What is most striking is the degree to which these ministers demonized America's enemies. Lyman Abbot insisted that white southerners were “defamers of God and the Christian religion” (26) and stressed after the fighting ended the need for missionaries to descend on the South in order to bring it to the “full and free gospel” to the inhabitants (27). In going to war with Spain, Abbott insisted that Spain's failure to embrace the Protestant Reformation remained at the core of why the United States needed to wage war on a regime that systematically looted the Cuban people. With regard to Germany, he claimed that they were nominal Christians who actually worshiped the Norse god Odin. Abbot's characterization of Germany proved tame compared to that Newell Dwight Hillis who occupied the prestigious Plymouth Church pulpit in Brooklyn once held by Henry Ward Beecher. In his book, The Blot on the Kaiser's Scutcheon, Hillis considered the possibility that it might be necessary to exterminate the German people and discussed a plan for mass sterilization of the nation's soldiers.
Scholars of the American Civil War and World War I have long recognized the strong support the American war effort received from white northern Protestant churches. Wetzel's makes a distinctive contribution is examining the dissenting traditions in this period beginning with African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Civil War. Drawing on the Christian Recorder shows how the African Methodist Episcopal Church mirrored white Protestants in their condemnation of a southern society that rejected the tenets of Christianity and saw the war as one of liberation ordained by God. However, Henry McNeal Turner and many lay members questioned the degree to which the United States was a Christian Republic. They stressed that the blot of racism was hardly confined to the South. After the United States entered the war against Spain in 1898, the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy supported the war effort, but remained more ambivalent about demonizing Spain and casting aspersions on religiosity of this nation.
Prior to America's entrance into World War I, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod largely adhered to Martin Luther's doctrine of two kingdoms and seldom discussed politics and international affairs in church periodicals or sermons. But there were some notable exceptions that hint at the pro-German sympathies of many Lutherans. While mainline Protestants were demonizing German leaders, the Lutheran Witness published an article lauding the faith of Paul Von Hindenburg. America's entrance into the war in April 1917 forced this insular Church to offer support for mobilization by encouraging bond sales from the pulpit and displaying American flags in sanctuaries. One of the most enduring cultural shifts sparked by the war would be dropping the use of German during church services. But after the Armistice, the Missouri Synod retreated from engagement with the kingdom of politics.
Wetzel makes a convincing case for continuity in white Protestant's attitudes toward war from 1861 to 1918. But the author surprisingly passes over the Philippine American War with only passing mention of it. Compared to the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War remained much more costly in American lives shed. Equally important, America's first sustained land war in Asia proved immensely controversial fostering a significant anti-imperialist movement championed by one of the nation's leading lay Protestants, William Jennings Bryan.
In considering northern Protestant churches reaction to World War I, Wetzel does not discuss the role of Episcopal Bishop Charles Brent. He is significant given the stature and influence of the Episcopal Church among political and economic elites, but also because he served as Chief of Chaplains for the American army in France. Except for the voice of African Americans who contributed to the Christian Recorder during the Civil War, the view of the soldier is largely absent in American Crusade. In terms of the American Civil War, the scholarship of James McPherson, George Rable, and David Rolfs suggest the sentiments of Abbott, Beecher, and other northern Protestant leaders widely held by white Union soldiers. But one wonders if this is fully the case with the doughboy in World War I, given the antipathy many had toward the proselytizing by Red Cross workers. Moreover, World War I had staggering rates of draft evasion and even outright armed resistance. These caveats aside the Benjamin Wetzel has written an important book that warrants an audience among students of both religious studies and military history.
