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 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 be understood as a unit. Grappling with the views of America's religious leaders, supplemented by those of ordinary people, American Crusade provides a fresh way of understanding the three major American wars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Benjamin Wetzel is Assistant Professor of History at Taylor University. He is the author of Theodore Roosevelt.

The United States' national identity has been foundationally shaped by warfare. It has also, of course, been so shaped by Christian religion. And yet relatively few historians have systematically examined American Christian leaders' interpretations of national identity through the lens of major American wars. Benjamin Wetzel's challenge, then, in his new survey of American Christian responses to the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I, is to find some texture amidst the smooth monotony of wartime moralizing. In American Crusade, Wetzel approaches the problem by juxtaposing a more-or-less uniform center with a diverse periphery.

American Crusade is a well-ordered and very readable book filled with evocative and often poignant quotations from a range of primary sources. In each chapter, Wetzel addresses the existing scholarship and describes the "new insights" his analysis offers.

The most important contribution of American Crusade to studies of religion, war, and Christian nationalism is Wetzel's thoughtful and complex examination of the dissenters to Christian nationalism. These views necessarily revealed a more complicated picture.

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 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.

This well-written, powerfully argued book demonstrates the almost incestuous link between politics, power, and religion.

David Mislin, Temple University, author of Saving Faith:

In tracing debates about Christian nationalism from the Civil War to World War I, Benjamin Wetzel uncovers ideological continuities that urge revisions to historians' conventional periodizations of this era. An insightful exploration of the profound ways in which warfare has shaped Americans' religious values.

Jonathan Ebel, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, author of G.I. Messiahs:

American Crusade impresses with its thorough and thoughtful archival work, analyses, and historiographical engagement—all of which sharpen our understanding of how religion shaped America's wars and identity. I am not aware of another book exactly like this one.