Book Review
Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great studies the religious faith of American soldiers and war workers during World War I, historicizing their spiritual reflections and notions of religious identity amid the war and its aftermath. As the first monograph to study the religious lives of everyday Americans engaged in the Great War, Faith in the Fight makes important contributions to the history of World War I and the cultural history of religion in America. Its methodology centers on the perspectives of “well over 300 voices” drawn from letters, diaries, memoirs, and collected works of correspondence. In addition, the newspaper The Stars and Stripes offers a rich source of poems, essays, letters, and visual art reflecting soldiers’ and war workers’ spirituality.
American soldiers and war workers “believed in the righteousness of the cause, believed in the communal and personal value of their errand, believed that in answering the call to arms they were answering the call of their faith.” By and large, the religious faith of Americans fighting in Europe was not diminished by the widespread death and destruction of industrial warfare. Ebel concludes that the Great War “altered but did not undermine [the] faith” of American troops and war workers, leading many to an “affirmation and strengthening of pre-war faiths.”[1]
Ebel’s framework is both efficient and effective, situating America’s involvement in the Great War within the historiography of American religious history in the early 20th century. Prewar America grappled with modernity, multicultural urban centers, and the growth of Protestant Fundamentalist and Pentecostal movements, as well as “muscular” Christian organizations formed to solve the “crisis of manhood.” National mobilization in brought ordinary Americans into a war effort of unprecedented scale and monumental importance, inspiring reflections on the spiritual, the transcendent, and the sacred.
Faith in the Fight examines a number of distinct thematic topics aimed at illustrating the religious beliefs of the soldiers and war workers shipped to Europe. One theme is the widespread belief among soldiers and war workers that the war represented a virtuous effort to achieve redemption, an experience that would prove restorative to individuals, America, and the world. Another theme explores the transforming, vitalizing experience of modern warfare and the phenomena of the “combat numinous,” the awe-inspiring, uncanny experience of combat. The war also moved American soldiers to face ideas of self-sacrifice and martyrdom, following Christ’s example of bringing about salvation via death in war. Additionally, Ebel explores the theme of soldiers’ ideas about the afterlife and “the porous nature of the boundary between this life and the next” arising as soldiers coped with the loss of comrades.[2]
Faith in the Fight calls out the distinct experience of African American soldiers and war workers who faced persistent racism in the military. Nevertheless, African American soldiers and war workers sustained ideas of faith and the redemptive power of their service—namely, the implicit promise of equal rights in America after the war. Similarly, the book devotes a chapter to the unique experience of women war workers who followed the call for service. These American war workers asserted themselves in space that was exclusively masculine (a military-controlled battle zone). Women developed various archetypal roles that were supportive of American soldiers and the war effort, finding ways to make substantial contributions by negotiating/navigating societal norms.[3]
Ebel concludes his book with a chapter on postwar America and the war’s repercussions on its religious and political climate. He emphasizes the significance the American Legion as a defender of American religious tradition. Ebel argues the American Legion’s growth and prominence points at a societal unwillingness to examine America’s intervention in the Great War—or, as Ebel describes it, “a story of reillusionment” that perpetuates the righteousness and glory of America yet disremembers the human cost of the Great War.[4]
Faith in the Fight is vital reading for any scholar of World War I, American religious history, or Americanists focused on the early 20th century. Ebel’s main contribution is bringing common soldiers and war workers of faith into the historical record. Related to those historical actors, Ebel deserves praise for the sheer volume of original sources he drew from. This effort makes the book’s conclusions all the more defensible. Looking at this quantitatively, given the number of sources (“well over 300 voices” plus numerous periodicals and other sources) relative to the two million troops deployed in the American Expeditionary Forces, a survey aimed at achieving 95% confidence with a ±5% margin for error requires a sample size of approximately 380 soldiers and war workers.[5] Finally, beyond its intellectual merits, the book proved very moving at times, especially when reading the candid words of a soldier who would die in combat within a matter of days (for example, Vinton Dearing who was killed in the Battle of Aisne-Marne).[6]
There are, however, a number of minor issues with Ebel’s book. At times his writing style becomes pedantic when analyzing primary source material, explicitly restating points a reasonably intelligent reader could glean from quoted text. For example, Ebel’s reexplanation/deconstruction of Hamilton Coolidge’s letter to his mother seems unnecessary.[7] Furthermore, at times Ebel lapses into free association, doing literary analysis more than historical analysis. For example, Ebel overanalyzes Julius Mitchell’s concise responses to the Virginia survey. In Mitchell’s words, serving in the war made him “[a] more sober and Christ-like patriot.” Ebel makes all manner of speculation about the possible meanings of Mitchell’s response yet fails to offer a plain reading within the historical context. Perhaps Mitchell used the adjective “sober” because in 1919 the Prohibition movement was in the news praising sobriety. Furthermore, Mitchell was clearly a man of faith who was proud of his military service, so perhaps “Christ-like patriot” are his words for an ideal American citizen.[8]
More substantively, Ebel’s assertion that “[t]he religious culture of pre-war America gave Americans ideas, images, and beliefs perfectly tailored to war” writes anti-war and anti-draft resistance by religious Americans out of history.[9] In fact, there was substantial opposition to the war. Clergymen who expressed antiwar opinions, including those with pacifistic tenets of faith, where subject to investigations and prosecutions by both the federal and state governments. This included clergymen from smaller religious orders like Mennonites, Quakers, and Russellites (Jehovah’s Witnesses), but was also extended to Lutherans (due to many being of German descent) and Catholics (due to both German and Irish ethnics in the clergy).[10] At the very least this deserved to be mentioned in the historiographic introduction to Faith in the Fight.
Finally, Ebel’s chapter the American Legion and post-war America (which serves as more of a capstone on book than its short conclusion) argues that the prewar ideals held by soldiers survived into the 1920s and 1930s “with such tenacity that they became and remain regular features of the national conversation in America. Veterans argued for the divinity of the nation, idealized the active, strenuous, potentially violent man, and thought of their dead as heroes, martyrs, and imitators of Christ. They continued to glorify war and to question the masculinity and impugn the patriotism of their critics.” Ebel refers to this mindset as “reillusionment” but offers little explanation of the concept. There are two issues with this chapter. First, the American Legion’s leadership cannot be equated with all veterans. Ebel should have mentioned the popular backlash to American involvement in World War I which certainly included veterans of faith. Second, while Ebel’s book is primarily about religious history, his final chapter is more about American nationalism—a topic without mention in most of Faith in the Fight. Ebel explored the idea of the war redeeming America in Chapter One, but this focused on ideas of curing national defects rather than the meaning derived from patriotic duty. Many historians and social scientists argue nationalism is a secular religion, and certainly nationalist sentiments can be expressed in religious language (in fact, several of the primary sources Ebel references mention both Christian/religious ideas as well as patriotic ones). Arguable, the American Legion was not a sign of reillusionment; rather, it was utilizing the ideas and words of Christian faith in order to reinforce American nationalism.[11]
[1] Jonathan H. Ebel, Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 2-3, 12.
[2] Ebel, 3-10, 18-20
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] This is an application of a statistical sample size formula:
Where n = sample size, Z = Z-score confidence level (normal distribution), p = population, E = margin for error.
[6] Ebel, 151.
[7] Ebel, 59.
[8] Ebel, 122-123.
[9] Ebel, 2-3.
[10] William H. Thomas, Unsafe for Democracy: World War I and the U.S. Justice Department’s Covert Campaign to Suppress Dissent (Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 31-88.
[11] Ebel, 38-47, 189.