The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation

Richard M. Gamble

Isi Books, Dec 1, 2003 - Religion - 306 pages

This line, the final one in G. K. Chesterton's poem, "The English Graves," serves for Richard as an interpretive key to a peculiarly important moment in American history: the time of the First World War, when progressive Christian leaders in America transformed themselves from principled pacifists to crusading interventionists. The consequence of this shift, says Gamble was the triumph of the idea that America has been destined by divine Providence to bring salvation to the less enlightened nations of the world. In The War for Righteousness, Gamble reconstructs the inner world of the social gospel clergy, tracing the evolution of the clergy's interventionist ideology from its roots in earlier efforts to promote a modern, activist Christianity. He shows how these clergy eventually came to see their task as world evangelization for the new creed of democracy and internationalism, and ultimately for the redemption of civilization itself through the agency of total war. World War I thus became a transcendent moment of fulfillment. In the eyes of the progressive clergy, the years from 1914 to 1918 presented an unprecedented opportunity to achieve their vision of a world transformed--the ancient dream of a universal and everlasting kingdom of peace, justice, and righteousness. American sacrifice was necessary not only to save the country, but to save the entire world. Vividly narrating how the progressive clergy played a surprising role in molding the public consensus in favor of total war, Gamble engages the broader question of religion's role in shaping the modern American mind and the development, at the deepest levels, of the logic of messianic interventionism both at home and abroad.This timely book not only fills a significant gap in our collective memory of the Great War, it also helps demonstrate how and why that war heralded the advent of a different American self-understanding.

What people are saying

Review: The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation

User Review  - John Schultz - Goodreads

A bad bible interpretation and its results put on display.

Review: The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation

User Review  - Martha - Goodreads

I would like this in the Kindle Edition, when it becomes available.

Contents

• A Vast Spiritual Migration: 25
• Applied Christianity: 49
• Applied Christianity Abroad: 69

About the author

Richard M. Gamble is Assistant Professor of History at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he has taught in the history and honors programs since 1994. He is also a Visiting Scholar at St. Edmund's College, Cambridge University, and regularly returns to the Western Front to lead travel-study programs on the Battle of Verdun. His essays and reviews have appeared in Humanitas, the Journal of Southern History, Chronicles, the Independent Review, and Ideas on Liberty.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation
• Author: Richard M. Gamble
• Publisher: Isi Books, 2003
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Jul 2, 2009
• ISBN: 1932236147, 9781932236149
• Length: 306 pages
• Subjects: History / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies); History / United States / 20th Century; Religion / Christian Church / General; Religion / Christian Ministry / Evangelism; Religion / Christianity / History; Religion / Religion, Politics & State; Social Science / Sociology of Religion