Customer Reviews

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

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One of my favorite topics to contemplate and discuss is how religion and politics cannot be separated. What you believe about your Creator--or don't believe about him--will affect how you view your world and what you think it should become. This book is a tremendous testimony to the truth that ideas have consequences and that religious ideas and politics do mix with profound consequences. I found the book incredibly interesting and well documented. Even though the author mainly dealt with the religious influences in America up to and during World War I, I found parallels to other periods of history in this country as well---even up to the very present crusade to "rid the world of evil."

American political Progressivism mixed with religious liberal groups and created a powerful combination in the decades preceding the First World War. God was with America, a "righteous" nation, and the nation had a heavenly obligation to spread its goodness to the world. One righteous nation would lead to another and another until all humanity could live as one. National barriers would dissolve; peace would reign.

So was the thinking of the American Progressive movement leading up to the First World War as told in Richard Gamble's The War for Righteousness. It is an eye-opening story of a country not bothered by the tight bond between church and state. Americans at that time truly believed they were a Christian nation, God's agent of good with a responsibility to redeem the earth by taking God's righteousness to every corner. Christianity, Christian principles and Christian blessings would flow to the world through the United States, God's chosen people, and the blessing of righteousness would be delivered by the sword if not willingly accepted through the Word.

The apparent success of the "American experiment" was viewed as God's revealed approval of her democracy. Since the defeat of the Southern Confederacy, God's blessing, it was concluded, resided with the victorious Union. The evil of slavery was vanquished, wealth (blessing) was available to those willing to work hard, and the country had reached her manifest destiny by expanding her borders to the Pacific Ocean. It therefore seemed obvious that America was God's special country, a nation set apart for a purpose. Since God approved of America, she could use herself as the standard to judge the world, but if the world did not agree, America would enforce her righteousness with the sword, for the world's own good. The democracy exampled by the United States was exalted as God's anointed form of government, and the old autocracies of Europe were by definition evil. Once the structures of the Old World were destroyed, America's righteous democracy would usher in a new era of world righteousness, peace and unity, with the United States as the humble world leader. America's willingness to fight selflessly for the world was an example itself of her righteousness, never mind the fact that men had to be drafted into "selfless" sacrifice via the Selective Service.

The arrogance is astounding, and a reader cannot help but wonder how much of the progressive attitude of aggressive American superiority remains today. It wasn't enough for Americans to believe that they had the best nation in the world; they insisted on waging jihad to spread it to the rest of the unfortunate or unrighteous world. How have the progressive ideals affected current war policies? Is democracy truly a divinely ordained form of government? And if it is, ought we to forcefully spread it abroad? Gamble does not delve into these questions, but his book certainly causes a reader to ask them.

Dr. Gamble has done what is necessary. He has recognised the connection between progressive Protestantism and American Diplomatic History. While writing my own Ph.D. disstertaion I was troubled to read a review of Dr. Gamble's book in the Atlantic Monthly. Fearful that someone had stolen my thesis - I immediately ordered the book. It was not my thesis but it was an incredibly illuminating book. I would recommend it to any reader who wishes to know something of substance about the international politics of the progressive era.

The other reviewers are right. This book is BRILLIANT! It is one that should be on the shelves of every thinking historian and seminary professor in the USA, since its sheer depth of insight ought to make it mandatory reading in today's academy. Professor: make sure ALL your students have bought this book.

The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation by Richard Gamble. The Social Gospel attitudes and actions of the progressive Christian clergy in 1910-1918 played a major role in drawing the U.S. into War World I. That situation sounds much like the attitudes and violent language of the fundamentalist right today. The complexities of Fundamentalism, then and now, seem often to draw upon concepts of "applied Christianity." Historically in our nation, says Gamble, applied Christianity uses the rhetoric of crusades, of a suffering Jesus as victim and disempowered, arather than as empowered enabler.

Gamble shows how the progressive, mainstream Protestant clergy in the late 19th Century and especially the first decade of the 20th Century provided the images and the language indispensable to waging the destruction that is war. Clearly there is more than this one compelling idea in the Gamble book. I found the idea compelling, especially because what today our culture frequently labels as conservative, fundamentalistic, absolutist, harsh, even unforgiving was in the early 20th Century the language of elite clergy and congregations identified with liberalism, progressivism, compassion, and reconciliation.

Jim Boushay of Resources Unlimited Foundation (Metro Chicago)

News of Gamble's genius has even reached Virginia. This is THE history book of 2003, and should be read by everyone who wants a clear understanding of the history of the USA in the 20th century. I agree with the other reviewers. Move over Daniel Boorstin - Richard Gamble is now THE American historian to watch and read. Make sure your history Professor has this book and makes all the class read it.

Richard M. Gamble's book is easy to read and engaging.

If I may, the topic is: Why would America, a nation who determined to stay out of foreign war entanglements (the constitution et al.), be so open and easily persuaded to go to war? Mr. Gamble has provided very strong evidence indicating that church leadership was captured by "progressives" (read: liberals) and then led the rank and file churches to support escatology which was extra-biblical. That is, they misled the churches into thinking that we were to establish heaven on earth -- and that theme was strong enough in those days to launch us into world War I. And, today, that theme is still strong enough to guide us into wars with the imaginings that it is our spiritual duty (destiny?)as a nation to establish stable governments where needed.

Mr. Gamble stayed on course with his theme and did an excellent job of it. I would like to see a detailed study which shows how the shift actually happened. Who did what, where and when - kind of thing. The change of national opinion in the early 1900's appears to be so abrupt including President Wilson's total reversal of positions. Why did the newspapers change positions so quickly. How does the Balford agreement interact with the social, political and religious themes present at this time?; also, this is a time of seminal changes in US monetary policy, taxing policy, immigration, how does that play on this theme?

Richard Gambles book provides us with another piece of the puzzle. Thank you Richard for your hard work and determination.

This is a magnificent work of thorough and detailed scholarship that everyone ought to read if we are to delve the issues behind one of the most pivotal parts of the history of the USA. It is not just students and professors who should read Gamble's effortless erudition, but that well known creature "the intelligent lay person". Not only that, but give it to your pastor as well - all too many American Christians have a view of their past that is entirely out of tune with what really happened. Let your life be transformed by the well-written, carefully thought out, beautifully crafted and yet still easy to read prose of this outstanding young scholar, Richard Gamble. We can but hope that we will all soon hear far more from his skillful pen.

Richard Gamble is one of the ablest young American historians around today, with a growing and well deserved international reputation as well. This book demonstrates that very clearly - his brilliant insights into this period are quite simply without parallel and this book ought to be compulsary reading for anyone studying the history of the USA in the early 20th century. If you are a history professor, get 20 copies for all your students and if you are a history student, make sure that your professor gets one for all the class. This is dynamic history at its very best. Christopher Catherwood, author of CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC RAGE (Zondervan, 2003)

Henry Steele Commager, Arthur Schlesinger, Daniel Boorstin, Edmund Morris - and now Richard Gamble. People who know Richard always knew he was a genius, but now that he has made this steller debut, we now all have the proof that Richard Gamble has just joined the ranks of America's most significant and distinguished historians. I am not exaggerating when I say this! Buy this magnificent tour de force and you will quickly be captivated by the truly outstanding analysis, the genuinely scintillating insights and the sheer breadth of vision that has gone into producing so fabulous a book. Read it and enjoy.