A Twentieth-Century Crusade: Lyman Abbott, Christian Nationalism, and World War I

Recent scholarship has illuminated the central role that religion often played in mobilizing American public support for World War I.  This paper uses the rhetoric of the theologically liberal Congregationalist editor Lyman Abbott (1835-1922) as a case study of the ways in which religious commitments could lead to an enthusiastic embrace of warfare.  As editor of the weekly newsmagazine Outlook, Abbott was an early supporter of “preparedness” and encouraged the war effort in part because he saw the United States as a Christ-like nation locked in an irrepressible conflict with a demonic foe.  Indeed, Abbott went so far as to claim that American soldiers’ deaths were analogous to Christ’s crucifixion and that Germany was the province of Satan.  In analyzing such remarkable rhetoric and imagery, I argue that Abbott’s amalgamation of Christianity and American nationalism (and thus his support for World War I) stemmed from his refusal to distinguish between sacred and secular categories.  Moreover, the paper explores how and why Abbott’s rejection of the sacred/secular divide (and his consequent adoption of Christian nationalism) can be traced in part to his appropriation of particular intellectual and theological propositions that were current in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.