Christ, Country, and Campus: ROTC, Masculinity, and Evangelical Politics at Wheaton College During the Vietnam War

In 1952, Wheaton College, a pinnacle of American Evangelicalism, brought the military to campus. This year marked the beginning of the ROTC program at Wheaton, but specifically a mandatory ROTC program requiring all eligible freshman and sophomore males to enroll. Though its presence went largely uncontested during the first decade of the ROTC’s existence on this Evangelical liberal arts campus, a shift occurred as the Vietnam War generated dissent across American society. This paper explores how views of political engagement, American empire, and masculinity at Wheaton College shifted over the course of the Vietnam War, using debates surrounding the mandatory ROTC program as its central lens. I argue that the Vietnam War catalyzed a crisis of masculinity within American evangelical culture, contributing to broader efforts to sustain patriarchal authority in the United States.

From its inception, the mandatory ROTC program at Wheaton was met with relatively little resistance or criticism. The onset of the Vietnam War even saw increased enrollment in advanced ROTC programs beyond the sophomore year, interpreted as optimistic patriotism, and as students’ desire for better training before graduating and heading to the war front. Yet a marked shift occurred around the Tet Offensive of 1968, when opposition to the mandatory program and to Wheaton’s relationship with the military intensified. Lines become increasingly divided on campus over the ethical and theological implications of this marriage between God and country. Eventually, the ROTC requirement was reduced and later removed altogether following the end of the war. Nevertheless, concerns over male formation and masculinity remained central. Where ROTC once functioned to unite religious commitment and national service at Wheaton, political realignment in the postwar years increasingly framed partisan conservatism as a means of safeguarding both evangelical identity and masculine authority.