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doi:10.1017/S0009640708001339 Mennonites, Amish, and the American Civil War. By James O. Lehman and Steven M. Nolt. Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. xv + 361 pp. $39.95 cloth.
At some point, the fascination with the American Civil War will end. There will be a time when the downpour of books will become a trickle. There will be a time when Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and Ulysses S. Grant will not loom over the American historical imagination. At this future time, months will pass when no new Civil War monograph will be reviewed in The New York Times. Years will pass without films of Confederate troops flanking Union regiments or of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson inspiring slaveholders to reject the political decisions of civil society. That moment is not now and, at least in the realm of religious history, thank goodness. In religion and culture, there is still much to be unearthed, examined, analyzed, critiqued, and challenged in the Civil War era. Mennonites. Amish, and the American Civil War is an excellent example of the kind of work that must be done to further our understanding of religion and the Civil War. By examining the varied wartime responses of Mennonites and Amish in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Midwest, Lehman and Nolt offer a detailed study of the relationships among religious beliefs and communities, patriotism and war, and theology and lived realities.
For Mennonites and Amish, the Civil War was a theological...