Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War

Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War. By Jonathan H. Ebel. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. xiv, 253 PP- $35.00, isbn 978-0-69113992-0.)

This book describes the marriage between religion and war consummated by American soldiers during World War I. Rather than becoming disillusioned by rhe blood, mud, and death of the trenches, Americans returning to the marquis de Lafayette's homeland concluded that participation in the carnage contributed to their spiritual growth.

Jonathan H. Ebel began his project with rhe expectation that wartime disillusionment undermined religion, but rhe data instead revealed that prewar faith survived the bloodbath as soldiers fit their new experience into their old beliefs. Ebel describes rhe widespread conviction that serving in the war was a calling...