G.I. Messiahs : Soldiering, War, and American Civil Religion / Jonathan H. Ebel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ebel, Jonathan H., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civil religion--United States.

Civil religion.

Soldiers--United States--Public opinion.

Soldiers.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (254 p.)

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Jonathan Ebel has long been interested in how religion helps individuals and communities render meaningful the traumatic experiences of violence and war. In this new work, he examines cases from the Great War to the present day and argues that our notions of what it means to be an American soldier are not just strongly religious, but strongly Christian. Drawing on a vast array of sources, he further reveals the effects of soldier veneration on the men and women so often cast as heroes. Imagined as the embodiments of American ideals, described as redeemers of the nation, adored as the ones willing to suffer and die that we, the nation, may live-soldiers have often lived in subtle but significant tension with civil religious expectations of them. With chapters on prominent soldiers past and present, Ebel recovers and re-narrates the stories of the common American men and women that live and die at both the center and edges of public consciousness.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Incarnating American Civil Religion

Chapter 2. Symbols Known, Soldiers Unknown

Chapter 3. In Honored Glory, Known but to God

Chapter 4. Saint Francis the Fallen

Chapter 5. The Vietnam War as a Christological Crisis

Chapter 6. Safety, Soldier, Scapegoat, Savior

Conclusion. Of Flesh, Words, and Wars

Notes

Credits

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

0-300-21635-1

OCLC:

927296915