Despite the level of hysteria attained in the preaching of some of America's most prominent ministers after 1917, a great majority of clergymen . did not come by their decision to support the war easily. One of the most sophisticated treatments of the possibility of harmonizing Christian principles with the need for war was Baptist preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick's The Challenge of the Present Crisis, published in 1917. The war struck a forceful blow to the optimism and progressivism of the age, and Fosdick's question was "In what mood shall a Christian, or for that matter an idealist of any kind, face the catastrophe? . . . And how can he harmonize his ideals with his necessities of action in a time of war?" He recognized the possibility that faithful Christians would slip into despair: "the horrors of Verdun, the mutilated bodies of Belgian boys, the...