Review: Ronit Y. Stahl. Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.

Authors

Patrick Q. Mason

Keywords

Ronit Stahl, military chaplaincy, tri-faith America, Mormon studies, religion and state

Abstract

Pop quiz: What do Mormons, Eastern Orthodox, and Buddhists have in common? Answer: For much of the twentieth-century, members of all three groups were classified as “Protestants” by the United States military. Why? Because in the “Protestant-Catholic-Jew” schema of “tri-faith America” that dominated for many decades, if you weren’t Roman Catholic or Jewish, you must have been Protestant. American historian Ronit Stahl has elevated this and many other head-scratching bureaucratic idiosyncrasies into a readable and insightful analysis of how the military chaplaincy both reflected and shaped the dynamic relationship of religion and the state in twentieth-century America. Enlisting Faith is another terrifically smart contribution to the vibrant field of American religious history, with plenty to say as well for those interested in political history, cultural history, military history, and legal history. Furthermore, probably without even consciously attempting to do so, Stahl has provided a sterling model of what the best of current Mormon studies scholarship is and does.

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Mason, Patrick Q. (2020) "Review: Ronit Y. Stahl. Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.," Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 7: No. 1, Article 19.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol7/iss1/19