Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith is an excellent survey of the history of "religion in American war and diplomacy," though I'm not sure why he says "religion" when he really means Christianity, the principle focus of this work.
The title is drawn from Ephesians, chapter 6, where Paul instructs believers to put on the "armor of God." Preston uses this to sum up his argument that Christianity has placed two distinctive, even contradictory, pressures on US foreign relations. "Sword of the spirit" refers to the one current of Christians who believe in American exceptionalism and that their country, in both peace and war, can or does serve a providential role. "Shield of faith" is a contrary current, one in which we find Christians taking pacifist or anti-interventionist stances. Not sure the biblical reference really matches this current--no doubt the exceptionalists (like Romney and Ryan in the 2012 presidential campaign, or Bush before them) think their position is about lifting up that "shield of faith" as well as the "sword of the spirit." Might be more appropriate to reference one of the jeremiads in the Old Testament (like one of those of my favorite prophet, Amos), or Jesus advising people to take the log out of their own eyes before trying to remove the speck from someone else's. But it's hard to turn either of those into snappy titles, and anyway, it's silly of me to get snippy about a title.
Preston's history moves back and forth between three levels--cultural, organizational, and individual. That is, he describes Christianity's impact on foreign relations works via ideas, religious pressure groups, and prominent religious and political leaders. This broad approach probably wouldn't satisfy those political scientists looking to locate and weigh the explanatory weight of this or that factor. But Preston is not out to make an argument about causation. Rather, he wants to give us enough evidence to make his thesis believable--that we can't fully comprehend US foreign relations without some reference to religion.
I think he makes a pretty convincing case (though since I already agreed with the thesis, I may be biased). However, I don't agree that "religion has had an almost uniquely intimate relationship with American war and diplomacy." After all, religion played prominent roles in the Roman, Spanish, and British empires and other imperial ventures (for example, state-sponsored Shintoism accompanied the Japanese bid for regional hegemony in the 1930s and 40s in East Asia). But that's about the only time that Preston seems to share the exceptionalism he examines. The book on the whole neither trumpets Christianity's impact on US foreign relations, nor criticizes it, though, as he says at the outset, "Readers will of course use the material in this book to support their own beliefs that religion is either a productive or pernicious force in American foreign relations." Thus 19th century US missionaries were both agents of informal empire-building and also brought the outside world back to their parishes, putting at least a small dent in the parochial character of many Americans. But, really, the bulk of Preston's evidence is about the collaboration of many Christians with US interventionism and war-making. Those with a "shield of faith" sensibility will wonder why their side lost out repeatedly, from the colonial massacres of Native Americans and conquest of a huge chunk of Mexican territory in the latter 1840s to the Vietnam war and our most recent bloody follies in Afghanistan and Iraq.
One of Preston's more significant arguments is his chapter on the early Cold War period, which he titles "The Great Schism and the Myth of Consensus." There he criticizes what he says is the common depiction of the years after WW II--a homogenous religious landscape. He reminds us that there was a great deal of debate among Christians about whether and how the US should conduct its Cold War with the Soviets. I was surprised and fascinated to learn that even the president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1946 thought the USSR had potential for good, and that Catholic groups refused to participate in air-raid drills.
The rest of the history is a recounting of the growing diversity of religious affiliations in the US, the schisms within mainline Christian denominations, yet their ongoing impact on US foreign policy via their mission activities, not to mention the importance of the Vatican II reforms and the later resurgence of Christian fundamentalism, particularly important to Reaganism in the 1980s. He wraps up the post-Reagan history quickly, perhaps too quickly, in an epilogue titled "The Last Crusade?" George W. Bush's administration gets about two pages. It deserved a bit more. This is a period, to my mind, that shows the declining purchase of conservative Christianity on US foreign policy. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but despite Bush's efforts (and those of his allies) to compare himself to Truman, and infuse the "Global War on Terror" with the religious sensibility evident in the early Cold War, he failed. The subdued narrative of US's providential mission in Afghanistan and Iraq never achieved purchase among the majority of Americans. Yet Preston ends with a deft description and analysis of President Obama's religiosity, and its roots in Reinhold Niebuhr's "Protestant realism." It's a position that doesn't mollify the Left and its relativistic predisposition, nor the Right, and its pining for an exceptional, sinless America that does the Lord's work in the world.
In short, Preston has done us a service with this book. A complicated, rich history of the relationship between an ever-shifting religious tableau in the US, and its dealings with the world.
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