Welcome back to class with the Lectures and History podcast. I'm your podcast producer, Shannon. This week, Hillsdale College Professor Richard Gamble teaches a class on American churches and religion during World War I. He discusses how American pastors, ministers, and rabbis spoke about the great War before and after the U.S. entered the

conflict. This lecture was part of a course titled The U.S. from the Great War to the Cold War.

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All right, good morning, everyone, and we are going to wrap up one part of America's experience in the

First World War by addressing explicitly the question of American religion during the war, the role of the churches during the war. Vast topic, and we will only get partway through that today. For class next time, you have the readings that are more focused on social gospel clergy and a response to social gospel clergy.

So we won't be done with this today,

but we are gonna work our way

through a broad overview of the question.

On the first day of class,

you read Woodrow Wilson's neutrality proclamation

from August 19th,, within the first two weeks or so of the war.

And in that, there was a section that I said, I'm going to come back to this.

And this is a section of the Neutrality Proclamation I wish I had paid closer attention to years ago. And this is a section of the neutrality proclamation I wish I had paid closer attention to years ago.

And this is the sentence.

Wilson, in pleading with the nation, pleading for neutrality in thought, word indeed, said,

the spirit of the nation in this critical matter will be determined largely by what individuals and society and those

gathered in public meetings do and say. Upon what newspapers and magazines contain. Upon what

ministers utter in their pulpits and men proclaim as their opinions on the street. So that key phrase there, we're going to zero in on what ministers utter in their pulpits.

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