Mark Twain's Final Offensive: 'the War-Prayer' and American Religious Nationalism

Abstract

Mark Twain Studies Vol. 2 Mark Twain’s Final Offensive: ”The War-Prayer” and American Religious Nationalism Christopher VAUGHAN Mark Twain’s “The War-Prayer,” while clearly grounded in the outbreak of the Span- ish-American war at a time when volunteers were the primary  ghting force, drew upon the succeeding years in which professional troops replaced the generally rag-tag volun- teers who  rst mustered in the thousands for a taste of martial glory wherever it was be- ing served up. Twain spoke in his indictment of the invocation of divine favoritism to a broader group of volunteers, however, in addressing the faithful who offered up their sup- port for the war, in whatever forms it had taken or would take. By the time he attempted to circulate it, the Philippine “insurrection” had been declared over, unilaterally, on the symbolic date of July 4, 1902. But the conquest of the Islamic southern Philippines, where the Spanish had never fully gained control and where resistance was persisting against the new foreign invasion, had continued to pique Twain’s anti-imperialist ire. The politi- cally-inected religious framework in which he couched “The War-Prayer” is thus worth contemplating. In positing an unspoken will to destruction among the pastors joining patriotic fervor to religious beseeching of the Almighty, Twain aimed his rapier wit not only at national- ism, but at the un-Christian version of Christianity used to justify the slaughter of the Fili-