Evangelical leaders minimized Vietnam atrocities and framed soldiers as Christian champions

Evidence

When word of American atrocities began to filter back to the home front, conservative evangelicals minimized the violence and advanced moral equivalencies. In a 1967 Christianity Today editorial supporting intensified bombing in North Vietnam, Carl Henry employed sanitized language dismissing any “civilian damage” as “regrettable,” adding that it paled in comparison to the damage inflicted by the communists. To Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell, the US soldier in Vietnam remained “a living testimony” to Christianity, and to “old fashioned patriotism.” A defender of “Americanism,” the American soldier was “a champion for Christ.” — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 115