World War II militarism helped evangelicals shed their marginal, anti-war reputation

Evidence

Among fundamentalists and evangelicals, any lingering ambivalence toward war was swept away by the attack on Pearl Harbor. The new war was an indisputable battle between good and evil, and this time around they would give no reason to be tarred as unpatriotic. Among Americans more generally, the war rehabilitated a more militant—and militaristic—model of masculinity, and fundamentalists and newly branded evangelicals, many of whom had never entirely abandoned the older muscular Christianity, joined the fray. Tellingly, when it came to the tactics of total war employed by the US military, it was liberal Protestants—many still chastened by the First World War—who expressed reservations. Ockenga, on the other hand, defended the firebombing of German cities in the pages of the New York Times. Evangelicals relished this role reversal, and their newfound patriotism and militarism would help them overcome their reputation as extremists and their marginal status. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 56

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The reversal—evangelicals out-militarist liberal Protestants on total war—feeds the same identity-via-political-marking dynamic as the dress panics piece: group identity repositioned through visible alliance with power.
• QUESTION: Worth checking: was it actually liberal Protestants who led WWI-era pacifist critique, and did evangelicals really relish this specific reversal, or is this a later-frame reading?