Steven L. DUNDAS. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Religion and the Politics of Race in the Civil War Era and Beyond.  Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2022.  xxiii + 393 pp.  $36.95  ISBN 9781640124882 (hardback). Reviewsed by Leo LEFEBURE, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20075

Steven L. Dundas, a retired chaplain in the US Navy and a former assistant professor at the Joint Forces Staff College of the National Defense University who describes himself as a “historian without a PhD” (xix), offers a fast-moving and helpful overview of the interplay between religious actors and the politics of race in American history.  While not claiming to offer the results of original research, Dundas draws effectively upon a large number of respected historians to present a gripping tale of racial and religious conflict from 1607 to the present, with a primary focus on events in the nineteenth century and particular attention to military history. 

Writing for a broad audience, Dundas does not delve too deeply into the technical hermeneutical and theological issues around religion, politics, slavery, race, and holy war; but he provides a wide-ranging narrative of how Southerners and Northerners, advocates for both slavery and abolition, variously invoked God’s will to defend their decisions and interpret events.  He documents how clergy supporting both sides of the Civil War interpreted it in theological terms as a holy war; soldiers on both sides actively attended religious revivals; after the Civil WaR Southern leaders regarded the so-called “Lost Cause” retrospectively in religious terms.  Dundas often points out similarities between past and present concerns, interpreting past events as anticipating present-day issues.  For example, he recounts how the ominous religious divisions among American Christian churches in the 1840s and 50s led to the national conflict in the Civil War, and he worries about what our current unresolved religious controversies may portend for the future of American society.  Emphasizing the importance of racist proslavery views in the self-understanding of Confederate leaders, Dundas locates the seeds of today’s belief in white supremacy in the proslavery religious ideology of the antebellum South. He often suggests comparisons as food for thought as the narrative moves on to the next topic.

Throughout his discussion Dundas is concerned to combat white Christian racism and the falsehoods that support it, especially the false narratives of white Christian nationalism, white supremacy, the “Noble South,” and the “Lost Cause.”  This book will be helpful for those seeking to understand how the history of Christianity in North America has intersected with political and racial relations past and present.