In US War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation, Kelly Denton-Borhaug states that the “sacrificial war narrative”—profoundly embedded in American culture, memory and national consciousness—is our (the American) story. The sacrificial metaphor at the heart of citizenship—inextricably tied to war—has “incredible power.” Our deeply religious war-culture, she says, “profoundly shapes our understandings of citizenship and the nation.”

In his of review of US War-Culture,  David Weddle summarizes Denton-Borhaug's argument as follows: "Deaths in battle are often designated as sacrifice, and therein a powerful motivation for warfare lies.”

References to combat deaths as “necessary sacrifices” are drawn from centuries of Christian interpretation of the death of Jesus as "required for salvation.” Warfare thus is transformed into a “sacred enterprise” devoted to saving the nation from its enemies.

Religious institutions, Denton-Borhaug says--perpetrating uncritical portrayals of Christ as the ultimate sacrifice for human salvation—“feed into war culture.” The model of the heroic offering of oneself for the salvation of others (by Christ) inspires the view of those who die in battle as “redemptive sacrifices.” Fervor for war is sustained by the pervasive “use of sacrifice to name the loss of life in battle.”

Just as Christ died to save humanity, so the soldier dies to save the nation. Like Christ, soldiers die so that we may live. By associating Christ’s death with the deaths of fallen warriors, wars that take the lives of soldiers become “sacred enterprises,” as valuable to patriotic piety as “the cross upon which Christ gave himself.” Jesus’ sacrifice “bleeds into and informs the meaning of the sacrifice of soldiers in war.”