In The Gospel of Nationalism (1986), Arlie J. Hoover writes about nationalism as a religion, theorizing that the “fluidity of the religious sense” makes it easy for human beings to switch the object of religious veneration: from the church to nation; from God to country.

Focusing on the sermons of German pastors during the First World War, Hoover demonstrates that the sacrificial soldier lay at the heart of religious nationalism. Far from being sinful, German pastors agreed, the life of the soldier was one of the most exemplary lives one could choose, a life of “moral courage, devotion, and self-denial.” The soldier, like Christ, was ready to “place his earthly life on the altar of love;” to “die for family, brethren, or country.”

German pastors looked upon the warrior’s death as the “most beautiful of all deaths.” The hero’s death—death of a German soldier—resembled the “free-will offering of Christ himself, who left his life voluntarily for his brethren.” Walter Lehmann: “German nationality and Christianity agree at their very core in heroism—nothing is greater than to leave your life for your friends and your brethren. Both are fulfilled in the hero’s death.”

German Lutheran theologian Adolf von Harnack stated that soldiers can claim the promise of scripture: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren” (I John 3:14). Whoever dies in battle “dies in the Lord”-- because he has “subordinated his bodily good” and “offered his life for the good of the Volk.”

The nature of war, Hoover observes, makes it easy for the soldier to understand the essence of Christianity: heroism, love, sacrifice, and devotion to duty. As General Patton said, soldiers understand the cross “because they have borne a cross themselves.” They know instinctively what Jesus meant when he said, “Greater love hath no man who would lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

So there you have it: the dynamic of warfare for Germans during the period of the First World War does not differ substantially from the dynamic that Kelly Denton-Borhaug finds at the heart of American culture. She states that Christian proclamations portraying the work of Christ as a sacrifice “cements the the social structure of war in Western cultures such as the United States.”

The sacrificial dynamic begins with Christ and his crucifixion. Christ died at the cross to save humanity. This dynamic evolved into the sacrifice of the soldier. The soldier dies on the battlefield to save his country.

It is not enough to claim that nationalism “borrows” from Christianity. Rather, nationalism descends from Christianity. Nationalism is an iteration of the idea that immortal entities exist on the face of the earth. Just as the church required sacrifices, so do nations require sacrificial death to sustain themselves. The nation as a body politic replaces the body of the Church. The idea of soldier who gives his life that his country might live derives from—symbolizes—the sacrifice of Christ, who died so that all of us might life.

Denton-Borhaug writes about “challenging the institution of war.” This amounts, she says, to becoming aware of the metaphor of sacrifice that defines and sustains this institution. Once we begin to “understand and interrogate these destructive connections,” war-culture begins to “dismantle in our minds.” At that moment, a “new kind of consciousness or awareness about our reality begins to dawn upon us.”

What does this new form of awareness amount to? It is recognition that—although each war is unique—there is a dynamic that is constant: the requirement that soldiers give their lives for their country.