Within the armed ranks during the Civil War, religion expressed itself in the form of revivalism.  Steven E. Woodworth, in While God is Marching On: the Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (2001), concludes that although religion permeated the lives of many ordinary soldiers, providing both assurance and chastisement, ultimately the War did not change sectional religious sentiments.[50]  Drew Gilpin Faust, in “Christian Soldiers: The Meaning of Revivalism in the Confederate Army,” (Journal of Southern History 53, no. 1, February 1987), explores the theme of Confederate army revivalism expressed in both personal piety and as a vehicle for corporate understanding of God’s plan in the midst of death, destruction, and defeat.[51]  Reid Mitchell, in “Christian Soldiers?: Perfecting the Confederacy” (Religion and the American Civil War), questions whether Confederate soldiers were more religious than Union soldiers.[52]  Philip Paludan, in “A People’s Contest:” The Union and the Civil War, 1861-1865 (1988), examines religion among Union soldiers and also concludes that Union revivals were common, albeit less publicized at the time.[53]

Kurt O. Berends (“’Wholesome Reading Purifies and Elevates the Man:’ The Religious Military Press in the Confederacy,” Religion and the American Civil War), examines the religious life of Confederate soldiers through the pages of the southern religious military press. Berends concludes that by the second half of the Civil War, southern ministers were convinced that the key to sectional victory was a converted army.  Christian denominations in the South proclaimed that the soldier was fighting for God and that manliness and commitment to the Confederate Cause were Christian virtues.  Maintaining faith in the primacy of personal salvation, southern churches, through the religious military press, rallied for sectional victory, while at the same time providing rational for the possibility of defeat.  Berends concludes that this message conveyed social implications far beyond the war itself, shaping the religion of the Lost Cause as a civil religion, but also perpetuating a manly Christianity.[54]

                Sidney J. Romero, in Religion in the Rebel Ranks (1983), explores the religious life of the Confederate soldier as portrayed through 20,000 plus letters, diaries and manuscripts.  Romero’s sources discuss religion in terms of revivals, chaplains, officers, soldiers and daily army life.  He concludes that religion was the greatest weapon of the otherwise disadvantaged South, providing the will to fight even against impossible odds.  “There seems little doubt that the church was the single greatest institution in the maintenance of moral in the Confederate army.”[55]