Shortly before assuming the presidency in 1913, Woodrow Wilson told a friend that “it would be an irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.”1 This now famous exchange notwithstanding, the advent of World War I and the expansive, idealistic vision that Wilson articulated for the postwar order ensured that he and his administration engaged in foreign affairs deeply during his time in office. Furthermore, Wilson's Fourteen Points and the outcomes he sought at the 1919 Paris Peace conference shaped international relations in the twentieth century profoundly. It is not surprising then that historians, political scientists, and other scholars have written extensively about Wilson's presidency and foreign policy. In some ways, Wilson anticipated the global order that emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century, yet his views and policy objectives—not to mention his white supremacist and patriarchal ideology—remained embedded in the mores of his particular time, upbringing, and religious culture. Wilson was, in part, a product of the Protestant social gospel movements of the early twentieth century. It is into this intellectual milieu that Cara Lea Burnidge plunges in her excellent monograph, A Peaceful Conquest: Woodrow Wilson, Religion, and the New World Order, which situates Wilson and his foreign policy within the context of social gospel Christian exceptionalism, internationalism, and imperialism.
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