When confronted with undeniable evidence of American brutality, evangelicals could always fall back on the concept of human depravity. With sin lurking in every human heart, violence was inevitable, and only Jesus was the answer. When the young army lieutenant William Calley faced trial for his role in the murder of some five hundred Vietnamese men, women, and children in what came to be known as the My Lai massacre, Billy Graham remarked that he had “never heard of a war where innocent people are not killed.”
