Providential interpretations of the Spanish–American War inevitable?

Dr. McCullough frames much of his dissertation as a narrative of U.S. Christian responses to the development of the Spanish–American War, and as such necessarily addresses the religious interpretations of the Battle of Manila Bay and the Battle of Santiago de Cuba. These interpretations, which Dr. McCullough convincingly tethers to the development of American religion more generally, may well seem jingoistic in the extreme, emphasizing as they do the ways in which the will of God is plainly manifest in American victory.

As distasteful as these interpretations may be at present, it seems to me that they were very nearly inevitable. Given that Admiral Dewey won the Battle of Manila Bay with only one casualty (to heat-stroke) and that Admirals Sampson and Schley won the Battle of Santiago de Cuba with only one U.S. fatality, would any non-providential interpretation have seemed even remotely plausible? To state the same question less formally, can we blame American ministers for seeing the hand of God in the comprehensive victories won by the U.S. Navy during 1898? The American public had no reason at all to expect that Spain, which had been fighting various wars throughout its far-flung empire throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, would have permitted its navy to lapse into such mean estate. Expecting a competitive adversary, could Americans have come to any other conclusion than that some sort of destiny or providence favored their cause when that adversary's forces were utterly routed?