Foreword / by Catherine L. Albanese and Stephen J. Stein -- Introduction -- Fighting the good fight -- Contesting the good fight : warfare and the American Revolution -- The power to "kill and make alive" : the spiritual battle and the body in post-Revolutionary America -- Beating their plowshares into swords : Methodists and violence in antebellum America -- Methodist respectability and the decline of the good fight for salvation -- The Christian's warfare and social violence
Summary
Early American Methodists commonly described their religious lives as great wars with sin and claimed they wrestled with God and Satan who assaulted them in terrible ways. Carefully examining a range of sources, including sermons, letters, autobiographies, journals, and hymns, Jeffrey Williams explores this violent aspect of American religious life and thought. Williams exposes Methodism's insistence that warfare was an inevitable part of Christian life and necessary for any person who sought God's redemp
