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