This comprehensive work explores the militia system and its role in the development of colonial New England. Ahearn contends that the militia and the military sermon created an atmosphere of Christian soldiery and warfare that exercised a powerful, long-lasting hold upon New Englanders. Ministers reinforced martial drill and militancy in their sermons. The language and attitudes of warfare became part of the society. New England's military sermons deeply encoded the biblical language of Christian warfare into the patterns of everyday life and into the fabric of American consciousness; its...