Making War and Minting Christians: Masculinity, Religion, and Colonialism in Early New England

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Making War and Minting Christians: Masculinity, Religion, and Colonialism in Early New England. By R. Todd Romero. (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011. Pp. xiii, 255. $26.95.)

When Anglo-American men beat their drums and carried their colors at the start of a battle in the Pequot War [1636-1637], they saw themselves as enacting a masculine show of force and order befitting of their gendered authority. Pequot warriors, however, could only respond with laughter at what they saw as a pompous and unmanly display. By adding a gendered analysis of masculinity, the long history of intertwined religion and warfare is given new treatment in R. Todd Romero's study of …