The title of this volume is as old as the Wesleyan movement and apt for the very latest Methodist theological self-designation.Marks of Methodism points back to John Wesley himself and to his efforts to define the movement.Such marks or hallmarks prescribe a basis for Methodist identity, purpose, and unity.They also serve to differentiate Methodists from other Christians, to sketch the boundaries of our movement, and to mark us off.Marks also invite attention to the conjunction of precept and practice, to the considerable recent affirmation of practices as the traditioning and corporate bearers of Christian faithfulness and witness; and therefore as the ground of theology and doctrine, and to Methodist embodiment of and featuring of traditioning practices long before that became fashionable. These marks point to an understanding of church, a doctrine of the church, an ecclesiology, embedded in the everyday structures, policies, organizations, and patterns of Methodist life."

"What does it mean to be a United Methodist?" The answer to this question, says Kenneth H. Carter, Jr., is to live a particular way of life and follow a particular form of discipleship. The distinctive aspects of that way of discipleship are contained in what has recently come to be known as "the practices." Christian practices are things done together, over time, in response to God's grace. They constitute an extended argument against some harmful alternative in the culture; they address and define a fundamental human need; they come to focus in worship; and they add up to a way of life. Carter contends that there are 6 essential practices in the United Methodist tradition: (1) searching the scriptures, (2) generosity with the poor, (3) testimony, (4) singing, (5) Holy Communion, and (6) Christian conferencing.

Written primarily for those who lead in United Methodist congregations, this book will give the reader not only an understanding of what the central United Methodist practices are, but also how they can be taught. Being formed in and by these practices does not happen overnight; it happens across a lifetime of observing the practices in others and trying them out oneself. Neglecting the Christian practices--failing to attend to them--can mean a life devoid of much of the purpose and power that life in the Spirit can hold.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church was an important part of the historic freedom struggles of African Americans from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights movement. This fight for equality and freedom can be seen clearly in the denomination's evolving social and ecumenical consciousness. The denomination's very name changed from "Colored" to "Christian" in 1954, but the denomination did not join the struggle late. Rather, the CME was a critical participant from the days following the Civil War. At times, the Church was at odds with their white Methodist counterparts and in solidarity with other African-American denominations on issues of racial desegregation and the role of social protest in religion.Raymond Sommerville's important book discusses the relationship between Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the CME. While King and others received most of the headlines during the Civil Rights Era, the CME proved to be involved at all levels and equally important in all they did. With its strategic location in the South and its long history of ecumenical involvement, the CME Church emerged as a leading advocate of ecumenical civil rights activism. Previous interpretations asserted that the CME was apolitical and accomodationist or that it was more progressive than it was. Sommerville presents a more nuanced account of how a church of largely former slaves emancipated itself from the constraints of white Methodist paternalism and Jim Crow racism to emerge as a progressive force of racial justice and ecumenism in the South and beyond. Sommerville examines major centers of the CME -- Nashville, Birmingham, Memphis, Atlanta -- and selected leaders inthe South in charting the gradual metamorphosis of the former CME as a largely nonpolitical body of former slaves in 1870 to a more politically active denomination at the apex of the modern Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

1923. An encyclopedic account of the work of a denomination throughout the world, presented region by region. Diffendorfer was assisted by Paul Hutchinson, Foreign Section and William F. McDermott, American Section.

1916. The story of the life and accomplishments of the Methodist minister David Morton. Contents: Heredity and Environment; Feeling After God and Finding Him; Called to Preach and Answering the Call; The Itinerant Preacher; Taking a Turn with the Schools; In the General Conference; Presiding Elder, East and West; Church Extension Secretary; and Closing His Career.

This book develops the theological method implicit in the theology of John Wesley. The four normative sources for doing theology have been described as the Wesleyan quadrilateral--Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. The author shows that for Wesley the Protestant concept of "Scripture alone" entails the view that the Scriptures are the primary source, not the only source, of theology. He proposes that Wesley's theological method is the basis for a catholic evangelicalism and ecumenism that is faithful to the Scriptures, to the Early Church Fathers, to a responsible use of reason, and Christian experience enlightened by the Holy Spirit.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Helps users understand and use United Methodist belief and tradition to function as a Christian in a multicultural society. Sessions covers the post-modern world philosophy and its failure to provide value outside of Christian faith by studying a variety of Wesleyan essentials from original sin to holy. 13 sessions.1. The Challenge of Multiculturalism2. Biblical Authority in a Relativist World3. The Divine Trinity in a Multicultural Age4. Is Jesus the Only Way to God?5. The Holy Spirit and the Spirit of the Age6. Does Humanity Need God?7. More than a Casual Relationship: Saving Grace8. Holiness of Heart and Life: Sanctification9. What's the Point of Worship?10. Christian Behavior in a World Where "Anything Goes"11. "What New Creation?": Christian Social Responsibility12. Mission in a Multicultural Society13. Marketplace Christianity: Living Authentically

A new Wesley biography published at the tricentennial of his birth.

The aim of this book is simple: it is an attempt to get to know the real John Wesley. The author explains why getting to know the real Wesley seems so difficult and describes the principles of such a quest. The first part contains material written by Wesley himself. The second part contains material written by Wesley's contemporaries, who describe, defend, and/or attack him on a number of points. The third part describes Wesley's fate at the hands of biographers and other writers since his day, starting with the eulogists and tracing the main currents of Wesley studies into the twenty-first century.

This book describes Wesley as he saw himself and as he was seen by both admirers and detractors. It gives a history of the biographies written about Wesley and provides a distillation of the primary documents written by and about Wesley. It includes an index and a bibliography.

John and Charles Wesley led the Methodist revival that swept eighteenth-century England and America and changed the face of Christianity forever. Their spirituality synthesized a unique blend of elements from the church fathers, Catholic mystics, and Protestant Reformers. This selection includes John's incisive writings on the spiritual life as well as the famous hymns of Charles, giving vibrant expression to the faith of the Wesleys.

"About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death." -- John Wesley

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

A plain account of John Wesley's life and work. Wesley, an ordained priest and English religious leader, was prompted by an experience at a prayer meeting in London to accept the principle of justification by faith and abandoned the ecclesiastical and High Church views. He preached rejection of the doctrine of election and is the author of educational treatises, hymns, ecclesiastical history, biblical commentaries and a variety of other books and essays. Handsomely illustrated with over 100 portraits, views and facsimiles.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The thoughts and beliefs of John Wesley and the Early Methodist traditions are frequently related to recent progressive tendencies in theology. There are numerous parallels between contemporary interests in people at the margins and Wesley's concern for poor people and his commitments to the sick and imprisoned. In this volume, contributors from diverse backgrounds in the United States and around the globe reflect on radical and liberation traditions in Methodism in their own context. In conversation with contemporary Methodism and the Wesleyan heritage, each chapter focuses on the question of how radical and liberation traditions provide new visions for the present and future of the church.

Contributors: Jose Miguez Bonino, Rebecca S. Chopp, Stephen G. Hatcher, Jione Havea, Theodore Jennings, Jr., Cedric Mayson, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Andrew Sung Park, Jong Chun Park, Harold J. Recinos, Joerg Rieger, John J. Vincent, and Josiah U. Young, III.

A Perfect Love is the full text of Wesley's "A Plain Account of Christian Perfection" edited and updated for the contemporary reader. It also includes in-text definitions and notes that explain names and terms that may be unfamiliar to the reader, as well as hymns by Charles Wesley that describe the work of grace in human lives that leads to perfection in love. The term Christian perfection, as Wesley used and understood it, may be translated as "Christian maturity"; it is the outcome of a life lived with and for God in Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Written completely in Spanish, this book on United Methodist polity, while it follows the structure and content of The Book of Discipline for teaching purposes, also seeks to interpret borader themes of church practice in their cultural and ecclesial contexts. The author addresses issues that are critical for the future of United Methodism, especially its movement toward becoming a more global, ecumenical church. Excellent for both student and church leaders.

After John Wesley's death in 1791, schisms from Wesleyan Methodism occurred regularly. These events were not unexpected and the authorities often accepted them with little obvious regret, even if they did not actually encourage them. The first major split occurred in 1797 when the Methodist New Connexion was formed, and in the following twenty years further significant schisms led to the establishment of the Primitive Methodists and the Bible Christians. Other offshoots arose that lasted for shorter periods. One of these was the Tent Methodists, a group that has been largely ignored by historians probably because it did not become a major national or regional body. Its significance has not, however, been sufficiently recognized. One tent, then two, capable of accommodating congregations of over 500, were used extensively by preachers in the Bristol Wesleyan circuit and further afield from 1814, in addition to their preaching plan commitments. They received varying degrees of support and hostility from the circuit hierarchy, and in late 1819 attempts were made to bring the work under the authority of the circuit superintendent. The local preachers involved refused to relinquish control of the tents, and a bitter dispute began which led to the effective expulsion of three leading local preachers. They, and others, formed the Tent Methodist sect that, for several years, made considerable progress in several parts of England and one small area of South Wales. Decline set in at the beginning of 1826, and by 1832 the tents had been disposed of, and all the chapels acquired by the sect had been sold. Soon afterwards the leaders had either rejoined the Wesleyans, had become ministers in the Congregational or Baptist denominations, or emigrated to North America.