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"Draws upon previously neglected primary sources to offer a ground-breaking analysis of the intertwined political, racial, and religious dynamics at work in the institutional merging of three American Methodist denominations in 1939. Davis boldly examines the conflicted ethics behind a dominant American religious culture's justification and preservation of racial segregation in the reformulation of its post-slavery institutional presence in American society. His work provides a much-needed, critical discussion of the racial issues that pervaded American religion and culture in the early twentieth century.a
--Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards, Academic Dean and Associate Professor of History and Theology, United Theological Seminary, Dayton Ohio

aA discerning, sober, and troubling probing of the preoccupation within the Methodist Church with Christian nationalism, civilization as defined by white Anglo-Saxon manhood, and race, race consciousness and athe problem of the Negroa that was foundational to and constitutive of a reunited Methodism. A must read for students of early 20th century America.a
--Russell E. Richey, Emory University

In the early part of the twentieth century, Methodists were seen by many Americans as the most powerful Christian group in the country. Ulysses S. Grant is rumored to have said that during his presidency there were three major political parties in the U.S., if you counted the Methodists.

The Methodist Unification focuses on the efforts among the Southern and Northern Methodist churches to create a unified national Methodist church, and how their plan for unification came to institutionalizeracism and segregation in unprecedented ways. How did these Methodists conceive of what they had just formed as auniteda when members in the church body were racially divided?

Moving the history of racial segregation among Christians beyond a simplistic narrative of racism, Morris L. Davis shows that Methodists in the early twentieth century -- including high-profile African American clergy -- were very much against racial equality, believing that mixing the races would lead to interracial marriages and threaten the social order of American society.

The Methodist Unification illuminates the religious culture of Methodism, Methodists' self-identification as the primary carriers of "American Christian Civilization," and their influence on the crystallization of whiteness during the Jim Crow Era as a legal category and cultural symbol.

During the nineteenth century, camp meetings became a signature program of American Methodists and an extraordinary engine for their remarkable evangelistic outreach. Methodism in the American Forest explores the ways in which Methodist preachers interacted with and utilized the American woodland, and the role camp meetings played in the denomination's spread across the country. Half a century before they made themselves such a home in the woods, the people and preachers learned the hard way that only a fool would adhere to John Wesley's mandate for preaching in fields of the New World. Under the blazing American sun, Methodist preachers found a better outdoor sanctuary for larger gatherings: under the shade of great oaks, a natural cathedral, where they held forth with fervid sermons. The American forests, argues Russell E. Richey, served the preachers in another important way. The remote, garden-like solitude provided them with a place to seek counsel from the Holy Spirit, serving as a kind of Gethsemane. As seen by the American Methodists, the forest was also a desolate wilderness, and a means for them to connect with Israel's wilderness years after the Exodus and Jesus's forty days in the desert after his baptism by John. Undaunted, the preachers slashed their way through, following America's expanding settlement, and gradually sacralizing American woodlands as cathedral, confessional, and spiritual challenge-as shady grove, as garden, and as wilderness. The threefold forest experience became a Methodist standard. The meeting of Methodism's basic governing body, the quarterly conference, brought together leadership of all levels. The event stretched to two days in length and soon great crowds were drawn by the preaching and eventually the sacraments that were on offer. Camp meetings, if not a Methodist invention, became the movement's signature, a development that Richey tracks throughout the years that Methodism matured, becoming a central denomination in America's religious landscape.

This book offers a comprehensive examination of Methodist practice, tracing its evolution from the earliest days up to the present. Using liturgical texts as well as written accounts in popular and private sources, Karen Westerfield Tucker investigates the various rites and seasons of worship in Methodism and examines them in relation to American society.

This book offers a history of three generations of Baptist and Methodist clergymen in nineteenth-century Virginia, and through them of the congregations and communities in which they lived and worked. Unlike previous scholars, who examined Southern Protestantism as only a proslavery and pro-Confederate ideology, Schweiger takes a wider view and finds a broad transformation of the social and cultural context of religious experience in the region. She traces several major themes, such as the contrast between rural and urban experience, or the Methodist and Baptist schisms of the 1840's through the lives and careers of 800 clergy.

All truly religious movements are informed by a search for spiritual renewal, often signalled by an attempt to return to what are seen as the original, undiluted values of earlier times. Elements of this process are to be seen in the history of almost all modern religious revivals, both inside and outside the mainstream denominations.

The dominant activities of the eighteenth century Wesleyan Methodist Connexion, in terms of expenditure, were the support of itinerant preaching, and the construction and maintenance of preaching houses. These were supported by a range of both regular and occasional flows of funds, primarily from members' contributions, gifts from supporters, various forms of debt finance, and profits from the Book Room. Three other areas of action also had significant financial implications for the movement: education, welfare, and missions. The Financing of John Wesley's Methodism c.1740-1800 describes what these activities cost, and how the money required was raised and managed. Though much of the discussion is informed by financial and other quantitative data, Clive Norris examines a myriad of human struggles, and the conflict experienced by many early Wesleyan Methodists between their desire to spread the Gospel and the limitations of their personal and collective resources. He describes the struggle between what Methodists saw as the promptings of Holy Spirit and their daily confrontation with reality, not least the financial constraints which they faced.

This is the first study of an important group in early Methodism. It was quite separate from Wesley's followers, with its own preachers, chapels, training college, and statement of belief. The book shows how the Connexion operated at the grass roots - including how congregations formed, how chapels came to be built, and how the Connexion related to other religious groups.

This first volume of a two volume edition contains letters written between 1727 and 1756 by the famous hymn writer, poet, and co-founder of Methodism, Charles Wesley (1707-1788), Volume 2 will contain letters written between 1757 and 1788. The edition brings together texts which are located in libraries and archives from across the globe and here presents them as a complete collection for the first time - many of the letters have never been previously published. The appended notes help the reader locate the letters in their proper historical and literary context and provide full information regarding the location of the original source and, where possible, something of its provenance.
These texts provide an intimate glimpse into the world of early Methodism and Charles' own struggles and triumphs as a central figure within it. They collectively document the story of Charles Wesley's early experiences as he sought to find his own place in Methodism and, of key importance for Charles, Methodism's place in the wider purposes of God. Here are letters of a theological kind, letters that reflect on his experiences as an itinerant preacher, letters that show something of his rather unsettled personality and letters that relate to his own personal and domestic circumstances. Here we see something of the inner workings of a nascent religious group. These are not sanitised accounts written by those looking back, but first-hand accounts written from the heart of a lived experience.
While this book will naturally appeal to those who have a specialist interest in the early history of Methodism, for others there is much to be gained from the picture it gives of the wider eighteenth-century world in which Charles and his co-religionists worked and lived.