An Interview with the Author on the History News Network

A Founding Father with a Vision of Equality Richard Newman's op-ed in "The Philadelphia Inquirer"

Author Spotlight in "The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle"

"Gold" Winner of the 2008 "Foreword Magazine" Book of the Year Award, Biography Category

Freedom's Prophet is a long-overdue biography of Richard Allen, founder of the first major African-American church and the leading black activist of the early American republic. A tireless minister, abolitionist, and reformer, Allen inaugurated some of the most important institutions in African-American history and influenced nearly every black leader of the nineteenth century, from Douglass to Du Bois.

Allen (1760-1831) was born a slave in colonial Philadelphia, secured his freedom during the American Revolution, and became one of the nations leading black activists before the Civil War. Among his many achievements, Allen helped form the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, co-authored the first copyrighted pamphlet by an African American writer, published the first African American eulogy of George Washington, and convened the first national convention of black reformers. In a time when most black men and women were categorized as slave property, Allen was championed as a black hero. As Richard S. Newman writes, Allen must be considered one of America's black Founding Fathers.

In this thoroughly engaging and beautifully written book, Newman describes Allen's continually evolving life and thought, setting both in the context of his times. From Allen's early antislavery struggles and belief in interracial harmony to his later reflections on black democracy and black emigration, Newman traces Allen's impact on American reform and reformers, on racial attitudes during the years of the early republic, and on the black struggle for justice in the age of Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington. Whether serving as Americas first black bishop, challenging slaveholding statesmen in a nation devoted to liberty, or visiting the President's House (the first black activist to do so), this important book makes it clear that Allen belongs in the pantheon of Americas great founding figures. Freedom's Prophet reintroduces Allen to today's readers and restores him to his rightful place in our nation's history.

This book looks at the role of Methodism in the Revolutionary and early national South. When the Methodists first arrived in the South, Lyerly argues, they were critics of the social order. By advocating values traditionally deemed "feminine," treating white women and African Americans with considerable equality, and preaching against wealth and slavery, Methodism challenged Southern secular mores. For this reason, Methodism evoked sustained opposition, especially from elite white men. Lyerly analyzes the public denunciations, domestic assaults on Methodist women and children, and mob violence against black Methodists. These attacks, Lyerly argues, served to bind Methodists more closely to one another; they were sustained by the belief that suffering was salutary and that persecution was a mark of true faith.

Kevin M. Watson offers the first in-depth examination of an essential early Methodist tradition: the band meeting, a small group of five to seven people who focused on the confession of sin in order to grow in holiness. Watson shows how the band meeting, which figured significantly in John Wesley's theology of discipleship, united Wesley's emphasis on the importance of holiness with his conviction that Christians are most likely to make progress in the Christian life together, rather than in isolation. Demonstrating that neither John Wesley's theology nor popular Methodism can be understood independent of each other, Watson explores how Wesley synthesized important aspects of Anglican piety (an emphasis on a disciplined practice of the means of grace) and Moravian piety (an emphasis on an experience of justification by faith and the witness of the Spirit) in his own version of the band meeting. Pursuing Social Holiness is an essential contribution to understanding the critical role of the band meeting in the development of British Methodism and shifting concepts of community in eighteenth-century British society.

A product of trans-Atlantic revivalism and awakening, Methodism initially took root in America in the eighteenth century. In the mid-nineteenth century, Methodism exploded to become the largest religious body in the United States and the quintessential form of American religion. This Cambridge Companion offers a general, comprehensive introduction to various forms of American Methodism, including the African-American, German Evangelical Pietist, holiness and Methodist Episcopal traditions. Written from various disciplinary perspectives, including history, literature, theology and religious studies, this volume explores the beliefs and practices around which the lives of American Methodist churches have revolved, as well as the many ways in which Methodism has both adapted to and shaped American culture. This volume will be an invaluable resource to scholars and students alike, including those who are exploring American Methodism for the first time.

With the decision to provide of a scholarly edition of the Works of John Wesley in the 1950s, Methodist Studies emerged as a fresh academic venture. Building on the foundation laid by Frank Baker, Albert Outler, and other pioneers of the discipline, this handbook provides an overview of the best current scholarship in the field. The forty-two included essays are representative of the voices of a new generation of international scholars, summarising and expanding on topical research, and considering where their work may lead Methodist Studies in the future.
Thematically ordered, the handbook provides new insights into the founders, history, structures, and theology of Methodism, and into ongoing developments in the practice and experience of the contemporary movement. Key themes explored include worship forms, mission, ecumenism, and engagement with contemporary ethical and political debate.

"American Methodist Worship is the most comprehensive history of worship among John Wesley's various American spiritual descendents that has ever been written. It will be a foundational book for anyone who wishes to understand how American Methodists have worshipped."-Sacramental Life
"This groundbreaking study will help to reshape the way that we think about early American Methodist worship and how it connects to more recent trends."-- The Journal of Religion
"Karen Westerfield Tucker's exhaustive examination of the history of American Methodist worship may indeed launch a new genre in liturgical historiography: denominational liturgical histories. The genius of this contribution is its comprehensiveness in examining for the first time the worship life of an American ecclesiological tradition."--Doxology

In 1834 the weary missionary Jason Lee arrived on the banks of the Willamette River and began to build a mission to convert the local Kalapuya and Chinook populations to the Methodist Church. The denomination had become a religious juggernaut in the United States, dominating the religious scene throughout the mid-Atlantic and East Coast. But despite its power and prestige and legions of clergy and congregants, Methodism fell short of its goals of religious supremacy in the northwest corner of the continent. In A Country Strange and Far Michael C. McKenzie considers how and why the Methodist Church failed in the Pacific Northwest and how place can affect religious transplantation and growth. Methodists failed to convert local Native people in large numbers, and immigrants who moved into the rural areas and cities of the Northwest wanted little to do with Methodism. McKenzie analyzes these failures, arguing the region itself-both the natural geography of the place and the immigrants' and clergy's responses to it-was a primary reason for the church's inability to develop a strong following there. The Methodists' efforts in the Pacific Northwest provide an ideal case study for McKenzie's timely region-based look at religion.

Challenging the traditional interpretation that the years between Reconstruction and World War I were a period when blacks made only marginal advances in religion, politics, and social life, John Giggie contends that these years marked a critical turning point in the religious history of southern blacks. In this ground-breaking first book, Giggie connects these changes in religious life in the Delta region - whose popularity was predominantly black but increasingly ruled by white supremacists - to the Great Migration and looks at how they impacted the new urban lives of those who made the exodus to the north. Rather than a straight narrative, the chapters present a range of ways blacks in the Delta experimented with new forms of cultural expression and how they looked for spiritual meaning in the face of racial violence. Giggie traces how experiences with the railroad became a part of spiritual life, how consumer marketing built religious identities, ways that fraternal societies became tied in with churches, the role of material culture in unifying religious identity across the Delta, and the backlash against the worldliness of black churches and the growth of alternate practices. The study take into account folk religion as well as a panopoly of institutions - black Baptist churches, African Methodist Episcopal church, Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, black conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and churches that formed the African-American Holiness movement - and looks at how they vigorously quarreled over the proper definition of religious organization, worship, and consumption. Vivid evidence comes from black denominational newspapers, published and unpublished ex-slave interviews conducted by the Works Progress Administration, legal transcripts, autobiographies, and recordings of black music and oral expression. This work is an excellent fit with the strengths of the OUP lists in African American, Southern, and religious history.

The ways in which people change and grow, and learn to become good, are not only about conscious decisions to behave well, but about internal change which allows a loving and compassionate response to others. Such change can take place in psychotherapy; this book explores whether similar processes can occur in a religious context. Using the work of Julia Kristeva and other post-Kleinian psychoanalysts, change and resistance to change are examined in the lives of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and his brother Charles, the greatest English hymn-writer. Their mother's description of them as young men as 'two scrubby travellers', was a prescient expression indicating their future pilgrimage, which they negotiated through many struggles and compromises; it points towards the 'wounded healer', a description which could be applied to John in later years. The use of psychoanalytic thought in this study allows the exploration of unconscious as well as conscious processes at work and interesting differences emerge, which shed light on the elements in religion that promote or inhibit change, and the influence of personality factors. 'Two scrubby travellers': A psychoanalytic view of flourishing and constraint in religion through the lives of John and Charles Wesley enriches our understanding of these two important historical figures. It questions the categorising of forms of religion as conducive to change and so 'mature', and other forms as 'immature', at a time when many, particularly young people, are attracted by fundamentalist, evangelical forms of belief. This book will be essential reading for researchers working at the intersection of psychoanalysis and religious studies; it will also be of interest to psychotherapists and psychoanalysts more generally, and to researchers in the philosophy of religion.

John Jea (b. 1773) and George White (b. 1764-c.1830) were two of the earliest African American autobiographers, each writing nearly a half-century before Frederick Douglass. Jea and White represent an earlier generation of African Americans who were born into slavery but granted their freedom shortly after American independence. Both chose to fight against slavery from the pulpit, as itinerant Methodist ministers in the North; Methodism’s staunch anti-slavery stance, acceptance of African American congregants, and use of itinerant preachers enhanced black religious practices and services in the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century. Graham Hodges’ substantial introduction to the book places these two narratives into historical context, and highlights several key themes, including slavery in the North, the struggle for black freedom after the Revolution, and the rise of African American Christianity.

This is an anthology of the writings of Charles Wesley. Best known for his hymns, such as `Hark! the Herald Angels Sing', and `Jesus, Lover of My Soul', Charles was the younger brother of John Wesley and the co-founder of Methodism. Despite his importance in the history of Protestantism, there is no collection of his writings in print, and indeed, little work has been done specifically on Charles in the last two generations. Tyson presents a chronologically arranged selection of the journals, sermons, letters, hymns, and poems in such a way as to both outline Wesley's life and illuminate the leading elements of his thought.

John Wesley led the Second English Reformation. His Methodist 'Connexion' was divided from the Church of England, not by dogma and doctrine but by the new relationship which it created between clergy and people. Throughout a life tortured by doubt about true faith and tormented by a series of bizarre relationships with women, Wesley kept his promise to 'live and die an ordained priest of the Established Church'. However by the end of the long pilgrimage - from the Oxford Holy Club through colonial Georgia to every market place in England - he knew that separation was inevitable. But he could not have realised that his influence on the new industrial working class would play a major part in shaping society during the century of Britain's greatest power and influence and that Methodism would become a worldwide religion and the inspiration of 20th century television evangelism.

The first presentation of John Wesley's doctrinal teachings in a systematic form that is also faithful to Wesley's own writings. Wesley was a prolific writer and commentator on Scripture, yet it is commonly held that he was not systematic or internally consistent in his theology and doctrinal teachings. On the contrary, Thomas C. Oden intends to demonstrate here that Wesley displayed a remarkable degree of consistency over sixty years of preaching and ministry. The book helps readers to grasp Wesley's essential teachings in an accessible form so that the person desiring to go directly to Wesley's own writings (which fill eighteen volumes) will know exactly where to turn. This volume focuses on the main doctrinal teachings of Wesley. Subsequent volumes in this series will deal with his pastoral and ethical teachings.

Scholars have historically associated John Wesley's educational endeavours with the boarding school he established at Kingswood, near Bristol, in 1746. However, his educational endeavours extended well beyond that single institution, even to non-Methodist educational programmes. This book sets out Wesley's thinking and practice concerning child-rearing and education, particularly in relation to gender and class, in its broader eighteenth-century social and cultural context. Drawing on writings from Churchmen, Dissenters, economists, philosophers and reformers as well as educationalists, this study demonstrates that the political, religious and ideological backdrop to Wesley's work was neither static nor consistent. It also highlights Wesley's eighteenth-century fellow Evangelicals including Lady Huntingdon, John Fletcher, Hannah More and Robert Raikes to demonstrate whether Wesley's thinking and practice around schooling was in any way unique. This study sheds light on how Wesley's attitudes to education were influencing and influenced by the society in which he lived and worked. As such, it will be of great interest to academics with an interest in Methodism, education and eighteenth-century attitudes towards gender and class.

Church and Chapel in Industrializing Society: Anglican Ministry and Methodism in Shropshire, 1760-1785 envelopes a new and provocative revisionist history of Methodism and the Church of England in the eighteenth century, challenging the Church's perception as a varied body with myriad obstacles which it dutifully and substantially confronted (if not always successfully) through the maintenance of an ecclesiastically and theologically rooted pastoral ideal. This model was lived out 'on the ground' by the parish clergy, many of whom were demonstrably innovative and conscientious in fulfilling their pastoral vocation vis-a-vis the new demands presented by the social, ecclesiastical, political, and economic forces of the day, not least of which was the rise of industrialisation. Contrary to the effete arguments of older cadre church historians, heavily reliant on the nineteenth-century denominational histories and primarily the various forms of Methodism, this book provides a thoroughly researched study of the ministry of John William Fletcher, incumbent of the parish of Madeley at the heart of the industrial revolution, whose own work along with that of his Evangelically minded Anglican-Methodist colleagues found the Church of England sufficiently strong and remarkably flexible enough to rigorously and creatively do the work of the Church alongside their non-Anglican Evangelical counterparts. Despite the manifest challenges of industrializing society, residual dissent, and competition from the Church's rivals, the Establishment was not incapable of competing in the religious marketplace.

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.

Key features of this text: * How to study the text * Author and historical background * General and detailed summaries * Commentary on themes, structure, characters, language and style * Glossaries * Test questions and issues to consider * Essay writing advice * Cultural connections * Literary terms * Illustrations * Colour design

Why did John Wesley leave the halls of academia at Oxford to become a Church of England missionary in the newly established colony of Georgia? Was his ministry in America a success or failure? These questions-which have engaged numerous biographers of Wesley-have often been approached from the vantage point of later developments in Methodism. Geordan Hammond presents the first book-length study of Wesley's experience in America, providing an innovative contribution to debates about the significance of a formative period of Wesley's life. John Wesley in America addresses Wesley's Georgia mission in fresh perspective by interpreting it in its immediate context. In order to re-evaluate this period of Wesley's life, Hammond carefully considers Wesley's writings and those of his contemporaries. The Georgia mission, for Wesley, was a laboratory for implementing his views of primitive Christianity. The ideal of restoring the doctrine, discipline, and practice of the early church in the pristine Georgia wilderness was the prime motivating factor in Wesley's decision to embark for Georgia and in his clerical practice in the colony. Understanding the centrality of primitive Christianity to Wesley's thinking and pastoral methods is essential to comprehending his experience in America. Wesley's conception of primitive Christianity was rooted in his embrace of patristic scholarship at Oxford. The most direct influence, however, was the High Church ecclesiology of the Usager Nonjurors who inspired him with their commitment to the restoration of the primitive church.

This second edition of Richard P. Heitzenrater's groundbreaking survey of the Wesleyan movement is the story of the many people who contributed to the theology, organization, and mission of Methodism. This updated version addresses recent research from the past twenty years; includes an extensive bibliography; and fleshes out such topics as the means of grace; Conference: "Large" Minutes: Charles Wesley: Wesley and America; ordination; prison ministry; apostolic church; music; children; Susanna and Samuel Wesley; the Christian library; itinerancy; connectionalism; doctrinal standards; and John Wesley as historian, Oxford don, and preacher.

The primary aim of this book is to explore the contradiction between widely shared beliefs in the USA about racial inclusiveness and equal opportunity for all and the fact that most churches are racially homogeneous and do not include people with disabilities. To address the problem Mary McClintock Fulkerson explores the practices of an interracial church (United Methodist) that includes people with disabilities. The analysis focuses on those activities which create opportunities for people to experience those who are different' as equal in ways that diminish both obliviousness to the other and fear of the other. In contrast with theology's typical focus on the beliefs of Christians, this project offers a theory of practices and place that foregrounds the instinctual reactions and communications that shape all groups. The effect is to broaden the academic field of theology through the benefits of ethnographic research and postmodern place theory.