According to The Book of Discipline, Wesley believed that the "living core of the Christian faith" is revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, "vivified" by personal experience, and confirmed by reason. The thesis of Wesley and the Quadrilateral is that the Church needs serious conversation about reappropriating the Quadrilateral in a manner that is consistent with historical Methodist identity (beginning with Wesley), a conversation that takes the church's past identity with the utmost seriousness while recognizing present and future cultural trends.

With a historian's precision and a passion for social justice, Alice Knotts shows in this book how the activities of the Methodist women's movement for civil rights developed decade by decade. Their activities were rarely in the public eye, yet they were shaping and being shaped by events and public opinion.

An astute and insightful history, Fellowship of Love documents the contributions of white Methodist women in the American civil rights struggle. The research for this volume has won the Jessie Lee Prize from the General Commission on Archives and History of The United Methodist Church. It documents in one volume otherwise disparate information important to understanding the contributions of women in the Methodist Church to race struggles in 20th-century America. 0687030870671 Many pastors are stymied by lack of activity, the barring of doors, and the erecting of barriers. They want to make a change. They know that change is necessary to break through gridlock and conflict, but they do not know what skills and techniques are needed to deliver the desired results.

In Unlocking Church Doors: 10 Keys to Positive Change, Paul Mundey provides

In the Methodist lexicon, 'conference' refers to a body of preachers (and later, of laity as well) that exercises legislative, judicial, and executive functions for the church or some portion thereof. 'Conference, ' says Richey, defined Methodism in more than political ways: on conference hinged religious time, religious space, religious belonging, religious structure, even religiosity itself. Methodist histories uniformly recognize, typically even feature, conference's centrality, but describe that in primarily constitutional and political terms. The purpose of this volume is to present conference as a distinctively American Methodist manner of being the church, a multifaceted mode of spirituality, unity, mission, governance, and fraternity that American Methodists have lived and operated better than they have interpreted.

Of the many hymnbooks published by John and Charles Wesley, the most important was A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1780). Taking this volume as a case study and concentrating on the Charles Wesley hymns included in it, Teresa Berger clarifies the relationship between the language of doxology of worship and praise of God and the substance of theological reflection. She identifies the central theological themes and emphases in this body of hymnody, and raises the question of how theology can be embodied in hymns. Central to her argument is the claim that the theological analysis of doxological material is possible only when it takes care to recognize and safeguard the characteristics, the criteria of authenticity, and the tests of authority and legitimacy peculiar to doxological language. Part One of the book sets the whole discussion within the context of a renewed interest in doxological and liturgical traditions across Christianity by showing how the relationship of doxology and theology is an important topic of theological discussion in Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and ecumenical circles. Part Two is devoted to a thorough theological analysis of the central themes and images of the 1780 Collection. Part Three attempts to clarify the nature of doxology in its relation to theology.

With the conclusion of the Civil War, the beginnings of Reconstruction, and the realities of emancipation, former slaves were confronted with the possibility of freedom and, with it, a new way of life. In The Times Were Strange and Stirring, Reginald F. Hildebrand examines the role of the Methodist Church in the process of emancipation--and in shaping a new world at a unique moment in American, African American, and Methodist history.Hildebrand explores the ideas and ideals of missionaries from several branches of Methodism--the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, and the northern-based Methodist Episcopal Church--and the significant and highly charged battle waged between them over the challenge and meaning of freedom. He traces the various strategies and goals pursued by these competing visions and develops a typology of some of the ways in which emancipation was approached and understood.Focusing on individual church leaders such as Lucius H. Holsey, Richard Harvey Cain, and Gilbert Haven, and with the benefit of extensive research in church archives and newspapers, Hildebrand tells the dramatic and sometimes moving story of how missionaries labored to organize their denominations in the black South, and of how they were overwhelmed at times by the struggles of freedom.

Offering a revisionist reading of American Methodism, this book goes beyond the limits of institutional history by suggesting a new and different approach to the examination of denominations. Russell E. Richey identifies within Methodism four distinct "languages" and explores the self-understanding that each language offers the early Methodists. One of these, a pietistic or evangelical vernacular, commonly employed in sermons, letters, and journals, is Richey's focus and provides a way for him to reconsider critical interpretive issues in American religious historiography and the study of Methodism. Richey challenges some important historical conventions, for instance, that the crucial changes in American Methodism occurred in 1784 when ties with John Wesley and Britain were severed, arguing instead for important continuities between the first and subsequent decades of Methodist experience.

As Richey shows, the pietistic vernacular did not displace other Methodist languages Wesleyan, Anglican, or the language of American political discourse nor can it supplant them as interpretive devices. Instead, attention to the vernacular severs to highlight the tensions among the other Methodist languages and to suggest something of the complexity of early Methodist discourse. It reveals the incomplete connections made among the several languages, the resulting imprecisions and confusions that derived from using idioms from different languages, and the ways the Methodists drew upon the distinct languages during times of stress, change, and conflict."

The Central Jurisdiction was created for African American members of the merger in 1939 of: The Methodist Episcopal Church, The Methodist Episcopal Church South, and The Methodist Protestant Church.

A collection of essays by leading Wesleyan/Methodist scholars Richard Heitzenrater, Roberta Bondi, David Lowes Watson, Theodore Runyon, Jean Miller Schmidt, W. Stephen Gunter, and Randy L. Maddox. These essays demontrate the specific impact Wesley's Aldersgate had not only on his life and theology, but also on subsequent generations of Methodists.

In John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, the pilgrims cannot reach the Celestial City without passing through Vanity Fair, where everything is bought and sold. In recent years there has been much analysis of commerce and consumption in Britain during the long eighteenth century, and of the dramatic expansion of popular publishing. Similarly, much has been written on the extraordinary effects of the evangelical revivals of the eighteenth century in Britain, Europe, and North America. But how did popular religious culture and the world of print interact? It is now known that religious works formed the greater part of the publishing market for most of the century. What religious books were read, and how? Who chose them? How did they get into people's hands? Vanity Fair and the Celestial City is the first book to answer these questions in detail. It explores the works written, edited, abridged, and promoted by evangelical dissenters, Methodists both Arminian and Calvinist, and Church of England evangelicals in the period 1720 to 1800. Isabel Rivers also looks back to earlier sources and forward to the continued republication of many of these works well into the nineteenth century. The first part is concerned with the publishing and distribution of religious books by commercial booksellers and not-for-profit religious societies, and the means by which readers obtained them and how they responded to what they read. The second part shows that some of the most important publications were new versions of earlier nonconformist, episcopalian, Roman Catholic, and North American works. The third part explores the main literary kinds, including annotated bibles, devotional guides, exemplary lives, and hymns. Building on many years' research into the religious literature of the period, Rivers discusses over two hundred writers and provides detailed case studies of popular and influential works.

A comprehensive one-volume history of American Methodism, tracing the development of a new church in a new nation from its beginnings with the Wesleys in England to the changes and challenges of later twentieth-century America. Black Methodism, the contributions of women, theological trends across 200 years--all emerge in clear detail. This book also includes the story of the Evangelical United Brethren Church as part of Methodism, as well as the cultural and religious pluralism of the country today.

For the first time, students of Wesley have access to Albert C. Outler's widely acclaimed "introduction" to Volume 1 of The Works of John Wesley in a single inexpensive paperback.

No student of John Wesley will need to be reminded of Albert Outler's stature, or the significance of his contribution to twentieth-century Wesleyan studies.

Contents A Career in Retrospect The Preacher and His Preaching The Sermon Corpus Theological Method and the Problems of development Wesley and His Sources On Reading Wesley's Sermons

If your worship consists of dry, rigid orders from the past, your church will die. If your worship, however, becomes the focus of life of every member in your congregation, your church will live. Through a worksheet format that culls information and references from the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal, 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship, and 1992 Revised Common Lectionary, you'll be able to more effectively integrate preaching, music, movement, and environment.

This volume is intended to set in historical context the official United Methodist theological statements in the Disciplines of 1972 and 1988, and to foster reflection on and discussion of the 1988 statement.

This provocative volume illuminates a dimension of John Wesley's theology that has received insufficient attention: his deep and abiding commitment to the poor. By focusing on the radical nature of Wesley's "evangelical economics," Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., provides an important corrective to the view that Wesley was concerned with the salvation of souls only, and not also with the social conditions of human beings.

Despite wide acceptance of the "Wesleyan quadrilateral", significant disagreements have arisen in both academic and church circles about the degree to which Scripture stood in a place of theological primacy for Wesley, or should do so for modern Methodists, and about the proper and appropriate methods of interpreting Scripture. In this important work, Scott J. Jones offers a full-scale investigation of John Wesley's conception and use of Scripture. The results of this careful and thorough investigation are sometimes surprising. Jones argues that for Wesley, religious authority is constituted not by a "quadrilateral", but by a fivefold but unitary locus comprising Scripture, reason, Christian antiquity, the Church of England, and experience. He shows that in actual practice Wesley's reliance on the entire Christian tradition - in particular of the early church and of the Church of England - is far heavier than his stated conception of Scripture would seem to allow, and that Wesley stresses the interdependence of the five dimensions of religious authority for Christian faith and practice.

These 32 essays (over 500 print pages) accent United Methodism in the United States and the traditions contributory to it. They provide new perspectives and fresh readings on important Methodist topics, including how Methodism appealed to the common folk and how it configured itself as a folk movement. Similar findings derive from the number of essays that explore gender and family. Here also are new readings on spirituality, worship, the diaconate, stewardship, organization, ecumenism, reform, and ordination (male/female; black/white). Less conventional subjects include the relation of Methodism to the American party system and Methodist accumulation of wealth and the wealthy.

With its plain, easy-to-understand language, this Pocket Guide will help you understand the major aspects of John Wesley's theology.

You will discover what Wesley believed about...The image of God and original sin Stewardship Justification by faith The witness of the Spirit Social holiness

...and more. This 96 page booklet also offers study questions that will help you or your group discuss the importance of Wesley's ideas for Christians today.

Women in the United Methodist tradition have long expressed their commitment to Christ and to their sisters and brothers. Here is a collection of essays and primary source documents that tells the stories of pioneering ministries of United Methodist women--of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds--from the eighteenth century. Each essay traces the individual faith journeys and self-understanding of its subject. The stories also reveal the sexism and racism that confronted each woman overtly or covertly in church and society, as well as their own attitudes toward it.

A selection of primary source documents by the subject follows each essay; these personal statements express vividly each woman's vision of vocation. In this way, the volume provides a lens for interpreting and analyzing the subjects' lives through their own words and enables women and men of today to identify with the commitment, experiences, and struggles of these pioneers and apply them to their own faith journeys. Thus, through the witness of these women, Spirituality and Social Responsibility calls the church to accountability and discipleship, both pastorally and prophetically.

This is the first volume published in more than twenty years that is specifically focused on the theology of evangelism in the Wesleyan tradition. It contains essays written by key Methodist leaders from Asia, America, Europe, and Africa, thus offering a wide range of views of the nature and purpose of evangelism in the Weslayen heritage. It also provides focused and stimulating theological reflection. These essays were first presented as a symposium at the Mission Resource Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in February 1992.

Asserting that the "return to Wesley" that is represented in the Quadrilateral is "intellectually wrongheaded," William J. Abraham argues that the Quadrilateral is not, and should not be, United Methodist doctrine. Abraham's lively treatise makes a provocative appeal for a reasoned exploration of the significance of the UMC's doctrinal identity. He reveals how churches have faced incompatible doctrinal proposals within their midst and examines the specific issues facing the United Methodist church as a whole.

This first effort at constructive Wesleyan theology to appear in United Methodist circles since the formation of the denomination in 1868 draws on the historical and literary work that has characterized Wesley studies in recent years. However, it moves beyond them to propose a way of reconstructing essential elements of Wesley's thought in service of the life and mission of United Methodists today.

Yoke of Obedience