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Description: Evidence of mainstream denominational decline
virtually throws itself in our faces--growing religious pluralism
in North America; the decline over the last half century in the
salience, prestige, power, and vitality of Protestant
denominational leadership; slippage in mainline membership and
corresponding growth, vigor, visibility, and political prowess of
conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist bodies; patterns of
congregational independence, including loosening of or removal of
denominational identity, particularly in signage, and the related
marginal loyalty of members; emergence of megachurches, with
resources and the capacity to meet needs heretofore supplied by
denominations (training, literature, expertise); growth within
mainline denominations of caucuses and their alignment into broad
progressive or conservative camps, often with connections to
similar camps in other denominations; widespread suspicion of,
indeed hostility towards, the centers and symbols of denominational
identity--the regional and national headquarters; migration of
individuals and families through various religious identities,
sometimes out of classic Christianity altogether. Denominationalism
looks doomed and is so proclaimed. It may be. However, viewing the
sweep of Anglo-American history, this volume suggests how much
denominations and denominationalism have changed, how resilient
they have proved, how significant these structures of religious
belonging have been in providing order and direction to American
society, and how such enduring purposes find ever new
structural/institutional expression. Endorsements: ""This book has
convinced me that denominational Christianity is not dying; it is
once again adapting and transitioning into a new chapter in its
fascinating history. Here is history from one of our most able
church historians, who not only studied our history, but also
helped make history in his church and seminary leadership, all in
service to the future vitality of our church."" --Will Willimon,
Duke Divinity School ""Face the facts of denominational decline and
discord. Spot the spires and spectacle of mega-churches on the
rise, and chart the paths of spiritual seekers and pluralist
pilgrims through faith in flux. Then find the underlying truth and
overarching spirit of American grace, made flesh in denominational
bodies and reborn through their living history. Nobody does this
better than Russell Richey, and no place better than in this
brilliant book."" --Steven M. Tipton, Emory University ""Russell
Richey has long been the master historian of the phenomenon of
denominationalism. This is a collection of his essays stretching
over a forty-year career. Each essay is a jewel, and together they
make up a glittering necklace that allows the reader to glimpse the
various facets of the denominational pattern."" --Robert Bruce
Mullin, General Theological Seminary ""In its historical scope,
from English origins to contemporary challenges of
denominationalism, and in its range of probing discussion, from the
voluntary principle to ecclesial purpose of denominations old and
new, Richey's work is an essential reference and stimulus to
teaching and scholarship in American religious studies."" --Thomas
Edward Frank, Wake Forest University About the Contributor(s):
Russell E. Richey, Dean Emeritus of Candler School of Theology and
William R. Cannon Distinguished Professor of Church History
Emeritus, is author or editor of twenty books, including
Denominationalism (1977, 2010) and Reimagining Denominationalism
(1994, 2010).
Beginning in 1760, this comprehensive history charts the growth and
development of the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren church
family up and through the year 2000. Extraordinarily
well-documented study with elaborate notes that will guide the
reader to recent and standard literature on the numerous topics,
figures, developments, and events covered. The volume is a
companion to and designed to be used with THE METHODIST EXPERIENCE
IN AMERICA: A SOURCEBOOK, for which it provides background, context
and interpretation. Contents include: Launching the Methodist
Movements 1760-1768 Structuring the Immigrant Initiatives 1769-1778
Making Church 1777-1784 Constituting Methodism 1784-1792 Spreaking
Scriptural Holiness 1792-1816 Snapshot I- Methodism in 1816:
Baltimore 1816 Building for Ministry and Nuture 1816-1850s Dividing
by Mission, Ethnicity, Gender, and Vision 1816-1850s Dividing over
Slavery, Region, Authority, and Race 1830-1860s Embracing the War
Cause(s) 1860-1865 Reconstructing Methodism(s) 1866-1884 Snapshot
II- Methodism in 1884: Wilker-Barre, PA 1884 Reshaping the Church
for Mission 1884-1939 Taking on the World 1884-1939 Warring for
World Order and Against Worldliness Within 1930-1968 Snapshot III-
Methodism in 1968: Denver 1968 Merging and Reappraising
1968-1984Holding Fast/Pressing On 1984-2000"
A fresh way to look at the ministry of The United Methodist Church.
United Methodism is often accused of having an incoherent
theological center. By examining the history and salient features
of the church, this book says that United Methodist theology is
actually appropriated from its experience as a missional corporate
body. This allows United Methodist to do theology in new ways and
to better adapt to its multivalent contexts.
In thirteen previously published essays, especially revised and
updated for this volume, United Methodist historian Russell Richey
explores various dimensions of the history, theology, and practice
of connectionalism in American Methodism.
Eminent United Methodist historian Russell Richey skillfully
analyzes the evolving marginalization of "extension
ministers"-United Methodist clergypersons serving the denomination
in ministry settings beyond the local parish. Drawing on
denominational history, theological argument, and practical
experience, Richey offers trenchant insights for reintegrating this
vital ministry into the United Methodist connectional covenant
today.
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."
Commissioned by the General Board of Higher Education and
Ministry for use in United Methodist doctrine/polity/history
courses.
From a Sunday school teacher's account of a typical Sunday
morning to letters from presidents, from architects' opinions for
and against the Akron Plan to impassioned speeches demanding full
rights for African Americans, women, homosexuals, and laity in the
Church, this riveting collection of documents will interest
scholars, clergy, and laity alike. This Sourcebook, part of the
two-volume set The Methodist Experience in America, contains
documents from between 1760 and 1998 pertaining to the movements
constitutive of American United Methodism. The editors identify
over two hundred documents by date, primary agent, and central
theme or important action. The documents are organized on a
strictly chronological basis, by the date of the significant action
in the excerpt. Charts, graphs, timelines, and graphics are also
included. The Sourcebook has been constructed to be used with the
Narrative volume in which the interpretation of individual
documents, discussions of context, details about events and
individuals, and treatment of the larger developments can be
found.
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.
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."
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.
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.
Denominationalism--that ''free market'' mode of organizing
religious life which, some say, manages to combine traditional
religious claims with a free society in a peculiarly American
way--is the subject of the previously unpublished papers in this
collection. No institution, the editors argue, is as crucial for
the understanding of American religious life, yet so much in need
of reassessment as the denomination. In a wide-ranging collection
of articles, a distinguished set of commentators on American
religion examine the denomination's past and present roles, its
definable nature, and its evolution over time. The study of
denominations, the authors show, sheds light on broader
understandings of American religious and cultural life. The
contributors--scholars of the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish,
Mormon, and African-American traditions--explore the state and
history of denominational studies in America, suggesting new models
and approaches drawn from anthropology, sociology, theology,
history, and history of religions. They offer provocative case
studies that reimagine denominational studies.
Denominationalism--that ''free market'' mode of organizing
religious life which, some say, manages to combine traditional
religious claims with a free society in a peculiarly American
way--is the subject of the previously unpublished papers in this
collection. No institution, the editors argue, is as crucial for
the understanding of American religious life, yet so much in need
of reassessment as the denomination. In a wide-ranging collection
of articles, a distinguished set of commentators on American
religion examine the denomination's past and present roles, its
definable nature, and its evolution over time. The study of
denominations, the authors show, sheds light on broader
understandings of American religious and cultural life. The
contributors--scholars of the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish,
Mormon, and African-American traditions--explore the state and
history of denominational studies in America, suggesting new models
and approaches drawn from anthropology, sociology, theology,
history, and history of religions. They offer provocative case
studies that reimagine denominational studies.
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