These 11 essays trace the development of religions of the heart, especially in the United States. They trace the historical, social, and cultural dimensions of the German Pietists, the African-American tradition, the Holiness movement, and the experiences of women in American Methodism. They also consider the state of heart religion today, centering the discussion on issues like preaching, education, the passions, faith and grace, and orthopathy. Contributors include ministers, philosophers, theologians, and behavioral scientists. c. Book News Inc.
Early American Methodists commonly described their religious lives as great wars with sin and claimed they wrestled with God and Satan who assaulted them in terrible ways. Carefully examining a range of sources, including sermons, letters, autobiographies, journals, and hymns, Jeffrey Williams explores this violent aspect of American religious life and thought. Williams exposes Methodism's insistence that warfare was an inevitable part of Christian life and necessary for any person who sought God's redemption. He reveals a complex relationship between religion and violence, showing how violent expression helped to provide context and meaning to Methodist thought and practice, even as Methodist religious life was shaped by both peaceful and violent social action.
On September 7, 1881, Matthew Simpson, Bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in a London sermon asserted that, "As to the divisions in the Methodist family, there is little to mar the family likeness." Nearly a quarter-century earlier, Benjamin Titus (B.T.) Roberts, a minister in the same branch of Methodism as Simpson, had published an article titled in the Northern Independent in which he argued that Methodism had split into an "Old School" and "New School." He warned that if the new school were to "generally prevail," then "the glory will depart from Methodism." As a result, Roberts was charged with "unchristian and immoral conduct" and expelled from the Genesee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). Old or New School Methodism? examines how less than three decades later Matthew Simpson could claim that the basic beliefs and practices that Roberts had seen as threatened were in fact a source of persisting unity across all branches of Methodism. Kevin M. Watson argues that B. T. Roberts's expulsion from the MEC and the subsequent formation of the Free Methodist Church represent a crucial moment of transition in American Methodism. This book challenges understandings of American Methodism that emphasize its breadth and openness to a variety of theological commitments and underemphasize the particular theological commitments that have made it distinctive and have been the cause of divisions over the past century and a half. Old or New School Methodism? fills a major gap in the study of American Methodism from the 1850s to 1950s through a detailed study of two of the key figures of the period and their influence on the denomination.
"During the Progressive Era, a period of unprecedented ingenuity, women evangelists built the old time religion with brick and mortar, uniforms and automobiles, fresh converts and devoted protégés. Across America, entrepreneurial women founded churches, denominations, religious training schools, rescue homes, rescue missions, and evangelistic organizations. Until now, these intrepid women have gone largely unnoticed, though their collective yet unchoreographed decision to build institutions in the service of evangelism marked a seismic shift in American Christianity. In this ground-breaking study, Priscilla Pope-Levison dusts off the unpublished letters, diaries, sermons, and yearbooks of these pioneers to share their personal tribulations and public achievements. The effect is staggering. With an uncanny eye for essential details and a knack for historical nuance, Pope-Levison breathes life into not just one or two of these women, but two dozen. The evangelistic empire of Aimee Semple McPherson represents the pinnacle of this shift from itinerancy to institution building. Her name remains legendary. Yet she built her institutions on the foundation of the work of women evangelists who preceded her. Their stories -- untold until now -- reveal the cunning and strength of women who forged a path for every generation, including our own, to follow."--Back cover.
Born in 1713 of French Huguenot stock, Philadelphia Quaker Anthony Benezet was probably the most significant force in advancing the cause against slavery and the African slave trade in the eighteenth century. However, while abolitionists like Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and John Wesley are familiar, the name "Benezet" is hardly recognized. And yet, it was his work that reinforced Sharp's legal battles, his tracts that singularly influenced both Wesley and Clarkson to join the cause, and his friendship with Benjamin Franklin that led to Franklin leading the American antislavery society after Benezet's death. To Be Silent... Would Be Criminal introduces the development of antislavery activity in America and then traces the life of Benezet, examining both his work and influence on individuals, including Wesley, Sharp, Clarkson, and Franklin. Benezet's correspondence with these and other contemporaries is reproduced here, giving insight into his relationships and his desire to build a viable network to oppose slavery. It's from a letter Benezet wrote to Lady Huntingdon, the chief administer behind the Calvinistic wing of Methodism, that the title of this book is derived: "...where the lives & natural as well as religious welfare of so vast a number of our Fellow Creatures is concerned, to be Silent, where we apprehend it a duty to speak our sense of that which causes us to go mourning on our way, would be criminal." With one exception, all of Benezet's antislavery tracts, which are otherwise available only in special archives, are replicated in full within the book, further demonstrating Benezet's uniquely significant role in the eventual victory over slavery.
This book explores what Catholics and Methodists believe about eucharistic sacrifice. Eucharistic sacrifice refers to the offering that Christ and his church make in the celebration of the Lord's Supper. It is, therefore, both a Christian doctrine and a church practice. The sacrificial dimension of the sacrament comes both from Christ's sacrifice on the cross and from his self-offering at the Last Supper in which Christ gives himself to the Father on behalf of his people. "This is my body, which is given for you" (Luke 22:19). The eucharist is a sacrificial meal because in the bread and cup Christians are united to the body and blood of Christ that was sacrificed for them on the cross. Moreover, the resurrected Lord is really present with his people in the eucharist, and while his historic crucifixion is an event in the past, Jesus' salvation continues and his grace is given to his people in the sacrament, "for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:28). Catholics and Methodists believe that Jesus instructs his followers to repeat his words and actions from the Last Supper in their celebration of the eucharist, but a long running assumption is that Catholics and Methodists-following the historic Reformation schism-are deeply divided over eucharistic sacrifice. This book challenges that assumption by analyzing what these churches teach on eucharistic sacrifice from historical, sacramental, liturgical, and ecumenical perspectives. Key figures like Thomas Aquinas and John Wesley help define eucharistic sacrifice in each tradition. Subsequently, authoritative texts such as ecclesial statements, eucharistic prayers, and hymns further specify what Catholics and Methodists believe they are doing when they offer the eucharist to God. Sours argues that far from being divided, Catholics and Methodists have much in common regarding this controversial doctrine.
In his The Life and Theology of Alexander Knox, David McCready highlights one of the most important figures in the history of Anglicanism. A disciple of John Wesley, Knox presents his mentor as a representative of the Neo-Platonic tradition within Anglicanism, a tradition that Knox himself also exemplifies. Knox also significantly impacted John Henry Newman and the Tractarians. But Alexander Knox is an important theologian in his own right, one who engaged substantially with the main intellectual currents of his day, namely those stemming from the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Meshing Knox’s theological teaching on various topics with details of his life, this book offers a fascinating portrait of a man who, in the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ‘changed the minds, and, with them, the acts of thousands.’
Perceptible inspiration, a term used by John Wesley to describe the complicated relationship between Holy Spirit, religious knowledge, and the nature of spiritual being, is not unlike the term 'Methodist' which was also coined by critics of Methodism during the eighteenth century in Britain. John Wesley's adversaries, especially the pseudonymous John Smith with whom Wesley exchanged letters for a period of three years, frequently challenged the plausibility of direct spiritual sensation, which Wesley defended. What does Wesley mean by perceptible inspiration? What does the teaching reveal about the nature and existence of God in Wesley's thinking? What does it suggest about the spiritual nature of humankind? In John Wesley's Pneumatology, it is argued that 'perceptible inspiration' more than a sidebar of Methodist thought, offers a useful model for considering the various features of Wesley's views on the work of the Spirit in relation to human existence, participatory religious knowledge, and moral theology.
The Wesleyan-Methodist movement entered American history as a fragment of British Methodism. It quickly took on a new identity in the early republic and grew into a vibrant denomination in the nineteenth century. The transitions from the rugged pioneer religion modeled by Bishop Francis Asbury to the urbane religion of industrial America was by design the goal of influential leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Nathan Bangs was perhaps one of the most significant of such leaders. He rose from obscurity to the ranks of power and influence by refining patterns of worship, expanding denominational publishing, and structuring ministerial education. This study is concerned with the development of respectability in American Methodism. It also explores questions on how Bangs and other leaders dealt with in-house conflicts on issues related to race, slavery, and the poor.
