The Lord's Dominion describes the development of mainstream Canadian Methodism, from its earliest days to its incorporation into the United Church of Canada in 1925. Neil Semple looks at the ways in which the church evolved to take its part in the crusade to Christianize the world and meet the complex needs of Canadian Protestants, especially in the face of the challenges of the twentieth century.
This volume looks at the Third Great Awakening, one of the most exciting times in the history of American Christianity. A. B. Simpson's impact on the Third Great Awakening and his influence on the modern church is examined. Emphasis is placed on the denomination he founded, the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Simpson's message, the Fourfold Gospel, is also explored. The Fourfold Gospel is: Christ as the Christian's Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King. The denomination Simpson founded took this message not only to North America, but also throughout the world. Five movements made up the Third Great Awakening and Simpson's contribution to each one is examined. These five movements include: Evangelizing, Holiness Movement, Healing Movement, Pre-millenial Movement, and Urban and Worldwide Outreach. As this book concludes with a look at Simpson's influence on the church today, we are reminded that as the church goes through the twenty-first century, the Fourfold Gospel continues to be proclaimed just as it was during the Third Great Awakening.
Most Wesleyan-Holiness churches started in the US, developing out of the Methodist roots of the nineteenth-century Holiness Movement. The American origins of the Holiness movement have been charted in some depth, but there is currently little detail on how it developed outside of the US. This book seeks to redress this imbalance by giving a history of North American Wesleyan-Holiness churches in Australia, from their establishment in the years following the Second World War, as well as of The Salvation Army, which has nineteenth-century British origins. It traces the way some of these churches moved from marginalised sects to established denominations, while others remained small and isolated. Looking at The Church of God (Anderson), The Church of God (Cleveland), The Church of the Nazarene, The Salvation Army, and The Wesleyan Methodist Church in Australia, the book argues two main points. Firstly, it shows that rather than being American imperialism at work, these religious expressions were a creative partnership between like-minded evangelical Christians from two modern nations sharing a general cultural similarity and set of religious convictions. Secondly, it demonstrates that it was those churches that showed the most willingness to be theologically flexible, even dialling down some of their Wesleyan distinctiveness, that had the most success. This is the first book to chart the fascinating development of Holiness churches in Australia. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Wesleyans and Methodists, as well as religious history and the sociology of religion more generally.
The stereotype of the woman missionary has ranged from that of the longsuffering wife, characterized by the epitaph Died, given over to hospitality, to that of the spinster in her unstylish dress and wire-rimmed glasses, alone somewhere for thirty years teaching heathen children. Like all caricatures, those of the exhausted wife and frustrated old maid carry some truth: the underlying message of the sterotypes is that missionary women were perceived as marginal to the central tasks of mission. Rather than being remembered for preaching the gospel, the quintessential male task, missionary women were noted for meeting human needs and helping others, sacrificing themselves without plan or reason, all for the sake of bringing the world to Jesus Christ.Historical evidence, however, gives lie to the truism that women missionaries were and are doers but not thinkers, reactive secondary figures rather than proactive primary ones. The first American women to serve as foreign missionaries in 1812 were among the best-educated women of their time. Although barred from obtaining the college education or ministerial credentials of their husbands, the early missionary wives had read their Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Hopkins. Not only did they go abroad with particular theologies to share, but their identities as women caused them to develop gender-based mission theories. Early nineteenth-century women seldom wrote theologies of mission, but they wrote letters and kept journals that reveal a thought world and set of assumptions about women's roles in the missionary task. The activities of missionary wives were not random: they were part of a mission strategy that gave women a particular role inthe advancement of the reign of God.By moving from mission field to mission field in chronological order of missionary presence, Robert charts missiological developments as they took place in dialogue with the urgent context of the day. Each case study marks the beginning of the mission theory. Baptist women in Burma, for example, are only considered in their first decades there and are not traced into the present. Robert believes that at this early stage of research into women's mission theory, integrity and analysis lies more in a succession of contextualized case studies than in gross generalizations.
Hundreds of people were converted, leading to significant church growth, in an 1857 revival led by Phoebe Palmer in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada that contributed to the beginning of the Second Great Awakening. This book explores the 1857 setting in the world and in Hamilton, including the key churches and people involved in the revival. What happened was not typical for revival meetings led by the Palmers, as this account shows. The book continues with a summary of the impact of the Hamilton revival around the globe, linking it to other revivals and the Second Great Awakening as a whole. The account ends with what subsequently unfolded in the Hamilton area and the churches involved. Many of the primary sources are in the Appendix, and the book includes numerous pictures and maps. Scholars, ministers, and lay people alike will appreciate this exploration of a chapter in Canada's spiritual history.
