The history of Wesleyan family of churches doctrines What are our core beliefs? Doctrinal Standards in the Wesleyan Tradition, Revised Edition, narrates the history of the formation of Wesleyan doctrines, describing how they were transplanted from the British Isles to North American, how they became constitutionally protected in Wesleyan-rooted churches. The first edition of this book affected the outcome of the 1988 General Conference of The United Methodist Church as the delegates decided many then-disputed doctrinal issues. This revised edition addresses the continuing hunger for more precise and useful information on the doctrinal traditions of mainline Protestantism. Hence the arguments have been updated with more than 400 changes. Included are doctrinal statements for the Evangelical United Bethren, Free Methodist, Methodist Protestant, Wesleyan, Nazarene, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, Christian Methodist Episcopal, and African Methodist Episcopal Churches; as well as an outline syllabus of a Course on the Articles of Religion.
A careful student of church liturgies, John Wesley created this book for use in the Methodist churches of North America in order that the young movement would have access to reliable liturgy. This book is, in its own sense, a masterpiece of solid doctrine, Wesleyan inspiration, and liturgical practice. "The Sunday Service of Methodists in North America" has been available as a reprint of the original book for many years. However, this edition does what others have not done until now: Rather than photocopying the pages of the original book, we have painstakingly typed each word and character to match the original text, and formatted the book for contemporary usage (included an updated and easily readable font), while maintaining Wesley's own language, spelling, and grammar.
Throughout this book, Scott J. Jones insists that for United Methodists the ultimate goal of doctrine is holiness. Importantly, he clarifies the nature and the specific claims of "official" United Methodist doctrine in a way that moves beyond the current tendency to assume the only alternatives are a rigid dogmatism or an unfettered theological pluralism. In classic Wesleyan form, Jones' driving concern is with recovering the vital role of forming believers in the "mind of Christ, " so that they might live more faithfully in their many settings in our world.