The Supernatural and the Circuit Riders
The Supernatural and the Circuit Riders

Author: Rimi Xhemajli

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-06-22

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 172526921X

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In The Supernatural and the Circuit Riders, Rimi Xhemajli shows how a small but passionate movement grew and shook the religious world through astonishing signs and wonders. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, early American Methodist preachers, known as circuit riders, were appointed to evangelize the American frontier by presenting an experiential gospel: one that featured extraordinary phenomena that originated from God’s Spirit. In employing this evangelistic strategy of the gospel message fueled by supernatural displays, Methodism rapidly expanded. Despite beginning with only ten official circuit riders in the early 1770s, by the early 1830s, circuit riders had multiplied and caused Methodism to become the largest American denomination of its day. In investigating the significance of the supernatural in the circuit rider ministry, Xhemajli provides a new historical perspective through his eye-opening demonstration of the correlation between the supernatural and the explosive membership growth of early American Methodism, which fueled the Second Great Awakening. In doing so, he also prompts the consideration of the relevance and reproduction of such acts in the American church today.

Sacred Capital
Sacred Capital

Author: Hunter Price

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2024-07-12

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0813951348

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How Methodist settlers in the American West acted as agents of empire In the early years of American independence, Methodism emerged as the new republic’s fastest growing religious movement and its largest voluntary association. Following the contours of settler expansion, the Methodist Episcopal Church also quickly became the largest denomination in the early American West. With Sacred Capital, Hunter Price resituates the Methodist Episcopal Church as a settler-colonial institution at the convergence of “the Methodist Age” and Jefferson’s “Empire of Liberty.” Price offers a novel interpretation of the Methodist Episcopal Church as a network through which mostly white settlers exchanged news of land and jobs and facilitated financial transactions. Benefiting from Indigenous dispossession and removal policies, settlers made selective, strategic use of the sacred and the secular in their day-to-day interactions to advance themselves and their interests. By analyzing how Methodists acted as settlers while identifying as pilgrims, Price illuminates the ways that ordinary white Americans fulfilled Jefferson’s vision of an Empire of Liberty while reinforcing the inequalities at its core.

The Civil War in Southern Appalachian Methodism
The Civil War in Southern Appalachian Methodism

Author: Durwood Dunn

Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press

Published: 2014-02-01

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1621900169

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The Civil War in Southern Appalachian Methodism addresses a much-neglected topic in both Appalachian and Civil War history—the role of organized religion in the sectional strife and the war itself. Meticulously researched, well written, and full of fresh facts, this new book brings an original perspective to the study of the conflict and the region. In many important respects, the actual Civil War that began in 1861 unveiled an internal civil war within the Holston Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South—comprising churches in southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and a small portion of northern Georgia—that had been waged surreptitiously for the previous five decades. This work examines the split within the Methodist Church that occurred with mounting tensions over the slavery question and the rise of the Confederacy. Specifically, it looks at how the church was changing from its early roots as a reform movement grounded in a strong local pastoral ministry to a church with a more intellectual, professionalized clergy that often identified with Southern secessionists. The author has mined an exhaustive trove of primary sources, especially the extensive, yet often-overlooked minutes from frequent local and regional Methodist gatherings. He has also explored East Tennessee newspapers and other published works on the topic. The author’s deep research into obscure church records and other resources results not only in a surprising interpretation of the division within the Methodist Church but also new insights into the roles of African Americans, women, and especially lay people and local clergy in the decades prior to the war and through its aftermath. In addition, Dunn presents important information about what the inner Civil War was like in East Tennessee, an area deeply divided between Union and Confederate sympathizers. Students and scholars of religious history, southern history, and Appalachian studies will be enlightened by this volume and its bold new way of looking at the history of the Methodist Church and this part of the nation.