Religion and Violence in Early American Methodism
Religion and Violence in Early American Methodism

Author: Jeffrey Williams

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2010-04-22

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0253004233

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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.

The Cashaway Psalmody
The Cashaway Psalmody

Author: Stephen A. Marini

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2020-02-14

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 025205170X

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Singing master Durham Hills created The Cashaway Psalmody to give as a wedding present in 1770. A collection of tenor melody parts for 152 tunes and sixty-three texts, the Psalmody is the only surviving tunebook from the colonial-era South and one of the oldest sacred music manuscripts from the Carolinas. It is all the more remarkable for its sophistication: no similar document of the period matches Hills's level of musical expertise, reportorial reach, and calligraphic skill. Stephen A. Marini, discoverer of The Cashaway Psalmody, offers the fascinating story of the tunebook and its many meanings. From its musical, literary, and religious origins in England, he moves on to the life of Durham Hills; how Carolina communities used the book; and the Psalmody's significance in understanding how ritual song—transmitted via transatlantic music, lyrics, and sacred singing—shaped the era's development. Marini also uses close musical and textual analyses to provide a critical study that offers music historians and musicologists valuable insights on the Pslamody and its period. Meticulous in presentation and interdisciplinary in scope, The Cashaway Psalmody unlocks an important source for understanding life in the Lower South in the eighteenth century.

Timetables of History for Students of Methodism
Timetables of History for Students of Methodism

Author: Rex D. Matthews

Publisher: Abingdon Press

Published: 2007-06-01

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1426764596

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Winner of the 2007 Saddlebag Selection Award from the Historical Society of The United Methodist Church as “the best book published during the year on the history, biography, polity or theology of United Methodism or its predecessors.” Understanding history rests largely on a grasp of two things: sequence and context. Know which events came earlier and which later, and you’ve gone a long way toward understanding influence and causation. Know what was going on in the wider world at the same time a historical event occurred, and you’ll better grasp the meaning and significance of that event for the people who experienced it. Yet even with the best history textbooks students have difficulty in gaining an immediate sense of sequence and context. Hence the purpose of this book: To lay out the most important events in the history of the Wesleyan/Methodist movement, to show them in their proper order, and to include the most important occurrences taking place on the national and international stages at the same time. Matthews presents his material in an easy to comprehend and visually appealing layout, enumerating the major trends and developments in Methodist history from 1700 to 2004. Rex D. Matthews is Assistant Professor in the Practice of Historical Theology at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. He currently serves as co-chair of the Wesleyan Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion, as General Editor of the Kingswood Books series, and as Managing Editor of the new electronic academic journal Methodist Review. An excerpt from the Circuit Rider review: "This is a book for college and seminary professors, for high school teachers of religion, for Sunday School teachers of children, youth and adults. It is a book for preachers and church musicians. It should be in every church library. This is a book for people who think history is boring as well as for those who delight in rich historical detail and story. It is a book to be savored and returned to again and again. And this is a book for all who love the church and yearn to be part of perfecting its mission and its life." (Click here to read the entire review.)

American Methodist Worship
American Methodist Worship

Author: Karen B. Westerfield Tucker

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-04-27

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0190454202

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"American Methodist Worship is the most comprehensive history of worship among John Wesley's various American spiritual descendents that has ever been written. It will be a foundational book for anyone who wishes to understand how American Methodists have worshipped."-Sacramental Life "This groundbreaking study will help to reshape the way that we think about early American Methodist worship and how it connects to more recent trends."-- The Journal of Religion "Karen Westerfield Tucker's exhaustive examination of the history of American Methodist worship may indeed launch a new genre in liturgical historiography: denominational liturgical histories. The genius of this contribution is its comprehensiveness in examining for the first time the worship life of an American ecclesiological tradition."--Doxology