The Methodist Experience in America Volume I

Beginning in 1760, this comprehensive history charts the growth and development of the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren church family up and through the year 2000.


Extraordinarily well-documented study with elaborate notes that will guide the reader to recent and standard literature on the numerous topics, figures, developments, and events covered. The volume is a companion to and designed to be used with THE METHODIST EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA: A SOURCEBOOK, for which it provides background, context and interpretation.

Contents include:
Launching the Methodist Movements 1760-1768
Structuring the Immigrant Initiatives 1769-1778
Making Church 1777-1784
Constituting Methodism 1784-1792
Spreaking Scriptural Holiness 1792-1816
Snapshot I- Methodism in 1816: Baltimore 1816
Building for Ministry and Nuture 1816-1850s
Dividing by Mission, Ethnicity, Gender, and Vision 1816-1850s
Dividing over Slavery, Region, Authority, and Race 1830-1860s
Embracing the War Cause(s) 1860-1865
Reconstructing Methodism(s) 1866-1884
Snapshot II- Methodism in 1884: Wilker-Barre, PA 1884
Reshaping the Church for Mission 1884-1939
Taking on the World 1884-1939
Warring for World Order and Against Worldliness Within 1930-1968
Snapshot III- Methodism in 1968: Denver 1968
Merging and Reappraising 1968-1984
Holding Fast/Pressing On 1984-2000

A wide-angled narrative that attends to religious life at the local level, to missions and missionary societies , to justice struggles, to camp and quarterly meetings, to the Sunday school and catechisms, to architecture and worship, to higher education, to hospitals and homes, to temperance, to deaconesses and to Methodist experiences in war and in peace-making
A volume that attends critically to Methodism's dilemmas over and initiatives with regard to race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and relation to culture
A documentation and display of the rich diversity of the Methodist experience
A retelling of the contests over and evolution of Methodist/EUB organization, authority, ministerial orders and ethical/doctrinal emphases