Methodist

Offering a revisionist reading of American Methodism, this book goes beyond the limits of institutional history by suggesting a new and different approach to the examination of denominations. Russell E. Richey identifies within Methodism four distinct "languages" and explores the self-understanding that each language offers the early Methodists. One of these, a pietistic or evangelical vernacular, commonly employed in sermons, letters, and journals, is Richey's focus and provides a way for him to reconsider critical interpretive issues in American religious historiography and the study of Methodism. Richey challenges some important historical conventions, for instance, that the crucial changes in American Methodism occurred in 1784 when ties with John Wesley and Britain were severed, arguing instead for important continuities between the first and subsequent decades of Methodist experience.

As Richey shows, the pietistic vernacular did not displace other Methodist languagesWesleyan, Anglican, or the language of American political discoursenor can it supplant them as interpretive devices. Instead, attention to the vernacular severs to highlight the tensions among the other Methodist languages and to suggest something of the complexity of early Methodist discourse. It reveals the incomplete connections made among the several languages, the resulting imprecisions and confusions that derived from using idioms from different languages, and the ways the Methodists drew upon the distinct languages during times of stress, change, and conflict.

Sand Creek.

At dawn on the morning of November 29, 1864, Colonel John Milton Chivington gave the command that led to slaughter of 230 peaceful Cheyennes and Arapahos--primarily women, children, and elderly--camped under the protection of the U. S. government along Sand Creek in Colorado Territory and flying both an American flag and a white flag.

The Sand Creek massacre seized national attention in the winter of 1864-1865 and generated a controversy that still excites heated debate more than 150 years later. At Sand Creek demoniac forces seemed unloosed so completely that humanity itself was the casualty. That was the charge that drew public attention to the Colorado frontier in 1865. That was the claim that spawned heated debate in Congress, two congressional hearings, and a military commission. Westerners vociferously and passionately denied the accusations. Reformers seized the charges as evidence of the failure of American Indian policy. Sand Creek launched a war that was not truly over for fifteen years. In the first year alone, it cost the United States government $50,000,000.

Methodists have a special stake in this story. The governor whose polices led the Cheyennes and Arapahos to Sand Creek was a prominent Methodist layman. Colonel Chivington was a Methodist minister. Perhaps those were merely coincidences, but the question also remains of how the Methodist Episcopal Church itself responded to the massacre. Was it also somehow culpable in what happened?

It is time for this story to be told. Coming to grips with what happened at Sand Creek involves hard questions and unsatisfactory answers not only about what happened but also about what led to it and why. It stirs ancient questions about the best and worst in every person, questions older than history, questions as relevant as today's headlines, questions we all must answer from within.

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 1968-1984Holding Fast/Pressing On 1984-2000

A revised edition of the perennial guide to United Methodist structure and governance.

An indispensable guide for all United Methodists--especially pastors, lay leaders, church council members, confirmation and new member candidates and their instructors, and seminarians--the book is presented in a practical, down-to-earth manner for easy use by both individuals and classes, clergy and lay. It highlights the functions and connectional relationships within the organization, beginning with the local church and continuing through connectional organs in districts, annual conferences and their agencies, jurisdictional conferences and their agencies, the General Conference, the general agencies of the Church, and the Judicial Council.

A comprehensive one-volume history of American Methodism, tracing the development of a new church in a new nation from its beginnings with the Wesleys in England to the changes and challenges of later twentieth-century America. Black Methodism, the contributions of women, theological trends across 200 years--all emerge in clear detail. This book also includes the story of the Evangelical United Brethren Church as part of Methodism, as well as the cultural and religious pluralism of the country today.

In a time when the United Methodist Connectional System is being questioned throughout the denomination, this volume explains the roots of the system, its rationale, and its success. Chapter essays: Connectionalism and Itinerancy; Constitutional Order in United Methodism and American Culture; African American Methodists; Methodist Identities and the Founding of Methodist Universities; Redesigning Methodist Churches: Auditorium Style Sanctuaries; Wesley's Legacy of Social Holiness; United Methodist Campus Ministry; The Effect of Mergers on American Wesleyan Denominations; Determinants of the Denominational Mission Funding Crisis; and others.

These new essays summarize the latest research by highly respected United Methodist scholars, exploring the distinctive doctrines and discipline of the denomination.

Essays include An Untapped Inheritance: American Methodism and Wesley's Practical Theology; The Scripture Way of Salvation: Narrative Spirituality and Biblical Praxis in Early Methodism; Theology, Religious Activity, and Structures of the Lives of Ordinary People; The Doors of Opportunity: Methodist Theological Education, 1866--1925; What Makes "United Methodist Theology" Methodist?; The Church as a Community of Moral Discourse; and Exploring Both the Middle and the Margins: Locating Methodism within American Religious History.

In this fourth edition, the bibliographies define the basic resources for students and instructors of seminary-level courses in United Methodist history, doctrine, and polity, as determined by the Advisory Committee of the Division of Ordained Ministry of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church.

This essential, completely updated reference tool provides basic bibliographies for students of the Methodist movement and Wesleyan heritage. It identifies standard texts with emphasis on the best modern critical interpretations available. Materials are arranged topically, each entry carrying an item number, with an index for cross-referencing.