The Methodist Experience in America: A History

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.

This is an 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.

This engaging and artful history traverses, with illuminating narrative and focusing snapshots, the soulful terrain of the Methodist experience in America. Methodists embrace piety, nurture, and advocacy in creative, challenging, and promising tension. Grounded in this particular history, we are positioned, prepared, and inspired for faithful Wesleyan witness and leadership.---Hope Morgan Ward, bishop, Mississippi Conference, The United Methodist Church

Richey, Rowe, and Schmidt have filled a long-standing need---an up-to-date survey history of Methodism in North America that brings into the core story a wealth of previously ignored or marginalized voices and themes. This will be the standard text for years to come.---Randy L. Maddox, William Kellon Quick Professor of Theology and Wesleyan Studies, Duke Divinity School

Designed as a textbook for Methodism courses, this intriguing volume and its companion sourcebook provide the best available description and analysis of the Methodist traditions in America for anyone interested in understanding their origins, growth, and development. The pages are filled with stories of people, events, theology, music, controversies, architecture, politics, causes, and the variety of concerns that reflect the experience of Methodists as an important part of American culture. The authors manage successful to hold together breadth in coverage with particularity in examples. unflinching analysis with accuracy in facts, unhesitant interpretation upon a foundation of historical details. The story pauses three times in particular to look more closely at how, in specific cities, parish life at the local level demonstrated the trends of the times. The division of the story into epochs follows upon the developments in each age; the description of regional characteristics grows out of their defining issues and events: the characterization of denominational concerns emerges in the people and debates that impel their development.---Richard P. Heitzenrater, William Kellon Quick Professor Emeritus of Church History & Wesley Studies, Duke Divinity School