Henry Foxall: Methodist, Industrialist, American

Henry Foxall was the quintessential catalyst for the transformation of a Spirit-filled movement into a denomination and a young nation into an economic powerhouse. This biography of Henry Foxall (1758-1823), sheds light on second-generation Methodism. In it, Jane Donovan focuses on Foxall's role in many of Bishop Francis Asbury's projects, thus offering new insight into the beginnings of Methodist institutionalization.

Biographies & Memoirs

Donovan, Jane B

Leaders & Notable People

New Room Books

Methodists love to tell the story and Methodist churches have consistently told and re-told the narrative of their eighteenth-century founding by John (and sometimes Charles) Wesley as a way of describing the distinctive identity of their religious communities. This book offers a comprehensive and critically documented account of the development of these narratives of Wesleyan origins and the ways in which they attempted to describe or encode the identity of Wesleyan/Methodist communities. This is not a cynical account of how interpreters have simply written their own agenda into the narrative (and that has happened); rather it shows in many cases how the unique position and contexts of narrators have enabled them to see things that really happened in the eighteenth-century Wesleyan movement.
How do communities transmit their identities across generations? One way is to tell narratives of their origins. This book examines how Wesleyan and Methodist communities have told and re-told narratives of their origins to encode and transmit their communal identities across generations.

Encoding Methodism: Telling and Retelling Narratives of Wesleyan Origins

Campbell, Ted A.

Religion & Spirituality

To know the story of Nathan Bangs is to understand American Methodism between the death of Francis Asbury and the Civil War. During the nineteenth century, the Methodist Episcopal Church transformed from an alternative society into a middle-class, mainstream denomination. While some scholars attribute Bangs with a desire for respectability, this book argues that respectability might have been more the result of Bang's mission to spread scriptural holiness than the cause. By documenting his life, ministry, and ecclesial leadership, this book shows how Nathan Bangs made Methodism more effective and helped it live into its missionary ethos by introducing standards and standardization.

Nathan Bangs and the Methodist Episcopal Church: The Spread of Scriptural Holiness in Nineteenth-Century America

Maddox, Jared

This book maps how American Methodists have responded to sexual change since World War II. It argues that the current United Methodist impasse over human sexuality has its root in the existence of two dichotomous ideologies of Methodist history and theology--one liberal and one evangelical, which come to the foreground in discussions of human sexuality. It offers evidence about how these ideologies have sought to reconcile their sexual ethic with sexual change since the birth control movement of the 1920s. In post-WWII America, most Methodists upheld a limited notion of family life and sexuality, one that allowed for the use of artificial contraception within marriage and for divorce. In response to the sexual revolution, liberal-leaning Methodists upheld a new sexual ethic, "the new morality," which peaked with radical new approaches to sex education, a full endorsement of abortion rights, and support of the homophile movement. However, "the new morality" coincided with an increased presence of and a new voice for evangelical Methodists, Charles Keysor and the Good News Movement. Evangelical Methodists critiqued "the new morality" as value-neutral and anti-Scripture. The evangelical desire for a rules-based morality solely reliant on Scripture collided with "the new morality" and led to intense debates over sex education, abortion, and the inclusion of LGBTQ persons within the United Methodist denomination from the 1970s onward. Since 1972, United Methodists have continually debated "human sexuality" at each General Conference, primarily through the advocacy efforts of political caucus groups. This author hopes that an historical examination of how Methodists have confronted sexual change will enlighten current conversations about human sexuality.

Entangled: A History of American Methodism, Politics, and Sexuality

Dreff, Ashley

This book examines eighteenth-century pamphlet attacks on early Methodism, which came from all sides--the episcopacy, clergy, other Christian groups, universities, Wesley's ex-preachers, ex-Methodist laity, the Calvinist branch of Methodism, and the secular community. For the most part, sympathetic sources have written the story of Methodism--letters, diaries, and journals of Methodist leaders. Although the opposition encountered by Methodism has been noted, many historians, repeating well-known quotations from a few anti-Methodist authors, have failed to appreciate the extent, nature, and reason for resistance to the movement. Anti-Methodist pamphlet attacks took place in the context of other forms of hostility: mob violence, antagonistic articles in newspapers and periodicals, criticism in novels and plays, and verbal assaults from pulpit and press.
Author Donald Henry Kirkham presents a nuanced view of the emergence of Methodism. His conviction is that a re-appraisal of works antagonistic to the movement and its principals offers a fresh perspective, even if distorted, and a needed corrective to the legend Wesley and his admirers created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The book references more than six hundred pamphlets and books published in Great Britain between 1739 and 1800 by opponents of the evangelical revival. The vast array of anti-Methodist literature represents, as Richard Heitzenrater has said, one of the most overlooked primary resources for the study of Methodism.

Outside Looking In: Early Methodism as Viewed by Its Critics

Kirkham, Donald Henry

Wesley's understanding of the Trinity is essential for Methodists. Beginning with the Trinitarian debates that raged from the early seventeenth century through the eighteenth century, this book documents how important the participatory economic Trinitarian dimension is for understanding Wesley's theology. The author shows how Wesley's Trinitarian vision of Christianity is dramatically different from other Christian thinkers and how it affects Wesley's ecclesiology and soteriology.

The Trinitarian Dimension of John Wesley's Theology

Colyer, Elmer M.

Discerning one's future can mean that we wrestle with God. We want to know where God is leading and what choices we should make to get there. Sometimes these matches last minutes and sometimes years.\nRecent research from the Barna Group says that "only 40% of practicing Christians say they have a clear sense of God's calling on their lives. Christian Millennials are especially sensitive to this divine prompting-nearly half (48%) say they believe God is calling them to different work, yet they haven't yet made such a change." But discernment can be a difficult process, one that calls for guides and exemplars. This richly illustrated book, complete with reflection questions, takes you into the biblical stories of eight persons who struggled with God. Each was changed, blessed, and moved forward with hope. Each found God's preferred future. You can too!\nDiscerning one's vocation often means that we wrestle with God. Sometimes these matches last minutes and sometimes years. We want to know where God is leading us next and what choices we should make to get there. Yet it is difficult to decide which is our own voice and which is God's.\nResearch from a recent Barna Group's study shares that "only 40% of practicing Christians say they have a clear sense of God's calling on their lives. Christian Millennials are especially sensitive to this divine prompting-nearly half (48%) say they believe God is calling them to different work, yet they haven't yet made such a change." Clearly there is a need to provide material to help.\nThis book takes readers into the stories of 8 biblical persons who struggled with God. As a result, they were changed, blessed, and moved forward with hope. They each found God's preferred future for their lives. You can too!\nOffers reflection questions to help readers focus their thinking.

Blessed Wrestling: Biblical Reflections on Discerning God's Call

Colwell, Jessie Squires

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