Wesleyan/Methodist Studies: Pan-Methodism

In this book, Dennis C. Dickerson examines the long history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and its intersection with major social movements over more than two centuries. Beginning as a religious movement in the late eighteenth century, the African Methodist Episcopal Church developed as a freedom advocate for blacks in the Atlantic World. Governance of a proud black ecclesia often clashed with its commitment to and resources for fighting slavery, segregation, and colonialism, thus limiting the full realization of the church's emancipationist ethos. Dickerson recounts how this black institution nonetheless weathered the inexorable demands produced by the Civil War, two world wars, the civil rights movement, African decolonization, and women's empowerment, resulting in its global prominence in the contemporary world. His book also integrates the history of African Methodism within the broader historical landscape of American and African-American history.

The history of the Methodist attempt to evangelize Native Americans is riddled with spectacular failures as well as dramatic successes.  In this balanced yet forthright account, Homer Noley helps you gain new insights and a richer understanding of Methodist missionary activities with native Americans from the 1600s to today.

Freedom's Prophet is a long-overdue biography of Richard Allen, founder of the first major African American church and the leading black activist of the early American republic. A tireless minister, abolitionist, and reformer, Allen inaugurated some of the most important institutions in African American history and influenced nearly every black leader of the nineteenth century, from Douglass to Du Bois. Born a slave in colonial Philadelphia, Allen secured his freedom during the American Revolution, and became one of the nation?s leading black activists before the Civil War. Among his many achievements, Allen helped form the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, co-authored the first copyrighted pamphlet by an African American writer, published the first African American eulogy of George Washington, and convened the first national convention of Black reformers. In a time when most Black men and women were categorized as slave property, Allen was championed as a Black hero. In this thoroughly engaging and beautifully written book, Newman describes Allen's continually evolving life and thought, setting both in the context of his times. From Allen's early antislavery struggles and belief in interracial harmony to his later reflections on Black democracy and Black emigration, Newman traces Allen's impact on American reform and reformers, on racial attitudes during the years of the early republic, and on the Black struggle for justice in the age of Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington. Whether serving as Americas first Black bishop, challenging slave-holding statesmen in a nation devoted to liberty, or visiting the President's House (the first Black activist to do so), this important book makes it clear that Allen belongs in the pantheon of Americas great founding figures. Freedom's Prophet reintroduces Allen to today's readers and restores him to his rightful place in our nation's history.

Revised in 1996, this book documents the history of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

Wesleyan theology and African American theology have both become fixtures on the theological landscape in recent years. While developing along parallel tracks both perspectives make claims concerning justice issues such as racism and sexism. Both, however, perceive justice from a particular vantage that focuses on just-us (just our community). Hence African American theology has not seriously studied John Wesley's stance against slavery or his work with the disenfranchised. And Wesleyan theologians have largely ignored the insights of African American theology especially in regard to certain injustices. To get beyond the "just-us" mentality, the author lays the foundation for a Pan-Methodist theology, which will draw from the strengths of African American and Wesley theologies.

This is a study of the transplantation of a creed devised by and for African Americans--the African Methodist Episcopal Church--that was appropriated and transformed in a variety of South African contexts. Focusing on a transatlantic institution like the African Methodist Episcopal Church, thebook studies the complex human and intellectual traffic that has bound African American and South African experience. It explores the development and growth of the African Methodist Episcopal Church both in South Africa and America, and the interaction between the two churches. This is a highly innovative work of comparative and religious history. Its linking of the United States and African black religious experiences is unique and makes it appealing to readers interested in religious history and black experience in both the United States and South Africa.

A Will to Choose surveys the first century of African American Methodism from its emergence in the 1860s through the changes wrought by the Civil War. From the beginning of Methodism in the United States, African Americans appropriated Methodism, helped transform it from a revitalization movement into an evangelical church, and integrated it into their struggle for liberation and wholeness.