Publisher's Synopsis
American Methodism comes in a variety of sometimes contrasting flavors. It is ecumenical and denominational, black and white, English- and Korean--and Spanish-speaking, liberal and conservative, Wesleyan and heir to the several Protestant reformations. The United Methodist Church (UMC), the largest of the family, joins other members in its fervid loyalty to the theology of John, the hymnody of Charles Wesley, and the evangelical "practical divinity" that eighteenth-century Anglican clergy developed into the Wesleyan disciplinary system. But as of the 1968 merger of the Methodist Church with the Evangelical United Brethren, the UMC could claim ties to the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anabaptist reformations as well as to Wesley's Anglicanism. Many would consider the UMC a mainline and liberal denomination. But within it, a sizable, significant, and vocal conservative-evangelical wing functions through various organizations to lobby for its defining concerns and to operate in para- or shadow-church fashion.
In these and other contrasts and tensions, American Methodism comes close, perhaps the closest, to being the prototypical denominational family. Thus, the American Methodisms make for an important, illustrative, and instructive study in Protestantism's prospects and perils. Methodist churches are growing abroad while static in the U.S. Methodism, black and white, like Roman Catholicism and unlike some other churches, has retained a good portion of its non-U.S. constituency. What might these global Methodist connections mean going forward for an American society increasingly becoming multi-ethnic and conflicted over immigration?
This new volume in the Columbia Contemporary American Religion series, written by an acknowledged expert, provides an overview of the history of Methodism in America; introduces Methodist practices and doctrines; and considers its ongoing engagement with American society on such issues as slavery and racism, secularization, gender equality, missionization, the culture wars, and the uneasy mix of mainline and evangelical denominations.
