Pietist and Wesleyan Studies - Böcker

While the most standard treatments of John Wesley's theology focus their attention on his distinctive 'way of salvation', they fail to provide a thorough examination of Wesley's 'means of grace.' This book offers the first detailed discussion of the means of grace as the liturgical, communal, and devotional context within which growth in the Christian life actually occurred. Knight shows how the means of grace together form an interrelated pattern that enables a growing relationship with God.

The roots of American evangelical religion that have usually been traced to the Puritans also included numerous German immigrants. In this migration, a major stream of spirituality, heretofore unexplored in their primary sources, was the Reformed and Radical Pietism that originated in the Rhineland and contributed to the formation of the earliest indigenous expressions of American denominationalism.This volume contains annotated selections, most of which were previously unavailable in English, from Pietist authors representing that Rhineland spirituality. Each selection is preceded by a historical and theological introduction. The influence of each author upon the emerging expressions of German-American evangelicalism, the United Brethren in Christ and the Evangelical Association, is also indicated. These include the Otterbeins, Lampe, Tersteegen, and Stahlschmidt (reformed and reformed-leaning Pietists), the Berleberg Bible group (Radical Pietists), and Collenbusch and Hasenkamp (Neo-Pietists who were influenced by the Enlightenment).

This resource displays the variety of ways in which the Wesleys' concept of 'the religion of the heart' (that is, the affective dimension of Christian faith) has been understood and embodied in the Methodist tradition. The author then offers some practical suggestions on how a livelier piety, a more deeply felt faith, can be fostered in local congregations, without leading into anti-intellectualism, fanatical emotionalism or maudlin sentimentality. This part approaches theology, worship, preaching, pastoral care, and educational ministry.

The Wesleyan tradition of the 18th century and its related movements has had a global impact that has often been understated and underestimated. Charles Yrigoyen, Jr. presents a diverse collection of essays that document the Wesleyan traditions from founder John Wesley's preaching across Great Britain to his followers' spread of Methodist views throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe.Through a series of essays, The Global Impact of the Wesleyan Traditions and Their Related Movements documents the influence of Methodist missionaries on peoples and religions throughout the world. The text is divided into three parts: Part I includes four essays about basic missiological and methodological issues; Part II includes 15 essays that illuminate the global impact of the Wesleyan traditions and related movements on topics such as independent churches in Africa and the Hwa Nan College in China; and Part III describes the resources for researching and extending the global impact of traditions of Wesley's works, such as the Obras de Wesley (the Spanish version of Wesley's works) and the valuable collection of Wesleyana and Methodistica materials at the John Rylands University Library in Manchester, Great Britain.Diverse in scope, The Global Impact of the Wesleyan Traditions and Their Related Movements is a comprehensive volume for religious scholars and historians interested in the Wesleyan traditions.

John Fletcher's theology of Pentecost is generally unknown today, and this book is the first comprehensive treatise on this subject. His writings were in large part responsible for shaping the theology of early American Methodism, especially his treatise on Christian Perfection, which highlighted a theology of Pentecostal sanctification. Wood recounts the decisive influence Fletcher had on early Methodism, and shows that his writings were able to "control the opinions of the largest and most effective body of evangelical clergymen of the earth." Fletcher's views on the Holy Spirit were also relevant in the ecumenical movement, specifically with reference to the World Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order held in Lima, Peru, in 1982. This group recommended the introduction of a liturgy of the Spirit in Christian baptism.For students and scholars or general readers interested in Methodist history and theology. Also a resource for pastors-helpful in developing a theology of Pentecost that will preach in a relevant way in the contemporary world.

Members of the church of the Nazarene believed that they were taking up John Wesley's mandate to take the message of holiness around the world. This resource provides a detailed case study of an American denomination's work in Asia during the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. The church's philosophies and policies of mission, unique in their attempt to build an international church rather than national churches, were developed and implemented through missionary leaders. Topics include the establishment of schools and hospitals, the organization of ecclesiastical forms and structures, and the success of church leaders. This book will be of interest to historians interested in the history of missions, American religious history and American-Asian relations, and missiologists.

This book describes all aspects of daily religious life of pious Reformed people in the Netherlands between 1720-1820 on the basis of the autobiographies of 14 men and 6 women. Sources are explored thematically, with each chapter describing one section of Pietist life. After introductory chapters on the theological, cultural, and social context and the individual backgrounds of the autobiographers, collective surveys are given about youth, education, adolescence, conversion experiences, spiritual life, marriage, children, congregational life, social and economic life, and the production and reception of the autobiographies.The Dutch perspective was chosen so as to demonstrate that Pietism was not just a movement from the big European countries like Britain and Germany. Apart from its impact on East European and Scandinavian countries, Dutch Pietism is an important and essential part of the movement, at the one hand in the special context of the pluriform and tolerant nation, at the other hand as a 'bridge' between Anglo-Saxon and German Pietist movements. Focusing on Dutch Reformed Pietism may also give a correction to the dominant 'Lutheran' view, caused by the Germanocentric historiography of the movement. Dutch Pietism has also influenced the spirituality of many religious people in the Netherlands up to the present day, including descendants of emigrants in North America and in South Africa.

John Wesley Redfield (1810-1863), controversial "lay" evangelist in the Methodist Episcopal and later Free Methodist churches, was the cofounder of the Free Methodist Church and in the 1840s and 50s had a broad ministry in the M.E. Church and beyond. An outspoken abolitionist, Redfield was controversial among Methodist leaders and in the M.E. press as his revivals typically were marked by dramatic emotional manifestations, including people being slain in the Spirit and dramatic conversions.This book makes available for the first time his autobiography, a 425-page handwritten manuscript Redfield wrote shortly before he died. Redfield's manuscript details (briefly) his early life; his conversion; his brief stormy marriage and divorce; his abolitionist activities; his contacts with Phoebe Palmer, one of the founders of the Holiness Movement; his occasional practice of medicine; and his remarkable revivals, which are further clarified and documented by the author's footnotes. This book presents Redfield's manuscript in its entirety-with critical and contextual notes-and serves as an important primary source for the study of the Wesleyan Holiness tradition, American Methodism, revivalism, and abolitionism.

Born in 1713 of French Huguenot stock, Philadelphia Quaker Anthony Benezet was probably the most significant force in advancing the cause against slavery and the African slave trade in the eighteenth century. However, while abolitionists like Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and John Wesley are familiar, the name "Benezet" is hardly recognized. And yet, it was his work that reinforced Sharp's legal battles, his tracts that singularly influenced both Wesley and Clarkson to join the cause, and his friendship with Benjamin Franklin that led to Franklin leading the American antislavery society after Benezet's death.To Be Silent... Would Be Criminal introduces the development of antislavery activity in America and then traces the life of Benezet, examining both his work and influence on individuals, including Wesley, Sharp, Clarkson, and Franklin. Benezet's correspondence with these and other contemporaries is reproduced here, giving insight into his relationships and his desire to build a viable network to oppose slavery. It's from a letter Benezet wrote to Lady Huntingdon, the chief administer behind the Calvinistic wing of Methodism, that the title of this book is derived: "...where the lives & natural as well as religious welfare of so vast a number of our Fellow Creatures is concerned, to be Silent, where we apprehend it a duty to speak our sense of that which causes us to go mourning on our way, would be criminal." With one exception, all of Benezet's antislavery tracts, which are otherwise available only in special archives, are replicated in full within the book, further demonstrating Benezet's uniquely significant role in the eventual victory over slavery.

Anthony Horneck (1641-1697) is a key figure for the migration of the continental Pietist sensibilities into Restoration Anglicanism and ultimately into Methodism. Horneck was educated at Heidelberg and Leiden and then immigrated to England during the year of the Restoration. In England he became a committed Anglican, but his life and ministry demonstrated the influences of developing continental Pietism. He preached salvation. He avoided disputes over non-essentials. Most significantly, he organized religious societies of awakened souls beginning in 1678. The rules Horneck drew up for the guidance of these societies bear many marks of continental Pietism and laid the foundation for philanthropic and revivalist movements in England. At Horneck's death there were a number of these religious societies in and around London. In the next twenty years they expanded in London and throughout the counties, profoundly impacting Anglican piety. By the 1720s their network provided the matrix of relationships through which Moravians (a Continental Pietist group) and Oxford Methodists met in what became the Anglo-evangelical revival. In the 1730s and 40s they enabled Methodism's rapid spread and were united into a new movement.Foundation for Revival provides insight into the complex religious world of Restoration piety—blurring some of the rigid distinctions between Puritans and Anglicans. As a combination of Restoration high church piety and Pietist sensibilities concerning personal regeneration, Horneck provides a theological emancipation from the usual categories defining evangelical Christianity. Horneck's life also reveals an early, and generally overlooked, link between continental versions of Pietism and English evangelicalism, on which both the development of mission/philanthropic institutions in England and the rise of Methodism, Reformed and Wesleyan, depend. Finally, as a forerunner of Methodism, Horneck helps to clarify many of the "contradictions" in the piety of the young John Wesley, giving Wesley

The life of the Evangelical United Brethren Church (EUB) was short—less than 22 years—yet this relatively small German-American denomination had a significant impact on Protestant Christianity. It developed a leading role in ecumenical movements in the United States, it succeeded in presenting programs that have been presented to the highest level of United Methodism—the General Conference—and it has made important contributions to scholarship in church history by preserving and making available to researchers an outstanding collection of materials. The essays gathered together in this book were taken from papers presented at a conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the joining of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ and the Evangelical Church to create the EUB denomination. The papers emphasize the development of the merged church, its theology, its concept of ministry, the history of the denomination in Europe, and the mission programs of the denomination. The Making of an American Church: Essays Commemorating the Jubilee Year of the Evangelical United Brethren Church is a unique collection of papers by EUB scholars and general church officers that combines scholarly rigor with an involvement in the events they discuss.

The Korean Holiness Church originated as an evangelical holiness movement through indigenous work and the American holiness mission. From its inception, the Korean Holiness Church believed that its primary task was not only to promote "scriptural holiness," as John Wesley and primitive Methodism had preached, but also to preach the "fourfold gospel," which may be summarized as regeneration, sanctification, divine healing, and the premillennial second coming of Christ.The Rise of the Korean Holiness Church in Relation to the American Holiness Movement argues that the theological foundation of the Korean Holiness Church can best be understood by analyzing the fourfold gospel in the history of the Korean Holiness Church and its internationally connected holiness movement. The brief, though rich, biographical accounts of the Korean Christians and American and British Missionaries woven into this book finally give these great men and women their due.

Pietism is increasingly recognized as the most important movement in Protestant Christianity since the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Simply put, early Protestant reformers were concerned with reforming the doctrine and beliefs of Christians whereas the Pietiest leaders were concerned with reforming the lives and behavior of Christians. This, coupled with other disagreements, led to calls for separation, which in turn gave rise to the movement best described as radical Pietism. German Radical Pietism introduces the English reader to the research of the major contemporary scholar of radical Pietism, Hans Schneider. Originally appearing in the comprehensive study of the history of Pietism that appeared in the 1990s, Schneider's research considers historical treatment of the major figures, movements, and ideas of the radical wing of German Pietism in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These developments are set in their historical and social contexts, thereby providing the first definitive treatment in English of this movement as a whole. Radical Pietism's seminal role in the emergence of modern religious communities_including Quakers, Brethren, and precursors of contemporary United Methodism, as well as a range of perfectionist communities in early American history_has only begun to be adequately assessed, and this study should be a critical resource in furthering that research. This work is one of the few studies available in English that addresses the important German historical work on Pietism from the late twentieth century. A definitive bibliography of recent research in radical Pietism is included to provide further reading on this important topic.

The relationship between John Wesley and George Whitefield has often been viewed as suffering from irreconcilable theological differences. In fact, for several years, the relationship between these two leaders of the revival of the Christian faith in eighteenth-century England was strained almost to the breaking point. Whitefield, a Calvinist, believed that each individual who ever lived was either destined for the glories of heaven or the horrors of hell due to an irrevocable decree of God. Wesley on the other hand argued that each person has placed before them two options: either to accept God's forgiveness or to reject it in favor of following one's own way. Most books in the past have focused on these John Wesley's and George Whitefield's differences, but what has been overlooked is the lasting friendship between these two men, which, after a brief period of separation, was restored for the sake of the continuation of the revival movement on two continents. Catholic Spirit: Wesley, Whitefield, and the Quest for Evangelical Unity in Eighteenth-Century British Methodism focuses on the key themes upon which both men agreed. It stresses the commonalties between the two leaders of British Methodism and illustrates the great lengths both went to in order to further the revival of the Christian religion in England and North America. Both Wesley and Whitefield claim to possess "Catholic spirits," that is, they both believed the importance of working with other like-minded individuals to spread the message of salvation through Christ. Author James Schwenk argues that they were successful in promoting that spirit of cooperation, even as some of their followers failed to understand how hard they worked at making "molehills out of mountains."

Christian faith is always a leap. When the leap takes particularly long in a society the Church has characteristically shortened that leap through a process approach to winning seekers known as "catechetical evangelism." Author Tory Baucum explores catechumenal evangelism in the early Church and its recovery in the early modern period in Methodism and late modernity (or postmodernity) in the Alpha course. Baucum seeks to describe the salient features of "catechetical evangelism" and why it is effective at creating an environment that shortens the leap from unbelief to belief.Evangelical Hospitality describes a church that has lost touch with its deep memory of evangelization, the recovery of that memory in catechetical ministry, and the kinds of practices this recovery spawns in the Church. After describing the social construction of faith communities, the bulk of the book examines four core practices, which are entailed in creating cultures of faith—places where believing in Christ becomes plausible and possible. The book concludes with some perennial principles from Christian communities who learn to construct faith cultures.

John Wesley's Ecclesiology: A Study in Its Sources and Development looks at the major traditions and sources that shaped Wesley's study of church doctrine. Wesley's ecclesiology is best understood in light of the sources and background that contributed to his own theological formation, as well as the events that he faced in the course of his endeavors in the Wesleyan Revival. Therefore, this study first examines the possible sources for Wesley's doctrine of the church and then moves to the investigation of the development of his ecclesiology in the course of his ministry. In doing so, this study looks at the large number of works written by John Wesley and the primary sources of the various traditions that influenced Wesley. John Wesley's rich legacy was inherited from several traditions—including primitivism, Anglicanism, Puritanism, Pietism, and to a lesser extent, Roman Catholicism—and these sources were instrumental in shaping his ecclesiology. Anyone interested in reading Wesley in the Christian tradition would want to read this book. Wesley's ecclesiology will provide Wesleyan Churches with a renewed understanding of their origins and a model for moving toward truly catholic, thoroughly evangelical, and continually reformed church.

Pietism is increasingly recognized as the most important movement in Protestant Christianity since the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Simply put, early Protestant reformers were concerned with reforming the doctrine and beliefs of Christians whereas the Pietiest leaders were concerned with reforming the lives and behavior of Christians. This, coupled with other disagreements, led to calls for separation, which in turn gave rise to the movement best described as radical Pietism. German Radical Pietism introduces the English reader to the research of the major contemporary scholar of radical Pietism, Hans Schneider. Originally appearing in the comprehensive study of the history of Pietism that appeared in the 1990s, Schneider's research considers historical treatment of the major figures, movements, and ideas of the radical wing of German Pietism in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These developments are set in their historical and social contexts, thereby providing the first definitive treatment in English of this movement as a whole. Radical Pietism's seminal role in the emergence of modern religious communities_including Quakers, Brethren, and precursors of contemporary United Methodism, as well as a range of perfectionist communities in early American history_has only begun to be adequately assessed, and this study should be a critical resource in furthering that research. This work is one of the few studies available in English that addresses the important German historical work on Pietism from the late twentieth century. A definitive bibliography of recent research in radical Pietism is included to provide further reading on this important topic.

For the better part of two centuries, Wesley scholars have been given a picture of the family of John Wesley that focuses positively upon the relationships of John and his brother Charles and his mother Susanna. What has come down to us about John Wesley's father—Samuel Wesley, Sr.—is a mixture of good and bad character traits, mostly seemingly inconsequential with respect to the making of Methodism under John and Charles. Now with Arthur Torpy's work, we have reason to think differently. Samuel Wesley, Sr. was a complex person whose thoughts, actions, and convictions were based on his understanding and practice of his tradition, experience, scripture, and reasoning. The Prevenient Piety of Samuel Wesley, Sr. examines the life of Samuel Wesley, exploring the influences of his early Dissenting upbringing, his Oxford education, subsequent published writings, and post 1709 sermons.

In this book, William Taylor tells in his own words the story of a foundational episode in his life. Following his trial ministry as a Methodist circuit rider in his home state of Virginia and his service of pastorates in the historic North Baltimore Conference, William Taylor (1821-1902) was commissioned as a missionary to California at the beginning of the Gold Rush Era. His subsequent "seven years of street preaching in San Francisco" set the stage for a half-century missionary career during which Taylor championed self-supporting missions to every populated continent, funded by the publication of his widely-read books.Despite his prolific writing, none of Taylor's publications reveal the personal dimensions of his struggles or the day-by-day development of his missionary perspective. This early chapter in Taylor's career emerges for the first time with the publication of his journal, privately held by family members for over a century. The substantial journal chronicles five of Taylor's seven enterprising years (1849-1856) in San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, and the surrounding area, while offering a rich, first-person account of contemporary events written in Taylor's fine, narrative style. With this journal, readers may trace the genesis of Taylor's approach to self-supporting missions, including the development of his thinking on fund raising and his skepticism toward the possibility of a Christian use of money. A scholarly introduction, footnotes, and appendixes, together with several images, set Taylor's California experiences in historical context, while clarifying and explaining the journal's rhetoric, holiness doctrine, missionary strategies, and oblique references.

Milton Wright (1828-1917), a United Brethren in Christ missionary, pastor, educator, editor, and later bishop, was widely known for his religious, political, and social commentary during America's post-Civil War era. Beginning with an introduction to Wright's life, A Higher Moral and Spiritual Stand: Selected Writings of Milton Wright presents 135 of Milton Wright's Religious Telescope editorials written between 1869 and 1877.The editorials reflect the depth of his thought and the breadth of his interests, including denominational struggles and successes, the relationship between personal piety and public morality, and concerns for both social order and social justice in what he hoped would become a truly Christian society.