Studies in Evangelicalism – serie

Pentecostalism is one of the most dynamic forces in the church renewal movement. From fast-growing denominations such as the Assemblies of God to popular television ministries, the fruits of Pentecostalism are to be seen throughout twentieth-century American Christianity. In this controversial study, Dayton explains how Pentecostalism grew out of Methodism and the nineteenth-century American holiness movement. He finds evidence of Wesleyan teaching in the classic writings of many Pentecostal leaders. He shows how Pentecostalism is deeply rooted in the Wesleyan theological tradition, rather than being a contrived system of modern revivalist ideas. Dayton also cites evidence that Wesleyan thinkers have tried to reorient their teachings in order to put ideological "distance" between themselves and the Pentecostal movement. The study is based on little-known original sources that shed light on a number of related themes in the study of American religion and offers new perspectives on the development of 19th-century millennialism, the rise and fall of reform movements, the emergence of the healing movement, and the evolution of evangelical religion in the nineteenth century. Martin E. Marty says that Pentecostals "have no choice, it is clear from this book, but to see that there were...roots to the growth they reaped." He calls Theological Roots of Pentecostalism "a very important statement, one without which subsequent commentators on Pentecostalism are not likely to give intelligent accounts."

This new edition expands and updates the only general interpretation of the rise and influence of perfectionist revivalism in America and Europe. Fifteen years of expanding research on the holiness movement reinforce this volume's continuing seminal value to cultural and social research. The new concluding essay describes the history of the revival through the turn of the century. This book expands our understanding of the fragmentation and coalescence of American religion by analyzing the factors which created numerous new holiness denominations. Dieter also outlines the historical and theological factors that separate this largely Wesleyan and Methodist wing of evangelicalism from the fundamentalism of Reformed evangelicals. The identification of such nuances will prove especially helpful to those struggling with the extreme diversity in American religion, especially in evangelicalism. For students and scholars of American religious movements as well as students of the feminist, temperance, abolitionist, and populist movements in American society.

Essek William Kenyon (1867-1948) has virtually escaped scholarly notice, and yet his influence on the twentieth-century church is profound. Of particular note is Kenyon's influence on William Durham that apparently led to the first major split in Pentecostalism. Kenyon's own evangelistic work was thoroughly interdenominational, touching every major Protestant denomination of his day. E.W. Kenyon and the Postbellum Pursuit of Peace, Power, and Plenty is the most comprehensive biography of Kenyon available today. It explores his influence on the Pentecostal/Charismatic movements, and likewise illuminates the practice of intuition and mysticism from which the 20th century message of peace, power and plenty emerged. Contains nine black and white photographs, bibliography and index.

Luther Lee, D.D. (1800-1889), one of the founders of Wesleyan Methodism, was a nineteenth-century reformer and an ordained minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Lee is known to most Methodist historians as a Methodist Episcopal minister who deserted the church that had brought him to spiritual birth and ordination. Wesleyan Methodist church historians know him as the first president of their denomination, an editor of their periodical, and unfortunately, a traitor who betrayed and then subsequently walked away from the church he had helped to establish. His significance to American history has not heretofore been observed. This volume explores Lee's life, his politics, and his theology. One of the author's particular foci is the extent to which Lee affected the antislavery movement. Paul L. Kaufman places Lee within the broad context of nineteenth-century reformism as he battled the "gag rule" of the Methodist Episcopal bishops, and then shaped the Wesleyan Methodist Connection while he served on the highest levels of Garrison's American AntiSlavery Society. Of interest to students and teachers of Methodism, American history, and the abolitionist movement.