Beginning in 1760, this comprehensive history charts the growth and development of the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren church family up and through the year 2000.

Extraordinarily well-documented study with elaborate notes that will guide the reader to recent and standard literature on the numerous topics, figures, developments, and events covered. The volume is a companion to and designed to be used with THE METHODIST EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA: A SOURCEBOOK, for which it provides background, context and interpretation.

Contents include:

• Launching the Methodist Movements 1760-1768
• Structuring the Immigrant Initiatives 1769-1778
• Making Church 1777-1784
• Constituting Methodism 1784-1792
• Spreaking Scriptural Holiness 1792-1816
• Snapshot I- Methodism in 1816: Baltimore 1816
• Building for Ministry and Nuture 1816-1850s
• Dividing by Mission, Ethnicity, Gender, and Vision 1816-1850s
• Dividing over Slavery, Region, Authority, and Race 1830-1860s
• Embracing the War Cause(s) 1860-1865
• Reconstructing Methodism(s) 1866-1884
• Snapshot II- Methodism in 1884: Wilker-Barre, PA 1884
• Reshaping the Church for Mission 1884-1939
• Taking on the World 1884-1939
• Warring for World Order and Against Worldliness Within 1930-1968
• Snapshot III- Methodism in 1968: Denver 1968
• Merging and Reappraising 1968-1984
• Holding Fast/Pressing On 1984-2000

A wide-angled narrative that attends to religious life at the local level, to missions and missionary societies, to justice struggles, to camp and quarterly meetings, to the Sunday school and catechisms, to architecture and worship, to higher education, to hospitals and homes, to temperance, to deaconesses and to Methodist experiences in war and in peace-making.

A volume that attends critically to Methodism’s dilemmas over and initiatives with regard to race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and relation to culture.

A documentation and display of the rich diversity of the Methodist experience.

A retelling of the contests over and evolution of Methodist/EUB organization, authority, ministerial orders and ethical/doctrinal emphases.