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The paper by Han, Bandi, and Nohadani on "On Finite Adaptability in Two-Stage Distributionally Robust Optimization" studies finite adaptability with the goal to construct interpretable and easily implementable policies in the context of two-stage distributionally robust optimization problems. To achieve this, the set of uncertainty realizations needs to be partitioned. The authors show that an optimal partitioning can be accomplished via "translated orthants." They then propose a nondecreasing orthant partitioning and binary approximation to obtain the corresponding "orthant-based policies" from a mixed-integer optimization problem of a moderate size. For these policies, they provide provable performance bounds, generalizing the existing bounds in the literature. For more general settings, they also propose optimization formulations to obtain posterior lower bounds that can serve to evaluate performance. Two numerical experiments support these findings. A joint inventory-routing problem highlights the practical applicability for large-sized instances with mixed-integer recourse. A case study from a pharmacy retailer demonstrates that the orthant-based policies are less sensitive to cost parameters than optimal solutions, enabling these policies to outperform comparable methods when the realized cost ratio deviates from its nominal value. In many real applications, practitioners prefer policies that are interpretable and easy to implement. This tendency is magnified in sequential decision-making settings. In this paper, we leverage the concept of finite adaptability to construct policies for two-stage optimization problems. More specifically, we focus on the general setting of distributional uncertainties affecting the right-hand sides of constraints, because in a broad range of applications, uncertainties do not affect the objective function and recourse matrix. The aim is to construct policies that have provable performance bounds. This is done by partitioning the uncertainty realization and assigning a contingent decision to each piece. We first show that the optimal partitioning can be characterized by translated orthants, which only require the problem structure and hence are free of modeling assumptions. We then prove that finding the optimal partitioning is hard and propose a specific partitioning scheme with orthants, allowing the efficient computation of orthant-based policies via solving a mixed-integer optimization problem of a moderate size. By leveraging the geometry of this partitioning, we provide performance bounds of the orthant-based policies, which also generalize the existing bounds in the literature. These bounds offer multiple theoretical insights on the performance, for example, its independence on problem parameters. We also assess suboptimality in more general settings and provide techniques to obtain lower bounds. The proposed policies are applied to a stylized inventory routing problem with mixed-integer recourse. We also study the case of a pharmacy retailer by comparing alternative methods regarding computational performance and robustness to parameter variation. Funding: E. Han is funded by the Southern Methodist University start-up fund for this research. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2022.2273. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the process of moral discernment in the United Methodist Church [UMC] in Germany in the face of differing convictions on issues of human sexuality within the horizon of the comprehensive study process of the World Council of Churches [WCC] on "Churches and Moral Discernment". After an introduction to the challenging debates within the worldwide United Methodist Church in the face of different convictions on human sexuality, a first section unfolds approaches to theological doctrinal formation and ethical discernment in a Methodist perspective. in a second section, the current process of ethical discernment in the UMC in Germany is examined. The paper concludes with some highlights on the significance of the analytical tool developed in the study process of the WCC for processes of moral discernment such as in the UMC in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a badly understudied topic, the feminist leadership provided by southern women in the Department of Christian Social Relations, a subunit of the Woman’s Society of Christian Service (WSCS), and the United Methodist Women (UMW) from 1940 to 1990. It examines the origins and influence of the powerful UMW and its predecessor organizations, and explains why southern women predominated in leadership and why southerners, who are usually understood to be forces of conservatism, led the church to adopt progressive positions and policies regarding racial and gender justice in the mid- to late twentieth century. Profiled are the three most influential women within the UMW and its predecessors: Thelma Stevens, Peggy Billings, and Theressa Hoover. It briefly describes the effect that the Religious Right had on progressive women, and concludes with a brief discussion of the current debate over human sexuality within Methodism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out an archival account of events leading up to the mass agencification of the British civil service by the Thatcher administration (1979–1990). This account holds lessons for contemporary understandings of the ideological roots and institutional structures of corporatization. When Thatcher came to power in 1979, she wanted to make government "efficient" through the adoption of "business‐like" practices. We show that this project was grounded in her Methodist upbringing and the emerging neoliberal economic theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Thatcher's efforts to instill a "market mentality" were met with stubborn resistance from a bloc of Ministers and senior civil servants. We find that Thatcher used agencification to break this resistance. Agencification removed Ministerial control over service delivery and saw "business‐like" managers placed in charge of the newly created agencies. This curtailed the workings of democracy. Like Thatcher's agencification, corporatization today imperils democracy in pursuit of "efficiency." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Methodist Review Newsletter is a quarterly electronic newsletter that provides updates on events, resources, and opportunities related to Methodist and Wesleyan studies. It covers topics such as scholarly society news, academic events, recent publications, and scholarly resources. The newsletter announces upcoming conferences, exhibitions, and research grants, as well as the inclusion of personal papers and court documents in the United Methodist Archives and History Center. It also highlights job postings for academic positions with a focus on justice-oriented approaches. The Methodist Review is an open-access, peer-reviewed electronic journal that publishes scholarly articles in the field. [Extracted from the article]

Ralph Edward Dodge, a Methodist missionary and bishop, played a significant role in indigenizing the Methodist Church in Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. He emphasized training indigenous people for leadership roles and incorporated traditional African worship practices into Christian worship. Dodge also formed an ecumenical alliance of churches in Zimbabwe and advocated for social justice. He implemented the Safari to Learning program, which sent African students to overseas colleges and universities, and many of its graduates became opponents of colonial policies. Dodge believed in the correlation between individual salvation and the salvation of society. [Extracted from the article]

Late in the Civil War, northern missionaries from African Methodist denominations flooded into Kentucky and across the upper South, where they sought new members, especially among Black Methodist congregations. But they encountered resistance from an unexpected foe--the law of church property. White Southern Methodists had prided themselves on their "Mission to the Negroes," and white churchmen used litigation to ensure that Black churches remained in the hands of the proslavery church, even after emancipation. This article recovers an otherwise unknown series of Kentucky court decisions on questions of race and church property. Other jurisdictions followed Kentucky's lead, frustrating shifts in allegiance to Black northern denominations. These cases give new context to the formation of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (CME) in 1870, which tied Black congregations firmly to the southern church. By taking law into account, the role of sacred space, church property and financial wealth, and the use of state power all emerge as key elements of the story. The legal history of CME's founding and its early growth highlight a reconstituted white supremacy, which imposed a strict requirement that the new denomination avoid all politics and yet could not prevent the emergence of a vibrant and longstanding spiritual community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memorialization of Ambrosio Gonzales, a nineteenth-century Methodist convert from New Mexico, has aided in the maintenance and expansion of Latinx Protestantism. Gonzales's trajectory matters to communal and institutional memories, I argue, because his life was embedded within the very origins of Latinx Protestantism in the Southwest. Moreover, Gonzales became emblematic of Protestantism at a time of westward expansion. Even today, commemorating Gonzales bolsters Latinx Protestant identities and legitimizes missionary efforts. While memorializations of Gonzales have often been symbolic, his life also had long-lasting structural effects on Latinx Protestantism in the West. This article is part of a special issue of Pacific Historical Review, "Religion in the Nineteenth-Century American West." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Swinney Conservatory of Music at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri has a long history with unique beginnings. After the Civil War, Central College (Central Methodist's original name) grew alongside a "Female Seminary," Howard-Payne Female College. Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the two schools developed their own distinct musical cultures with Howard-Payne faculty developing a music curriculum, and Central students forming their own musical ensembles. When the schools merged in 1923 these two cultures united to create a conservatory of music at a time when many other American conservatories were being established. Just before the merger, Kansas City banker Edward Fletcher Swinney, who had strong family ties to the Fayette area and a history of philanthropy towards causes in Missouri education, donated $35,000 to Howard-Payne College for the construction of the conservatory building that would eventually bear his name. This article focuses on the early history of both Central College and Howard-Payne Female College, the role that music played at both schools (as a curricular and non-curricular activity) and the events leading to the formation of Central College's music curriculum and construction of the Swinney Conservatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under Ryerson's leadership, Canadian Methodists retook control of the Book Room in Toronto from the British Wesleyans and stocked it with cheap books ordered from New York. Methodists found themselves compelled to import their literature from one of two institutions: the British Wesleyans' London Book Room or the New York-based Methodist Book Concern run by the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) in the United States. If Canadian Methodists were willing to pay a denominational premium for the Concern's books, perhaps they were more like American Methodists in that respect. [Extracted from the article]

Though rural Protestant missionaries stationed in Cuba routinely reproduced Anglo-American epistemologies and values, often in the service of US corporations, they also worked alongside their parishioners to challenge state and economic violence, as well as break the cyclical nature of Cuban poverty. Shared struggle with Cubans against Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship proved transformative for many rural missionaries who, in the late 1950s, developed a revolutionary consciousness born through transnational solidarity. Missionaries challenged the dominant narrative coming from the US government and foreign corporations, as the Revolution pursued an increasingly anti-imperial and anti-capitalist agenda after Batista entered exile. While corporate executives and government officials from North America and Europe feared the new government, rural missionaries, often funded by these same corporations, defended the structural changes taking place after 1959. Through oral history and archival research, this article exposes how Cuban Protestants proved particularly influential in shaping the lens by which foreign missionaries came to understand, appreciate, and ultimately support the Cuban Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Holland's Short Account describes church life in the City of London in the 1730s with special reference to the religious societies and their connections with Wesley's "Oxford Methodists." He shows how the Moravian Peter Böhler's preaching cross-fertilized these networks' High-Church Anglicanism with the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone and thereby sparked the English Evangelical Revival. Recounting the early life of the resulting Fetter Lane Society, which served as the Revival's London headquarters, Holland emphasizes the frequent visits to and from the Moravian congregations in Germany and the Netherlands. All of this was intended to support his argument that the English Anglican members of Zinzendorf's Brüdergemeine, while accepting the Lutheran doctrine of justification, were neither Dissenters nor "Old Lutherans" (the name Zinzendorf had invented for them in order to distance the Moravian tradition from them). Rather, they had joined the Moravian Church on the understanding that in doing so they were not separating themselves from England's established church but joining a "sister church" in a form of "double belonging." This text thus illuminates not only the early history of the Moravian Church in England but also Anglican church life in 1730s London and the origins of Wesleyan Methodism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]