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This paper purposed to explore the impact and future of Methodism in the face of challenging trends in the Kenyan religious space. Through qualitative empirical research done in the Njia Circuit of Methodist Church in Kenya (MCK) Nyambene Synod, this study identified the main practices and trends that are challenging and influencing Methodism in Kenya. They include religious commodification that has been developing and infiltrating Christian churches in the last three decades, the Pentecostal spirituality, mass and social media influence, spiritual lethargy and “quick fix mentality,” Africanization of Christianity campaigns, and MCK structures. The study found that Christianity in Kenya has been forced to swiftly respond to the enlightenment brought about by modernity, socioeconomic currents, and political winds of change. Churches including MCK, are grappling to control the religious space in Kenya and that dictates that adaptation is necessary for survival. This paper addresses the gap in how to integrate eighteenth-century Methodism into the twenty-first-century church in Kenya. Consideration is based on the fact that since the inception of the MCK, other forms of churches, ministries, and social change have happened. This paper proposed a consideration for a paradigm shift in the way the Methodist Church carries out mission work in today’s society, and especially through its structural organization. Thus, acceptance and use of new wineskins to withstand the vigour of new wine to avoid tearing away in the form of loss of relevance and impact.

This article explores the intricate evolution of Chilean Pentecostals from apolitical and socially detached citizens to ardent supporters of the country's dictatorship. The aim is to challenge prevailing historical assumptions that explain the transformation through factors exogenous to the movement as well as long-held interpretations of their eschatological dispositions. It looks to revisit their early theological commitments and millennial concerns, complicating scholarly claims that the movement reflected a clear premillennialist orientation which has been held up to explain their enduring reluctance to enter the political sphere prior to the 1973 military coup. By examining early Pentecostal publications, this article reveals a religious movement shaped by pneumatological expressions, Methodist beliefs and local autonomy. Contrary to normative interpretations, it argues that Chilean Pentecostals' longstanding unwillingness to engage in political change was not a forgone conclusion rooted in their theological commitments. Political engagement was always a possibility rather than a clear deviation. This research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of Chilean Pentecostalism, shedding light on the complex interplay of theology, historical context and scholarly interpretations that have shaped our understanding of the movement's political trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methodism came to Zimbabwe in 1891. The church expanded through Eurocentric theology taught to the locals. As the mission continued to grow the indigenes became part of the Methodist ethos and theology through the contextualisation of the gospel, the localisation of worship, and the indigenisation of leadership, however, the church did not have a visible identity. When the church finally designed its logo in 1987, there was no deliberate effort to explain the meaning and significance of the insignia to its congregants. Coupled with this lack of knowledge, the logo later became the church's trademark through kitchen utensils with the logo, clothing material, designed in different fashions of women, men, and youth regalia, billboards, and branding of different items and properties. This paper aimed to contribute to Methodist theology and scholarship by providing literature that explains the meaning and significance of the Methodist logo which is represented by a circle, the map of Zimbabwe, the cross, a scallop shell, and a dove. The paper started by presenting the methodology used to gather data. This was followed by a historical development of the logo. The paper also analysed the significance of the logo as a fundraising tool, a form of identity and a quasi-uniform in the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe. In this paper, we argued that the Methodist logo represents the indelible theological insignia that directs its congregants to a deep theology of a church located within the global Wesleyan Methodist and in particular the "connexionality" of Zimbabwe. The paper concluded by forwarding that, logo(s) remain central to the identity of any organisation and members of each organisation need to have an appreciation of their identity and the meaning of their emblems if the organisation has to be theologically impactful to its congregants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a new perspective on the Straits Chinese public intellectual Lim Boon Keng (1869–1957) in historical context. Rather than analyze Lim's relative Chineseness, it explores the development of his argument that a new civil religion was necessary for citizenship in the post-Enlightenment world before the rise of reform and revolution in China. It introduces the positions and the rhetoric of key protagonists in local debates in Singapore over governance, education, and religion, and analyzes the influence of global developments such as the expansion of Methodist mission schools, the American Student Volunteer Movement, James Legge's translations of Confucian classics, and the first World's Parliament of Religions in 1893. I argue that Lim, who wrote as "Isaiah" in 1896 to oppose proselytizing in publicly supported schools while courting his Chinese Christian bride, may be understood as engaging the world as a modern world citizen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerson Bainbridge was an important entrepreneur, philanthropist and (briefly) Liberal M.P. whose influence has been overlooked and under-estimated by historians. His wide-ranging industrial success, particularly in coal mining, and his growing personal wealth enabled him to play an important role in the North Midlands region particularly from 1890. His familial roots in Methodism and Temperance and his adherence to the main tenets of political nonconformity and Liberalism were the foundations of his 'world view'. This was to prove of critical importance in the design, development and ethos of the 'model villages' his company founded in the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire coalfield. The impact and influence of this 'enlightened paternalism' long outlasted him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the significance of John Wesley's experience on 24 May 1738 when his heart was "strangely warmed". It argues against attempts to dilute the evangelical significance of this experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the rearguard action fought by the clergyman and writer Richard Polwhele against what he saw as the threat of Anglican Evangelicalism and Methodism in Cornwall during the French Revolutionary period, highlighting the connections between religious experience, rhetorical performance and politics. Whether it be through his theorizing of pulpit oratory, his rows with those he considered Enthusiasts or his understanding of ordination oaths, Polwhele maintained that religious belief should be regulated by rhetorical distance. Explaining this stance, the article shows how Polwhele's theological and ecclesiological opposition to the Enthusiasm he regarded as dangerously inherent in Evangelical Protestantism also led him to address shortcomings within the governance of the Church of England itself. This danger was embodied in Polwhele's eyes by the failure of too much pulpit oratory, particularly in the provinces, to engage through its language, content and tone with its popular audience. By focusing on the neglected figure of Polwhele, the article brings together and adds to current work on regional identity, Loyalism, Romantic religion and the sermon as a performative literary form in the eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

„Gesundheit zu finden, sollte das Ziel des Arztes sein. Jeder kann Krankheit finden", so fordert Still 1899 in Philosophy of Osteopathy [ 1 ] seine Nachfolger*innen auf, die Gesundheit, wie er sie verstand, zu finden. Das Ziel der Studie war es, den Gesundheitsbegriff bei Andrew Taylor Still auf seinen historischen Hintergrund und seiner Bedeutung hin, zu untersuchen. Da Sprache und Begriffsdefinitionen in der Osteopathie ein bekanntes Problem sind, könnte der methodische Ansatz dieser Studie auch auf weitere Begriffe angewandt werden, um im Sinne der Wissenschaft eine einheitliche Sprache in der Osteopathie zu etablieren. „To find health should be the object of the doctor. Anyone can find disease." Still challenged his followers in 1899 in Philosophy of Osteopathy [ 1 ] to find health as he understood it. The aim of the study was to examine the historical background and meaning of Andrew Taylor Still's concept of health. Since language and definitions of terms are a well-known problem in osteopathy, the methodological approach of this study could also be applied to other terms in order to establish a common language in osteopathy in the sense of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a general context of latent francophobia and anti-Catholicism, what memorial role did the British eighteenth-century leisure press play in relation to the Saint Bartholomew Day massacre? After an overview of the magazines which represented the 1572 Paris Massacre, this study aims to assess the originality of the descriptions of the massacre by placing them in a historiographical perspective. It also purports to scrutinize the reasons which lay behind the interest in the massacre. It thus uncovers the changing nature of the instrumentalisation of the event. It highlights that beyond persisting anti-Catholicism and francophobia, representations of the massacre in the British press reflect the secularization of the British society as well as its politicisation and commercialisation.

'[T]rue Christianity cannot exist without both the inward experience and outward practice of justice, mercy, and truth,' writes John Wesley, the eighteenth-century founder of Methodism. For him, belief and behavior, motivation and praxis, collapse dialectically into one. The Kyoto-formed dialogist Masao Abe identifies one strength and one weakness each in the poles of Western and Zen thought. For him, the West understands the importance of ethical behavior but cannot understand the oneness of all things. Conversely, Zen Buddhism is deficient in its conception of ethics but more actualized in understanding the interdependence of all things (pratityasamutpada). While his Western interlocutors include a disproportionate number of heirs to the Wesleyan tradition, Abe himself never deals directly with Wesley. This is presumably because of the latter's European Modernist philosophical and theological commitments. Still, putting these diverse worldviews in creative dialogue with each other might do more to resolve Abe's twofold tension than does his conversation with more 'likely' interlocutors. If Abe is correct that 'the practical problem par excellence' in Buddhism is integrating the 'oneness of practice and enlightenment and that the West tends to bifurcate existence to its own detriment,' Wesley can be invited into the conversation to stand in the gap between these challenges. For the Methodist patriarch, understanding and ethics are two sides of one coin in his emphases on 'practical divinity' and 'social holiness.' KEYWORDS: John Wesley, Masao Abe, ethics, social justice, Zen, Methodism, comparative studies, interreligious dialogue, dualism, AN UNLIKELY CONVERSATION: THE DIALOGUE PARTNERS Raised in Epworth, Lincolnshire, John Wesley (1703-1791) was born into a world of religious polemics. Both of his grandfathers, as well as his paternal [...]

This paper explores the potential of the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex for studying the history of Methodism in Bolton (aka 'Worktown') during the middle third of the twentieth century, with particular reference to the years 1937–40 and 1960, demonstrating its value for recording the lived experience of Methodism. An appendix contains three key documents, two of them relating to the work of the Victoria Hall in the Bolton Mission circuit, which was much lauded by Mass Observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the history of Methodism in France since its introduction in the 1780s. It was always a minority into the larger Protestant minority, probably hampered by its being intrinsically linked to British Methodism. In 1938, French Methodism merged into the Presbyterian Église réformée de France, leaving only a few communities which are today members of the U.S.-based UMC. This article will first present the birth and implantation of Methodism in France, then its consolidation and salient features before concluding on the enduring, albeit silent, influence of Methodism in French Protestantism since 1939. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining primary and secondary sources, the author describes spiritual friendships among women as a characteristic of the Methodist movement in North America from the late eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries, suggesting that these bonds played a determinative role in the movement's growth. The article demonstrates how distinguishing features of early American Methodism, including its social occasions (such as class, band, and society meetings, love feasts, events with guest preachers, and gatherings segregated by sex), spirituality of sanctification, and proactive social concern, were predominantly constituted by women's participation and grew from invitations by and for women. These features likewise facilitated the development of women's leadership as organizers within the movement, of which they have been and still are the predominant gender. The author contrasts the influential role of women in friendship as a determinative factor in the movement's growth with the more familiar veneration of its prominent male itinerant preachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Martin Luther and John Wesley stand as towering reformers and transformers whose influence still defines ecclesiastical theology in the twenty-first century. Luther and Wesley survived 200 years apart in two different countries, and circumstances, and yet their responses to the challenges of their milieus present the lived legacies of Lutheranism and Methodism respectively. Factors contributing to the shaping of their backgrounds and theology force one to argue that: "without Luther's theology, the development of Methodism was a chance". The purpose of this paper was to reread the convergencies in the backgrounds and theology of Luther and Wesley and analyse how their life settings and writings influenced the twenty-firstcentury church. The paper reminds the twenty-first-century church that much as Luther and Wesley's biographies were influenced by the role of their parents, their conversion through nature, the impact of university life, unplanned marriages, and the fight against orthodoxy. Unfortunately, similar converging life experiences have not been taken seriously to "saltify" the rotting world as individualism and self-gain characterise the modern church. The paper also argues that Apostle Paul's theology of justification by faith, sola fide, sola scriptura, and sola gratia is central to both Luther and Wesley, and they are the anchors of the twenty-firstcentury church. This paper does not aim to bring superiority and inferiority intricacies between Luther and Wesley but to use Luther as the role model of Wesley with the two being the beacons of the twenty-first-century ecclesia and ecclesiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies Samuel Foote’s comedy The Minor, created in 1760, and the controversy it provoked. As Foote’s play satirizes George Whitefield and his preaching, its legality was debated. The use of scriptural quotations by ridiculous characters was criticized as Methodists argued that religion itself was being ridiculed. Foote, however, constantly defended his right to lampoon hypocrites, and his play was a real success. Moreover, a new fashion for Anti-Methodist publications originated in the scandal surrounding The Minor, thus undermining the attempts to censor the play.

Within Protestant theology, Arminianism is a theological perception based on the views of Jacob Arminius (1559-1609), who lived in the Netherlands in the 16th century, and it opposes Calvinism’s theological propositions on fate, grace, human will, the atonement of Jesus, and the perseverance of believers. Arminianism, which started to find a place in England with the influence of Remonstrants, later moved to America with intense migrations. In America especially John Wesley and Methodists played an important role in the spread of Arminianism. Many Protestant denominations in America prefer the belief in destiny based on the emphasis of Arminianism on universal atonement and the will of man in salvation rather than the principles of Calvinism. In this article, firstly, the life of Arminius will be presented, and then his objections to Calvin’s Reformed theology will be discussed. Later, the spread of Arminianism in America will be mentioned. At this point, John Wesley’s Arminianism will be discussed. Then the Protestant communities that are closer to the Arminian approach rather than Calvinism will be mentioned. By this study, Arminian Protestant theology in America will be explained although this theology is not completely based on the arguments of classical Arminianism. Thus, the origin and course of the theological debates between Calvinism and Arminianism that have continued until today in America will be revealed.

This article draws on food studies, religious history, and research on Equiano's religious orientation to argue that Equiano's Interesting Narrative describes a creolized African and Methodist asceticism in relation to food and ritual practice. His introduction to the Moravian-Methodist love feast before his conversion resonates with his earlier textual recollections of commensality and feasting practices in his eastern Nigerian homeland. Equiano's early textual descriptions of feasting rituals suggest that he was attracted to Methodism because of his experiences through the Middle Passage and his memories of feasting practices, purification rites, and sacrifices and offerings from his childhood in Igboland. Equiano's experiences of sacrifice and his portrayals of hunger and hunger strikes as a form of resistance on the slave ships mark his choice of religious and ascetic orientation. His reclamation of the ocean as a free Black sailor, an Atlantic Creole, contributes to his interest to a temperate Methodist orientation and inner-worldly asceticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the religious contents of Elizabeth Gaskell's 1854–1855 novel, North and South , within the context of Apocalyptic literary traditions from Antiquity, and in the literary and historical contexts accessible to Victorians. Inviting this comparison is the character Bessy Higgins, a terminally ill factory seamstress who quotes the Book of Revelation and reports prophetic dreams of some actual merit. By placing this anachronistically apocalyptic voice amid the working poor of her industrial urban setting, Gaskell effects a return to the original political function of the Apocalyptic genre: the vindication of a disenfranchised underclass. Drawing upon examples from Christian and pre-Christian Antiquity, this essay establishes the generic features of Apocalyptic literature as they pertain to its political function, and identifies key points at which Gaskell's text aligns with them. Though Gaskell does not replicate the genre's form in full, North and South being a novel rather than a dream-vision, she nonetheless uses the character Bessy to incorporate apocalyptic concepts, images, arguments, and rhetoric into her otherwise realistic narrative of nineteenth-century class struggle. The result, coded in layers of Biblical reference, is an indictment of the capitalist class, comparing them to the sinners who temporarily inherit the Earth in the Apocalypse of John, after the righteous have been purged from it. The final part of this essay further contextualizes Bessy Higgins within the Methodist traditions contemporary to North and South , and within Gaskell's intersecting religious and political views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This essay examines the The Troublers of Israel in the context of Methodism's uneasy, and seemingly contradictory, relationship with the theatre and argues that its anonymous author purposefully adapted the operatic form to achieve his rhetorical, and religious, aims. Even though this tactic has confused bibliographers who have miscategorized the piece as an anti‐Methodist work since the nineteenth century, the operatic form, like George Whitefield's preaching, effectively demonstrates how the Methodists coopted and redeployed the dramatic arts as a means of conveying their religious message while reframing and refuting anti‐Methodist arguments. The Troublers provides further evidence, in addition to Whitefield's preaching, that the Methodists recognized the power of the dramatic arts to influence belief and behaviour at the same time they condemned more mainstream forms of plays and playgoing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The statement "one undivided church" has always been at the centre of theology since New Testament times. Jesus in his greatest prayer in (John 17) appealed to God that his followers may be one, as he and God are one. For Jesus, oneness was proof that he was sent by God. In the history of Methodism, John Wesley, as late as a month before he died in 1791, wrote to Ezekiel Cooper in Philadelphia saying, "lose no opportunity of declaring to all people that the Methodists are one in all the world and that it is their full determination so to continue" (Wesley, 1997:260). Furthermore, the oneness theme was underscored by the World Methodist Council as their theme and logo for the 2016 Conference. The theme was used both to reflect the Council's goal of being a body that unites the eighty member-churches and also to recall John Wesley's quote. In 1958, the Methodist Church of Southern African (MCSA) Conference, added "and" to the statement and proposed the statement that the MCSA is a "one and undivided church". Using the examples of Jesus, John Wesley and the World Methodist Council, this paper interrogates the MCSA's 1958 statement to find out to what extent the MCSA is in fact one and undivided. The paper will conclude by proposing a novel theological approach that MCSA can consider, for it to be one truly undivided church. The article uses desktop methodology and reviewed credible and relevant academic literature available on the topic under study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Oksident is the property of Oksident and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Ever since its conversion to Christianity between the 5th and 7th centuries, Wales has developed a remarkably strong and lasting interest in the Faith, which was almost unique in Western Europe. It only began to weaken in the aftermath of WWI, and resisted rather well until the early 1980s. Yet the demise that has followed since then is very strong, even in the European context of a marked decline of churches. The aim of this paper is to try and understand these two strong successive specificities of Wales.

This article considers one of the most significant events in African–American history – the Charleston slave Conspiracy of 1822. The author focuses on the causes and prerequisites of this phenomenon, which are divided into 5 groups (political, socio-cultural, socio-economic, demographic and personal motives). Subjecting each of them to a critical analysis, he comes to the conclusion that it is impossible to attribute the Denmark Vesey conspiracy to typical slave uprisings. The source base of the research is the materials of the trial, testimonies and newspaper publications of that time.

Reading is acknowledged to have been a key means of transmission and reinforcement of the Methodist message in Britain, yet the role played by libraries in the history of the movement has been comparatively neglected, certainly in the aggregate. This article offers a preliminary collective overview of non-institutional private libraries and collections of Wesleyana formed by individual British Methodists, from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, and seeks to ascertain what became of them over subsequent years. Information is assembled about ninety-five collectors, a combination of ministers and laity, who mostly achieved some prominence in British Methodism. Although the need for further research into the topic is recognised, it has already been possible to detect several trends, not least the historically relatively weak appetite of what is now the Methodist Church of Great Britain for the acquisition and preservation of its library and documentary heritage, a reticence which has contributed to the loss of a significant portion of it overseas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Willis Hoover was one of the prominent founders of Chilean Pentecostalism at the beginning of the 20th century in Chile, and his influence was felt in the education of pastors and believers. From the beginning, the movement took root in the poor sectors of society. Although the latter is quite well known, there is a lack of analysis of Pastor Hoover's own ideas in general and on social issues in particular, as well as the influence he received in this regard from Methodism, his tradition of origin. In view of this, the present essay outlines general characteristics of his social thought based on his writings, and its continuities and discontinuities with Methodism from the perspective of political theology in a Pentecostal key in order to shed light on the character that Hoover sought to imprint on the nascent Pentecostal movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of French Journal of British Studies / Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique is the property of Centre de Recherches et d'Etudes en Civilisation Britannique and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)