Books by Russell E. Richey

With Protestantism now experiencing a decline in growth and expansion, many people are concerned about the future of denominations. Church budgets are being slashed, and dissident groups are increasing in number on the denominational fringe. To provide a better understanding of and respect for the potentials and limitations of denominations, Dr. Richey presents the varying perspectives of acknowledged authorities to explain first of all what denominationalism, a basic form of the American church, is. How did denominationalism begin, what is its essence, and what is the denominational pattern of the Christian church? Ten articles explore these questions from different viewpoints and give alternative explanations. Dr. Richey provides an introduction to each of the articles, calling attention to its particular contributions and divergences from other interpretations while raising important critical questions.The question What is the future of denominations? cannot be answered without a more explicit understanding of the phenomenon of denominationalism. The articles presented here, together with their introductions, represent Russell Richey's attempt to penetrate both the vagueness that surrounds denominationalism and the causes of the current malaise afflicting individual denominations.Russell E. Richey is William R. Cannon Distinguished Professor of Church History at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia.

These 32 essays (over 500 print pages) accent United Methodism in the United States and the traditions contributory to it. They provide new perspectives and fresh readings on important Methodist topics, including how Methodism appealed to the common folk and how it configured itself as a folk movement. Similar findings derive from the number of essays that explore gender and family. Here also are new readings on spirituality, worship, the diaconate, stewardship, organization, ecumenism, reform, and ordination (male/female; black/white). Less conventional subjects include the relation of Methodism to the American party system and Methodist accumulation of wealth and the wealthy.

Offers a fresh way to look at the ministry of The United Methodist Church

This Sourcebook, part of a two-volume set, The Methodist Experience in America, contains documents from between 1760 and 1998 pertaining to the movements constitutive of American United Methodism.

A comprehensive one-volume history of American Methodism

In the Methodist lexicon, 'conference' refers to a body of preachers (and later, of laity as well) that exercises legislative, judicial and (to some extent) executive functions for the church or some portion thereof. But 'conference, ' Richey argues here, defined the Methodist movement in more than political ways: On conference hinged religious time, religious space, religious belonging, religious structure, even religiosity itself. Methodist histories uniformly recognize, typically even feature, conference's centrality, but describe that in primarily constitutional and political terms. The purpose of this volume is to present conference as a distinctively American Methodist manner of being the church, a multifaceted mode of spirituality, unity, mission, governance, and fraternity that American Methodists have lived and operated better than they have interpreted.