John Wesley in America: Restoring Primitive Christianity

ISBN-13: 9780198757306 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 256 str.

Geordan Hammond

Opis

Why did John Wesley leave the halls of academia at Oxford to become a Church of England missionary in the newly established colony of Georgia? Was his ministry in America a success or failure? These questions--which have engaged numerous biographers of Wesley--have often been approached from the vantage point of later developments in Methodism. Geordan Hammond presents the first book-length study of Wesley's experience in America, providing an innovative contribution to debates about the significance of a formative period of Wesley's life.
John Wesley in America addresses Wesley's Georgia mission in fresh perspective by interpreting it in its immediate context. In order to re-evaluate this period of Wesley's life, Hammond carefully considers Wesley's writings and those of his contemporaries. A laboratory for implementing his views of primitive Christianity, the mission served to restore the doctrine, discipline, and practice of the early church in the pristine Georgia wilderness. Understanding the centrality of primitive Christianity to Wesley's thinking and pastoral methods is essential to comprehending his experience in America. Wesley's conception of primitive Christianity was rooted in his embrace of patristic scholarship at Oxford. The most direct influence, however, was the High Church ecclesiology of the Usager Nonjurors who inspired him with their commitment to the restoration of the primitive church.

Recenzje

Geordan Hammond's valuable and deeply researched study of the Georgia mission of 1735-7 offers a fresh assessment of John Wesley's effort at 'saving [his] own soul' by planting primitive Christianity anew in virgin territory ... this is a welcome and refreshed account of 'Wesley in America', and I am sure it will be widely read.

O autorze

Geordan Hammond is Director of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre and Senior Lecturer in Church History and Wesley Studies at Nazarene Theological College (Manchester, UK). He is co-editor of Wesley and Methodist Studies, is a Fellow of The University of Manchester and Australasian Centre for Wesleyan Research, and is a Member of the Royal Historical Society. Currently he serves on the committees of the Charles Wesley Society and Ecclesiastical History Society. His teaching and research is in church history and historical theology with a particular focus on Methodism and the Church of England in the eighteenth century.