Methodist Unification

Morris L. Davis is Assistant Professor, History of Christianity and Wesleyan/Methodist Studies, Drew Theological School.

• Acknowledgments Introduction * Birth of a Nation, Birth of a Church * The Baltimore Meeting: Saints, Cemeteries, and Savages * Race Consciousness * The Savannah Meeting: "The Bogey of Social Equality" * The Final Three Meetings: The Problem of Missions and the Urgency of Patriots Epilogue Appendix: List of Delegates to the Joint Commission with Biographical Notes Notes Selected Bibliography Index About the Author

A discerning, sober, and troubling probing of the preoccupation within the Methodist Church with Christian nationalism, civilization as defined by white Anglo-Saxon manhood, and race, race consciousness and & the problem of the Negro that was foundational to and constitutive of a reunited Methodism. A must read for students of early 20th century America. - Russell E. Richey,Emory University Draws upon previously neglected primary sources to offer a ground-breaking analysis of the intertwined political, racial, and religious dynamics at work in the institutional merging of three American Methodist denominations in 1939. Davis boldly examines the conflicted ethics behind a dominant American religious cultures justification and preservation of racial segregation in the reformulation of its post-slavery institutional presence in American society. His work provides a much-needed, critical discussion of the racial issues that pervaded American religion and culture in the early twentieth century. - Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards,Academic Dean and Associate Professor of History and Theology, United Theological Seminary, Dayton Ohio The Methodist Unification underscores the immense power that race has held in American, and Methodist, consciousness, and its ability to shape the politics of both church and state. (Church History) "Morris L. Davis has made a major contribution to the literature in this examination of the denominational cultures that resulted in the racial segregation of the Central Jurisdiction of the Methodist Episcopal Church. (Choice)