ABSTRACT This article examines Phoebe Palmer’s theology of holiness in relation to contemporary feminist discussion of kenosis. Feminist objections to kenosis concern its implications in light of power inequalities, but kenotic Christology is a distinctive of Christian feminism. Palmer’s approach to entire sanctification is key to understanding her proto-feminist voice. Through consideration of her formative American Methodist context, associated expectations, and personal experience, it is here argued that Palmer’s theology exemplifies a participatory understanding of kenosis in which identity is not lost but rather secured through surrender to God. This holiness theology became the basis of her authority and women’s advocacy and thus contributes insights that can inform contemporary Christian feminist discussion.

Methodists have always loved statistics. In the final and longest chapter of this impressive volume, ‘A Quantitative Assessment of the Global Expansion of Wesley’s Methodism’, David Jeremy notes that ‘the legacy of John Wesley’s mind has been sliced and diced into 104 denominations’ (522); in an earlier chapter, Isabel Rivers records the ‘astonishing range’ of Wesley’s publications, running to some 1,570 items in the English Short Title Catalogue (53). It comes as no surprise, then, that a book setting out to explore Wesley’s ideas and to analyse and assess the ‘Wesleyan mind’ (1) should comprise no fewer than forty chapters and exceed 500 pages in length. This is in itself a considerable achievement, especially given the challenge of producing such a work during the COVID-19 pandemic (ix). The editors are to be congratulated both on assembling a very distinguished team of scholars and on ensuring a high degree of consistency in the delivery of the chapters: nearly all sustain a uniform length of ten to twelve pages, with two or three suggestions for further reading; the chapter bibliographies, not unexpectedly, vary from a handful of titles to fifty or more.After the editors’ introduction, the book is organized into seven parts. Part I establishes John Wesley’s historical context, with chapters on Britain, the Atlantic World, and Wesley’s education and early spiritual formation. Part II examines Wesley’s ‘major works’, beginning with his ‘publishing strategy’ and then looking at his journals, sermons, Christian Library, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, the 1780 Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists, Primitive Physic, the 1763 Compendium of Natural Philosophy, Wesley’s 1784 revision of the Book of Common Prayer, and the 1742, 1761, and 1780 collections of tunes. The editors explain that this part covers ‘some of Wesley’s major works’ (3): this reviewer wondered whether ‘major’ had been determined by length, by significance as an indicator of Wesley’s thinking, or by contemporary or subsequent impact, and why doctrinal treatises like Original Sin (1757) and A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1766) had not made the cut. That said, every chapter in this section richly deserves its place.Part III of the volume is subdivided into three. Part IIIA considers the principles of Wesley’s thinking: theology; metaphysics; epistemology; psychology and psychotherapy; ethics; and social and political thought. Part IIIB turns to ‘humankind and society’: race, enslavement, and othering; gender, sexuality, and marriage; education and children; money and business; war; poetry and aesthetics; food, drink, and dress; and engagements with non-British cultures. Part IIIC moves on to ‘humankind and the world’: providence and history; the natural and supernatural worlds; science and technology; and animal welfare.With parts IV and V, the focus moves from ‘discerning the Wesleyan mind’ to questions of reception and legacy. Part IV looks first at Britain and Ireland and then at America (‘America’ here meaning the United States) up to c. 1820, and then follows a chapter on Wesley portraiture, focusing on the sixty years after Wesley’s death. In part V four chapters sketch ‘Wesley’s longer-term legacy’ in the Atlantic World; Africa; Australasia, Asia, and Oceania; and Latin America and the Caribbean, before Professor Jeremy concludes the volume with the ‘quantitative assessment’ of Methodist statistics mentioned above. The authors in part V had perhaps the most difficult brief in trying to summarize the impact of Wesley and Methodism on a continent (or several continents) over a couple of centuries. A case might perhaps have been made for staying with the exploration of Wesley’s mind and his intellectual legacy and not trying to cover the diffusion of the Methodist movement across the centuries and the continents as well. This endeavour, as well as necessitating great skill in synthesis and summary, also raises the question of the relationship between John Wesley’s mind and the ‘Wesleyan’ mind, and whether twentieth- and twenty-first-century world Methodism has created Wesley in its own image, just as Victorian Methodists reshaped Wesley’s portrait to match the denominational foundation myth (437).The sheer breadth of coverage and the consequent need for concise treatment mean that scope for original research in this volume is limited, although many of the authors reference their own articles and monographs that explore chapter themes in greater depth. The particular strengths of this collection are the summaries of key themes in John Wesley’s thought, the cross-referencing between chapters, and the detailed bibliographies. By bringing so many expert studies together in one place, Dr Norris and Dr Cunningham have provided an invaluable resource for students and scholars of John Wesley and the Methodist movement. Their achievement is deserving of the highest praise.

ABSTRACT The Methodist Student Movement (MSM) emerged just before the 1939 denominational inauguration and catalyzed engaged youth within the Methodist Church. Facilitated through national to local leadership, it aimed at educating and empowering young adults via Wesley Foundations, National Conferences, and civic involvement. Its work turned contentious as youth pressed for quicker desegregation in defiance of the Church’s sluggish stance. This conflict highlighted a divergence in theological adherence regarding equality, leading to the gradual dissolution of MSM tools and youth participation. The denomination’s reluctance to address segregation aligned with its theological discipline clashed with the urgency felt by MSM members. The General Conference’s slow response led to the disappearance of organizational support and youth involvement, underscoring the clash between tradition and the evolving social conscience.

The MWRC supports the research of scholars studying the Methodist, Wesleyan, and Evangelical traditions, particularly from MWRC partner institutions. Each year visiting research fellows are welcomed for short periods of intensive research in Manchester. The MWRC helps facilitate access to the world-renowned Methodist Archives and Research Centre at The John Rylands Research Institute and Library in Manchester. It also has its own specialist library with research space for visiting research fellows and PhD students studying at MWRC partner institutions. The Centre hosts student-led research colloquiums, an annual lecture by a leading scholar in Methodist/Wesleyan Studies, and occasional international conferences. It is also involved in the publication of the book series Studies in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements. For more information about the Centre and upcoming events, go to: www.mwrc.ac.uk or contact the Centre’s Director, Dr Geordan Hammond: ghammond@nazarene.ac.uk.The Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History is a research centre of Oxford Brookes University, which embodies the relationship between the university and the trustees of the former Westminster College, Oxford. The Centre is home to important resources, including the Wesley Historical Society Library and a number of archive and art collections. The Routledge Methodist Studies series of monograph research publications is also edited from the Centre. The Centre offers a small number of visiting research fellowships each year to enable scholars to come to Oxford to use its resources. The Centre also has a number of research students working in the broad field of religious history and culture. It also sponsors lectures, conferences, and other research activity. For more information, go to: https://www.brookes.ac.uk/hpc/research/oxford-centre-for-methodism-and-church-history/ or contact the Centre’s Director, Professor William Gibson: wgibson@brookes.ac.uk.The Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, and the Manchester Wesley Research Centre have worked in partnership for a number of years. In 2012, the centres established a biannual seminar series that has now extended to include the Wesley Study Centre, St John’s College, Durham University; Wesley House, Cambridge; Cliff College; and The Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham. The seminars provide an opportunity for established and emerging scholars of Methodist Studies to present the findings of their research. We conceive of Methodist Studies broadly and aim to provide opportunities for students of history, theology, literature, art, material culture, and other fields related to Methodism. For further information, visit: www.mwrc.ac.uk/methodist-studies-seminars/.

ABSTRACT The rise of analytic theology can be a useful tool for bringing precision to theological systems of the past. Wesleyan theology stands to benefit from these trends. This article addresses the development of Wesley’s understanding of faith in the years 1725 and 1730—a formative intellectual time in his life—using analytical theology as a method applied to his correspondence with his mother Susanna and other texts. This article argues that while his theology of faith continued to develop into the later view of trust, the early influence of Fiddes and others (which shaped Wesley’s Aristotelian thinking about knowledge as simple apprehension, judgement, and discourse) would remain an important feature of his theological and epistemological thinking.

Conceived as a Festschrift to honour the work of Dana Robert, celebrated scholar of world Christianity and missiology at Boston University, Unlikely Friends makes a significant contribution in its own right to recalibrating mission studies through the lens of friendship. Taken together, the fifteen chapters of this volume develop a theme that found fullest expression in Robert’s latest monograph, Faithful Friendships, published in 2019 but which has implicitly guided much of her scholarship to date. Friendship, it turns out, is a vital hermeneutical key to unlocking the rich tapestry of encounters that make up the history of global mission. This volume, like Dana Robert’s own work, both sheds critical light on actual missionary practices otherwise obscured by official narratives and prompts readers to consider how those same practices of grass roots, boundary-crossing friendships might transform their own participation in the missio Dei.While the final section of the book provides an interesting glimpse into the person and work of Dana Robert, not least through testimonials from fifteen of her colleagues and students, it is the first three sections—‘The Power of Friendship’, ‘The Problems with Friendship’, and ‘The Practice of Friendship’—where the volume’s substantial argument is developed. In various ways, each author seeks to illustrate Robert’s thesis in Faithful Friendships, that friendships—especially friendships made by followers of Jesus across boundaries of culture and ethnicity—are both ordinary and revolutionary. They are ordinary in that such friendships inevitably occur wherever human life is lived unencumbered by the stranglehold of colonial and paternalistic tendencies; they are revolutionary in that such friendships are living embodiments of the healing and transforming arrival of the Kingdom of God.Each chapter explores the theme of friendship in relation to the author’s own missional experience or disciplinary expertise. The result is a diverse set of reflections, tracing the significance of friendships in missional work in every corner of the world, in cross-cultural urban settings, in interfaith relations, and among transnational deaf communities, to cite just some of the contexts considered. Despite the range of subject matter, the essays are consistently well written, and all evidence the careful interpretation of missional practice in context, which is the hallmark of Dana Robert’s own work.A few recurrent insights are noteworthy. First, the book repeatedly illustrates a dynamic understanding of global Christianity; as Mark Noll puts it in his chapter, influenced by Robert’s own work, Christianity is ‘a dynamic global system of mutual influences flowing back and forth across vast regions, immense periods of time, and cultures of great diversity’ (11). The variety of boundary-crossing friendships traced by the chapters underscores this important characterization. Second, boundary-crossing friendship is often closely associated with the sharing of food. This, of course, is hardly surprising, given the boundary-crossing meals shared by Jesus; but it is, nevertheless, borne out by stories of friendship from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Zimbabwe, and inner-city Boston. Third, focusing on friendship offers the possibility of unpicking narratives of colonialism, racism, and paternalism, and replacing them with authentic stories of empowerment. Importantly, none of the friendships described in this volume were merely instrumental or tokenistic. Friendships—especially boundary-crossing friendships—flourish only as they grow out of genuine spatial, relational, and spiritual ties. When such friendships grow, they inevitably challenge the systems and structures that seek to (dis)order reality otherwise.Appropriately, as a celebration of the work of Dana Robert, Unlikely Friends develops an outlook that is thoroughly Methodist and Wesleyan in flavour. The essays are grounded in reflection on the practice of mission, demonstrating a theological intuition about friendship that grows from observing the networked relationships of missional communities. Moreover, the authors collectively agree that boundary-crossing friendship is not only possible, but that it is enabled and, indeed, mandated by the gospel. Such an expansive approach to boundary-crossing mission is worthy of reflection on and embodiment by any scholar or practitioner in the Wesleyan tradition.Unlikely Friends is one of those rare volumes that successfully brings together a diverse set of essays into a coherent whole, both expanding the reader’s horizons with numerous new vistas, and inviting critical reflection on the reader’s own missional practice. As such, the book accomplishes its role as a Festschrift for Dana Robert, both illustrating her insights and thesis about friendship and mission in global Christianity, and inspiring others to prove that thesis by forging friendships that can become ‘a primary channel through which the transformational power of the gospel flows’ (139).

ABSTRACT This article explores why John Wesley was slow to condemn the East India Company for its brutal exploitation of the Indian subcontinent in the late eighteenth century. One reason may have been a hope that the Company would support Methodist missionaries; another his friendship with Ebenezer Blackwell, who was active in Company affairs. A letter sent to shareholders in the mid-1760s suggests that Wesley was supporting efforts to stabilize the Company and secure its long-term partnership with the government. These failed, and the Company entered a period when short-term profit-seeking dominated its decisions, causing Wesley to finally speak out.

ABSTRACT Despite portrayals of John Wesley and early Methodist leaders as proto-proponents of civil rights, their Arminian anti-slavery stance was hardly what scholars Ibram X. Kendi and Anthony G. Reddie term ‘anti-racist’. There remained in their writings evidence of empire that upheld racist constructs. What if, rather than decrying colonists’ desire for independence, Wesley had helped them see that fighting for enslaved persons’ freedom might assist their own efforts at liberation from tyranny? Confronting the persistence of racism even amid anti-slavery in Wesley and early Methodism aids in developing an alternative lens to empire that can help their descendants today.