Beulah Or Two And One Half Years Of Consecrated Life

Recipient of the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History for 2007 Faith in the Great Physician tells the story of how participants in the evangelical divine healing movement of the late nineteenth century transformed the ways Americans coped with physical affliction and pursued bodily health. Examining the politics of sickness, health, and healing during this period, Heather D. Curtis encourages critical reflection on the theological, cultural, and social forces that come into play when one questions the purpose of suffering and the possibility of healing. Curtis finds that advocates of divine healing worked to revise a deep-seated Christian ethic that linked physical suffering with spiritual holiness. By engaging in devotional disciplines and participating in social reform efforts, proponents of faith cure embraced a model of spiritual experience that endorsed active service, rather than passive endurance, as the proper Christian response to illness and pain. Emphasizing the centrality of religious practices to the enterprise of divine healing, Curtis sheds light on the relationship among Christian faith, medical science, and the changing meanings of suffering and healing in American culture.

"The term 'Methodist' is used in its broadest sense to include the Evangelical United Brethren family, Black Methodist, other U.S. Methodist bodies..."--Intro.

The Wesleyan Holiness Movement began out of the teachings of John Wesley, who held that Christ's atonement provided sufficient grace for the believer to live in this world continually loving God and neighbor unconditionally, although the believer's expressions of that love would not be perfect. Since its founding, different movements have been spawned and have interpreted Wesley's doctrine in their own way. The two volumes presented here represent the first installation of a three-part series that greatly expands upon Charles Jones's landmark 1974 work. This work focuses on the Wesleyan Holiness Movement, while the third and fourth volumes have the Keswick Movement and the Holiness Pentecostal Movement as their focal points. This series provides materials for study of doctrine, worship, institutional development and personalities, as well as antecedent and related movements. It will serve to illustrate the history both of the Holiness Movement and the rural-urban transition in which it developed. Theological reconsiderations, realignments, and changes, as well as the nearly exponential growth of the Movement since the book's publication, make these new publications almost absolutely necessary. The guides retain all of the good and strong qualities exhibited in the first edition, and have strengthened them.