William Taylor And The Mapping Of The Methodist Missionary Tradition

This book is the first critical biography of William Taylor, a nineteenth-century American missionary who worked on six continents. Following Taylor’s global odyssey, the volume maps the contours of the Methodist missionary tradition and illumines key historical foundations of contemporary world Christianity. A work of social history that places a leading Methodist missionary in the foreground, this narrative illustrates distinctive aspects and tensions within Methodist missions such as the importance of doctrines like universal atonement and entire sanctification, a deeply pragmatic orientation rooted in God’s providence, an embrace of both entrepreneurial initiatives and networked connection, and the use of revivalism for missionary outreach and leadership development. A Virginia native, Taylor became a Methodist preacher and missionary in California. This volume provides an important narrative account of Taylor’s career as an itinerant revivalist and popular author, in which he toured the eastern United States, the British Isles, and Australasia. Taylor’s participation in the South African revival made him an evangelical celebrity. The author also follows Taylor’s important visits to India and South America, where he initiated new Methodist missions in those contexts and pioneered the concept of “tentmaking” missions. In 1884, Taylor was elected missionary bishop of Africa by his church. By the end of his life, Taylor had recruited or inspired hundreds of Methodists to become foreign missionaries.

The Routledge Companion to John Wesley provides an overview of the work and ideas of one of the principal founders of Methodism, John Wesley (1703-91). Wesley remains highly influential, especially within the worldwide Methodist movement of some eighty million people. As a preacher and religious reformer his efforts led to the rise of a global Protestant movement, but the wide-ranging topics addressed in his writings also suggest a mind steeped in the intellectual developments of the North Atlantic, early modern world. His numerous publications cover not only theology but ethics, history, aesthetics, politics, human rights, health and wellbeing, cosmology and ecology. This volume places Wesley within his eighteenth-century context, analyzes his contribution to thought across his multiple interests, and assesses his continuing relevance today. It contains essays by an international team of scholars, drawn from within the Methodist tradition and beyond. This is a valuable reference particularly for scholars of Methodist Studies, theology, church history and religious history.

What can movements for decolonization teach Wesleyan theology? This book faces this question to show that decolonial voices are reshaping the contours of Methodist and Wesleyan traditions. Contributors to this volume include theologians, pastors, and leaders in the Global South who are leading the people called Methodists to encounter the tradition anew in the radical spirit of decolonization.

In this book, William Taylor tells in his own words the story of a foundational episode in his life. Following his trial ministry as a Methodist circuit rider in his home state of Virginia and his service of pastorates in the historic North Baltimore Conference, William Taylor (1821-1902) was commissioned as a missionary to California at the beginning of the Gold Rush Era. His subsequent "seven years of street preaching in San Francisco" set the stage for a half-century missionary career during which Taylor championed self-supporting missions to every populated continent, funded by the publication of his widely-read books. Despite his prolific writing, none of Taylor's publications reveal the personal dimensions of his struggles or the day-by-day development of his missionary perspective. This early chapter in Taylor's career emerges for the first time with the publication of his journal, privately held by family members for over a century. The substantial journal chronicles five of Taylor's seven enterprising years (1849-1856) in San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, and the surrounding area, while offering a rich, first-person account of contemporary events written in Taylor's fine, narrative style. With this journal, readers may trace the genesis of Taylor's approach to self-supporting missions, including the development of his thinking on fund raising and his skepticism toward the possibility of a Christian use of money. A scholarly introduction, footnotes, and appendixes, together with several images, set Taylor's California experiences in historical context, while clarifying and explaining the journal's rhetoric, holiness doctrine, missionary strategies, and oblique references.

Pentecostal mission to Scandinavia came through "eyewitnesses" to the Azusa Street revival including Johnson-Ek and the Hollingsworths. Particularly important for Pentecostal mission was T. B. Barratt. He became Pentecostal after conflict with the Methodist (U.S.A.) Mission Board over mission theory and practice. His congregation in Kristiania became an international model. Other mission leaders included Andersen-Nordquelle, and Seehuus (Norway), Björk, Ongman. and Pethrus (Sweden), and Plum (Denmark). Each was already an established religious leader and editor of a periodical. Growth of Pentecostal mission and demands of Colonial governments caused institutionalization of mission administration (1915--1929). Trajectories in Norway and Sweden were toward professional "Boards," away from the earlier entrepreneurial, self-governing, self-theologizing, self-supporting and self--propagating mission models. Following Barratt's disillusionment with institutionalized U.S.A.

Excerpt from History of the William Taylor: Self-Supporting Missions in South America William taylor has never received the full measure of recognition that was his due. That wonder-working man, whose evangelistic tours left literally trails of fire in Australia, in South Africa, and in India, undertook also to carry the gospel to South America. Leaving New York with but little money and no knowledge of the Spanish language, he achieved the amazing record of traversing the Isthmus of Panama, and then, sailing down the west coast, he left behind him a series of schools wholly self-supporting. These schools, through varied experiences, have since come to be the centers of evangelistic influences and are to-day the strategic points of Methodist work all along the west coast of South America. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.