Wesleyanism is a movement of hope. Wesleyans and their Holiness and Pentecostal offspring pray and work with the expectancy that the love and power of God will transform hearts and lives, renew the church, and bring compassion, healing, and justice to a suffering world. In a variety of ways, from holiness of heart and life to bodily healing to the abolition of slavery, they anticipated the life of the coming kingdom of heaven to already be breaking into the present through the power of the Holy Spirit. Anticipating Heaven Below explores their optimism of grace, examining its pitfalls as well as its promise. Henry H. Knight seeks to enable and inspire present generations within Wesleyan, Holiness, and Pentecostal movements to proclaim with confidence the promise of heaven below, and to do so with passion and integrity.

Since the 1830s, Holiness and Pentecostal movements have had a significant influence on many Christian churches, and they have been a central force in producing what is known today as World Christianity. This book demonstrates the advantages of analyzing them in relation to one another. The Salvation Army, the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church, and the Free Methodist Church identify strongly with the Holiness Movement. The Assemblies of God and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World identify just as strongly with the Pentecostal Movement. Complicating matters, denominations such as the Church of God (Cleveland), the International Holiness Pentecostal Church, and the Church of God in Christ have harmonized Holiness and Pentecostalism. This book, the first in the new series Studies in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements, examines these complex relationships in a multidisciplinary fashion. Building on previous scholarship, the contributors provide new ways of understanding the relationships, influences, and circulation of ideas among these movements in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Southeast and East Asia. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Kimberly Ervin Alexander, Insik Choi, Robert A. Danielson, Chris E. W. Green, Henry H. Knight III, Frank D. Macchia, Luther Oconer, Cheryl J. Sanders, and Daniel Woods.

Are we Methodists ready for the work of God to be unleashed? Are we ready for Methodism to be the catalyst of yet another New Pentecost? God has decisively acted in Christ, and Christ says, "Do this." Therefore, there is only one real answer, since "not ready" is not a valid response. For United Methodism to be revived, there can be no more such excuses. Christ showed us his presence and power through Constant Word and Sacrament praxis during the time of the Acts 2 church. Christ then again showed us his same divine presence and power through Constant Word and Sacrament praxis during the Methodist-Evangelical Revival. We have now been given two millennia to view this work of God. We Methodists were born of this work of God. How much more being made ready to unleash it do we require?

To read and visualize the transfiguration of Christ is to enter its mystery and encounter its hope. Like the Gospel writers and the disciples who climbed the mountain with Jesus, we struggle to tell the story and explain its meaning. Yet this astounding event reveals God's ultimate purpose in sending his Son--the complete restoration of humanity and all creation--our transfiguration in Christ. The light and glory of that moment reveal a destiny that is infinite and eternal, made possible by the power of grace. Transfiguration is the trajectory and goal of our spiritual journey. Across time and space, Christians have reflected on the mystery and hope epitomized in the transfiguration, yet their voices have been heard primarily within their own cultural and ecclesiastical contexts. This study gathers many of those voices from the panorama of Scripture and church history and finds in them the common theme of radical transformation in Christ. The point of this theological conversation is spiritual transfiguration and hope for each of us as we reach toward the future Christ has shown us in himself.

Twenty-first-century Protestantism is radically different from the Protestantism of the Reformation. The challenges of modernity affected all aspects of Christianity and the more successful attempts to combat these challenges came about as a result of two rather different yet similar theologians in the nineteenth century. This work provides an exhaustive look at Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of modern liberal Protestantism, and Phoebe Palmer, the mother of the Holiness movement. The trend of liberalism is to strip away all but what is essential to Christian life, while the Holiness movement sought to make all of life applicable to the Bible and God. While these two movements may appear contradictory, they are grounded in a shared source of experiential Protestantism, commonly known as Pietism, and develop their theological systems from this starting point. This study includes not only their theologies, but also biographies that introduce the reader to these two luminaries. Liberalism and holiness, as created by Schleiermacher and Palmer, lay the foundation for Pentecostalism, fundamentalism, neo-orthodoxy, and the interdenominational movements of the nineteenth century. Only from this vantage can we understand the modern Protestant mindset.

Preaching the Manifold Grace of God is a two-volume work describing theologies of preaching from the historical and contemporary periods. Volume 1 focuses on historical theological families: Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, Anglican/Episcopal, Wesleyan, Baptist, African American, Stone-Campbell, Friends, and Pentecostal. Volume 2 focuses on families that are evangelical, liberal, neo-orthodox, postliberal, existential, radical orthodox, deconstructionist, Black liberation, womanist, Latinx liberation, Mujerista, Asian American, Asian American feminist, LGBTQAI, Indigenous, postcolonial, and process. In each case, the author describes the circumstances in which the theological family emerged and describes the purposes and characteristics of preaching from that perspective.

This work is part of a growing chorus of theological voices raised in support of erotic desire. Although most theologians have concluded that there will be no experience of sexual desire and delight in the world to come, Patricia Beattie Jung critically examines the historical traditions and biblical rationales for this teaching. She defends an alternative claim that there will be a healed and glorified experience of sex in heaven based on a compelling account of the Christian hope for bodily resurrection. The first half of the work focuses on Christian foundations for the notion of sex in heaven, while the second goes on to discuss some of the implications of those convictions for sex on earth. Jung concludes with discussions of how best to nurture sexual delight on earth and how and why internet pornography fails in that regard.

Human flourishing is an ever-expanding concept that crosses geographic, ethnic, cultural, and religious lines as persons, both individually and corporately, seek to find happiness, fulfillment, and purpose. This book brings together well-established and burgeoning Wesleyan scholars to consider not only John and Charles Wesley’s understanding of human flourishing but the broader Wesleyan perspectives on contemporary issues such as calling, creation care, healthcare, education, technological enhancements, death and dying, and more. Throughout these chapters the complexities and challenges of life, both past and present, are explored and grappled with, and we are reminded over and again that God is the ultimate source of flourishing.

In The Supernatural and the Circuit Riders, Rimi Xhemajli shows how a small but passionate movement grew and shook the religious world through astonishing signs and wonders. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, early American Methodist preachers, known as circuit riders, were appointed to evangelize the American frontier by presenting an experiential gospel: one that featured extraordinary phenomena that originated from God's Spirit. In employing this evangelistic strategy of the gospel message fueled by supernatural displays, Methodism rapidly expanded. Despite beginning with only ten official circuit riders in the early 1770s, by the early 1830s, circuit riders had multiplied and caused Methodism to become the largest American denomination of its day. In investigating the significance of the supernatural in the circuit rider ministry, Xhemajli provides a new historical perspective through his eye-opening demonstration of the correlation between the supernatural and the explosive membership growth of early American Methodism, which fueled the Second Great Awakening. In doing so, he also prompts the consideration of the relevance and reproduction of such acts in the American church today.

Only a few decades past, academia tended to scoff at the very idea of serious Pentecostal theology. Today profound and variegated theological implications of this dynamic movement are the object of exploration and development across the entire spectrum of the Christian theological corpus. Arguably, an acute need has arisen for identification and evaluation of the Pentecostal movement's original and ongoing theological ""essentials."" What is Pentecostal theology really all about anyway? This volume realizes that Pentecostal theology is at its heart a working theology undergirding and energizing believers' worship of God in prayer and praise, in holy living, and in witness to a personal experience of the risen Lord and Savior manifested in the continuing power of the Holy Spirit. Authentic implementation, if not explicit articulation, of fervent Pentecostal theology often occurs in the vitality of local churches, house fellowships, and various mission settings in America and around the world. Birthed in the fires of revival movements, essential Pentecostalism, including Pentecostal theology, continues to burn brightest wherever it is fueled most directly.