Explores the emergence of African Methodism within the black Atlantic and how it struggled to sustain its liberationist identity.

Published in 1817, The Doctrines and Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was the first definitive guide to the history, beliefs, teachings, and practices of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Beginning with a brief history, the book moves into a presentation of the "Articles of Religion," including the Trinity, the Word of God, Resurrection, the Holy Spirit, scripture, original sin and free will, justification, works, the church, purgatory, the sacraments, baptism, the Lord's Supper, marriage, church ceremonies, and government. Immediately following the articles is an extended four-part catechism that more fully explicates the meanings and implications of the doctrinal statements. A DOCSOUTH BOOK. This collaboration between UNC Press and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library brings classic works from the digital library of Documenting the American South back into print. DocSouth Books uses the latest digital technologies to make these works available in paperback and e-book formats. Each book contains a short summary and is otherwise unaltered from the original publication. DocSouth Books provide affordable and easily accessible editions to a new generation of scholars, students, and general readers.

Through exhaustive research and graceful writing, Newman shows all the sides of Richard Allen: activist, institution-builder of the AME church, theologian and writer, and pulpit politician.

Every man in this life has a part to play, and, leaves a footprint, seen and followed by--some other. How well that part is played depends very largely on the man. It may be played loosely--carelessly--without a thought of anything but the NOW, the present; without any thought of its scope in reaching, touching, or influencing another's life. It is a footprint, nevertheless, and some one follows in it and is stunted in life, perhaps for life. On the other hand that part may be played with great care as to every detail, with much toil in preparation, with the thought ever in view that "no man lives to himself alone," but that we are building character and making men, how careful, then must one be in the CHOICE and USE of the material that tends to the "making" men.

Henry McNeal Turner was an "epoch-making man, " as his colleague Reverdy Ransom called him. A bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church from 1880 to 1915, Turner was also a politician and Georgia legislator during Reconstruction, U.S. Army chaplain, newspaper editor, prohibition advocate, civil rights and back-to-Africa activist, African missionary, and early proponent of black theology. This richly detailed book, the first full-length critical biography of Turner, firmly places him alongside DuBois and Washington as a preeminent visionary of the postbellum African-American experience. The strength and vitality of today's black church tradition owes much to the herculean labors of pioneers such as Turner, one of the most skillful denominational builders in American history. When emancipation created the prerequisites for a strong national religious organization, Turner, with his boldness, charisma, political wisdom, eloquence, and energy, took full advantage of the opportunity. Combining evangelicalism with forthright agitation for racial freedom, he instigated the most momentous transformation in A.M.E. Church history--the mission to the South. Stephen Angell views Turner's advocacy of ordination for women and his missionary work in Africa as a further outgrowth of the bishop's deep evangelical commitment. The book's epilogue offers the first serious analysis of Turner's theology and his replies to racist distortions of the Christian message.

Get to know the first five Black women to be elected diocesan bishops within the Episcopal Church. During this moment, with the #metoo movement, Black Lives Matter, and the increased feelings of division in our country, Black women clergy in the Episcopal Church have voiced a need to come together, believing that their experiences and concerns may be very different than those of other clergy. That need is answered here in This Band of Sisterhood. The five Black women bishops featured in this book can provide a compass for how to journey along these new paths. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, Carlye J. Hughes, Kimberly Lucas, Shannon MacVean-Brown, and Phoebe A. Roaf offer honest, vulnerable wisdom from their own lives that speaks to this time in American life. Both women and men will find this book invaluable in discerning how God might be calling them to use their own leadership skills.