The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A History

Description

In this book, Dennis C. Dickerson examines the long history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and its intersection with major social movements over more than two centuries. Beginning as a religious movement in the late eighteenth century, the African Methodist Episcopal Church developed as a freedom advocate for blacks in the Atlantic World. Governance of a proud black ecclesia often clashed with its commitment to and resources for fighting slavery, segregation, and colonialism, thus limiting the full realization of the church's emancipationist ethos. Dickerson recounts how this black institution nonetheless weathered the inexorable demands produced by the Civil War, two world wars, the civil rights movement, African decolonization, and women's empowerment, resulting in its global prominence in the contemporary world. His book also integrates the history of African Methodism within the broader historical landscape of American and African-American history.

Dennis Dickerson is James M. Lawson, Jr Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee. A scholar of American labor history, the American civil rights movement, and African American religious history, he has received grants and fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies, among others. He is the author of Out of the Crucible: Black Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, 1875-1980 (1986), African American Preachers and Politics: The Careys of Chicago (2010) and Militant Mediator: Whitney M. Young, Jr (1998), which was awarded the 1999 Distinguished Book from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.

'Grateful thanks are due to Dennis Dickerson for this thoroughly researched and beautifully written study of one of World Methodism's most significant branches.' Martin Wellings, Wesley and Methodist Studies '... Dickerson's book is a masterfully crafted contribution to the field of African American religious history, and it will serve as a resource to both scholars and non-scholars alike for many, many years to come.' Ahmad Greene-Hayes, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History