'Populist Saints' tells the story of B.T. and Ellen Roberts' lives, recounting their critique of powerful elites and illuminating the 'crisis of Methodism' that gave rise to the Free Methodist Church.

On September 7, 1881, Matthew Simpson, Bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in a London sermon asserted that, "As to the divisions in the Methodist family, there is little to mar the family likeness." Nearly a quarter-century earlier, Benjamin Titus (B.T.) Roberts, a minister in the same branch of Methodism as Simpson, had published an article titled in the Northern Independent in which he argued that Methodism had split into an "Old School" and "New School." He warned that if the new school were to "generally prevail," then "the glory will depart from Methodism." As a result, Roberts was charged with "unchristian and immoral conduct" and expelled from the Genesee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). Old or New School Methodism? examines how less than three decades later Matthew Simpson could claim that the basic beliefs and practices that Roberts had seen as threatened were in fact a source of persisting unity across all branches of Methodism. Kevin M. Watson argues that B. T. Roberts's expulsion from the MEC and the subsequent formation of the Free Methodist Church represent a crucial moment of transition in American Methodism. This book challenges understandings of American Methodism that emphasize its breadth and openness to a variety of theological commitments and underemphasize the particular theological commitments that have made it distinctive and have been the cause of divisions over the past century and a half. Old or New School Methodism? fills a major gap in the study of American Methodism from the 1850s to 1950s through a detailed study of two of the key figures of the period and their influence on the denomination.

B. T. Roberts saw the exclusion of women from ordination as analogous to racism. His ability to see the new community made possible by Christ offers Christians today a prophetic vision of the difference Christ makes. Roberts's 1891 Ordaining Women takes seriously the scriptural promise that Christ has unmasked the false distinctions and repaired the damaged social arrangements of this world. Like the abolition of slavery, the ordination of women becomes yet another obvious sign of the world made new in Christ. With careful attention to biblical interpretation, church tradition, and empirical evidence, Roberts exposes the biases that have long held captive the Christian imagination. In this new edition, Benjamin Wayman offers an updated and fully annotated version of Roberts's original work and demonstrates the breadth and depth of his analysis. Roberts's vision of the gospel challenges the traditional and still-dominant view of the global church, and invites Christians to reimagine the inclusion of women in ordained ministry. If Christians had for so long been wrong about race, might we today be wrong about gender?

This is an invaluable handbook on Methodism containing an introduction, dictionary of key terms, and concentrates on key themes, methodology and research problems for those interested in studying the origins and development of the history and theology of world Methodism. The literature describing the history and development of Methodism has been growing as scholars and general readers have become aware of its importance as a world church with approximately 40 million members in 300 Methodist denominations in 140 nations. The tercentenary celebrations of the births of its founders, John and Charles Wesley, in 2003 and 2007 provided an additional focus on the evolution of the movement which became a church.

A comprehensive guide-from both chronological and a topical perspective-to a broad, diverse, deeply rooted, and influential religious tradition.