Encoding Methodism: Telling and Retelling Narratives of Wesleyan Origins

Synopsis

Methodists Love To Tell The Story And Methodist Churches Have Consistently Told And Re-told The Narrative Of Their Eighteenth-century Founding By John (and Sometimes Charles) Wesley As A Way Of Describing The Distinctive Identity Of Their Religious Communities. This Book Offers A Comprehensive And Critically Documented Account Of The Development Of These Narratives Of Wesleyan Origins And The Ways In Which They Attempted To Describe Or Encode The Identity Of Wesleyan/methodist Communities. This Is Not A Cynical Account Of How Interpreters Have Simply Written Their Own Agenda Into The Narrative (and That Has Happened); Rather It Shows In Many Cases How The Unique Position And Contexts Of Narrators Have Enabled Them To See Things That Really Happened In The Eighteenth-century Wesleyan Movement. The Book Utilizes The Contemporary Metaphor Of Understanding How Various Interpreters And Interpretive Communities Have Encoded Wesleyan Identities By Telling Narratives Of Wesleyan Origins.