Life Of Joshua Soule

by Horace M. DuBose

$16.99

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Most Wesleyans are familiar with the name of Francis Asbury, the great circuit-riding preacher who shepherded Methodism through the cataclysm of the Revolutionary War, and was ordained a founding bishop by the new Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Fewer readers are aware of Asbury’s mighty successors, however. Among these is the Life of Joshua Soule. The young man from Maine (the area Asbury called “the land of the Presbyterians” for its entrenched Calvinism) received his pastoral charges and ordination under Asbury himself. Here is the story of the man who became the author of American Methodism’s constitution, establishing the manner of its church government and function. Here, too, is the story of the senior bishop from New England who, in defense of that same constitution, threw in his lot with Southerners as one of the founding bishops of the new Methodist Episcopal Church, South, when the church split over the grievous issues that faced the annual conference of 1844. The author describes exactly what happened at that annual conference, naming names and providing background. If you have not read about this event in detail, you will probably be surprised at how things transpired, and you may find the issues were not as black-and-white as one may think. Like his great predecessor, Joshua Soule was destined to help steer Methodism through the saddest and bloodiest crisis ever to befall Americans. More than a biography, this is a window onto great and turbulent times in the story of Wesleyanism in America.