A Will to Choose ─ The Origins of African American Methodism

Melton (Institute for the Study of American Religion, Santa Barbara, California) traces the history of African American Methodists from the colonial period and the early national period through the Civil War to the organizational discontinuities that followed it. While taking account of the larger and more widely studied churches in the movement, he focuses on members of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South after 1845. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

J. Gordon Melton is the director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, California. He is the author of more than twenty-five books, including the Encyclopedia of American Religions, American Religion: An Illustrated History, Encyclopedia of Protestantism, and the Encyclopedia of African American Religion.