Perfecting Perfection: Essays in Honour of Henry D. Rack

Henry D. Rack is one of the most profound historians of the Methodist movement in modern times. He has spent a lifetime researching and writing about the rise and significance of John Wesley and his Methodist followers in the eighteenth century and has also uncovered the historical significance of the Methodist Church in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Collected in Perfecting Perfection are thirteen essays honouring the life and scholarship of Dr. Rack from a host of international scholars in the field. The topics range from Wesley’s view of grace in the eighteenth century to the dynamic intersection of the Methodist and Tractarian movements in the nineteenth century. Ultimately, the collection of essays offered here in honour of Dr. Rack will be engaging and provocative to those considering Methodist Studies in the present and future generations.Table of ContentsAbbreviations | Contributors | Introduction - Robert Webster | 1 From Arminius (d. 1609) to the Synod of Dort (1618–1619) - W. Stephen Gunter | 2 Robert Barnes and John Wesley’s Reformation Heritage - David Lowes Watson | 3 The Exercise of the Presence of God: Holy Conferencing as a Means of Grace - Richard P. Heitzenrater | 4 Perfecting Plain Truth for Plain People: John Wesley’s Sermons - Patrick Streiff | 5 Mission Spirituality in the Early Methodist Preachers - Philip R. Meadows | 6 Medicine on Demand: John Wesley’s Enlightened Treatment of the Sick - Deborah Madden | 7 Wesley’s Invisible World: Witchcraft and the Temperature of Preternatural Belief - Owen Davies | 8 John Wesley and Francis Asbury - John Wigger | 9 Echoes of Wesley on the US Southwestern Frontier: The Autobiography of William Stevenson - Ted A. Campbell | 10 “Did God Do That?”: Common and Separating Factors of Eighteenth-Century Methodism and Contemporary Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal - Robert Webster | 11 The Oxford Movement and Evangelicalism: Parallels and Contrasts in Two Nineteenth-Century Movements of Religious Revival - Peter B. Nockles | 12 From The Soul of Dominic Wildthorne to the Wesleyan Guild of Divine Service: Some Methodist Responses to Anglo-Catholicism in Victorian and Edwardian England - Martin Wellings | 13 Bibliography of the Principal Published Writings of Henry Denman Rack - Clive D. Field | Index