Release date: Aug. 1, 2008

Methodist History Book Earns Award for Emory Professor

Contact:
Elaine Justice: 404-727-0643, elaine.justice@emory.edu
Kelly McLendon: 404-727-4481, kelly.mclendon@emory.edu

A book by Rex Matthews of Emory University's Candler School of Theology is being honored as the best book published during the year on the history, biography, polity or theology of United Methodism or its predecessors. Matthews' book, "Timetables of History for Students of Methodism" was chosen by The Historical Society of the United Methodist Church as its 2007 Saddlebag Selection.

The book was chosen by the selection committee for its research excellence and thoroughness. The work uses a timeline to place key events in American Methodism and British and World Methodism next to historical events and cultural milestones. The chronicle begins in 1700, three years before the birth of Methodism founder John Wesley, and concludes in 2005.

"Timetables of History for Students of Methodism" doesn't attempt to compete with other historical timetable books, says Matthews, who is visiting assistant professor of historical theology at Candler. Instead, the work presents key events and happenings of Methodist history in their larger context.

The book also places events "into relationŽship with relevant events and developments in other branches of the Methodist and Wesleyan family, both in America and around the world," he says. The book relates events in Methodism to their secular counterparts, a feature also recognized by the award committee.

"I think the committee was probably most impressed by the book's long-term usefulness for Methodist studies," said Rob Sledge, a member of the award committee and historian-in-residence of the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation. "It takes its place alongside the few other reference works in the field."

Matthews was inspired to develop the book in 2004, the year that marked his arrival at Candler as well as his return to full-time teaching after almost two decades of working in the publishing world while teaching part time.

"The first time I taught a section of Candler's 'History of Methodism' class, I was confronted with the disagreeable but undeniable reality that many of my students seemed to recall very little of the American or world history that they must have studied at some earlier time in their academic careers," Matthews says. "They had real difficulty in placing events or movements or issues related to the history of Methodism into their larger historical context."

Matthews' current research focuses on the life and thought of John Wesley, and on the history and development of Methodism in Britain and America.

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