The Center for the Study of World Christian Revitalization Movements

      This issue of Revitalization surveys recent literature on renewal and revitalization, ranging from theoretical and historical discussions to more popular works. We begin with an overview of a dozen or so books that treat varying dimensions of renewal. Methodism, Revivalism, Antirevivalism     The most significant recent book on Methodism as a movement is David Hempton’s Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (Yale UP, 2005; 278 pp.). Hempton, an Irish historian now at Boston University, presents a nuanced global picture of the rise of Methodism. He builds the book around several polarities—showing, for example, how Methodism developed quite differently in America and…