Sacred Flame of Love

In connecting Methodist history with the larger social transformation of nineteenth-century Georgia, Christopher H. Owen uncovers a story of considerable complexity and variety. Because Georgia Methodists included people from every social class, few generalizations apply properily to all of them. For many years they were loosely united by common adherence to the ideals of Wesleyan evangelicalism, but economic and political developments would gradually accentuate Methodist social divisions and weaken even this bond. Indeed, deviating far from the conception of unchanging and asocial southern religion often held by scholars. Owen sees both church and society undergoing enormous change in the nineteenth century.

"The Sacred Flame of Love is well researched, well written, and fills an important gap in the rapidly expanding historiography of southern religion". -- Randy J. Sparks, author of On Jordan's Stormy Banks