John Seybert and the Evangelical Heritage
J. Steven O'Malley

Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-0979793547    Retail: $34.00

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The Evangelical Association was a revival movement at the beginning of the 19th century, which reached out to the large numbers of German-Americans who had settled throughout the mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states. Their founder, Jacob Albright (1758-1808), and his colaborers developed indigenous and distinctive patterns of hymnody and worship set in a German idiom. For three decades after Albright’s death, the Evangelicals were without a bishop until in 1839 a promising young circuit preacher named John Seybert was made the first “constitutional” bishop of the Evangelicals.

“Dr. J. Steven O’Malley’s biography of the Evangelical Association’s Bishop John Seybert (1791-1860) is a significant contribution to a deeper understanding of our United Methodist heritage. He makes a strong case for the Christian godliness Seybert preached with candor and conviction in his frequent itineration between his native Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. O’Malley’s support of such committed Christian living emerges from his extensive scholarship in German Pietism and from the influence of his maternal great-grandfather, Monroe Scheidler, an ordained minister of the former Evangelical United Brethren Church, who preached and exemplified the call to Christian holiness.”

-K. James Stein, Jubilee Professor Emeritus of Church History, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

“This book fills a gap in the story of the United Methodist heritage in America. The stream flows from The Evangelical Church into The Evangelical United Brethren Church and thence into The United Methodist Church. Professor O’Malley has presented here an account of the ministry of Bishop Seybert which bears directly on the historic resources for theological and spiritual renewal in United Methodism.”

— Mack B. Stokes, Bishop of the United Methodist Church

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