There are considerable resources for black songs among African-American denominations and churches that are now widely available for churches in every tradition. This article is especially helpful in describing the different types of songs that have developed from the black worship tradition.
Wesleyan liturgical theology is deeply concerned to define worship as more than public acts. Worship has to do with all of life, with relationships, and with vocations. In deed and thought believers continually act out their relationship to Christ.
John Wesley was an Anglican clergyman who sought to bring new life to the Church of England through conversion and enthusiastic response to God in sacramental worship. In America, Wesleyan forms of worship did not survive. There Methodists tended to follow the frontier-revivalist pattern of worship.
John Wesley was born at the Epworth rectory in 1703. He went to Oxford University in 1720 and was ordained deacon in 1725. He returned to Oxford in 1729 and became the leader of the “holy club” or Methodists which had been organized during his absence by his brother, Charles. He went to Georgia as a missionary in 1735 and while there published his first hymn book.
harles Wesley has been called “the poet of Methodism.” Born in Epworth, England in 1707 he was educated at Westminster School and Oxford University, where he took his degree in 1728. It was while a student at Christ Church College that Wesley and a few associates, by strict attention to duty and exemplary conduct, won for themselves the derisive epithet of “Methodists.”
Mary Artemisia Lathbury was born in Manchester, New York in 1841. After graduating from school she became an art teacher and later engaged in editorial work. She contributed a number of hymns to the Methodist Hymnal; including her best-known work, “Break Thou the Bread of Life.”
John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism, attended Oxford University in 1720 and was ordained deacon in 1725. He returned to Oxford in 1729 and became the leader of the “holy club” or Methodists, which had been organized during his absence by his brother, Charles.