Daniel Ramirez

Respectable Methodism

History & Biography

“Daniel Flores’ impressive archival project offers a fresh and expanded view of Nathan Bangs, one of the most emblematic representatives of Methodist identity and aspirations in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. Bangs shaped Methodism’s urban profile, charted its theological maturation, and set the Methodist Episcopal Church on a course of upward mobility and respectability that took it to the apex of religious, social, and political influence. Flores’ sober analysis also counts the cost of that pursuit.”

When the Spirit Is Your Inheritance

“When the Spirit Is Your Inheritance opens a new de-centering vista in the study of Pentecostalism and borderlands. Jonathan Calvillo has expanded what is usually a scholar's footnote or introductory sentence into a full-fledged model of self-reflexivity, turning the ethnographic gaze inward, as well as outward toward the community that shaped and is being studied by the scholar. With the descriptive power of a James Baldwin and the introspection of a Richard Rodríguez, Calvillo offers a deeper understanding of the personal and social dimensions of spirit-empowerment among the ostensibly peripheral and disempowered, beyond glossolalia or other usual markers of Pentecostal identity and practice.”