This book tells the story of how American democracy and early Wesleyan Methodism wed. It is the story not of the institutional church but of a concept fathered by John Wesley and American democracy--egalitarian universalism. Anytime something new appears, it needs an engine to push it along. Francis Asbury, his circuit riders, America's early poets, and the Black slaves became that engine.

This book will show how egalitarian universalism, as defined by the New Testament, became the concept that guided the development of America's new democracy. The book will also show how this revolutionary concept was squeezed when the Civil War rushed in. Had it not been for the gospel writer and his Luke-Acts, American democracy and Methodism might have been forever lost.