Our Effect

Here you can find summaries and reports of what has been happening at GCAH.

Report submitted to the 2012 General Conference for the General Commission and for the African American Methodist Heritage Center link

2012 Awards and Grants from the General Commission on Archives and History of The United Methodist Church:

The John Harrison Ness Memorial Award is a $500 prize which may be given to a seminary student who submits the best paper on some aspect of United Methodist history.  The award memorializes the first General Secretary of the General Commission and longtime leader in historical work from the Evangelical United Brethren tradition. No award will be made in 2012.

The World Is My Parish Grant of up to $3000 is intended to encourage research into the development of The United Methodist Church and its antecedents in conferences not in the United States.   This grant will assist in the organization and cataloging of the collection of pamphlets and documents collected by the late Bishop Ole Borgen. This collection is housed in the headquarters building of the Norway Annual Conference. In April, 2012, the Methodist librarian of Drew University, Dr. Christopher Anderson, will spend a week assisting the archivist of the Norway Conference in this work. The grant will cover travel expenses for Dr. Anderson.   The Borgen collection is a vast resource of print and manuscript materials that need to be available to researchers in Norway and beyond.

 The Asian, African, Hispanic, and Native American History Research Grant up to $3000 is intended for research in the history and heritage of ethnic/racial groups in the United Methodist tradition. Part of the award goes to Dr. Elizabeth A. Georgian who recently earned a Ph.D. from the University of Delaware and is assistant editor of the Charles Carroll of Carrollton Papers.   Her work on African Americans in early American Methodist history will eventually be published as part of a book dealing with the question of democratization in the Early Republic and the rise of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The book will draw on her dissertation, but the section on African Americans’ relationship to the Methodist Episcopal Church, schismatic movements, and rising American interest in democracy will be new. Dr. Georgian in her application indicated that “this project will draw on and expand on classic works but it advances the field in two particular ways. First, when modern scholars have approached African American Methodism, they have largely focused on Richard Allen and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. This project will explore the other major denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, as well as the largely overlooked decisions made by Blacks to remain in the Methodist Episcopal Church or to depart for other forms of Christianity altogether. Second, historians of African American Methodism generally situate their work within the broader context of African American Christianity and culture, producing valuable insights. This project will go in a new direction, however, considering African American Methodists’ religious choices within the context of Methodism and the competition between evangelical churches in the early republic, viewing their religious beliefs as equally important to their racial identity. And so, by looking at African American schismatic movements, this project will shed light on the broader, complicated issues of Blacks’ evolving relationship to evolving democratic ideals in the early republic, a question that deserves far more attention than political historians have given it.”

 A grant was also made to Mark Dixon, a student at Princeton Theological Seminary. He described his project this way: “This project seeks to present the missionary work of Peter Böhler among the African slave population in South Carolina between the years 1738 and 1740. Böhler’s account of this work has essentially been lost to scholarship for over a century.  The Methodist school, which has taken an interest in Böhler due to his relationship with John Wesley, has been even less aware of Böhler’s activities in South Carolina as it has largely relied on Anglican sources (e.g. minutes of the Trustees of the Colony of Georgia). Due to Böhler’s failures as a correspondent, those records are devoid of any of his firsthand reports.   Through archival research, we have uncovered correspondence and diaries from Böhler and his assistant George Schulius, all of which were written during or immediately prior to their missionary activities in the slave mission field of South Carolina. All of these documents are in 18th-century German manuscript and require transcribing to be accessible for most modern scholars. Because this research is for a seminar paper, time constraints will likely prevent the transcribers from producing transcriptions of presentable quality. However, the paper will include substantial references to and quotations of this primary material. In time, the goal is to produce a critical transcription and translation of the entire record.”

The Josephine Forman Scholarship of $10,000 is awarded to a person of color pursuing graduate work in archival studies, made possible by a generous gift from the estate of Ms. Forman, long time archivist of the South West Texas Conference. The recipient for the 2011-2012 academic year is Nidya Gonzalez, who is enrolled in the MLIS degree program at the University of Pittsburgh. The selection process is underway for the 2012-2013 academic year in cooperation with the Society of American Archivists.

The Jesse Lee Prize is a $2000 grant awarded once every four years to assist with the publication of a book-length monograph in Methodist history. The 2012 award goes to Geordan Hammond who recently completed his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester (UK) and is Director of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre, Co-editor, Wesley and Methodist Studies, and Lecturer in Church History & Wesley Studies, Nazarene Theological College, Manchester, UK. The Prize will assist in the publication of his dissertation entitled, ‘‘Restoring Primitive Christianity: John Wesley and Georgia, 1735-1737.”  

There were no selections for the Center for the EUB Heritage Audrie E. Reber Memorial Award, the Women in United Methodist History Research Grant or Writing Award. 

The General Commission is honored to provide encouragement for the research and writing of history of the Wesleyan tradition through these grants and awards as well as other projects for which it provide modest financial support.  Information on all awards is available at www.gcah.org and applications are welcomed.