Through a compact presentation, Russell Richey presents the Methodist encounter with the American woodland and explores how that encounter shaped the denomination. As it began to win adherents in post-Revolutionary America, Methodism adapted to a context much different than it faced in Britain. For one thing, with the exception of Thomas Coke, the early leadership of the American church was unschooled in formal theology. Preachers and superintendents (later bishops) learned their craft through the itinerary system by which a younger, untrained minister learned from a seasoned veteran. The value of this system was epitomized most clearly in the person of Francis Asbury who became the most widely-traveled and famous early leader of the American church. Itinerants, constantly on the move, preaching, planting congregations, and administering the sacraments, through an assigned circuit, developed the “camp meeting” as an organizing instrument of administration and worship.

Secondarily, Methodist preachers, in their attempts to obey John Wesley's injunction to “preach in the fields,” turned, by necessity, to the American woodlands as a staging area for their efforts. Particularly in the American South, it made little sense to preach in blazing hot open fields. America had woodlands in abundance. It was on the woodland frontier that the young nation was growing, where there was a need for preachers of the gospel, and it was toward the woods that Methodist itinerants directed their efforts.

But the woodlands were much more significant to the development of American Methodism than merely as a backdrop to its activity. Richey argues that through their interaction and utilization of the woodlands, Methodist preachers developed an effective experiential and implicit theology. Through their efforts they sacralized the woodlands as shady grove (a natural cathedral), as garden (a kind of Gethsemane where temptations might be fought and spiritual solace sought), and as wilderness (a challenge through and into which the Methodist “gospel” must be taken). These three-fold spiritualizations of the woodland came together in the camp meeting—staged revivals that became a Methodist signature.

Richey presents his thesis in five chapters and an appendix. Chapter 1 begins with the work of John Wesley and the British progenitors of Methodism. Included is a discussion of Wesley's admonition to “preach in the fields” (both an evangelistic and a practical necessity since Wesleyan preachers were increasingly barred from Anglican churches). This examination segues into the critical shift that Wesleyan preachers made in America, moving from activities in the fields to the woodlands and their subsequent sacralization. Chapter 2 elaborates upon the sacralizing of the woods and the development of the camp meeting within the context of the Methodist quarterly meeting. The prodigious efforts of Asbury are noted as he managed to establish the camp meeting as a a regular feature throughout the new Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC), both on the frontier and in eastern American cities. Chapter 3 explores the deeper theological import of the camp meeting. Richey notes that the relative lack of theological sophistication on the part of Methodist preachers means that scholars must “teas[e] out implicit or implied meanings” (7) in the forest engagement of Methodism. Chapter 4 tracks the development of the camp meeting in the later nineteenth century. In the antebellum period, the MEC divided over slavery and various ecclesiological disputes. After the Civil War, the camp meeting evolved in basically two directions: on the one hand, it retained its revivalist fervor in the various holiness and perfectionist strains of Wesleyanism. On the other hand, the camp meeting was institutionalized in the MEC proper and became the vehicle for both middle class relaxation (retreat centers) and educational efforts (i.e., Chautauqua). The domestication of the camp meeting was indicative of mainline Methodism's march toward a more affluent, modernistic, and non-revivalistic character in the twentieth century. A concluding chapter elaborates upon this latter theme with particular emphasis on the MEC's reimagination and reinvention of the wilderness motif in a modern, institutional context. The appendix illustrates John Wesley's own preaching efforts under trees and in groves, so as to draw a link with the later efforts of the American preachers.

Richey, dean emeritus of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, has produced a significant and thoughtful work. Few doubt the effectiveness of the early Methodist itinerants in spreading the precepts of their faith—labors that made the MEC America's largest religious denomination by the mid-nineteenth century. Was it the sheer emotionalism and community building of the revivalistic camp meetings that fueled the growth? Richey argues that there was more substance to the camp meetings than merely sensationalism and it is in his conception of the preaching in the woodlands as shady grove, garden, and wilderness with their respective alllusions to significant biblical themes that Methodism in the American Forest makes its contribution to an appraisal of American Methodism.

There is little to criticize in Richey's work. His suppositions are buttressed with copious references to primary source materials including direct quotes from principal characters. One caution is in order, however. Richey emphasizes throughout his book that his three-fold characterization of woodland Methodist preaching is implicit and based on the activities of the preachers. Such an approach runs the risk of developing an artificial theological template that imposes implications upon the itinerants' preaching that they did not intend. Richey avoids this potential pitfall by appealing to many sources over an extended period of time and then tracing all of his suppositions back to the theology of Wesley himself.

One cannot avoid an occasionally wistful tone in Richey's writing. A preacher and teacher in the United Methodist Church, he suggests that a crucial reforming spark may have been lost to Methodism through the domestication of the camp meeting and the theology implicit in its woodland themes. Also, of contemporary interest in an age of increasing consciousness of the interaction between theology and environmentalism, Richey wonders if “more cooperative and sustained reflection by Methodism's parties might have equipped the church for ongoing leadership on environmental and ecological matters” (9).

Both as a well-documented historical examination of American Methodism and as a thoughtful and suggestive theological work, Methodism in the American Forest is a valuable addition to the corpus of American church history that should draw the attention of scholars of both Methodism and the larger evangelical community.