Dr. Dennis C. Dickerson, Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, TN, USA published his masterpiece, The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A History (Cambridge: Cmabridge University Press, 2020). The book examines the long history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and its intersection with major social movements over more than two centuries. The AME began as a religious movement affirming the rights of enslaved and free people of African descent in the United States shortly after the American Revolution in the late eighteenth century. Since then, the African Methodist Episcopal Church developed as a freedom advocate for Blacks in the Atlantic World, becoming an institution committed to fighting slavery, segregation, and colonialism. In this opus magnum, Dickerson recounts how this black institution nonetheless weathered the inexorable demands produced by the Civil War, two world wars, the civil rights movement, African decolonization, and women’s empowerment, resulting in its global prominence in the contemporary world. The book also integrates the history of African Methodism within the broader historical landscape of American and African-American history.
Published during the global pandemic of COVID-19 in 2020, the book gained much and well-deserved attention during 2021 and is being the subject of several discussions in 2022. IAMSCU hopes to engage in these discussions and invite Professor Dickerson to share his research with its members worldwide.