Is religion disappearing from American life? Less than 50 percent of Americans now hold membership in any religious institution, and even fewer attend worship services. The decline in Christian churches is especially pronounced among the young and cuts across all denominations.
But for Methodists and like-minded Protestants, concerns are deeper than shrinking denominational membership. Polls show disconcerting ignorance about religious and spiritual matters even among churchgoers. Our values as a society are in large measure molded by religion. What shape will Protestant Christianity take in the twenty-first century? And of Methodism? And beyond that, what kind of community will we be?
Dawsey proposes returning to the roots of Christianity. And with anecdotes and stories and a sweeping grasp of church history, he examines those essential practices and beliefs necessary to revitalize American churches. Key, he argues, is rediscovering Christianity as a philosophy of living. John Wesley characterized the practice of religion as first, doing no harm; second, doing good; and third, keeping the ordinances of faith. Loving God and God's creation--the doing of Christianity--marks the path for becoming the churches and individuals Christians were called to be.

James M. Dawsey is professor and Wolfe Chair of Religious Studies at Emory and Henry College, Virginia. He is an ordained United Methodist minister and author of The Lukan Voice: Confusion and Irony in the Gospel of Luke (1986), Peter's Last Sermon: Identity and Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark (2010), From Wasteland to Promised Land: Liberation Theology for a Post-Marxist World (1992), and more than eighty other monographs, novels, and articles in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.