Russell Richey

Russell E. Richey, research fellow of the Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, is dean emeritus of Candler School of Theology and William R. Cannon Distinguished Professor of Church History Emeritus, Emory University. He served from 2000-06 as Candler’s dean. He previously held academic and administrative posts at Duke Divinity School, 1986-2000, and Drew University, 1969-86. One of the two editors of the Methodist Review, an editorial advisory board member of the Journal of Southern Religion, both online ventures and on the editorial board of Methodist History, he writes on denominationalism, civil religion, and American Methodism.

Richey’s A Church’s Broken Heart: Mason-Dixon Methodism is forthcoming (2021) from New Room Books. Among his recent books are Methodism in the American Forest, OUP, 2015; Formation for Ministry in American Methodism: Twenty-first Century Challenges and Two Centuries of Problem-Solving, 2014; Denominationalism Illustrated and Explained, 2013; American Methodism: A Compact History, 2012; The Methodist Experience in America: A History, 2010 (the latter two with Kenneth E. Rowe and Jean Miller Schmidt); Methodist Connectionalism: Historical Perspectives, 2010; Doctrine in Experience: A Methodist Theology of Church and Ministry, 2009; Extension Ministers: Mr. Wesley's True Heirs, 2008; and Marks of Methodism: Practices of Ecclesiology, 2005.

A festschrift, The Renewal of United Methodism: Mission, Ministry and Connectionalism, Essays in Honor of Russell E. Richey, edited by Rex D. Matthews appeared in 2012. Richey’s book-length “United Methodist Doctrine and Teaching on the Nature, Mission and Faithfulness of the Church,” published as “A Resource Paper from the UMC Committee on Faith and Order,” was mounted in the fall of 2013.

Richey co-led the June 2016, 2014, 2011, and 2009 Summer Wesley Seminars of Duke’s Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition and co-directed Asbury Theological Seminary’s Wesleyan Studies Summer Seminar, June 2019, 2017, 2015, and 2013. A writer for the UMC Task Force to Study the Episcopacy established by 2004 General Conference and for the national Episcopal-United Methodist Bilateral, he served as vice president of the Wesley Works Editorial Project and has been a member of the UMC Committee on Faith and Order since its launch. Attending successive Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies (1987, 1992, 1999, 2002, 2007, 2013, 2018), he was plenary speaker in 2002 and co-chaired working groups (1992, 1997, 2013, and 2018).

He is currently at work on Methodists in America for the Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series (CUP).