Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Mormonism In The Methodist Marketplace: James Covel And The Historical Background Of Doctrine And Covenants 39–40, Christopher C. Jones

BYU Studies Quarterly

Joseph Smith received two revelations in January 1831 (Doctrine and Covenants 39 and 40) directed to one "James Covill." Joseph and his scribes noted that Covill "had been a Baptist minister for about forty years." Historians discovered nothing about a Baptist minister named James Covill, but documents unearthed by the Joseph Smith Papers Project revealed that he was actually a Methodist minister. This sliver of information opened the door to information about a very well-known Methodist minister in upstate New York by the name of James Covel.

Christopher Jones mines this Methodist vein productively and pieces together a short biography …

Poetry As The Handmaid Of Piety: Hymns As A Catalyst For Human Development In Early Methodism, Brian Yeich

The Asbury Journal

In the preface to the 1780 edition o f Hymns for the People Called Methodist, John Wesley stated, 'When Poetry thus keeps its place, as the handmaid of Piety, it shall attain, not a poor perishable 'Wreath, but a crown that fadeth not away."l While John Wesley may have never used the term ''human development," a student of Wesley would quickly observe that Wesley and the early Methodists were focused on the transformation of individual human lives as well as the society in which they lived. This paper explores the connection between the hynmody of early Methodism and …