HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

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HSUMC members and others may make nominations to the Saddlebag Selection Award Coordinator, Doug Tzan, who will complete the process with the publishers. Books for consideration can be submitted by March 1. See selection criteria at the bottom of the page.   Once the selection committee has completed its deliberations the winner will be notified soon after.  The award is given at the HSUMC Annual meeting and gathering - location and dates TBA.

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Information or questions about the award can also be directed to Doug Tzan. 

Doug Tzan

Saddlebag Selection Award Coordinator

dtzan@wesleyseminary.edu

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PREVIOUS WINNERS

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• 2024:  Daniel F. Flores, Respectable Methodism:  Nathan Bangs and Respectability in Nineteenth-Century American Methodism, Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers.

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• 2023:  no award given

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• 2022:  Carol M. Norén, On to Perfection: Nels O. Westergreen and the Swedish Methodist  Church, self- published,  printed by Wipf and Stock Publishers.

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• 2021: Paul Wesley Chilcote, Singing the Faith: Soundings of Lyrical Theology in the Methodist Tradition, Foundery Books.

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• 2020: Donald Henry Kirkham, Outside Looking In: Early Methodism as Viewed by Its Critics, New Room Books.

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• 2019: Ashley Boggan Dreff, Entangled: A History of American Methodism, Politics, and Sexuality, New Room Books

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• 2018: Ted Campbell, Encoding Methodism: Telling and Retelling Narratives of Wesleyan Origins, New Room Books.

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• 2017: Paul W. Chilcote, A Faith That Sings: Biblical Themes in the Lyrical Theology of Charles Wesley, Cascade Press.

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• 2016: Russell E. Richey, Methodism in the American Forest, Oxford University Press.

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• 2015: Tash Smith, Capture These Indians for the Lord: Indians, Methodists and Oklahomans 1844-1939, University of Arizona Press.

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• 2014: Charles Yrigoyen and Susan E. Warrick, editors, Historical Dictionary of Methodism 3rd edition, Scarecrow Press.

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• 2013: Randy L. Maddox, Doctrinal and Controversial Treatises on Soteriology, volume 12 of the Works of John Wesley, Abingdon Press.

 

• 2012: Jennifer Woodruff Tait, The Poisoned Chalice: Eucharistic Grape Juice and Common-sense Realism in Victorian Methodism, University of Alabama Press.

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• 2011: Russell E. Richey, Kenneth E. Rowe, and Jean Miller Schmidt, The Methodist Experience in America, Volume 1, Abingdon Press.

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• 2010: John Wigger, Francis Asbury and the Methodists, Oxford University Press.

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• 2009: Charles Yrigoyen, Jr., John McEllhenney, Kenneth Rowe, United Methodism at Forty: Looking Backward, Looking Forward, Abingdon.

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• 2008: Rex Matthews. Timetables of History for Students of Methodism, Abingdon Press.

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• 2007: John R. Tyson, In the Midst of Early Methodism: Lady Huntingdon and Her Correspondence, Scarecrow Press.

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• 2006: Robert Bray, Peter Cartwright: Legendary Frontier Preacher, University of Illinois Press.

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CRITERIA

 

The following selection criteria have been adopted:

 

1. The selection should achieve a balance between the scholarly and the popular. The selection should be respectable and readable, serious and accessible.

2. The selection should be on a significant subject of general interest to United Methodist audiences, that is, related to Methodist history or polity or theology or biography or similar matters.

3. The entry will have been published during the specified calendar year.

4. A publisher may submit more than one entry in a given year.

 

The Society, upon making the selection, promotes the sale of the book among its membership and beyond. This is done through public announcement in the church press, through encouragement in the publications of the Society, through a celebration of the book at the Society’s annual meeting and in other venues. The publishing company is free to engage in whatever promotional activities it may choose in connection with the award. Appropriate plaques are presented to the author and to the publisher.