A TALE OF TWO BROTHERS: John & Charles Wesley

..... which is also, necessarily, a tale of Methodist history, traces the leader, John Wesley, and his younger brother, Charles, who was the follower, up to a point. Above and beyond its contemporary accents, this turns the light on one who assumed his was the dominating personality, after the older brother, Sammy, had given way; on Charles, who assumed that John ""had always the ascendant over me""; until the day came when Charles, along with the Methodists, per se, dissented. Its religious points parallel the brothers' partnership, from ego- to theo-centric, from public to personal and psychological and all the way from Epworth, to Oxford, to Georgia, and back to London, Bristol, Wales, and the rise of the separation of Methodism from the Church of England. It makes a fascinating dual portrait in which a certain caddishness (Charles' when the time comes) an unexpected secretiveness (John's marriages and his emancipation from the Church of England). More than just a religious market here in its portrayal of family history and the origins of evangelical history.