As The United Methodist Church teeters on the brink of schism, Ashley Boggan Dreff's book Entangled: A History of American Methodism, Politics, and Sexuality offers new insights into the conflicts over human sexuality that have brought the denomination to the breaking point. Director of women and gender studies at High Point University, Dreff draws on her PhD research at Drew University, tracing two strains within American Methodism and how both responded to changing sexual practices since the First World War. By exploring politics in Methodism and in United States society, she demonstrates how the Church both influences and is influenced by cultural change.
These two competing ideologies have deep Methodist roots, one growing from the Church's legacy of social reform and the other from its focus on evangelism. Dreff explores how sexuality became the site of contest between these branches in their differing responses to birth control, sex education, abortion,...
