A Will to Choose traces the history of African-American Methodism beginning with their emergence in the fledgling American Methodist movement in the 1760s. Responding to Methodism's anti-slavery stance, African-Americans joined the new movement in large numbers and by the end of the eighteenth century, had made up the largest minority in the Methodist church, filling positions of authority as class leaders, exhorters, and preachers. Through the first half of the nineteenth century, African Americans used the resources of the church in their struggle for liberation from slavery and racism in the secular culture.

"Melton has given us an excellent history of a heretofore scarcely-documented theme. It is light enough that it is hard to put down and deep enough to refer to again and again. This work will be a classic of American church history." - Black History Review

"Of the writing of books on African American Methodism there will be no end, but this book is well worth paying attention to. This book has been a labor of love, the culmination of a forty-two year project by J. Gordon Melton in searching out and making sense of many scattered and not easily accessible sources....What he [Melton] aims to trace in all of its glory and struggles is a tradition of African American leadership....He succeeds remarkably well....There is much to recommend this work....This book is an important advance in black Methodist historiography." - Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, March 2008

"This work will be of value to all interested in African American life, American religious history, and American social and cultural studies. . . . Highly recommended. All levels." - CHOICE

"Thoughtful and meticulous." - Journal of American History, March 2008

"J. Gordon Melton has produced a very useful and readable examination of African American Methodism....This will be an indispensable book for those with an interest in African American history and the history of religion." - Journal of Southern History, August 2008

"Long after the promise of Reconstruction gave way to the closed society of the Jim Crow South, the church remained a crucial site of black self-determination and self-definition. A Will to Choose demonstrates that this was always a characteristic of African American Methodism." - The Journal of African American History