Abingdon Press is the book publishing arm of the

United Methodist The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelic ...

Publishing House which publishes sheet music, ministerial resources,

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...

-study aids, and other items, often with a focus on

Methodism Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's br ...

and Methodists.

History

Abingdon Press was begun in the early 1900s by the Methodist Church, with headquarters in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. The name of the imprint is a reference to the town of

Abingdon, Maryland Abingdon is a census-designated place in Harford County, Maryland, United States. It lies northeast of Baltimore on Maryland Route 7, near the Bush River, between Exits 77 ( MD 24) and 80 ( MD 543) of Interstate 95. Demographics History Abi ...

, location of the Methodist university

Cokesbury College Cokesbury College was a college in Abingdon, Maryland and later Baltimore, Maryland that existed from 1787 until 1796. Cokesbury College was founded as the first Methodist college in the United States. Its name was a combination of the names of ...

.Alan K. Waltz
"Abingdon Press,"
in ''A Dictionary for United Methodists.'' New York: Abingdon Press, 1991. Cited in United Methodist Church: Glossary: Abingdon Press, www.umc.org/. In 1923 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South adopted the name Cokesbury for its own publishing concern, with headquarters in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and ...

. When the northern and southern branches of the Methodist Episcopal Church reunified in 1939, the name Abingdon-Cokesbury was chosen as the name of publishing house of the unitary Methodist Church and Nashville was chosen as the headquarters. This name remained in use until 1954, when a return was made to the name Abingdon Press, with the church's retail division for its publishing enterprises assuming the name Cokesbury. In 1965 the joint Abingdon Press and the associated Cokesbury retail shops employed more than 2,000 people.Leland D. Case, "Origins of Methodist Publishing in America," ''Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America,'' vol. 59, no. 1 (First Quarter 1965), pg. 27
In JSTOR

References

External links

Abingdon Press home page

United Methodist Publishing Househome home page

Cokesbury home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Abingdon Press History of Methodism in the United States United Methodist Church Christian publishing companies Book publishing companies based in Tennessee Publishing companies established in the 1900s Companies based in Nashville, Tennessee