Abingdon Press is the book publishing arm of the United Methodist Publishing House which publishes

sheet music Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed books or pamphlets in English, A ...

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 o ...

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

Methodism Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related Christian denomination, denominations of Protestantism, Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John W ...

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 U ...

. The name of the imprint is a reference to the town of Abingdon, Maryland, location of the Methodist university Cokesbury College.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 The Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MEC, S; also Methodist Episcopal Church South) was the American Methodist denomination resulting from the 19th-century split over the issue of slavery in the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). Disagreement ...

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 t ...

. 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