James O'Kelly is one of the first men in the United States to make an attempt to restore the New Testament church. His focus was to restore elderships to the church rather than have a one-man bishop. He learned from John Wesley that an elder is equal to a bishop, but Frances Asbury viewed himself as a one-man overseer of the whole Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States.

O'Kelly and those who felt the same way he did confronted Asbury in one of the year-end meetings of the Episcopal Church in America. The result was that the O'Kelly group left, and within a few years grew to over 20,000 people.

This book surveys in a scholarly way the facts on all sides of this schism of the late 1700s in America.