Reform Movements in Methodism Brought on by Societal Issues 1830-1885

By Paul McCleary

A thoughtful critic of his denomination who sees its future bound to the way in which it reacts to reformers and reform movements. In times of social change, social institutions feel the stress to be faithful to their purpose as well as the tension to be relevant to innovation. The institutions that survive will be those which are capable of responding to change as well as continuing to be faithful to its loyal supporters. The best way to manage that tension is by understanding the organizations history in dealing with prior encounters with reform movements.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503521797

Paul McCleary

The author has been an ordained minister for over fifty years and served as pastor, missionary, staff of a General Conference committee, staff of general agencies of his denomination, and staff of ecumenical agencies. He has been a member of national and international agencies, including those on which he has served as an officer: InterAction, the International Forum on Child Welfare, CICARWS of the World Council of Churches, and the nongovernmental organizations to UNICEF of the United Nations. He has conducted studies for the InterAmerican Development Bank and the World Bank. He has cotaught a course on international development with his daughter at SAIS (Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies) in Washington, DC.

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Copyright © 2015 by Paul McCleary.

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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter One: The Second Great Awakening and Methodism’s Awakening

Chapter Two: Revivalism, Schism, and the Creating of New Denominations

Chapter Three: Methodism’s Transition to Respectability and Social Status

Chapter Four: Constitutional Discourse as a Tool of Reform

Chapter Five: A Reform Movement That Succeeded by Failing The Creation of the Wesleyan Methodist Church

Chapter Six: The Tipping Point in Methodist Theology The Creation of the Free Methodist Church

Chapter Seven: A Doctrine That Evolved into a Movement

Appendix I

Appendix II

Bibliography

Preface

This is the second book in a series on Reform Movements in Methodism. The first book covered the years 1784 to 1830 and was entitled Reform Movements in Methodism and How They Were Treated. That period was marked by reform movements broadly influenced by the new political climate in America. They were personal expressions of individual interpretations of the egalitarianism emerging in America and applied to Methodism. The reform movements were clergy-led. Also, they were also more regional or local in character rather than national. The last mentioned in the previous study, which led to the founding of the Methodist Protestant Church, was the first to show different characteristics.

Reform efforts were met with heavy-handed discipline applied by first Bishop Asbury and later by Bishop McKendree. Each instance of reform was put down or ejected from the church. While not entirely accurate to say that Methodism during this period was more English than American, it was clearly more shaped, formed, and molded by Wesleyan influences, which originated in England. The period was marked by reform movements to Americanize Methodism.

This second phase of reform movements in Methodism, the one in which we are concerned here, was also a fairly clearly delineated period of its history. The reform movements in this period now demonstrated new characteristics. They were national in character; they had acquired techniques and strategies from the campaigns of the recently formed political parties and more unabashedly adopted and promoted the major social issues of national consequence which reflected their values. They also had the involvement and support of laypersons.

These changes reflected the maturing of Methodism. It had become a national church with significant public stature. It was struggling to cast off its frontier, populist image for one suggesting social and cultural acceptability. Its chapels had become churches of classic and gothic architecture. It was striving for an educated ministry and had built over thirty-five colleges and universities to educate and prepare its laity for a place in society and for public leadership. Methodism moved from being a movement despised and viewed with contempt to one which attained wide public acceptability to the extent, for example, the State of Indiana’s delegation to the US House of Representatives are all Methodist but two, and one of the two senators is Methodist as well as the governor.

The goals of the second and third generation of Methodists have changed. No longer was the objection exclusively the striving to convert souls but rather it involved striving for status, respectability, and acceptance in society. The period under study is one of transition, tension, and schism.

This second study also continues the practice of dissecting reform movements in order to understand how they functioned and what produced success. The analysis of the antislavery movement is distinct in that it goes into great detail to lay out and describe the process used by the antislavery reformers of constitutional discourse around the separation of Methodism over the slavery question. It is interesting to note how ideological interpretations continue to reside with us today. The dialectic between the episcopacy and the General Conference began to define the lodgment of power. It also introduced the role of the laity and place of women in the church. The westward expansion of the country challenged the church to expand as well. World missions came to the fore, exposing the church to new cultures. Much is happened. The focus will remain the same—the reform movements in Methodism and how Methodism responded to each. The third study in this series will focus on the reform movements from the post-Reconstruction period to the near present.

Introduction

Reform movements in early Methodism (1784–1830) evolved through several changes. They were relatively small in scale, usually led by a single individual. They were led by the preachers motivated by desires to see changes in structure and function to make Methodism a more democratic institution. In this early stage, the reformers were exclusively preachers, either itinerant or local. Without exception, the reform movement was controlled and forced out of Methodism taking with it others of a like mind. In each incident, the bishop, either Asbury or McKendree, was successful in exerting influence, directly or indirectly, to put down the movement.

Those who wrote biographies or histories tended to emphasize the positive characteristics of the early leaders, demonstrating few flaws or shortcomings. Church historians viewed reformers as renegades filled with personal ambitions, eager for recognition and power. The passing of time allows for a more balanced view without the need to defend or gloss over shortcomings or weaknesses of church leaders.

The period under study in this volume was a very important one in both Methodist and American history. There were important national and international events affecting the developments of the United States as a world power. Some of these hold little direct reference to the subject under study. Only slight or no reference to these events and developments is not meant to lessen their importance but only to acknowledge their part in the primary subject of the research.

Viewed from a larger perspective, the issue underlying the conflicts between the reformers and the bishops was the rights of the preacher. The preachers sought by the election of presiding elders to restrain the absolute power of the bishop over their individual destinies. It was a political issue key to understanding the social transformation that roiled America and made it different from the social order in Europe based on divine rights and social class structure.

It was only a step to apply that same logic to others especially where slavery involved the black. That issue was primary and continued to feed internal tensions within Methodism through the period of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

However, a new issue was becoming predominant, which would transform Methodism to a greater extent than the issue of the rights of the individual. This was energized by economic factors that were both materialistic and psychological. There was an increasing desire for a more educated clergy, both by the clergy themselves as well as by those who sat in the pews. The clergy felt the need to be more competitive with those of other denominations who had seminary training at institutions, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The laity was moved by the desire to be respected and accepted on the basis of newly acquired wealth. Hard work and frugality had brought wealth. With it came the desire to be recognized for their accomplishments.

There were three denominational schisms near the same time. The first was the Presbyterian schism of 1837–1838. It had several peculiar characteristics which distinguished it from the Methodist and Baptist. Slavery was neither the sole nor the primary issue of the division. The disagreements were over theology and ecclesiastical law between the old school and the new school.

In its basic outline the Baptist schism of 1845 closely resembled the split in the Methodist Church. In each case the denomination divided along clear sectional lines. Also, separate, sectional churches resulted from the schisms. Yet the Baptist had a much looser church organization than the Methodists.

The outstanding difference with the Methodist disunion was that it played out over several years in the form of an ongoing constitutional debate. For that reason the Methodist schism offers a more insightful view of the issues and counter issues of the slavery question. The Methodist process makes clear how the dialogue between the anti- and proslave factions produced for each party a better understanding of their position and its logic. Future reform movements having as a goal separation from Methodism will need to resort to a political dialectic involving constitutional debate. The study highlights the critically important role played by the Wesleyan schism in defining the conditions for the Southern separation.

The last reform movement to be reviewed involves the doctrinal issue of sanctification strongly supported by the Free Methodists, while it is sociological factors that were primary to the Episcopal Methodists. This movement opens for discussion the influential Holiness Movement with its diverse subsequent ramifications.

Chapter One

The Second Great Awakening and Methodism’s Awakening

Methodism got off to a shaky start in America, arriving about one hundred and sixty years after the founding of the first colonies. The colonies were hardly unchurched. Most of the colonies had been founded for religious purposes, and all but two had established churches. The arrival of a Methodist circuit rider in town would have been seen as unwanted competition and would hardly have been welcomed. To complicate matters, Methodism encountered one setback after another. John Wesley wrote some tracts opposing the American Revolution which rapidly found their way to America and did no end of harm to the work. As the hostility grew, all but one of the missionaries sent by Wesley to America decided to return to England. From such an inauspicious beginning, within fifty years Methodism grew to be the largest denomination in America. How could that happen?

It was the Irish who played a key role in the founding of American Methodism. Through the instrumentality of Robert Strawbridge, a Methodist lay preacher from County Leitrim, societies were started and linked by circuits which stretched from a farm base in Maryland to Pennsylvania and Delaware. In New York, Phillip Embury, a lay preacher of German background whose parents were converted by the preaching of John Wesley on his visit to Ireland in 1752, a society was organized and services started.

Beginning in 1769, nearly ten years after Strawbridge started preaching, through 1774, Wesley sent ten missionaries to build on the foundation laid by the two local preachers. Internal problems soon developed: conflict over the observance of the sacraments, tensions among the preachers over leadership issues, and Wesley’s publications on politics in America, which caused severe persecution to the itinerant preachers. The founding lay preachers were treated no better. Strawbridge was castigated for serving the sacraments and was left without appointment after 1775. In New York, Embury was replaced by one of the missionaries. Both men were to fade from American Methodist history.

External factors added to the tribulations: the hostility of the churches already present in America, the disruption of the Revolutionary War, and the departure of the missionaries whose loyalty was to the crown. In 1774, three left; in 1775, one died and another resigned due to poor health and later joined the Presbyterians; by 1778, three more had returned to England and a fourth withdrew from the ministry. Francis Asbury, the one missionary from England remaining, went into voluntary seclusion to avoid being taken prisoner. This meant the best trained or most experienced of the cadre of preachers were gone. Those who were left were men who were local preachers with little knowledge or experience of Methodism as it existed in England. By and large, the future of the church was left in the hands of young men with two or three years experience of preaching whose primary qualification was their conversion experience. The arrival of missionaries from England had been spread over several years. Their time in the colonies was so short they hardly had time to establish a firm footing in any of the circuits or preaching points. Though there were Methodist preachers who sustained the work after they left, this was probably the lowest point in the development of American Methodism as an organization.

Shortly there was to occur an event that was to radically transform the future for American Methodism. The Second Great Awakening, according to Presbyterian historians, began in 1789 with a revival at Hampden-Sydney College. Congregationalist historians date the Second Great Awakening in their churches as 1797. Regardless of the exact date of its beginning, the Second Great Awakening transformed Methodism from a small backwater religious movement into the largest denomination in America. The Second Great Awakening was transformational to Methodism in several respects. To bring to light the full detail of the elements transforming Methodism, some background needs to be reviewed.

The First Great Awakening swept the American colonies during the 1730s and 1740s. This predated the arrival of Methodism. However, it was a contributory first step to the sequence of events that were to follow. The First Great Awakening occurred among churches which had been present in the colonies for some time. The message of the Great Awakening was one of personal salvation challenging the deism of the day. It struck a blow to ritualism, formalism, and sacramentalism by making Christ a deeply personal and immediate presence. It appealed to the emotions without evoking the extreme emotionalism of the revival yet to come.

Jonathan Edwards is attributed with having a major role in the Great Awakening. Edwards (October 5, 1703–March 22, 1758) was pastor of a church in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he succeeded his grandfather, Rev. Solomon Stoddard. Edwards’s mother, Esther, Solomon Stoddard’s daughter, was a woman said to be of unusual mental gifts and of independent character.

Edwards married Sarah Pierpont, who was seventeen at the time. Sarah was from a famous New England clerical family. James Pierpont (1659–1714) her father, was a founder of Yale College, and her mother was the great-granddaughter of Thomas Hooker.¹ Sarah was an exemplary pastor’s wife. They parented eleven children, the fifth of whom included the only son, who was named Jonathan after his father. Solomon Stoddard died on February 11, 1729, leaving his grandson, Jonathan Edwards, to minister to one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the colony. Edwards played a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening. The first revivals in 1733–35 took place at his church. In a revival, Edwards delivered the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, which became a classic of early American preaching, emphasizing the threat of hell and need for personal salvation. Edwards died from a smallpox inoculation shortly after beginning the presidency at the College of New Jersey (Princeton University).

The revival received added support by the visit from a young English Anglican preacher, George Whitefield. Whitefield had been a member of the Holy Club at Oxford along with John and Charles Wesley. It was Whitefield who encouraged John Wesley to preach in the open-air to miners. On his second trip to America in 1740, he traveled extensively, attracting large crowds. He was not reluctant to indicate his affiliation with the Methodists. Neither was he without his critics or imitators. His critics faulted him for extemporaneous open-air preaching and itinerancy. His imitators attempted to replicate his preaching style and emotional appeal. Whitefield saw the colonies as his mission field. He made seven trips in all to the colonies. On the last trip in 1770, Whitefield died and is buried beneath the pulpit of the Old South Presbyterian Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Benjamin Franklin, though a Deist, was an enthusiastic supporter of Whitefield.

The churches which embraced this revival were the Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Congregational, and German Reformed. It had minimal, if any, impact on the Quaker, Lutheran, and Anglican communions. The First Great Awakening served as a renewal movement for those already within the church whose membership had been symbolic and relatively meaningless.

The First Great Awakening contributed to the Methodist transformation-to-come in several ways:

a. The revival’s impact on the staid and tradition-bound churches opened the way for Methodism’s informal, spontaneous style.

b. The positive reputations of Edwards and Whitefield created a climate of acceptance for the preaching style and message which was a forerunner to that of the Methodists.

The Second Great Awakening began around 1790 and gained momentum by 1800. By the 1820s, the revival was widespread through the newly acquired lands in the west. By the 1840s, it had played out. The Second Great Awakening had an immense impact. Unlike the First Great Awakening, which reached the membership of the church, the Second brought literally thousands of new members into churches. It expanded the outreach of the churches to new geographical areas. It brought into being several new denominations. The revival was especially beneficiary to the Methodists and Baptists. The eighteen hundred Christian ministers serving in 1775 swelled to nearly forty thousand by 1845. The number of preachers per capita more than tripled; the colonial legacy of one minister per fifteen hundred inhabitants became one per five hundred… . The Congregationalists, which had twice the clergy of any other American church in 1775, could not muster one-tenth the preaching force of the Methodists in 1845.² There were specific reasons for this.

The Second Great Awakening was not one constant ongoing revival but one which broke out in various places, involving different denominations at different times. At the beginning, the revival movement included several of the denominations which had participated in the First Great Awakening. Once begun, the revivals spread like wildfire through Kentucky, Tennessee, and southern Ohio.

The Presbyterians are recognized as those who gave the first initiative to the Second Great Awakening. Credit for the first camp meeting is attributed to Rev. James McGready, pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Gasper River, Logan County, Kentucky.

³

McGready announced a traditional sacramental occasion for the last week in June 1800, with special invitations to Methodists John Page, preacher on the Red River Circuit, and John McGee.

Methodist historian Emory S. Bucke provides this description of the first camp meeting, conveyed here because it became the model for future camp meetings:

When people came to this Cumberland valley from distances of a hundred miles or more and at least thirteen wagons transported people and provisions, the crowd would obviously overflow the capacity of the tiny church and the ability of the neighborhood to feed and house them. The men cleared the brush away from the vicinity of the church, building a stand and log seats for outdoor use. Services were held according to plan, from Saturday evening to Tuesday morning, with the height of revival excitement coming spontaneously after the first night’s formal service ended. The ministers and people continued the meeting indoors, while some retired to sleep in the wagons or in hastily prepared tents made of branches and sheets. Sunday evening found the excitement continuing, with cries of the distressed for mercy turning eventually to joyous shouts of release. No person seemed to wish to go home, reported McGready. Thus had been born the camp meeting.⁴

Following the Presbyterian led meetings at Gaspar River and Muddy River, there was a Methodist Quarterly Meeting in August at Edward’s Chapel.

The news of the unusual camp meetings spread like wildfire and attracted people from distances to see for themselves what was happening. Among those travelers was Barton Stone, Presbyterian pastor of two small churches in Bourbon County, Kentucky. In the spring of 1801, he journeyed to Logan County to investigate the religious situation. He returned convinced it was a work of God. Soon there was, under the preaching of Barton Stone, a revival at Cane Ridge.

It was during the summer Rev. Barton Stone held a sacrament occasion at Cane Ridge, Kentucky. It was estimated the Cane Ridge revival attracted up to as many as twenty thousand people. Numerous Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist⁵ preachers participated in the services.

Beginning on Friday, August 6, 1801, the Cane Ridge camp meeting went on for a week, with continuous religious services either in public or private exercise of devotion. Stine’s church stood in a beautiful grove, finely shaded and watered and admirably adapted to [the] purpose of an encampment. The host congregation had prepared carefully, clearing and leveling a central area two hundred to three hundred yards long. The preachers’ stand was at one end, with a spacious tent, designed as shelter from heat or rain for a large assembly. The ground adjoining