One Family Under God. Anna M. Lawrence
Atlantic world was a crucible of religious exchange in the eighteenth century. The Methodist family flourished in this transatlantic arena as early evangelicals established a missionary project to spread the word, both domestically and universally. The early evangelical movement had three main characteristics: transcendence, sociability, and mobility. Evangelicals repeatedly sought to transcend their physical bodies in order to have a better union with God, and they sought to connect with one another in order to find support for their individual religious journeys. They found sustenance among many different kinds of people, whose only essential commonality was their overriding desire for salvation. The religious family expanded connections between evangelical members who were not related by blood and not necessarily connected by nationality, ethnicity, or race.
Eighteenth-century evangelicals achieved this transcendence and sociability through the expansive print culture and mobility of people circulating throughout the Atlantic world. This mobility was central to how Methodism expanded as a family—from the circuits that kept preachers in constant rotation to the outdoor revivals where evangelicals traveled to meet with each other. Just as evangelicals were itinerant, their language was also mobilized by the increased circulation and production of print material. Methodists spanned the vast distance of the Atlantic through epistolary and print means more commonly than by actually crossing the ocean themselves. The circulation of evangelical discourse formed the basis of their spiritual unity, overcoming the great distance between evangelical groups.
Formative episodes in early Methodist history occurred in England, Wales, Ireland, America, and even on the Atlantic Ocean itself. This organization grew as a transatlantic movement with ideas, discourse, and people crisscrossing the Atlantic throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Methodism was not an English transplant on American soil; it matured within a culture of exchange. Because of founder John Wesley’s charisma and organizational strengths, Methodist histories tend to focus on Oxford or his home of Epworth, England, as the sites of Methodism’s genesis. In some historical narratives, the transatlantic scope of Methodism only arises during the post-Revolutionary period when American Methodist leaders challenged John Wesley’s leadership. But there were important earlier chapters of significant transatlantic cultural exchange. One such period was when John and Charles Wesley undertook an Anglican mission in Georgia in 1735 and put a number of early Methodist social and organizational ideas to the test. Subsequently, in the late 1730s and 1740s, American and English revivalists fed off each other, swapping conversion accounts and methods for evangelizing the transatlantic arena. Transatlantic dialogues occurred between American and English evangelicals and also between European pietists, like the Moravians, and nascent Methodists. Moravianism and the broader transatlantic evangelical culture helped to spark Methodists’ simultaneous concentration on the mission of converting souls and formulating a domestic religiosity, the foundation for the Methodist family.
Origins of Methodism
Any discussion of the origins of a social or religious movement is tricky. A movement does not spring forth fully formed at one point in time; instead, multiple strains coalesce to produce a movement. Still, like any storyteller or listener, we appreciate even a provisional starting point. One date to begin talking about Methodism’s birth might be 1729, when John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and others began meeting in “the Holy Club” at Oxford University.1 Some historians frame the beginnings of Methodism with a biography of Wesley, starting with his birth in 1703, emphasizing his parents’ interesting mix of high church and dissenting strains.2 Some early histories of English evangelicalism choose a very specific beginning, John Wesley’s conversion on May 24, 1738, at “about a quarter to nine,” to be precise.3
Methodism came out of the broader evangelical movement, but it was not the only spoke in that wheel. While he was the primary founder of Methodism, it would be a mistake to locate the genesis of Methodism and its ideas solely in John Wesley. For one, George Whitefield, a fellow member of the Oxford Holy Club, had experienced his own conversion earlier, in 1735, and was a leading itinerant by 1738. Well before John Wesley’s rise, Whitefield was touring throughout the Atlantic world, in the American colonies, England, and Wales. In addition, British evangelicalism began not with Wesley-centered revivals but with Welsh dissenters, who emerged prior to the inception of Methodism. The major formative period for evangelicalism in the British Atlantic world commenced as early as 1714, when there was a small Welsh revival led by Griffith Jones. There were larger numbers of successful revivals after Anglican clergymen Daniel Rowlands and Howell Davies began itinerating in 1735. In 1736, the renowned Welsh preacher Howell Harris started his itinerant preaching career, and he became particularly instrumental in fomenting robust revivals, forming small spiritual societies, and encouraging lay preaching; all these elements eventually became cornerstones of Methodist practice.4
If one links Methodist history to the Welsh revivals and the meetings of the Holy Club, it becomes clear that Methodism began as a collaborative movement, drawing upon a sometimes uncoordinated and contradictory set of leaders and influences. Charles Wesley started the Holy Club in 1729, before his elder brother John became its true leader.5 The club’s structure was less like a cohesive organization and more like a network of associations. The Holy Club was actually a diverse, shifting group of societies that met within different colleges at Oxford during the early 1730s.6 The title “Methodist” was originally an aspersion, cast by fellow students who satirized the methodical, monotonous religious life that its members promoted.7 John Wesley was particularly taken with rules for keeping one’s life in the narrow way, as his mother, Susanna, had imposed a sense of spiritual order at an early age. He read widely and was particularly taken with Dr. George Cheyne’s teachings on health and nutrition, as well as seventeenth-century devotional writer Jeremy Taylor’s rules for holy living.8 These rules included limiting entertaining diversions and mixing with the opposite sex in order to keep the mind focused on spiritual goals. The Holy Club meetings elaborated on the methodical practices of regular prayer and selfexamination that John Wesley had begun to institute in his personal practice. These proto-Methodist meetings included a mix of discussions of classical literature and theology, alongside the dissection of a holy life.
If we take the Holy Club as the opening chapter of Methodism, a few aspects central to the Methodist character become apparent. The Holy Club established some of the key elements in Methodist religiosity, the spiritual fellowship and sociability found outside of formal institutions. The Holy Club correlated religious goals with social ones; members held each other accountable for maintaining daily religious practices, but also for refraining from social practices that could be harmful to their souls. The club advocated getting out of bed when it was still dark and praying very early, so as to avoid masturbation.9 The club also warned against running after the “pretty creatures” of London. Charles Wesley frequently attended London theaters and had some romantic relationships with actresses there.10 When criticized by his older brother John, Charles responded, “What, would you have me be a saint all at once?”11 Also, these proto-Methodists invoked a strong sense of association, formulating a network that went outside of blood family ties. One of the crucial aspects of family ties is religious association, and families expected that their children would grow up in the religious traditions of their family. In formulating their own religious society, the Wesley brothers provided a forum for religiosity that was distinct from their fellow students’ religious practices of churchgoing. The Holy Club’s underpinning belief was that institutional adherence was not enough. On the individual level, pulling away from traditional religious institutions had an effect on the individual’s family; taken collectively, the innovation of new spiritual organizations was a form of dissent.
Religious dissent was not welcome in eighteenth-century English society. Yet Oxford, like many English institutions, was growing more tolerant of dissent in the early eighteenth century. The fact that Oxford University tolerated Holy Club meetings in the early 1730s demonstrates that the eighteenth-century Church of England was, to a degree, more lenient toward dissenters than it had been in the previous century. In fact, this toleration contrasted sharply with the violently fractured religious atmosphere of the seventeenth century, which witnessed the English Civil War. Dee Andrews writes that in the eighteenth century, “Nonconformists were no longer perceived by the Anglican majority as dangerous schismatics