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The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800: The Shaping of an Evangelical Culture, by Dee E. Andrews, Princeton University Press, 2000, 367 pp.; $59.50
The title of Dee Andrews's superb account of early American Methodism, The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760-1800, points to the central paradox of this religious history. The Methodists, reviled as Loyalists by the patriots in the mainstream of American evangelicalism in the 1760s and '70s, only tenuously established themselves in the midst of a Revolution they largely opposed. Yet in the wake of the British defeat, Methodism thrived in the early Republic, and by 1800 was poised to become in the largest denomination in the United States. Indeed, as Andrews puts it, nineteenth-century Methodism virtually became "America's church." How a tiny group of British missionaries navigated the rising tides of American nationalism and turned an unpromising beginning into a triumphal success is the story of her book.
There are many interrelated elements to her fascinating explanation. Andrews, like earlier historians, places great emphasis upon the flexibility and discipline of Methodism's unique organization. Methodism evolved from its origins as a movement within the Church of England. In enlisting itinerant and lay preachers free of the traditional duties and costs of parish priests, John Wesley drew from his experiences both as a missionary in the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and as the leader of voluntary societies of clergy and laity in Britain.
Much of the tightly organized, top-down institutional structure of American Methodism was also owed to its English founder's indefatigable labors and dictatorial style. Beneath Wesley's overriding clerical authority were placed the leading American clergy, most notably Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke, who in turn oversaw a growing number of settled local ministers and a cadre of licensed lay itinerants commissioned to ride circuits in areas without regular clergy. Beneath these hierarchical layers emanated a more informal network of unlicensed male and female preachers and of grassroots lay meetings, called classes, often held within private homes.
This Methodist system of organization was at once highly centralized and capable of infinite expansion, for it provided direction and order to its participants while remaining unencumbered by the need instantly to build churches and to recruit highly trained, official clergymen. The formation of Methodism within the interstices of the Church of England gave rise to a new evangelical method, one that proved ideally suited to the denominational competition and expansion of unchurched territory in post-revolutionary America.
Andrews convincingly argues that early Methodism also possessed special appeal to Americans because of its deviation from aspects of mainstream culture. She lays special stress on Methodist household piety and the religious roles of devout women as running against the grain of traditional ecclesiastical and patriarchal structures both. (The brothers John and Charles Wesley, it should be noted, grew up under the religious tutelage of their fervently evangelical mother, Susanna.)
Traveling missionaries commonly used the lay households in which they were invited guests as their theater of operation. The heroic exertions of the passionate, intensely ascetic, and generally young male circuit riders added greatly to their charismatic appeal, especially to those women who devoted themselves to their care. Women often led the men of their families into the faith, at times becoming recognized religious virtuosos, class leaders, and lay preachers themselves. Subtly loosening the strictures of male domination, early Methodism stimulated the participation of women on various levels, sometimes in direct defiance of their husbands. Its household-based piety, moreover, fostered an intimacy among members of both sexes and encouraged the sense that Methodist societies were alternative families.
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