Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T14:15:48.577Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Puzzle of American Methodism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Nathan O. Hatch
Nathan O. Hatch
Affiliation:
professor of history and vice president of graduate studies and research in the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Picture, if you will, the rich landscape of American religious history that has taken shape over the last half century. At least three features of this terrain stand out, the first being a richly-textured panorama before us, a recognizable field of study that has come into existence in a relatively short span of time. This field has been shaped by a varietyof forces, among them the vast expansion of religion departments since 1960, the recovery of the role of religion in the broader disciplines of history, literature, sociology and political science, and the stubborn persistence of religion in modern American life which scholars struggle to explain.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , June 1994 , pp. 175 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. May, Henry F., “The Recovery of American Religious History,” American Historical Review 70 (1964): 79–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. The epitome of this tradition is Ahlstrom's, Sydney E. brilliant synthesis, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, 1972).Google Scholar

3. See Mead, Sidney E., The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America (New York, 1963)Google Scholarand Marty, Martin E., Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

4. Hudson, Winthrop S., The Great Tradition of the American Churches (New York, 1953).Google Scholar

5. Bratt, James D., “A New Narrative for American Religious History?” Fides et Historia 23 (1991): 19–30.Google ScholarStout, Harry S. and Taylor, Richard, “Studies of Religion in American Society: The State of the Art,” a paper presented 21 October 1993 for the conference New Directions in American Religious History: The Protestant Experience, Wingspread Conference Center, Racine, Wisconsin.Google Scholar

6. Moore, R. Laurence, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York, 1986);Google ScholarButler, Jon, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, 1990).Google Scholar

7. Bloom, Harold, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York, 1992);Google ScholarFinke, Roger and Stark, Rodney, The Churching of America, 1776–1990 (New Brunswick, 1992).Google Scholar

8. Mathews, Donald G., Slavery and Methodism: A Chapter in American Morality: 1780–1845 (Princeton, 1965);Google ScholarSmith, Timothy L., Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (New York, 1957).Google Scholar

9. Halevy, Elie, England in 1815, translated by Watkin, E. I. and Barker, D. A. (New York, 1961), first published in French in 1913;Google ScholarThompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963);Google ScholarHobsbawm, Eric J., Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (London, 1968).Google Scholar

10. Richey, Russell E., Early American Methodism (Bloomington, Ind., 1991);Google ScholarRichey, Russell E., Rowe, Kenney E., and Schmidt, Jean Miller, Perspectives on American Methodism: Interpretive Essays (Nashville, 1993);Google Scholarand Schneider, A. Gregory, The Way of the Cross Leads Home: The Domestication of American Methodism (Bloomington, Ind., 1993).Google Scholar

11. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, Annually Held in America; From 1773 to 1813, Inclusive (New York, 1813), p. 612.Google Scholar

12. Finke, Roger and Stark, Rodney, “How the Upstart Sects Won America: 1776–1850,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 28 (1989): 27–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarBy this time the influence of once-dominant churches had declined precipitously: Congregationalists from 20.4 percent to 4 percent of adherents, Episcopalians from 15.7 percent to 3.5 percent, and Presbyterians from 19 percent to 11.6 percent.Google ScholarSee also Coleman, Robert Emerson, “Factors in the Expansion of the Methodist Episcopal Church from 1784 to 1812,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1954), pp. 363–399.Google Scholar

13. Carwardine, Richard J., Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New Haven, 1993), pp. 114–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Asbury, Francis, The Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury, ed. Clark, Elmer C., Potts, J. Manning, and Payton, Jacob S., 3 vols. (Nashville, 1958), 3: 332.Google Scholar

15. Assessing this kind of evidence, Wigger, John argues in a forthcoming article that the denning characteristic of American Methodism under Francis Asbury was not a theological abstraction like Arminianism, but a quest for the supernatural in everyday life.Google ScholarWigger, John, “Taking Heaven by Storm: Enthusiasm and Early American Methodism, 1770–1820,” forthcoming, Journal of the Early Republic.Google Scholar

16. Schaff, Philip quoted in Nast, William, “Dr. Schaff and Methodism,” Methodist Quarterly Review 31 (1857): 431.Google ScholarOn these themes, see Yoder, Don, “The Bench Versus the Catechism: Revivalism and Pennsylvania's Lutheran and Reformed Churches,” Pennsylvania Folklife 10 (1959): 14–23;Google Scholarand Hatch, Nathan O., The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, 1989), pp. 102–113, 153–54.Google Scholar

17. Pocock, Emil, “Popular Roots of jacksonian Democracy: The Case of Dayton, Ohio, 1815–1830,” Journal of the Early Republic 9 (1989): 489–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Laurie, Bruce, Working People of Philadelphia, 1800–1850, pp. 46–48.Google Scholar

19. Stevens, Abel, The Life of Nathan Bangs, D. D. (New York, 1863).Google ScholarPrentice, George, Wilbur Fish (Boston, 1890).Google Scholar

20. Brown, Richard D., Knowledge is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700–1865 (New York, 1989), pp. 190–193, 235–240;Google ScholarFletcher, Calvin, The Diary of Calvin Fletcher, ed. Thornbrough, Gayle et al. , 9 vols. (Indianapolis, 1972–1983), 1: 98.Google Scholar

21. The phrase “boiling hot religion” is that of Wallcut, Thomas in a letter of 31 October 1789 from “Muskingum,” Ohio to James Freeman, a Unitarian minister in Boston. I am grateful to Anthony Stoneburner for bringing to my attention this letter which is located at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.Google Scholar

22. Wacker, Grant, “The Functions of Faith in Primitive Pentecostalism,” Harvard Theological Review 77 (1984): 353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Semmel, Bernard, The Methodist Revolution (New York, 1973).Google Scholar

24. Relevant works include Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class;Google ScholarHobsbawm, Eric, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour;Google ScholarObelkevich, James, Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey, 1825–1875 (Oxford, 1976)Google Scholar, Gilbert, A. D., Religion and Society in Industrial England: Church, Chapel, and Social Change, 1740–1914 (London, 1976);Google ScholarWard, W. R., Religion and Society in England, 1790–1850 (New York, 1973);Google ScholarHempton, David, Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750–1850 (Stanford, 1984);Google Scholarand Valenze, Deborah M., Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England (Princeton, 1985)Google Scholar

25. Wood, Gordon S., “The Significance of the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 8 (1988): 1–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarSee also Wiebe, Robert H., The Opening of American Society: From the Adoption of the Constitution to the Eve of Disunion (New York, 1984);Google ScholarWilentz, Sean, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850;Google ScholarAppleby, Joyce, Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s (New York, 1984);Google ScholarTaylor, Alan, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760–1820 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1990).Google Scholar

26. Thomas, George M., Revivalism and Cultural Change: Christianity, Nation Building, and the Market in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Chicago, 1989);CrossRefGoogle ScholarMartin, David, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (Oxford, 1990), pp. 21, 43.Google Scholar

27. Brekus, Catherine, “‘Let Your Women Keep Silence in the Churches’: Female Preaching and Evangelical Religion in America, 1740–1845” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1993).Google ScholarSee also Andrews, Doris Elisabett, “Popular Religion and the Revolution in the Middle Atlantic Ports: The Rise of the Methodists, 1770–1800” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1986).Google ScholarImportant studies that give little attention to the Methodists include Bloch, Ruth H., “American Feminine Ideals in Transition: The Rise of the Moral Mother, 1785–1815,” Feminist Studies 4 (1978): 101–126;CrossRefGoogle Scholarand Cott, Nancy, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Women's Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven, 1977).Google Scholar

28. Andrews, William L., Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century (Bloomington, Ind., 1986).Google Scholar

29. Donald Mathews, “Christianizing the South,” a paper presented 23 October 1993 for the conference New Directions in American Religious History: The Protestant Experience, Wingspread Conference Center, Racine, Wisconsin.Google Scholar

30. Hofstadter, Richard, Anti-lntellectualism in America (New York, 1963);Google ScholarDouglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

31. Hudson, Winthrop, “The Methodist Age in America,” Methodist History 12 (1974): 3–15.Google Scholar

32. On Sweet, William Warren, see Ash, James L. jr, Protestantism and the American University: An Intellectual Biography of William Warren Sweet (Dallas, 1982).Google ScholarMead, Sidney E., The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America (New York, 1963), p. 54.Google Scholar

33. Sweet, William Warren, Religion in the Development of American Culture, 1765–1840 (New York, 1952).Google ScholarAccording to Ash, James L. Jr, Sweet “patronized the multitude of sectarian groups in America as little more than institutional and theological anomalies which attracted the mentally unstable.”Google ScholarSee “American Religion and the Academy in the Early Twentieth Century: The Chicago Years of William Warren Sweet,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 50 (1981): 461.Google Scholar

34. Hudson, Winthrop S., The Great Tradition of the American Churches (New York, 1953).Google ScholarMoore, R. Laurence has a superb discussion of this point in “Protestant Unity and the American Mission—The Historiography of a Desire,” the introductory chapter to his book, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York, 1986), pp. 3–21.Google Scholar

35. See Porter, Roy, “The Heart of the Country,” a review of E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common in The New Republic, 4 May 1992, pp. 35–38.Google Scholar

36. Lasch, Christopher, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York, 1991).Google Scholar

37. Haroutunian, Joseph, Piety Versus Moralism: The Passing of the New England Theology (Hamden, Conn., 1964).Google Scholar

38. Warner, Stephen, “Work in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States,” American Journal of Sociology, 99 (1993): 1054–1055.Google Scholar

39. Martin, David, Tongues of Fire, p. 21.Google Scholar

40. Valeri, Mark, “The Economic Thought of Jonathan Edwards,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 60 (1991): 37–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, translated by Reeve, Henry, 2 vols. (New York, 1945), 1: 53, 314.Google Scholar

42. Carwardine, Richard J., Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New Haven, 1993), p. 52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. Bushman, Richard L., The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, 1992), pp. 313–352.Google Scholar