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Revivalism, Historians, and Lived Religion in the Eastern Canada-United States Borderlands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Hannah Lane
Hannah Lane*
Affiliation:
Mount Allison University
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Extract

Historians of evangelicalism in Canada and the United States have long debated the timing and nature of changes in revivalism in the northeast during the nineteenth century and the vocabulary that best describes these changes. Calvinist and Arminian theologies provided two approaches to this history: revivalism and ‘declension’ as widespread but cyclical, and wholly dependent on God; or revivalism as a dispersed but continual force, sustained also by human effort. The former framework has informed studies of Baptists and Congregationalists, and the latter, studies of Methodists, whose history did not fit common periodizations of the Second Great Awakening.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 44: Revival and Resurgence in Christian History , 2008 , pp. 251 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2008

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References

1 Long, Kathryn, The Revival of 1857–58: Interpreting an American Religious Awakening (New York and Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar; Carwardine, Richard, Trans-Atlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America 1790–1865 (Westport, CT, 1978)Google Scholar; Hempton, David, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (London and New Haven, CT, 2005)Google Scholar.

2 French, Goldwin, Parsons and Politics: the Role of the Wesleyan Methodists in Upper Canada and the Maritimes (Toronto, Ont., 1962)Google Scholar; Semple, Neil, The Lord’s Dominion: the History of Canadian Methodism (Montreal, Que. and Kingston, Ont, 1996)Google Scholar; Rawlyk, George, The Canada Fire: Radical Evangelicalism in British North America 1775–1812 (Montreal, Que. and Kingston, Ont., 1994)Google Scholar.

3 Rawlyk, G. A., ed., Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience (Montreal, Que. and Kingston, Ont, 1997)Google Scholar; Crouse, Eric R., Revival in the City: the Impact of American Evangelists in Canada (Montreal, Que. and Kingston, Ont., 2005)Google Scholar; Christie, Nancy and Gauvreau, Michael, A Full-Orbed Christianity: the Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada 1900–1940 (Montreal, Que. and Kingston, Ont., 1996)Google Scholar.

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5 Hall, David D., ed., Lived Religion in America: toward a History of Practice (Princeton, NJ, 1997)Google Scholar. The few Canadian studies to take this approach include Marks, Lynne, Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure, and Identity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Small-town Ontario (Toronto, Ont., 1996)Google Scholar, and Die, Marguerite Van, “The Marks of a Genuine Revival”: Religion, Social Change, Gender, and Community in Mid-Victorian Brantford, Ontario’, Canadian Historical Review 79 (1998), 524–63 Google Scholar.

6 This is documented more fully in Lane, , ‘Tribalism, Proselytism, and Pluralism: Protestants, Family, and Denominational Identity in Mid-Nineteenth Century St Stephen, New Brunswick’, in Christie, Nancy, ed., Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Community in Canada 1760–1969 (Montreal, Que. and Kingston, Ont., 2002), 103–37 Google Scholar; Lane, , ‘Methodist Church Members, Lay Leaders and Socio-economic Position in Mid-Nineteenth Century St Stephen, New Brunswick’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, 2004 Google Scholar and eadem, , ‘Re-Numbering Souls: Lay Methodism and Church Growth in St Stephen, New Brunswick, 1861–1881’, unpublished MA thesis, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton 1993 Google Scholar.

7 Knowlton, I. C., Annals of Calais, Maine, and St Stephen, New Brunswick (Calais, 1875 Google Scholar; rpt. St Stephen, NB, 1875), 10–14; Rev. Millet, Joshua, History of the Baptists in Maine (Portland, ME, 1845), 369–70 Google Scholar; Acheson, T. W., ‘Methodism and the Problem of Methodist Identity in Nineteenth-Century New Brunswick’, in Scobie, Charles H. H. Google Scholar and Grant, John Webster, eds, The Contribution of Methodism to Atlantic Canada (Montreal, Que. and Kingston, Ont., 1992), 107–23 Google Scholar.

8 Census of the Province of New Brunswick (Saint John, NB, 1861); ‘adherence’ and ‘adherents’ follow nineteenth-century usage, referring to what was recorded on Canadian census returns.

9 ‘Social Statistics’, Censuses of Calais and Baring, 1850 and 1860, available on microfilm at Maine State Archives, Augusta, Maine, USA.

10 Fits, Ann Taves, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to Jama (Princeton, NJ, 1999)Google Scholar.

11 See the annual ‘Spiritual Reports’ and letters sent to the Committee of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, available on microfilm at Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada; after 1855, the best sources are The Provincial Wesleyan and local newspapers.

12 Minutes, Washington Baptist Association, Maine, 1843–62; Minutes, Maine Baptist Convention, 1834–81; Dexter, H. V., ‘Farewell Sermon’, St Croix Courier, 22 April 1869 Google Scholar.

13 Minutes, New Brunswick Association of Baptists, 1834–44; Minutes, Western New Brunswick Association of Baptists, 1845–81.

14 Carter, Michael D., Converting the Wasteplaces of Zion: the Maine Missionary Society 1807–1862 (Wolfeboro, NH, 1990)Google Scholar; Keeler, Seth H., The Apostolic Method of Church Extension (Augusta, ME, 1853)Google Scholar, and idem, A Semi-centennial Discourse, delivered at Calais, Me., June 3, 1879. Minutes, Washington Baptist Association, Maine, 1843–62; Maine Baptist Convention, 1834–81; H.V. Dexter, ‘Farewell Sermon’, St Croix Courier, 22 April 1869.

15 Provincial Wesleyan, 22 November 1851; 10 November 1869; 31 January 1872.

16 Lane, , ‘Re-Numbering Souls’, 77–9, 83–4 Google Scholar; Richardson, W. Ralph, ‘Methodist Revivalism and the Baptists of Eastern British America in 1858’, in Priestly, David T., ed., A Fragile Stability: Definition and Redefinition of Maritime Baptist Identity (Hantsport, NS, 1994), 21–34 Google Scholar; Ricker, Joseph, Personal Recollections (Augusta, ME, 1894), 102–3 Google Scholar.

17 Provincial Wesleyan, 2 October 1856; 5 October 1871; 29 August 1860.

18 ‘Spiritual Report’, St Stephen Circuit, 1836, available on microfilm at Maritime Conference Archives, United Church of Canada, Saclcville, New Brunswick, Canada; see also Carter, Converting the Wasteplacesof Zion, 53.

19 Enoch Wood, Committee of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, 16 February 1844 and ‘Spiritual Report’, St Stephen Circuit, 1844, available on microfilm at Maritime Conference Archives, see n. 18 above; St Croix Courier, 29 November 1867.

20 Provincial Wesleyan, 20 May 1858; see also 23 March 1864.

21 See Lane, ‘Re-Numbering Souls’, 66–71.

22 Provincial Wesleyan, 10 September 1862; 4 May 1874.

23 Smith, T. Watson, History of Methodism in Eastern British North America, 2 vols (Halifax, NS, 1877), 2: 251–2 Google Scholar; Cooney, Robert, Autobiography of a Wesleyan Methodist Missionary (Montreal, Que., 1856), 212–14 Google Scholar.

24 Provincial Wesleyan, 6June 1860.

25 Cited in Reid, John G., Mount Allison University: a History, vol. 1:1843–1914 (Toronto, Ont., 1984), 38–41 Google Scholar; Provincial Wesleyan, 7 April 1859.

26 Lane, , ‘Re-Numbering Souls’, 76–7, 178–80, 185–7 Google Scholar; McClymond, Michael J., ‘Issues and Explanations in the Study of North American Revivalism’, idem, ed., Embodying the Spirit: New Perspectives on North American Revivalism (Baltimore, MD, and London, 2004), 1–46 Google Scholar.

27 Provincial Wesleyan, 31 March 1877.

28 St Croix Courier, 10 January – 21 February 1878, Provincial Wesleyan, 2 March 1878; Records, St Stephen Circuit, 1878.

29 Provincial Wesleyan, 19 April 1855; see also Christie, ‘Re-Numbering Souls’, chs 4 and 5.

30 Historical Sketch of the First Congregational Church, Calais, Maine, with Confession of Faith, Covenant, Rules and Catalogue of Members to May, 1877 (Boston, MA, 1877); Records of the Congregational Church, Calais, Maine, 1825–81 (xerox, Maine Historical Society, Portland) and of the First Orthodox Congregational Church, Milltown, 1845–81 (Provincial Archives of New Brunswick), Manual of Congregationalism (Portland, ME, 1859).

31 See Ricker, Personal Recollections and note 13 above.

32 Lane, , ‘Evangelicals, Church Finance, and Wealth-holding in Mid-Nineteenth Century St Stephen, New Brunswick and Calais, Maine’, in Gauvreau, Michael and Hubert, Ollivier, eds, The Churches and Social Order in Nineteenth-and Twentieth-Century Canada (Montreal, Que. and Kingston, Ont, 2006), 109–50 Google Scholar.

33 See Dexter, H. V., ‘Farewell Sermon’, St Croix Courier, 22 April 1869 Google Scholar.

34 Provincial Wesleyan, 11 January 1879, 1 February 1879, 2 September 1881.

35 Semple, , Lord’s Dominion Google Scholar; Westfall, William, Two Worlds: the Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Montreal, Que. and Kingston, Ont, 1989), 76–89 Google Scholar.

36 Rabinowitz, Richard, The Spiritual Self in Everyday Life: the Transformation of Religious Experience in Nineteenth-Century New England (Boston, MA, 1989)Google Scholar.

37 See also Clark, Calvin, History of the Congregational Churches in Maine, 2 vols (Portland, ME, 1926), 1: 342–4 Google Scholar.

38 Provincial Wesleyan, 11 January 1879; Huestis, Stephen F., Centenary of Methodism in Eastern British America 1782–1882 (Halifax, NS, 1882), 65 Google Scholar; see also Ricker, , Personal Recollections, 103 Google Scholar, and Burrage, Henry S., History of the Baptists in Maine (Portland, ME, 1904), 470 Google Scholar.

39 See Westfall, William, ‘Voices from the Attic: the Canadian Border and the Writing of American Religious History’, in Tweed, Thomas A., ed., Retelling U.S. Religious History (Berkely and Los Angeles, CA, 1997), 181–99 Google Scholar. Thus, Canadian-American differences seem sharper when the American South is included. In contrast, see David Bell’s nuanced analysis of non-Calvinist Baptists in Maine and Brunswick, New, ‘Yankee Preachers and the Struggle for the New Brunswick Christian Conference, 1828–1838’, in Goodwin, Daniel C., ed., Revivals, Baptists, and George Rawlyk (Wolfville, NS, 2000), 93–112 Google Scholar.

40 Little, J. I., Borderland Religion: the Emergence of an English-Canadian Identity, 1792–1852 (Toronto, Ont., 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 See Lane, ‘Tribalism, Proselytism, and Pluralism’, and Carwardine, Richard, ‘Unity, Pluralism, and the Spiritual Market-Place: Interdenominational Competition in the Early American Republic’, in Swanson, R. N., ed., Unity and Diversity in the Church, SCH 32 (Oxford, 1996), 297–335 Google Scholar.