2.1 Methodist Ideology in the Early 1800s

This is a series titled, "A History of Wesleyan Ideology." The goal is to look at the ideological and cultural forces that have converged to shape The Wesleyan Church as we know it today. The picture to the side is that of circuit rider Francis Asbury.

The previous posts have been:

Preface to Wesleyan Ideological History
1.1 Wesley and High Protestantism
1.2 An Archaeology of Wesley's Thinking 

With this post, we begin our journey through the founding and early years of The Wesleyan Methodist Church, which was founded in 1843.

1. It would be easy for Wesleyans to ignore the years from Wesley's death in 1791 to the founding of The Wesleyan Methodist Connection in 1843. But these years were when the Americanization of Wesley began. In these years, American culture began to shape Wesley's founding ideas. How can we fully know what the Wesleyan Methodist Church (WM) was in its beginnings if we do not know what it was reacting to and what it continued from what was before?

When we think of the WM founding, our minds immediately go to the issue of slavery, and that was the biggest factor. But it wasn't the only one. Wesleyan Methodists were just one of several groups that also had problems with the way the Methodist Episcopal Church was led -- including its failure to include non-ministers in its decision-making at that time.

Still, in the end, the Wesleyan Methodists withdrew (and to some extent were pushed out) over the refusal of the broader Methodist Church to take a "Wesley-an" stand against slavery. Instead, the hierarchy tried to smooth over tensions between northern and southern Methodism. Like some efforts on a national level during that period to hold the nation together, Methodism made concessions to slavery in the early decades of the 1800s to try to hold the church together.

It didn't work anyway. Southern Methodism would split from northern Methodism in 1844, the year after the WM Connection was formed. At the 1844 General Conference, a bishop from Georgia was asked to step down for being a slave owner. The result was the biggest split in the Methodist church yet. The ME Church South would remain separate until 1939, when north and south reconnected to form the Methodist Church.

2. The Methodist Episcopal Church was effectively founded in 1784 at the famed "Christmas Conference." John Wesley, who had never intended to form a church, finally recognized that the political separation between Britain and the Americas might require a distinct church in America. He ordained Thomas Coke a "superintendent" in England. Then Coke came to America and ordained Francis Asbury in Baltimore. Both were British. 

Wesley had opposed the Revolutionary War for several reasons. He did not believe Methodists should participate in it. However, Wesley was a realist. What was done was done.

Similarly, Wesley thought it was a mistake for Asbury to take the title of bishop. He preferred for the leadership to be "superintendents." But Asbury preferred bishop, and the Christmas Conference voted him such. 

From where Wesleyans sit today, this was a mistake. The power of the bishopric in the Methodist church has arguably been a constant problem throughout its history. Indeed, the recent separation of the Global Methodist Church has given ample examples of crafty bishops using their power to manipulate congregations and to circumvent the Methodist Discipline.

Bishops in the Methodist Church are elected for life. At the time when the WM Church was founded, there was no lay voice in who was chosen. Bishops had little to no accountability. The WM Church was not the first split that took place in those early decades of Methodism. In 1790, the Republican Methodist Church was founded in part because of a lack of lay representation in church leadership.

In 1830, the Methodist Protestant Church withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church over the issue of governance and the failure of several attempts to include lay representation in church governance. When the WM Church was finally founded, its leaders would be superintendents, not bishops, and there would be an emphasis on parity. The concept of parity is that there be equal numbers of ministerial and lay delegates to its conferences on a district and general level.

The Methodist Protestant Church would also be part of the merger in 1939 when north and south came back together.

3. When we think about cultural trends, clearly democracy and individual liberty were key cultural elements in the American culture of the late 1700s and early 1800s. Americans didn't like monarchs. Francis Asbury in the end was British. He was more comfortable with the idea of a king.

So, it is no coincidence that there would be a push within American Methodism for non-ministerial representation and for what we might call a "presbyterian" form of church governance. In this regard, the "congregational" form of governance such as in the Baptist church is consummately American in that regard, where each local church runs its own show. "Freedom of conscience" in the Methodist Protestant Church and "soul freedom" in the Baptist church resonated strongly with American culture.

Nevertheless, the presbyterian form -- where representatives are chosen to conference and leaders are elected to serve for a fixed amount of time -- seems to combine the advantages of other forms of governance while mitigating their weaknesses. This is of course why western representational democracies have been so successful. They build in a balance of power.

The US has a single executive. This has some of the efficiency of a monarch but his or her tenure in office is not permanent. Every four years the leader is reviewed by the people. In much of the history of The Wesleyan Church, it has had multiple General Superintendents. This especially made sense in the age when travel and communication was not so easy. 

The WM church did have a single General Superintendent for many years in Roy Nicholson, but it ground him to a pulp and he strongly advised against it. When the WC recently went to a single General Superintendent in JoAnne Lyon, Lee Haines stood up and advised against it, mentioning Nicholson. Nevertheless, it has worked under Lyon and Schmidt, not least because of a delegation of authority. (I suspect Nicholson was more of a funnel.) These also have been two selfless individuals whose hearts are in the right place.

I personally remain uncertain whether it is ideal to have only one General Superintendent. What would happen if a less godly individual was chosen, someone who was crafty in their wielding of power? We like to think that those the church chooses will always be saintly and wise, but looking back through history, I'm not sure we can always depend on it.

The counterbalance of a strong General Board is thereby important. At present, the collective power of the district superintendents of the church seems rather strong as well as a counterbalance. 

In the end, it's about informed representation as well as proper checks and balances. These are consummately Western cultural values, yes. But they have been proven effective thus far. They are not foolproof but, as Winston Churchill famously said, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others."

In the end, the form of leadership the church takes will likely have a lot to do with the culture in which it is situated. The early church retained some Jewish structures (like groups of elders), but it also had free-ranging charismatic leaders like Paul. These leadership structures fit the first century. It is no surprise that the forms of leadership under different cultures will be different. It fits the incarnational principle. It would be foolish to try to model a form that fit well in the first century but would be self-defeating today.

4. Another feature of some of the early pullouts was the naive hermeneutic that thinks "We're just following the Bible." The early 1800s saw the Cane Ridge revivals and the Stone-Campbell movements that were sick of all the divisions in Christianity and all the different groups that were emerging at the time. Their solution was to go back to the Bible -- "No creed but Christ; no book but the Bible."

This sounds good and is certainly well-intentioned. The problem is that the polyvalence of the Bible stands at the very heart of matter. The fact that the Bible can be interpreted differently by different individuals is the core reason for the endless multiplication of denominations in America. The Stone-Campbell movement is a case in point. It is almost comical how this movement gave birth to so many different denominations that weren't supposed to be denominations but were just following the Bible -- the Christian Church, Churches of Christ (instrumental and non-instrumental), Disciples of Christ, etc. The rate of multiplication for this "no book but the Bible" tradition is a consummate example of the fact that there is always more involved than the Bible. If you don't realize this dynamic, it runs wild and unchecked.

American individualism also played a role. Not only was it each group deciding what they thought the Bible meant. In America, it was every individual deciding what the Bible means. The 1800s are a case study in charismatic individuals going off and starting their own church. Most of these would stay roughly within the lines. But then you would also have Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and many others.

5. James Madison called slavery America's original sin. The slave trade started in Europe and was pernicious, but it seemed the hardest to get rid of in America, no doubt because the southern economy was built on top of it.

The founders of the Wesleyan Methodist connection preached against it and lobbied strongly against it in the Methodist Episcopal Church. In this, they were continuing the position that Wesley had taken in England before his death. The leadership of the ME church found them counterproductive, zealots. Just as America had its "gradualists," who wanted to phase out slavery, so many northern Methodists fell into this camp. 

Were the founders of Wesleyan Methodism zealots? I suspect they were. I suspect they would be strongly resisted by most Wesleyans today. More on that in the next post.

There's also an important distinction between being opposed to slavery and looking down on "Africans" as inferior. There were plenty of people against slavery who were racists of a "softer" sort. (Think for example of the American Colonization Society that wanted to free the slaves and send them back to Africa) The founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816 and the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion in 1821 largely resulted from the marginalization of black worshippers in Philadelphia and New York City respectively.

I had a conversation with some of my children recently in which I wondered if there were shades of racism -- blatant, soft, and benevolent. We all get the concept of someone who flat-out hates people of another race. But then there are those who have biases that are more subtle. Maybe someone automatically locks their doors when someone of a different color approaches. I call this "soft racism." Then there are those who try to "help those poor people," in effect demeaning another race by assuming they need help. I've heard this called "benevolent racism." One of my children said, "Nope, it's all just racism." :-)

It's clear that the ME leaders of Philadelphia wanted the black worshippers to be in their place. They didn't want them sitting in good seats in church. They didn't want them owning their own church property or serving as elders. Although he resisted it for a long time, eventually, Richard Allen formed the AME church so that blacks in Philadelphia could worship freely and spread the gospel freely. The AME church would grow much faster than the white congregations in Pennsylvania. 

6. The "trust clause" was also a part of early American Methodism, going back to Wesley himself. This is the idea that the district holds the property deeds to local churches. This has been extremely controversial in the split of the United Methodist Church because congregations that wanted to leave in effect had to get permission from the UM church. There was a window when there was a process for exit, but it was (in the minds of some) abruptly closed at the last General Conference, leaving congregations who were more hesitant to leave at first in an uncomfortable situation.

The Wesleyan Church has inherited this practice. It emphasizes the unity and connection of local churches as one body. It makes it hard for schism to happen, where a charismatic figure leads a local church away from the denomination. It gives a tool for the broader church to stem off heresy in a local body. At the moment, the UM debacle has left many Wesleyans afraid of what would happen if the general church became the heretic.

I have mixed feelings about the trust clause. It made sense in Wesley's day because he helped fund the churches. It made sense in the 1800s when the church was largely uneducated and "go start a cult" was in the water. I think it has been a positive feature of Wesleyan colleges. None of the Wesleyan colleges can split off from the church and go its own way. Balance of power and checks and balances are always the name of the game.

At the same time, we should be aware of the cultural impact of hyper-individualism on us and the cult of freedom that is part of America's culture. For Paul, our freedom is from sin, which entails a slavery to righteousness. In Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8-10, Paul emphasizes that my individual freedom is never an excuse to harm or put a stumblingblock in front of others. The New Testament models a corporate interconnectedness and accountability.

The American impulse is for me (or my local church or my denomination) to do it my way. But that is not the biblical way. Beware the gravitational pull of culture on this one