American Methodist History

1
American Methodist History

• Civil War and Reconstruction Period

2
Issues of the Day

• Denominational Competition
• New Science (aka Darwin)
• Slavery
• States Rights

3
Denominationalism

• Constant war of words (and sometimes fists)
  between members of differing denominations
• Issues over infant baptism, worship, prayer,
  ritual and leadership led to numerous debates

4
New Science

• With the publication of Origin of the Species,
  Methodists (like many Christian communities)
  perceive a world view under siege.
• Charles Lyell provides a new view of geology,
  challenging the basis of the Christian creation
  narrative.
• A few rationalist attempts made a reconciliation,
  with little positive result

5
Slavery

• 1844 did not settle the issue of slavery.
• Border states felt caught between the two
  denominations.
• Instead, most persons self-affiliated on
  national, political issues of the day (Union vs.
  Confederacy)
• This division still pitted church against church,
  brother against brother, sister against sister.

6
Methodist Episcopal Church

• During the Civil War, gave unconditional support
  to the Union.
• Bishop Simpsons friendship with Lincoln provided
  symbolic significance for the denomination.
• Simpson conducts Lincolns funeral in
  Springfield, IL

7
Methodist Episcopal Church

• Denomination also supported chaplains during the
  Civil War.
• Over 500 Methodist ministers became regimental
  chaplains.
• Also expanded the denomination into Southern
  territory.
• Questionable to what extent the military assisted
  in such evangelistic efforts.

8
Methodist Episcopal Church, South

• Hardly the church of secession. In fact, rather
  restrained in its commentary.
• While the MEC, South joined the cause of the
  Confederacy, times were more desperate, so
  polemics were less harsh.
• Did develop a vigorous mission to the slaves also
  the voices of abolition were rare, indeed.
  217,000 slaves brought into the church during the
  war.

9
Methodist Episcopal Church, South

• High participation of minister in the war as
  soldiers, many of whom also provided chaplaincy
  service.
• Some groupings of men took on a revivalist flair.
• Buildings suffer excessive damage from Union
  troops
• General Conference of 1862 did not take place due
  to the disruption and danger of civil war.

10
Reconstruction

• For the Methodist Episcopal Church, the end of
  the war meant Union Victory and the expansion of
  the denomination.
• It also meant Gods vindication for the side of
  righteousness
• Interesting enough, several MEC congregations
  interested in providing war relief to their
  southern comrades.

11
Reconstruction

• In large part due to the relationship of Bishop
  Simpson to Lincoln, the Methodist Episcopal
  Church now seen as a Republican Outpost.
• Establishment of Freedmans Aid Societies.

12
Freedmans Aid Society

• During and after the Civil War northern women who
  had been active in the anti-slavery movement
  before the war often formed organizations to help
  former slaves become free members of American
  society. They sent clothing, money, and books to
  the South. In freedmen's aid societies women also
  raised money to send teachers to the South, most
  of whom were young white women. Women in the
  freedmen's aid movement faced many problems.

13
Freedmans Aid Society

• Many in Northern society were not yet ready for
  women to become prominent in public life or to
  assume leadership in national organizations. And,
  although most Northerners supported the end of
  slavery, many feared social equality between the
  races and subscribed to many racist stereotypes
  of African Americans. Lastly, because most men in
  the movement feared that former slaves would
  become dependent on charity, they opposed women's
  efforts to provide adequate resources to former
  slaves.

14
Freedmans Aid Society

• They are now collecting money on a large scale
  from some persons who never before were called
  on, and who have contributed freely. Miller would
  like for all the anti-slavery and freedmen's
  societies to be merged in this--a Reconstructive
  Union. He sent an appeal to our "Friends'
  Association." I told him it was objected, that
  woman was ignored in their new organization, and
  if it really were a reconstruction for the
  nation, she ought not so to be, and that it would
  be rather humiliating for our anti-slavery women
  and Quaker women to consent to be thus
  overlooked, after suffering the Anti-Slavery
  Society to be divided in 1840 rather than yield,
  and after claiming our rights so earnestly in
  London to a seat in the "World's Convention." He
  was rather taken aback, and said, "if there
  seemed a necessity for women," he thought "they
  would be admitted" to which the impetuous reply
  was, "seemed a necessity!! for one half the
  nation to act with you!"
• Lucretia Mott, 19th Woman Rights Leader and Quaker

15
The State of Southern Methodism

• So far as we can ascertain, most of its
  conferences are virtually broken up, its circuit
  system is generally abandoned, its appointments
  without preachers to a great extent, and its
  local societies in utter confusion.
• Christian Advocate, 1865

16
Joshua Soule (1781-1867)

• Joshua Soule was born in Bristol, Maine on August
  1, 1781.  He died in Nashville, Tennessee on
  March 6, 1867.   Soule quickly became known as an
  opponent of Calvinism, Unitarianism, and
  Universalism.

17
Joshua Soule

• When he was twenty-three he was appointed
  presiding elder over the state of Maine. He was
  on the committee to draft the constitution of the
  delegated general conference, which, since 1813,
  has been the fundamental law of the church. He
  was a delegate to the general conference of 1812,
  and also to that of 1816. At the latter he was
  elected book-agent and editor of the "Methodist
  Magazine." He did not like these posts, and had
  made up his mind not to accept a re-election
  but in 1820, before that question was raised, he
  was elected a bishop. 

18
Joshua Soule

• A great debate had occurred on whether presiding
  elders should be elected or, as before, appointed
  by the bishops. Mr. Soule was opposed to their
  election, but the majority of the conference
  voted in favor of it. Having full confidence in
  his sincerity, they elected him bishop, but he
  declined rather than administer what he believed
  to be an unconstitutional law, reentered the
  pastorate, and was stationed first in New York
  and then in Baltimore. 

19
Joshua Soule

• In 1824 the General Conference reversed its
  action and reelected him bishop. These
  circumstances have no parallel in the history of
  the denomination.
• In 1842 Soule visits Great Britain as a delegate
  from the General Conference of the United States
  to the British Wesleyan conference. 

20
Joshua Soule

• In 1844 the General Conference was held in New
  York. Bishop James O. Andrew had become
  complicated with slavery, and the conference
  passed a resolution asking him to desist from the
  exercise of his functions until this encumbrance
  should be removed. It was Bishop Soule's opinion
  that the conference had no right to pass such a
  resolution. Bishop Andrew declined the
  proposition, and the result was a division of the
  church. Bishop Soule adhered to the southern
  members, and when the Methodist Episcopal Church,
  South, was established he went with it, and
  became its Senior Bishop. 

21
Joshua Soule

• In 1848 he visited the General Conference of the
  Methodist Episcopal Church at Pittsburg, but was
  not recognized as a bishop or a delegate, though
  he was courteously received as a visitor. At the
  age of seventy-two he retired from public life.

22
Palmyra Manifesto

• Statement prepared by two dozen ministers and
  twelve laymen in the summer of 1865 in Palmyra,
  Missouri.
• Maintained that continued separation of the two
  denominations of paramount importance, if for no
  other reason, because of all the wrongs
  perpetrated upon the Southern churches by Union
  Troops

23
Palmyra Manifesto

• it is due every principle of self-respect and
  ecclesiastical propriety that we maintain, with
  firm reliance upon the help of the Great Hand of
  the Church, our organization without
  embarrassment or compromise.
• Excerpt from Palmyra Manifesto

24
General Conference of 1866 Methodist Episcopal
Church, South

• Should the laity have representation on the floor
  of the General and Annual Conferences?
• Motion in favor of lay representation passes.
• 1870 General Conference the first with elected
  lay delegation, with equal lay-clergy
  representation.

25
General Conference of 1866 Methodist Episcopal
Church, South

• Probationary period for church membership
  abolished.
• Compulsory attendance of class meetings
  abolished.
• Four year limit placed on each itinerate
  appointment or charge.
• Four new bishops elected.

26
General Conference of 1866 Methodist Episcopal
Church, South

• Conference decisions obviously provide a needed
  framework for reconstituting the denomination.
• While white membership increases, black
  membership rapidly declines.
• Less than 20,000 Black American members by 1869.
• White membership by 1875 over 700,000.

27
Methodist Episcopal Church, South

• Continues its mission to the Negroes but
  political changes push toward segregation of
  congregations.
• J.B. McFerrin, assists in the reconstitution of
  publishing and education concerns.
• Sunday schools booming
• Vanderbilt University founded in 1875
• Revivalism resurgent
• Temperance Movement supported by the denomination.

28
Methodist Episcopal Church, South

• The African American membership of The Methodist
  Episcopal Church, South, had declined
  significantly during and after the war. In 1870
  its General Conference voted to transfer all of
  its remaining African American constituency to a
  new church. The Colored Methodist Episcopal
  Church (now called The Christian Methodist
  Episcopal Church) was the product of this
  decision.

29
Meanwhile, in the North

• Rapid urbanization brings an end to Romanticism
  and a rise in Liberal philosophy.
• Methodist Episcopal Church becomes a major urban
  denomination.
• Movement for massive church extension into rural
  areas begins.
• Membership by 1900 exceeds three million.

30
Methodist Episcopal Church

• Continued its general opposition to understanding
  the Episcopacy as a higher, third tier of
  ordination. Instead, Bishop was an office
  served, but not necessarily for life.
• Methodist Protestant Church moved further away
  from the Episcopacy, forming an Annual Council to
  advise bishops in 1875. Annual Council finally
  dissolved by 1892.

31
Methodist Protestant Church

• The Methodist Protestant Church was organized in
  November 1828 in response to growing controversy
  within the Methodist Episcopal Church surrounding
  the representation of lay members within church
  conferences.  Members broke with the Methodist
  Episcopal Church over what they perceived as the
  unlimited exercise of power over church policies
  by the ministry, to the exclusion of lay members. 

32
Methodist Protestant Church

• Rejecting the notion of Episcopal, or
  ministerial, control, the new church designated
  equal representation of ministerial and lay
  members for each conference, thereby assuring
  "the mutual rights of the ministry and the
  laity."  Originally known as The Associated
  Methodist Churches, the later title was adopted
  in 1830 during the Second Annual Conference in
  Baltimore, Maryland.  Beginning with a national
  membership of 5,000 in 1830, membership reached
  196,985 by 1939.

33
Methodist Protestant Church

• The Methodist Protestants being a reform
  movement, were well-known for the battles they
  fought over the great societal issues of the 19th
  century such as slavery, temperance, and secret
  oath-bound societies.
• In regard to slavery, the Methodist Protestants
  were considerably more abolitionist than the
  Methodist Episcopals, probably because the
  smaller body did not have many churches in
  southern states.
• Reunited with Methodist Episcopal Church in 1939.

34
Liberalism

• A 19th century political viewpoint or ideology
  associated with strong support for a broad
  interpretation of civil liberties for freedom of
  expression and religious toleration, for
  widespread popular participation in the political
  process, and for the repeal of protectionist
  legal restrictions inhibiting the operation of a
  capitalist free market economy.

35
Liberalism

• Liberal American Protestantism in the 19th
  century was allied with similar trends in Europe,
  where scholars were reading and interpreting the
  Bible in a new way. They questioned the validity
  of biblical miracles and traditional beliefs
  about the authorship of biblical books. There was
  also the challenge of Charles Darwin's theory of
  evolution to contend with. If human beings were
  descended from other animals, as most scientists
  came to believe, then the story of Adam and Eve,
  the biblical first parents, could not be
  literally true. In this manner, Methodist
  theology and doctrine submitted itself to the
  standards of rationalism and objectivism.

36
Liberalism

• What distinguished 19th-century Liberal
  Protestants was optimism about the human capacity
  for improvement. Some of the early ministers
  believed that the church could accelerate
  progress by trying to reform society. In the
  spirit of the gospels, they began to work on
  behalf of the urban poor.

37
The Question of Itineracy

• During Reconstruction, both denominations
  struggle with the issue of itineracy.
• Many pastors presenting arguments both for and
  against the institution of itineracy.

38
In Favor of Itineracy

• Scriptural institution practiced by Jesus,
  disciples and the primitive church.
• Part of the early beginnings of Methodism
• Advocated by John Wesley
• Practiced by Asbury, Coke and others
• Provided ability of clergy to reach others

39
In Opposition of Itineracy

• Itineracy a human invention.
• Times have changed since Wesley and Asbury.
• Permanent appointments would improve efficiency
  and encourage preachers to be more studious and
  devoted.
• Impossible to promote a stable, moral existence
  under such a system.
• Continued threat to the family.
• Parishioners do not like the system.

40
Decline of Class Meeting

• Domesticated by the Sunday school
• When Circuit Riders take appointments, class
  leader and local preacher positions no longer
  necessary.

41
Decline of the Camp Meeting

• Annual Conferences begin to purchase land as
  permanent camp meeting spaces.
• Removes the spontaneity of camp meeting
  experience.
• Liberal Protestant movement enhance decline.
• Chautauqua, as a logical, well planned summer
  series of lectures, emerges.
• Camp meetings still held in the South (revivalism
  still a part of the Methodist Spirit)