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A New Church in a New Nation

John Wigger

in American Saint Francis Asbury and the Methodists

American Methodism expanded dramatically in the 1780s, built on the consolidation Asbury brought to the movement after the war. Membership rose from 8,500 in 1780 to 57,600 in 1790 and the number of ... More

American Methodism expanded dramatically in the 1780s, built on the consolidation Asbury brought to the movement after the war. Membership rose from 8,500 in 1780 to 57,600 in 1790 and the number of preaching circuits increased from twenty-one to ninety-eight. To provide leadership and the sacraments for American Methodism, John Wesley began ordaining preachers in 1784. He ordained Thomas Coke a superintendent for America, much to the chagrin of Charles Wesley. Coke then ordained Asbury at the so-called Christmas conference in December 1784, where the American preachers voted to create the independent Methodist Episcopal Church in America. The Christmas conference also voted to expand the rules against Methodists holding slaves, though these rules were rolled back six months later. The church also sent unsuccessful antislavery petitions to the Virginia Assembly. Coke and Asbury meanwhile began the process of constructing Cokesbury College in Abingdon, Maryland.Less

Spiritual Armories on the New Suburban Landscape

Jeanne Halgren Kilde

in When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America

After the Civil War, population growth, industrialization, and urbanization significantly affected evangelical congregations. As many established congregations decided to move away from their ... More

After the Civil War, population growth, industrialization, and urbanization significantly affected evangelical congregations. As many established congregations decided to move away from their original downtown locations and build churches in the new suburbs, church mission, location, and architectural style became intertwined. The trend toward medievalism and the widespread adoption of the Richardsonian Romanesque architectural style underscored the domestic or member‐focused internal mission of congregations while at the same time indicating their perception of the risky nature of outreach and evangelizing missions in heterogeneous urban neighborhoods. Resembling armories, these buildings articulated middle‐class ambivalence toward urban life, at once safely sheltering members yet also providing a redoubt from whence forays into the broader community could be launched. This chapter uses a case study approach to investigate congregations and their church buildings, and includes Lovely Lane Church in Baltimore, designed by architect Stanford White, and Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church in Denver, designed by Robert S. Roeschlaub among several buildings examined.Less

Piety on the Plains

Robert Wuthnow

in Red State Religion: Faith and Politics in America's Heartland

This chapter examines how Kansas became a bastion of Protestant Republican conservatism. The 1850s saw the first alliances between Republicans and Methodists in Kansas. The relationship of religion ... More

This chapter examines how Kansas became a bastion of Protestant Republican conservatism. The 1850s saw the first alliances between Republicans and Methodists in Kansas. The relationship of religion to politics that emerged in those years continued through the end of the nineteenth century—and shaped much of what happened in the twentieth century. The relationships between churches and public affairs in Kansas were complicated because Kansans were divided about the state being free or having slavery. Nearly all these complications were evident as Kansas moved toward statehood. The chapter first considers Abraham Lincoln's visit to the Kansas Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church in Atchison during his presidential campaign in 1859 before discussing the role of the churches in establishing civic order in the region's towns and farming communities. It also explores public religion, how abolition and temperance brought church leaders and politics together, and church expansion in Kansas.Less

Apostles of New Abolition

Gary Dorrien

in The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel

Henry McNeal Turner and Ida B. Wells-Barnett were pioneers of the black social gospel, both as militant anti-lynching activists and within the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Turner paved the way ... More

Henry McNeal Turner and Ida B. Wells-Barnett were pioneers of the black social gospel, both as militant anti-lynching activists and within the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Turner paved the way for new abolition movements and organizations that he did not join, and Wells-Barnett had embattled relationships with them.Less

Schism

John Wigger

in American Saint Francis Asbury and the Methodists

William Glendinning and William Hammet represented two significant challenges to Asbury’s authority in the early 1790s. Though neither was much of a direct threat, together they helped to set the ... More

William Glendinning and William Hammet represented two significant challenges to Asbury’s authority in the early 1790s. Though neither was much of a direct threat, together they helped to set the stage for O’Kelly’s protest at the 1792 General Conference. At the conference, O’Kelly proposed that itinerant preachers be allowed to appeal their annual circuit appointments made by Asbury. After much debate, during which Thomas Coke now opposed O’Kelly, the conference rejected O’Kelly’s proposal and he left the church. With a group of followers O’Kelly started a new church, the Republican Methodist Church.Less

United Methodism in Crisis: Scriptural Renewal through the Good News Movement

in Public Pulpits: Methodists and Mainline Churches in the Moral Argument of Public Life

Liberalism in theology had gained “full domination of official Methodism” by the 1920s, and New Left liberationism had followed its lead a half century later. Over these decades, evangelical ... More

Liberalism in theology had gained “full domination of official Methodism” by the 1920s, and New Left liberationism had followed its lead a half century later. Over these decades, evangelical conservatives had been increasingly excluded and eventually disenfranchised as second-class citizens in the United Methodist Church. In pursuing this work and pushing against the consensual weight of the ecumenical liberalism prevailing in the church, the Good News movement gained “deeper knowledge of the labyrinthian ecclesiastical power complex which determines and controls denominational politics touching every local church.” Good News mobilized to combat this threat. From the pages of its magazine sprang a stream of ten petitions and four resolutions, carried by Good News board members into the legislative proceedings of the 1972 Methodist General Conference.Less

United Methodism in Crisis: Prophetic Witness through the Board of Church and Society

in Public Pulpits: Methodists and Mainline Churches in the Moral Argument of Public Life

The United Methodist Building is the last nongovernmental edifice left facing directly onto the Capitol. Dedicated in 1924 by the Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals of the Methodist ... More

The United Methodist Building is the last nongovernmental edifice left facing directly onto the Capitol. Dedicated in 1924 by the Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals of the Methodist Episcopal Church (North), the building today houses the Washington offices of the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the National Council of Churches, and a score of other religious agencies and advocacy groups, earning it the nickname “the God Box.” The building's prime tenant and landlord is the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society (GBCS), established there to represent and give voice to “the religious conscience of America.” The board is directed by the United Methodist Church to project plans and programs that challenge its members to work for righteousness through their own local churches, through ecumenical channels, and through society at large. The GBCS is charged to carry out a remarkably broad array of missions of moral and social inquiry, advocacy, education, planning, and programming that extend nationwide from Capitol Hill to local church pews and back again.Less

Faith and Freedom: The Institute on Religion and Democracy

in Public Pulpits: Methodists and Mainline Churches in the Moral Argument of Public Life

The Institute on Religion and Democracy began with a bang. It issued from a report fired across the bow of the United Methodist Church in 1980, aimed at challenging the “peace-and-justice” course set ... More

The Institute on Religion and Democracy began with a bang. It issued from a report fired across the bow of the United Methodist Church in 1980, aimed at challenging the “peace-and-justice” course set by leaders of the Methodist General Board of Church and Society and the General Board of Global Ministries. “Most Methodist church-goers would react with disbelief, even anger,” the report began, “to be told that a significant portion of their weekly offerings were being siphoned off to groups supporting the Palestine Liberation Organization, the governments of Cuba and Vietnam, and the pro-Soviet totalitarian movements of Latin America, Asia and Africa, and several violence-prone fringe groups in this country,” so charged the report's author, David Jessup, a new member of the United Methodist Church in a large suburban congregation outside Washington, D.C.Less

From Cold War to Culture Wars: The Evolution of the IRD

in Public Pulpits: Methodists and Mainline Churches in the Moral Argument of Public Life

In the first five years of its existence, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) launched an influential investigation of Methodist “peace-and-justice” grants and programs it found tilted to ... More

In the first five years of its existence, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) launched an influential investigation of Methodist “peace-and-justice” grants and programs it found tilted to the political left. It allied with Good News, the leading evangelical church-renewal group in the United Methodist Church, to organize Methodists opposed to these policies. Through the 1980s, the IRD focused on international issues. It championed U.S. policy in the Caribbean cold war, demanded alternatives to the African National Congress in South Africa, and cheered the decline and fall of the Soviet bloc as the dawn of a new era of democratic capitalism around the world. In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR, the IRD championed the prospect of twin democratic and capitalist revolutions to transform North-South conflicts as well as East-West divisions.Less

Southern Catholics and Desegregation in Denominational Perspective, 1945–1971

Mark Newman

in Desegregating Dixie: The Catholic Church in the South and Desegregation, 1945-1992

The chapter compares the response of the Catholic Church in the South to desegregation with that of the region’s larger white denominations: the Southern Baptist Convention, the Methodist Church, the ... More

The chapter compares the response of the Catholic Church in the South to desegregation with that of the region’s larger white denominations: the Southern Baptist Convention, the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. It also makes comparisons with Catholics outside the South and with southern Jews, a minority, like Catholics, subject to suspicion and even hostility from the Protestant majority, and with the Northern (later American) Baptist Convention and the Disciples of Christ, both of which had a substantial African American membership. The comparison suggests that white lay sensibilities, more than polity or theology, influenced the implementation of desegregation in the South by the major white religious bodies. Like the major white Protestant denominations, Catholic prelates and clergy took a more progressive approach to desegregation in the peripheral than the Deep South.Less

Moving Uptown

Kyle B. Roberts

in Evangelical Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York City, 1783-1860

This chapter examines how developments reshaping New York in the 1840s and 1850s affected evangelical congregations. Evangelical competition in a dynamic and expansive spiritual marketplace, ... More

This chapter examines how developments reshaping New York in the 1840s and 1850s affected evangelical congregations. Evangelical competition in a dynamic and expansive spiritual marketplace, aggressive church-building strategies, and an embrace of a new rhetoric of domesticity contributed to the growth of the city and the experience of life within it. In turn, the city provided the financial, social, and organizational resources that allowed evangelical congregations to thrive and expand their reach locally, nationally, and globally. The chapter focuses on the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, which provides a useful lens for exploring the ways in which evangelicalism's efforts to transform the city allowed the city ultimately to transform evangelicalism. It revisits John Street at different points in its nearly ninety-year history on the same lot in lower Manhattan.Less

Community

Jennifer Hull Dorsey

in Hirelings: African American Workers and Free Labor in Early Maryland

This chapter focuses on the African Methodist Episcopal Church and its meaning for free men and women in rural Maryland. Founded in 1816 by Reverend Richard Allen in collaboration with other African ... More

This chapter focuses on the African Methodist Episcopal Church and its meaning for free men and women in rural Maryland. Founded in 1816 by Reverend Richard Allen in collaboration with other African American Christians from across the Middle Atlantic states, the AME Church on the Eastern Shore expressed the values, culture, and experience of a distinct group of free African Americans while reinforcing their membership in a regional community. This chapter examines how the AME Church gained worship communities on the Eastern Shore through evangelism and how Methodism, along with Catholics and Quakers, contributed to the religious education of African Americans. It also considers the AME Church's denunciation of slavery and concludes with a discussion of the role played by the men and women who participated in rural prayer classes in propagating the AME mission.Less

Embodying Methodist Theology: Diverging Conceptions of Holy Living in American Methodist Theology

Kevin M. Watson

in Old or New School Methodism?: The Fragmentation of a Theological Tradition

This chapter explores the diverging conceptions of holy living in Simpson and Roberts in depth. The chapter argues that Simpson was most concerned with growing and expanding the Methodist Episcopal ... More

This chapter explores the diverging conceptions of holy living in Simpson and Roberts in depth. The chapter argues that Simpson was most concerned with growing and expanding the Methodist Episcopal Church, often compromising on what had been core commitments of Methodism in the hope of gaining a broader audience and expanding the institution. Roberts, on the other hand, believed that these same compromises were leading to a sacrifice of Methodism’s mission to “spread scriptural holiness.” The chapter outlines disagreements about how holiness should be expressed in the lives of Methodists, focusing in particular on differences in church buildings, dress and personal wealth, secret societies, and slavery. The chapter concludes by discussing the different visions for the future of American Methodism that Simpson and Roberts had, as a result of these different understandings of the importance of holiness and how it should be expressed in the lives of Methodists.Less

The Chaplain and the Slaver

Josephine F. Pacheco

in The Pearl: A Failed Slave Escape on the Potomac

This chapter considers the friendship of Hope H. Slatter, a notorious Baltimore slave trader, and Henry Slicer, chaplain of the Senate, both of whom were connected with the Methodist Church. Their ... More

This chapter considers the friendship of Hope H. Slatter, a notorious Baltimore slave trader, and Henry Slicer, chaplain of the Senate, both of whom were connected with the Methodist Church. Their relationship demonstrates that by the 1840s, holding men and women in bondage had become a moral issue, not merely an economic one. For many Christians, converting slaves without giving them freedom ceased to be an acceptable response to the belief in the brotherhood of man. For Methodists, the writings and admonitions of their founder John Wesley reinforced their opposition to slavery, even though it was difficult, if not impossible, to form an alliance with radical abolitionists.Less

Alienation

Bridget Ford

in Bonds of Union: "Religion, Race, and Politics in a Civil War Borderland"

By 1860, this chapter argues, white Ohioans and Kentuckians had articulated starkly different purposes for their religious organizations and laws. With Cincinnatians sometimes at the forefront and at ... More

By 1860, this chapter argues, white Ohioans and Kentuckians had articulated starkly different purposes for their religious organizations and laws. With Cincinnatians sometimes at the forefront and at other times in tow, Ohioans rendered their faiths and constitution into notably antislavery positions and had begun to undo prejudicial laws afflicting African Americans. As Ohioans injected a “freedom national” philosophy into their most powerful institutions, Kentuckians sensed risk. In reaction, slaveholders there tried to purge the state of its emancipationist sentiments by diminishing Louisvillians’ electoral influence and by restricting the growth of a free black population. Though Ohioans insisted on the immediate rupture of property rights in persons upon contact with its soil, Kentuckians gave new divine clout to those same property rights. Before 1849, these sectional positions had not needed to be staked out so clearly. After that year, this chapter argues, Ohio and Kentucky risked increasing sectional alienation to further their positions on the morality of slavery.Less

Protestant Mainline

Sarah E. Ruble

in The Gospel of Freedom & Power: Protestant Missionaries in American Culture after World War II

After World War II, mainline institutions such as the Methodist Church and the Christian Century presented mainline Protestantism and its missionaries as part of a U.S. vanguard bringing freedom and ... More

After World War II, mainline institutions such as the Methodist Church and the Christian Century presented mainline Protestantism and its missionaries as part of a U.S. vanguard bringing freedom and peace. However, many mainline leaders assert that their vision of freedom does not align with that of the United States. This chapter discusses the mainline's assessment of the United States' role in the postwar world and the impact of America's Wilsonian logic on the world. It also highlights Century writers' criticisms of U.S. power and the obligations of American Protestantism.Less

The Jackson Church Visits: “A Good Quarter-Time Church with a Bird Dog and Shotgun”

Carolyn Renée Dupont

in Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1975

This chapter explores the events following Charles Golden and James Matthews' visit to Galloway Memorial Methodist Church. The two knew that white Jackson churches had systematically rejected ... More

This chapter explores the events following Charles Golden and James Matthews' visit to Galloway Memorial Methodist Church. The two knew that white Jackson churches had systematically rejected integrated parties that came to visit. Golden and Matthews expected a welcome and believed the Galloway congregation would respond in terms of faith, but the two bishops underestimated Mississippians' preferences for tradition—they were turned away. The church visit campaign and the spectacles it created complicate the understanding of the relationship between moral suasion and civil rights victories. On the one hand, it moved America's largest Protestant bodies to declare segregation and other forms of racial oppression out of keeping with the tenets of Christianity. On the other hand, endorsements of human and racial equality at the national level made little difference in local churches and in ordinary lives.Less