Thoughts on the Concerns of 19th Century Methodists

I have, for some time, been working my way through Leslie Ray Marston’s From Age to Age: A Living Witness – Free Methodism’s First Century. I had previously read the book for a class but wanted to return to the historical foundations of Methodism. (I’m a sucker for understanding history).

In reading about the rise and decline of American Methodism in the 19^th century, I ran across several comments from contemporary preachers and bishops expressing concern over the slide away from the pursuit of sanctification that had characterized first the Wesley’s and later the leaders of the transplanted Holiness movement in the United States. Many of this era lamented the slackening of Methodism’s advance and attributed it to a decline in a pursuit of purity and an increase in moral laxity.

I will attempt to provide a few examples.

On the decline in simplicity of worship:

“There was no standing among the members in time of prayer, especially the abominable practice of sitting down during that exercise was unknown among early Methodists.

Lord save the Church from desiring to have pews, choirs, organs, or instrumental music, and a congregational ministry like other heathen Churches around them.” – Peter Cartwright

On the decline in plainness of dress:

From the 1856 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church:

Quest: Should we insist on the rules concerning dress?

Ans: By all means. This is no time to encourage superfluity in dress. Therefore receive none into the church till they have left off superfluous ornaments. … Allow no exempt case. Better one suffer than many … Give no tickets to any that wear high heads, enormous bonnets, ruffles or rings.

On amusements:

“In his editorship of the Western Christian Advocate during the quadrennium before he was elected bishop in 1852, Matthew Simpson vigorously editorialized against the theater, state licensing of liquor, Sabbath desecration, and licentiousness which he claimed was stimulated by the exhibition of Hiram Powers’ sculptured nude, “The Greek Slave.”” – L.R. Marston

To 21^st century Christians, these concerns of 19^th century Methodist leaders seem legalistic and we are certainly tempted to dismiss them as relics of a less enlightened age. [it seems a general rule in history that we assume that our current generation is the most enlightened and judge vigorously the attitudes of the past. This, however, is a discussion for a different article.] We look at the charges of these early Methodists as acetic or extremist but too easily discount the spirit that birthed them: a passion for purity, devotion, and a ward against apathetic Christianity. For instance, rules over instrumental music and sitting in church were in place to discourage passivity in worship; to keep worship services from becoming spectator sports. Concerns over dress were aimed at guarding against pride and against encouraging economic disparity among believers.

We live in a particular age of American Christianity where our visible lives differ very little from our non-believing neighbors. From our dress to our Netflix habits our lives are virtually indistinguishable from those who don’t claim to follow Christ; except of course for one hour on Sunday morning. While the particular concerns of those early preachers may not apply to our context today, the Spirit surely does. Could it be that in our rejection of passionless legalism we have mishandled our liberty in such a way as to give us license to not only self-centered indulgence but outright sin? As I write I feel the tug of conviction on my own heart. Can we not all admit that we have allowed our leniency to corrupt the purity afforded us through Christ’s merciful atoning death and resurrection? Perhaps we are in need today of a similar fire; a realization and rejection of what is not beneficial for our sanctification. The call to discernment guards us against both the dangers of empty ritualistic observances and freewheeling moral compromise. Given by the Spirit, discernment empowers us with the liberty, responsibility, and freedom to willingly choose to obey our Savior.

'i love you'

the dry ground beckons

no rain in weeks.

from a couch, she calls.

‘I love you’

can mean so many things.

In June

In June,

When weary eyes

Tread the tired ponderings

Of faith;

When expectant prayers

Gestate still

In the thickening air,

The day bears out

It’s slow surrender.

Silhouetted

Now

Catskins burst forth

In palest half-light.

Moth and gnat

Swirl

In dervish dance

In the streetlight’s

Amber wake.

A breeze,

High and unfelt,

Rattles the dry leaves

Of the cottonwood

Towering above.

Amid the estival gloaming

Old ghosts prowl

Lonely streets.

Their airy vestments

Reminders

Of a caustic age;

Of ancient wounds;

And new worries,

Reciting their tired

Liturgies of gloom.

Tarrying now,

With malice faced,

These idle feet

Choose

To still;

To soak;

To draw

Deep the breath of life;

To resonate

The length and breadth of freedom,

Yielding their faltering frame

Into the quickening night

And receiving,

In full measure,

The fathomless peace

Eluding comprehension.

Fluttering lids

Dare now to wake.

They dread no more

The anxious hours.

Treading, now,

‘neath oaken boughs.

Once furtive eyes

Behold

Glittering fields

Of fairy starlight

Where insect chorus

Grace the gathered.

And specters

Dance no more

In looming shadow

But wither;

Fade

To dull recall.

Returning

Now

From wayward flight

Before the lumbering

Advance of sleep,

A backwards glance

On solemn streets,

Perhaps a memory

Of this joy

To keep.

Pt. 4 - Facts

There are facts,

Incontrovertible facts,

Truths that cannot be negated or rationalized away with enough wishful thinking.

As children we grow up believing that history is concrete, immovable. Paul Revere rode to wake the sleeping colonists in the spring of 1775. The Spanish American War began with the sinking of the USS Maine. Taft became the first president to throw out the first pitch of a baseball game. These are facts.

We have an inherent belief that given enough time and distance, the truth with invariably come to the light. The truth, we believe, cannot be buried, ignored, or obscured forever. This is a belief upon which our entire perception of history, government, and ethics are based. We stake our lives upon it.

The failure, though, is that while history often plays out in the ways we believe it should; that justice is meted out (though perhaps not as quickly as we might like), it finds its ultimate foundation on flawed humanity.

The truth is that facts, in practice, are malleable things, easily submerged if they prove themselves too convicting or distasteful to the general majority. One of mankind’s greatest feats is its ability to forget or ignore that which it views as displeasing or uncomfortable. Facts are uncomfortable things because they force us to face a reality outside of our own consciousness, outside of our own perception.

We have toyed so long with the absence of absolutes that now, when we so desperately long for them, they escape us. We are truly bearing the brunt of our philosophies. The weight is great indeed. Will we be able to bear it?

Five hundred years ago man knew that his destiny was shaped by providence, and though he might rebel against it, trusted that a divine hand loomed above. Now man knows and trusts only himself. We bear the scars of that trust more with every passing year.

Mankind trusts in its own civility, believing that all that is profitable is progress; that he is, of course, morally superior to his unenlightened ancestors. What demands that age naturally yields ethical advancement? Is such a law demonstrated by our personal behavior?

We are now our own accusers.

Our actions witness to our transgression.

We are what we always have been, only now our barbarism is unmasked, unveiled for the villainy that it is. The ‘enlightened’ may decry it but even his pursuit for righteousness is birthed in his own shrouded desires and personal lusts. As altruistic as his motives may seem they are rooted in conceit and selfishness as much as the bigot. We should not be surprised. We should be horrified.

This is a fact: Knowle Montgomery was not some archetypal supervillain or some twisted alien creature. He was a man who spoke the language men could hear. He did not in some subversive way manipulate or co-opt history, bending it to his will. He simply gave voice to what was already in the hearts of the people. Of some people that is. That is lost now. History will soon record him as some sort of anomaly; a character and the blame will pass off of the people and onto some caricature from the annuls of textbooks. The culpability will be shifted and given enough time, the bent content of our natures will reappear.

Unless we are already too far gone.

He was not a monster. We are the monsters.

This is a fact: the fires beyond Willow Run burn still.

Pt 3 - The Crawl Space

The footsteps overhead were muffled. It was hard for Declan to determine how many individuals there were- four, maybe five. The concussive steps swirled about as in some sort of strange dance. They were the steps of the careless, of the heedless. Mostly, it appeared, they were in the foyer, though at least one had gone off into the kitchen. They could hear someone rummaging through the drawers.

“What are they doing?” Tara whispered.

“Quiet,” Declan barked in a hushed tone that nevertheless conveyed his frustration. He did not need to see her face to know the look of fear that marked it. It had been the moments when faced with that helplessness that had stung him the most as she was growing up. Now, here, in the dark, he felt all but helpless again.

Their knees sunk into the wet sand of the crawlspace. Every movement was met by a wave of cobwebs so thick as to nearly impede their advance. They hung closed to the wall where they could cling to the studs and avoid venturing out too far into the damp mire. Though for years he had avoided going down here unless there had been a problem with the sump pump due to his intense distaste for all things creeping and crawling, he now gave no second thought to the discomfort. Fear necessitates compromise.

Into the punishing dark came only slivers of light from the narrow slits between the slowly warping boards of the stairs which descended directly overhead. Age had cracked and shifted the wood, time and age- the omnipresent enemies. There was not enough of a gap to see through, not even shadows or silhouettes, but only to allow enough light in to punctuate the darkness with pinprick starlight.

He felt his daughter push in tighter against him as the footsteps descended the basement stairs. A few- however many intruders there actually were- remained on the main level while at least one had gone to the upper. Now one had reached the basement landing. He leaned hard against the panel where they had entered the crawl. If anyone was to explore the crawl they would have to push the panel in and off the side. Declan positioned his body to make this impossible or at least improbable. An explorer should meet with the resistance and assume that the way was simply sealed. At least he hoped they would. They had not had much time to plan their escape. All of their possessions, those precious necessities such as food and water, were still upstairs. Beyond that, everything else, the trappings of life- the photos, the keepsakes, and the albums- sat on shelves that were now at the mercy of faceless raiders. He reached back in the dark for Tara’s hand.

She was the one who had seen them coming. Foolishly, he had been negligent, out in the back tracing out the dimensions that would be their garden, their little Eden. He heard too late the tinny shatter of windows as the raiders pillaged a house down the street. There had been little chance of escape and less of success in a direct confrontation. Tara, who had been up in her bedroom, the one room in the house that still retained the appearance of normalcy, as if nothing had ever happened, saw them approach. She ran to the back door and gestured wildly in a strange pantomime until he, who had been laying out some salvaged lumber for a raised bed, recognized her attempt and immediately understood the peril. As he pushed past her into the house, he took hold and pulled her on.

Now, only silence. Unnatural silence. Then, footsteps on the tile floor. He heard Tara’s muffled, panicked breathing. He fought to silence his own. In the pregnant distance between breaths there was only emptiness and malice. Each hesitating step reverberated in the cavernous expanse, still more in the void within in his mind. Still he clutched desperately to his daughter’s trembling hand.