American Methodist Worship (Religion in America)

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American Methodist Worship

Karen B. Westerfield Tucker

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

american methodist worship

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AMERICAN METHODIST WORSHIP

Karen B. Westerfield Tucker

1 2001

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Copyright 䉷 2001 by Karen B. Westerfield Tucker Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tucker, Karen B. Westerfield. American Methodist worship / Karen B. Westerfield Tucker. p. cm.—(Religion in America series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–19–512698–X 1. Methodist Church—United States—Liturgy. 2. Public worship. I. Title. II. Religion in America series (Oxford University Press) BX8337.T83 2000 264'.07'00973—dc21 99–049346

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

In memory of Frank and Nellie Baker Grady and Rowena Hardin Methodist teachers and Christian exemplars

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Acknowledgments

o scholar ever does her or his research in a vacuum. The professional and personal support of countless individuals has contributed to this project, but certain institutions and people should be named. The Louisville Institute for the Study of Protestantism and American Culture granted a summer stipend for research. Assistance was provided by library staff, archivists, and local church historians around the country, but special thanks should be given to library personnel at Drew University, Duke University, Emory University, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, the Library of Congress, Southern Methodist University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wesley Theological Seminary, the United Methodist Archives, the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference Archives, and Historic St. George’s Church. Richard P. Heitzenrater offered advice and valuable information. Douglas R. Cullum obtained hard-to-find documents related to the Free Methodist Church. Lester Ruth provided helpful comments and graciously shared primary materials he had uncovered regarding early Methodist communion practices in stations. Russell E. Richey, Geoffrey Wainwright, and James F. White all gave a careful reading to the manuscript. I am grateful to Professor Harry Stout of Yale University for accepting this work into the series he edits, and to Cynthia Read, Theodore Calderara, Robert Milks, and Stacey Hamilton of Oxford University Press who collaborated in the publication of this book. I benefited from the encouragement and support of colleagues and students at the Divinity School, Duke University. Fellow members of the Post-Reformation Historical Research Seminar of the North American Academy of Liturgy followed with interest the progress of the project. I particularly thank my husband Stuart and my son Benjamin for their patience and understanding during the more than a dozen years required to produce this study. This book is dedicated to two Methodist couples whose partnered scholarship and ministry have both instructed and inspired.

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Contents

Introduction xi 1

The Lord’s Day: The Shape of Worship 3

2

The Lord’s Day: Ordinary and Propers 31

3

The Great Festivals of the Methodists 60

4

The Rites of Christian Initiation 82

5

The Lord’s Supper 118

6

The Music of Methodist Worship

7

The Solemnization of Christian Marriage 176

8

Methodist Funerals 199

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Devotion and Discipleship 224

156

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A House for Worship

239

11

Roles in Public Worship 257

12

American Methodist Worship: Memory and Modernization 270

Notes 283 Index 337 Photo gallery follows page 155


Introduction

ethodism, it has often been asserted, is the quintessential American denomination. Yet the story of its worship life—an important descriptor for any religious body—has never been (fully) told. It may be that, as long as (international) liturgical scholarship limited itself to the study of service books, the texts of Methodism as a derivative branch of Anglicanism were not considered particularly interesting. In addition, liturgical historians and theologians, until recently, have hailed from Europe, where Methodism is proportionally quite small and therefore seen as a minor denomination—and hence not worthy of serious or sustained investigation. The development of a school of North American liturgical scholarship, and particularly the training of North American Protestant liturgical scholars, is now encouraging the study of largely heretofore overlooked Protestant liturgical traditions that have flourished on this side of the Atlantic. Historians of American culture, for their part, have generally shied away from dealing with the overtly theological dimensions of a people gathering to pray; even within Methodist studies, worship and its doctrinal implications have been largely neglected, save for the camp meeting and revivalism. Yet liturgists have now started to move “beyond the text” in an effort to understand the tacit and informal dimensions of worship practices in their social, cultural, and ecclesial settings. And students of domestic culture, as well now as exotic, have begun to set considerable store by ritual and cult as revelatory of a community’s beliefs and development. Therefore, the time appears ripe for an examination of worship in the American Methodist tradition that will both make an insider’s contribution to cultural history and provide for liturgiology the case study of a church that has always known its worship of God to be unconfined by written directions or prayers. This is what is attempted here. At the outset, the phrase “American Methodist” used in this study must be clarified. The term here refers to those churches that considered themselves to be inheritors of the theology and practices of the eighteenth-century evangelical Anglican John Wesley, and as testimony to that affiliation, adopted “Methodist” or

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Introduction

“Wesleyan” as part of the denominational name. Not all of the denominations meeting that criterion receive mention, whether because of their small size (e.g., the Primitive Methodist Church in the U.S.A.) or their regional limitation (e.g., the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection); and, of those churches selected, more attention generally is given to the larger bodies. Yet this study intentionally finds a place for three African-American denominations and two Holiness churches whose stories and contributions are sometimes disregarded in favor of discussions concerning the three denominations that would in 1939 form the Methodist Church. The Methodist Church in 1968 united with the Evangelical United Brethren to form the United Methodist Church, but the inheritance from the Evangelical United Brethren is treated only insofar as it has a bearing on the “Methodist” liturgical trajectory after the date of merger. American Methodism literally was born with the nation. Although Methodist meetings in Maryland and New York organized by lay men and women are attested from the 1760s onward, it was the formation in 1784 of the Methodist Episcopal Church that marked the beginning of Methodism’s transition from a society within the Church of England to a separate denomination. As the nation matured, so did the denomination, with growing pains shared by both. Questions about the nature and practice of democracy in the early years of independence occasioned the creation of the nonepiscopal Methodist Protestant Church. Debates concerning the rights of African Americans and the holding of slaves divided both the nation and episcopal Methodism. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, technological and scientific advancement launched the nation into the mainstream of world affairs; Methodism struggled with maintaining an effective witness in a world that was redefining God and humanity. As the nation twice strove to recover from global warfare, Methodism, in part, healed itself from internal division and appealed for greater unity within Christendom. In the last three decades of the twentieth century, the United Methodist Church shared in the decline of the white Protestant establishment while simultaneously seeking to come to terms with the multicultural reality of the United States. The shared historical phases of growth between the nation and Methodism have already been studied and documented. What has not been investigated is how Methodist liturgical expressions shaped and were shaped by the theological and ecclesial processes leading Methodism from society to mature denomination, and how the liturgy and the performance of worship were influenced by the ideals and developmental tensions within the nation as a whole. Did theological shifts internal and external to American Methodism, and the presence of other denominations and religions, have a bearing on worship? Are there indications that such factors as race, ethnicity, gender, region, economic standing, and modernization in their American forms contributed to liturgical change? Over the course of more than two hundred years, was the liturgy of Methodism—the worship of that quintessential American denomination—“Americanized”? The focus of this book is not liturgical texts as such since studies already exist that expose the lineage of textual revision for the majority of “official” rites, at least for the larger denominations. Moreover, an examination limited to those texts oversimplifies the complexity of Methodist worship, for leaders of worship have

Introduction

xiii

always believed they had the flexibility and freedom to depart from the authorized ritual. Indeed, some characteristically Methodist worship services (e.g., the love feast, the watch night service, the camp meeting, family worship—and sometimes even Sunday morning) were organized without the benefit of a formally established text. Rather than simply chronicle the details of textual revision, therefore, this study looks behind and beyond the official liturgical texts to offer an exploration and analysis of the evolution of American Methodist worship, looking holistically at the ecclesial processes and influences (e.g., theological, liturgical, demographic, cultural, and social) that motivated Methodists to rethink or reorganize their theology and praxis of worship, and at the dogmatic topics and systematic questions thereby engaged. Thus, primary sources for the study, in addition to the authorized liturgical texts, include official ecclesiastical documents of other kinds; unofficial liturgical resources that were used by Methodists; and descriptions and accounts from individual Methodist diaries and journals, from church and secular newspapers, and from (selected) local church archives. Attention is also given to the nontextual matters of environment and performance. Methods of various categories are employed that best facilitate the investigation and interpretation of a particular rite or liturgical event. In one category, liturgical texts are compared, analyzed, and criticized. Comparisons are made between the text, content, and structures of American Methodist liturgies, their liturgical antecedent (the Urtext in the Church of England’s Prayer Book), their liturgical next of kin (the texts of British Methodism), and their liturgical contemporaries from other Christian traditions (both in North America and abroad). Internal analysis is rendered on specific rites in an effort to determine the rationale (where possible) for textual change, to interpret the overall theological intention, and to understand the significance of the liturgical structure. A second category of methods, borrowed from phenomenology, is employed to scrutinize the performance of the whole service of worship in context: words, objects, and actions. Descriptions from eyewitnesses are used where available; other accounts come from the detractors and critics of Methodism (e.g., Baptists regarding Methodist baptismal practice), and from Methodists who romanticize earlier periods within Methodist history. Unfortunately, Methodists have tended to focus on the results of worship (e.g., conversion, a new awareness of God) rather than the service itself, so documentation is scant, with the exception of accounts of camp meetings, revivals, and prayer meetings. Other methods allow concentration upon the theological or cultural assumptions governing or laden within the liturgical rite or event, and investigation of psychological and other functions. In sum, the goal is to paint for American Methodist worship as complete a picture as possible of its various forms, styles, settings, expressions, understandings, and dynamics. No other book, to my knowledge, has attempted to collect the liturgical wealth of American Methodism—or any other American Protestant tradition, for that matter—in such a comprehensive way. The book is organized according to the several times and occasions of Methodist worship. The Lord’s Day service, the basic unit of Methodist worship and that which liturgically links Methodism to the church catholic, occupies the first two chapters. The first chapter exposes the basic structural development of the word or “preaching” service, while the second explores the more detailed features of

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Introduction

Sunday worship and the contextualization of the Lord’s Day within weekly, quarterly, and annual cycles. Despite some recovery of the connection between word and sacrament in the twentieth century, Methodists have generally understood the Lord’s Supper almost to be an occasional service rather than an integral component of Sunday practice; thus the service of Holy Communion figures as a later and separate chapter. After the Lord’s Day material comes, for contrast, chapter 3 on the largely unscripted and peculiarly Methodist “usages,” whose emphases are integration into and maintenance within the denominational community. The sacraments of baptism (along with related questions concerning confirmation and church membership) and Eucharist, both markers of ecclesiastical identity and ritualized expressions of soteriology, constitute chapters 4 and 5. Hymns and music, hallmarks of the “singing Methodists” that pervade all aspects of worship, are then scrutinized as both theological statement and ecclesiological self-definition. Chapters 7 and 8 concentrate on the occasional services of marriage and burial that reveal more concretely the interfacing of Methodist worship and the wider American ethos. Whereas the services of Sunday morning and the sacraments are distinctively Christian celebrations that define the nature of the church, weddings and funerals are also cultural rites that carry with them the Christian and nonChristian customs of time and place. To help set Methodist theology and practice in context, each of these two chapters includes important elements of social history surrounding these rites of passage. Chapter 9 looks at the liturgical articulation of the works of piety and mercy “expected” of the Methodist people. The material setting for worship and the changing configurations of the liturgical space are then addressed. Roles in the leadership of the various types of Methodist worship are the subject of chapter 11. The final chapter—which is more than a mere “conclusion”—gains its special significance from the fact that it synthesizes the revisionary processes already examined and seeks to identify particular factors that have contributed to the evolution of Methodist worship as a whole.

american methodist worship

A GENEALOGY OF AMERICAN METHODISM

Methodist Episcopal Church (1784)

African Methodist Episcopal Church (1816)

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1821)

Methodist Protestant Church (1830)

Wesleyan Methodist Connection (1843)

Methodist Episcopal Church

Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1844)

Free Methodist Church (1860)

Colored (Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church (1870)

Methodist Church (1939)

United Methodist Church (1968) [with the Evangelical United Brethren Church]

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The Lord’s Day The Shape of Worship

n 1932, representatives of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in an effort to preserve the sanctity of Sunday as a day of worship and rest against the encroachment of secularizing tendencies, invoked the founding principles of the nation alongside the ecclesiastical practice of the Lord’s Day. Appeal was made not only to the scriptural law and gospel; the Lord’s Day was identified as “one of the first institutions planted on American soil,” with its observance codified “in the second article of the Federal Constitution.” The Methodists resolved to oppose all legislative efforts “to make the Lord’s Day a holiday instead of a holy day. The church will not stand by and see the walls of the Lord’s Day broken down.”1 The juxtaposition—even on matters of worship—of agendas and traditions common to the denomination and the civil government reveals in Methodist thought an organic connection between the church and the nation that can be traced to the beginning of both institutions. Methodists, who before 1784 existed organizationally as a religious society under the general if distant jurisdiction of the Church of England, embraced the ideals of liberty of conscience and freedom of religious expression popular in colonial America. After the independence of the nation and the Methodist denomination, Methodists continued to uphold the value of freedom: for “spreading scriptural holiness throughout the land”; for reforming the nation; and for providing opportunities for worship in different liturgical styles. In the early years in particular, Methodists often pointed to the rise and development of the nation as a sign of God’s work among a righteous people, though they were quick to admonish when correction seemed to be in order. This prophetic witness has remained a characteristic part of Methodism, and it has been held alongside an equally characteristic Methodist patriotism and nationalism. Yet at times that critical edge has been wittingly or unwittingly blunted as Methodism simultaneously sought to be faithful to God and relevant to the American people. From the mid-nineteenth century onward, as Methodism became more established and was identified by politician and church official alike as the most American of Protestant denominations, calls to accountability “under God” increasingly gave

I

3

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way (often grudgingly) to cultural conformity and accommodation. What might be called the Americanization of Methodism can be seen in all aspects of its life, and especially in the shape and content of its worship. The revisions made to Methodist Sunday worship throughout its history make this abundantly clear.

John Wesley’s Urtext Even John Wesley, Church of England priest and staunch Tory, had to concede in a letter dated September 10, 1784, that through “a very uncommon train of providences,” the newly emancipated American people had been “disentangled” from the civil and ecclesiastical government of England. Because of their political freedom, Wesley allowed that the Methodists, “those poor sheep in the wilderness,” likewise were set free to spread the gospel as an independent church, though Wesley assumed, as their founder, that he still would lead the fledgling denomination from England. One aspect of that freedom concerned liturgical expression: Methodists were now “at full liberty, simply to follow the scriptures and the primitive church.”2 The liberty so defined clearly implied certain norms for Christian worship. Wesley’s adherence to the classic Anglican triad of Scripture, Christian tradition, and reason as normative for doctrine underlay his instruction that Scripture and the primitive church should serve as sources for Methodist liturgical praxis. Selfdefined as homo unius libri, Wesley insisted that Scripture was the supreme authority and definitive revelation in all matters, including the church’s creedal and conciliar decisions. The standard and norm for Christian worship thus also was to be located in Scripture, though Wesley did not expect that the biblical text should provide the precise ordo or rubrics for worship. Scripture was the supreme rule; but valid, though subordinate, rules and forms could indeed “flow” from it.3 Christian tradition was for Wesley selectively vital; and of value to him, besides the English reformation, was especially ante-Nicene Christianity, a period that, in his day, had been the object of renewed interest. Numerous antiquarian works were reprinted, and accounts of early Christianity proliferated. Wesley recommended that the Methodist people familiarize themselves with the early church, and to encourage their reading he included selected primary and secondary materials, sometimes abridged, in the fifty volumes of his Christian Library. But while some churchmen looked to the literature of the ancients solely for fuel to stoke the fires of contemporary apologetics and polemics, Wesley also pursued a more pragmatic purpose. Because the first three Christian centuries represented for him the doctrine and practice of true, uncorrupted, scriptural Christianity, Wesley believed that the practices described in the apostolic writings and early church orders could provide suitable models for the renewal of the church. Wesley was not alone in the pursuit of what was perceived to be an unadulterated liturgical, spiritual, and ecclesiastical paradigm. He was, in fact, one among many who mined the riches of the early church for examples of liturgical ordines, prayer texts, descriptions of orders of ministry, and testimonies to holy Christian living; he also was acquainted with the products of these seventeenth- and eighteenth-century inves-

The Lord’s Day: The Shape of Worship

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tigations.4 Wesley’s brief missionary sojourn in Georgia (1736–1737) afforded him an opportunity to experiment (albeit unsuccessfully) with ancient liturgical forms and practices, especially those disclosed in book 8 of the so-called Apostolic Constitutions. Even after his return to England he continued to regard America as a place where his ideals of primitive Christianity might thrive. Although his views on antiquity were nuanced as the years went by, Wesley never doubted that the Methodist work conformed to his (and others’) conception of primitive practice, thus offering an alternative to the religious climate in America and in England.5 Thus, Wesley’s advice that the American Methodists employ the example of the primitive church to guide their new liberty came from a deep-seated desire that, in fact, had given impetus and shape to the Methodist movement as a whole. Besides Scripture and tradition, reason was a necessary norm since, for Wesley, religion and reason were inextricably linked. Understood to be more than simply human thought or comprehension, reason was the perceiving of divine revelation through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Christian worship in particular was to be judged by conformity to Scripture and reason, and together these norms justified experiments in worship that varied from the liturgy of the Church of England, particularly where there was scriptural or apostolic precedent, or in matters judged to be adiaphora. In addition, the judicious use of reason coupled with Scripture led Wesley to conclude that there could be various styles or expressions of worship as long as the essentials of the faith were maintained and articulated. Modes of worship could not be dictated or prescribed, for rational human beings had a Godgiven right to worship as they were persuaded.6 Wesley the pragmatist added a fourth norm to the classical Anglican triad that strengthened his conclusion that Scripture and antiquity provided the best model for the American Methodists. Though not equal in authority to the other three criteria, the experiences of an individual and of the community were to be considered in making theological and practical assessments. The efficacy of worship, for example, could be judged by the resultant spiritual good: it proclaimed the gospel of salvation; it led to conversion and/or confession; it was truly edifying; and it inspired works of charity and mercy. Innovative practices in worship, therefore, could be evaluated not only in terms of their testimony to Scripture and tradition but also by the witness of the Spirit in human life.7 Lest the Americans be at a loss regarding his advice to follow the Scriptures and the primitive church, Wesley conveniently provided them with a model: a service book prepared in 1784 that was drawn from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Wesley’s high regard for the Prayer Book was clear throughout his life, and he declared in the preface to The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America. With Other Occasional Services that there was “no LITURGY in the World, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational Piety, than the COMMON PRAYER of the CHURCH of ENGLAND.”8 This, however, did not mean Wesley regarded the Prayer Book as unalterable. During his American journey, Wesley confided in a diary entry for March 5, 1736, that he had “revised Common Prayer book.” At the Methodist Conference of 1755 in Leeds, he openly criticized certain scripturally indefensible portions of the Prayer Book in the essay “Ought We to Separate from the Church of England?” And in

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his newly created service book, he felt free to edit the original, primarily by the deletion of long, redundant, and controversial texts, and by the omission of those things having “no valuable end” (e.g., the “so-called holy days”). But for Wesley, the Prayer Book, with all its imperfections, still contained language that was “not only pure, but strong and elegant in the highest degree.”9 By relying upon the perceived apostolicity of the Prayer Book of 1662, and by removing the extraneous material that obscured the purer elements, Wesley believed that he was giving the American Methodists the best liturgical document the church had to offer. The Americans, for their part, recognized Wesley’s claim that their liturgy—and their church—was being organized according to the standards of primitive Christianity. Ezekiel Cooper wrote in his journal in 1788 that he was “from scripture & reason together with experience more than ever established in the Methodist principles as being apostolic.”10 Wesley’s service book, which was officially approved as the “prayer book” of the Methodist Episcopal Church at the constituting Christmas Conference of 1784 in Baltimore, contained services for baptism, marriage, Communion of the sick, burial, and ordination. But it was from the services for Sunday that the book took its name, indicating Wesley’s preference that the Methodists gather for worship on the Lord’s Day. Wesley’s expectation was not entirely realistic, for in the early years, not all Methodists found it possible to assemble for Sunday worship, though they undoubtedly longed to do so. City stations and communities with a resident local preacher could expect a Sunday service. But the majority of Methodists were in societies located on circuits that might encompass hundreds of miles. The itinerant preacher responsible for a circuit would generally hold services in a given community only once in the course of two weeks, and rarely would that be on a Sunday. Wesley provided orders of service for morning and evening prayer on the Lord’s Day, and for the administration of the Lord’s Supper that, following the Prayer Book tradition, included the sermon as part of the Ante-Communion. The Great Litany was to be prayed on Wednesdays and Fridays, and the Prayer for All Conditions of Men along with the General Thanksgiving were identified as the “Prayer and Thanksgiving to be used every Lord’s Day.” A table of proper lessons to be read at Sunday morning and evening prayer, and a listing of proper collects, epistles, and gospels to be read on Sundays and other particular days throughout the year were also included, but these had been substantially reduced from the Prayer Book model, since Wesley omitted the greater portion of the Anglican sanctoral while retaining from the temporal calendar Advent, Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Whitsunday, and Trinity. The number of psalms to be used was also decreased: in his “Select” psalter, which provided a thirty-day cycle of psalms for daily (not just Lord’s Day) morning and evening prayer, Wesley deleted thirtyfour psalms in their entirety and omitted sections of fifty-eight others, explaining only that he believed some psalms “highly improper for the mouths of a Christian Congregation.” The language of some psalms was altered on account of Wesley’s apparent preference at times for the style and syntax of the King James (Authorized) Version over that of the Coverdale version.


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Unlike the Prayer Book, which stipulated that morning and evening prayer were to be said or sung daily, Wesley, by rubric, expected the services to be said (not sung) on the Lord’s Day only. Wesley, in fact, made no rubrical addition allowing for congregational singing in any of his services, though it was expected that Methodist prayer would be accompanied with hymns, as is evident from the presence of A Collection of Psalms and Hymns for the Lord’s Day that was sent along with the Sunday Service. Ideally, morning prayer each Sunday was to be concluded with the service of the Lord’s Supper as long as it was presided over by a properly ordained elder (presbyter), but the reality in the new church was that the number of available elders was significantly smaller than the number of communities in need of one, and, in point of fact, American Methodists were as unaccustomed as Anglicans of the time to weekly Eucharist. Wesley’s orders of morning and evening prayer were also significantly shortened from their Prayer Book form, in response, perhaps, to the long-standing concern among some Anglicans that the services were too lengthy. Some prayers were undoubtedly eliminated because they were considered inappropriate for the American context, such as the prayers for the royal family. Others were modified to reflect the new situation: the prayer for the King’s Majesty was reformulated for the “Supreme Rulers.”11 Wesley’s order for morning prayer took this shape: Scripture sentences Address [“Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us, in sundry places. . . .”] General Confession and Prayer for Forgiveness The Lord’s Prayer Versicle and Response [“O Lord, open thou our lips. . . .”] with Gloria Patri The Psalms with Gloria Patri First Lesson Te Deum Second Lesson Jubilate Deo The Apostles’ Creed Introductory Dialogue [“The Lord be with you”] with Kyrie eleison Collect of the Day Collect for Peace Collect for Grace Prayer for the Supreme Rulers Prayer of St. John Chrysostom Apostolic Benediction [“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . .”] Comparable changes were made to the Prayer Book order of evening prayer. The Ante-Communion, or the service of Holy Communion up to the offertory, would have been inserted prior to the benediction on non-eucharistic Sundays, and had the following structure: The Lord’s Prayer Collect for Purity

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The Decalogue Prayer for the Supreme Rulers [different from that in morning prayer] Collect of the Day Epistle Lesson Gospel Lesson Sermon Wesley furnished no directions regarding the integration of morning prayer and the Ante-Communion, which is a surprising omission or oversight, given Wesley’s assumption that morning prayer with the Lord’s Supper service was to be the normative Sunday form. It seems unlikely that Wesley would have encouraged the customary Anglican practice of proceeding through the morning prayer and Communion liturgy as written, given his concern to avoid the “vain repetitions” that had been a criticism of the Prayer Book liturgy voiced from as early as the sixteenth century. Yet there is no evidence to support the possibility that the American Methodists omitted from the Ante-Communion those components that had already been used in the initial service of morning prayer.

The Methodist “Directory” The Sunday Service as intended for American Methodists—another version first printed in 1786 was made available for Methodists in “His Majesty’s Dominions”— went through five London-published editions during the years 1784–1790,12 with revisions made to the services of baptism and communion by Wesley or perhaps by his assistant Thomas Coke, but with no marked changes in the services for Sunday. This suggests that, although for twenty years Methodists in America had employed a simple service of preaching, some members of the Methodist Episcopal Church found Wesley’s liturgical plan basically suitable, appropriate, and useful, and indeed such seems to have been the case in the cities and towns as well as in some rural areas. Francis Asbury, who had been set apart as “superintendant” (renamed “bishop” in 1787) at the Christmas Conference, recorded in 1785 that during a visit to New York he “read prayers twice”; and Richard Whatcoat, elected bishop in 1800, observed while working with Asbury in South Carolina in 1790 that “Bror asbury Red the Morning Servis.”13 However, for most Methodists, particularly those in the less populated areas and the circuit riders who served them, Wesley’s liturgy was not so successful. Thomas Haskins, one of the preachers present at the Christmas Conference, conceded in 1785 that though he made “a second attempt to read the morning service as abridged by Mr. Wesley,” and the service was “most excellent in itself,” ultimately it would not “be of much use among us—as a people.”14 The bound Sunday Service may have been regarded as a prohibitive expense for poor, illiterate communities for whom energetic preaching, extempore prayer, and lined-out hymn singing—and not liturgical prayer— were central. Many of the Methodists, especially the native-born Americans who had not been affiliated with the Church of England, found Wesley’s prayer book and liturgical worship to be an alien and politically offensive imposition that nei-


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ther reflected the essence of Methodist worship as they knew it nor aided the Methodist missionary impulse. Convinced that prayers were better said with the eyes shut, they felt their newfound freedom and their piety restricted by the Conference-approved Sunday Service, and they thus abandoned the book, believing that its use had never been made obligatory. Hints that official changes were in the wind came in December 1789, when a General Council of bishops and presiding elders meeting in Baltimore approved that “the exercise of public worship on the Lord’s day, shall be singing, prayer, and reading the Holy Scriptures, with exhortation or reading a sermon, in the absence of a preacher.”15 Soon after the death of their “venerable Father” in 1791, the American Methodists considered themselves at liberty to alter the liturgy that he had bequeathed to them. References to the Methodist “liturgy” or “prayer book” in the official Discipline, some of which had already been reworded or omitted, were completely struck from the Discipline in 1792. Morning and evening prayer services, the Litany, the psalter, the lectionary, and the propers disappeared and were replaced by a set of rubrics in a section of the Discipline headed “Of Public Worship,” a presentation not unlike a Presbyterian directory of worship—and indeed some Methodists referred to this form as a directory of public worship. The rites of baptism, Lord’s Supper, marriage, burial, and ordination from the Sunday Service were abbreviated, altered, and placed into a thirty-seven page section of the Discipline entitled “Sacramental Services, &c”; the nomenclature for the part containing the services would later be changed to “Ritual.” The separation of the Eucharist from the pattern for regular Sunday morning worship and the transformation of the Sunday liturgy into largely an extempore service undoubtedly reflected the practice of Sunday worship for almost all Methodists. Yet by this method of revision, guidance for Methodist worship was essentially transferred from a prayer book to a piece of “canon law.” The replacement of Wesley’s morning prayer service with a short paragraph of instructions may have actually, in the end, brought the Methodists into closer conformity with the ancient church their founder so admired. Morning prayer was now to consist of “singing, prayer, the reading of a chapter out of the Old Testament, and another out of the New, and preaching,” a striking similarity (save for the singing) to the service of the word described in Justin Martyr’s First Apology, chapter 67. The contents of the afternoon service were like those of the morning, though only one chapter from the Bible was to be read; encouragement for two readings in the afternoon was introduced with the 1804 Discipline. The evening service was to be observed simply with singing, prayer, and preaching. In the 1824 Methodist Episcopal Discipline, instructions for the use of the Lord’s Prayer and the apostolic benediction (2 Corinthians 13:14) were added, with the former to be used “on all occasions of public worship in concluding the first prayer,” and the latter at the dismissal. These basic components for worship on Sundays and other days were the acknowledged ingredients of authentic Methodist worship from the late eighteenth century into the second half of the nineteenth; and they continued to constitute the backbone for Methodist worship into the late twentieth century. The Methodist leadership expected these minimal guidelines for the content of worship to be followed, since they were “given for the establishment of uniformity

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in public worship amongst us, on the Lord’s-day.” Nevertheless, some Methodist preachers felt at liberty to improve upon the rule. Jesse Lee claimed in 1810 that while preachers in towns and cities often adhered to the instructions, most others rarely obeyed them, preferring instead to read only one chapter of Scripture on Sabbath days, which was placed “either before or after the first prayer, and always before the preaching.”16 Methodist preachers clearly assumed that one Scripture lesson, usually not a full chapter and later often no more than a single verse, was sufficient to launch the main focus of the service: the sermon. For example, George Coles, writing of an afternoon service in New York City in 1841, reveals not only his simple order of service but also his use of the Scripture text: At 3 o’clock I began the service in Greene Street, and, after singing and prayer read the 147th Psalm, & after the second hymn took for my text the 20th verse of that Psalm and discoursed 1st on the sin of not acknowledging God as the author of all our blessing; 2ndly on the difference between pagan, Mahommedan, Jewish, Catholic, & Protestant nations; 3rd, on the word “judgments” in the text, which I suppose means the same as it does in the 119th Psalm; 4thly on the duty of praising the Lord, not only with our lips, but also in our lives.17

Similarly, Leonard Smith of Illinois describes morning worship from 1860: I arose about 5 1⁄2 a.m. & paid my morning sacrifice to God. At the ringing of the second bell I repaired to the house of prayer to talk to the people on the Exercise of Godliness. I opened the exercise by singing the 297 Hymn to the tune Uxbridge after which I prayed. Then I read the morning lesson in the 4th Ephes. Then sang again the 570 Hymn to Boylston. Took my text from 1 Tim. 4:7. Closed by singing & prayer.18

Even before the revision of the Sunday Service in 1792, there had been a growing tension between the desire for a recognizable Methodist pattern of worship and freedom in liturgical expression. The adoption of Wesley’s revision of the Anglican Articles of Religion in 1784 may have, in actuality, aided in sowing the seeds of this conflict, for Methodist Article 22 “Of the Rites and Ceremonies of Churches” recognized that differences in worship had always existed “according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners,” yet required conformity to scripturally sound and commonly approved liturgical practices of the church lest order be broken and fragile consciences wounded. By 1789, the Council meeting in Baltimore had determined that it had the authority to “render the time and form of public worship, as similar as possible through all their congregations,” and resolved that, where practicable, worship on the Lord’s Day was to begin at 10 o’clock, and alternatively, if necessary, at 11 o’clock.19 Uniformity in worship resurfaced as a topic at the meeting of the General Conference in 1824, where it was reported that the reading of Scripture, the Lord’s Prayer, and the apostolic benediction were often omitted from public worship. Although neither the prayer nor the benediction had been previously identified in the Discipline as “requirements” for worship, the report presupposes their normativity for Methodist worship; ritual memory (from the office of morning prayer or from the general practice of the Methodist societies) may have encouraged the retention of the prayer and benediction, or perhaps they were used because of their status as scriptural forms. The legislative


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response to the report was to insist that the preachers “observe the order of worship” found in the section “Of Public Worship,” again revealing certain assumptions, since many undoubtedly believed the section to contain only a list of components and not necessarily a sequence of items.20 A follow-up report in 1832 saw improvement toward the goal of public worship as “uniform, Scriptural, and edifying,”21 an accomplishment later reports show was short-lived. Methodists still felt at liberty to forgo the stated orders and improvise in worship, even though the assumptions of the denominational legislation were otherwise. In spite of repeated calls for uniformity in praxis, denominationally sanctioned worship orders for the Lord’s Day were never mandated for the Methodist people. Placed alongside the issues of uniformity and freedom in practice was another persistent yet related matter: the avoidance of a formalism in worship that potentially could stifle the Spirit. Formality, among other things, could be defined as rigidity in order (a risk when imposing uniform patterns), long and languid prayers, use of liturgical texts, and ostentatious attitudes and accoutrements. Simplicity was preferred, since the unadorned gospel message was best represented to plain folk by simple means. Methodists—even in 1850—would often look back nostalgically to earlier, simpler times and pine for the idealized bygone days: And we cannot believe that in a building which “for a long time had benches only with backs provided below,” the congregation was either very large—very rich—very proud—or very showy. And as for the preachers, although Captain Webb, as a British officer, may have preached in his regimentals, a red coat on his back and an epaulet on his shoulder, he was neither stiff nor starched as many a Methodist preacher of our own times is. There was no strutting, self-conceited fop, dressed like a dancing master, dangling his cane as he walked to the house of God, to set his foot in that pulpit. There was no supercillious [sic] coxcomb to flounce and flutter, like a play actor before a starring [sic] audience. There was no Doctor of Divinity with “a wig full of learning,” to talk to a listening congregation about things he did not understand, or if he did understand them, were not calculated to make his hearers wise unto salvation. There was no vindictive Laud with a heart full of bitterness and wrath against his brethren, to ascend that pulpit and announce, Methodist preachers are “the divinely instituted ministry”—“the divinely authorized expounders,” &c. No! all these improvements in Methodism were reserved for future times. The preachers and people in those days acted under a conviction “Thou God seest me”; and when they assembled to worship, “they worshipped him in spirit and in truth.”22

For some Methodists, what became identified as the revival style of hymn singing, ardent prayer, and fiery preaching that flourished on the frontier exemplified the basic and most fruitful means of winning souls. This often meant adopting a practical approach so that worship reached its commonly understood goal: the conversion of heart and mind, which often was dramatically confirmed by kinetic and vocal responses in the pew or at the altar rail. To obtain the sought end of worship, Methodists of the early nineteenth century and beyond willingly exhibited the liturgical pragmatism popularized by Presbyterian Charles Grandison Finney, whose “new measures” outlined in 1835 commended decency and orderliness in worship (1 Corinthians 14:40), but denied the need for any set forms or modes, noting that neither the apostles nor Jesus himself had used established liturgies.23 The

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shape of Lord’s Day worship, according to this thinking, was determined by the worship leader’s assessment of the spiritual needs of the community, not by some prescribed order, though the general pattern was to progress from the “preliminaries” (e.g., singing, prayers, testimonies), to a “message,” followed by an invitation to commitment. Methodist promotion of “new measures” in worship was the subject of criticism, both inside Methodism and outside, with one of the most notable critics being Mercersburg theologian John Williamson Nevin in The Anxious Bench (1843, 1844). Even so, simple, free, and locally derived styles of worship have always existed alongside the official ordines approved by the legislative bodies of Methodism. Some Wesleyan offshoots of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in fact, never produced official liturgical texts for Sunday worship. Hence, concerns about uniformity, formality, and freedom in worship persisted throughout the entire history of Methodism and in all its parts, and they continued to influence discussions about liturgical practice as well as official liturgical revisions in each generation.

The Establishment of Specified Orders for Morning Worship The simple service of the word and in many cases the rubrics of 1792 (with the modifications of 1824) were maintained even as the Methodist Episcopal Church divided over issues as varied as race, denominational governance, slavery, and the Wesleyan doctrines of perfection and holiness, thereby giving birth to several new Methodist ecclesiastical bodies, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1816); the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1821); the Methodist Protestant Church (1830, which divided in 1858 and was reunited in 1877); the Wesleyan Methodist Connection (1843); the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1844); and the Free Methodist Church (1860). These new denominations continued or slightly altered the textual description of Sunday worship that they had inherited. The instructions were kept intact by the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, respectively the largest black and white denominations outside the Methodist Episcopal Church. The Methodist Protestants, in their first Constitution and Discipline of 1830, kept the intention of the 1792 rubric, but in the section on “Public Worship” gave the components a specific order for Lord’s Day worship, described expectations of worship practice, and elaborated upon apparent problems of decorum (the first among the Methodist groups to do so in the section dealing with worship): The morning service on the Lord’s day, shall consist of singing of a hymn, prayer, and reading a portion of the word of God; then singing another hymn, or part thereof, and preaching. After sermon, another hymn, or part of a hymn, shall be sung, an appropriate prayer addressed to the throne of grace, and the congregation dismissed with the apostolic benediction, while the preacher and congregation are yet kneeling. The afternoon and evening services shall consist of the same exercises, except reading portions of Scripture, which may be omitted. We recommend that no sermon exceed one hour; and that the minister be not tedious in conducting the other parts of divine worship. It is further recommended, that the Lord’s prayer be repeated at the close of the first morning prayer.


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During public worship, the congregation is expected to attend with becoming gravity, abstaining from all salutations of persons present, or coming in; and from gazing about, sleeping, smiling, whispering, and all other indecent behaviour. [It is expected of all who attend on our ministry, that they carefully avoid the too common practice of standing about the church doors before service, and of leaving the house before the congregation is regularly dismissed.] While the minister is addressing the throne of grace, the whole congregation should meekly kneel before God; and during the singing of the first hymn, stand up with their faces towards the minister, and assist in this delightful part of divine worship. The verses of the second hymn should be read over by the minister, and then sung by the people while seated.

Although they did not alter the Methodist Episcopal Church’s directions for worship, the Free Methodists, led by Benjamin Titus Roberts, nevertheless saw their departure in 1860 from the mother church as an opportunity to purge worship of what were perceived to be fashionable tendencies and worldly conformities and thus return to the power of godliness exhibited in early Methodism.24 A century after their founding, Free Methodists still included virtually unchanged the prose directions for public worship they had inherited; but they had succumbed to the tendency of the other Methodists and reduced the amount of Scripture heard in worship. These concerns about disorder and worldliness, arising in part from cultural, social, and economic changes within the Methodist constituency, reveal that much more was happening in Sunday worship than the simple rubrics would seem to indicate. As Methodism became firmly established as a denomination and an institution within the American society and settled in its own self-understanding, attention gradually shifted from ministry among the poor and lower class to the middle class and affluent, though ministry to the poor remained a part of Methodist work over the centuries. Fervent religious experience and evangelical zeal were tempered as many of the larger Methodist bodies sought social and theological “respectability,” and styles of ministry changed with the dismounting of the itinerant. With the increased sophistication of Methodism’s constituency came a desire for worship services that exhibited closer affinities to the more economically advantaged denominations, particularly the Protestant Episcopalians. The specified contents of the service became more numerous and, accordingly, the orders became longer and more complex. The narrative directions were replaced by an outline of worship elements. While for many congregations the new orders of worship were foreign to their own experience and practice (and would remain so), for others, particularly in the cities, what developed was likely a codification of what were perceived to be the most popular and representative practices. It is therefore significant that in 1864, four years after the Free Methodists separated themselves in order to restore a gospel simplicity to worship, the Methodist Episcopal Church made a few alterations to the section in the Discipline on “Public Worship”: a “lesson” from Scripture of unspecified length was to be read rather than a “chapter,” thereby potentially decreasing the amount of Scripture heard in the congregation; a doxology was to be sung at the end of the service before the benediction; and participation by the people in the various acts of worship was identified as an expectation.

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Two years later, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South made a similar adjustment to the statement about its readings; in 1870, an outline order for the morning service was printed in the Discipline that followed the same structure as the 1830 Methodist Protestant, though it specified the use of two “lessons”; a separate rubric enjoined the saying of the Lord’s Prayer in unison at the conclusion of the first prayer. The 1870 order would remain the standard for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South until 1905, and in 1880 it was made more widely available by the printing of the order and instructions from the Discipline in the final pages of the denomination’s New Hymn-Book. The Colored (renamed “Christian” from 1956) Methodist Episcopal Church, which broke away in 1870 from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, opted to follow the new worship pattern of the parent body. As the printed orders for worship became more elaborate, they nevertheless kept the intention apparent in the 1792 directions and reinforced by revivalism: the service was directed toward the sermon and the yield that could be obtained from evangelical preaching. The order approved by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1888 builds upon the previously established liturgical foundation and indicates that the prayer following the sermon might focus upon the appropriation of the message. The option of a responsive reading of Scripture is introduced: Singing one of the hymns of our hymn-book, the people standing Prayer, concluding with the Lord’s Prayer, repeated by the congregation, the minister and people kneeling The reading of a lesson from the Old Testament, and another from the New, either of which may be read responsively The collection Singing another of our hymns, the people sitting Preaching A short prayer for a blessing on the word Singing, closing with a doxology, the people standing The pronouncing of the apostolic benediction This order was (directly or indirectly) imitated yet modified by the Methodist Protestants in 1892, who placed the collection immediately before the “sermon,” did not include a final doxology (this was added in 1924), and elected not to designate a responsive reading of the Old and New Testament lessons. Instead, they placed an additional reading before the lessons: a responsive reading of a psalm or the Beatitudes, or a reading “in concert” of the Decalogue, all of which was to be concluded with the Gloria Patri. The Decalogue, which had been dropped from Wesley’s Ante-Communion in 1792, was also introduced by the African Methodist Episcopal Church into their official order of public worship in the 1890s, where it was placed as the last reading before the sermon: Voluntary by choir Scripture Sentences: “I was glad” etc., according to the Ritual Singing a hymn from our hymnal, after its announcement by the officiating minister Prayer, minister and congregation kneeling


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Voluntary by choir Scripture lesson, minister and people reading alternately Scripture lesson by minister Singing Reading of the Decalogue; minister leading, the people responding Singing Announcements Preaching or Exhortation The Lord’s Prayer or an extempore prayer, the minister and congregation kneeling Collecting Offerings Doxology and Benediction Methodist Protestants “officially” continued to use the 1892 order up to the time of their merger with the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1939. The basic structure offered to the African Methodist Episcopal Church at the turn into the twentieth century continued, with some additions, down to the Book of Worship of 1984. Not to be outdone in the area of liturgical innovation, the Methodist Episcopal Church adopted a new order in 1896, ignoring the caution voiced in 1892 by William McKinley and others that following the road toward increased ritualism would eventually lead to a decline in religion.25 The 1896 service expanded that of 1888 by including options for choral and instrumental music and for the unison recitation of the Apostles’ Creed immediately following the opening hymn as a statement of ecclesiological self-identity; these provisions had actually been proposed in 1888 by J. E. Wilson of South Carolina, but had been rejected in favor of the approved order.26 In the 1896 outline, preaching is identified as the “sermon,” announcements are to be given before the collection, and the reading of the Old and New Testament lessons is split by the singing of the Gloria Patri, with provision given for a responsive reading of the Old Testament lesson if it is from the Psalms. As with previous orders, the expectation was that this order would “establish uniformity in public worship,” and to aid in such uniformity, approval was given to put the order in the people’s hands by publishing it in that year’s printing of the official hymnal. Such uniformity was to extend beyond the bounds of the Methodist Episcopal Church, however, for the 1896 text became the foundation of a liturgical if not yet political union between the two major branches of episcopal Methodism. Slightly revised and designated a “common order,” it appeared in the Methodist Episcopal 1904 Discipline, in the 1906 Methodist Episcopal Church, South Discipline, in a shared hymnal published in 1905, and again (slightly adapted) in another shared hymnal in 1935. Both Methodist bodies agreed that emphasis ought still to be placed on the evangelistic quality of worship: a shared rubric in both churches’ Discipline and in the hymnal instructed that “an invitation to come to Christ, or to unite with the Church, should be given when this [final] hymn is announced.” The Methodist Episcopal Church, South officially maintained the “common” text throughout the ongoing discussions of reunion, though concern was expressed in 1934 that pastors in rural areas and villages had been

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unable “to develop the people for its use,” and that pastors in the cities had discarded the order in favor of one of their own improvising.27 The official adherence to the “common order” by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South stood in contrast to their ecclesiastical partner, which, in another innovative move, introduced (though not without debate) completely new orders of Lord’s Day worship in 1932 that were believed to conserve “the noblest values of our rich evangelical heritage and speak the vital language of today.”28

A Return to Wesley’s Ordo and Instructions The 1932 Methodist Episcopal Discipline offered two orders of worship for Sunday, and a third, “An Order for Morning or Evening Prayer,” which was “adapted from the Sunday Service of John Wesley and suggested for occasional use.” This was not the first time Methodists had turned their attention to recovering Wesley’s previously abandoned Sunday Service, the use of which, it was sometimes claimed, had never been repealed in the Discipline. At the 1866 meeting of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the first following the war, the Conference approved a “memorial” (petition) by St. Francis Street Church in Mobile, Alabama, that Wesley’s Sunday Service be restored and allowed for its optional use.29 The Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s book editor and editor of the volume was conveniently Thomas Osmond Summers, former pastor of St. Francis Street and chair of the Conference committee that had urged approbation of the memorial. Born in England, Summers had come to the United States in 1830 and distinguished himself by his scholarly interest in matters theological, liturgical, and literary; he eventually served as professor of systematic theology and dean of the theology faculty at Vanderbilt University until his death in 1882. Summers brought out the The Sunday Service of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1867, which combined the denomination’s current Ritual (services for the Lord’s Supper, infant and adult baptism, marriage, burial, and ordination) with a new order for the reception of members and Wesley’s Lord’s Day services as published in 1786. Included from Wesley’s Sunday Service were morning and evening prayer; the Litany; the table of proper lessons for Sunday morning and evening prayer and other particular days; and the substantial section of collects, epistles, and gospels to be used on Sundays throughout the year and at Nativity, Good Friday, and Ascension. Alterations and omissions from the Wesleyan original are evident; for example, at points the language of Wesley’s work is brought into line with current denominational phraseology for historic Christian texts, and all Scripture translations now come from the preferred King James Version of the Bible.30 Although it is impossible to ascertain the actual usage of the 1867 Sunday Service by local congregations, interest in Wesley’s liturgy did not wane. Following the example of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church approved in 1880 the optional use of “Wesley’s Prayer Book.”31 In 1891, Charles S. Harrower of the Methodist Episcopal Church first published Select Psalms, a book lacking the official sanction of the


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General Conference, but carrying the “imprimatur” of Bishop Edward G. Andrews. Compiled in response to an apparent demand to “dignify and enrich” public worship, the book encouraged the use of a psalm with a concluding Gloria Patri in public worship—even though such a provision had not been specified in the Conference-approved service of 1888. The core of the book is Wesley’s thirty-day cycle of psalms, translated throughout in the King James Version, and to which are joined “Selections of Psalms and Other Scriptures.” Additional portions of Wesley’s Sunday Service were printed alongside the current Methodist Episcopal Ritual: tables for proper lessons; the Decalogue with responses; the two ecumenical creeds; canticles, collects, versicles, and prayers from morning and evening prayer (supplemented with prayers proposed to the Protestant Episcopal General Convention of 1886); and outlines of the orders for morning and evening prayer.32 Two years later, Harrower brought out a similar unofficial book, this time with full texts for a conflated service of morning and evening prayer, for the Litany, and for Sunday collects throughout the year (with stated epistle and gospel lessons), along with other enrichments. Neither the 1784 nor the 1786 Sunday Service was used directly as the source; instead, borrowings appear from the 1882 recension of Wesley’s service made by the “English Wesleyans,” and new material is imported (e.g., opening sentences as propers) from the 1892 Book of Common Prayer of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. No explanation is given for the preference of this revised text over Wesley’s approved versions, though it may be significant that both of Harrower’s books were published on the heels of the second ecumenical Methodist conference in 1891.33 Another conflated service of morning and evening prayer was published in 1903, this one drawing directly from the 1784 service, though with some alteration, particularly the placement of the Prayer for the President from the American Prayer Book alongside Wesley’s Prayer for Supreme Rulers, and the addition of two prayers (for Ministers of the Gospel and for All Conditions of Men) that Wesley had deleted.34 Even though the 1903 version was closer to Wesley’s original, it was Harrower’s version of the “Wesley Sunday Service” that appeared in Methodist Episcopal bishop Wilbur Thirkield’s Service and Prayers for Church and Home (1918, 1928). The “Wesley” liturgical texts published by Summers, Harrower, and the anonymous editor of 1903 saw some usage in local church worship, as attested by Hugh D. Atchison, in 1927 the pastor of St. Luke’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Dubuque, Iowa: Here and there we find Methodist Episcopal churches timidly trying to live up in some measure to our “great and good inheritance,” by using some form of worship, based on the general outline of the Sunday Service. Saint Luke’s Church of Dubuque . . . is one of these pioneer churches; and has used a greatly simplified form of this service for more than thirty years; and the results have been highly gratifying.35

The published services also prepared the ground for the production in 1930 of trial orders of worship by the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Commission on Worship and Music, headed by Bishop Thirkield. Among the four services offered was an order for morning prayer (with rubrics indicating variations for evening) “adapted” from Wesley. Here portions of the historic Anglican office, as mediated by Har-

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rower and the 1892 Prayer Book, were blended with Methodist assumptions of what was necessary for Sunday worship.36 All four orders were framed in generally the same shape, and though they elaborated the previous “standard” form, they were now identified as following the psycho-spiritual-aesthetic sequence put forward by Congregationalists Von Ogden Vogt and Willard L. Sperry, who attempted to express how outer form articulated the inner experience of worship.37 The commission believed that Vogt’s progression—vision, humility, vitality (or exaltation), recollection, illumination, dedication, and peace—revealed the essential shape of the great historic liturgies, including the Prayer Book, though several components of the commission’s “Wesley” service were jiggled so that they might fit Vogt’s form. However, when the service was approved in 1932 as the “Order for Morning or Evening Prayer,” the historic shape of Anglican morning prayer had been restored. The “Wesley” service was preceded in the Discipline of 1932 by two other orders, designated Order I and Order II. Order II was an abbreviation of the longer Order I, the latter taking the shape of the reconstructed and revised Wesleyan ordo, except for the location of the creed, which, in a departure also from Vogt’s scheme, was placed earlier in the service rather than in the “illumination” section: order I order II (designated by *) *Prelude (Hymn, if a procession) *Call to Worship *(Hymn, if no procession) *Prayer (of Confession) *Silent Prayer Words of Assurance *The Lord’s Prayer *Anthem or Chant (Venite or Te Deum) Responsive Reading Gloria Patri Affirmation of Faith, The Apostles’ Creed, Or Other Affirmation *Lessons from the Old and New Testaments

order for morning or evening prayer (“Wesley” text) Prelude Scripture Sentences Hymn Call to Confession General Confession Prayer for Pardon The Lord’s Prayer Versicle Venite Psalter Gloria Patri

Lesson from the Old Testament Te Deum [morning] or Magnificat [evening] Lesson from the New Testament Jubilate Deo [morning] or Nunc Dimittis [evening] Declaration of Faith (Apostles’ Creed)


Prayer

[Junior Sermon for children] Offertory [Junior Sermon, if not placed above] *Presentation of Offerings Hymn Sermon Prayer *Hymn or Doxology *Silent Prayer *Benediction *Postlude

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Collect for Grace [morning] or Collect for Aid against all Perils and a Collect from the ordination liturgies [evening] Prayers, ending with the Apostolic Benediction Offertory (an anthem may be sung) Presentation of Offerings (Hymn, if sermon) (Sermon) (Prayer, if sermon) Hymn Benediction

These orders of 1932, along with the shared “common order” from the 1905 hymnal, formed the basis for discussion of a unified Methodist Church service made by a committee of representatives from the three Methodist bodies that were to reunite in 1939. In fact, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South virtually had already Order I from the 1932 revision, renumbered as Order II in their printing of the 1935 shared hymnal—though, in what may have been a typographical error or a liturgical experiment, the Gloria Patri was relocated to follow the Apostles’ Creed, a change that would continue to influence the placement of the Gloria in local church worship. According to Nolan Harmon, a committee member and later a bishop, the chosen process in the development of the unified rite was to keep the basic texts of 1932 and to offer alternatives only when deemed necessary.38 The result was the approval for the new Methodist Church of substantially the same four orders as had the official sanction of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1932. The “Wesley” service remained the same. Order I was the same as in 1932, but now silent prayer followed the benediction, and, reflecting alterations already made to the order in the 1935 hymnal, the prayer after the lessons was now the “Pastoral Prayer,” and an “Invitation to Christian Discipleship” appeared after the sermon prayer. The new Order III was virtually the old 1932 Order II, but with the designations of “Pastoral Prayer” and the “Invitation” as in Order I. The new Order II was a working over of the “common order”: Prelude Call to Worship Invocation Hymn Affirmation of Faith (Apostles’ Creed) Anthem Responsive Reading Gloria Patri

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Lessons from the Holy Scriptures The Silent Meditation The Pastoral Prayer The Lord’s Prayer The Offertory Dedication of Offerings Hymn Sermon Prayer Invitation to Christian Discipleship Hymn Benediction Postlude This proliferation of orders for Sunday, begun in 1932 and continued in 1939, reached new heights with the publication in 1945 of the first official Methodist worship book since Wesley’s Sunday Service, though its use was understood to be “optional and voluntary” in respect to the Methodist tradition of being “both liturgical and free.” Three services each are provided for morning, for evening, and for morning or evening; the “Wesley” morning and evening service of 1939, now with the Collect for Peace, is continued; fifteen services are supplied reflecting the church year as well as ecclesiastical and civil occasions; and a morning and an evening service is offered for family or small group worship, thus justifying the title of the work as The Book of Worship for Church and Home. With the exception of one of the conflated morning and evening services that reproduces Order II of 1939 (the old “common” order), the rest are restatements or nuancings of 1939 Order I (following the shape of the reconstructed Wesleyan ordo). A theological and psychological rationale for Order I—and all of worship—is expressed, which still hints at the categories suggested by Vogt: An order of worship should move with unity and meaning. There is a fourfold aspect to an order of worship. Four attitudes of the devout worshipper are presented in ascending movements—adoration, confession, affirmation, and dedication. They imply the divinely descending movements of vision, pardon, illumination, and fruition. While this pattern allows for wide variety of content, it at the same time possesses such unity that, if it is generally followed by our churches, a Methodist will feel at home in any Methodist church. This is because the things we are most used to always come in the same order. For example, the Lord’s Prayer, the Responsive Reading, and the Creed are always found in the same place, as are the Call to Worship and the Benediction. I.

The Adoration of God

The congregation should be called to worship at the opening of every service by a hymn of praise and adoration. Prelude Call to Worship Hymn


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Invocation Collect II.

The Confession of Sin

If through our adoration we come to a vision of God, we naturally feel the need of confessing our sins. Prayer of Confession Silent Meditation Words of Assurance Prayer for Pardon or Words of Forgiveness The Lord’s Prayer III.

The Affirmation of Faith

The experience of forgiveness should bring a mood of exaltation, in which we can affirm our faith through music, scripture, and creed, all moving toward the Pastoral Prayer. Anthem The Responsive Reading Gloria Patri Affirmation of Faith The Lessons: Old Testament, New Testament Pastoral Prayer IV.

The Dedication of Life

All that follows the Pastoral Prayer, from Offertory to Benediction, should be in a mood of dedication, which is centralized in the Sermon. The goal of all worship is the dedication of ourselves, in the name of Christ, to his Church and Kingdom. Offertory Hymn The Sermon An Invitation to Christian Discipleship Hymn Silent Prayer Benediction Postlude

Not simply outlines (a separate outlined “Order of Worship” is provided), these services are richly developed with a variety of texts incorporated for prayer and praise. Many of these texts originate outside of Methodism in both denominational and ecumenical prayer collections; even a prayer from the 1940 Union Prayerbook for Jewish Worship is included, which serves as the invocation in the third evening service. Users of the 1945 book may have found the presentation of multiple services to be unhelpful or unwieldy, for with the next liturgical revision approved twenty years later by the Methodist Church, only two services for Sunday with full texts were printed, with numerous seasonal and general aids for use as propers provided in separate sections. One service with full texts in the 1965 Book of Worship was

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an accurate reprinting of Wesley’s 1784 morning prayer, which was placed in the concluding section of “Services in the Methodist Tradition.” Wesley’s actual service may have been included as a corrective to the newest variant services adapted from Wesley, such as those in The John Wesley Prayer Book (1956) and The Wesley Orders of Common Prayer (1957).39 The other complete service, the standard form for Methodist worship, subtly reshuffled the components of the 1945 service and was given a new rationale: closer conformity to Wesley’s order for morning prayer. The outline took this shape: Prelude Scripture Sentences, or Call to Worship Hymn Invocation Call to Confession General Confession Prayer for Pardon or Words of Assurance The Lord’s Prayer Versicle Psalter or Other Act of Praise Gloria Patri Anthem The Scripture Lessons Affirmation of Faith Doxology Collect Pastoral Prayer Offertory with parish notices Presentation of offering Hymn The Sermon Invitation to Christian Discipleship Hymn Benediction Postlude The committee charged at the 1956 General Conference with developing new resources had sought to make Wesley’s service more than a “museum piece” and so had offered a service “true to [the Methodist] heritage” and “historically and psychologically valid” that contained all the elements of “vital Christian worship: adoration, confession and forgiveness, praise and thanksgiving, proclamation of the Word, and dedication of life.” The service carried the notice that it was an adaptation of Wesley’s Sunday Service and that it was recommended for Lord’s Day use; an abbreviated form of the service (in outline), without the Wesleyan identification, was also provided.40 The standard service and the brief outline, along with other materials (but not Wesley’s 1784 text), were then authorized for trial use from 1960 to 1964. Evidently the overt declaration of patterning the standard


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service upon the Wesleyan ordo proved problematic, for the heading was removed in the approved 1965 Book of Worship, and the explicit Wesleyan connections of the service were lost. In many respects the 1965 Book of Worship was ill-timed: it appeared three years before the Methodist Church was to unite with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to constitute the United Methodist Church; and the work done did not take into account the liturgical research and ferment that had given rise to the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) and the subsequent ritual revision of the Second Vatican Council. Recognizing the problem, the United Methodist Church in 1970 established a committee to compose a series of alternate, yet unofficial rituals. This led to the issuance of a Service of Word and Table that established the normativity of a eucharistic shape for Lord’s Day worship whether or not the Lord’s Supper was celebrated. The service was fine-tuned from 1972 until 1984 when it was approved as the first United Methodist Lord’s Day service.41 The finalized text appeared in both the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal and the 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship: Entrance Gathering Greeting and Hymn Opening Prayers and Praise Proclamation and Response Prayer for Illumination Scripture Sermon Response to the Word Concerns and Prayers Confession, Pardon, and Peace Offering Thanksgiving Prayer of Thanksgiving (or Great Thanksgiving at Holy Communion) Lord’s Prayer (Breaking the Bread) (Giving the Bread and Cup) Sending Forth Hymn or Song and Dismissal with Blessing Going Forth The structure of the service did not rely on Wesley’s morning prayer, but instead imitated the classical shape of the Sunday liturgy believed to be found in its primitive form in Justin Martyr, a pattern that had gained wide ecumenical acceptance as a paradigm for new forms of worship. Even though Word and Table lacked a structural indebtedness to Wesley, the framers of the rite acknowledged its conformity to the spirit of Wesley, in that, quite consciously, his descendants had simply followed the Scriptures and the primitive church as he had charged them to do in 1784.

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Other Forms for Sunday Worship Sunday Afternoon and Evening Worship In 1792, when the Methodist Episcopal Church abandoned Wesley’s orders for Sunday morning and evening in favor of a brief listing of components to be included in a service of worship, the Methodist leadership assumed that, where possible, their people would gather for worship on Sunday at times in addition to the morning hour. Samuel Seaman described the multiple gatherings that would have been typical in the nineteenth century for societies within city stations situated along the eastern seaboard, in this case a New York City congregation in the 1830s and 1840s: There were three sermons on the Lord’s day, at 10:30 a.m., at 3 p.m., and in the evening at 6:30 in the winter, 7:30 in the summer, and 7 in the fall and spring. The afternoon congregations were at least as large as any. Sunday-school met at 9 a.m., and 1:30 p.m., and the children occupied the galleries with their teachers at both the morning and afternoon services, unless especially excused at the request of their parents. Week-evening services were half an hour later than those of Sunday, varying also with the season.42

For some Methodists, Lord’s Day worship took place either in the afternoon or the evening on account of the distance between meetinghouses and the scarcity of ordained ministers. In remote areas, the main service of the week was not held on Sunday at all, or Lord’s Day worship was presided over by a licensed local preacher or an approved exhorter, a role that, in later times, might also be assumed by the Sunday school superintendent. Afternoon worship was to include the same components as the morning service, though with a reduction in the amount of Scripture to be read; Methodist Protestants from their formation indicated that both afternoon and evening services were to be comparable to the morning service, except for the number of Scripture lessons. Although the Methodist Episcopal Church from 1864 to 1912 and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South from 1870 to the 1939 merger followed the Methodist Protestants in conforming the design of the evening service to that of the afternoon, many congregations of those denominations, as well as other Methodist bodies, continued to practice the instruction from the 1792 Discipline that “singing, prayer, and preaching” should comprise the evening service. Since the unchurched and unconverted were often the intended participants in the evening service, worship generally took on an evangelistic flavor. Many of the early Methodist preachers record in their diaries and journals the Scripture texts taken for the evening services and for other times of day, and note with pride the reaping of the harvest of new souls or their dismay at the coldness and hard-heartedness of their hearers. In a move that may have reflected either the dwindling practice of multiple Sunday gatherings or the expectation that services at all hours should conform to the morning pattern, the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1912 eliminated from the disciplinary section “Order of Public Worship” all references to afternoon and


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evening worship; eight years earlier, the paragraph on afternoon and evening had been reduced to a simple footnote in the section. This omission is all the more striking in light of the concern that had been expressed in the popular periodicals of several Methodist denominations that the Sunday evening service was going the way of the afternoon service that had, in many congregations, largely disappeared. Indeed, some would argue, it was precisely the expectation that the evening service should be an imitation of the increasingly elaborate morning form that had contributed to its decline. A corrective would be to return to the uncomplicated, evangelistic service with a focus on persuasive preaching that had characterized Methodism of earlier days.43 What should not be done, Congregational minister Washington Gladden first stated in 1898, was what some Methodist pastors and others had selected: to use various “devices” and other enhancements to attract persons to evening worship. Such amusements, said Gladden, inevitably led to the prostitution of worship.44 Yet numerous Methodist congregations that had exercised their liturgical freedom in developing simple worship found that evening services no longer held the attraction they once did, though some, like Church Street Methodist Episcopal Church, South in Knoxville, reportedly had to turn crowds away during the years 1914–1915. Church Street’s 7:30 p.m. evening service for Sunday, February 19, 1928—of prelude, hymn, prayer, anthem, announcements and offertory, sermon, hymn, benediction, and postlude—offered both simplicity and denominational integrity, for it was simultaneously a truncated version of the standard morning service and an expansion (by instrumental/choral music, notices, and offering) of the 1792 instructions.45 With an ever-increasing number of entertainments and diversions tempting Methodists, Sunday evening worship continued to decline, but it did not disappear. Evening gatherings were encouraged by the publication of worship aids from denominational presses and by the production of official liturgical texts: the 1932 Methodist Episcopal Discipline included the conflated “Wesley” morning and evening prayer, and the 1945 Book of Worship of the Methodist Church listed eight services for evening use (strangely, no special evening order was contained in the 1965 Book of Worship). The 1989 United Methodist Hymnal and the 1992 Book of Worship provided an evening service, but in a significant departure from the Methodist tradition, the service was no longer one with revival-type preaching, but more of a “cathedral”-style service of praise, prayer, and psalmody modeled on classical forms. Although some congregations used this order on Sunday nights, an increasingly popular Sunday evening form at the end of the twentieth century was the so-called “contemporary” service, based on principles that harkened back to Finney’s “new measures.” Drawing upon drama, the musical beat of the day, the latest in media and technology, and other cultural “entertainments” that certainly would have horrified earlier Methodists, these services, like the Methodist evening services of former days, often catered to the unchurched, now labeled “seekers.” This freer, but planned, style of worship also made inroads into the Sunday morning order, as congregations experimented with forms that blended their regular pattern with the “contemporary” in an effort to be “seekersensitive.”

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Sunday School Worship Methodist educational and fellowship ministries have also generated forms for Sunday worship. Methodists in England and America were at the forefront of what would become the Sunday school movement, and legislation supporting the Christian nurture and catechizing of children claimed a priority in the nascent Methodist Episcopal Church.46 On account of a keen focus upon the organization and structure of the Sunday schools, and the proliferation of literature from denominational presses, Sunday school membership from all the branches of Methodism in 1866 allegedly was only slightly under that of the combined total from six other leading denominations.47 Significantly, numerous scholars in Methodist Sunday schools had no other affiliation with the church; the inclusion of worship “exercises” with the gathering of the entire school was, in part, meant to encourage their—and the other children’s—participation in the regular services. For Methodist members and their children, Sunday school worship sometimes served as the replacement for the worship associated with the Methodist class meeting which, by the mid-nineteeth century, was in decline. And, particularly for frontier or rural congregations, the Sunday school assembly, led by the Sunday school superintendent or other appointed lay leader, provided the primary opportunity for weekly worship, since a circuit-riding licensed or ordained preacher might only be able to lead worship once or twice a month. Because no official guidelines were offered for Sunday school worship, the services varied according to location and context, and generally a truncated form of the congregation’s regular service was followed, supplemented with prose and poetry from collections such as The Sunday-School Speaker, compiled in 1860 by Thomas O. Summers. Illinois clergyman Leonard Smith recorded in 1869 that he began his Sunday school with the reading of Scripture, singing, and prayer, followed by a “catechism lesson”;48 these components for opening worship are widely attested in other communities. As the regular Sunday morning service became more elaborate, so often did the Sunday school order, a development illustrated by the pattern used in the 1890s by Pisgah Church of Tazewell County, Virginia, which shows as well the popular custom of blending a service of worship with fellowship or business meeting, and the utilization of opening and closing forms: Opening Bell Taps or Organ Voluntary, as signal for silence Singing Responsive Reading, school standing Prayer, closing with the Lord’s Prayer in concert Calling of Roll Singing The Lesson Teachers take charge of classes Recitation of the Lesson, including Catechism Lesson Warning Bell—five minutes Closing Bell—silence


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Closing Singing Official Reports Review and application of lesson Announcements, including Church services Doxology. Dismission49 Additional components might include special speakers, a devotional or Bible study by the leader, recitations of Scripture or poems by the classes, the unison profession of a creed, special monetary offerings, reports on the health and welfare of members or neighbors with prayer on their behalf, and the celebration of special themes or days such as Bible Sunday, Rally Day, or Children’s Day. Large churches cultivated well-organized orchestras and choirs that performed for the opening and closing gatherings and occasionally for the main Lord’s Day service. Each church developed its assembly as it saw fit, stressing education, Christian formation, lay leadership, and the active participation of all present. Though Methodist Sunday schools were not restricted to denominational resources, Methodist publishers readily stepped in to fill a need: songs, responsive readings, and full “programs” for worship were available in the Epworth Hymnal (1885, 1891), The Methodist Sunday School Hymnal (1911), various versions of The Cokesbury Hymnal (first published in 1923 and in print for the rest of the twentieth century), and The Abingdon Song Book (1938); the Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s Superintendent’s Guide suggested themes and texts for devotions throughout the course of a year. Congregations that over time retained their Sunday school assembly because of custom or from the existential need of sharing a pastor with other congregations often kept the form parallel to the structure of the preaching service, while singing songs and hymns from what had become for them the “Sunday school hymnal.” The assembly pattern used in the 1990s by Poplar Springs United Methodist Church of Sanford, North Carolina, demonstrates the fluidity between the two services: sunday school

worship service

Gathering Greetings

Prelude Call to Worship Opening Prayer Hymn Affirmation of Faith Children’s Time Concerns of the Congregation Morning Prayer and Lord’s Prayer Offering Hymn of Preparation Scripture Readings

Announcements Prayer Hymn Scripture Lesson Lesson Offering Dismissal

Sermon Closing Hymn Benediction

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Or a simple pattern reminiscent of early nineteenth-century practice might be retained, as was the custom in the late 1990s of Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Hurdle Mills, North Carolina, which opened its Sunday school with a sequence of hymn singing, Scripture reading, and devotional reading, followed by supplicatory and intercessory prayer. When a congregation abandoned its assembly on account of changes in demographics, pedagogy, or leadership, beloved components of the school service sometimes migrated to the main Sunday worship service, creating a hybrid form with the expectation that worship would be simultaneously doxological, didactic, and koinonaic. Efforts in the latter half of the nineteenth century and in the first two decades of the twentieth century to produce a uniform worship order for Methodist Sunday schools failed, perhaps on account of the greater concern to integrate children and youth into the primary corporate service. Inadvertently, the Sunday school assembly had become, for many children (and adults), a substitute for the preaching service, prompting Ohio Conference officials in 1875 to remark regarding the attendance of children from Methodist families at the main service that “either Methodist families have few children, or they put forth little effort to have them in their sanctuary.”50 Cries resounded through denominational newspapers to rectify this ongoing problem for the sake of the gospel and the future of the church.51 Multiple solutions were proposed, including the collapsing of the Sunday school assembly and preaching service into a combined morning order of almost two hours duration, which would begin with opening exercises and Bible study directed by the Sunday school superintendent, and conclude with the pastor leading “appropriate services” and a short sermon.52 But the decision reached by the Methodist Episcopal Church, at first unofficially and in 1932 officially, had, at its worst, the effect of further alienating children and youth from the primary service of the word. Utilizing the latest tools in the growing academic field of developmental psychology, and borrowing from the psychospiritual and liturgico-aesthetic work of Vogt, Sperry, and others, denominational leaders determined that graded Sunday school worship services were to be preferred over the multigenerational school gathering, since “difference in age, experience, capacities, and needs make necessary worship services that differ in purpose and content.”53 The intended outcome was twofold: to “train” children and youth for worship in the main congregation, and in doing so, to provide meaningful, appropriate, and well-constructed services that addressed life experiences and stimulated the religious imagination. Ideally, the Sunday school service and the preaching service, though distinct services of worship, were to be regarded as parts of a unified whole.54 However, in some congregations, the age-specific service would become a “children’s church” that youngsters attended as a substitute for all or part of the main service. In 1932, the Methodist Episcopal General Conference charged its agencies to produce appropriate age-level services for the Sunday school; and, along the same vein, it was also in 1932 that this denomination introduced into its official Sunday morning order the option of a “junior sermon,” which persisted in Methodist worship under various titles. Books of age-specific worship resources continued to be published after the merger creating the Methodist Church, and among the most popular was a series written by Alice Anderson Bays, the centerpiece for which were talks on


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famous personages, works of art, or skills for Christian living.55 Even though the services were designed for particular age groupings, Bays’s order of service was nevertheless basically the same and hinted at the order used for the primary morning service: Prelude Call to Worship Hymn (variable sequence, consisting of one or more: Prayer, Scripture, Affirmation of Faith, Responsive Reading, Poem) Story or Talk or Exposition of Painting/Sculpture (Poem) Prayer Hymn Benediction Despite the availability of age-level resources, Sunday school services were often truncated versions of or variations upon the congregation’s regular Sunday pattern, as evident from a 1964 worship service for the “junior department” of Glenmont Methodist Church in Wheaton, Maryland: Hymn Call to Worship Silent Meditation Prayer The Lord’s Prayer Offering Doxology Presentation of Tithes and Gifts Lesson from the Scriptures Hymn Benediction The popularity of poetry, religious drama, paintings, sculpture, and other creative arts in the Sunday school encouraged their inclusion in the Lord’s Day service, though actual usage was usually tempered by the congregation’s sensibilities on such matters. Explorations during the 1940s and 1950s of the place of the arts in worship gave way in the 1960s and 1970s to experiments in worship with liturgical dance, sound recordings, film clips, and sacred clowning. These “innovations” were tested in non-Methodist congregations as well. Methodists widely produced “creative” orders of, or guidelines for, worship in print or in typescript: individuals, local churches, and even Methodist conference committees tried their hand.56 Although much of what developed was ephemeral, it did actualize for many Methodists the long-held principle of liturgical freedom for Sunday worship. Worship on the Lord’s Day in a Methodist congregation may reproduce past or present official denominational services, it may be the product of a localized evolutionary process by which various worship patterns or components of worship are molded together to create a unique whole, it may combine the two previous

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types over the course of the year, or it may be highly variable in form. In spite of the wide range of structural possibilities, certain characteristics are predictable for much of Methodist worship. These worship elements conform not only to what is considered the essence of Protestant Christian worship but also to the foundational Methodist “directory” of 1792. To the basic components of prayer, reading of Scripture, preaching, and song may be added the rehearsal of creeds and the saying or singing of Psalms. The actual choice of texts and actions for any given service depends upon the particular emphasis for the day, whether that be determined locally or by conformity to wider theological, liturgical, and ecclesiastical agendas.

2

The Lord’s Day Ordinary and Propers

very regular service of Christian worship consists of both ordinary and propers: by the former is meant the invariable liturgical texts or acts of worship that are repeated each time the people gather; by the latter, the texts and acts that are variable and usually reflect the day or season of the church year. At first blush it might appear that Methodists had no ordinary as such until the twentieth century; that despite pushes for liturgical uniformity, the desire for liturgical freedom and the evangelical fervor of the first hundred years obviated any invariable components of worship other than preaching. Yet clearly the Methodists have always had an ordinary, not of texts per se, but of standard components for worship as outlined in the Methodist “directory” of 1792, which was gradually expanded to include responsive psalmody and creeds though not in every congregation or denomination. Methodists also made use of propers tied to the Christian year, at first in a limited fashion and more fully as worship became more formalized. To the Christian calendar the Methodists added their own festival days and civic observances, blurring them in ways deemed appropriate for the most “American” of denominations. The ordinary and propers used in worship help define what it means to be Methodist on the Lord’s Day.

E

The Contents of Lord’s Day Worship Prayer Frequent and disciplined prayer in public and in private was, according to John Wesley, one of the fundamental and characteristic practices of the Methodists who were to carry out in all seriousness the Scripture mandate to pray—“to lift up their hearts to God”—without ceasing, and thereby exercise what was considered to be one of the instituted means of grace.1 Wesley’s revision of the Prayer Book therefore was intended to equip the American Methodists for what their self31

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definition charged them to do. The Sunday Service also recognized the radical departure that Methodists had made from the Prayer Book tradition when it allowed for the option of extemporary prayer in public worship,2 though this rubric came not in Wesley’s orders for morning and evening prayer, but in the service for the Lord’s Supper. Wesley himself had no difficulty in combining written and extemporary forms of prayer on any liturgical occasion, though Methodists have often forgotten this fact.3 The use of printed prayers on Sunday morning was not the favored practice of the majority of early American Methodists, who preferred the extemporary style over the reading of prayer texts; Methodists who worshiped in the large urban centers and utilized both types of prayer were, for a time, the exception. Thus the tension found early on concerning freedom or form in worship in general was borne out liturgically by the method of prayer used and theologically through the pneumatological presuppositions that undergirded the definitions of authentic prayer. Extemporary prayer, valued by generations of Methodists as the best means of praying with the mind and the spirit (1 Corinthians 14:15; cf. Romans 8:15–16), admittedly could be subject to a variety of human weaknesses. In their 1798 commentary on the Discipline, Bishops Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke reinforced the caution they had received from Wesley against praying without intermission for more than eight to ten minutes and added their own warnings, which later Methodists would often reiterate since the advice apparently went unheeded: Scarcely any thing tends to damp divine service more than to be praying too long, and in a languid manner. Few things more tend to bring a congregation into a formal spirit. Sometimes indeed the minister is led within the vail in an unusual way, and may then justly give full vent to the holy flame. But on other occasions let the prayer be very fervent, and of moderate length. “When ye pray,” says our Lord, “use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them.” Matt. vi. 7,8.4

Writers of essays and pastoral aids over the next two hundred years recommended that those who were to pray in public should take stock of their own spiritual state, since indifference might breed formalism, malaise could discourage the prayers of persons in the pew, and personal confession could mask the intended purposes of corporate prayer. Equally dangerous was a style characterized by exaggerations in voice and mannerism, and the use of language or turns of phrase inappropriate to the place or time. Extemporary public prayer directed to the throne of grace ideally was to be sincere, heartfelt, comprehensive, clear, effective but unaffected, and brief. Just as there were moves toward creating uniform liturgies for Lord’s Day worship, similarly there were efforts, though initially more subtle ones, to endorse standard prayer texts. The instruction approved by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1824 that the Lord’s Prayer was to conclude the first prayer at all occasions of public worship effectively opened the door to the use of set prayers, though it was generally acknowledged that this preformulated prayer was unique in that it was prescribed as a form and model by the Lord himself. But which text of this Scriptureprayer was to be used? The differences in the synoptic texts were not lost on the

The Lord’s Day: Ordinary and Propers

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Methodists, and debates ensued from the late 1850s to the 1910s on the most appropriate text and translation, and whether or not the final doxology ought to be added.5 During this period, unofficial prayer resources by Methodists appeared on the market alongside the reprints and revisions of parts of Wesley’s Sunday Service. These publications included T. O. Summers’s The Golden Censer: An Essay on Prayer, with a Selection of Forms of Prayer, Designed to Aid in the Devotions of the Sanctuary, Family, and Closet (1859), Charles LeVerne Roberts’s Divine Service: A Compilation of Collects and Psalms for Use in the Public Worship of God in the Methodist Episcopal Church (1903), and Bishop Thirkield’s Service and Prayers for Church and Home already mentioned (1918, 1928). The appearance of written prayer texts was unsettling to many Methodists. While Roberts’s editorial note in Divine Service claimed that his collection responded to the cry “Back to Wesley” that reverberated through the Methodist Episcopal Church as a type of “liturgical movement,” others feared that such interest in “ritualistic” prayers would force a departure from traditional Wesleyanism. Such concerns were well-founded, for as the momentum toward written prayers increased, the discipline and skills of praying extemporaneously or spontaneously in public worship declined, though they were best preserved within African-American Methodism. The changing attitudes of Methodists toward written prayers are substantiated by the presence of twenty-one pages of official but optional “Aids to Individual and Congregational Devotion” in the 1939 Discipline of the newly formed Methodist Church. The impetus toward printed prayers continued, with most American Methodist bodies since the 1950s placing prayer texts among their official worship resources. Usually the expected function of the prayer is specified (e.g., confession, intercession). The contents of the prayers reveal much about Methodist (or at least some Methodist) understandings on the pervasive theological and moral issues. For example, prayers articulating the concerns of the social gospel movement are rife in the 1930s and 1940s, with some, by such writers as the Baptist Walter Rauschenbusch, managing to find a place in books published in the 1980s and 1990s. Even the sources of the prayers spoke to Methodist assumptions about prayer and about Methodist ecclesial identity within the church catholic: the rediscovery of ancient texts and the ecumenical sharing of contemporary, multicultural resources invited the use of prayers ancient and modern, national and international.

Readings and Psalmody The Articles of Religion sent to America by Wesley in 1784 have served as a constitutive and binding document for Methodist and Wesleyan churches. The fifth Article on the “sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for salvation” sets forth the role of Scripture and delimits what is canonical (the Apocrypha is excluded). This statement reinforced Wesley’s teaching that Scripture was the inspired and infallible word of God, which had supreme authority in the establishment of doctrine and in Christian life, though other subordinate authorities, such as reason, experience, and selected eras of the church’s tradition might also be at work; a questionable modern interpretation claimed Wesley’s norms for doctrinal authority were precisely fourfold (the “quadrilateral”).6 Exactly because the Scriptures were

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the paramount norm, the Bible was not to be revered at a distance but rather used with respect for its divinely appointed purposes: Methodists have always been charged to seek grace through searching the Scriptures corporately and privately by reading, hearing, and meditating on them. As Coke and Asbury noted in 1798, a “peculiar blessing” accompanied the public reading of the Scriptures, and so presiders at worship were to do all in their power to “lead the people to the love of the holy bible.”7 The supplanting of the 1784 orders for morning and evening prayer by the rubrics of 1792 may, at first sight, suggest that the amount of Scripture potentially heard in the actual Methodist congregation was substantially reduced. In reality, the new rubrics may rather have been intended to increase the quantity of Scripture used in those assemblies that had already abandoned the Sunday Service. The instruction that a chapter be read from each testament was no stray thought. The proper lessons for morning and evening prayer that had come into the Sunday Service from the Book of Common Prayer were primarily readings of a complete chapter, though the lectionary for epistles and gospels—connected with the Communion service—did designate portions of chapters. Those who were familiar with Wesley’s journal8 and the preface to his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765) would have recognized the use of two testamental chapters as the pattern for the daily private reading of the Scriptures that Wesley knew in his childhood and had recommended for all Christian people. Officially, at least, the designation of a minimum of two readings would remain unchanged in episcopal Methodism, though, as has already been noted, the term “lesson” would eventually replace “chapter.” Other Methodist bodies called for unspecified readings or a single lesson, usually understood to be the text for the sermon, and thus better rubricized what was more generally Sunday practice in most of American Methodism. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a growing hermeneutical shift away from the literal and historical reading of the Bible, which was generated by the development of critical approaches to the text,9 provoked fears that the authority of Scripture—and hence the Christian faith as well as traditional Methodism— was under assault. Equally threatening were persons “exalted to high seats in the temple of wisdom and fame” who professed the infallibility of the “oracles of science” and who denied the validity of revealed truth and inspired Scripture.10 Methodists rallied to support the “Bible cause” of their denominations and the American Bible Society (founded in 1816) by mobilizing efforts to circulate the sacred text to all who would receive it, thereby reinforcing the contention that “Protestantism and patriotism unite in pointing to the Holy Bible as the living genius, creative and conservative, of our civil as well as our ecclesiastical institutions.”11 Perhaps in response to the perceived undermining of scriptural authority, and coinciding with renewed interest in Wesley’s forms for the Lord’s Day, some Methodists began to look at developing a practical psalter that would encourage the use of more Scripture in corporate worship and, by allowing for responsive readings, the active participation of the people whose role was criticized as “nothing but patient waiting and hearing.”12 In 1865 was published an unofficial Sabbath Psalter: A Selection of Psalms for Public and Family Worship, compiled by Henry J. Fox, who offered fiftythree sets of psalms for morning and evening and, though intent upon avoiding


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“formalism” in worship, suggested that the psalm be used at the commencement of a service or following the first prayer. A memorial sent from the Genesee Conference to the Methodist Episcopal General Conference of 1868 to request the approval of a psalter began the series of petitions that would persist over the ensuing years in that denomination and others, though such strategies were seen by some as additional evidence of Methodism’s sure movement toward ritualism. Meanwhile, collections of unauthorized responsive readings appeared, including those drawn from Wesley’s Select Psalms and Scripture Lessons arranged for Responsive Readings in Religious Services (1889) by the Methodist Episcopal Church’s publishing house, which, in a given reading, combined portions of psalms or other Scripture texts under a stated theme. The drive to approve a psalter eventually culminated, for the Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in the inclusion in the 1905 hymnal of two sets of conflated psalms for fifty-three Sundays of the year. Debates then followed about the propriety of tampering with holy writ to create a single reading from the conflation of multiple texts, the correctness of editing out theologically difficult passages from a single psalm, the placement of the psalms in other than canonical order, the translation of the text to be used, and, consequent to the First World War, the appropriateness for Christian worship of psalms praising a bellicose and vengeful God.13 In the years since 1905, many Methodist bodies have placed either a psalter or a section of responsive readings in their hymnal or worship book. Openness toward the use of a psalter coincided with another change: acceptance of the methods of biblical criticism and, with it, the raising of uncertainties about the authority of Scripture. Though cautions were put forward and claims made that some had gone too far in “using that liberty which Methodism has always allowed to its representatives,”14 Methodists from the beginning of the twentieth century have explored and accepted new forms of scholarship with the intention that the church might more authentically address the times in which it ministered. In a statement that Methodists a century earlier would not have recognized, the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1934 wrote that “scholarship has always found a friendly attitude in our Methodism, because life is the final test of truth.”15 The incorporation of responsive psalmody into worship had the unintended result of depriving congregations of the fullness of Old Testament riches. Archie C. Murray of Baltimore expressed the problem to the Methodist Episcopal General Conference of 1912: Whereas the Responsive Reading of the Psalms—however excellent it might be if simply added to our rather brief form of worship—is far from being a sufficient substitute for the Old Testament Lesson of which it has deprived us; And whereas our Saviour, habitually quoting from the sacred Scriptures and referring to “Moses and the Prophets,” the early sacred histories (as, e.g., “Kings”) being then called “Former Prophets,” certainly does not in any way countenance our Church’s unfortunate reduction of the thirty-nine sacred books of the Old Testament Scriptures to the one book of Psalms—and neither do his Apostles. Now therefore we earnestly beg (thru you) the General Conference to restore the Old Testament Lesson by ordering that whenever any responsive reading is used, such

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American Methodist Worship reading shall in no wise take the place of either of the two Bible Lessons to be read distinctly by the minister or leader.16

Although the issue raised by Murray was not immediately resolved, it did encourage long-term interest in the production of an Old Testament lectionary and eventually invited the specification of 110 Old Testament readings in the shared 1935 Methodist Hymnal. Interest in lectionary usage broadened, so that in the 1965 Methodist Book of Worship there was a single-year, Christian-calendar lectionary of three lessons (basically Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel), a psalm, and an act of praise. Ecumenical involvement during the 1970s and 1980s by some of the Methodist branches in the Consultation on Common Texts (CCT) led to contributions by Methodist representatives toward the production of the three-year, three-lesson (plus psalm) Common and Revised Common lectionaries, with the results of those endeavors published in many of the Methodist service books produced in the late twentieth century. The frequency of lectionary usage in Methodist worship rose, but many congregations—and their preachers—still relied upon immediate divine inspiration or personal and pastoral agendas in the selection of Scripture for Sunday.

Preaching Preaching always held a central place in Methodist worship and work, and was by most Methodists considered the essential component of a worship service. The primary intention of Methodist preaching was never exegetical accuracy, but rather the need to inflame stone-cold hearts and rekindle the lukewarm by the power of the gospel, through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, preachers from the first century of American Methodism would often boast that though their sermons (which “took” a Scripture text and elaborated upon it) or exhortations (testimonies or accounts of the faith not connected to a specific text) might not be erudite or systematic, they were effectual. Persuasive evangelical preaching has been so characteristic that it was once asserted that Methodists “get right into the heart, and there they stick, until they tear it all to pieces.”17 Englishwoman Isabella Lucy Bird Bishop would concede that among the most powerful sermons she heard in her mid-nineteenth-century visit to the United States were those from Methodist pulpits.18 This evangelical emphasis can be traced to John Wesley, whose simple instruction in his Large Minutes (Question 36) that preaching “invite, convince, offer Christ, and build up” was repeated in successive editions of the Discipline and elaborated upon in Methodist preachers’ own practical advice on homiletics: The design of preaching is to awaken sinners, and to bring them to Christ;—to urge believers to the attainment of holiness of heart and life;—to show sinners the turpitude of their hearts and sinfulness of their practice, and to bring them to the foot of the cross, stripped of self and of all self dependence;—to press the old Methodistical doctrines of justification by faith; the direct evidence from God, through faith in the merits of Christ, of the forgiveness of sin; and the adoption into his family. Nor are we to be ashamed of that unfashionable doctrine, Christian perfection: but we should point out clearly a travail of soul, not only for justification, but for sanctification, and the evi-


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dence of it. The holier we are, the more fit we shall be both for this world and that reward which awaits us hereafter.19

Preachers were urged to be serious, to direct the message to the context or situation of the hearers, to speak the simple truth to the point and in understandable language, and “to have such a variety of subjects, thoughts, expressions, figures, arguments and illustrations as shall entertain and edify, instruct and benefit even the most refined and religious in [the] congregation.”20 Methodist itinerant preachers spoke to all classes, races, and language groups wherever and whenever there was need, in imitation of Wesley’s own innovative and unrestricted preaching in domestic dwellings and in the open air. The urgency for proclaiming the gospel was such that both Wesley and Asbury preferred that itinerants be unmarried and thus unfettered, though that expectation disappeared in the early nineteenth century. Methodist preachers often left detailed accounts of the desired spiritual awakening of souls that was manifested in response to their enthusiastic preaching; this popular genre of Methodist literature was published into the twentieth century. The early Methodists, in particular, would often comment that they had been “at liberty” when their preaching seemed to accomplish its intended goal—setting “at liberty” those enslaved to sin. Conversely, a preacher might comment, as did William Doub preaching on Revelation 22:14 in Hillsborough, North Carolina, that “I had not much liberty; but I hope some good was done.”21 The testimony of Thomas Rankin, who was sent to America by John Wesley, is representative of a fervent, charismatic style of preaching and worship that, after the Civil War, would be preserved particularly in the Holiness branches of Methodism: At 4 o’clock I went to the chapel again. I preached from Rev. 3rd chapter, 8 verse. Towards the close of the sermon, I found an uncommon struggle in my breast; and in the twinkling of an eye, my soul was so filled with the power and love of God, that I could scarce get out my words. I scarce had spoken two sentences while under this amazing influence, before the very house seemed to shake, and all the people were overcome with the presence of the Lord God of Israel. Such a scene, my eyes saw, and ears heard; as I never was witness to before. Through the mercy and goodness of God, I had seen many glorious displays of the arm of the Lord, in the different parts of his vineyard, where his providence had called me to labour; but such a time as this I never, never beheld. Numbers were calling out aloud for mercy, and many were mightily praising God their Saviour; while others were in an agony, for full redemption in the blood of Jesus! Soon, very soon, my voice was drowned amidst the pleasing sounds of prayer and praise. Husbands were inviting their wives, to go to heaven with them; and parents calling upon their children to come to the Lord Jesus: And what was peculiarly affecting, I observed in the gallery (appropriated for the black people) almost every one of them upon their knees; some for themselves, and others for their distressed companions. In short, look where we would, all was wonder and amazement! As my strength was almost gone, I desired Brother Shadford to speak a few words to them. He attempted so to do, but was so overcome with the Divine presence, that he was obliged to sit down; and this was the case, both with him and myself, over and over again. We could only sit still and let the Lord do his work. For upwards of 2 hours the mighty pouring out of the spirit of God continued upon the congregation. As many of them had come from far, we with the greatest difficulty and the most earnest per-

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American Methodist Worship suasions, got them to depart, between 7 and 8 o’clock in the evening. Some of them had to ride 10 and others 15 miles to their habitations. Such a day of the Son of Man, my eyes never beheld before. From the best accounts we could receive afterwards, upwards of 50 were awakened and brought to the knowledge of a pardoning God that day; beside many, who were enabled to witness that the blood of Jesus had cleansed them from all sin.22

The conversion of hearts and minds, or at least sound scriptural learning, was also expected from the other side of the pulpit. Methodists typically have judged the success or failure of preaching (and the preacher) by visible means, such as the number of persons gathered in praise, prayer, or distress at the “altar” after the sermon, or by the message’s ability to move emotionally or to edify spiritually and sometimes even intellectually. So observed Mississippi native Maria Dyer Davies, writing in her late teens: December 29, 1850. Went to church to day, heard Mr. Massingale. Subject, analogy of the ancient races to the christian etc. Was not eloquent, but I felt built-up. Enjoyed it much & learned something too. . . . August 29, 1852. Sabbath-night. I have been to Plum Creek to-day. I did not enjoy the sermon. The minister was slow, discourse lengthy & somewhat common-place. I do not know though how many were benefitted by it. . . . April 21, 1853. Wednesday. We have been to church again, but I could not feel interested. Mr. Finley preached, was not in the spirit, thought his sermon not good. The church seemed cold.23

While, in principle, the goal and primacy of preaching have remained constant, the content and presentation of Methodist sermons have been affected by changes exterior to Methodism—such as shifting cultural presuppositions regarding rhetoric and public discourse, advancements in media technologies,24 and the development of psychological disciplines—and interior, especially increased levels of education for clergy and laity, new or redirected theological and social emphases (raising concerns about neglected doctrinal issues), and the conception of the sermon as an element in liturgical worship. There have always been critics of lengthy sermons (one Captain Meredith Brock of Florida, it was said, took out his newspaper when he perceived sufficient time had elapsed).25 But judging by actual practice and the written recommendations of “experts,” Sunday morning sermons, over two hundred years, gradually decreased in duration from approximately one hour to (as brief as) ten minutes; brevity became the watchword as sound bites replaced oratory. Extemporary preaching, prepared for in advance by prayerful study and reflection, was repeatedly extolled as the preferred method of sermon delivery. Yet, over time, the utilization of sermon manuscripts became more accepted, though they were still condemned by some as too formal, mechanical, unnatural, and “not Methodist.” The use of sermon manuscripts was encouraged not only by sophistication in academic study and the general decrease in oratorical skills but also by the intellectual demand in some quarters that sermons “make one think.” Even so, Methodist congregations in each generation have decried the decline in preaching from previous days, exposing a trend to replace spiritual subjects on Sunday morning with topics moral and psychological, and relegating the once


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central issue of conversion to occasional revival meetings. One remedy has been to focus upon the messenger rather than the message, giving rise first to the pulpit princes and, at the end of the twentieth century, to the marketability of televangelism. The practice of liturgical preaching, that is, the exposition of a biblical text that takes into account the context and content of the service as a whole, was first introduced to Methodists in the mid-twentieth century, and brought a new dimension and expectation, but did not establish itself as a feasible solution in uniting knowledge and vital piety.

The Apostles’ Creed and Other Affirmations of Faith When the Apostles’ Creed appeared in 1896 as a standard component of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s new order of public worship, it marked the first time since the abandonment of Wesley’s orders for morning and evening prayer that a creed had officially been used for Methodist worship on occasions other than when the baptismal liturgy for adults was celebrated (where the creed in the interrogative mode served as the profession of faith prior to baptism). In spite of the limited usage of the Apostles’ Creed prior to 1896, it had been the focus of ongoing controversy among all Methodist bodies. Debate had not been so much in regard to its doctrinal content and authority, but because of the single phrase “the holy catholic Church,” which some took to indicate the Roman Catholic Church—an interpretation not unique to the Methodists but found among Protestants and Catholics alike. The Methodist Protestant Church, in addressing the issue, took the bold step of omitting the creed entirely from its liturgical formulations in 1830. To squelch misunderstandings, the Methodist Episcopal Church’s General Conference in 1836 added an asterisk at the suspect phrase in the adult baptismal rite with the corresponding note reading “by holy catholic Church is meant the Church of God in general”; in 1864 this footnote formulation was altered to “the one universal Church of Christ” and was repeated in subsequent publications of the baptism service until 1932. The defining note, however, was not included when the creed appeared in the 1896 order for public worship and was added only in 1916. Even with the explanatory note, the matter was hardly resolved, as efforts were made at practically each succeeding quadrennial meeting of the General Conferences to have the phrase stricken from the creed. Indeed, the omission of the offending phrase was the solution taken by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which, from 1854 to 1910, used in its place “the Church of God” in the baptismal rite, though by 1905 the denomination had already officially restored the original terminology by its approval of the Sunday order published that year in the joint hymnal. The Free Methodists, considering that the theological assumptions undergirding “the holy catholic Church” were adequately covered by “the communion of saints,” simply removed the first phrase in the baptism rite; the Wesleyan Methodists, on the other hand, omitted both phrases. AfricanAmerican Methodist denominations addressed the problem by experimenting with many of these same solutions: in the twentieth century, the African Methodist Episcopal Church kept the original expression but added the sharp explanation “the Church Universal, and not the Papal Church of Rome.” Methodist involve-

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ment in the ecumenical scene did not resolve this debate; one Methodist writer in the 1920s insisted that “catholic” and “Christian” could not be equated since the Catholic Church was essentially pagan.26 Although worship resources produced by the largest Methodist bodies gradually restored “the holy catholic Church” to the creed, the phrase was still most often accompanied by an explanatory note. Another clause from the Apostles’ Creed, not found in the oldest forms of the symbol of faith but understood by later Christians to be part of the received text, was short-lived in Methodist usage. It appeared in the 1784 Sunday Service, but was deleted at one of the creed’s three appearances in the 1786 edition, an omission that some scholars contend did not originate with Wesley. In the 1786 formulation, “he went down into hell” disappeared from the adult baptismal rite while “he descended into hell” was retained in the orders for morning and evening prayer. The discrepancy may be explained as an oversight, but by 1792 it made no practical difference since, with the dropping of morning and evening prayer, the baptismal formulation was the only version to remain. The omission of the phrase may be explained as an effort to remove a theologically volatile subject: the thirty-ninth Anglican Article affirming Christ’s descent into hell had prompted debate within the Puritan wing and also among the founders of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America; it had not been included in Wesley’s revision of the Articles. Only in the late twentieth century would United Methodists reintroduce the phrase, and then as part of the stated “ecumenical” version of the creed produced by the English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC). Ecumenical awareness, particularly in the twentieth century, was a factor in efforts to establish a definitive text of the Apostles’ Creed as a whole. When, for some Methodists, the Apostles’ Creed became a normative part of the Sunday liturgy, a decision was required about the version of the creed to be used. Should it be a declarative variation of the baptismal interrogative, until then the only form of the creed still in Methodist usage? Should Wesley’s formulation of the creed for the prayer services be restored, recognizing that Methodists had, in 1784, inherited from Wesley most of the variations in the wording of the creed found at different places in the Prayer Book? The form used for morning and evening prayer differed at several points from that in the baptismal liturgy, even when allowing for the interrogative address, though Wesley himself had attempted some textual reconciliation by modifying “resurrection of the flesh” to “resurrection of the body” in the baptismal formulation so that all three citations of the creed were in agreement on that matter. The version from Wesley’s morning and evening prayer, the text also used in the Protestant Episcopal Church’s daily offices of 1892, was the option selected in 1896 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, which nevertheless made some editorial modifications before printing the text in the Discipline. Though the Methodist Episcopal Church, South approved the creed for their Sunday order in 1906, a declarative version was not provided in their Discipline; one was available to congregations in the 1905 joint hymnal. Methodists now had two different versions of the creed, which then led to efforts to produce a single, uniform text. The Protestant Episcopal Church’s rites were a source for the official “discovery” by Methodists of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, since neither that creed


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nor the Athanasian Creed (which Wesley disliked because of its “damnatory” clauses) had found a place in Wesley’s Urtext. Wesley had also omitted from his version of the Articles of Religion the eighth Anglican Article confessing belief in the three historic creeds. The Nicene Creed, which in the Prayer Book appeared as part of the Communion rite, undoubtedly had been deleted by Wesley not because of any doctrinal question (the first four Methodist Articles are virtually an abbreviated recasting of the Nicene formula), but to avoid the redundancy of two creeds in one liturgical performance, since the Communion order was expected to follow immediately after morning prayer. Because of the absence of the Nicene and Athanasian formulations in the first Methodist liturgy, the early Methodists had been accused of heterodoxy by their enemies, and in response had published sermons and treatises affirming the doctrine of the Trinity.27 Nevertheless, neither the Nicene nor the Athanasian statements of faith was ever officially restored. Although the Nicene Creed may be found in some official worship books after 1945, its practical usage was limited among Methodists who preferred the shorter and theologically less demanding Apostles’ Creed. Methodists from the 1930s also created and used modern declarations of faith and Scripture statements, the latter being most often a catena of Scripture, from one canonical book or several, and loosely following the structure of the ecumenical creeds. The two most widely published modern declarations in Methodist resources have been the “Korean Creed,” composed by Bishop Herbert Welch (with consultation from Korean Methodists and from representatives of the two largest branches of episcopal Methodism in America) and adopted in 1930 when the Korean Methodist Church became autonomous,28 and the so-called “Modern Affirmation,” which, at the request of Bishop Wilbur Thirkield, was drafted by Edwin Lewis of Drew Theological Seminary. Both of these creeds appeared in the 1932 ecumenically minded Book of Common Worship for Use in the Several Communions of the Church of Christ, edited by Thirkield and Congregational minister Oliver Huckel, and in the 1935 Methodist Hymnal.

Doxologies and Benedictions Hymns and, in the second century of American Methodism, service music were normative for Methodist worship and, though these topics will have an entire chapter devoted to them, it is appropriate to mention here doxological ascriptions. Freestanding, single-stanza metrical doxologies of different meters were included in Methodist hymnals long before they became a specified component of the Methodist ordo. Two designated doxologies occur in the Methodist Episcopal hymnal of 1821, and nineteen may be found in the final pages of that denomination’s 1849 hymnal; both hymnals contain the doxological conclusion shared between Thomas Ken’s hymns for morning, evening, and midnight published in 1695: “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.” This stanza, found in most Methodist hymnals and typically set to the tune Old Hundredth,29 came to be commonly known as the Doxology. Other short, trinitarian acclamations also served as conclusions for hymns, following the hymnic models offered by Charles Wesley and other hymn writers, and as independent musical praise that could appear at various points in

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the liturgy, though most often at either the beginning or end of the service. Methodists did not inherit metrical doxologies as a Christianizing resolution to metrical psalms, since Wesley had specified that the psalms and the concluding Lesser Doxology or Gloria Patri (“Glory be to the Father,” etc.) were to be read. With the reintroduction of psalmody as an official and distinct component of the service almost a century after its excision in 1792, a sung Gloria Patri came into use along with a recommended tune by Charles Meineke. A rubric in the 1824 Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church instructing that the apostolic benediction (2 Corinthians 13:14) be the sole form employed in dismissing the congregation from public worship was retained by that denomination until 1928; other Methodist denominations that fell heir to or adopted the prescription similarly relaxed their restrictions in the early twentieth century. The earlier effort toward liturgical uniformity actually, on the infrequent Communion Sundays, had led to variability in practice (which undoubtedly was also the case on other Sundays): the Communion service, which was typically tacked on at the end of the normal Sunday service, had its own benediction (Philippians 4:7), and despite calls for clarification about which benediction was to be used, no official statement seems to have been offered. One solution apparently was to sing the apostolic benediction at the conclusion of the Communion service, using a hymn text by John Newton (“May the grace of Christ our Saviour”) found in numerous nineteenth-century Methodist hymnals under the subheading “apostolic benediction.” The issue was put to rest first by the printing of optional scriptural benedictions (e.g., Numbers 6:24–26; Hebrews 13:20–21; 1 Timothy 1:17; Jude 1:24– 25), and later by allowing (or at least not condemning) nonscriptural forms.

The Languages of Worship The vocabulary and syntax of American English have evolved over the last two centuries, and Methodists have responded in different ways to the question of how this should affect the language of public worship. The replacement of some archaic Prayer Book forms with modern equivalents in the Sunday Service (e.g., “you” for the Old English nominative “ye,” “are” [the present indicative plural of the verb “to be”] for “be,” and the personal “who” for “which”) opened the door for Methodists to keep abreast of common linguistic forms. Nowhere are renovations more evident than in the Lord’s Prayer, though these may have come from Thomas Coke’s hand rather than Wesley’s, since the latter indicated in a June 20, 1789, letter to Walter Churchey that he preferred “which” to the 1784 use of “who art in heaven.” Despite the apparent invitation to employ modern linguistic forms in worship, Methodists mostly have been conservative in their use of language; at the end of the twentieth century, many congregations within the Methodist family still considered the vocabulary and style of the King James Bible the most suitable for the reading of Scripture and the saying of prayers. Sometimes the alteration of a single word in a denomination’s liturgical formulation was met with considerable discussion on linguistic and theological grounds, such as the request made in 1864 by a few members of the Methodist Episcopal Church to emend “Holy Ghost” to “Holy Spirit.” The official change was approved only in 1916, and then the debate


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reopened when talks began that would lead to the merger of 1939. Although the recommending committee proposed the printing of both forms, among the descendants of that merger mention of the “Holy Ghost” was rarely heard in worship save in certain doxological ascriptions and hymns. The extent to which genderinclusive liturgical language—for humans and for deity—ought to be used became a matter of debate, with the subject of God-language remaining unresolved at the end of the twentieth century. American Methodism, while predominantly English speaking, has not been exclusively so, even from the earliest days. Asbury intentionally chose for companions in ministry Henry Boehm and other German speakers. Boehm recalled that in 1803 bilingual services took place at joint meetings between the Methodists and the United Brethren in Christ, with a single preacher speaking in both English and German alternately, or with two or more preachers working together to preach and provide simultaneous translation.30 Throughout the nineteenth century, as immigrant communities established themselves, Methodists held services in German and Bohemian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, oftentimes conducted by ordained immigrant ministers who left their original ecclesiastical community to join with the Methodist cause, or by immigrant lay preachers who themselves had first heard the gospel from the Methodists. To aid in the Methodist work, the Discipline (with the order of public worship), hymnals, or other resource books were published by the church presses in these languages. The German-speaking community, the largest of the non-English immigrant groups, received the most sustained attention, with the first of a series of German Methodist hymnals published in 1839 (Sammlung von geistlichen Liedern); these hymnals in turn were used as part of the American Methodist missionary effort in Germany and other German-speaking countries.31 Eventually, as these linguistically distinct populations became assimilated into the American melting pot, English became the primary liturgical language: in 1920, the Swedish Methodist Episcopal Church at Bishop Hill, Illinois, removed the ethnic designation from its name, and in 1922 services were held in English every other Sunday morning; by the 1950s, Swedish was used only for special occasions.32 Attention of the Methodist bureaucracies then shifted to provide worship in the native tongue for indigenous Americans and for the more recent arrivals to American shores from Asia and Pacific regions. At the end of the twentieth century, official and unofficial worship resources for the United Methodist Church in the United States appeared in English (with prayers translated into English from other languages), Cherokee and other dialects of native American tribal groups, Spanish, Lao and a few languages of new Asian immigrants, and Korean. Immigrant and indigenous peoples are distinguishable not only by their languages but also by the customs and cultural practices that shape their ethnic or racial identity. The inculturation of what may otherwise be construed as an “anglicized” style of Sunday worship has been permitted as long as the foundational doctrinal standards and the basic assumptions of Methodist worship have not been violated. Methodist worship, therefore, may take on a local color, not only by the language used but also by the customs integrated into weekly or occasional services. It is in the special services, such as those on the great occasions of the liturgical

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year, those demarcated as special Sundays of the ecclesiastical year of the denomination, or those significant to the local congregation, that the characteristic expressions of a community are most easily observed. An imported Swedish custom that, in 1997, had been in use at First United Methodist Church of Lindstrom, Minnesota, for seventy-five consecutive years, was the cradle-rocking service, held variously on “Children’s Day” or Sunday school “Promotion Day.” While lullabies were sung softly by a choir, each infant born within the last year was introduced to the congregation and then placed in a cradle to be rocked by several of the older children; in some years, this activity took the place of the sermon.33 The 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship, in an effort to recognize the ethnic and racial diversity of the denomination and to encourage multicultural worship within a given congregation, included such services as an Hispanic Los Posadas (“Service of Shelter for the Holy Family”) and rubrics for Tongsung Kido, a Korean practice of simultaneous vocal prayer by every person in the congregation on a common theme.

Sunday and the Annual Cycle The Meaning and Observance of Sunday Come, let us join with one accord In hymns around the throne; This is the day our rising Lord Hath made and call’d his own. This is the day which God hath blest The brightest of the seven, Type of that everlasting rest The saints enjoy in heaven. Then let us in his name sing on And hasten to that day When our Redeemer shall come down, And shadows pass away. Not one, but all our days below, Let us in hymns employ; And, in our Lord rejoicing, go To his eternal joy. This hymn by Charles Wesley, located in the section on “The Sabbath” in the 1849 Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church and in other Methodist collections, sets forth the multiple meanings of Sunday acknowledged historically by Methodists: the special but not the only day for worship, it is hallowed by God, recalls creation and the resurrection, requires release from earthly toil and responsibilities, and anticipates the eschatological day of the Lord that is the hope and desire of all believers. Each of these aspects has been present with varying degrees


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of intensity throughout the course of American Methodism, and the hymns in official and unofficial Methodist books, as they are organized under the headings of Sabbath, Lord’s Day, or related themes, provide a window into the interpretations and emphases of a particular denomination at a certain time. However, it is the stress upon the Sabbath as the day of both worship and rest that had the most enduring impact upon the nation and the Methodist people—this in spite of the fact that many Methodists in the early period held their primary corporate worship service on a day other than Sunday. Methodists had no difficulty transferring the seventh-day legislation of the Decalogue to the first day of the week, a conclusion reinforced by the Sabbath theology of English Puritanism that had influenced Wesley and the nascent Methodist movement, and by the sabbatarian ethos of New England that permeated the religious life of the country. Required by their General Rules to avoid “profaning the day of the Lord,”34 Methodists regarded keeping the Lord’s Day as a duty, a delight, and a means of grace. No unessential labor or commerce was to be undertaken, and one was to avoid causing others to work. Private devotion and corporate worship were the duties at hand, yielding the dual blessings of spiritual renewal and physical rest. Personal and communal observance of the Lord’s Day was therefore taken quite seriously: Bishop Asbury berated himself for riding his horse unnecessarily on the Sabbath, and in 1828, Bishop Joshua Soule was brought under investigation (and eventually cleared) when it was suspected he had preached a sermon suggesting that Christians were not constrained to keep the Sabbath since the law enjoining it had been abolished.35 From the mid-nineteenth century to the Second World War, Methodists remained concerned about preservation of the Lord’s Day, but for them the issue shifted slightly from an internal focus upon the holy habits of the membership to the external (and sometimes internal) influences that threatened not only the maintenance of those habits, especially church attendance, but the central place of Christianity in American life as well. Also at stake, Methodists claimed, were the prosperity of the nation, the perpetuation of civil liberties, and social morality. Protection of a distinct and consecrated Lord’s Day was incumbent “not only upon every true religionist and philanthropist, but every true patriot,” since the Sabbath is “the bulwark of a vital Christianity, and a vital Christianity is the bulwark of the nation.”36 North Carolina’s Sampson Circuit in 1866 approved a resolution that reveals at the local level the concern that resounded throughout all spheres of Methodism: Whereas, we are positively commanded by Almighty God to remember the Sabbath Day to keep it Holy, Therefore Resolve that we, the members of this Quarterly Conference for Sampson Circuit do most respectfully and earnestly invite the attention of our people to the absolute necessity of a more constant and prayerful observance of the Holy Sabbath. Resolved that visiting on this day for the purpose of transacting temperal [sic] business is also a violation of the Holy Day. Resolved that the running of Railroad Trains, Steamboats, Stages, and Etc., on the various lines of travel except in cases of absolute necessity, is a violation of the command of God, and tends to the demoralization of our people in as much as it prevents

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American Methodist Worship tens of thousands from attendance upon divine worship and the proper influence of the Sabbath. Resolved, that we call upon all Christians and good citizens to speak out earnestly and constantly against all desecration of the day of the Lord and appeal to all who are guilty of this sin to cease this violation.37

Each Methodist denomination organized committees, and national, ecumenical forums (e.g., the American Sabbath Union, the Sunday League of America, and the Lord’s Day Alliance) were constituted to counter the decline in Sabbath observance that had become obvious in the years following the Civil War, and to address the attack on the Sabbath that was identified as taking shape largely under three principal forms. First, the relaxing of travel and commerce restrictions drew considerable attention. Church leaders issued appeals comparable to those of the Sampson Circuit for individuals to avoid unnecessary journeys and for the developing public transportation systems to cease or limit operation on the Lord’s Day. Businesses or factories that opened on Sunday received condemnation for Sabbath desecration, as did saloons that served patrons, the postal system that transported and delivered mail, and the publishers and readers of Sunday newspapers. Second, the increasing American fixation with Sunday amusements—theater, moving pictures, dance, sports, family picnics, and other “evils of the age”—was disparaged. The day of rest was not to be reinterpreted as a day of mere recreation, since this attitude, it was feared, would force open the door even wider to the invasion of worldliness in the lives of Christians; this was a danger against which Methodists always had vehemently preached and published. And third, a growing Catholic and Protestant immigrant population from continental Europe, which allegedly ridiculed the “Puritan Sabbath,” was fingered as a culprit for their use of Sunday for physical and mental enjoyment rather than for spiritual benefits. The changing demands of the workforce eventually contributed to the relaxing or, in some cases, the disappearance of Methodist Sabbath restrictions. A related matter, in the years during and after the Second World War, was the increasing numbers of women in the workplace who, because of the demands of employment, found it difficult to maintain their customary role as the primary inculcators of Sunday observances. Another factor, simultaneously a cause and a manifestation of the phenomenon, was the gradual softening of polemics against worldliness which, by the middle of the twentieth century, had mostly vanished. “Votes to Put End to Amusement Ban” was the front page headline of the New York Times on May 18, 1924, when the Methodist Episcopal Church’s General Conference produced the shocking decision to allow individual conscience in lieu of church legislation. Yet the General Rule against profanation remained on the disciplinary books, and some notion of Sabbath rest or limitations persisted in popular piety, most notably in the Holiness and African-American denominations. Hymns with an explicit rest motif still were sung, though their quantity declined in the largest Methodist bodies; the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal contained no hymn explicating the meaning of Sunday, whereas the 1996 A. M. E. Zion Hymnal preserved numerous Sabbath rest hymns. While the recovery of the Lord’s Day as the weekly day of resurrection—a product of the ecumenical rediscovery of early Christian theology and praxis—under-


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girded many of the late twentieth-century Methodist orders for Sunday worship, it generally did not, at least at the popular level, fill the theological void left by the turning away from a strong notion of Sabbath rest. This led, in some parts of Methodism, to a reduced commitment to Sunday as the normative day for worship, an attitude reinforced by the removal of governmental “blue laws” and the consequent changes in working patterns of church members, and also by the desire to reach newcomers at a time convenient for them. Arguments were made in some quarters that the move away from a normative Sunday was, in fact, a recovery of the earlier Methodist practice of holding corporate worship on any of the seven days of the week. Such a claim forgot that Sunday has always been the central and chiefly recognized day of worship and Sunday morning the preferred time for worship. Other days were utilized because the circuit-riding preachers could not be present in every community on Sunday, so it was a matter not of personal convenience, but of available leadership. Yet even as Sunday stood on the verge of losing its privileged standing, Easter as the annual day of resurrection, and the feasts and fasts born from the paschal mystery, found increased recognition.

The Annual Cycle Methodists have never been without annual observances. Received from Wesley in 1784 was a temporal calendar for Sundays governed by readings and collects for the four Sundays of Advent, Sundays after Christmas, Sunday before Easter, Easter Day, Sundays after Easter, Sunday after Ascension, Whitsunday (Pentecost), Trinity Sunday, and Sundays after Trinity. This pattern conformed to the Prayer Book sequence of Sundays with a notable exception: though the Prayer Book readings and collects remained unchanged, the heading “Sundays after Christmas” was now used to locate the days previously designated as Sundays after Epiphany, the pre-Lenten Sundays of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima, and the first five Sundays of Lent. The absence of Lent and also Ash Wednesday may be explained as a consequence of Wesley’s sensitivity to the series of objections that had been raised, primarily by the Puritans, regarding the scriptural legitimacy of a forty-day fast by Christians, and also, perhaps, by Wesley’s desire to avoid the creation of a possible contradiction between his doctrine of Christian assurance and an extensive penitential season.38 The omission of Epiphany is much more difficult to explain, given Wesley’s knowledge of the feast’s antiquity. But Wesley apparently was prepared to sacrifice for the sake of simplicity, brevity, and practicality any weekday “holy day (so-called)” that served no “valuable end.” Of the thirty-three such holy days identified in the Book of Common Prayer, Wesley retains only the three christological “particular days” of Christmas, Good Friday, and Ascension; the sanctoral, including Wesley’s beloved festival of All Saints’ (so identified in his journal for November 1, 1767), found no place in the official Methodist annual cycle.39 Wesley’s pared-back calendar undoubtedly was still more substantial than what many Methodists actually honored, especially those who had no history of association with the Church of England. But many of the days he designated were certainly familiar. Prior to the reception of the Sunday Service, Methodist Thomas

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Rankin, in the years 1773 to 1776, made special mention in his diary of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsunday.40 Freeborn Garrettson noted he observed “a solemn fast, being good Friday, the day on which the great Redeemer gave up his precious life.”41 Four years after Wesley’s calendar was approved, Ezekiel Cooper recorded his concerns for the spiritual keeping of Thursday, December 25, 1788, and included the text he took for his evening sermon, which was the proper lesson indicated in the Sunday Service for morning prayer, not for evening: This being Christmas-day there were prayer meetings very early in the morning & preaching three times in the day. O what a pity this day is kept at all by many if they can’t keep it better than they do! To my heart I was grieved to see & hear so much evil as I did among the people. In preaching my evening sermon I preached from His name Isa. 9.6. In my improvement I asked the congregation why they kept Christmas. Was it in remembrance of Christ’s coming into the world? I then asked how they kept it. Was it in such a manner that they honoured or dishonoured the Son? I replyed that many of them kept it like Pagans or Turks whom one might think did it in contempt of Christ.

Although Wesley’s provisions for a temporal cycle were laid aside in 1792, certain christological festal days continued to be recognized during the course of the year, and not only because of the perpetuation of cultural custom. In December 1792, Cooper commented again on Christmas, falling that year on a Tuesday; the predawn service he described was apparently practiced by other preachers as well: This morning rose early, with a grateful heart. About sun rise we met at the preaching house where we had prayer. I read the second chapt. of Matthew and part of the first, and gave a lecture upon the nativity of our Lord. At N o’clock I preached to a full congregation, upon the occasion of the Festival.42

Cooper’s final phrase provides a clue for the continuity of the liturgical observance of Christian days without the reinforcement of lectionary or collects. Embedded within the disciplinary section on the “matter and manner” of preaching was the counsel that originated from Wesley’s Large Minutes, “always avail yourself of the great festivals, by preaching on the occasion.” Although this instruction for the Methodist Episcopal Church would, in 1848, be transferred to the section on the conduct of preachers as a “smaller advice,” it would endure until the 1939 merger; the Methodist Episcopal Church, South kept the provision in its Discipline until 1866, remarkably the same year in which approval was given for the republication of Wesley’s Sunday Service. The seriousness with which the Methodist preachers were urged to approach at least the great days of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost is evident from the 1798 commentary on Wesley’s advice: Souls are of so much value, that we should improve every opportunity for their good. Shall the men of the world have carnal festivals on their birth-days, and shall we not commemorate the birth-day of our Lord? The primitive fathers of the church observed the day, which is now kept sacred by most of the churches of christendom. . . . Again, shall states and nations celebrate the day of liberation from slavery or oppression, or some other glorious event, from year to year? And shall we not celebrate by a holy


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festival the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord, and the mission of the Holy Spirit, to which we are indebted for blessings infinitely more valuable than any which the revolution of states can possibly afford?43

Throughout the nineteenth century, Methodists generally noticed a few Christian festal days in the course of the year, sometimes kept them with preaching, prayer, and song, and criticized persons (Methodist and otherwise) who used those days, especially Christmas, as an occasion to take “unusual liberties for selfindulgence and sinful associations.”44 But the feasts and fasts of the liturgical year generally never took hold either as the governing framework in Methodist conceptualizations of the yearly calendar or as holy days elevated beyond special days of prayer. As Coke and Asbury’s 1798 commentary implies, a truncated liturgical year offered only one among several means of defining Methodist time: the annual cycle was shaped by an intricate interweaving of occasions common to the entire Christian Church, others particular to the denomination, and others yet again devoted to civic causes and commemorations. The various editions of the Methodist Discipline in the nineteenth century, for the most part, ignore the liturgical year, but readily make reference to the quarterly and yearly (and quadrennial) Conference gatherings that were, perhaps, the most prominent markers for the Methodist sense of annual time. These Conference meetings were not just business sessions and opportunities for fellowship; they were times for worship and prayer, the forms for which came not from prescribed orders of worship (except for Communion), but from the rich unwritten resources of the denomination coupled with favorite hymns.45 Besides the Conferences, the Discipline from the second half of the nineteenth century also registered special denominational days to be emphasized in worship on Sundays or on other days of the week, or in the Sunday school. These days could promote a social issue, like Temperance Sunday, or the collection of a monetary offering for a particular cause, such as Children’s Day, which, by the 1870s, was typically held on the second Sunday of June. Days with a focus upon intercessory prayer were encouraged, such as the Day of Prayer for Colleges; and for the sake of Christian unity, the Week of Prayer instituted by the Evangelical Alliance. Though it was not specified by the Discipline, General Conference reports clearly indicate that some Methodists at their general meetings aided the healing of the war-torn nation by participation in Decoration Day services at soldiers’ graves.46 Evidently, in some localities the activities of Children’s Day and Decoration Day were combined into one Sunday evening observance.47 Other Methodist publications attest to the variety of days and seasons that might have been observed, with, of course, their actual performance determined by individual preference and community custom. The blurring of the three strands comprising Methodist time is best seen in the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Methodist Almanac (retitled The Methodist Yearbook in 1880), which, on the cover of each annual issue, measured the number of years from the granting of American independence. The first issue of 1827, printed by T. R. Marvin of Boston, included among the monthly listings in calendrical sequence of “Observable Days, Aspects, &c.” specific Methodist commemorations virtually comprising a type of Methodist sanctoral (e.g., Wesley’s birth and death dates), national and local dates (e.g.,

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Benjamin Franklin’s birthday), and a temporal and sanctoral sequence otherwise unknown to Methodists (including Circumcision, Palm Sunday, Nativity of Mary, St. Stephen). The odd combination of materials suggests that an Anglican calendar of New England or some other source provided a template upon which were added Methodist references. Such a hunch may be confirmed by the “Advertisement” listed in the 1834 Almanac: the book, now produced by Methodist publishers in conformity with recommendations from the General Conference, was explicitly intended for more than the members and friends of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Even so, the 1834 issue reduced the liturgical calendar and redefined parts of it: December 25 is noted not for Christmas, but as a significant day in the founding of episcopal Methodism. After 1834, identification of days and seasons from the liturgical year come and go in no determinable pattern, but the Methodist and national aspects of the books remain strong, with some annual publications incorporating a separate chronological table of important Methodist events (e.g., 1842, 1858–1861). A table of “Festival Days, Holidays, Fasts, Etc.” was printed in the editions of 1868 to 1872, which distinguished between the “national festivals” of New Year’s Day, Washington’s Birthday, and Independence Day, and the “religious festivals” of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian unity, prayer for colleges, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Christmas, “and all Thanksgiving and Fast Days appointed by the National or State authorities.” These days probably represent the simplest form of the calendar acknowledged by members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Yet in 1873, the editor evidently returned to a template format (perhaps to secure a wider readership) by listing under a “Cycle of Time and Church Days” such occasions as Septuagesima, Ash Wednesday, and Corpus Christi; this table, under various headings and sometimes expanded, persisted to the final year of publication in 1933. Though Methodists would not have observed most of the days of this liturgical calendar, they certainly would have been aware of their existence simply through the use of the Almanac and had opportunity to become acquainted with the terminology of a more catholic liturgical year by reading the explanations that were sometimes added to the book. The table of contents or subject headings in the official Methodist hymnals identify the expected usage of certain hymns and are thereby a good indicator of a church’s “magisterial” conception of important days in the course of the year. Charles and John Wesley had published numerous hymn collections for days and seasons of the church year including Nativity, Easter, Ascension, and Whitsunday,48 but few of those texts would find their place in American collections—a possible consequence of the removal in 1784 of the final clause from Wesley’s instruction for preaching on the great festivals: “and singing the hymns, which you should take care to have in readiness.” Nevertheless, Methodist hymnals have always included a repertoire of hymns for Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, though the specified headings differ by hymnal and denomination. Hymns for the New Year (and in some hymnals, hymns for the associated watch night service) are likewise universally present in varying quantities. Found in nineteenth-century hymn books are also hymns for denominational and local church occasions such as anniversaries of missionaries, Bible societies, and Sunday schools, and national events such as public fasts and general thanksgivings. Other


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hymns of thanksgiving for “our country” appear by the 1840s. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s A Collection of Hymns for Public, Social, and Domestic Worship of 1847 offers twenty-eight hymns for “national solemnities,” among which are two texts designated for the Fourth of July; their changed attitude toward the nation is reflected in the 1880 New Hymn-Book, which allows only three “national solemnity” hymns. Harvest hymns were added as an annual day of Thanksgiving evolved from a New England festival to a national day of celebration popular among a largely rural Methodism. Methodists at the end of the nineteenth century were often attracted to the catechetical and devotional aspects—as well as the pageantry—of the liturgical year. This appeal, in part, grew out of a renewed interest in the Wesleyan liturgical heritage, which was made manifest by the reprinting of the Sunday Service and the publishing of derivative texts like Charles Harrower’s book and thereby exposed a number of Methodists to the concept of a year shaped by the life of Christ. Attention to the Christian year was also construed as a remedy for the increasing secularization of the nation borne out by the decline in Sabbath piety evident in urban areas; the variety of forms and ceremonies accompanying festal celebrations could summon the interest of a distracted constituency. For the status-minded, the adoption of more elaborate services of worship, commonly associated with the socalled “liturgical” churches, could draw into the Methodist fold those who preferred that style of worship. Numerous explanations thus can be proffered for the elevation of christological festivals to a new importance. Some Methodists began to concede, as did Joseph Berry, editor of the Epworth Herald for Methodist Episcopal youth, that certain festal days were not to be regarded as cultural holidays with religious overtones or as days simply to be honored with prayer, but as, in fact, sacred days.49 As might be expected, not all Methodists were enamored of this shift. Efforts were made to calm the anxieties of those who saw the promotion of Christian festal days as one more intrusion of formality and ritualism. In A Treatise on the Lenten Season, Bostwick Hawley argued that in addition to “giving some needed instruction to the people,” “a judicious observance of these anniversaries would induce a reform in extreme ritualistic Churches.”50 Another writer who claimed that Methodism had “not rejected a moderate use . . . of commemorative days” and testified to the “almost universal” celebration of Christmas and Easter in churches in the eastern half of the country nevertheless insisted that caution be taken “lest in the ceremonial we lose sight of the spirit that underlies, and lest by a multiplication of days we return to what the Church found it necessary to abandon.”51 What began as a reexamination of the values and benefits of a liturgical year led in the early twentieth century to a flurry of publications meant as homiletical and liturgical resources for local pastors and congregations. Even so, some were not convinced, finding “the white life of the Christian incomparably superior to what the ritualists call the ‘liturgical colors.’ ”52 True to the historic Methodist framework, Christian days were listed as special occasions in the calendar year alongside denominational days and civic commemorations. Charles Roberts’s Divine Service of 1903, which kept Wesley’s collects under their assigned Sunday and particular day headings, also added collects and responsive readings for the week-

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days of Passion Week (the second week before Easter) and Holy Week, and for Thanksgiving Day, Missionary Day, national occasions, Children’s Day, and Temperance Day. The 1905 joint Methodist Hymnal virtually reiterated Roberts’s scheme for special days by providing responsive readings for Christmas, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter, the Nation, Thanksgiving Day, Missions, Education, and Temperance and Moral Reform, and by accentuating the readings with hymns for those defined occasions and also for Advent, New Year, Holy Week (“Sufferings and Death”), Ascension, and Pentecost. Bishop Thirkield, in the 1918 Service and Prayers for Church and Home, expands the resources by providing prayers to accompany the responsive readings, ignoring Palm Sunday while adding Advent and the New Year. Besides these days, Methodists were often willing to experiment with innovative denominational and civic celebrations in the Sunday school,53 some of which then crept into the Lord’s Day service. The Sunday school observance held in a Grafton, West Virginia, Methodist Episcopal Church in May, 1907, to remember Anna Jarvis’s mother, eventually, through Jarvis’s own organizational efforts, blossomed into the churchly and national celebration—on Sunday—of Mother’s Day.54 In a Methodist-published book of 1916, Mother’s Day stood along with Children’s Day, Thanksgiving Day, Education Day, and Memorial Sunday as recommended special-day themes for Sunday worship.55 All but the Holiness wing of Methodism continued to promote, at least officially, a selection of ancient and modern annual celebrations; at the local level, the modern denominational and civic days often proved to be most popular. New Methodist days were proposed (e.g., Wesley [later Aldersgate] Day and All Methodist Church Sunday). In the spirit of maintaining the sanctity of the Lord’s Day, petitions were put forward during the 1920s and 1930s for Methodist leaders to use their political clout in persuading the federal government to establish Good Friday as a legal holiday, but none were adopted.56 A significant boost for observing Christian days and seasons in the churches came from the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America (later renamed the National Council of Churches), which, in 1935, claimed six Methodist denominations among its twenty-three member churches.57 In that year, the Federal Council’s Committee on Worship, chaired by Bishop Thirkield, began a study to produce a “Church Calendar Year” for use by “nonliturgical churches” that had “virtually no recognized calendar” and were “therefore subjected to sporadic influences.” If churches, as part of their planning, were to employ an annual financial scheme, then “why not have a Christian Year for guidance in our daily devotions and public worship, for giving direction to our preaching and Bible reading, for the commemoration of historic days, seasons and personalities, and the general ordering of our varied program of work?”58 The subcommittee charged with the task was convened by Methodist professor Fred Winslow Adams of Boston University School of Theology, who, in 1926, had claimed that Methodism was well placed to make a contribution to the revival of the theory and practice of worship.59 The subcommittee’s program was published in 1937 under the title The Christian Year, which contained the twofold agenda of revitalizing the recovered Christian year with contemporary and evangelical expressions, and providing another common basis for greater Christian unity. Not


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surprisingly, the work, in Methodist fashion, overlapped liturgical and civil—and now social (e.g., Race Relations Sunday) and ecumenical (e.g., Christian Unity Sunday)—occasions, yet conceived them as one whole system organized within a christological framework. The new liturgical season of Kingdomtide was also inaugurated, developed to emphasize the proclamation of the gospel in contemporary life (a theme of the social gospel movement) and to accommodate “modern days such as Labor Day and World Peace Day.” This innovative season that divided up the long period after Pentecost would take hold more firmly among Methodists than any other Protestants and strongly influence Methodist preaching, teaching, and policy for at least the next two generations.60 The key Methodist role and presence in the Federal Council of Churches plan had a direct bearing on what Methodists would confirm as annual observances after 1940. For African-American Methodists, this is best seen by the defining structure of hymns in the official hymnals and by the responsive readings for “special days” that are supplied therein. A small number of notable, often “connectional,” days are defined in the Discipline; for the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1940, these included (Richard) Allen Day, Easter Day, Children’s Day, and Endowment Day. Ties to the Federal Council’s work are more clearly evident with the 1945 Book of Worship of the Methodist Church. Participating on the commission that would produce the book were Fred Winslow Adams and Oscar Thomas Olson, who replaced Bishop Thirkield in the chair of the Federal Council’s Committee on Worship upon the latter’s death in 1936. So it is not surprising that the book included a calendar, lectionary, aids for the Christian year, and fifteen orders of worship “Suggested for Festival Observances of the Christian Year” comprising Advent, Christmas, New Year, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Whitsunday, Kingdomtide, Christian Unity, Memorial, Thanksgiving for “Harvest, Land, and Liberty,” and Thanksgiving Day. Supplementing and reinforcing the official resources in the Book of Worship were articles in the Methodist periodical The Pastor, published from 1937 to 1956, which in its second decade regularly carried the features “Calendar” (offering homiletical and program resources), “Liturgy” and “Homiletics,” and “Liturgical Question Box” (providing answers to queries about origins and practice).61 Resources for the annual liturgical-denominational-civil cycle continued to expand in the late twentieth century, even among the reticent Wesleyan and Free Methodists.62 The largest Methodist body, the United Methodists, strove in its 1992 Book of Worship to maintain the historic blend of annual elements, but this book, unlike its 1965 predecessor, delineated between the different strands by providing separate headings, with the classic Christian year receiving obvious priority. In fact, it could be argued that two more categories made an appearance, though scantily represented and lumped under the subheading “other special days”: panMethodist occasions (Aldersgate Day), and Protestant recognitions (Reformation Day). This format was not adopted by the last Methodist worship book to be produced in the twentieth century, that of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1996), which interwove the three basic strands while following the sequence of the liturgical year.

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Being Methodist on the Lord’s Day Bishop George Foster Pierce of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, concerned in the late 1860s for the preservation of a distinct Methodist identity in worship and elsewhere, inscribed these words in a letter: “Be Methodists out and out. Keep up all our peculiarities; preach like Methodists; sing like Methodists; pray like Methodists. There is nothing in Methodism to be ashamed of.” But what peculiar Methodist identity was being advocated? Continuing his letter, Pierce advised the recipient: Train your children in the way they should go. Teach them to love Methodism; carry them with you to the house of God, to the class-meeting, to the love-feast; keep up your Sunday-school; buy books, give work, teach, hunt up the poor and neglected, bring the outcasts in. Pray for a revival. Lord, send now prosperity.63

For Pierce and others, proper Methodism was a continuation of a heritage of ritual simplicity, spiritual vitality, and ethical responsibility. Yet, as has already been seen, numerous Methodists came to regard their Wesleyan and American inheritance as something more complex than such a simple description would allow. Moves toward a stated and formal liturgical style were, in effect, a retour aux sources, a recovery of components from the earliest liturgical formulary of American Methodism. Evangelical outreach to the neighbor or community could not be divorced from concern for the spiritual well-being of the country and the world, so Methodism, from the beginning, saw itself as a key player in the establishment of a Christian nation under God, though different denominations as well as individuals were to choose disparate means to accomplish that end. The nation in turn, at least for a time, looked to Methodism as an advocate of the Christian moral values that had come to be interwoven with the national agenda. President Theodore Roosevelt, upon receiving a copy of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Discipline of 1908, was inspired to comment that not only do Methodists engage in the Lord’s work and fight evil “with rugged strength and courage,” they also “stand for and represent a peculiarly strong and virile type of American citizenship.”64 By the 1930s, however, many Methodists had come to recognize along with other Protestants that the entanglement of Christianity with the wider American culture had compromised Christian identity as well as denominational particularity: “Instead of the church having Christianized civilization, they found that the civilization had captured the church.”65 Expanded use of the liturgical year, juxtaposed with the denominational and civil calendars, was one means many Methodist bodies employed to reclaim their distinctiveness as church. Participation in the growing ecumenical and liturgical movements enabled Methodists to contribute to a unified Christian engagement with nation and world, and it also allowed them, in concert with other Christian groups, to take stock of themselves and to reexamine what it meant to proclaim and worship the One whose kingdom is not of this world. At the end of the twentieth century, the always pragmatic Methodists continued to opt for a variety of solutions to the question of how to worship


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authentically both as the descendants of Wesley and as Christians who take seriously the multifaceted constituency that gathers or potentially gathers on the Lord’s Day. The uniform practice of Sunday worship was recurrently encouraged by some denominational authorities as the means by which a distinct and recognizable Methodist liturgical identity could be demonstrated in an increasingly pluriform American society, and as an insurance against inept worship leaders. But these causes for uniformity could not be separated from the broader concern that Methodists in all things be ordered as a people of the Discipline. When in 1792 Wesley’s Sunday Service as a distinct book of worship was laid aside and its greatly abbreviated contents subsumed into the Discipline, Sunday worship became a component in a book of law for ordering Methodist life and work. Instructions for public worship were isolated in a section of the Discipline apart from the other (occasional, pastoral) offices and in a format comparable to other ecclesiastical legislation, suggesting a stronger legal status for the ordering of corporate worship on Sunday and other days of the week. This then raised a significant question: as part of Methodist law, were the rules governing public worship to be obeyed equally with the other contents of the Discipline? The question was difficult to answer definitively, since church leaders were not of one mind whether the rubrics after 1792 were intended to be an exact order or a mere listing of items that might be included in any sequence and combination. Many Methodists regarded the brevity of instructions as an expression of Methodism’s genius to permit freedom of worship as local circumstances demanded. Yet numerous church leaders stressed that full obedience to church law required reasonable conformity to the stated plan for worship. Freeborn Garrettson, quoting St. Paul’s direction to “walk by the same rule” (Philippians 3:16, KJV), contended in 1826 that the Discipline provided “standards or way-marks” necessary to “transmit our doctrines and usages to the generations following.”66 Variety in local worship praxis, which included components heretofore unapproved, was already being exercised when official orders containing old and new components were drawn up by some denominations in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The argument persisted that worship leaders should conform to General Conference–approved “rules” for the sake of uniformity, yet concessions were sometimes made for a limited inculturation of the specified worship plan, as was proposed in 1894 regarding the Methodist Episcopal Church’s order: The General Conference in its wisdom has not left our Church without a prescribed order of Sabbath worship. Paragraph 56 of the Discipline contains definite instructions upon this subject. The tendency, however, to substitute for the assigned order an arrangement peculiar to individual churches is certainly widespread. If the practice of the whole Church may be inferred from the customs which obtain in our own locality the order in the different churches varies widely. Some begin their worship with an anthem by the choir, some with a hymn, and some with the doxology. Some recite the Lord’s Prayer, and some do not. Some read a responsive lesson from Wesley’s Select Psalms; some read a psalm selected at random by the pastor; while some, perhaps a goodly proportion, read no responsive lesson at all. Some take the collection before

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American Methodist Worship the sermon, and some afterward. In fact, it is hard to imagine a greater diversity than exists in the practice of a Church whose order of worship is so fully outlined in the Discipline. The attention of our younger ministers especially should be directed to this common neglect of the established rules. It is not here contended that the order prescribed is necessarily the best that could be devised; nor is it forgotten that the Discipline inserts the saving clause, “as far as possible,” in its directions. Yet local alterations of the rules should not be capricious, injudicious, or unreasonable.67

Even Bishop Thomas B. Neely, who eventually in 1916 would dispute on legal grounds the changes made to the worship orders of the Methodist Episcopal Church, asserted that “the fair interpretation is that the order is what the General Conference wants and expects the Church to observe, but that, at the same time, the wording is not so ironclad that it will not bend where there is a real necessity.” Neely then identified six principles for conducting public worship, the sixth of which states the case for denominational uniformity: The form of service should be sufficiently fixed to maintain at least a fair degree of denominational uniformity, so that a member would know what to expect wherever he went; yet, at the same time, the order should be so flexible that it could be varied in minor matters when circumstances should indicate the necessity of some modification, by insertion or omission to meet the legitimate requirements of the occasion. These variations, however, would be exceptional. It is necessary to have some order of public worship, for no order to guide ministers and people leads to confusion and disorderliness of service instead of the orderliness which should characterize public worship. There is a judicious mean between the one extreme of a too ornate and overloaded liturgy and the other extreme of one so bald that, in its barrenness and coldness, it lacks the essential features of a scriptural and well-balanced service and therefore is measurably unprofitable. There is, however, something more important than a form of worship, and that is the fact of worship. The form has its value, but the spirit is more greatly needed. An order of worship is merely the skeleton. The skeleton is necessary, but it should be clothed upon the living body. Whatever may be the form, there must be the life. Where there is earnest spiritual life the Church can prosper with very little form. Where there is form without spiritual vitality the Church must fail.68

The opinion that the authorized orders should be “scrupulously and reverently observed” with an allowance for “variety within limits” continued to be expressed into the 1930s, as confirmed in the 1934 Episcopal Address at the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South,69 but this view was tempered by those who took a more stringent approach. For example, S. M. Merrill, in the 1908 edition of his Digest of Methodist Law, insisted that Methodist Episcopal churches refusing to use the 1905 “common” order should be considered guilty of “insubordination” and of “a breach of courtesy” toward their “sister” Methodist Episcopal Church, South.70 The tension between advocates of liturgical uniformity and those who supported the freedom of local expression was seemingly lessened in the Methodist Church by the disclaimer on the title page of the 1945 Book of Worship that it was “for voluntary and optional use,” a move perhaps also meant to recognize, so soon after the 1939 merger, that ritual change within local congregations could not be ac-


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complished quickly. With this statement, however, the relationship between liturgy and church law became ambiguous, especially since the Methodist Church’s Discipline defined the services as “authorized.” Claims were made that the Discipline bound persons to subscribe to the orders unchanged, but even the chairman of the commission that produced the book found it necessary to propose, ten years after publication, that the services “should be made official for required use.”71 Legal uncertainty may have been a deliberate means to mediate the conflict between uniformity and freedom, since an approved order for Sunday (in the 1965 Book of Worship described as the “usage of the Methodist Church”) would provide a denominational standard, while still allowing for local liturgical expression. The legal standings and expectations again were not completely defined with the “official” United Methodist Book of Worship (1992), though the ordinal demanded that ordinands accept the denomination’s “order, liturgy, doctrine, and discipline,” a phrase church officials were hesitant to interpret. At the end of the twentieth century, Methodists of the United Methodist Church—and of the other denominations in the Methodist family—remained unclear about the legal standing of their approved Lord’s Day orders of worship. Yet factions still clamored, for the sake of the liturgical identity and the theological integrity of the particular branch of Methodism, that the orders had to be followed to the letter; and others stressed that Methodism’s legacy is not to require adherence to any form. Distinctions have often been made between form and formalism, a qualification hinted at by Neely in his sixth principle. For a minority of Methodists, any stated form, official or otherwise, smacked of formalism and ritualism. Most, however, have been willing to concede the benefit of some logical, repeated order to worship. What has been feared is “the meaningless following of a form, or the following of a meaningless form,”72 and the use of ceremonial or liturgical accoutrements that would preoccupy and distract both the worshiper and the worship leader. Cautions have always been raised that “our clear, sharp views of spiritual, experimental, and practical religion” must not “give place to magnificent cathedrals, ‘loud-sounding organs,’ operatic singing, and splendid rituals.”73 But Methodist angst heightened in the wake of the Oxford movement, as some of their nearest ecclesiastical kin, the Protestant Episcopalians, drifted in an Anglo-Catholic direction. This “Catholic” trend, perhaps indirectly, influenced the Methodist recovery of Anglican liturgical roots via Wesley, though those who favored this move were quick to reassure critics that Wesley’s Lord’s Day services “cannot be classed among ritualistic practices.”74 Contributing also to Methodist concern was the “peril of Romanism,” increased by the influx of Roman Catholic immigrants. The seriousness of this issue during the late nineteenth century is spelled out in the Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which includes an entire section “concerning ritualism.” Although uniformity in practice was desired, and “the orderly repetition of the Decalogue, the Apostles’ Creed, and the responsive reading of the Scriptures” commended, “any and all efforts that favor the introduction of ritualism in connection with our public service” was deprecated, since a “heavy and prosy ritualistic service” could stifle “spiritual interest.”75 The engagement of some Methodists in the growing liturgical movement, the acceptance of more complex Sunday worship patterns, and an interest in aesthetics

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for worship led one writer in 1902 to ask cynically whether Methodists would have to choose “more liturgy or more life.” A respondent countered that this was a false dichotomy, that more liturgy could, in fact, contribute to more spiritual life.76 The bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South echoed this sentiment, claiming that though “excessive ritualism cramps the soul and tends toward a mere form of godliness rather than the power thereof” and “sufficient liberty in worship for the guidance of the Spirit of God” must always be allowed, “the entire history of the Christian Church has demonstrated the value of a dignified ritual.”77 This view has been embraced as the majority of Methodist denominations continued along the road of liturgical renewal, while remaining sensitive to those who adhere to a free and flexible service; both types have been seen as equally Methodist. In surveying the history of American Methodism, therefore, one must speak of Methodist liturgical identities despite recurrent efforts to mold practice into one unified, uniform pattern. Yet the differences between these identities are not sufficient to remove persistent family resemblances. Being Methodist on the Lord’s Day means reading Scripture and preaching the good news of salvation and peace; singing hymns and, sometimes, psalms; offering prayer, often extempore, to thank, confess, and intercede; and graciously receiving the prevenient, justifying, or sanctifying grace that the triune God provides. Such characteristics are not, of course, exclusively Methodist. Indeed, it was never Wesley’s expectation that Methodists and their worship should be substantively different from other “real Christians, of whatsoever denomination they be”; distinctions were to be made from “the unbelieving world, from all those whose minds or lives are not according to the gospel of Christ.”78 Nevertheless, Methodist Sunday worship does, in its underlying principles, exhibit a family trait: the appropriation, in some fashion, of what are perceived to be the liturgical guidelines and practices introduced by John Wesley for the people called Methodist. A wide range of interpretation has occurred here, because Methodist liturgical expression, even in its infancy, was multifaceted. The liturgical styles and the affective piety manifested already in eighteenth-century Methodism have virtually functioned as primitive paradigms for the worship of the past two centuries: evangelistic preaching, teaching, and hymn singing outside of church walls, which was deliberate but spontaneous; the unadorned, planned yet flexible preaching services in meetinghouse, chapel, domestic dwelling, or available sheltered space; the informal praise, prayer, and testimony service of the intimate class meeting, a later manifestation of which was the Sunday school opening exercise; and the formal, highly structured services for the Lord’s Day, first from the Book of Common Prayer, and after 1784 from the Sunday Service and its recurrent appearance in adapted forms. These represent diverse, but ultimately not divergent, practices that have coexisted throughout the course of American Methodist history, with the formal service gaining prominence in the twentieth century. While these various styles generally converge on the matter of worship’s content and components, there have been differences—even within a particular style—on whether worship’s predominant emphasis should be doxology, catechesis, conversion, or cultivation of the moral life. Wesley himself would not have made such sharp distinctions among these purposes, regarding them rather as strands in a single whole. Spiritual worship, claimed Wesley, “properly and directly consists in


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the knowledge and love of God, as manifested in the Son of his love, through the eternal Spirit. And this naturally leads to every heavenly temper, and to every good word and work.”79 The separation of the strands and the Wesleyan styles of worship selected to express them have contributed to the multiple liturgical profiles of American Methodism. Specific emphases have risen to prominence at certain times, and often the strands appear in combination, but like the worship styles that ritualize them, all four have been present from the rise of Methodism. The various configurations of strands and styles may be treated as separate Methodist liturgical identities. But they must not be seen as approaches complete unto themselves, for the sum of the strands and styles represents the fullness of the Methodist and the Christian life. Methodist Sunday worship is both simple and complex, informal and formal, free and fixed, evangelical and doxological.

3

The Great Festivals of the Methodists

lthough Wesley believed that Methodists should not be substantially different from other Christians, Methodists celebrated special services of worship that expressed and reinforced their denominational identity. These occasions were not delineated in Wesley’s Sunday Service of 1784 or in subsequent recensions of that text. Rather, they developed independently from the Prayer Book tradition in response to Methodism’s organizational and evangelistic concerns but were never regarded by church officials as a substitute for regular Lord’s Day worship. Some of these worship services originated in Britain and were exported to the New World; others were honed from Methodist and a shared Protestant evangelical experience on American soil. No official or prescribed order was mandated, but over time, custom and expediency shaped paradigms that informally spread throughout Methodism. “These were our great festivals,” commented Ohioan David Lewis on one peculiarly Methodist service. “Here we renewed our covenants with God and his people, obtained encouragement and strength in our souls, and rejoiced together in the salvation of God.”1 Though these “great festivals” would wane after Methodism’s first century, they never were entirely lost, and some would find new life as the result of a renewed interest in the Wesleyan heritage. By these “great festivals” is meant in this chapter the whole range of love feasts, watch nights, services of covenant renewal, quarterly meetings, camp meetings, protracted meetings, and indoor revivals.

A

The Love Feast The earliest Methodist missioners brought to America the love feast, a service devised intentionally to imitate early Christian praxis. From his reading of Scripture and Christian antiquity, Wesley knew of the ancient Christian agape or love feast, where “the Rich and the Poor feasted together at the same Table” and “they testified and confirmed their mutual Love and Kindness.”2 He may have been aware 60


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that love feasts had been revived by certain Separatists, Baptists, and Anabaptists during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But it was Wesley’s exposure to the Moravian renovation of the practice, at Savannah, Georgia, in 1737, and at the Moravian community of Herrnhut in 1738, that prompted his interest in its value as a means of bolstering Christian fellowship and reinforcing spiritual growth and accountability. The love feast became an integral component of the Fetter Lane Religious Society Wesley had helped to found in 1738, and after Wesley broke with Fetter Lane (which eventually would become the first Moravian congregation in England), the love feast continued among the Methodist societies, though in a manner distinct from Moravian practice. Attendance was mostly restricted: at first, to members of the gender-segregated and intimate Methodist bands,3 because of the revelation of personal dispositions and the generation of intense emotion; and then gradually to the members of the small-group classes and the larger Methodist society who were in good standing. Earnest seekers not members of the society might sometimes be admitted with special permission. Status was authenticated by the presentation of a ticket or token distributed quarterly that bore the name of the owner or the authorizing person (and sometimes both), as well as the date or serial letter and the citation of a Scripture verse. Doorkeepers monitored admission and, to avoid outside accusations that these gatherings promoted orgiastic behavior (criticisms that nevertheless persisted), only the assistant or superintendent ministers directly responsible to Wesley could oversee the event. A highlight of the love feast was the symbolic communal meal: In order to increase in them a grateful sense of all His mercies, I desired that one evening in a quarter all the men in band, on a second, all the women, would meet; and on a third, both men and women together; that we might together “eat bread” (as the ancient Christians did) “with gladness and singleness of heart.” At these lovefeasts (so we termed them, retaining the name, as well as the thing, which was in use from the beginning) our food is only a little plain cake and water. But we seldom return from them without being fed, not only with “the meat which perisheth,” but with “that which endureth to everlasting life.”4

Exhortations, prayer, and almsgiving accompanied the meal, but the opportunity for personal testimony truly formed the heart of the fellowship. According to Frank Baker, all these components proceeded in a scheme that was “the normal order followed throughout Wesley’s lifetime,” a sequence that was customary, useful, and not required: Hymn Prayer Grace (sung) Bread distributed by stewards Collection for the poor Circulation of the loving-cup Address by the presiding minister Testimonies and verses of hymns Spontaneous prayers and verses of hymns Closing exhortation by the minister

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Hymn Benediction5 Among the hymns that were routinely sung was the five-section love feast hymn written by Charles Wesley and first published in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1740). The text of the first part, which contains echoes of the love feast’s apostolic roots and its Methodist manifestation, crossed the Atlantic and has been handed down to generations of Methodists: Come, and let us sweetly join Christ to praise in hymns divine; Give we all with one accord Glory to our common Lord: Hands, and hearts, and voices raise, Sing as in the ancient days, Antedate the joys above, Celebrate the Feast of Love. Strive we, in affection strive: Let the purer flame revive, Such as in the martyrs glow’d, Dying champions for their God. We, like them, may live and love; Call’d we are their joys to prove; Saved with them from future wrath, Partners of like precious faith. Sing we then in Jesu’s name, Now as yesterday the same, One in every age and place, Full for all of truth and grace. We, for Christ, our Master, stand Lights in a benighted land; We our dying Lord confess, We are Jesu’s witnesses. Witnesses that Christ hath died, We with him are crucified: Christ hath burst the bands of death, We His quickening Spirit breathe. Christ is now gone up on high; (Thither all our wishes fly;) Sits at God’s right hand above, There with Him we reign in love!6 The first explicit witness of a Methodist love feast in America comes from the journal of Joseph Pilmore, who, along with Richard Boardman, had been sent by Wesley as a missionary. On Friday, March 23, 1770, Pilmore expressed the hope


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that through this “occonemy of the Methodists,” the Philadelphians in attendance might be prepared “to eat bread togither in the kingdom of God.” Two months later, on Sunday, May 13, he described an evening love feast in New York where “the Lord was remarkably present” and “we felt the softening power of the holy Ghost, and our Souls were disolved with love in the presence of the mighty God of Jacob.”7 From 1770 onward into the nineteenth century, accounts of love feasts increase in frequency, reflecting not only the proliferation of Methodist societies in America but also the occasion’s overwhelming emotional and spiritual power, which moved participants to record the event in their diaries and journals. Services were expected to be no more than an hour and a half in duration, but because of the perceived presence of the convicting, justifying, and sanctifying Spirit of God, this rule was often violated. Technically the love feast could be observed anytime the authorized leader, defined after 1792 as the preacher in charge of a circuit, was present,8 but the event regularly came to coincide with the quarterly visitation of the presiding elder; love feasts also were observed at the annual and quadrennial gatherings of the Methodist conferences. As in British Methodism, membership in the society was generally the prerequisite for attendance, and evidence (at first the class tickets, later love feast tickets) was expected to be shown. Laxity in this restriction caused a statement to be placed in the Minutes of the first Conference of the American Methodist societies held in 1773 at Philadelphia that persons should be admitted into the love feast only two or three times before they would be expected to become members of the society; the rule survived when the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in 1784 and was kept by that church until 1864, whereas the Methodist Episcopal Church, South continued it until 1882. The desire that all who sought “to flee from the wrath to come” be formed in practical godliness and vital piety is clearly exhibited by the economic and racial diversity represented at the love feast of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, an inclusivity that provoked Thomas Rankin to remark in 1774 that the devotion of the rich often paled to that of the poor of African descent.9 According to Nathan Bangs, the American service in the early years contained the same components as the British, though exhortations were sometimes absent from the love feast proper, and the sequence generally took a different shape: a hymn, prayer, the taking of bread and water, the relating of one’s own “experience and enjoyment of divine things,” almsgiving, singing, prayer, and the benediction.10 Official stipulation of a collection for the poor to be made at the love feast is provided in the 1787 Discipline, though it quietly falls out by 1792. Yet almsgiving is listed in the suggested form for the love feast that first appears in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s 1858 Discipline. This order basically follows Bangs’s scheme, except for the inclusion after the opening prayer of a “short address, setting forth the nature and design of this institution,” and, immediately before testimonies by the members, both the collection of the offering “whenever it is deemed necessary” and the reception of “candidates for church-fellowship” into the church. Almsgiving and membership components were dropped in 1866, and the outline as set forth from that date survived in the Discipline until 1938, the last book before merger.

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Despite the “official” omission of the collection for the poor, it survived in practice and is mentioned in a description of an early twentieth-century love feast drawn from the childhood memories of Emory Stevens Bucke. Bucke also notes another variation from the suggested form: the reading of a Scripture lesson on the “bread of life” preceded the distribution of the bread, which then was followed by relevant commentary, testimonies, and hymn verses; the same actions came after a Scripture lesson on “the waters of mercy” and “never thirsting.”11 Pieces of Bucke’s service meshed with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s pattern in the service contained in the Methodist Church’s Book of Worship of 1965; these are also joined by new elements: A Hymn of Praise The Scripture Voluntary Prayers and the Lord’s Prayer An Address A Hymn of Christian Fellowship The Passing of the Bread [with the blessing “Blessed art thou, O Lord, God of the universe, who dost bring forth bread from the earth.”] Offering for the Poor The Passing of the Cup [with the promise “Jesus Christ said, Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.”] A Thanksgiving in Unison Testimonies A Hymn of Thanksgiving A Blessing This is almost the same order provided in the 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship. The form suggested in the African Methodist Episcopal Book of Worship (1984), derived from a “primitive” ritual sequence proposed in The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity (1885), by Bishop Henry Turner, preserves more of the simple shape described by Bangs, though the placement of the testimonies and the symbolic meal are reversed, and a Scripture lesson is added after the opening prayer. A rubric instructs that the love feast should be shared within a week before Communion is celebrated, a custom that Bucke noted as well. In this practice, the love feast functioned as a type of penitential or reconciliation rite based on Matthew 5:23–24. Bishop Turner offered the explanation: the love feast was a necessary preparation for Communion in that it allowed the people opportunity to “bury all bickerings, malice, envy and strife, and if any are not speaking, to get them to make up and start upon a new Christian career.”12 The observance of the love feast declined as Methodism identified itself less as a connection of societies and more as a denomination. Nevertheless, the love feast survived to the end of the twentieth century, though for most Methodists its practice was more of a novelty or a memory of a precious peculiarity than a vital “feast of love” where “the love of God enkindles in the soul, it communicates from heart to heart, brethren are united in the closest bonds, God is felt to be gloriously present, heaven is begun on earth, and every heart responds to the sentiment.”13 During Methodism’s first century in America, the love feast was looked to as an


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opportunity for fellowship and Christian nurture, where men and women, young and old, rich and poor could build one another up in Christian love; and the sharing of bread and water was a symbol of “the friendship existing between those persons who eat from the same dish & drink from the same bowl.”14 Sometimes the tense atmosphere sparked negativity, as the pastor of a Virginia church discovered in 1861, and the love feast itself then became an occasion for constructive reconciliation: Love Feast—a strange meeting for Love Feast—charges of enimity [sic] were made by the members against each other in very bitter terms and I bound them over to keep the peace. I found animosities had existed for years in this church and proposed the following covenant—1—Not to bear enemity [sic]. 2—To bridle the tongue. 3—To speak to each other. 4—To attend the means of grace. All present took the pledge on their knees except one man, who said he could not speak to a certain brother!15

The relaxing of the qualifications for attendance, along with the cooling of Methodist fervor, proved in the end to have a part in the love feast’s eventual decline. Although admission tickets continued to be issued despite calls within some denominations to curtail the practice, and the Discipline delineated who could properly attend, the restrictions for privacy often broke down, sometimes in response to accusations of exclusivism made both inside and outside Methodism. The selective nature of the gatherings, however, was not so much intended to be an obstacle (though in part there was a literal obstruction, since once the doors to the meeting were closed, no one was permitted to enter), but a pastoral design to provide an environment of trust where all—particularly women, whose public speaking in mixed company was discouraged socially—could express themselves freely, honestly, and equally.16 The attraction of other Christians and nonChristians to these occasions, and the eventual opening of the doors to them, changed the essential character of the love feast to such an extent that for many its original usefulness was lost.

The Watch Night and the Renewal of the Covenant Wesley knew from his sojourn at Herrnhut and from the Moravian Church’s Constitution the custom of singing a verse at each hour of the night by those on the night watch,17 and from his experience at Fetter Lane he probably was acquainted with the Moravian watch night service for New Year’s Eve. But the direct origin of the Methodist watch night, according to Wesley, was the extended nighttime service of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving that developed around 1740 in the coalmining community of Kingswood as a spiritual alternative to the evening tipple at the alehouse. At first hesitant to accept this innovation, Wesley eventually embraced it on account of its similarity to the vigils held in apostolic times and provided for in the Church of England’s 1662 Book of Common Prayer, a point he made in countering his detractors who charged the Methodists of holding “midnight assemblies.”18 This “solemn season” soon spread beyond Kingswood to Bristol and Newcastle, and to London, where the first watch night was kept on April 9,

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1742. The timing of what was apparently in the cities a monthly service was inherently practical, and the shape and content of the service determined to both glorify God and edify the people: We commonly choose for this solemn service the Friday night nearest the full moon, either before or after, that those of the congregation who live at a distance may have light to their several homes. The service begins at half an hour past eight and continues till a little after midnight. We have often found a peculiar blessing at these seasons. There is generally a deep awe upon the congregation, perhaps in some measure owing to the silence of the night; particularly in singing the hymn with which we commonly conclude: Hearken to the solemn voice! The awful midnight cry! Waiting souls, rejoice, rejoice, And feel the Bridegroom nigh.19

This hymn, a portion of the so-called “midnight hymn,” was one of a number of hymns authored by Charles Wesley for use at the watch night, eleven of which were published independently as Hymns for the Watch-Night (1746); three years later, seven texts came out in the Hymns for New Year’s Day (1749). One watch night hymn, “Come, let us anew our pleasures pursue” shares the first half line with a New Year hymn of the same meter, “Come, let us anew our journey pursue”; the latter hymn came to be used at watch nights on New Year’s Eve, a practice that remained long after the decline—even in Wesley’s lifetime—of the monthly gathering. There is no firm evidence that American Methodists ever routinely observed a monthly watch night, but certainly in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the solemn occasion had not yet been relegated to the final evening of the year; and still into the late nineteenth century, members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church were encouraged to hold watch nights from 1:00 to 6:00 a.m. on Christmas morning in what was believed to be an imitation of ancient Christian practice.20 According to oral and practical tradition, the service took place on various nights of the week, lasted several hours, and comprised preaching and exhortation (typically by different speakers), singing, and prayer. The watch night’s characteristic length and contents encouraged Thomas Rankin to identify a comparable daytime service as a “watchafternoon,” a designation apparently unique to Rankin.21 True to its origins, Methodists in America saw the watch night as an alternative to worldly customs and amusements. In 1787 Asbury noted that “we had a watch night, and the gentry had a ball”; and in the 1798 commentary on the Discipline, after explaining that both Jesus and St. Paul spent all night in prayer, he asked, “And shall not the ministers and people of God in these days imitate such great examples? Shall the dissipated and profane revel and watch, night after night, in the service of Satan, and shall we think it too much to watch and pray sometimes for a few hours together?”22 The Methodists even criticized less provocative nighttime behavior. In comparing the Methodist service with the cultural custom of ringing the church bell through the night to herald the new year, Ezekiel Cooper described the latter as “Satan’s Watch Night.”23 Such Methodist piety,


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especially at the watch night on New Year’s Eve, invited disruptions by those who were more attracted to unholy exploits. When a mob threatened on the last night of 1770, Pilmore concedes that “the terrors of the Lord made them afraid” and so they left the worshipers alone.24 Other gatherings were not so fortunate: sneezing replaced singing when pepper was placed on a stove before a watch night in 1838.25 The expectation of every watch night was the outpouring of the manifold blessings of God. The themes of repentance (the conflict between darkness and light), readiness for the eschatological judgment, and watching and waiting all were intended to provoke a response of faith. These emphases were sometimes reinforced by the inclusion of other ritual acts at the watch night, such as the love feast, baptism, and reception into church membership.26 But occasionally the intended benefits were slow in coming. At a New Jersey watch night around 1810, a remedy was made for a cool gathering: In the new Church, a “Watch Night” was held on New Year’s Eve, but it was a dull time; about ten o’clock the elder brethren proposed to “break up and go home.” The Class Leader, Brother Duer, cries, “No, brethren, that will not do, let us pray again.” Sister Phebe Peters was called upon to pray; and in a short time during that pious woman’s exercise, the power of the Highest fell upon the congregation; the house seemed to be filled with the Divine presence, and the members’ hearts overflowed with love and joy. The meeting held until towards morning!27

An exhorter’s lack of skills changed the mood of another New Year’s meeting: At 8 o’clock began the watchnight. I commenced the services by giving out, “Thou Judge of quick and dead,” with as much solemnity of voice, attitude and look as I could command: it was well sung by a good choir, and numerous congregation in the old tune called “Aylesbury.” After this I made a long prayer, and then gave out “Lo, he comes with clouds descending,” which was well sung. I then preached a long sermon the 11th & 12th verses of the 20th Chapter of Revelation. After this we had singing and prayers, and some exhortation such as it was, for there was not a regular exhorter, nor a preacher of any kind, present besides myself. One of my volunteer exhorters made a very crooked piece of work of it; and his singing set the whole house in an uproar of laughter from which I found it rather difficult to recover them. I then dismissed them.28

Despite distractions, the New Year’s watch night service progressed toward welcoming another year of the Lord. Some communities greeted it on their knees in prayer or sang “Come, let us anew our journey pursue” or another hymn. Others, noted Methodist Episcopal bishop Thomas Morris, renewed “the Christian’s covenant to strive for ‘a closer walk with God,’ ” and, kneeling, spent the minutes until midnight “confessing the sins of the past year, returning thanks to God for the blessings of life and grace perpetuated to them, and engaging with the Lord, each for himself, to be for Him the ensuing year, whether called to live and labor, or die and go to eternity.”29 To do this, many Methodists drew upon the resources that Wesley had provided for covenanting with God. Wesley was not unique in promoting the renewal of one’s personal covenant with God as an improvement in “practical divinity.” He knew of covenant renewal from his mother and father, who, though convinced Anglicans, readily instilled in

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their son the language and concepts of Puritan covenant (federal) theology in which they had been nurtured by their own Dissenting parents. References to covenanting were also familiar to Wesley through his reading of Puritan devotional literature, selected writings from Laudian Anglicanism, and the Moravian Church’s Constitution. So, it is not surprising that Wesley would freely employ covenantal language in his writing and, given his penchant for ritually expressing commitments to the Christian faith, develop a service of covenant renewal that usually concluded with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Wesley’s expectation was that the covenant service, like the love feast, would be a private, not public, event. Though some posit that a simple service was in practice by 1747 or 1748,30 Wesley’s journal entry for August 11, 1755, was the first to confirm that a service took place using the words of “that blessed man, Richard Alleine.” The words referred to were the Puritan Richard Alleine’s in Vindiciae Pietatis: Or, A Vindication of Godliness (1663), wherein lengthy directions for covenanting were followed by five brief instructions and a form of “solemn covenant” borrowed from Alleine’s Puritan son-in-law Joseph Alleine (Joseph’s material would also appear in the widely popular An Alarme to Unconverted Sinners, which appeared in 1671 after his death).31 In 1753, Wesley published versions of both Alleine works in the Christian Library, but it was Vindiciae Pietatis that was subsequently used for the Methodist covenanting service, with the leaders drawing most often upon the Christian Library printing of Richard Alleine’s text. To all or part of Alleine’s directions and the covenant prayer might be joined exhortation, extemporary prayer, and hymns. By 1778 at least, a Charles Wesley hymn was commonly used at these services; the text soon became designated the “covenant hymn” and its use at covenant renewal a Methodist tradition: Come, let us use the grace Divine, And all with one accord In a perpetual covenant join Ourselves to Christ the Lord, Give ourselves up through Jesu’s power His name to glorify, And promise in this sacred hour For God to live, and die. The covenant we this moment make Be ever kept in mind! We will no more our God forsake, Or cast His words behind; We never will throw off His fear, Who hears our solemn vow: And if Thou art well-pleased to hear, Come down, and meet us now! Thee, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Let all our hearts receive, Present with Thy celestial host


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The peaceful answer give; To each the covenant-blood apply Which takes our sins away, And register our names on high, And keep us to that day!32 The publishing in 1779 of a separate (and unapproved) text for the covenanting service by the Methodist itinerating preacher Thomas Lee may have provided the impetus for Wesley to bring out his own pamphlet, and in 1780 Directions for Renewing Our Covenant with God was printed. As might be expected, Wesley’s Directions are virtually the directions and covenant prayer from Vindiciae Pietatis, though the first of Alleine’s five directions is considerably abbreviated, and the rest of the text has been slightly reworked. The Directions went through approximately nineteen editions and formed the basis for later variations in the covenanting services that would develop in British Methodism.33 Apparently there was no printing of Wesley’s Directions in America, and no direct American usage of Wesley’s text can be confirmed. Even so, the Americans knew the practice of covenanting. From March to June 1786, Ezekiel Cooper twice records that covenants had been renewed.34 The scant references available indicate that the short-lived covenant renewal soon was placed exclusively at the year’s end watch night or, less frequently, on New Year’s Day, and only hints are given about the shape and content of the service. Bishop Thomas Morris’s reflections in 1852 (mentioned above) possibly suggest some familiarity with the language of Wesley’s Directions; a fictionalized account of a watch night published in 1859 describes only the singing of the covenant hymn while the congregation knelt in the first minutes of the new year;35 and Illinoisan Leonard Smith, in his journal for December 31, 1860, recorded that following “silent, secret prayer to God,” “we concluded by shaking hands with all who had made a covenant with God.” New Year’s Eve watch nights, with ritual actions for covenant renewal sometimes conjoined, continued well into the twentieth century, though in some local congregations their character evolved from an entire evening of prayerful solemnity to a festival capped by prayer.36 One Massachusetts pastor, frustrated with many from his congregation exchanging the traditional watch night for the glitter of the hotels and nightclubs, in 1938 experimented successfully with dancing and games in the church hall prior to midnight prayer in the pews.37 The Methodist New Year’s Eve watch night also sometimes expanded into an ecumenical, evangelistic service: in 1909, the Chicago Coliseum hosted over 12,000 in an evening of praise, prayer, appeal, and commitment.38 Perhaps in response to the increasing variety in practice, juxtaposed with the desire to reclaim Wesleyan liturgical traditions, the Methodist Church offered in the 1945 Book of Worship “The Order of Worship for Such as Would Enter into or Renew Their Covenant with God, for Use in a Watch-Night Service or on the First Sunday of the New Year.” With the introduction of this service, the distinct (and officially unscripted) watch night service took second place to an ordered (and formal) covenant service, and thereby, wittingly or unwittingly, early American Methodist praxis was effectively reversed. The 1945 service did not reproduce

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one of the editions of Wesley’s Directions, but rather borrowed from the British Methodist Book of Offices (1936) the order drawn up from the covenanting traditions of the various Methodist bodies that had recently merged in 1932.39 What figured as the covenant prayer in the 1936 service was not a portion of the form of solemn covenant original to Joseph Alleine, but a segment from Richard Alleine’s fourth direction reworked as a prayer. The sequence of the 1945 service varied slightly from the British service, but the 1936 order was restored for the service utilized in the 1965 Book of Worship: Hymn [“Come, let us use the grace divine” or some other] Collect for Purity [“Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open”] The Lord’s Prayer [in unison] Reading from John 15:1–8 Description of the New Covenant and Summons to Self Examination Prayer of Adoration Litany of Thanksgiving Litany of Confession Prayer of Confession [in unison] Scriptural Absolution Hymn Introduction to a Renewal of the Covenant Covenant Prayer [by the minister, then the people join in saying, “I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee; let me be full, let me be empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.”] Introductory Dialogue [Sursum Corda] Preface [brief] Sanctus Prayer of Consecration and the rest of Holy Communion or, if no Communion, a Hymn and Benediction The 1984 African Methodist Episcopal Book of Worship also followed the 1936 British order, but inexplicably omitted the unison prayer of confession, the scriptural absolution, the introduction to a renewal of the covenant, and the covenant prayer. An intentional move away from the 1936 order back to Wesley’s Directions occurred in the 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship, which presented, at the conclusion of the sequence normative for Sunday worship, selected directions for covenanting now briefly framed as invitation or prayer, and the 1780 covenant prayer abbreviated and reworked in contemporary language as the designated covenant prayer.40 Rubrics indicated that the service could be used at times other than the New Year, but this recovery of the older tradition was tempered by the statement that ideally the service should be used only once annually.


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The Quarterly Meeting The love feast and, occasionally, the watch night and the renewal of the covenant converge in another peculiarly Methodist institution that David Lewis denoted as the “great festival”: the quarterly meeting. Quarterly patterns were familiar in the British judicial system (“quarter days”), Anglicanism (e.g., ember days), other religious societies (most notably the Society of Friends), and in Methodism itself (e.g., the scheduled meetings of the band and general love feasts, and the issuance of tickets of membership). Inspired by such precedents, British Methodist John Bennet in 1748 developed a system of oversight whereby clusters or circuits of Methodist societies would join together four times a year to transact business. Bennet’s method proved to be so beneficial that by the late 1750s the quarterly meeting became an established component of Methodist organization for monitoring both spiritual and temporal affairs.41 Rules for ensuring the perpetuation of the quarterly meeting were written into the Minutes as one of the leadership responsibilities of Wesley’s assistants, to whom also fell the duty of quarterly reports for each society’s finances and membership, and “every remarkable conversion and remarkable death” (Large Minutes, Question 42). Because the assistant also had the task of overseeing watch nights and love feasts, it was convenient for him to plan these occasions of worship to coincide with the gathering of the society every three months. Early on, serious and sustained worship became synonymous with the quarterly meeting, and not just because of the peculiar Methodist rites, but on account of the numerous preaching services and prayer meetings that surrounded and interspersed the business sessions. The spiritual energy generated at these meetings often attracted persons not already affiliated with the Methodist societies, which required that distinctions be made between private and public events, a separation that was often difficult to maintain. The quarterly meeting transplanted in American soil took root as a one-day event most often held on Tuesdays, but because of the distance between societies in rural areas (twenty to thirty miles was a common journey to meeting), and the desire expressed by persons in neighboring circuits to attend (some traveling upwards of fifty miles), the custom developed of holding two-day meetings on Saturday and Sunday. Jesse Lee further explained the rationale for the two-day format, which became the recommended procedure according to the 1780 American Minutes: slaves and the poor could come only on the Lord’s Day; and the wealthy would not trouble themselves to come at any other time. “Shouting and praising God” could anticipate the meeting and the arrival of the preachers. On one occasion, the preachers found persons “on the ground crying for mercy, and others in extacies [sic] of joy.” Lee recognized, in fact, that an extended meeting allowed greater opportunity to produce the affects of “lively religion”: At a quarterly meeting held in Baltimore on the 8th and 9th of August, 1789, and during the following week, the kingdom of Satan suffered great loss. The first day of the quarterly meeting was profitable to numbers: many cried and wept bitterly for mercy, and some souls were born of God. Sunday, the second day, was most awful and glorious. In the love feast at eight in the morning, the society enjoyed a little Pentecost,

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American Methodist Worship and dwelt as it were in the suburbs of heaven. The presence of God was awfully felt, while the people one after another feelingly declared what God had done for their souls. In public preaching, the word was so accompanied by the energy of the holy Ghost, that there were few but felt its mighty power. Some of the greatest revilers of the work were constrained to tremble and weep. The congregation broke up on Sunday night very late, after many had been converted. Some were two, three or four hours on their knees, others were prostrate on the floor, most earnestly agonizing for mercy, till they could rejoice in God their Saviour. What power! What awe rested on the people!42

Other Methodists would refer to the spiritual dynamism of these meetings with such epithets as “a glorious season,” an “outpouring of grace,” and “a melting time,” which describe not only the intensity of the individual experience in both the public and private assemblies but more importantly the Christian unity and fellowship of the faithful expressed in the private, intimate gathering of the love feast. Meetinghouses, public buildings, barns, and even brush arbors and tents were used to shelter the crowds who assembled for public preaching services and for the services open only to Methodists with supporting documentation. The revival aspect of these meetings became so paramount that the business sessions led by the presiding elder on his quarterly visit as pastoral supervisor rarely find a mention in accounts other than the official record. Elizabeth Roe of Illinois refers in passing to the business-laden “quarterly conference”; but her interest is focused on the evangelistic quality of this meeting from the late 1820s, and on the contemporary reappropriation of the apostolic love feast: The quarterly meeting commenced on Saturday, with preaching at twelve o’clock noon, and at early candle-light. This was the manner of giving out evening meetings, as there were but few people in Illinois at that early date who had clocks. The mantle clock was not in use then, and the old-fashioned ones with long wooden cases were difficult to move, and were left behind. Brother [Peter] Cartwright preached at twelve o’clock, noon. The quarterly conference occupied the afternoon, and Brother Tartington preached at candle-light, and the service closed with a devotional prayer meeting. The preaching was food for my soul. I had not heard Brother Cartwright preach since I had been converted, except on this occasion. Sabbath morning at nine o’clock we assembled without the tolling of a bell, in the upper room of the Court House, to enjoy a Love-feast. The room was filled, and the door closed, and oh! what a precious hour it was, as one after another arose to speak of the mercy of God; the love of a precious Savior shed abroad in their hearts; the victories they had gained since their last quarterly meeting or love-feast, and of the blessed hope of immortality and eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Many shouts of glory went up from hearts that were filled to the overflowing. The walls of the court house fairly rang with the melody. The house, for the present at least, seemed to be sacred on account of the presence of the Lord. It appeared to me something like the love-feast, or classmeeting the disciples enjoyed when doubting Thomas made one of their number, and our blessed Savior permitted him to put his finger into the wounds, and Thomas cried out, “My Lord, and my God!” I do not think there was a person in that house but who could say, “I know my Redeemer lives and intercedes for me; I shall see Him as He is. Praise the Lord for the hope set before us.” At eleven o’clock we had public service in the lower story—quite a large room— and it was filled, and every door and window was crowded with attentive hearers.


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Father Cartwright discoursed, and seemed endowed with the power and demonstration of the Spirit of God. Some were awakened to a sense of their sins, and other were converted. It was a time long to be remembered, and will be remembered in glory.43

From the descriptions of Lee, Roe, and scores of other Methodists, a shape emerges for the two-day quarterly meeting that shows a tendency toward a common pattern, though not a fixed structure. A fast was expected on the Friday prior to quarterly meeting and was legislated in the Discipline beginning in 1792.44 A preaching service around noon marked the beginning of the meeting on Saturday, which would be followed by the business session, sometimes held at the same time as another preaching service. The day would conclude with preaching and prayer meetings, and sometimes with a stated watch night or a service to renew one’s covenant with God. The closed love feast most often began the Sunday phase, with a preaching service coming later in the morning and, if time and personnel allowed, also in the afternoon and evening. Another consistent element of the quarterly meeting, though not as regular as the love feast, was the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. By Methodist polity, the sacrament required the services of an ordained minister who, for many circuits, came only four times a year in the form of the presiding elder; baptisms and weddings, additional tasks of the ordained, were also performed.45 Admission to the Lord’s Supper was gained through proof of the quarterly ticket, and if one was not a Methodist, by examination of spiritual character. The placement of Communion in the course of the quarterly meeting could vary, with records indicating that it began the Sunday session, came immediately after or was blended with the Sunday love feast (with the collection of alms functioning as a type of linchpin), or followed a preaching service either on Saturday or Sunday.46 The sacrament also might not be present at all, as apparently was the case for the meetings cited by Lee and Roe. Even though, for many Methodists, the quarterly meeting was the only chance to receive Communion, and they looked forward to the presence and power of God in the sacrament, for some the love feast proved to be the highlight of the meeting. Such elevated status undoubtedly is linked with the fact that the love feast was the Methodist occasion for communion with God and fellow Christians prior to the ordination of the first Methodist ministers in 1784, and its standing did not waver even after Methodists were permitted to receive the sacrament from the hands of their own clergy. It has been said that the quarterly meeting, which intertwined the business of the circuit with the rituals that defined and formed the Methodist community, was the place where “Methodism was distinctively itself, most fully church.”47 Though the quarterly meeting as a forum for local church business endured into the twentieth century, its character as a unique opportunity for worship declined as preachers ceased to itinerate as in former days, as more ordained ministers were set apart for administration of the sacraments and the church’s other rites, and as circuits were dismantled into single “station” churches or small “charges” of two or more. Some of the peculiar liturgical components of the quarterly meeting were preserved in another type of meeting, one unique to America that had developed alongside the quarterly plan and survived it when the quarterly meeting had outlived its original function: the camp meeting.

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The Camp Meeting Preaching in the open air characterized Methodism from almost the very beginning, and was a practice much criticized by Church of England clergy and others who deplored such irregularities. In England and America, Methodist services were held outside of church walls for two basic reasons: Anglican clergy were often unwilling to share their buildings with the Methodists; and the small structures available to the Methodist preachers frequently could not accommodate the crowds. To this twosome, the American Methodists, cognizant of the circumstances of a spreading population, added a third: the gospel was to be proclaimed in places where there were not yet established settlements. The Americans never had any qualms about praising God in “nature’s temple,” so when participants and observers at the quarterly meeting overflowed the designated room, the obvious solution was to move the public preaching services out-of-doors. Indeed, matters were sometimes so planned from the start. Because of the difficulty in finding lodgings near the meeting, many who came some distance, in any case, carried their own provisions with them and slept under the stars in makeshift beds on the ground or in a wagon. Therefore, even before the creation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodists were already experiencing the setting as well as the revivalistic content of the camp meeting, which from the early 1800s would develop into an independent institution for worship, evangelism, and social exchange. The camp meeting as a form thus did not arise ex nihilo in the revivalistic atmosphere that pervaded the nation in the phenomenon now identified as the Second Great Awakening. In addition to the Methodist outdoor preaching services and quarterly meetings, other antecedents, such as the Scottish Presbyterian eucharistic “sacramental seasons” and “holy fairs,” and the outdoor preaching services of certain Separate Baptists in Virginia, bridged the gap between the two Awakenings.48 Methodist outdoor meetings of more than two days’ duration, at which participants intentionally camped together, were also held in Georgia and the Carolinas in the decade before the Presbyterian outdoor assemblies at Gasper River (1800) and Cane Ridge (1801) in Kentucky, which have been long credited as the first real camp meetings and as catalysts for the Second Awakening. No matter what denomination or site eventually is credited with the origination of the camp meeting, it is evident, despite the contentions of earlier historians,49 that the Methodists did not adopt the camp meeting as an entirely new and innovative occasion for enthusiastic worship and the conversion of souls, but instead adapted and transformed what they had previously found successful at the quarterly meetings to the format of a residential protracted convocation that now was designated under a new name. The close relationship between the quarterly meeting and the camp meeting continued to be expressed, by some Methodists, through the practice of creating camp meetings out of regularly scheduled quarterly meetings. The connection between the two is explicity addressed in the Discipline of the Free Methodists by an instruction present from that denomination’s inception and on into the first half of the twentieth century, which states that the holding of camp meetings “as the interests of the cause of God may require” is under the jurisdiction of the quarterly conference.50 This juxtaposition of business and worship in quar-


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terly and camp meetings thus concretely bore witness to the self-image of disciplined Christian life that Methodists codified, but did not explicitly articulate, in their Discipline.51 Camp meetings have usually been associated with the American frontier, and certainly Methodists found them to be a practical necessity and a spiritual boon in the sparsely inhabited backwoods where hundreds and even thousands of worshipers flocked to the proceedings. But camp meetings were not an institution of the frontier alone.52 Bishop Francis Asbury and other Methodist leaders encouraged open-air revivals across the nation: in the West and in the not-so-remote areas of the eastern seaboard. The settled Methodists of city and town happily extended their own familiar practices into the flexible camp meeting format because they recognized, as did Asbury, its potential as a “battle ax and weapon of war” to “break down walls of wickedness, part of hell, superstition, false doctrine.”53 For similar reasons, other denominations, like the United Brethren, engaged in camp meetings on the frontier and in settled regions during the first decades of the 1800s. On occasion, Baptists and Presbyterians shared cooperatively in general or union meetings with the Methodists, though at ecumenical “sacramental” meetings, the Baptists separated themselves during the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Camp meeting methods proved for some denominations to be divisive rather than upbuilding, and decisions were taken within certain groups, most notably those within the Reformed tradition, to discard the practice soon after its implementation. However, the camp meeting as a vehicle for large-scale evangelical worship continued to be cultivated throughout the nineteenth century by all the different branches of Methodism. Methodist outdoor revival meetings could be found in every region, in languages other than English (the Swedish “lager moten”), and attended by whites, blacks, and native peoples, sometimes together and sometimes apart. The area for the camp meeting, which participants regularly denoted as hallowed or sacred space, was arranged according to the expected components and anticipated outcome of the meeting. The earliest meeting places were loosely organized near wood and water sources and pasturage, with a wagon bed or a hastily constructed platform used as an elevated stage for preaching and exhortation. Underbrush was cleared to create a grove for the worshipers, who, segregated by gender, stood or sat on the ground, on logs, or on rough-hewn planks. The small tents that surrounded the corporate worship area were constructed from assorted fabrics to shelter families from the elements. By the mid-1830s, as the camp meeting grew in popularity and size, so did the complexity of the spatial design and the necessity of planning for what in some places became an annual summertime event. On acreage set apart as campgrounds, permanent structures were built, the most prominent being the pulpit or speakers’ stand, which evolved from a simple platform into a raised and roofed building enclosed on three sides, which sometimes could accommodate the speaker and as many as a dozen or more other persons. Two stands might be placed at opposite ends of the ground, and large meetings could have even more, with prominence given to the stand located, if the contours of the land allowed it, in a natural amphitheater. Immediately in front of the preaching stand was an area, sometimes

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enclosed, designated as the “altar.” This straw-covered space could be open for standing and kneeling, or filled with one or more “mourners’ benches” or “anxious benches,” all set aside for those newly awakened to the bondage of sin and desiring deliverance, as well as for “backsliders” who again came seeking redemption. In some encampments, two tents, one for women, the other for men, or one large tent with partitions might be erected in the altar area, where an anticipating light would be kept burning day and night. Extending from the altar would be rows of benches separated by a wide aisle. The seating was most often in the open air, but over time a large tent might be supplied, or a shed or wooden pavilion (“tabernacle”) constructed to house both pulpit and seating. The entire worship space could be configured as a circle, rectangle (“oblong square”), dodecagon, horseshoe, or other pattern, and around it might be the cooking fires that, along with candles and fire stands, provided illumination for the assembly. Behind each fire would be a tent, the occupants’ wagon or carriage, and their horses. At popular meeting sites, larger “boarding” tents might be added, and eventually permanent cabins or cottages were built. As the facilities became more organized, each campground established regulations for participants and enforced policies devised to deal with “rowdies” and other outside disturbances; in some camps, police or guards were secured to monitor events. The Camp Meeting Manual (1854), by New York Methodist B. W. Gorham, and other guidebooks were published to expedite the increasingly complicated process of arranging and maintaining the camp meeting and grounds in “Methodist order.” The growing sophistication of the camp meeting, evolving from a haphazard gathering of simple folk utilizing jerry-built and temporary structures to a planned summer “resort” of permanent constructions for a growing Methodist middle class, serves as an another indicator of Methodism’s emergence into the cultural mainstream during the mid-nineteenth century.54 In comparison to the dramatic alteration of the camp meeting site, the content of the meeting changed very little, though the religious ecstasy the contents aroused gradually subsided except in gatherings sponsored by Methodism’s Holiness churches. The essential ingredient of the assembly was evangelistic preaching, “more properly exhortations to repentance than illustrations of points of faith.”55 Often dozens of preachers, lay and clergy, would be on hand to lead three or more services each day, with some services scheduled simultaneously on different parts of the grounds. Prayer meetings, in families and other clusters (some genderspecific), were expected, and were as likely to lead to the altar as the preaching. Small groups sometimes formed spontaneously, “animated by the love of God, and attracted by the sympathetic groans of wounded sinners, whose piercing cries ascended to heaven,” and so would remain in “petitions and intercessions to Almighty God, in behalf of themselves, and their mourning fellow creatures” throughout the day and night, if need demanded, to be rewarded when the “mourning penitents emerged into the liberties of the Gospel.”56 Songs and hymns filled the air, and could be taken from the denominational hymn books and special camp meeting songsters that were brought by the participants. If books were unavailable, the worship leader might sing the text line by line with the people responding in turn, thereby creating a “call and response” pattern. New tunes, some utilizing popular secular melodies, were also composed on site. Texts were impro-


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vised by using snippets of Scripture along with generous portions of “hallelujah,” or by taking a familiar hymn text and adding to it an independent—and sometimes thematically unrelated—refrain or chorus (e.g., the Isaac Watts text “Come Ye that Love the Lord” with the refrain “We’re Marching to Zion”). The theological themes of repentance, grace, forgiveness, and judgment abound in camp meeting songs, nuanced with images and metaphors that reflect the events of the camp meeting itself: pilgrimage to Canaan; warfare (encampment against the enemy; sinners slain in battle who emerge newly born); and the reunion of believers in heaven.57 The peculiar liturgical idioms of the Methodists adjusted well to the camp meeting format: closed love feasts were observed, most often when the gathering doubled as a quarterly meeting or was scheduled as part of an annual conference; every evening had the potential of being a watch night; and though a formal covenanting does not seem to have taken place, covenant language is employed recurrently to describe one’s renewed promises to God. Also performed were the established Methodist rituals of baptism, the solemnization of marriage, and the reception of members, though formal rites of membership would not be introduced until the second half of the nineteenth century. The Lord’s Supper, celebrated with a simple table placed in the altar area, was not always observed on the Lord’s Day; frequently the sacrament was kept until the evening before or the day of departure. Other practices not uniquely Methodist also flourished at the camp meeting. The kinetic responses generated in reaction to the spiritual and emotional intensity of preaching services and the Methodist love feasts were equally abundant at the camp meeting, and were manifested in new and different forms. The shouting, barking, laughing, singing, jerking, falling, rolling, dancing, and running “exercises” that were distasteful to outsiders and condemned by them were, for the campers, visible evidence of the Spirit of God moving in their midst and thus essential signs of the spiritual life. Nathan Bangs and other Methodists found the physical eruptions objectionable and pleaded for reform, arguing that such a “spirit of pride, presumption, and bigotry, impatience of scriptural restraint and moderation . . . marred and disgraced the work of God.”58 Though the exercises were not usually prohibited, their appearance at meetings soon diminished. Concerning the jerks, a “very strange as well as disgusting exercise” where the individual rapidly whipped the head backward and forward, John Brooks of Tennessee commented that the practice “passed away in a few years, to the joy of all.”59 The large assemblage of persons at the camp meetings offered opportunities for more than the provocation of religious enthusiasm and commitment. Camp meetings were convened during the War of 1812 and the Civil War, although the number of assemblies and attendance at them was reduced, and those held during the latter conflict sometimes became forums for promoting nationalistic agendas, effectively blurring the spiritual with the political, and the denomination with the nation. On one occasion, just before the final benediction at the 1861 Chicago District Camp Meeting, the congregation sang patriotic songs before a pulpit draped with the American flag. Following the benediction and the official closing of the camp meeting, speeches commending support for the Union were rendered by the same leaders who, days earlier, had led rallies for the kingdom of God. Tears

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ran down faces as the “Star Spangled Banner” was sung, moving the reporter to note that on that day, “the love of Christ and the love of our country met together. Religion and patriotism embraced each other.”60 The co-opting of the camp meeting for the promotion of causes other than just the spiritual contributed to its decline in the years following the Civil War, as did population shifts, concerns about social respectability and status, and Methodism’s increasing self-identification with the broader American society.61 In their “Pastoral Address” at the 1880 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the bishops identified the spiritual deficiences of those camp meetings “made a source of revenue mainly, or where luxurious ease and popular amusement are more largely patronized than prayer-meetings are.” Equally troubling were Methodists who forsook Lord’s Day worship in their local congregation for participation in these camp meetings and, by taking public transportation to them, desecrated the Sabbath.62 Nevertheless, the camp meeting as an institution did not die, though many oncethriving campgrounds disappeared in the forests from which they had been carved. Methodism’s Holiness branches nurtured the camp meeting, as did persons within the larger Methodist bodies, who challenged their churches not to neglect the old institution but to correct its inadequacies, in order to have “more of the oldfashioned power while we get more of the new style polish and culture” since “ ‘modern improvements’ are no helps in bringing souls, soundly converted, into the kingdom of God.”63 Methodist periodicals, into the 1920s, regularly published calendars and advertisements for upcoming camp meetings, as well as descriptions of the good work accomplished at them. Numbers of twentieth-century assemblies maintained but modified the contents of the older gatherings. The Galesburg (Illinois) District Camp Meeting, held at Gilson on August 18–24, 1903, preserved in the daily program much of the arrangement of the meeting from former days, but also addressed contemporary needs, seen particularly by the stated involvement of children and youth and the demand for Bible study: 8:00 8:30 9:30 10:30 2:30 4:00 [6:30 7:30

a.m. a.m. a.m. a.m. p.m. p.m. p.m. p.m.

Prayer Meeting Bible Reading Normal Bible Lesson Preaching Preaching Children’s Meeting Young People’s Meeting] Evangelistic Services64

In spite of the changes, the impression made at the camp meeting was still worthy of inscription in personal diaries: Hattie Womack Thornton recorded her thrill at the “wonderful testimonials” given at a 1912 camp meeting love feast presided over by missionary Elizabeth Claiborne.65 Such experiences undoubtedly continued to be recounted when persons experienced spiritual awakening and nurture at one of the Methodist-related camp meetings that dotted the late twentieth-century American landscape.


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Protracted Meetings and Indoor Revivals In the more than two hundred years of American Methodism, numerous other experiments and forms of revival were engaged in by the ever-pragmatic Methodists, from elaborate assemblies with scores of preachers, to the “greatest liturgy in the world, short and scriptural and mighty powerful—‘Amen,’ ”66 each with the goal of converting the lost and edifying the faithful. Though ideally the spirit of revival would infuse Methodists throughout the year and be manifested by regular participation in “family, social, and public prayer, attended with a greatly quickened faith, and an increased love for all the services and ordinances of the sanctuary,”67 observation taught that lukewarm preaching, laxity in observing the means of grace, and the distractions of life begat backsliders. Small group meetings of prayer and testimony were encouraged to keep faith and spiritual disciplines alive. Protracted meetings of prayer and praise led by local preachers followed up quarterly or camp meetings to ignite the fires of those who had not yet come to the altar, or to stoke the embers to full flame in those who had previously fallen away. Annual or more frequent indoor protracted meetings were held with fiery preaching by guest preachers, the singing of hymns calling for repentance and promising forgiveness, and concluding with an altar call to the railing that typically surrounded the pulpit and the Communion table. Numerous communities experienced a “town camp meeting” of several weeks’ duration as the rural camp meeting declined and its methods became urbanized; the first such meeting in Winchester, Virginia, in 1869 drew a “large and attentive” congregation, and consisted of a prayer and experience meeting at 9 a.m., preaching by “prominent ministers” at 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., and an evening service.68 Specially appointed Methodist evangelists might make an annual appearance in a local congregation for several days and nights of special services, and local “revival workers” were set apart to aid in the endeavor. In every decade, techniques and advice for the promotion of revivals were found in personal journals, periodical articles, and books on the subject, and though the methods varied (e.g., psychological analyses are proposed in the 1920s), the expected outcome remained constant.

A Peculiar Identity The “great festivals” may be identified as the most characteristic worship services or settings of American Methodism, even though these services share affinities with non-Methodist, and even non-American, forms. Though not perhaps terribly original, Methodists were nonetheless highly adept at borrowing and reworking available resources to reinforce their Arminian claims that all persons, in every place, should be offered an opportunity, and indeed persuaded, to accept and embrace God’s boundless love. Before 1784, the freestanding celebrations of the love feast, the watch night, and the renewal of the covenant, and the combination of services at the quarterly meeting were the places where Methodism was uniquely itself, where both insiders and outsiders recognized the distinctive Methodist pres-

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ence, whether as an ecclesiola in ecclesia or as (functionally) an independent religious society. As Methodism developed after 1784, these services, joined by the worship marathon that was the camp meeting, continued for a time to be the principal and defining markers of the Methodist community, and as such, directly bore upon expectations for the normative Sunday worship pattern. In many respects, the great festivals were manifestations of a broader peculiarity that could be claimed to distinguish Methodism as a whole: There is a peculiarity of spirit that pervades and distinguishes the different denominations. The Episcopalians have their atmosphere. How antique and formal! The Presbyterians have theirs. How solemn, rigid and exact! “Decency and order” are their watchwords. The Baptists have theirs also. How damp, exclusive and denominational! The Methodist spirit or atmosphere is peculiar. It is a vital spirit. “Life and power” is a familiar note among us. What would pass for a meeting among others has little interest to a live Methodist, if it have not life, elasticity and power. It is a free spirit. “Liberty” is its watchword; liberty from sin, from bondage, body and soul; liberty to pray loud or low, to speak, to use all the gifts bestowed, whether “one talent” or “ten,” whether among men or women; liberty for all, learned or unlearned, rich or poor, young converts or old ones; liberty to sing, whether by note or by rote, with the Spirit and with the understanding, to sing in the choir, or in the congregation; liberty for all to sing, “not one in ten only.” Simplicity is characteristic of it; no affectation, no pompous, mechanical, or strained dignity. It is an earnest spirit.”69

Wesley had drawn upon what he believed were ancient Christian principles in developing the love feast, watch night, and covenant renewal to articulate and sustain the unity of the Christian community—a unity ideally marked by the collapsing of distinctions of gender, race, and economic standing, since it was incumbent upon each and every redeemed sinner to testify to God’s mercy and grace. “The very design of a love-feast,” commented Wesley, “is a free and familiar conversation, in which every man, yea, and woman, has liberty to speak whatever may be to the glory of God.”70 Such intentions of social leveling, equality, and freedom were not restricted in the Methodist design to these special, intimate occasions, but found a concise expression there and also in the more public events of the quarterly meeting and camp meeting. The peculiar usages flourished in early Methodism, but not only because they provided a lively forum for mutual strengthening in the Christian faith. The undergirding egalitarian assumptions of these assemblies conformed well to the democratic sensibilities of the American Methodist membership; indeed, both the Methodist services and the political ideals of the young nation were themselves products of the Enlightenment’s stress on the welfare of the individual. It was Methodism’s democratic character as a people’s movement that enabled the denomination’s rapid growth in its first decades, despite the hierarchical structures set forth in its polity.71 But as Methodists claimed a greater denominational—and bureaucratic—identity and transferred spiritual leadership more firmly into the hands of the ordained clergy, the liturgical opportunities devised for mutual care and accountability declined, and were over time redefined or reconfigured. If “liberty” was the spirit, then “life, elasticity and power” were its signs and fruits. Methodists freely employed any available means to lead seekers to Christ


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and encourage their ongoing commitment, and found the flexible and temporally concentrated great festivals to be especially efficacious and edifying. A successful meeting was calculated by the numbers who experienced tangibly and dramatically the power of God and claimed it for themselves. Worship undeniably was oriented toward human ends, bearing out a theology that was informed both by evangelical concerns and by an Enlightenment optimism toward human capabilities. Although the great festivals were meant as occasional (quarterly or annual) supplements to the weekly Lord’s Day service, the enthusiastic reception given to the style and content of the meetings virtually guaranteed that some communities would strive to replicate aspects of them on every Sunday morning. In addition to the evangelistic preaching that was already expected for Methodist worship, personal testimonies might also be included, as well as lengthy prayers by one or more individuals (but usually not women on Sunday morning!). And later, during the heyday of the camp meeting, assorted practices from that great festival, such as sustained altar prayer and the singing of camp meeting hymns, might be included in Sunday worship. It is therefore no surprise that Wesley’s Lord’s Day services were so short-lived, and that the American Methodist leadership had such difficulty trying to establish some modicum of uniformity in the practice of worship on the Lord’s Day. The influence of the camp meeting and other revivals on Methodist Lord’s Day worship was such that when specified orders were developed, they reflected the revival structure by the placement of the sermon near the conclusion of the service; Communion, when it was celebrated, was added on as the final event before departure, as at the camp meeting. But the adoption of the revival model for Sunday did have its drawbacks. Stress on the individual and his or her personal experience jeopardized the development of a strong ecclesial understanding of the gathering as a corporate body, even the body of Christ, where worship is done to the sole glory of God. This focus on the individual undoubtedly contributed to the privatization of religion in America, which one writer has labeled “American Gnosticism.”72 Revival worship also marginalized those deemed too young for an experience of conversion, a remedy for which was sought in the creation of general and age-level Sunday school worship assemblies and missionary society festivals. Taken together, the great festivals comprised an entry rite into the Methodist community: the invitation came in exhortation and sermon; inquiries were addressed in prayer meeting, private conversation, and at the “altar”; admission was gained by the presentation of a ticket or token that was validated by sincerity of intention; integration came through ongoing participation in the peculiar services. Methodist understandings of baptism were strongly influenced by the conversion emphasis in the great festivals, since the love feast, watch night, and quarterly meeting were already in place when the Methodist Episcopal Church received its rites of baptism in 1784. Though Methodists have been ready to maintain the practice of infant baptism, the stress on a conversion experience—whether prior to baptism or as the “fulfillment” of a baptism received in infancy—began to strain against an understanding of baptism as itself a sacrament. This tension was not unique to American Methodism; it is already found in John Wesley.

4

The Rites of Christian Initiation

ethodists have spilled more ink on the subject of Christian initiation than on any other worship-related topic. Treatises, tracts, and essays have been circulated widely as Methodists have sought to distinguish themselves from believer baptists (e.g, Baptists and Disciples of Christ), on the one hand, and from sacramentalists (particularly Anglo-Catholics), on the other. These apologias have had a greater benefit than simply the rebuttal of unacceptable theological positions: they have allowed Methodists to grapple with and hone their own particular definitions of baptism, membership, and most important, church. Although Methodists since 1784 have in principle adhered to the baptismal standards articulated in their Articles of Religion, the establishment of a firm statement about initiation has proven elusive precisely because of Methodism’s inheritance both as a daughter of Anglicanism and as the religion of the warmed heart. Many of the recurrent controversies internal to American Methodism in this area owe their origin in large part to the seeming ambiguities inherent in the writings of John Wesley.

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Baptism in Wesley’s Sunday Service The theology and practices of Christian initiation that Wesley favored at the end of his life and Wesley’s perception of the theological and pastoral milieux in America at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War each appear to have guided his revision of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer initiatory rites. Retained in the Sunday Service were “The Ministration of Public Baptism of Infants to Be Used in the Church” (now simply entitled “The Ministration of Baptism of Infants”) and “The Ministration of Baptism to Such As Are of Riper Years” (intended for children and adults who could respond for themselves). But both baptismal texts from the Prayer Book underwent significant alterations at Wesley’s or other Methodist hands, first in 1784 and again in 1786; regarding the later edition, no definitive proof can be found determining whether it was Wesley or Thomas Coke who 82


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introduced the changes. Gone, certainly, already in 1784 was the entire office of confirmation, which Wesley in the 1755 essay “Ought We to Separate from the Church of England?” had declared to be one of the things in the Prayer Book he found indefensible.1 Wesley’s removal of confirmation may rest on several factors, none of which he explicitly delineates; he, in fact, said little about confirmation in a lifetime of sermons and other writings. Wesley believed that confirmation, as a distinct rite, could not be located either in Scripture or in apostolic sources, both of which were essential authorities for his liturgical praxis. The absence of scriptural precedent, the superstitious practices associated with confirmation, and its supposed superfluity had also encouraged long-standing opposition to the rite by the Puritans and other Dissenters (e.g., “An Admonition to the Parliament” of 1572, and the “Millenary Petition” of 1603), and Wesley was familiar with their arguments from his reading of history and from his acquaintance with ongoing debates regarding Prayer Book revision and the liturgical comprehension of dissenting groups. The general depreciation and neglect of the office in England and the unfamiliarity of the rite in America, since no bishop—the authorized administrator of confirmation in Anglicanism—had up to that date been found on American shores, may have each contributed to Wesley’s decision. He also may have been unwilling to grant the Methodist “superintendant” episcopal status since, at the time the Sunday Service was written, he still understood Methodism to be operating within the broad framework of Anglicanism, and this was surely at the center of his objections to the use of the term “bishop” in American Methodist documents from 1787 onward. For Wesley, the rite of Christian initiation was baptism, and the two texts he bequeathed provided the starting point for subsequent Methodist practice, theology, and ritual revision.

The Administration of the Baptismal Rites A cursory comparison of the first part of the 1784 baptismal texts with those in the 1662 Prayer Book immediately reveals a substantial reduction in the length of the opening rubrics, and therewith the removal of certain directions for performance. Among the materials lost are directions regarding the necessary preparation for participation in each respective rite. Similarly, instructions are removed about the location of the rite—both its whereabouts physically and its placement in the course of a broader service of worship (e.g., morning prayer). On the former, even Wesley’s shortening of the title of the infant rite is telling: no longer is it stipulated that the rite will be “used in the Church” (interpreting the original title as an indicator of spatial location, rather than simply ecclesiastical status), and the condition of public administration is put in doubt, though “Public Baptism of Infants” is retained in the running heads at the top of each page. This does not suggest that Wesley was an advocate of private baptism in domestic dwellings, for in fact Wesley did not include the 1662 service for “The Ministration of Private Baptism of Children in Houses” among his services in 1784. Rather, it is more indicative of the laxity toward church baptism within Anglicanism in general, Wesley’s own practice later in life, and his desire to offer an inculturated rite for the American situation. Early in his ministry, particularly while a missionary in Georgia, Wesley

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had scrupulously followed what he believed to be the Church of England’s rule by requiring that infants and those of “riper years” be baptized in the church edifice. He encouraged the Methodists to receive baptism in their parish church, especially since only Anglican baptisms were officially registered, and technically, according to the sixty-eighth canon, no one requesting baptism could be refused. But when access to Anglican churches became limited because of Wesley’s association with the Methodist movement (he himself was not assigned to a parish church), out of necessity Wesley resorted to baptism in Methodist preaching houses, the church buildings of Dissenters, secular buildings (including private homes), and the outdoors. Wesley anticipated that the American Methodists would have a comparable problem since only a few Methodist buildings had been constructed by 1784; besides, he could hardly allow the aspiration to spread the gospel and bring persons sacramentally into the Christian fold to be hampered by the requirement of a physical facility. Despite the elimination from the 1784 baptismal services of the Prayer Book’s references to the building, Wesley’s own practice shows that he expected baptism to be a public event in the presence of other Christians, and that it be a component within a larger service of worship either on the Lord’s Day or a weekday. The administrator of baptism in Wesley’s rites was not a priest but a minister, whose exercising of sacramental authority is clarified within the 1784 ordination liturgies: baptism is normally the prerogative of the presbyter or elder, and hence also the “superintendant”; a deacon is permitted to baptize only “in the absence of the elder.” No lay minister, except in dire emergencies, could rightfully have assumed the role of baptizer in Wesley’s mind. An Anglican until his death, he concurred that the proper administrator within the Church of England was one who was episcopally ordained.2 Consequently, a person baptized by an individual not within the apostolic succession lacked a valid baptism and was to be properly baptized if admission into the Church of England or to the other rites of the Church (e.g., the Lord’s Supper or the burial office) was sought. Wesley’s fierce adherence to this position in his early ministry, reinforced by his imitation of NonJuror liturgical practices, landed him in dire straits in Georgia.3 Though by 1738 he no longer insisted upon the “rebaptism” of Dissenters and regretted his previous stringency, throughout his ministry Wesley apparently continued to baptize those dissatisfied with “lay baptism.”4 Wesley’s preference for episcopally ordained administration is evident from an introduction he prepared in 1756 for the publication of a “Treatise on Baptism,” an abridgement of his father Samuel Wesley’s A Short Discourse of Baptism, which had been appended to the larger The Pious Communicant Rightly Prepar’d (1700): The baptism—I ought to call it the “dipping”—of all Anabaptists, as much stress as ever they lay upon it, is no baptism at all. For they want episcopal administrators which are essential to Christian baptism. And indeed, this invalidates the baptism of all who have formally separated from our Church.5

Yet influenced by Edward Stillingfleet’s The Irenicum, a Weapon Salve for the Church’s Wounds (1659), Wesley was forced to concede in that same year of 1756 that though episcopal forms were “scriptural and apostolical,” “neither Christ or


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His Apostles prescribed any particular form of Church government,” thus allowing for the recognition of nonepiscopal ordination and hence the validity of nonepiscopally administered baptisms.6 Two years later in 1758, when the “Treatise” was published as the sixth section of the younger Wesley’s Preservative Against Unsettled Notions in Religion, the introduction did not appear, and subsequent printings of the “Treatise” on both sides of the Atlantic never included it. The removal of the introduction was not intended as a silent permission for the Methodist lay preachers to baptize, since Wesley remained adamantly opposed to their doing so.7 Wesley’s own actions in 1784 of ordaining Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey to the presbyterate, and appointing Thomas Coke as “Superintendant,” doubtless provided in his own mind for a succession of American Methodist ministers who would dispense the sacrament. All references to godparents and their role are struck from Wesley’s two baptismal services, though a vestige remains in the infant rite where the “Friends of the Child” are charged to state the child’s name when asked by the minister. This deletion pared back both services in terms of participation, local custom, and ritual text: godparents had been included in the infant rite from the inception of the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549; when the “riper years” rite was introduced in 1662, the place of godparents was retained following the model of the infant rite, though the newer rite added an address to the candidates. Wesley, with the tract “Serious Thoughts Concerning Godfathers and Godmothers” (1752, reprinted in 1758 in Preservative Against Unsettled Notions in Religion), had in fact acknowledged the expedient and apostolic, though nonscriptural, custom of selecting Godfearing baptismal sponsors to assist the newly baptized in the leading of a Christian life. Yet in this tract—and in the 1755 essay “Ought We to Separate”—Wesley doubted the appropriateness of the godparents’ answers made on behalf of the infant, though “the compilers of our Liturgy inserted them because they were used in all the ancient Liturgies.”8 Generations of Puritans before Wesley had posed a comparable query and also challenged the exclusion of the parents in favor of the godparents; and both of these issues were being revisited in the ferment of unofficial liturgical revision during Wesley’s day.9 Thus it is not surprising that the proxy questions for the godparents were excised from the infant rite, and along with them all rubrics, addresses, and charges made to the sponsors in both rites. One consequence of this purging, however, was the loss of the symbol of faith from the infant rite. In the “riper years” service, Wesley kept the renunciation of Satan, profession in the form of the Apostles’ Creed, and covenantal promise since the candidate was expected to make his or her own response. Regarding the application of water, dipping (immersion) and pouring (affusion) had been specified in the 1662 Prayer Book, though for infants, pouring was advised only in cases when it could be certified that the child was weak. Of these two, Wesley’s preference early in his ministry had been for immersion rather than the more common practice of affusion even for healthy infants; under the influence of the Non-Jurors, he believed immersion to be most consistent with the praxis of the early church and even adopted the revived patristic custom of triple immersion that had been specified in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer.10 In conformity with the apostolic practice of immersion, Wesley kept the dipping of in-

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fants and those of riper years in his Prayer Book revision, but also indicated that pouring was feasible for older children and adults. However, the provision and conditions for infant affusion he excised, probably because he found the restrictions both problematic and widely disregarded: at least once, his own adherence to the rubrics had forced him to refuse baptismal pouring upon a healthy infant.11 As a substitute, Wesley advised sprinkling (aspersion), an innovation among Anglicans, but known in England from the time of the interregnum in the seventeenth century when, in the briefly authorized Directory for the Public Worship of God (1644), the mode was specified along with pouring. Wesley had come to believe that aspersion was appropriate within the range of meanings of baptizo and the intentions of the Lord himself, and presented it as a viable option in his 1751 publication of “Thoughts upon Infant Baptism. Extracted from a Late Writer.” The anonymous “writer” has long been assumed to be the Anglican William Wall, and Wesley’s “Thoughts” a condensation of Wall’s History of Infant Baptism (1705), but large portions of the essay come from authors other than Wall or Wesley; Wesley’s defense of the legitimacy of several baptismal modes appears to combine Wesley’s own composition with material quoted from the sermon “Christian Baptism” by Congregationalist theologian and hymn writer Isaac Watts.12 Wesley states, apparently in his own words: With regard to the mode of baptizing, I would only add, Christ no where, as far as I can find, requires dipping, but only baptizing: which word, many most eminent for learning and piety have declared, signifies to pour on, or sprinkle, as well as to dip. As our Lord has graciously given us a word of such extensive meaning, doubtless the parent or the person to be baptized, if he be adult, ought to choose which way he best approves. What God has left indifferent, it becomes not man to make necessary.

Biblical allusions also permitted sprinkling, which invited a particular theological interpretation of the baptismal act. Borrowing material original to Watts, Wesley further noted: Besides, pouring or sprinkling more naturally represents most of the spiritual blessings signified by baptism, (viz.) the sprinkling the blood of Christ on the conscience [1 Peter 1:2], or the pouring out of the Spirit on the person baptized [Acts 10:45–48], or sprinkling him with clean water [Hebrews 10:22; cf. Ezekiel 36:25], as an emblem of the influence of the Spirit; all which are the things signified in baptism as different representations of the cleansing away of the guilt or defilement of sin thereby.13

Because “God has left indifferent” the matter of mode, the mature Wesley did not insist on any particular form. Even if several persons were to be baptized at the same event, Wesley would typically administer the rite according to the mode requested.14 Thus it may have been recognized that the identification of only two modes in the 1784 infant rite created an unnecessary limitation, and so the option of affusion was inserted into the 1786 edition of the Sunday Service. In a strange but largely explainable circumstance, extant copies of the 1784 Sunday Service appear in two versions: some contain in the infant rite a rubric for postbaptismal signing with the cross and an accompanying statement; others do not. No usage of signation is found in any “riper years” text. Apparently the dual


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form of the infant rite resulted from an unresolved attempt at correction before the copies of the Sunday Service were sent to America—unbound, either from haste or to avoid the duty assessed for bound books. Examination of the books themselves reveals that the original printing did not include the signation; separately printed substitutes (cancels) with the signation were clearly a later addition, though not all of the books received the necessary readjustment.15 Questions then must be raised about the originator of the correction, particularly in light of Wesley’s comment in 1789 that “Dr. Coke made two or three little alterations in the Prayer-Book without my knowledge. I took particular care throughout to alter nothing merely for altering’ sake.”16 Coke had overseen the printing of the work, but did a “little alteration” include omission of signation? In the late 1740s Wesley had himself identified “the superstitious use of the sign of the cross” as one of the abuses in the early church, and he knew from reading Puritan history and John Jones’s Free and Candid Disquisitions (1749) the plea to make baptismal signation optional since many had scruples about it.17 In spite of Wesley’s familiarity with debates on the use of signation, the evidence points to Wesley as the source of the correction inserting signation into the infant rite. This raises the yetunanswerable question why signation was dropped entirely from the “riper years” rite. For whatever reason, the subject was put entirely to rest in the next edition of the Sunday Service in 1786: signation is not present in either baptismal rite.

The Rite and Its Effects Other emendations to the 1662 Prayer Book baptismal rites were made for the sake of linguistic modernization, brevity (e.g., the removal of the Gospel exhortation), and theological adjustment. Of considerable importance is Wesley’s deletion of postbaptismal references to regeneration in the exhortation to thanksgiving and prayer found in both rites, and in the thanksgiving prayer of the infant rite, which expresses gratitude that “it hath pleased thee [to regenerate this Infant with thy Holy Spirit,] to receive this Infant for thine own Child by adoption, and to incorporate him into thy holy Church.” Modification—deletion of “now” from “that being [now] born again”—was made to the thanksgiving prayer in the adult rite, a prayer Wesley surprisingly retained though it was virtually a repetition of the prayer for the Spirit that came earlier in the liturgy (and in which “now” did not appear in either the 1662 or 1784 form). To assume from these omissions that Wesley rejected a theology of baptismal regeneration is to ignore the testimony to the remission of sin(s) and regeneration that was retained in both rites before the imposition of water: in the address (“None can enter into the kingdom of God, except he be regenerate and born anew of water and of the Holy Ghost”); the first prayer, a collect based on the flood prayer in Luther’s Taufbu¨chlein via Hermann von Wied’s Simplex ac Pia Deliberatio (“didst sanctify water to the mystical washing away of sin”); the second prayer (“may receive remission of his sins by spiritual regeneration”); and in one of the blessings for the candidates that almost functions as a thanksgiving over the baptismal waters (“sanctify this water to the mystical washing away of sin”). Additionally, Wesley’s revision of the twentyseventh Anglican Article of Religion, “Of Baptism,” annexed to the Sunday Service

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kept in its Methodist counterpart (Article Seventeen) the phrase that baptism is “also a sign of regeneration, or the new birth.” The apparent inconsistency in Wesley’s approach to baptismal regeneration in the rites and in his other writings has subsequently yielded great debates about his baptismal theology, particularly his understanding of the rite’s efficacy. Wesley never intended to write on baptism as a theological systematician; rather, he addressed the subject of baptism as a committed Anglican priest vexed by persons who claimed the benefits of ritual baptism yet lacked the visible evidence of faith. By including baptismal rites in the Sunday Service, Wesley maintained the Anglican doctrine that baptism is one of two dominically ordained sacraments of the Church that serves as “a sign, seal, pledge, and means of grace.” Obligatory upon all for initiation into the Church, baptism was also to be understood as the ordinary means for salvation: “Indeed, where it cannot be had, the case is different, but extraordinary cases do not make void a standing rule.” On the one hand, said Wesley, God expects persons to be washed in baptism, but on the other, God is not obliged to save only though the sacrament.18 The presentation of two baptismal services in 1784 bore witness to Wesley’s conviction that neither age nor cognitive powers were factors in the eligibility to receive the sacrament. Though infants have yet to commit actual sin and lack the proficiency to confess faith or renounce “the devil and all his works,” they are still proper recipients of baptism according to Wesley because they have been stained by original sin. For all guilty “children of wrath” the merits of the life and death of Jesus Christ are needed and applicable. Infants are capable of making a covenant or being bound by a covenant made for them by their parents or others—an everlasting gospel covenant, in direct succession to the covenant made between God and Abraham. Yet the sign of that Abrahamic covenant given to male infants or converts, circumcision, has been replaced, in the Christian dispensation, by the Lord’s institution of baptism, which stands as a seal of the new covenant for both males and females. The continuity (or analogy) between circumcision and baptism is foreshadowed by the blessings and promises of the old covenant and realized by Christ’s expectation that infants would come to him: they were to be counted with “the nations” (Matthew 28:19); and he demanded that their way not be hindered since to such as them belongs God’s kingdom (Mark 10:13–16).19 That a baptismal connotation was assumed for the verses in Mark 10 is evident by the selection of the text as the prescribed Gospel lesson for the infant rite. Charles Wesley reinforced the baptismal connection with a hymn based on Mark 10:14 that was reproduced in several American Methodist hymnals: Jesus, kind, inviting Lord, We with joy obey thy word, And in earliest infancy Bring our little ones to thee. Born they are, as we, in sin; Make the unconscious lepers clean; Purchase of thy blood they are,— Save them by thy dying prayer.20


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Thus in obedience to Christ’s command, the Church throughout the ages, beginning with the designs of Christ himself and the baptism of “households” in the Acts of the Apostles, has baptized infants and children. In baptism, infants and all others who come to the font enter into a mystical union with Christ himself, and are admitted into the Church to “share in all its privileges and in all the promises Christ has made to it.”21 A hymn written by Charles Wesley for use “At the Baptism of a Child” expresses precisely in relation to an infant the “way of salvation” (via salutis) that was open to all the human race such as it was set out in his brother John’s prose writings: God of eternal truth and love, Vouchsafe the promised grace we claim, Thine own great ordinance approve, The child baptized into Thy name Partaker of Thy nature make, And give her all Thine image back. Born in the dregs of sin and time, These darkest, last, apostate days, Burden’d with Adam’s curse and crime, Thou in Thy mercy’s arms embrace, And wash out all her guilty load, And quench the brand in Jesus’ blood. Father, if such Thy sovereign will, If Jesus did the rite enjoin, Annex Thy hallowing Spirit’s seal, And let the grace attend the sign; The seed of endless life impart, Seize for Thy own our infant’s heart. Answer on her Thy wisdom’s end In present and eternal good; Whate’er Thou didst for man intend, Whate’er Thou hast on man bestow’d, Now to this favour’d babe be given, Pardon, and holiness, and heaven. In presence of Thy heavenly host Thyself we faithfully require; Come, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, By blood, by water, and by fire, And fill up all Thy human shrine, And seal our souls for ever Thine.22 Since each succeeding generation is “burden’d with Adam’s curse and crime,” the benefits of Christ’s onetime passion and death as well as his eternal pleading for sinful humanity provide the “promised grace” needed to restore the image of the Maker lost by the fall. By virtue of Christ’s universal atonement, the Holy Spirit

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grants to all persons prevenient or preventing grace—a conscience that yearns for God—and only by an intentional rejection of this grace may it be lost. Because infants are still “born in the dregs of sin and time” and the “guilty load” must be “washed out,” justifying or pardoning grace procured by the blood and righteousness of Christ is applied by the cleansing waters of baptism that “quench the brand.” Justification is accomplished by God for the individual, resulting in a relative change. Simultaneously, sanctifying grace is bestowed that imparts “the seed of endless life”: the newly baptized is regenerated, born again, born of the Spirit, thereby producing a real, though incomprehensible, change in the person. Granted “pardon” and born anew, the “favour’d babe” weathers the storms of temptation and grows in “holiness” toward “heaven” or glorification, which is perfection in love. Throughout the process of sanctification signs of faithfulness are to be utilized: these are works of mercy and works of piety, the latter also known as the instituted means of grace, which comprise prayer, receiving the Lord’s Supper, searching the Scriptures, and fasting.23 Should the child die before committing an actual sin, the Word of God assures that he or she is saved. But if the child should fall into and persist in actual sin, he or she would lose the “principle of grace” infused at baptism and so die spiritually.24 Infants brought to baptism are at the same time born again. Wesley understood, with the Church of England, that by the “hallowing Spirit” the “grace [did] attend the sign,” and that God would “seize our infant’s heart”: “Our Church supposes that all who are baptized in their infancy are at the same time born again. And it is allowed that the whole office for the baptism of infants proceeds upon this supposition.”25 Though he avoided explanations of how sacraments work, preferring to trust that they do so, mysteriously, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, Wesley did reject what he understood to be the Roman Catholic doctrine of the sacramental effect ex opere operato, precisely because it could imply the efficacy of ritual performance apart from the working of the power of God. He affirmed with the Anglican Catechism of his day that a sacrament is “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, given unto us, ordained by Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof.”26 This definition is essentially put forward in the twenty-fifth Anglican Article of Religion, and it survived in Wesley’s editing of what became the sixteenth Methodist Article, though it was weakened by the removal of certain words: Sacraments ordained of Christ, are not only badges or tokens of Christian Men’s Profession; but rather they are certain [sure witnesses, and effectual] Signs of Grace, and God’s good Will towards us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our faith in him. . . . And in such only as worthily receive the same, they have a wholesome effect or operation.

By his adherence to these statements, Wesley maintained the Augustinian differentiation between the external, material sign (signum) and the internal thing signified (res). Since they are not identical, the signum (baptism) and the res (new birth) are distinct; yet they are not separable, for both are needed to make a sacrament. In infant baptism, Wesley acknowledged that the signum and res are coinstantaneously imparted.


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On the matter of infant baptismal regeneration, Wesley never wavered. Infant baptism was effectual and efficacious. But Wesley observed that persons baptized in infancy often appeared later to be more children of the devil than children of God—often as soon as the age of reason. To appeal to the new birth of one’s baptism while living as a wretched sinner was to admit a false assurance of salvation and consign oneself to damnation. Hence, those who had lost the “principle of grace,” who lacked the inward witness of the Spirit or had not manifested the Spirit’s fruits, needed to be regenerated or “born anew” a second time, not through baptism if they had been validly baptized previously, but by the “circumcision of the heart.” A conscious experience of saving grace, also termed by Wesley the “new birth,” was necessary to restore the divine image that had been distorted or suppressed.27 In the case of baptized backsliders, God’s grace and mercy were constantly available for those who truly repented, that they might again be confident of their adoption as sons and daughters of God. In effect, two new births, one sacramental and objective, and the other experiential and subjective, were necessary for most individuals baptized as infants. Though Wesley apparently did not regard the two births as unrelated, nevertheless he did not establish definitively the connection between the two; for example, the second new birth is never fully claimed to be a restoration or recovery of the grace bestowed in baptism.28 Wesley’s solution to the problem of postbaptismal sin may have unwittingly contributed to the diminution for later Methodists of any strong understanding of infant baptismal regeneration since, in practice, interest came to be focused more on the profession of personal assurance. For the less frequent practice of adult baptism, Wesley held, as in infant baptism, that the signum and res are imparted simultaneously, but only if the candidate sincerely repented and believed in the gospel: “Baptism, administered to real penitents, is both a means and seal of pardon.”29 Baptismal regeneration was thus presumed to occur in adult candidates who presented no obstacle. Wesley, commenting upon the baptism of a “gentlewoman” in 1760, noted that “the peace she immediately found was a fresh proof that the outward sign, duly received, is always accompanied with the inward grace.”30 The expectation that the promised grace would accompany the sign to issue forth in regeneration is expressed in several stanzas of Charles Wesley’s trinitarian hymn “At the Baptism of Adults”: Father, in these reveal thy Son; In these for whom we seek thy face The hidden mystery make known, The inward, pure, baptizing grace. Jesus, with us thou always art; Effectuate now the sacred sign, The gift unspeakable impart, And bless the ordinance divine. Eternal Spirit, descend from high, Baptizer of our spirits thou! The sacramental seal apply, And witness with the water now!

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O that the souls baptized therein May now thy truth and mercy feel, May rise, and wash away their sin— Come, Holy Ghost, their pardon seal!31 But Wesley also admitted that for adults the signum and res might not be imparted at the same moment, especially in cases where the person was not truly repentant or had already received assurance prior to the imposition of water.32 Though the event of baptism itself might not be regenerational, it was certainly expected that the new birth would either precede or follow it. Baptism, then, could still be regarded as the rite of initiation into the Church, as a testimony to previous faith, and as a sign of God’s ongoing work of grace in the life of the individual. Theologically, Wesley appears to have held to both infant and adult baptismal regeneration throughout his life, though in the case of adult baptism the immediate, spiritual connection between the application of water and the new birth could not be guaranteed. The elimination of references to regeneration from certain postbaptismal statements and prayers in the 1784 rites thus cannot be interpreted as Wesley’s rejection of a theology of regeneration, especially considering the retention of such language in the prebaptismal prayers.33 While, as some have averred, the partial removal may have been prompted by Wesley’s sensitivity to others’ objections to the notion of regeneration or by his concern to emphasize the need for a subjective new birth,34 a more plausible explanation is Wesley’s unwillingness either to claim to know the mind of God or to suggest the sacrament’s effect ex opere operato: prior to the imposition of water, one could speak assuredly of the promise of regeneration and pray for it; afterward, to insist that regeneration had inevitably occurred would improperly bind God or turn the sacrament into a human work. The language of regeneration—particularly for infants—was more thoroughly eradicated from the 1786 edition of the Sunday Service, the responsibility for which has mostly been placed on Thomas Coke, with questions raised about Wesley’s authorization of or involvement in the process. Removed from the first prayer and the relevant prayer for the candidates in each rite is the assertion that Christ sanctified water for the “mystical washing away of sin”; now, in the first prayer, water is sanctified “for this holy Sacrament.” Both the second prayer (with “may receive remission of his sins by spiritual regeneration”) and the prayer for the Spirit (“Give thy Holy Spirit . . . , that he may be born again, and be made an heir of everlasting salvation”) disappear entirely from the infant rite; of these two, only the prayer for the Spirit is omitted for those of “riper years.” Untouched in both rites is the statement in the opening exhortation that “None can enter into the kingdom of God, except he be regenerate and born anew of water and of the Holy Ghost,” perhaps because it is a not-so-easily dismissed paraphrase of John 3:5. The overall result of these alterations in the ritual texts of 1784 and 1786 was to set up a tension, and perhaps even a contradiction, between baptismal practice and Wesley’s theology as articulated in the “Treatise on Baptism,” the Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, and other sources. The ground was laid for sub-


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sequent controversies as the American Methodists sought to discern the mind or spirit of Wesley on the subject of baptism.

The Reception of Wesley’s Baptismal Services By 1784, the American Methodists for at least a dozen years had been longing to receive the sacraments from the hands of the Methodist preachers. Though Robert Strawbridge of Maryland had opted to administer both baptism and Communion without approval from either Wesley or the American leadership, most of the preachers waited impatiently for permission to assume a priestly role. Matters had come to a head at the 1779 Conference held in Fluvanna County, Virginia, and attended primarily by the southern preachers, where, after serious debate, a presbytery of three preachers was formed who ordained each other and then ordained the other preachers who were in agreement with the plan. Preachers in Virginia and North Carolina then administered the sacraments for a time, but because they feared a division among the Methodists and denunciation from Anglican friends, the decision was made to suspend sacramental privileges. Wesley’s issuance of baptismal rites and the authorization of proper administrators thus came as a relief to a tense situation, though his sacramental services were a far cry from what the Fluvanna Conference had recommended and what had probably been practiced: the “ceremony,” “according to our Lord’s command,” was to be “short and extempore,” the proper modes were sprinkling or “plunging” as requested for either infants or adults, and signation was not to be employed.35 The baptismal rites of the Sunday Service may have been duly received and adopted at the 1784 Christmas Conference, but among those ordained to sacramental ministry in Baltimore were men who had already performed another “Methodist rite.” Justification of “baby-sprinkling”—both subject and mode—consumed Methodist attention in the years before and after the creation of the Methodist Episcopal Church. When Baptists and others “haunted” the Methodists “like ghosts” “to persuade the people that they have never been baptized,” countermeasures included general discourses and sermons on the topic (with prooftexting by use of Acts 2:36, Romans 5:18–19, and 1 Corinthians 7:14, as well as other texts).36 In perhaps a concession to the Fluvanna “legislation,” the 1784 Discipline (published in 1785) allowed for the recipient’s or parents’ preference of either immersion or sprinkling (Question 45), with pouring added in the edition published in 1786 (Question 43). Choice of mode was vigorously defended: After the last sermon I had to baptize two young men, one by pouring, the other by immersion. I went down to the water where I performed the ordinance, and having a mixed congregation, I was led to speak largely in vindication of baptizing both ways according to the desire of the people—insisting that the apostolic mood of baptizing could not be moved to be altogether one way or the other. I told them if any would shew me scripture to condemn any mood, I would then give it up. I found much satisfaction while speaking on the subject.37

Yet in a startling departure from Fluvanna’s decision not to permit rebaptism, the 1784 Discipline (Question 46) and also the 1786 publication (Question 44) admit

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such a possibility in the instance where an individual baptized as an infant had scruples about the validity of his baptism, even after sustained argument to the contrary; this option was not continued from 1787 onward. To aid the Methodist defense of infant baptism and the use of several “scriptural” modes, a seventy-one-page treatise was appended to the Discipline each year from 1790 to 1797. Written in 1788 by Moses Hemmenway, who was a Congregationalist minister stationed in Wells, Maine, and published under the title A Discourse on the Nature and Subjects of Christian Baptism, the lengthier original had been abridged for Methodist reading by book steward John Dickins. The extract both reinforced and expanded upon many of Wesley’s arguments in the “Treatise on Baptism” and “Thoughts upon Infant Baptism”: immersion was not the only scripturally valid mode; sprinkling best depicted the outpouring of the Spirit; infants were members of the “gospel church,” inheritors of the Abrahamic promise, capable of making covenant, and eligible to receive the sign of the new covenant. Yet unlike Wesley’s “Treatise,” the newer work does not develop the doctrine of original sin as a factor legitimating infant baptism; the stress is upon infants as participants in the Abrahamic covenant and beneficiaries of Christ’s adoption and inheritance. On the matter of rebaptism, Hemmenway provided the Methodists a firm statement that such an action was “utterly wrong” and without “precept or example.” Bishop Francis Asbury, in 1797, echoed Hemmenway’s position: “I consider that there was neither precept nor example in holy writ to justify our rebaptizing one who had been baptized in the name and form which Christ commanded in Matt. xxviii,19.”38 Notably absent from Hemmenway’s treatise, other official documents of the time (besides the Articles of Religion), and personal records of the late eighteenth century is any sustained commentary on the issue of baptismal regeneration. According to accounts in diaries and journals, adults and children under their care flocked to the Methodist deacons and elders for baptism. Methodist flexibility about mode may have been one factor; another was the circuit-riding system that brought the Methodist clergy into remote areas unfrequented by other ministers. The passage in 1787 of a restriction that forbade the reception of “a fee or present” for administering the sacrament also encouraged persons even from other ecclesiastical traditions to seek out Methodist officiants.39 Printed under the section “On Baptism” in the Discipline, the restriction was altered from 1828 to prohibit the assessing of a “charge for administering baptism.”40 The revised baptismal rites approved at the Conference of 1792 established texts that set the liturgical standard of baptismal praxis for the majority of Methodists well into the twentieth century. The 1784 and 1786 editions of the Sunday Service constituted the basic texts. The editing that was done (by yet-unknown hands, but certainly with the approval of Bishops Asbury and Coke) was by the omission of entire prayers or by the transference of prayers from one location within the rite to another. A rubric was introduced authorizing the substitution of a “suitable” exhortation in place of the opening address, which for both rites was the 1786 version of Wesley’s text that contained the statement regarding regeneration from John 3:5 and the equation of baptism with membership in “Christ’s holy Church.” While thus allowing variety at one point, this new rubric of 1792 deleted the


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permission given in a 1786 rubric for the minister to omit prayers if constrained for time. Three legitimate modes were specified in the case of both infants and “those of riper years,” with sprinkling now given priority. Also in both texts, another rubric suggesting the use of a closing extemporary prayer was substituted for the final prayer of thanksgiving and its preceding introduction, thus providing some flexibility, but regrettably removing explicit theological statements about the nature of baptism not elsewhere expressed, such as engrafting “into the body of Christ’s Church” and burial “with Christ in his death.” Although American Methodist literature of the late eighteenth century does not dwell, as it would in the next century, on the issue of the baptismal regeneration of infants, the topic was nonetheless a pertinent issue, for the 1792 infant rite follows the 1786 edition in removing the prayers that substantially affirm regeneration. However, remnants are present, though the efficacy of what is prayed for may have been judged to be less immediate and more prolonged over time: in the opening prayer (“wash him and sanctify him with the Holy Ghost”); and in the blessings for the candidate, now located after the opening prayer (e.g., “may receive the fullness of thy grace”). A restoration made to the 1786 version of the infant rite, surprisingly not followed in that for “riper years,” is the reinsertion of a petition in the final blessing for the candidates that God might sanctify the baptismal waters; instead of the 1784 formulation, the phraseology reworked in 1786 for the first prayer, “sanctify this water for this holy sacrament,” is adopted. The 1792 infant rite, thus truncated and adjusted, took the following shape: Opening Address [“Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin. . . .”] Opening Prayer [“Almighty and everlasting God, who of thy great mercy didst save Noah and his family. . . .”] Five Petitions for the Candidate [“O merciful God, grant that the old Adam. . . .”]; [“Grant that all carnal affections may die. . . .”]; [“Grant that he may have power and strength. . . .”]; [“Grant that whosoever is dedicated to thee. . . .”]; [“Almighty, ever-living God, whose most dearlybeloved Son Jesus Christ. . . .”] Gospel Lesson [Mark 10:13–16] Naming of the Child and Baptism in the Trinitarian Name The Lord’s Prayer Extemporary Prayer Because it was believed faith would be evident and repentance expressed in those of “riper years” coming to the font, the editors of 1792 had no reservations about retaining some of the prebaptismal language of regeneration for that rite. Restored to this rite, but in a new location, is the prayer for the Spirit that had been deleted in 1786. The collect based on Luther’s flood prayer is omitted, perhaps to distinguish it from the infant rite. The former “second” prayer, a prayer with overt regeneration language, becomes in 1792 the opening prayer for the rite: Opening Address [“Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin. . . .”]

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Opening Prayer [“Almighty and immortal God, the aid of all that need. . . .”] Prayer for the Spirit [“Almighty and everlasting God, heavenly Father, we give thee humble thanks. . . .”] Gospel Lesson [John 3:1–8] Address to the Candidates Renunciation Profession [including the interrogative form of the Apostles’ Creed] Five Petitions for the Candidates [“O merciful God, grant that the old Adam. . . .”]; [“Grant that all carnal affections may die. . . .”]; [“Grant that they may have power and strength. . . .”]; [“Grant that they being here dedicated. . . .”]; [“Almighty, ever-living God, whose most dearly-beloved Son Jesus Christ. . . .”] Baptism in the Trinitarian Name The Lord’s Prayer Extemporary Prayer The 1792 rites may serve as a concise articulation of American Methodist baptismal—and liturgical—theology at the end of the eighteenth century. Brevity and extemporaneity were important, but so was the authorization of a discernably “Methodist” order of service that would unite the far-flung Methodist communities, espouse Methodist doctrinal assumptions, and keep the Methodist preachers identifiably Methodist. Selection of a scripturally valid mode was deemed a matter of personal conscience, with sprinkling considered the practice favored in the “primitive churches in general.”41 Infants were arguably proper recipients of baptism, but the nature of the baptismal grace given was becoming more ambiguous and the status of baptized infants in the church more questionable. The language of baptismal regeneration was assuredly expressed for those of “riper years,” while Wesley’s apparent certainty of infant regeneration was suppressed in favor of a subjective “regeneration” in the years after the age of reason. Mode, the subjects of baptism, the nature of baptism, and church membership: these four issues addressed directly or indirectly in 1792 would be continuing topics for discussion during the next two centuries. Methodist theological positions in these areas would not be crafted solely on the basis of an internal dogmatic framework; rather, Methodist views on baptism developed also in response to external stimuli, such as the baptismal theology and practice of other denominations, the philosophical and political notions of democratic egalitarianism present in American society, and the social, anthropological, and (later) psychological understandings of children and childhood.

The Mode and Subjects of Baptism Throughout the nineteenth century, Methodist judgments about baptism were voiced in a vast array of books, systematic theologies, tracts, hymns, sermons, public forums and debates, and other media. The camp meeting in its heyday


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provided an incomparable setting for disseminating partisan ideas, and in response to evangelical preaching and Methodist teaching on baptism, persons of all ages were baptized with the mode of their choice at a service typically held during the assembly’s final hours. Camp meeting songsters frequently included versified polemics, though the texts were often more doggerel than poetry, as exemplified by a song from an 1807 collection by Virginia preacher Stith Mead: When Christ the Lord was here below, About the work he came to do, All righteousness by him was done; He even was baptis’d by John. This last old Rite he thus obey’d; From the strict path he never stray’d; And lo! the spirit in glory shed, Like water pour’d upon his head. A voice from God was heard to say, Upon that same accepted day, In thee, my Son, I am well pleas’d, Thou hast my threaten’d wrath appeas’d. Commission men to bear the news, To Gentile worlds and royal Jews, Baptizing all, both great and small, Whom God’s most holy word doth call. The mode to us is told full well, By those on whom the spirit fell; Which brought to Peter’s wond’ring eyes, How John the Baptist did baptize. In Acts the 11th, and 16th verse, This scripture truth you may rehearse; So let not this from bigots slip, That Baptism only means to dip. That infants then we may baptize, Who dares protest, when we premise? That Jesus took them in his arms, Inviting them to heav’nly charms. I bless the Lord that I was born, From PAGAN darkness to be torn, That e’er my parents for me vow’d, And gave my infant soul to God. Although from right I’ve err’d and stray’d, Yet when convinc’d I strove and pray’d, Until the Spirit was on me shed, Like water pour’d upon my head.

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I bless the Lord that I was found, To be baptiz’d on Christian ground: Not all the talk of artful men, Shall move me from my Brethren.42 Most of the burgeoning literature on baptismal topics by Methodists lacked the imprimatur of the General Conferences; it was simply the influential opinions expressed by authors who wrote in reaction to local and more widespread controversies. Conference-approved doctrinal assertions and practical prescriptions were, for the most part, conveyed in succinct paragraphs within the Discipline, by the identified baptismal hymns in the official hymnals, and in the summaries of denominational catechisms. The Methodist Episcopal Church, which had dropped the printing of the Hemmenway extract from the Discipline in 1797, provided again in 1814 a fuller authoritative statement on baptism with the publication of former Baptist preacher Peter Edwards’s “A Short Method with the Baptists” in A Collection of Interesting Tracts, Explaining Several Important Points of Scripture Doctrine.43 Edwards’s essay, which was reprinted until 1825, emphasized the historic continuity of infant practice from the early church and challenged the “requirement” of an explicit New Testament warrant by arguing that if infants shouldn’t be baptized, then, by similar reasoning, neither should women partake of the Lord’s Supper. Three new documents were then introduced into the Collection: John Wesley’s “Treatise on Baptism” and “Thoughts Upon Infant Baptism” (both unedited); and the brief “Remarks on Infant Baptism” by the English patristics scholar H. S. Boyd, which argued for the antiquity of infant baptism based on a reference to the baptism of Empress Eudoxia’s “little children” in an oration by John Chrysostom. From 1861 until publication of the Collection ceased in 1892, a single baptismal essay was included by an anonymous (probably Methodist) nineteenth-century writer who defended the scriptural and historical basis for infant baptism, and promoted sprinkling and pouring as the most ancient modes. The essays chosen to represent the official Methodist Episcopal position on baptism each accentuate the most prominent points of debate faced by all the Methodist denominations during the nineteenth century: proper mode(s) and subjects. Methodists defended aspersion and affusion against their Baptist and Campbellite (Disciples of Christ) accusers by arguing, as had Wesley, for the multiple meanings and practices associated with the verb baptizo in the New Testament. Preachers in the field, who generally lacked the necessary linguistic skills, depended upon the exegetical work of learned Methodists and other sympathizers to provide the various definitions of baptizo that could simultaneously persuade new converts to join the Methodist fold and debunk the ever-proselytizing immersionists. Methodist Protestant George Brown discovered while stationed at Connellsville, Pennsylvania, in the late 1840s that local debate hinged precisely on the “correct” interpretation of the relevant Greek verbs and nouns.44 Relentless antagonism from the exclusive immersionists created antipathy toward that mode, even in the first decades of the nineteenth century: New York minister George Coles confessed that one Sunday afternoon in 1832, following the baptism of “two grown persons and three infants,” he “preached against immersion.”45 By


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midcentury, the Landmark movement within the Southern Baptist Convention, which claimed an uninterrupted succession of immersed believers back to the apostles, contributed to a further decline in the use of the mode among Methodists.46 In an interesting countermove, some Methodist exegetes came to regard sprinkling and pouring—deemed variations of a single mode—as the most legitimate, scriptural forms. Aspersion and affusion were believed to represent best the spiritual cleansing coming from above and the descent of the Holy Spirit, and they could be “proven” to be the methods used by John the Baptist and the apostles (especially on the day of Pentecost). Immersion, in the Bible, was arguably more akin to destruction than salvation, and the suggestion that immersion baptism imitated or alluded to Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 6:3–11, Colossians 2:11– 12) was refuted as heresy and superstition;47 indeed, the first prayer for the candidates, which petitioned God “that the old Adam . . . may be so buried,” was dropped from both of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s baptismal rites in 1864, though it was retained in other Methodist branches. The lack of strong Scripture proof for immersion was also combined with more practical concerns, including the frequent Methodist practice of baptism in family dwellings: Immersion is held to be antagonistic to pious thought, both in the candidate and spectators; it is imprudent, exposing health, and endangering life. Under some circumstances it is impossible, as with the dying and in desert places; is ofttimes inconvenient, and sometimes even indelicate; is useless, “much water” being of no avail, even for bodily cleansing, when the body is only wet, not washed; is in opposition to the Spirit’s work, water tending to chill warmth and extinguish fire; contradicts the mode of spiritual baptism, that being invariably by a “shedding forth” or “pouring out;” it is unscriptural, the Bible nowhere, either by example or command, teaching it.48

In order to reflect these changing views, efforts were made from the second half of the nineteenth century to remove or limit the option of immersion, and to realign the order of the three modes for listing in the Discipline (within the rite itself, sprinkling came first; immersion was typically listed first in the general directions or elsewhere in the Discipline, at least until 1880 in the Methodist Episcopal Church).49 Immersion never disappeared as an authorized mode, though by the turn into the twentieth century few Methodist candidates requested it, and some administrators, for reasons of conscience, refrained from offering it as an alternative. Only occasionally did the issue arise whether the number of applications of water should correspond to the three Persons of the Godhead. The antiquity of “trine immersion” was known to the Methodists,50 and apparently they had practiced both the single and the threefold forms since no restrictions appeared in any Discipline. But from the 1880s, efforts were made in some quarters to eliminate the threefold application, with claims that it was “highly improper, if not heterodoxical” since it denied the unity of the Godhead, and also that it was associated with “high ritualistic practices.”51 Nevertheless, no statement was added to any Discipline to address the propriety of either method. Methodist writers in the nineteenth century, who unquestioningly held to the propriety of baptism upon profession of faith, were also adamant in their defense

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of infant baptism, reiterating but also expanding the arguments of covenant participation, baptismal supervention of circumcision, dominical “warrant,” and apostolic practice “proven” by earlier generations. Yet these apologias were as much intended for the Methodists themselves as for their detractors since, not surprisingly, infant baptism was often neglected as a result of the ongoing stress by Methodists upon the necessity of personal conversion and profession, and the unrelenting criticism of the anti-pedobaptists. At the 1840 General Conference, members of the Methodist Episcopal Church were admonished to “give [their] infant offspring to God in holy baptism,” and in 1850, a New York local preacher was reprimanded for refusing to be in attendance whenever infants were baptized.52 An Ohio Conference report for 1875 acknowledged the continuing problem and offered explanations: Infant baptism is not generally practiced. Large circuits and stations report no children baptized. The highest number reported in any one charge was twenty-eight, and that charge having over five hundred members. It is observed also that of the members received into full connection a very large per cent received adult baptism, though large numbers of them were from the Sabbath-school and young people of the Church, which justifies the inference that for some time past there has been a decline in the sentiment and practice of our people as to the responsibility and value of infant baptism. It is suggested that even where the baptism of children is common there are erroneous and almost superstitious notions as to the value, nature, and obligation of infant baptism. That if a child is about to die it is very important to have it baptized, or that it is only a religious way of naming it. The pulpit and religious press should speak out on this subject; not dogmatically, but practically.53

To stem the decline in practice, an additional rationale for infant baptism was advanced, which was refined following the publication of Congregationalist Horace Bushnell’s influential book Christian Nurture (1847): baptized infants, brought up under the care of the church and nurtured throughout childhood, would grow up confident in the Christian faith, and thus in later life exert a positive moral influence upon the larger society. A corollary of this viewpoint was that the demands of infant nurture would be reciprocally a beneficial religious stimulus to the child’s parents; and parental responsibility for baptized infants would enhance the establishment of a Christian home.54 Methodists, who had always been keenly aware of the power of infant baptism to influence the parents, now used as a strong justification for the practice the familial “sharing the benefits of religion.”55 The Methodist Episcopal Church in 1864 ritualized this view by introducing an address to the parents in the infant rite (adapted, in all probability, from the then-current Protestant Episcopal charge to sponsors) that delineated their duty “to see that he be taught, as soon as he shall be able to learn . . . all things which a Christian ought to know and believe to his soul’s health, in order that he may be brought up to lead a virtuous and holy life.” Most of the other Methodist branches followed suit, among them the Free Methodist Church, which in 1866, in its first major revision of the received infant rite, inserted a newly written prayer for the child and parents with the petition: We pray for these parents, that they may realize how great is the responsibility resting upon them, touching the proper training of those entrusted to their care: we beseech


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thee to grant unto them the aid of thy Holy Spirit, that both by precept and example they may so lead this child in the narrow way of life, that both parent and child may come to the everlasting kingdom, which thou hast promised by Christ our Lord.

Hotly debated throughout the nineteenth century was the question whether the infants of unbaptized or unprofessed parents were eligible to receive baptism, a controversy fueled by the unacceptability to the Methodists of the Calvinist doctrines of election, limited atonement, and infant damnation. Some Methodists, against the Calvinists, applied a theology of universal atonement in such a way to baptism as to assert that “the child has a right to baptism, not in view of the faith of the parents, but in view of the atonement of Christ, since the same ground that entitles him to salvation, entitles him also to baptism.”56 This theological position deviated from Wesley’s and changed the terms of the “rivalry” between baptism and the conversion experience that was expected later in life. Other arguments against the necessity of parental ecclesiastical status were based on belief in the call of Christ to all children, and the analogy between baptism and circumcision (the latter, in antiquity, given to some persons regardless of parentage). Though all infants were entitled to baptism, indiscriminate baptism was never advised. On the other side, those Methodists who insisted upon at least one believing parent (“belief” loosely defined as assent to the Christian faith even if not formalized by either baptism or active church membership) generally did so from an understanding of baptism’s covenantal aspects or of baptism as the doorway to schooling in the Christian faith. The definition of baptism as an ecclesiastical ordinance also pressed for the necessity of a parent who was a church member, as did the parental vows introduced into the ritual of baptism. The moderating position actually appears to be the one most widely espoused and practiced in the second half of the nineteenth century: even though by Christ’s redemption all infants were eligible for baptism, yet for the sake of the infants and the church, only those children should be baptized whose Christian care and nurture could be assured either within the family or the congregation.57 This conclusion, though theologically articulated, may in reality reflect an underlying sociopolitical factor, namely, the democratic and Enlightenment guarantee of individual rights. An equally persistent issue during the nineteenth century was rebaptism. Methodists generally agreed that since Campbellite and Mormon baptisms were not recognizably in conformity with historic Christian praxis by their employment of other than the triune Name, and were therefore invalid, persons with those backgrounds could legitimately be (re)baptized.58 Baptisms by laity, though irregular, did not require rebaptism as long as they had been “seriously done” and “the subject, matter, and form, were according to the institution.”59 But there was less consensus regarding the handling of requests for rebaptism when an individual, baptized in infancy, later in life sincerely believed either his infant baptism or the mode by which baptism was performed to be inappropriate according to Scripture. This was particularly true for persons who, having been sprinkled as infants by Roman Catholic priests, then desired immersion as Protestants. Rebaptism was firmly rejected by many who contended that to rebaptize was to concede the necessity of a particular mode or the illegitimacy of infant baptism. Leonidas Rosser constructed his thesis for only one ritual baptism on the basis of the “proofs” for

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infant baptism: the impossibility of either annulling or supplanting previously made covenant obligations; the unrepeatability of circumcision; the permanence of God’s promises and God’s seal; and the irrevocability of future responsibilities and rewards.60 Persistent demands for legislation against rebaptism from the 1840s eventually yielded such a statement for the Methodist Episcopal Church Discipline in 1868, with a comparable note added by the Methodist Protestant Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church shortly afterward. Yet at the 1872 quadrennial meeting of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s General Conference, Seba F. Wetherbee of the Maine Conference petitioned for an alteration of the statement against rebaptism in order to recognize personal conscience and choice on the matters of subject and mode. Wetherbee contended that the four-year-old rule was deterring parents from bringing their children to baptism and preventing adults who had been baptized as infants but now subscribed to immersion from joining the denomination.61 Even though the Methodist Episcopal Church eventually succumbed to pressure and abandoned the statement against rebaptism in 1896 (the Methodist Protestant Church kept it until 1939; the African Methodist Episcopal Church maintained the restriction in their 1996 Discipline), denominational officials nonetheless made it clear that the removal of the rule did not constitute a silent approval of rebaptism.62 Still, with the restrictions or without, Methodist practice of occasional rebaptism did not abate. Methodists continued to produce books and essays focusing on the mode and subjects of baptism during the twentieth century, but not in the quantity of the preceding century. No new theses were put forward; old arguments basically were recast for a new audience who assumed that, for Methodists, aspersion, affusion, and immersion were the normative scriptural modes. Because Methodists were confident about their stand on modes and their refutation of exclusive immersionist claims, the meaning of baptism as burial and resurrection with Christ could now be utilized positively since Romans 6 had been “proven” not to be a warrant for immersion. The addition of a rubric urging the performance of the rites in the company of the congregation and in the church building in effect demonstrated, for many of the episcopal Methodist branches, the preference for sprinkling and pouring, since few buildings had baptisteries to accommodate either immersion or submersion.63 The rubric, which first appeared in the 1932 Methodist Episcopal Church rites perhaps as the result of influences from both the ecumenical and liturgical movements, also signaled the desire to recover the ecclesial dimension of the sacrament that had been suppressed on account of geography (frontier individualism), political and social factors (privatization), and theological emphasis (the stress upon personal conversion). The majority of Methodists adhered to the legitimacy of infant baptism, although, as will be seen, the nature, meaning, and formulation of the infant rite had moved further from its Wesleyan original. Some Methodist pastors, while continuing to baptize infants, argued for (and even practiced) a service of infant dedication in order where possible to defer baptism to a time when the rite would be more “spiritually meaningful.” A challenge arose for the Methodist Church when, in 1968, it merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church, which had inherited a rite of infant dedication from the Church of the United Brethren


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in Christ—a rite that had been introduced in 1945, only the year before official union with the Evangelical Church. Because the United Methodist Church did not envision the immediate production of a new worship book (the Methodist Church having brought out its Book of Worship in 1965), it regarded the worship services of the former denominations as authoritative. This meant that episcopal Methodism, for the first time, had a rite of infant dedication, though denominational officials were quick to claim the dedication service was best reserved only for former Evangelical United Brethren congregations. Although the 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship included no dedicatory service, creative pastors, on occasion, were known to fashion such a service. The Free Methodists, on the other hand, introduced in 1985 a new Service of Infant Dedication (an act allowed for by rubric since 1974) to stand alongside their rite of infant baptism. The question of whether the parents of infants brought to baptism ought themselves to have been baptized remained unresolved in the first half of the twentieth century, and though in the remainder of the century the controversy persisted, several of the denominations gave a rubrical answer by stating in a preface to the infant rite the expectation that parents should be church members. Rebaptism continued to be requested by infant-baptized Methodists and persons coming from other Christian denominations, despite the presence of written and unwritten guidelines to the contrary. Though doubts about the validity of mode or subject were cited as the motivation for rebaptism, a concern increasingly articulated by persons baptized as infants was the absence of a cognitive or memorable experience of baptism. The recovery of “Wesley’s” covenant service in the twentieth century in effect offered an opportunity for a “dry” public profession of faith in lieu of water baptism. The United Methodist Church’s service for the reaffirmation of baptism, first proposed in 1976 and officially approved in 1984, and perhaps the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s “Order for an Affirmation of the Baptismal Covenant” (though designed for infant-baptized children and youth making their first public profession) provided another ritual alternative.

The Nature and Meaning of Baptism The nineteenth-century justification for the practice of infant baptism that was built upon a theology of implied or explicit universalism and a Bushnellian concept of Christian nurture (mediated largely through the work of Freeborn G. Hibbard)64 signaled a significant shift away from a classical Wesleyan understanding of baptism’s purpose, though both an Arminian denial of election and the notion of growth toward Christian perfection in love (post regeneration) had certainly been integral components of Wesley’s via salutis. Members of the Methodist Church’s commission charged in 1956 with the reformulation of baptismal and other rites to be placed in the 1965 Book of Worship recognized the implications of this shift: In preparing the Orders for the Methodists in America, Mr. Wesley carried over into the ritual for the administration of baptism two ideas from the Church of England which are foreign to our thinking. A comparison of our present order with the one

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recommended by John Wesley reveals sharp divergencies. These differences in the main center around the teaching of total depravity and baptismal regeneration. Our present ritual bears marks of this conflict, and of the attempts of revisers to retain the form of the ritual for baptism while eliminating the offending elements in the content. During this process of revision, the idea of baptism as a sacrament was watered down, if not lost altogether. In the main our ministers have acquiesced to the popular notion that baptism is nothing more than a dedication of the child to God by his parents. Indeed, some conceive of baptism as a social event where no Christian conviction is involved. It is looked upon as a mark of respectability in the community.65

Restrictive legislation prohibited tampering with the Articles of Religion received from Wesley, but liberal Methodists allowed themselves a certain latitude in interpreting the definitions of sacrament, baptism, and original sin found therein in the face of broader theological and cultural changes. Though the baptismal rites as revised in 1792 remained virtually untouched by episcopal Methodism until the 1850s, the tenor of theological discussions in the first half of the nineteenth century hinted at what textual alterations would eventually be made. Methodists generally espoused a moderating position between what they perceived as theological extremes. In this they conformed to the example of English Methodist and systematician Richard Watson, whose influential Theological Institutes (1823), a longtime standard on both sides of the Atlantic, built upon yet went beyond the foundations laid by John Wesley. Regarding the sacraments, Methodists strove to chart a course between the Scylla of an “anti-scriptural” ex opere operato that made “the act of receiving a sacrament independent of true faith” and the Charybdis of a sentimental memorial that differs “not essentially from the other rites and ceremonies of religion.” Positively, according to Watson, the sacraments were both signs and seals of the covenant: “To every one to whom the sign is exhibited a seal and pledge of the invisible grace is also given.”66 But the relationship between the signum and the res continued to trouble the American Methodists, especially in regard to the sacrament of baptism and its connection to justification, regeneration, and sanctification. Methodists did not want to concede with the Quakers that the ritual of baptism was entirely expendable for it added nothing; neither did they view the sacrament as absolutely essential for the remission of sins and for salvation, as is evident from their criticism of Roman Catholics, Disciples, and “high-church” Tractarian Anglicans and Episcopalians. Yet they had inherited and even republished Wesley’s “Treatise on Baptism” in which the signum and res still were argued to be imparted simultaneously in such a way that baptism figured as the “means and seal of pardon.” Because they found Wesley’s statements on baptismal regeneration difficult to accept (since they could not be “verified” by Scripture, reason, observation, or experience), and perhaps because they desired, consciously or unconsciously, to distinguish themselves further from Anglicanism, Methodists sought distance from Wesley on this point in theological discourses and in the ritual texts. When editor John Emory published in 1831 the first American edition of Wesley’s works, he appended to the “Treatise” (following section 2.5) a disclaimer that Wesley’s views on baptismal regeneration, “which we at this day should not prefer,” were not his final opinions


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on the matter, but those of an earlier Wesley; a similar statement appeared after that date with printings of the “Treatise” within the Collection of Interesting Tracts. When critics such as Baptist James R. Graves argued that Methodism was guilty of “Romish” origins and “papist” practices because the expectation of baptismal regeneration was inherent in its baptismal liturgies and in the writings of its founder, some Methodist authors saw this as gross misinterpretation.67 Others readily admitted to Wesley’s regenerational statements, but noted that they were of “modified form” and “evangelical.”68 Baptism was coming to be regarded less as a means of regeneration, and more as its sign, seal, or promise, in effect further separating the outward sign and the inward grace that Wesley considered distinct yet indivisible, but which he had conceded could, in some circumstances, be separated in time. The formulation in the seventeenth Article that baptism was a “sign of regeneration, or the new birth” became a proof text that the sign was to be “distinct and separate” from what was signified: in his commentary on the Articles first published in 1853, A. A. Jimeson would even state that the sign and what it signified “may exist without the other.”69 Caution was expressed lest baptism be viewed as synonymous with regeneration; the early church’s metonymous designation of baptism by “the grace which it symbolizes” had, unfortunately, contributed to the error of “ascribing grace to the ordinance” itself.70 That baptism was “to be regarded as emblematical, and not conditional, of the new birth”71 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South taught in a 1861 catechism: Q. A. Q. A. Q. A.

What is baptism? Baptism is a sign of the grace of God that makes us Christians. Does baptism make us Christians? No; water cannot make us Christians: grace makes us Christians. Who works that grace in us to make us Christians? The Holy Ghost.72

The distinction between signum and res was such that some Methodists would not only describe baptism and regeneration as two separate entities but also differentiate between a water baptism and a Spirit baptism, the former a shadow of the latter, which was the essential thing and necessary for salvation. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South reinforced this dichotomy in 1858 by removing from the infant rite references to the sanctifying of the baptismal waters and by including in their official hymnals of the mid-nineteenth century this hymn: Rites change not, Lord, the heart,— Undo the evil done,— Or, with the uttered name, impart The nature of thy Son. To meet our desp’rate want, There gushed a mystic flood: O from His heart’s o’erflowing font Baptize this soul with blood!

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Be grace from Christ our Lord, And love from God supreme, By the communing Spirit poured In a perpetual stream.73 Yet water baptism was not construed to be an empty sign. T. O. Summers stressed that baptism’s purposes were as a sign of God’s mercy and grace, a ratification of the title to covenant blessings and a pledge toward the discharge of corresponding obligations, and an aid to sanctification.74 Baptism was still described as a sacrament, but to avoid suggesting sacramental efficacy ex opere operato, the definition of the term sacrament was often reworked to emphasize its function as a sign of, or petition for, God’s saving work and grace, but not as a means of grace. While these developments may perhaps be seen as the beginnings of a regrettable division between sign and reality, a benign interpretation at this point in the midnineteenth century might allow that the Methodist Episcopal Church, South feared the loss of God’s freedom in granting the new birth; and, positively put, they wished to insist on the authentic interiority of the spiritual life. Methodists were willing to concede that regeneration might accompany adult baptism if it was preceded by true repentance and faith. Generally it was believed that infants were not spiritually regenerated in baptism: the use of the term in reference to infants and children acknowledged only their new covenant relationship with God and the Church.75 Indeed, given the argument sometimes advanced that infants, prior to baptism, were already beneficiaries of Christ’s universal atonement (increasingly identified—incorrectly—as Wesley’s doctrine of prevenient grace), any notion of infant regeneration was, in fact, redundant. But significant questions were thereby raised about the moral and spiritual status of infants and children, since, taken to its logical conclusion, this understanding of universal atonement undermined the doctrine of original sin—a doctrine already under attack by liberal theologies using social and philosophical concepts derived from the Darwinian theory of evolution.76 Some authors held to both original sin and universal atonement, and related them in ways that avoided contradiction. Others claimed that children were born in a state of grace (defined as justification or simply as innocence) because imputed guilt had been cancelled, but their inherited corrupt nature required regeneration and sanctification after the committing of actual sin. One of the many variations on this position allowed (following Bushnell) that, with proper nurture, a child might never know sin, thereby suggesting that regeneration was unnecessary, a concession few Methodists were willing to admit. Without reconciling the tension between universal atonement and original sin, the Methodist Episcopal Church alone, in its 1856 Discipline, officially commended an understanding of the universal atonement related to infant baptism, though four years later the bishops nervously expressed concern about its theological implications regarding sin.77 As if to remedy this problem, in 1864 the infant rite’s opening address was revised to juxtapose the Wesleyan clause asserting that cleansing was needed from the sin in which all are conceived and born, and a new statement promoting the view that infants were redeemed by Christ’s blood prior to water baptism. Additional alterations were made to the opening address


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(and other prayers) expressive of the shifting views: removed was the assertion that baptism granted to the child “that thing which by nature he cannot have” (a phrase retained in the adult rite), and distinguished as two actions were the baptism of water and that of the Holy Ghost.78 Infant baptism was no longer considered to bestow an immediate benefit other than establishing the covenant and granting a divine blessing. Instead, baptism anticipated spiritual fruition in the course of the individual’s life. Both the Methodist Episcopal Church (from 1840) and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (from 1844), in their respective paragraphs in the Discipline on the “Instruction of Children,” speak of parents “dedicating” their children to the Lord in baptism. The Methodist Protestants had already defined baptism as dedication in their 1830 infant rite, both in an opening exhortation and in the prayer that followed: Almighty and most merciful God, Father of our spirits, Former of our bodies, Redeemer and Saviour of our souls, we thank thee that thou hast made it our privilege to dedicate our children to thy service, that they may be lively members of the church of Christ, and heirs of eternal life.

In 1864, the Methodist Episcopal Church, using the exalted language typical of the period, voiced in a new concluding prayer a comparable purpose for baptism whose benefits would unfold in the future: O God of infinite mercy, the Father of all the faithful seed, be pleased to grant unto this child an understanding mind and a sanctified heart. May thy providence lead him through the dangers, temptations, and ignorance of his youth, that he may never run into folly nor into the evils of an unbridled appetite. We pray thee so to order the course of his life, that by good education, by holy examples, and by thy restraining and renewing grace, he may be led to serve thee faithfully all his days, so that, when he has glorified thee in his generation, and has served the Church on earth, he may be received into thine eternal kingdom, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Accordingly, many of the references to regeneration remaining in the infant rite were, in the liturgical revisions that occurred in some Methodist denominations from the 1850s to the 1880s, either removed entirely or understood proleptically; the more liturgically conservative African Methodist Episcopal Church would not alter the address and prayers from the 1792 form until the 1950s. Hints of adult baptismal regeneration likewise fall away from Methodist Episcopal and Methodist Episcopal, South rites, but the Free Methodists affirmed regeneration and original sin in their 1860 adult rite, as evident in the opening prayer (“that they, coming to thy holy baptism, may receive the inward baptism of the Holy Ghost”) and in the opening address, the formulation of which did not change until the second half of the twentieth century: Dearly Beloved, Since all men are by nature sinners, and have nothing in themselves by which they can be delivered from the guilt and pollution of sin, and attain to that holiness without which no man can see the Lord, we invite you to join with us in fervent prayer for these persons, that they may have grace always to keep their Covenant with God, and that they may continually enjoy the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.79

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Though the Holiness and African-American Methodist churches refused to abandon a theology of original sin, and were (for a time) more hesitant to relinquish some possibility of baptismal regeneration at least for adults, they, with the larger Methodist bodies, generally devalued baptism as a sacrament. Despite the alterations made to both infant and adult rites, certain members of the two largest episcopal Methodisms were not satisfied that the work of revision had gone far enough, especially those persons influenced by the liberal philosophical doctrines that permeated the scholarly and popular writings of numerous Methodist theologians toward the end of the nineteenth century. Many Methodist preachers were exposed to this literature (e.g., Miner Raymond’s Systematic Theology [1877–1879], John Miley’s Systematic Theology [1892, 1894], and Henry C. Sheldon’s A System of Christian Doctrine [1912]) as some of the titles appeared on denominational reading lists required for ministerial licensing and on seminary syllabi. As Robert Chiles has shown, a notable theological transition was underway in American Methodism. In Wesley and eighteenth-century Methodism, primary emphasis had been laid on the doctrines of revelation, original guilt and total depravity, and grace; a subordinate place was accorded to the themes of human reason, moral character, and free will. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, anthropological emphases were gradually elevated to a primary status, while the theocentric was reduced to a secondary role. Though there were conservative elements countervening these trends, the “liberal evangelicalism” of the late nineteenth century soon met the “evangelical liberalism” of the early twentieth century.80 Thus, claims could be made that in Methodist teaching baptism was “a public profession,” used because “it is ordained by Christ—not because it can take away sin, not because its administration is necessarily accompanied by the work of the Holy Spirit.”81 Although representatives of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South found the infant rite “a standing protest against Pelagianism on the one hand, and Romish baptismal regeneration on the other, as well as so-called Zwinglianism,” other members lobbied for changes to the infant rite of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which had not made the extensive changes of its larger sister church, arguing that “the ritual squints at the baptismal regeneration of children, and implies their lost condition without conversion.”82 Sacramental efficacy thus waned while human positivism waxed. Alterations to the baptismal rites in the first three decades of the twentieth century reflect the agendas of the liberal theological discussions: the social gospel proclaimed the evils of social sin (with an “Arian” Christology heralding Jesus as a “young and fearless prophet”) and, with the exception of the war years, the basic goodness of the human condition was upheld. After years of petitions, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1910 revised both its infant and adult rites: while original sin was not denied, the human situation was regarded more optimistically; and Jesus’ invitation to little children replaced in the infant rite the implied reference to regeneration in John 3:5. The Methodist Episcopal Church’s surgery was far more radical. In 1916, all allusions to original sin and baptismal regeneration were removed from the infant rite (Mark 10:13–15 and Matthew 28:19 replaced John 3:5). The adult rite still spoke of sin, but only of actual sinning rather than any natural depravity; and the citation from John 3 was reworked so that one is


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not born of water and Spirit but simply born “anew.” Objections were lodged that the revision abandoned the “old doctrinal teachings” and displayed “the new AntiMethodistic theological drift.”83 Yet the 1916 revision functioned as a prelude to the more liberal emendations of 1932, which bear the influence of the personalist theo-philosophies advocated by Borden Parker Bowne and his students, particularly Albert C. Knudsen. Baptism now bestowed nothing (though perhaps a name, in the eyes of some persons); it simply served as a sign of the personal spiritual journey that would ideally ensue or continue after the ritual moment. Even the covenantal character of baptism was lost from the infant rite: the Order for Baptism of Children asserted that children are entitled to baptism because they are already members of the kingdom of God, thereby marking a drift toward Pelagianism that previous generations had striven to avoid. Baptism’s only purpose was to launch the child’s growth “in grace and in knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ,” and for this, the parents and the clergy took an active role; God played only a minor part. For adult baptism, the action centered on the candidate’s personal confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and the acceptance of the “obligations” of the sacrament, namely, turning from sin (the historic renunciation of Satan and profession by the Apostles’ Creed were eliminated in this revision) and endeavoring to “keep God’s holy will and commandments.” The 1932 baptismal rites represent American Methodism’s most extreme departure from its own heritage and from historic western Christianity. When the Methodist Protestants and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South merged with the Methodist Episcopal Church, the new Methodist Church’s rites (in 1939, and again in the 1945 Book of Worship) largely followed the ritual text from the Methodist Episcopal Church. But in the baptismal rites, the more theologically conservative Methodist Episcopal Church, South carried greater influence and contributed a correction against possible accusations of Pelagianism (it was now asserted in the infant rite that all persons were recipients of saving grace), though in accordance with the current trend the doctrine of original sin remained muted. The subjective quality of all the baptismal rites still overshadowed any objective means of grace. This was the theological problem confronting those commission members who reported in 1960 that in the history of Methodist revision, “the idea of baptism as a sacrament was watered down, if not lost altogether,” and upon which the bishops commented in that same year: Other Christians are asking us, and we might well ask ourselves, “Do your sacramental practices conform with your historic sacramental doctrines?” We recognize that The Methodist Church stands in an anomalous position in the eyes of other major Christian communions with respect to our current practice.84

The first three decades of the twentieth century had been characterized by a virtual literary lull on the topic of baptism; those books produced largely contained a rehashing of nineteenth-century themes. The 1940s saw renewed interest in baptismal issues, generated by Methodist ecumenical involvement, by rediscovery of Wesley, and by the recovery, through the liturgical movement, of earlier Christian practices. Also during this period, some of the churches that had maintained the eighteenth-century texts sought to provide an alternative “modern” form; in

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a display of pan-Methodist collegiality, the African Methodist Episcopal Church borrowed for its 1952 Discipline the Methodist Church’s infant rite to stand alongside the older text (both rites, with some editorial emendations, would appear in the 1984 Book of Worship). Although Methodists, while never being unanimous in their assessment of the nature and meaning of the sacrament, had in the nineteenth century attained a general consensus on many issues, theological ferment in the twentieth century created a gulf of opinion that, by the century’s end, had yet to be closed. Some Methodists continued to refute baptismal regeneration and the doctrine of original sin (both considered by Methodist church historian Robert Goodloe to be contrary to American democracy), oddly regarded baptism as a “means of grace which does not confer grace,” and defined infant baptism as primarily “a dedication service with the parents assuming the responsibility of so instructing and leading the child that he will later confirm the stand taken by his parents.”85 In contrast to what was often labeled the “evangelical view” was the “sacramental,” which emphasized the bestowal of objective divine grace over subjective profession, recognized the mysterious as well as the rational (a stress indebted to the recovery of patristic understandings of the sacrament), and combined the ecclesiastical with the personal. Ideally, both the “evangelical” and the “sacramental” views were to be respected, in conformity with the perceived intentions of Wesley himself. Such a via media was desired by the 1960 revisers. Yet in their rationale for restoring to baptism what they considered “its original and historic meaning as a sacrament,”86 they employed, not the more traditional Augustinian arguments, but rather their more recent theological inheritance (e.g., the natural innocence of children, universal atonement, and a dominating subjective element). The infant rite, as published in the 1965 Book of Worship, defined baptism as “an outward and visible sign of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, through which grace we become partakers of his righteousness and heirs of life eternal,” leaving open the relation between the signum and the res. For youth and adults, baptism of “water and the Holy Spirit” was rather more clearly seen as a restorative from sin since “all men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” The baptismal rite of the United Methodist Church—first proposed in 1976, officially approved in 1988, and published in the 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship—moved further toward the recovery of baptism as sacrament while simultaneously retaining the element of personal faith (from parents and congregation, in the case of those who could not respond for themselves). Sharing in the ecumenical rediscovery of a patristic understanding, baptism was now seen as initiation into the paschal mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. A single but complex rite, with the theologically significant title of “baptismal covenant,” suffices for every age group; the purpose of baptism is the same for all persons and, regardless of age, sin and evil are denounced (in a restored renunciation, though nowhere is original sin explicitly named) and Christ is professed (through the Apostles’ Creed).87 Efforts to reunite the signum and res, by use of the phraseology that “through the sacrament of baptism” we are “given new birth through water and the Spirit,” met with great outcry from the evangelical wing of the denomination, which feared baptismal regeneration.88 To clarify (or perhaps to equivo-


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cate), a denominational statement on baptism followed Wesley’s contention (for adults) that the new birth might not coincide with the water bath.89 Though their liturgical texts may suggest a sacramental understanding of baptism, United Methodists, as well as other members of the Methodist family, did not fully resolve the quandary inherited from Wesley—to synthesize an objective baptismal grace with a personal profession of faith and a subjective experience of the Holy Spirit.

Baptism and Church Membership Because Wesley had done away with confirmation, American Methodism received baptism as the sole ritual of initiation, though some Methodists opted to add laying on of hands and prayer in the practice of the baptismal rite, that, as Nathan Bangs suggested, “the blessing of the Holy Spirit [might] descend upon the subject of [the] holy ordinance.”90 But prior to 1784, Methodism’s status as a religious society within the Church of England had necessitated a series of regulations for admission and membership independent of the sacrament of baptism, which was generally assumed to have been received, though was not mandated. This dual inheritance— both ecclesial and societary—would mire any prospects for consensus concerning the prerequisites of membership in the “Methodist Church.” The sacramental and the evangelistic were combined in the first official books of the Methodist Episcopal Church: through baptism, an infant or individual of “riper years” was “received into Christ’s holy Church” and “made a lively member of the same”; and according to Question 16 in the Discipline, membership tickets were to be issued quarterly for regular admission to the “society” only after examination, a two-month trial period (after 1788, probation was set at six months),91 and ongoing visible and active fulfillment of Christian duties, the neglect of which could bring expulsion. The new denomination, reflecting its sectarian origins, did not stipulate baptism as a prerequisite for membership, and those who argued against making it such pointed to the “one only condition” appertaining to membership in the still-binding General Rules of the United Societies: “a desire to flee from the wrath to come, to be saved from their sins.” The absence of a baptismal requirement proved practically beneficial for Methodist communities served by unordained preachers, though it contributed to the confusion regarding the connection between baptism, conversion, and membership. In the early years, the disparate official statements regarding church membership were commonly reconciled by identifying baptism with general membership in “Christ’s holy Church,” taking Philip’s baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch into no particular church (Acts 8:35–39) as the scriptural precedent and justification. Denominational affiliation was granted following the period of probation, ideally with, but also without, baptism. After 1836, membership in a local Methodist Episcopal congregation was contingent upon prior baptism. A ruling in 1840 waived the probationary period only for members “in good standing in any other orthodox church” who sought affiliation with the Methodist Episcopal Church.

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Methodist polity accorded well with the phenomenon of camp meeting and revival baptisms and with the regular practice of baptizing persons who had not yet experienced saving faith, but who were truly penitent: in both cases, individuals enrolled in a “class” to receive catechesis and nurture until their spiritual maturity warranted “full fellowship.” When outsiders criticized “seekership and probation as both grossly unscriptural and highly pernicious,” Methodists such as Illinois frontier preacher Peter Cartwright countered that it was the “safety-valve” of the Methodist Episcopal Church, since only sincere professors of religion, under the care of the church from the time of their baptism, should become members of the denomination or a congregation.92 However, precisely which sincere professors were worthy of membership was debated among the Methodists in this period and later. While some insisted that evidence of the new birth was requisite (acknowledging that the thirteenth Article of Religion defined the church as a “congregation of faithful men”), others reiterated the societal “rule” that repentance and the desire for God’s grace was sufficient. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the vigorously defended practice of infant baptism was believed to initiate children into the invisible, catholic Church, but not to grant any formal association with either the denomination or the local congregation. Methodists generally did not attempt to untangle such an ecclesiastical conundrum (though there were constant calls for clarity, from both internal and external sources), preferring instead simply to juxtapose an affirmation of Christ’s inclusion of children in the new covenant with the expectation that Methodist membership required evidence of vital piety. To motivate children toward personal faith and membership, Methodist preachers were obliged by the 1784 Discipline to catechize both baptized and unbaptized children. So guided, those youngsters who were deemed “truly awakened” could be admitted into societal membership. The educational requirements of the Methodist Episcopal Church expanded in 1824, with the organization of classes for children, and again in 1836 when the content of instruction for baptized children was specified to “embrace the nature of experimental religion, but also the nature, design, privileges and obligations of baptism.” Whether the rights of baptism included access to the Lord’s table was a subject of ongoing and heated discussion.93 Since, for many Methodists, introducing a baptized child into the invisible church and “yet not making him a member of any visible section of that Church” was ecclesiologically “absurd,”94 more carefully delineated connections began to emerge in church legislation. The provision of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1840, which permitted advising toward probationary status for “truly serious” children, was expanded in 1856 under the heading “Of Baptized Children” (Part 1, Ch. 2, §3) to supply a more definitive link between the baptized child and the visible church: Whenever they shall have attained an age sufficient to understand the obligations of religion, and shall give evidence of a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins, their names shall be enrolled in the list of probationers; and if they shall continue to give evidence of a principle and habit of piety, they may be admitted into full membership in our Church, on the recommendation of a leader with whom they have met at least six months in class, by publicly assenting before the


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Church to the baptismal covenant, and also the usual questions on doctrines and discipline.

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s Discipline in 1858 introduced a statement that went even further than that of its sister church by implying that baptized children already held probationary membership; following “a public profession of faith in Christ” and evidence “of a sincere and earnest determination” to live the Christian faith, the candidate would “be duly recognized as [a member] of the Church.” Some critics denounced the change, fearing that both infant baptismal regeneration and religious formalism were on the rise.95 Certainly the former was not a danger, and in fact, both denominational statements more strongly reflect the current positive views of childhood, a theology of Christian nurture, and the growing assumption that infants before baptism were, by Christ’s atonement, already citizens of God’s kingdom. Repeated requests to produce an approved service for the reception of probationers yielded for the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1864 a “Form for Receiving Persons into the Church After Probation,” an order later borrowed, with some modifications, by the African Methodist denominations. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which in 1866 had rescinded entirely the obligation of a probationary period, produced in 1870 the “Form of the Reception and Recognition of Church-Members.” Each rite began with an ecclesiastical definition, establishing the nature and work of the Church, as well as the general and local obligations of its members. The membership language of the respective denominational Discipline was restated in the service, both in the form of an address and in one of the questions to the candidate. In fact, the Methodist Episcopal Church’s rite functioned more as a legal transaction than an act of worship, since the ritual action revolved around the minister, the congregation, and the candidate, and prayer (extemporary) was stipulated only in a final rubric. Perhaps in reaction, the 1870 rite provided two formulaic prayers and the Lord’s Prayer. Profession of the necessary spiritual prerequisites was required in both services, with the Methodist Episcopal Church insisting upon “saving faith,” and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South employing the language of the “one only condition.” The baptismal covenant was ratified and confirmed (T. O. Summers even likened the new service to confirmation,96 and indeed some turns of phrase were drawn from Anglican confirmation orders), and then the candidate agreed to abide by the discipline and life of the denomination, and to support it materially. The Methodist Episcopal Church required assent to its doctrine by asking, “Do you believe in the doctrines of Holy Scripture, as set forth in the Articles of Religion?”—a subscription some found contrary to the Wesleyan tradition.97 The phraseology of the rites clearly indicates that their completion bestowed a membership status not previously found in baptism, and for which the extension of the “right hand of fellowship” was the culminating ritual action. This procedure beyond baptism was similarly accentuated by the Methodist Protestant “Form of Reception” first produced in 1868 in which candidates submitted themselves to a new and distinct membership covenant. Even with formal rituals in hand for some of the denominations by the late nineteenth century, the theological and practical interconnections between bap-

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tism, conversion, and membership remained unclear. Methodists concurred that through baptism the young were brought into an intentional nurturing affiliation with the visible church, though the precise nature of that association was disputed. Children typically were not eligible to qualify as full members until at least the age of accountability, with the targeting of early adolescence for solicitation of spiritual commitments supported by research in the new field of developmental psychology. Different criteria were proposed as prequisites for full membership no matter what age: evidence of regeneration, unfeigned repentance, public assent to the essentials of the Christian faith, and completion of a prescribed course of catechesis.98 The Holiness branches of Methodism expressed more confidence in their criterion: “Church members should be real Christians—truly pious—converted persons.”99 Disqualifications from either potential or active membership were also topics of discussion, with “nonscriptural” divorce often heading the list. Probationary status for baptized adults and children continued as an operative category for most denominations. The Methodist Episcopal Church, apparently impressed by an earlier Methodist Protestant form, utilized from 1896 until the 1939 merger (and then as the Methodist Church until 1964) an official “Form for Receiving Persons into the Church as Probationers” (altered to “Preparatory Members” in 1916) that effectively enrolled the baptized as catechumens. Candidates professed their “earnest desire to be saved from sin,” and their intention “to give reverent attendance upon the appointed means of grace in the ministry of the word, and in the private and public worship of God.” Formal instruction then followed in anticipation of future membership commitments. Baptized children were not expected to participate in the rite after 1912, as the Discipline from that year conferred probationary membership with the reception of baptism, but as before they were still to be the recipients of formal catechesis in the Sunday school and in special classes. To aid children on their journey toward reception as full members, the suggestion was offered in 1929 to “grade” church membership with four distinct ritual markers in infancy (baptism), the “junior period,” middle adolescence, and young adulthood.100 In deference to the distinct needs and contributions of children, a separate membership rite was developed for them, in 1914 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and two years later by the Methodist Episcopal Church; other Methodist bodies would develop comparable services in the second half of the twentieth century. Suppositions were shared between the episcopal Methodist rites, such as the necessity of public and personal appropriation of membership privileges and duties. An ecclesiastical self-definition along with the location of membership were more strongly articulated in the rite of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (“Is it your sincere desire, of your own free will and accord, to continue as a member of the Church of Christ, in the communion of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South?”), and the same body uniquely insisted that parental nurturing responsibilities continued after child membership; the latter, but not the former, component survived when the Methodist Church revamped the rite of the Church, South as its new text. The Methodist Episcopal Church’s children’s membership rite had been abandoned in 1932, leaving only a general rite as the sole order for membership. In a shift of tone, following modifications approved in 1916 and again


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in 1932, the Methodist Episcopal rite no longer inquired about “saving faith,” but asked the candidate to “confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.” New in 1932 to the Methodist Episcopal Church’s “Order for Receiving Persons into the Church” (itself a revealing title) was the laying on of hands accompanied by the blessing, “The Lord defend thee with his heavenly grace and by his Spirit confirm thee in the faith and fellowship of all true disciples of Jesus Christ.” Words and actions hinted at a rite of confirmation, as had the optional laying on of hands in the baptismal rites of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, first recommended in 1866. Churchly literature labeling the membership rites as “confirmation” was common from the 1930s. Even the African Methodist Episcopal Church, in outlining the contents of the worship materials in the 1940 Discipline, identified its rite of reception of members with confirmation, though the rite itself made no such association (and the denomination, by the end of the twentieth century, had not produced a service of worship so specifically identified). The Methodist Church in 1965 promulgated an “Order of Confirmation and Reception into the Church,” using a title that was claimed to “restore the Sacrament of Baptism to its traditional meaning as a sign and seal of inclusion in Christ’s holy Church,” and defining confirmation as a renewal of baptismal vows and an active assumption of membership’s responsibilities and privileges.101 Another stated intention was to represent the “historic” office of confirmation, with “historic” defined as the rite separate from baptism that began to emerge in the western church in the fifth century, and that was practiced as baptismal reaffirmation and the culmination of concentrated catechesis by continental Protestants and their descendants. Profession and membership (human work) were the rite’s primary purpose. Only secondarily was it conceived as an imbuing of the candidate with the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands (divine action)—the function of the earlier postbaptismal acts from which “confirmation” developed. Recovery of a unified sacramental initiation rite (water bath, invocation of the Holy Spirit and laying on of hands [“confirmation”], first Communion) using fourth-century models was the goal of the United Methodist Church’s revisionary work from the 1970s through the 1990s, and the desire at the end of the twentieth century of other Christian churches as well. Following the design of earliest Christian praxis and the continuing custom of the Orthodox, the intention was to complete Christian initiation for children and adults at one event. Yet the rites reflecting the normative practice of adult initiation in the early church proved insufficient for the pedobaptist and personal-profession-requiring United Methodists: laying on of hands (designated “confirmation”) might accompany baptism, but there was still the expectation that a person baptized in childhood would later make public profession, at which time denominational loyalty would also be vowed. While the rite implies that a child at baptism becomes a member of Christ’s church universal and local, the denomination was more reticent to establish legislation to that effect. At the end of the twentieth century, Methodist polity and baptismal practice assume that baptism is not sufficient completely to establish church membership. Categories of probationary, preparatory, or “junior” membership are still used by some denominations for baptized adults on trial or for baptized children. Baptism’s

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ability to grant some status of membership is put further in doubt when even unbaptized children under the care of a congregation may be ranked as preparatory members. To add to the confusion: the classification of “constituent” may be used for all nonmembers of a congregation, whether they be baptized or unbaptized, young adults or the elderly. Methodism’s hesitation to tie firmly together baptism and church membership undoubtedly stems in part from its origins as an evangelical society that regarded personal appropriation of the saving work of God in Christ as superior to the sacramental application of water. But the problem is not unique to Methodists: it has been an issue throughout the history of Christendom, but particularly after the establishment of infant baptism as the predominant practice in the making of Christians.

The Unresolved Tension A tension occurs whenever the church both baptizes infants and expects personal faith of its members. This tension was played out in Wesley’s theology as he strove to hold in tandem both the grace that precedes all human response and the necessity of saving faith confessed and lived out. One solution would have been to adopt a believer baptist stance; but Wesley, as an Anglican, affirmed the giving of baptism to infants as a needed and effective remedy for the original sin that tainted each individual from the womb. The unresolved tensions found in Wesley between infant baptism and the experience of the new birth took on a new shape for the American Methodists. On the one hand, insofar as Methodism retained its character as a movement within the evangelical revival, it kept individual religion to the fore. On the other hand, however, Methodism sought to provide an ecclesial framework for the largest possible proportion of the population, which, with the changed evaluation of childhood in the general culture, led it to redefine the meaning and effect of infant baptism away from remission of sin and regeneration toward a pedagogy of goodness. Though Methodists have continuously experimented with different theological and practical solutions to the problem of representing in Christian initiation both God’s objective gift of salvation and the subjective human response, no single satisfactory answer has been found. The Methodist Church’s bishops realized in 1960 that Methodism sometimes stood in an “anomalous position” with respect to the church catholic on the matter of the sacraments. Their episcopal successors in the United Methodist Church were concerned to place Methodism more squarely within the broader Christian tradition. The method employed in their response to the World Council of Churches’ text of 1982 on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry seems to imply that the various positions on baptism held by different groups within United Methodism ensure that the denomination as a whole manages to do justice to all the various features that a fully Christian understanding demands. In both the Wesleyan heritage and contemporary theology and practice of Methodists, baptism appears to be regarded from three differing perspectives. First, the traditional Wesleyan interpretation of infant baptism emphasizes very personally such


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doctrines as original sin, universal atonement, and prevenient grace. Second, the more churchly emphasis is based upon a covenant theology and corporate fellowship in Christ. Third, some United Methodists accept the presuppositions underlying believer’s baptism only, interpreting it in clearly voluntaristic terms. In fact, John Wesley’s own teachings can be construed to support each of the three positions as conditioned by varying stages of the denomination’s life in America. It is observed that United Methodism can be recognized as both a church and a movement. We emphasize at the same time both the objective and subjective aspects of the gospel, both the ecclesial and the personal. This stance is not one of theological indifference, but an understanding of how divine action and personal human response come together. Therefore, it is incumbent on our church to recognize the regularity and validity of baptismal rites in other Christian churches, and to include a variety of baptismal modes in our own.102

Thus, Methodism at the end of the twentieth century appeared almost as a microcosm embracing many of the understandings and practices that figure unreconciled in historic Christianity.

5

The Lord’s Supper

“ also advise the elders to administer the supper of the Lord on every Lord’s day.” In this way, John Wesley, in his letter of September 10, 1784, to “Dr. Coke, Mr. Asbury, and our Brethren in North-America,” established a christological linkage between the sacrament and Sunday, and therewith his preference for Methodist liturgical praxis. What Wesley urged upon the Americans was not new for Methodists, though the provision for distinctively Methodist celebrants at Communion was an innovation—and an arrangement not approved by the majority of Anglican clergy on either side of the Atlantic, including Wesley’s own brother Charles, who chided his sibling in prose and in verse.1 From the earliest days of the Methodist movement in Britain, John Wesley had encouraged not just frequent Communion, but constant Communion, in imitation of what he believed to be attested in Scripture (Matthew 6:11; Acts 2:46) and in apostolic practice.2 Wesley’s own habit, since the age of twenty-two, had been to partake of the sacrament at least weekly, and while at Oxford he invited his students and members of the Holy Club to observe the rubric in the Prayer Book (1662) that at cathedral and collegiate churches the sacrament was to be received “every Sunday at the least” unless there be “a reasonable cause to the contrary.”3 Regular reception of the Lord’s Supper was also emphasized in the religious society at Fetter Lane in which Wesley participated after his return to England from America, though when the Moravian Philip Henry Molther began to teach that the sacrament should be limited to those who had full assurance of faith, the Methodists, who disagreed with Molther, departed to form their own distinct society in 1740. Four years later, Wesley directed members of the Methodist “Band Societies” “to be at church, and at the Lord’s table, every week.”4 This was doubtless a difficult requirement, given much Anglican antipathy toward the Methodists, as well as the custom of many rural and urban parishes of offering the sacrament only thrice yearly, and then only as a concession to the Anglican canon of 1604 and the Prayer Book’s requirement that parish-

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ioners communicate a minimum of three times a year (including Easter). To address the expectation that qualified Methodists would receive the sacrament, and to accommodate the scores of hungering souls who desired “the office of love,” Wesley encouraged sickroom reception (permitted by canon law), and consented, over time, to have the Supper celebrated at Methodist gatherings when the preacher was an ordained Anglican priest. At those assemblies hymns would be sung, particularly those from the doctrinally articulate collection of Hymns on the Lord’s Supper (1745). The Eucharist was thus an intrinsic part of the evangelical Wesleyan revival. Wesley recognized that in America “for some hundred miles together there is none either to baptize or to administer the Lord’s supper,”5 and that the Methodists longed for the sacraments from their own preachers—a privilege debated from 1772 and a matter that came to a head with the southern preachers’ decisions at the Fluvanna Conference in 1779.6 For these reasons (along with the inaction of the bishop of London, whose jurisdiction included oversight of the colonies) Wesley was finally moved to take into his own hands the irregular task of setting some men apart as Methodist presbyters. But the sacrament that had been the vital core of Wesley’s ministry and mission in Britain was, in America, an occasional— though still desired—devotion even after Wesley’s bold initiative, owing to the geographical spread of the population, the expectation of an itinerant ministry, and the dearth of authorized ministers, who might appear in a given community only quarterly (a meager sum of twelve or thirteen elders was selected at the 1784 Christmas Conference to serve with “Superintendant” Thomas Coke and the already-ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey in the United States, Nova Scotia, and Antigua). Wesley’s ideal that the elders would celebrate and the people receive the Lord’s Supper every Lord’s Day was never realized in practice for the entirety of American Methodism, although congregations at various times and places strove to adhere to the intention of Wesley’s advice. Weekly Eucharist may not have survived the transposition to America, but Wesley’s eucharistic rite did; and of all the orders in the Sunday Service for local use, it was to remain for two centuries the closest to Wesley’s original in form and in substance.

The Reception of Wesley’s Ordo: 1784–1792 In providing in the Sunday Service a eucharistic liturgy for use “every Lord’s day,” Wesley started with the Prayer Book’s “Order for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion,” in which the Communion liturgy proper was preceded by an Ante-Communion (Lord’s Prayer, Collect for Purity, Decalogue with the response “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law,” two Collects for the King, Collect of the Day, Epistle Lesson, Gospel Lesson, Nicene Creed, rubric for Notices, Sermon). Overall, the order received from Wesley a conservative revision despite his stated design to shorten the length of the Lord’s Day service.7 The content of the prayers was largely left unchanged; in the Prayer of Consecration, only a redundant “one” was omitted (“by his one oblation of himself once offered”):

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Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who made there (by his oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious death until his coming again; hear us, O merciful Father, we most humbly beseech thee, and grant that we, receiving these thy creatures of bread and wine, according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ’s holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood: who, in the same night that he was betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it; and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take, eat; this is my Body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me. Likewise after Supper he took the cup; and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of this; for this is my Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you, and for many, for the remission of sins: Do this as oft as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of me.

Where alternate prayers were provided in the Prayer Book, Wesley removed one of the options, thereby reducing the length of the printed text but not the performance. To avoid redundancy, the Nicene Creed was dropped from the AnteCommunion, since the Apostles’ Creed appeared in the preceding order of morning prayer; yet surprisingly the Lord’s Prayer, which would have been said as part of the morning office, was retained in the Ante-Communion as a presidential prayer and in the Communion rite proper as a prayer of the elder and people after the partaking of the bread and wine. Adjustments throughout the rite were made for the American context by reworking references to the king and his realm (changes were made once again in the 1786 edition) and to ministerial offices (removing the nomenclature of bishop, priest, curate), and by the excision of rubrics that bespoke a settled and established ministry. No real attempt was made to abbreviate the listing of offertory sentences: the sole sentence to disappear was taken from the Puritan-detested apocryphal book of Tobit; yet another sentence from Tobit (4:8–9) was retained among the nineteen remaining sentences until it was deleted in the 1786 edition. Wesley’s expectation of a weekly Eucharist is hinted at by the removal of the post-offertory rubric (“when there is Communion”), the rubric requiring announcement of the next Communion celebration (and with it the three exhortations), and the collects at the end of the rite to be said following the offertory “when there is no communion.” Since the bulk of the revision was accomplished by deletion rather than disruption, the basic shape of Wesley’s service after the Ante-Communion was still that of the Prayer Book: Offertory Sentences Collection of Alms [during the reading of the sentences] Prayer for Christ’s Church Militant [“Almighty and everliving God, who by thy holy Apostle. . . .”] Invitation [“Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins. . . .”] General Confession [made by the minister on behalf of the people; “Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men. . . .”]

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Prayer for Forgiveness Comfortable Words Sursum Corda [“Lift up your hearts. . . .”] Common Preface [“It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty. . . .” to be followed by a Proper Preface on Christmas Day, Easter Day, Ascension Day, Whitsunday, and the Feast of Trinity] Sanctus [“Therefore with Angels and Archangels. . . .”] Prayer of Humble Access [“We do not presume to come to this thy Table. . . .”] Prayer of Consecration [“Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who, of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ. . . .”] Communion of the Ministers Communion of the People The Lord’s Prayer Post-communion Prayer [“O Lord and heavenly Father, we thy humble servants desire thy Fatherly goodness. . . .”] Gloria in excelsis [to be said] Extemporary Prayer [optional] Benediction [Philippians 4:7 with trinitarian blessing] Wesley did introduce some new material, giving a subtle distinction to the Methodist service that reflected his own theological and liturgical preferences. He turned the absolution after the General Confession from a pronouncement of divine pardon, whether understood in a declaratory or a performative way, into a prayer for forgiveness on behalf of all the penitent; comparable changes were also made to the absolution in the morning and evening offices.8 Many of the rubrics identifying postures during the liturgy were eliminated, particularly the “all meekly kneeling” during reception, which some felt intimated eucharistic adoration (though most Methodists had opted to kneel and would continue to do so).9 Instructions were added that the people should stand during the Comfortable Words and kneel at the Prayer of Humble Access. Contrary to the Prayer Book, but in line with other eighteenth-century revisions,10 Wesley advised that should the consecrated elements be spent before all had received, the entire Prayer of Consecration was to be repeated and not simply the Words of Institution. The absence of the manual acts from the Prayer of Consecration in some copies of the Sunday Service demonstrated not a Wesleyan innovation but an unauthorized Coke variation, since later editions included the directions. The service ended with the option of the characteristically Methodist practice of extemporary prayer. Mention of another Methodist custom is notably absent: nowhere did Wesley provide rubrically for the singing of hymns. Even with Wesley’s alterations, the 1784 Lord’s Supper service was closer to the 1662 Prayer Book than would be the 1789 Communion rite of the American Protestant Episcopal Church, which drew upon the 1764 Scottish Communion liturgy as its base.11 The Sunday Service also included the Prayer Book’s order for the Communion of sick, and kept the collect, the lessons from Hebrews 12:5–6 and John 5:24, and the rubrics indicating that the service was to continue at the Invitation and that

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the ministers were to receive first. However, absent entirely from Wesley’s revision was the Prayer Book’s prior service “for the visitation of the sick,” perhaps because the Methodist “essentials” of prayer, Scripture, and hymn had worked remarkably well for improvised bedside worship. Wesley’s eucharistic theology was passed on to the American Methodists primarily through his resources for public prayer, namely, the revised Lord’s Supper service itself and the nine Wesleyan Communion hymns that were included under the category “sacramental” in A Pocket Hymn Book Designed as a Constant Companion for the Pious (1785?) published in America.12 The richest theological statement by the Wesleys on the sacrament, the collection of 166 Hymns on the Lord’s Supper inspired by the structure and content of Daniel Brevint’s Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice (1673), appears not to have been at all widely used in America in spite of the fact that the book went through nine British printings by 1786;13 and neither the large Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1780), nor the Collection of Psalms and Hymns for the Lord’s Day (1784), which was sent along with the Sunday Service, had a section designated for sacramental hymns, although the former contained four hymns from the Hymns on the Lord’s Supper in the section “For Believers Saved” and three elsewhere. The received lex orandi was supplemented with overt doctrinal statements on the sacrament found in the twenty-four abridged Articles of Religion, and by incidental references in Wesley’s Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament and his Standard Sermons, both of which were considered measures of Methodist doctrine before and after the Christmas Conference. Like other Christians of his day, Wesley regarded the Supper as a perpetual commemoration of Christ’s death and passion observed in obedience to his “gracious word” in the holy Gospel.14 But this “precious legacy” bequeathed in the “death-recording rite” Wesley understood as a dynamic remembrance (anamnesis) of Christ’s saving work, for at the table the believer is transported back to the foot of the cross while simultaneously receiving in the present the benefits of the passion: Who thus our Faith employ His Sufferings to record, Ev’n now we mournfully enjoy Communion with our Lord; As tho’ we every one Beneath his Cross had stood, And seen him heave, and heard him groan, And felt his gushing Blood. O God! ’tis finish’d now! The Mortal Pang is past! By Faith his Head we see Him bow, And hear Him breathe his last! We too with Him are Dead, And shall with Him arise,

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The Cross on which He bows his Head, Shall lift us to the Skies. (HLS #4:3–4) For those who repent of their sins and draw near with faith, the sacrament is efficacious, conveying the promised “antidote for sin” and “feeding our souls.” The “cup of blessings” that imparts Christ’s blood and the bread that is his “mystic body” “cheer each languid heart [with] the grace which sure salvation brings”: Author of our Salvation, Thee With lowly thankful Hearts we praise, Author of this great Mystery, Figure and Means of Saving Grace. The sacred, true, effectual Sign, Thy Body and thy Blood it shews, The glorious Instrument Divine Thy Mercy and thy Strength bestows. We see the Blood that seals our Peace, Thy Pard’ning Mercy we receive: The Bread doth visibly express The Strength thro’ which our Spirits live. (HLS #28:1–3) In the sacrament Jesus “meets his followers” by his “special presence,” a definition-defying real presence not explicable by the doctrine of transubstantiation (which is “repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions” [eighteenth Article of Religion]). Communicants at the table are also assured that they will “meet [him] in the skies” to “banquet with our Lord in heaven”; meanwhile, they find their “heaven on earth begun” by the union of the worship “below” with that of “the Church triumphant in thy love” since “the kingdoms are but one.”15 Because the “Son of God and Man” enjoined “all who truly bear the bleeding Saviour’s name” to attend the “eucharistic feast” and thereby receive “pardon and holiness and heaven,” the Christian should partake regularly and willingly. That Christ’s sole oblation at Calvary was sufficient satisfaction for the sins of the whole world was confirmed in the eucharistic rite and in the twentieth Article of Religion. Yet for Wesley, along with other Anglicans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries whose theology drew upon the content of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the sacrifice is perpetually presented by Christ, who is both the great high priest and the eternal victim, in order that his followers may receive its benefits afresh: Rivers of Salvation still Along the Desert roll, Rivers to refresh and heal The fainting sinsick Soul; Still the Fountain of thy Blood

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Stands for Sinners open’d wide, Now, e’en now, my Lord, and God, I wash me in thy Side. (HLS #27:3) To Christ’s offering his people are to join their own sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and resign their souls and bodies to his “blessed service” that “every thought and word might proclaim” the goodness of God.16 Wesley’s resources for the Lord’s Supper were assimilated by the American Methodists, whose expectations and understandings of Communion had already been shaped in part by the discipline and rules of the Methodist society. The sacrament, acknowledged by Methodists to be a means of grace instituted by Christ, was to be received only after an individual had made a careful review of both heart and motive. This examination was aided by the spiritual accountability required within one’s assigned band or class. Wesley had no need to include rubrics or exhortations in the Sunday Service defining qualified communicants, since the Methodist system effectively provided the means for fencing the table. Tickets or tokens, such as those by then used for the love feast, were distributed quarterly to identify and admit persons deemed sincere in their intentions. The love of neighbor that was required of every communicant included one very particular manifestation of Wesley’s “social holiness”: the first American Discipline (and the only Discipline to do so) forbade the communicating of any slaveholder who refused to manumit his slaves according to the plan devised by the church (Question 42.5). Yet the Methodists were not exclusionary; they willingly offered hospitality to persons not of their own church who desired to partake of Communion administered by the Methodist elder, but asked that such individuals subject themselves to the same evaluative criteria as the members. Approval was obtained from the minister or other designated leader, but in some places the congregation evidently had opportunity to voice objections.17 Such care toward admission was especially practiced at the more private Lord’s Supper services held at bedside and at the quarterly meeting (often in tandem with the love feast). During large public gatherings that were not as easily monitored, Methodist elders often preached a “sacramental” or “preparatory” sermon prior to administration as a means of delineating who were proper communicants. In both settings, private and public, Methodists at the Supper of the Lord experienced the power and love of God that, on one occasion in Baltimore, was described as “a sword piercing through many hearts & cordials to others.”18 Prior to 1784, the quarterly meeting had sometimes been used by Methodists as a eucharistic occasion, with the sacrament presided over by sympathetic Anglican clergy or by their own (unauthorized) preachers.19 After 1784, when presidency at the table was emphatically restricted to the elder alone in accordance with Wesley’s plan, Communion at the quarterly “great festival” became the common pattern, as evident from Thomas Ware’s matter-of-fact comment that “the administration of the ordinances at our quarterly meetings was singularly owned of God.”20 Recognition of the impracticality of weekly observances when the elders were so few was registered by the Americans’ willingness to tam-

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per with a foundational Wesleyan document. Whereas in 1791 the Discipline reprinted the Band Society direction—“to be at church, and at the Lord’s table, every week”—as Wesley had promulgated it in 1744, one year later in 1792 (and after Wesley’s death) the line in the Discipline now more accurately read, “to be at church, and at the Lord’s table, at every opportunity.” This alteration and the other changes approved in 1792 were not intended to belittle the sacrament or suggest a diminished eucharistic piety.21 On the contrary, the people who had clamored for the Lord’s Supper continued to hold it in high esteem, since there they expected to meet the “Master of the feast” and fellowship as brothers and sisters in Christ. The requirement that Methodists receive “at every opportunity,” which for many came quarterly, meant that Methodists at the least partook more frequently than had been the custom in the great majority of Anglican parishes. In the setting of the quarterly meeting, the Lord’s Supper service proper could be attached to the end of a service of song, prayer, Scripture, and preaching or exhortation (which was the sequence of the “ceremony” detailed by the Fluvanna preachers),22 or it could be directly preceded or followed by a love feast, or it could exist autonomously. Indications are that Wesley’s Ante-Communion may have gotten little usage, and the Communion service proper often began with the collection of alms. It is therefore not surprising that, with the revision of the Lord’s Supper rite in 1792, the material preliminary to the offertory sentences in Wesley’s 1784 service was jettisoned, with only the Collect for Purity surviving in a new location after the Prayer for Forgiveness. Removal of the direct textual association between the sermon and the Lord’s Supper, and the subsequent relegation of the Communion service to the separate section of the Discipline on “Sacramental Services, &c.,” attested in print to what was already the case in practice—that the Supper of the Lord was not administered on every Lord’s Day. Yet it also left in doubt the continuation of the historic conjoining of word and sacrament since nowhere was it explicitly stated that a sermon must accompany Communion and, according to the Discipline (section “Of Public Worship”), the reading of Scripture lessons need not be done on Communion days. Another clear linkage between word and sacrament was lost with the deletion in 1792 of Wesley’s brief rite for communing the sick. In their revision of Wesley’s revision, the Americans continued his process of reducing the length of the service. The offertory sentences were reduced by four. Removed from the order were the Prayer for Christ’s Church Militant, the Comfortable Words, the Sursum Corda, all references to the proper prefaces (and with it direct acknowledgment of the church year), and the rubric for kneeling at the Prayer of Humble Access. Adjustments were made to the manual acts and to the rubrics and words at the distribution. For the latter, the words “body and soul” in “preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life” were reversed, perhaps to reinforce the eighteenth Article’s teaching that “the body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner.” The order approved in 1792 would remain virtually untouched for approximately the next half century:

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Offertory Sentences Collection of Alms [during the reading of the sentences] Invitation General Confession Prayer for Forgiveness Collect for Purity Common Preface Sanctus Prayer of Humble Access Prayer of Consecration with manual acts Communion of the Ministers Communion of the People The Lord’s Prayer Post-communion Prayer Gloria in excelsis Extemporary Prayer Benediction Church leaders in 1792 also introduced a new provision that would substantially impact eucharistic practice and theology in later Methodism. A rubric was added at the conclusion of the Lord’s Supper rite, reading, “If the Elder be straitened for time, he may omit any part of the service except the prayer of Consecration.”23 The new rubric supported the liturgical liberty desired by ministers and people, but it also invited a lack of ritual uniformity across the denomination and led to the corruption of the rite’s integrity in two different manners. Most drastically, some elders soon felt free to substitute material of their own composing even at the cost of the Prayer of Consecration itself. Although the Methodist Episcopal Church would introduce legislation in 1824 requiring that “in administering the ordinances” the “form of discipline invariably be used,” the continuance of the 1792 rubric with the rite (even into the twentieth century) had the end result of perpetuating the problem. On this matter, Freeborn Garrettson remarked in 1826: But I have been astonished to see some of our brethren in the ministry, especially the young, laying aside such beautiful and expressive compositions, and marrying, baptizing, and even administering the Lord’s supper, extemporaneously. I am sorry to lose a single sentence or even word of our sacramental forms. To be a lovely people, a prosperous people, a united people, a people gathering in an abundant harvest, we must be a holy, inoffensive people, following all the usages of the church, as transmitted to us by the venerable Mr. Wesley. I say Mr. Wesley; for we all know that the Bible was his standard.24

Less blatantly, even when the 1792 text was not replaced by free compositions, the rubric’s isolation of the Prayer of Consecration yielded problems of reductionism. Among some elders it encouraged a minimalist approach to observance of the sacrament, for on occasion, the sacrament might consist solely of a hymn, the Prayer of Consecration, and the distribution.25

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The Rite and Its Interpretation 1792–1968 The Methodist Episcopal Communion rite of 1792 was taken up without alteration in the respective Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Other Methodists in the first decades of the nineteenth century perpetuated the custom of reducing the length of the foundational text. The “United Societies of the People commonly called Methodists” (later the Union Methodists), who broke in 1801 from St. George’s Church, Philadelphia, proposed a rite consisting of the 1792 components of Offertory Sentences, Invitation, Prayer of Humble Access, Prayer of Consecration (with manual acts), Words at the distribution, Lord’s Prayer, and Benediction.26 A comparable pattern was set out in the first Discipline (1843) of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America, with offertory sentences and a collection for the poor, the Invitation, a general prayer by the minister (created by fusing the first part of the General Confession with the Common Preface, Sanctus, and Prayer of Humble Access), Prayer of Consecration (without manual acts), the Words at the distribution, the Lord’s Prayer, a rubric allowing for the option of extemporary prayer, and a benediction. Two years later, the Wesleyans severely truncated the ritual text, although they added a rubric designating a hymn between the sentences at the giving of alms and the Invitation: the specified texts for the general prayer and the Prayer of Consecration were replaced by a single rubric calling for a general prayer “in the name of all those who are minded to receive the holy sacrament,” which was then followed by the Words at the distribution, and the Lord’s Prayer. At the end of the century the 1845 Wesleyan Methodist pattern remained, although the offertory sentences had been replaced with the reading of selected scriptural warrants for the sacrament (Matthew 26: 26–29; 1 Corinthians 10:16, 17; 1 Corinthians 11:23–29), and the specific instruction for almsgiving had been deleted. The Methodist Protestant Church in 1830 compressed the 1792 rite but also introduced new material, for example inserting into the text several Scripture sentences to be said first at the distribution of the bread and then at the cup, and including a rubric for hymn singing at the distribution in order to record the already extant practice. After beginning the service with an “appropriate discourse,” the collection of alms (with offertory sentences), and the preparation of the table, the Methodist Protestant minister gave a general introduction (newly composed) and then led into a long prayer. The first three paragraphs contain material drawn from various parts of the 1792 eucharistic rite,27 from Scripture (e.g., Romans 3:23), and from an unexpected source in the second paragraph: the General Confession from Wesley’s (and the Episcopal) morning and evening prayer (“Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways. . . .”). The fourth paragraph adds two further ingredients in this pastiche, namely, pietistic turns of phrase (e.g., “melted into tenderness”) and long scriptural quotations (Isaiah 53:4–5) that help to create the flavor of extemporary prayer. Particularly interesting here is the explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit,

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which, except for the Collect for Purity, was not otherwise present in Wesley’s rite: Grant unto us, O our heavenly Father, the effectual assistance of thy holy Spirit, that while we partake of these thy creatures of bread and wine, according to thy Son our Saviour’s holy institution, in grateful remembrance of his death and passion, that our hearts may be penetrated with unfeigned love and gratitude for the unspeakable gift of thy Son, in the redemption and salvation of our souls. May we be melted into tenderness on account of the great love wherewith Christ hath loved us, and given himself for us. May we ever remember his agony and bloody sweat in the garden of Gethsemane; his cruel mockings and scourgings in Pilate’s hall; and his ignominious death on the cross. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. May we have redemption through his blood which was shed for the remission of our sins; and, being justified by faith in him, may be filled with love, have grace to keep all thy commandments, and show forth the Lord’s death till he come. And finally, be brought, with all the Israel of God, to inherit eternal life, through the merits and mediation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

The pneumatological reference in this prayer could be complemented with the singing of a hymnic epiclesis by Charles Wesley, which found a place in Methodist Protestant and other Methodist hymnals in the section on the Lord’s Supper: Come, thou everlasting Spirit, Bring to every thankful mind, All the Saviour’s dying merit, All his sufferings for mankind: True recorder of his passion, Now the living fire impart, Now reveal his great salvation, Preach his gospel to our heart. Come, thou Witness of his dying; Come, Remembrancer divine! Let us feel thy power, applying Christ to every soul—and mine! Let us groan thine inward groaning, Look on him we pierced and grieve, All receive the grace atoning, All the sprinkled blood receive.28 Methodists in the first half of the nineteenth century may have been impelled to spread “scriptural holiness throughout the land,” but many were equally concerned to fulfill the Lord’s command to “Do this in remembrance of me.” A minister forced by circumstances to miss the sacrament celebrated at the conference of preachers confessed remorse “that I should so lightly esteem the ordinance of the Lord.”29 That the desire for the Lord’s Supper remained among the laity even

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after the rite was reduced in length and content is attested by the sacramental celebrations held for the sick and imprisoned, and the preaching of “profitable” sermons on the subject of the Eucharist.30 One elder noted that he usually carried a small flask of wine among his saddlebags in order to communicate persons in the remote regions of his circuit who hungered for the sacrament but found it difficult to attend the quarterly gatherings.31 Building upon the foundation of sacramental theology laid by John Wesley, Methodists, in their theological discourses upon and hymnic statements about the Eucharist during this period and beyond, accentuated the koinonia between believers and Christ, the communion and unity expressed among the participants while meeting around the table, the fellowship of love that transcended time and space, and the anticipation of supping with Christ and the saints in the kingdom of glory. Special emphasis was placed upon the atoning sacrifice as (contrary to Calvinist doctrine) beneficial to all humankind, for which the grateful response should be praise and thanksgiving. The Supper was identified as the successor to the Jewish Passover (comparable to baptism’s replacement of circumcision), but it was not to be understood only as a commemoration of Jesus’ dying love in a historical sense. As a representation of Christ’s vicarious and propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, the rite (by God’s own design) set the meritorious passion and death mentally and sensibly before faithful and sincere penitents.32 O Thou eternal victim slain, A sacrifice for guilty man, By the eternal Spirit made An offering in the sinner’s stead, Our everlasting Priest art thou, And plead’st thy death for sinners now! Thy offering still continues new, Thy vesture keeps its bloody hue; Thou stand’st the ever-slaughter’d Lamb, Thy priesthood still remains the same; Thy years, O God, can never fail, Thy goodness is unchangeable. O that our faith may never move, But stand unshaken as thy love: Sure evidence of things unseen, Now let it pass the years between, And view thee bleeding on the tree, My God who dies for me, for me!33 The Lord’s Supper, a meal actively claiming the grace of the “Victim Divine,”34 was therefore to be understood as a covenant rite that, on God’s side, is “the visible token and pledge of a covenant of mercy in the blood of Christ.” For those who partake, the sacrament is a sign and a seal of God’s promises, “a visible acknowledgement of this covenant so ratified by the sacrifice of Christ, and an act of entire

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faith in its truth and efficacy in order to the remission of sins, and the conferring of all other spiritual benefits.”35 The bread and wine thus are emblems of Christ’s redeeming love that, by faith, are taken and eaten as spiritual sustenance.36 The The The The

Father gives the Son; Son his flesh and blood: Spirit applies, and faith puts on righteousness of God.37

Richard Allen, founder and bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, expressed these theological concepts in the language of devotion, borrowing phrases from the liturgy and the Articles: I believe, that Thou hast instituted and ordained holy mysteries, as pledges of thy love, and for a continual commemoration of Thy death; that Thou hast not only given Thyself to die for me, but to be my spiritual food and sustenance in that holy sacrament to my great and endless comfort. O may I frequently approach Thy altar with humility and devotion, and work in me all those holy and heavenly affections, which become the remembrance of a crucified Saviour.38

The fundamental theological themes and emphases of the first half of the century were continued and reinforced in the second, though by the mid-1850s, the content of books and manuals on the Lord’s Supper was nuanced to address a growing neglect of the sacrament that church leaders deemed “inconsistent with growth in grace and a life of piety.”39 Writers in this period expressed concern that on “sacrament sabbaths,” members sometimes would leave the church before the eucharistic rite began or “sat aside while the blessed ordinance of the Lord’s Supper was being dispensed.”40 The decline in attendance was attributed to multiple causes. The somber Supper proved less attractive than the more restricted and visibly evangelical love feast. On account of Baptist influence and, toward the end of the century, because of questions raised concerning the original sinfulness of humanity and the atonement as the indispensable means of salvation, some Methodists had come to regard the Supper as a memorial and fellowship meal rather than as a necessary and efficacious sacrament for the remission of sin. An extreme position occasionally taken was an entire rejection of the Supper as an example of Romish “sacramental religionism.” Concerns about the spiritual and moral disposition of the celebrant caused some donatistic Methodists to abstain from the sacrament, despite arguments to the contrary.41 Among the more biblically literal and spiritually serious, the sacrament was avoided lest it be approached without proper preparations (among these reconciliation with one’s neighbor, i.e., Matthew 5:23– 24) or taken unworthily (1 Corinthians 11:27–29). The primary reason given for the decline was the general disregard for reception as a Christian duty. In providing a remedy for this problem, membership manuals and catechisms repeated the obligation to partake and the implications of laxity: “No one can be excused from this duty which we all owe to the Lord Jesus. It is as plainly enjoined as is prayer or praise. To neglect it is not only to disobey Christ, but to slight his dying request.”42 Following a practice observed by the Methodist Protestants since 1830, the Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1864, approved a disciplinary solution

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by bringing to trial any member who habitually neglected the sacrament and the other means of grace, with expulsion from the church the alternative of last resort.43 A theological and historical study by Samuel Luckey, The Lord’s Supper (1859), was designed with the stated purposes of encouraging covenant responsibility and invigorating sacramental participation. In successive chapters, Luckey considered the Supper as memorial, passover, Eucharist, Communion, and sacrament, and under each thematic heading noted an appropriate Christian behavior or response. To understand the ordinance as a memorial, said Luckey, is to discern that it is based upon the historical fact of the atonement. Not only is there the confirmatory witness of Christ’s passion and death in Scripture; there is also the corroboratory and incontestable evidence of its truth by the endurance of the sacramental practice from the time of its institution. Each individual who partakes of the sacrament contributes toward the unbroken succession of testimony to Christ’s sacrifice and its benefits. Conversely, a Christian who disregards the sacramental privilege risks disrupting the continuity of proclamation and denies the validity of the atonement.44 Luckey then placed this interpretation of memorial in the broader context of the other themes. Against the backdrop of the theological discussions of his day, he cautioned against focusing solely upon an understanding of the Supper as a memorial that would deny its full purpose as a sacrament and thus encourage the communicant to regard the service as a mere, empty form. “Our views must penetrate deeper than this into the sacred mystery in order to derive all the benefit from it which it was designed to convey to those who meekly receive it in a right manner.”45 Perhaps because Methodist theological reflection directed upon the sacrament in the second half of the century was largely consistent with what had come before, few changes were made to the eucharistic rites during this period. The Methodist Protestants, who at this time abbreviated their former eucharistic prayer and then concluded it with the Lord’s Prayer and Wesley’s Invitation, were the only denomination to introduce substantial new material. For several years they experimented with an alternative reading of either the Decalogue or the Beatitudes after the collection of alms, eventually settling upon the reading of Isaiah 53:(1–3) 4–10 and the rehearsal of the Apostles’ Creed in that location. The Free Methodists, who had taken over the Methodist Episcopal rite verbatim, eventually dropped the opening offertory sentences, thus beginning the rite with the Invitation. The first alterations made to Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s rite came in 1854, of which the most significant was the removal of the rubrics for the manual acts that had been judged by some to be “a mimicry of our Saviour’s sacrifice—the offering of him as an unbloody sacrifice upon the altar.”46 (Despite requests for their excision, the Methodist Episcopal Church would keep the instructions, though they were altered.) Further revisions were approved by the Church, South in 1870, including the relocation of the Lord’s Prayer following the Prayer of Consecration and the communication of the ministers, and the introduction of a rubric officially inviting the congregation to sing a hymn during the distribution; the 1870 order would be the form of the eucharistic rite adopted by the Colored (Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church.

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Several of the alterations suggested or approved for the Methodist Episcopal Church’s rite adumbrate later textual revisions and theological shifts related to the Lord’s Supper, as well as the increasing tendency (at least officially) toward liturgical formality and elaboration in that denomination. For one quadrennium only (1864–1868), the phrase from the Prayer of Consecration, “receiving these thy creatures of bread and wine, according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ’s holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion,” was shortened to “receiving these memorials of the sufferings and death of our Saviour Jesus Christ.” The reversion to the older form in 1868 indicates that the denomination was neither ready to strike at what they believed was the heart of the sacramental rite, nor willing as a body to continue a move in a direction of what might be construed as memorialism. They were disposed to introduce new phraseology further reinforcing that the benefits to be received from the sacrament were purely spiritual: with the textual revision authorized in 1864, the Prayer of Humble Access no longer petitioned that after reception “our sinful souls and bodies may be made clean”; instead, the request was a more general “that we may live and grow thereby.” An unusual move was the relocation in 1864 of the Common Preface and Sanctus to a place immediately before the distribution, where it apparently was meant to function as a corporate “outburst of thanksgiving and praise” in anticipation of reception.47 New rubrics specified that the Invitation, the Confession, and the Prayer of Consecration were not to be omitted even if the minister was “straitened for time” (1864); that the Gloria in excelsis could be said or sung (1868);48 and, that, at a minimum, the Confession, the Prayer of Consecration, the words at the distribution, the Lord’s Prayer, an extemporary supplication, and the Benediction were to be employed when communing the sick (1884). Despite instructions in the Discipline mandating that the Communion rite as approved be used verbatim, numerous Methodist Episcopal ministers (and those of other Methodist denominations with a similar rule) nevertheless felt at liberty to offer their own formulations and prayers as substitutes. No effort was made by any of the denominations to ensure that preaching accompanied the sacrament. By the last decades of the nineteenth century, a practice on Communion Sundays, even in “station” churches with a single Sunday service, was to omit preaching to save time. In some congregations, this meant that the Lord’s Supper rite alone was utilized for the order of the day, with the addition of opening and closing hymns. One author acknowledged that elimination of the sermon was contributing to the decline in worship attendance on Communion days, since would-be communicants who regarded the sermon as the essential component for every service of worship absented themselves, and those not inclined or prepared to commune stayed away since they could not participate.49 To avoid either constriction of the Sunday morning preaching service or overly lengthy services with preaching and Communion, some time-conscious Methodists opted to move the observance of Communion to an afternoon or evening service, borrowing a pattern of some quarterly meetings, or, where feasible, to offer Communion in an early-morning chapel service. Thus what had already been construed as an occasional service became, wittingly or unwittingly, an irregular, special service.

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The eucharistic rites for most of the Methodist denominations received only minor emendations from the 1880s to the 1960s, and the revisions were typically done by the relocation or removal of material, with the text of the African Methodist Episcopal Church being the least altered overall and the most consistent with what had been produced in 1792. Not so the Methodist Episcopal Church, which would again tamper with its service in 1916 and in 1932 sanction a significantly changed order that, nevertheless, for the first time since 1792 combined word and sacrament in a unified rite. Usage of the full text as printed was stated as the preferred practice, though the deletion of the Ante-Communion remained an option. The production of “an entire service for all instead of an addendum at which people may stay or go as they please,” with a ritual form that permitted “the laity to have a larger participation in our services,” required the “omission of some phrases which had become endeared through much repetition” and their replacement with “those of contemporary vitality which will become sanctified by use.”50 Practical considerations were conjoined with others ecclesiastical and more academic: members of the revision commission, in the spirit of the ecumenical and liturgical movements, confessed to having consulted the rituals of other Methodist and Evangelical churches; and recent studies in early Christian praxis, psychology, anthropology (especially the phenomenological approach), and comparative religions undergirded the revisers’ stress on the desirability of ritual form, and on the historical and theological appropriateness of an integrated service of word and sacrament that valued active congregational involvement.51 A few refinements were made to the 1932 order at the General Conference of 1936, and it was the 1936 rite that would carry over into the 1939 merger: Hymn [Heber’s “Holy, holy, holy” is designated] Litany [“God is a Spirit. . . . God is Light. . . . God is Power. . . . God is Love. . . .”] Gloria Patri [said or sung] Collect for Purity [in unison] The Lord’s Prayer The Decalogue [litany] and/or the Summary of the Law [both optional] The Beatitudes [two forms, both litanies, both optional] Epistle Gospel Apostles’ Creed or other “authorized” Affirmation of Faith Sermon or Communion Meditation Hymn [with the preparation of the altar] Collection of Alms with Scripture Sentences [four sets of five sentences] Ascription of Praise [1 Chronicles 29:14, said or sung] Scriptural Thanksgiving [1 Chronicles 29:11] Invitation General Confession [by the minister and people together] Prayer for Forgiveness Comfortable Words

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Sursum Corda Common Preface [“It is very meet, right. . . .”] Sanctus [said or sung] Prayer of Consecration Prayer of Humble Access Communion of the Ministers Communion of the People Post-communion Prayer Gloria in excelsis [said or sung] Benediction [Philippians 4:7 with trinitarian blessing] Structurally, with its inclusion of an Ante-Communion, the rite represented an approximate return to the historic 1784 pattern, though in the Communion section, the Prayer of Humble Access was repositioned after the Prayer of Consecration. The reinstatement of the Decalogue came after decades of requests for its return for use as an act of Communion preparation and confession;52 the repeated response was the one Methodists had known prior to 1792. Continuing an alteration made in 1916 (1910 in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South), the laity joined the minister in praying the General Confession. Yet even as Methodism’s liturgical past was reclaimed and many of its beloved usages were continued or “modernized,” other accepted goals of the 1932 revision were put forth, including the selective reception of ecumenical liturgical resources and the promotion of “contemporary vitality.” Now extending the Decalogue, or substituting for it, was the Summary of the Law, familiar in that location to American Episcopalians since 1789.53 An option in place of or in addition to the Decalogue was the reading of the Beatitudes as a litany, which, though new to the Methodist Episcopal Church, had been regarded as an appropriate substitution for the “old” law in certain English-language liturgies since the seventeenth century and was included in the worship of Americans from some Reformed traditions.54 The new opening litany (four Old and New Testament sentences alternating with the refrain “Glory be to God on high”) appears to have been modeled after the first part of a “Service of Preparation for Holy Communion” printed in a collection of ecumenical and experimental liturgical resources contrived to enrich devotional experiences and “clothe with the dignity of liturgical form thoughts that express the religious needs of modern life.”55 Attention to contemporary expression was not only achieved by the importation of recently composed texts. Historic components were reworked in 1932 to eliminate “words and forms which have become unmeaningful to the present generation.”56 Among the antiquated and now theologically suspect were phrases that enforced an understanding of the Supper as an objective means of grace and an efficacious sacrament and that defined God as a sovereign, yet merciful, judge who demanded satisfaction for human sin. Lord’s Supper hymns specified in hymnals and popular literature produced by many of the Methodist bodies had already emphasized the Supper as a memorial meal, an opportunity for self-dedication to moral duties and spiritual improvement, and a symbol of union with Christ and of the unity among believers;57 now the prevailing view was to be expressed in

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ritual language. Thus, “provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us” was eliminated from the General Confession as inconsistent with a view of a benevolent and beneficent God. The institution and command in the Prayer of Consecration was no longer “to continue a perpetual memory of his precious death until his coming again,” but “to continue this memorial of his precious death.” Communicants now partook “of the divine nature through him” rather than “of his most blessed body and blood,” according to the Prayer of Consecration. Similarly, the reference to “eating the flesh” and “drinking his blood” was altered in the Prayer of Humble Access to “these memorials of Thy Son Jesus Christ” by which one is now “filled with the fullness of his life.” Church politics prior to the 1939 merger determined that the Methodist Episcopal rite would continue in the new Methodist Church, though as a concession to the Methodist Protestants, the responsive reading from Isaiah 53:1–10 was added following the Beatitudes. The rite of the former Methodist Episcopal Church, South was kept as an alternative order, not only because of dissatisfaction with the Methodist Episcopal service but also to avoid the expense of producing a new hymnal (the Communion order of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South was contained in that denomination’s printing of the joint 1935 Methodist Hymnal). The two official Communion rites available to ministers and congregations of the Methodist Church in 1939, and again in the 1945 Book of Worship (with optional proper prefaces and lectionary added for both forms),58 demonstrated the diversity and confusion that existed regarding the theology and practice of the sacrament: the one unified rite of word and Supper suggested a memorialist stance, while the separate rite for the Supper preserved historic Methodist sacramental language. These discrepancies did not go unnoticed, and debates between “Zwinglians” and the “sacramentalists” ensued in Methodist organs, principally the Advocate and The Pastor. Born from this literary activity in 1946 was the Brotherhood of St. Luke (redesignated the Order of St. Luke two years later), founded for the purposes of studying the liturgies of the church catholic, cultivating within Methodism the liturgical renewal that was engaging other churches, and encouraging the faithful and informed practice of the sacraments. Members of this organization, through The Pastor and their own periodical, The Versicle, introduced Methodists to liturgical scholarship of the East and West (e.g., Dom Gregory Dix and The Shape of the Liturgy), and the ritual revisions under discussion in other churches during the 1950s and 1960s. Essays and advice columns by Romey P. Marshall, William Esler Slocum, Paul S. Sanders, and W. Maynard French, among others, exposed the history and theology of Holy Communion and other Methodist rites, and offered suggestions on the administration of the current services—for which they were sometimes accused of “un-Methodist” formalism and ritualism. In light of current scholarship, members of the Order and their sympathizers attempted a recovery of both the early church and Wesley. They stressed that the Lord’s Supper was a “thanksgiving,” but also an objective sacrament at which Christ is present through the power of the Holy Spirit to sanctify his people, and where believers join their sacrifice of praise and work with his and are thereby empowered to live a life of prayer and service.59 Romey Marshall, at the request of the African Methodist

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Episcopal Zion Church, drafted a new order for communion sensitive to the agenda of renewal, and although that denomination would not adopt the service, the Methodist Church would include some of the proposals in their next revision of the rite.60 The members of the Order of St. Luke constituted only a small minority within the Methodist Church. Yet their desire for a normative, unified rite that preserved the understanding of the Supper as Eucharist, sacrament, memorial, and Communion reiterated the emphases of liturgical renewal under discussion by other Protestant denominations. These deliberations within the wider church, and internal efforts—even by the bishops61 —to elevate the place of the sacraments in practice, did not escape the notice of the committee that had been charged in 1956 with the Methodist Church’s liturgical revision. A single and complete order of word and sacrament attentive to the Wesleyan heritage and the “psychological stages in the experience of corporate worship” was put forward in 1960, with a variant text provided at the Prayer of Consecration and at the Prayer of Humble Access in recognition that “the words ‘so to eat his flesh and to drink his blood’ are an offense to some of our people, while they are inspiration and power to others.”62 Final approval in 1964 was given, however, to two rites, one word and sacrament, the other sacrament only in a “brief form,” with no alternative prayers within either rite. The sequence of the full rite had been drastically altered as a result of the intention to integrate the distinct parts of word and of sacrament (which, at the time, were identified as the liturgy of the catechumens and the liturgy of the faithful) into a cohesive whole. New material (e.g., the Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church in the form of a litany) stood alongside an altered Gloria, Prayer of Confession, and Prayer of Humble Access: Scripture Sentences Call to Prayer Collect for Purity The Lord’s Prayer Gloria in excelsis [said or sung] Invitation General Confession Prayer for Forgiveness Comfortable Words Pastoral Prayer or Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church Lesson(s) [with an anthem or hymn between the Epistle and Gospel if two lessons are used] Apostles’ Creed or other Affirmation of Faith Sermon Notices Hymn Offertory with dedication Rubric indicating the option of a collection of alms Sursum Corda

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Common Preface [with option of adding a Proper Preface for Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost] Sanctus [said or sung] Prayer of Consecration Prayer of Humble Access Agnus Dei [said or sung] Communion of the Ministers Communion of the People [with the optional singing of hymns] The Peace Post-communion Prayer Hymn Benediction For those who wished to continue the familiar shape of the Methodist liturgy, the brief form was the only recourse, and even then the Sursum Corda, Common Preface, Sanctus, and Gloria were missing.63 For Methodists and non-Methodists concerned for liturgical renewal, both forms were inadequate in structure and in content. Episcopal liturgist Massey Shepherd (who spearheaded the efforts of the Consultation on Church Union to produce a model service in 1968 and was its principal writer), in correspondence with Order of St. Luke member Lawrence Snow, criticized the Methodist liturgical conservatism: I am sorry to see the Methodists being so traditional and conventional, instead of pioneering in the light of current liturgical developments—such as, e.g., the rite of South India or Taize´. . . . I share your comments on the proposed Methodist rite. I could make others—such as the unhappy position of the Lord’s Prayer, for example. But I shall refrain, because my main concern is that the revision seems to be made too narrowly within the compass of the Prayer Book tradition, and is not sufficiently oriented towards the ecumenical dimensions of liturgical revision that now are so important.64

Only in the next decade would Shepherd’s aspirations for the Methodist eucharistic liturgy become a possibility within one of the Methodist denominations.

1968–1996 Given that the Methodist Church had just completed a liturgical revision, the newly created United Methodist Church in 1968 elected not to formulate new orders for Communion, but instead authorized for use the four rites that it had inherited: the full and brief services of the Methodist Church, and the “regular” and brief forms of the Evangelical United Brethren Church. The latter’s regular order, designed as a “unit complete in itself,” was considered by that denomination to be historic, catholic, and evangelical, and as such, it shared affinities with the Methodist Church’s rites of 1945 and 1965, and more broadly with the Prayer Book tradition as well as the Reformed tradition: Processional Hymn or Call to Worship Collect for Purity

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The Lord’s Prayer Responsive Psalm [95, 96, or 100] Gloria Patri Epistle Lesson from 1 Corinthians 10:16–21 Hymn of Adoration [Heber’s “Holy, holy, holy” suggested] Gospel Lesson from Luke 22:14–19 Apostles’ Creed Sermon Prayer for the Church Anthem Offertory Communion Hymn Examination of Conscience [the Beatitudes with responses, or the Decalogue with responses, or Kyrie] General Confession [from the Prayer Book daily office] Words of Assurance Sursum Corda Common Preface [“It is very meet, right. . . .”] Sanctus Prayer of Humble Access Prayer of Consecration [from the first part of the Methodist prayer, adapted to include an invocation of the Word and Holy Spirit comparable to the 1549 Prayer Book] Words of Institution [quotation of 1 Corinthians 11:23–26] Communion of the Ministers Invitation Communion of the People Post-communion Prayer [two forms] Gloria in excelsis [as a responsive reading] Benediction [Philippians 4:7 with trinitarian blessing] Despite the strong similarities of the rites contributed by the predecessor denominations, what would become the distinctively United Methodist rite did not develop from a coalescing of those two services. The new rite would not depend directly upon the liturgical traditions of the merged churches, but would, like other eucharistic revisions of the 1960s and 1970s, look to a ritual paradigm that antedated both Protestantism and the split between the churches of the East and West: a sequence of word and sacrament as found in the First Apology of Justin Martyr (chapter 67) and hinted at in Luke 24:13–35; and a eucharistic prayer or anaphora that imitated, in particular, the prayer in the so-called Apostolic Tradition attributed to Hippolytus, and also the anaphoral construction of West Syrian/Antiochene models.65 For Methodists, this signaled the first radical departure from the Lord’s Supper texts received from John Wesley. Yet, as the revisers noted, the new formulation bore out “Wesley’s admonition that our worship ‘follow the Scriptures and the primitive Church’ while at the same time speaking to the condition of contemporary United Methodists.” The revised ritual text represented “an attempt

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to incorporate both the historic and ecumenical witness of the church and also the distinctive gifts that our United Methodist heritage enables us to contribute to the universal church.”66 The service first introduced to United Methodists in the spring of 1972 as an unofficial alternate text (later to be called Supplemental Worship Resources 1) was the culmination of eight drafts, the first of which was put before the Alternate Rituals Committee in February 1971.67 Among the matters debated had been whether to include the Kyrie and the Gloria in excelsis (the former was dropped, the latter kept as an optional act of praise), and which affirmation of faith should be used (Nicene Creed, Apostles’ Creed, or the United Church of Canada’s statement—the latter was taken up in the 1972 text, but a rubric allowed the option of other affirmations).68 The 1972 rite introduced several new components, including an epicletic prayer for illumination borrowed from the Reformed tradition, the sharing of the peace, and the distinct ritual action of the fraction in order to represent fully the ancient four-action shape of the liturgy delineated by Dom Gregory Dix (offertory, thanksgiving, breaking of the bread, distribution): Greeting Hymn of Praise Confession and Pardon Act of Praise Prayer for Illumination Scripture Lessons [interspersed with psalms, canticles, anthems or hymns] Sermon Affirmation of Faith Prayer for Others Invitation and Peace The Offering Thanksgiving The Breaking of Bread and Taking of the Cup The Giving Prayer after Receiving Hymn or Doxological Stanza Benediction Although the 1972 rite would be revised in 1981 and again in 1984, the order remained relatively stable, with the only significant structural change the reconfiguration of the confession and pardon sequence as a response to the sermon and a preparation for the sacrament. In its original place was inserted an opening prayer that might be a prayer of the day, although the confession and pardon might still take place at that point if not used after the sermon. Eventually the Collect for Purity was specified as the opening prayer, though with the option of other prayers. Attempts throughout the process to restore the cherished Prayer of Humble Access failed. The classic West Syrian/Antiochene shape of the new eucharistic prayer and its emphasis on eucharistia posed no significant problems for the revision process. Thanksgiving for God’s works and not (primarily) remorse for human sinfulness

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was the focus, accentuating a tone of jubilant Easter resurrection and not penitential Good Friday. Dilemmas were faced as the committee strove to define and articulate in prayer the active role of the Holy Spirit in the sacrament, the nature of Christ’s sacrifice and presence, and the recognition that Christians participate not only in the new dispensation but in the full scope of God’s salvation history, from creation to eschatological fulfillment. Regarding the latter, the decision was made early in the process to forgo proper prefaces in favor of complete, distinct prayers for special seasons and occasions—an unusual solution, one shared with Ethiopian anaphoras and certain Gallican mass-books—which allowed expression of thanks for God’s saving works of the old and new covenants. The basic prayer of 1972, reached by compromise and consensus, met the goals of appealing to and directing the liturgical and theological sensibilities of United Methodists, for the optional text eventually sold over two and a half million copies: The Lord is with you. And with you also Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right to give him thanks and praise. Father, it is right that we should always and everywhere give you thanks and praise. Only you are God. You created all things and called them good. You made us in your own image. Even when we rebelled against your love, you did not desert us. You delivered us from captivity, made covenant to be our God and King, and spoke to us through your prophets. Therefore, we join the entire company of heaven and all your people now on earth in worshiping and glorifying you: Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. We thank you, Father, that you loved the world so much you sent your only Son to be our Savior. The Lord of all life came to live among us. He healed and taught men, ate with sinners, and won for you a new people by water and the Spirit. We saw his glory.

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Yet he humbled himself in obedience to your will, freely accepting death on a cross. By dying, he freed us from unending death; by rising from the dead, he gave us everlasting life. On the night in which he gave himself up for us, the Lord Jesus took bread. After giving you thanks, he broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said: Take, eat; this is my body which is given for you. When the supper was over, he took the cup. Again he returned thanks to you, gave the cup to his disciples, and said: Drink from this, all of you, this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you and many, for the forgiveness of sins. When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we experience anew the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ and look forward to his coming in final victory. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. We remember and proclaim, Heavenly Father, what your Son has done for us in his life and death, in his resurrection and ascension. Accept our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, in union with Christ’s offering for us, as a reasonable and holy surrender of ourselves. Send the power of your Holy Spirit on us, gathered here out of love for you, and on these gifts. Help us know in the breaking of this bread and the drinking of this wine the presence of Christ who gave his body and blood for mankind. Make us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in service to all mankind. Through your Son Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit in your Holy Church, all glory and honor is yours, Father. Amen.

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By the time the basic “Great Thanksgiving,” as part of an entire service of “Word and Table,” was officially sanctioned in 1984, it had been revised with attention to inclusive language, and musical settings had been scored for the congregational responses. Theologically, the text had become more bold in interpreting Christ’s presence (“Make them [the bread and wine] be for us the body and blood of Christ”) and explicating the sacrament’s redemptive and ethical aspects (“that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood”).69 The principal text became the model for dozens of eucharistic prayers crafted for use at weddings, funerals, and the various seasons and festivals of the Christian year, thereby allowing for a breadth of theological and euchological expression not permissible by the constraints of a single prayer. According to the United Methodist Hymnal (1989) and the Book of Worship (1992), the previously approved basic pattern of Word and Table was expected to govern the order of service on Communion and non-Communion Sundays (the Great Thanksgiving being replaced by a general prayer of thanksgiving). Yet United Methodist leaders recognized (aided by letters expressing reservations about the new text) that ritual customs and theological understandings are not easily uprooted. The complete order of Word and Table was given priority in both books (Service 1), but was followed by a series of services in which the Communion portion of the rite alone appears, allowing the new Communion text to be appended to a congregation’s usual Sunday morning liturgy or an abbreviation of it. Service 2 comprised the Invitation, Confession and Pardon, Peace, Offertory, and the basic Great Thanksgiving. Designed for flexibility and freedom, Service 3 included from the basic Great Thanksgiving only the congregational responses and the transitional statements preceding them, so that an alternate eucharistic prayer or an extemporary formulation might be offered. Newly created for the 1989 hymnal and designated as Service 4 was a sacrament-only service conflating and reordering the former Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren Communion rites; from the latter came an introductory dialogue and an epiclesis (“bless and sanctify with thy Word and Holy Spirit these thy gifts of bread and wine”) not found in the former Methodist rite. Service 4 was expanded in the Book of Worship to a service of word and sacrament, again blending components from the predecessor denominations.70 A brief service for use with the sick and homebound was included in the Book of Worship as Service 5. These multiple options for the Lord’s Supper offered in the official resources fulfilled the United Methodist desire for flexibility and variety. But the 1992 Book of Worship also stands as testimony to the diversity of Lord’s Supper practices that have existed within American Methodism from the beginning despite repeated calls for ritual uniformity. Although it may not have been a dominant factor in the decision to preserve the historic Methodist (and Evangelical United Brethren) Communion rite in the 1989 and 1992 books of the United Methodist Church, the continuation of some vestige of the older form has enabled that denomination to maintain a ritual linkage with the wider American Methodist family. The other Methodist denominations, cognizant of the liturgical changes elsewhere, elected to keep relatively close to their ritual inheritance. The African Methodist Episcopal Church’s service of “The Word of God and Celebration of the Holy Communion,” first published

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in 1980 and showing resemblances to the patterns of other revised rites, contained new prayers and modernizations of the older ones, but also maintained separately the church’s “traditional” Communion service.71 No new Lord’s Supper text or revision of the old was taken up by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in their 1996 Book of Worship, although the sacramental rite was now preceded by a word service. As dialogues to reunite the Methodist family continued at the end of the twentieth century, the shared text for the Lord’s Supper potentially offered a key to an even more substantial communion.

Admission to the Table Methodists have never been able to establish a consensus about the conditions necessary for admission to the Lord’s Supper. Disputes with other Christians and internal theological shifts have only added to the uncertainty of the issue, which, it may be surmised, originates from the absence of a definitive statement about proper communicants in Wesley’s ordo for the Lord’s Supper. Instead of a rubric, the American Methodists fell heir to several assumptions based upon the content of the Sunday Service and British Methodist praxis. Some of these suppositions were not easily translated into the new context; others were readily appropriated and, over time, acquired a range of interpretations. No service of confirmation finds a place in the Sunday Service, bearing out Wesley’s contention in his Treatise on Baptism that, following the example of the anteNicene church, baptism suffices for initiation into Christ’s church and membership in the same. Access to the table, therefore, was granted by baptism alone, and not through a pair of formal rites, as had been the historic and expected Anglican practice. Acting upon this view, Wesley and other Anglican clergy sympathetic to the Methodist cause baptized those who desired to affiliate with the Methodist societies but had not yet received the sacrament (e.g., Quakers and Baptist sympathizers) and permitted their communication without confirmation. Yet these persons and those already baptized (confirmed or not) did not automatically gain admission to Methodist Communions, for entry was allowed only to those society members and visitors who held the requisite ticket signifying successful examination of their moral character and their spiritual seriousness. The Invitation contained in the Prayer Book Communion rite, which would have been addressed only to baptized and (ideally) confirmed Anglicans, reinforced for Methodist participants the scrutiny they had already undergone preparatory to the rite: Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways; draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort.

Methodists heard the Invitation not only as demanding but also as generous: those baptized who had not yet come to a full assurance of saving faith, but who knew their “utter sinfulness and helplessness” and could sincerely profess to be striving toward holiness, were welcomed to the table. Thus, the sacrament could

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be a confirming ordinance for the assured, and as Scripture and experience authenticated, a converting ordinance for those yet “unconverted, who had not yet ‘received the Holy Ghost,’ who (in the full sense of the word) were not believers.” To every soul who expressed at least a modicum of faith, God would convey through the sacrament preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace depending on the stage of each individual’s spiritual maturity.72 Wesley’s belief that there were degrees of faith had caused the rift with Molther and the Fetter Lane Moravians who advocated “stillness,” meaning one should be still and abstain from any outward work, including the means of grace, until true faith was obtained.73 Wesley’s view was equally disconcerting to Scots Presbyterians and others who feared the Methodists allowed “all promiscuously to come to the Lord’s table.”74 Such accusations were unwarranted, for the discipline surrounding Methodist Communions, in fact, did not suffer all comers.75 The tenor of Wesley’s policy was to encourage people, at whatever stage in the life of redemption, to come regularly to the Lord’s table— provided they showed evidence, as with membership in the Methodist societies in general, of their “desire to flee from the wrath to come, to be saved from their sins.” The American Methodists, even with their strong affirmations of freedom and liberty, could not countenance a totally unrestricted table, and so, after the revision of 1792, continued in their disciplinary rules the condition of examination or careful monitoring. It was not until 1858 that the Methodist Episcopal Church, South dropped the stipulation introduced in 1792 that “no person shall be admitted to the Lord’s Supper among us who is guilty of any practice for which we would exclude a member of our Church.” The Methodist Episcopal Church kept the prohibition until 1892. As late as 1996 the Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church retained the regulation; and only in 1976 did it remove the even more precise qualification that first appeared in 1786 and had persisted in that denomination with only slight verbal changes, but which had earlier disappeared from other Methodist bodies: “Let no person who is not a member of our Society be admitted to the Supper without examination and some tokens given by an Elder or a Deacon.”76 The Free Methodists, in the latter half of the twentieth century, maintained in print that persons who were immoral or engaging in disreputable practices ought to be fenced from the table until penitence was made. They also held up a provision found in early Free Methodist legislation that drew upon the requirements of repentance, neighborly charity, and holiness of life stated in the rite: “All persons properly included in the general invitation may be allowed to partake of the Lord’s Supper among us.” In practice, most Methodist churches in the nineteenth century saw the “Ye that do truly and earnestly repent” as a sufficient safeguard when ministers and church leaders carefully judged worthy communicants by that standard and by the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith defined in the Articles of Religion. Room was thereby left open, following Wesley’s design (though not using his phrase “converting ordinance”), to admit those earnest seekers who were not yet completely convinced of their acceptance with God. Thus a young, weeping penitent could receive permission from Bishop McKendree to approach the table:

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Hurrying to the table she fell upon her knees and cried aloud to God. With streaming eyes the Bishop administered the bread; and just as her lips tasted the wine of the sacramental cup, pardon was communicated, and heaven sprung up in her heart. Instantly she rose to her feet, and her face shining like that of an angel, while, with an eloquence that went to every heart, she told the simple story of the cross, and the wondrous power of Christ to save. All seemed to partake of the common joy of that renewed spirit.77

By that same interpretation, an ex-governor of Maryland surrendering himself to Christ could receive Communion for the first time as “an open declaration of his Christian purpose and faith.”78 Conversely, a woman not a Methodist, whose opinions on the divinity of Christ suggested Arianism, could be barred from communing with their fellowship, or a class leader unreconciled with his neighbor could fence himself.79 Those persons who were already communicants were expected to have prepared themselves for reception by prayer, introspection, and repentance, and ideally, by fasting on the Friday beforehand.80 By 1884, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church had stipulated another act of preparation on the Friday before the sacrament: according to their disciplinary article “Of the Lord’s Supper,” on Friday evening “every pastor in charge of a circuit or station” was to examine “the members of the society in general class” to see “how their souls [were] prospering.” The Invitation provided a viable and valuable guideline for admission, but stripped from its original Prayer Book context, it had lost the fundamental assumption and safeguard that underlay it. No longer could it be presupposed that those who heard the summons had previously been baptized. Elders, following the lead of numerous Methodist writers, in general expected baptism to have taken place prior to the Lord’s Supper and for communicants to have some degree of faith, but made exceptions if circumstances (such as the desire for immersion) had prevented an individual from previously receiving the baptismal washing.81 A deliberate or voluntary neglect of baptism, however, usually kept one from the table.82 Some elders also recognized that at larger gatherings, where the normal strictures of the Methodist system could not be fully employed, or when, by the late nineteenth century, the procedures for examination had mostly broken down, a selfadministered test of “Ye that do truly” might include the unbaptized. Efforts during the mid-nineteenth century to establish a disciplinary rule delineating baptism as a precondition failed,83 primarily because Methodists, in polemical debates with the Baptists at that time, were reluctant to concede either the necessity of baptism prior to Communion or the validity of a restricted, “close” Communion. Thus carefully balanced statements also appeared in the literature: Though, therefore, it is lawful, as a matter of Church order, that Baptism precede the use of the Lord’s Supper, the same as in the dispensation of shadows circumcision usually preceded the passover; yet neither Baptism nor any other Church ordinance is a necessary prerequisite to the Eucharist, and, therefore, not of the communion of Christians with their Lord at his table. The only positive requisite to this communion relates to and involves character rather than forms or ceremonies, and consists of sincere penitence and faith in Christ, or that righteousness which is by faith in Christ.84

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Baptists contended, on a basis of Scripture and church history, that baptism indispensably preceded the Lord’s Supper; to invert the order, as Methodist permissiveness allowed by admitting the “unregenerate” to the table, was to “pervert the Supper and sin a daring sin against Christ.” Countering what they perceived to be Baptist exclusivism, Methodists offered their own scriptural “proofs” negatively put: for example, the disciples had not been baptized before they ate in the upper room, the Great Commission came only after the Supper had been instituted, and nowhere did Christ either command baptism to precede the Eucharist or establish any priority of order (each sacrament thus having its own nature and design).85 Against the Baptist understanding that baptism as initiation into church membership made one eligible for the Supper, many Methodists argued that active faith was the integral ingredient, and not necessarily baptism. With such an interpretation they could also answer Baptist challenges that, by virtue of their baptism, infants logically had a right to Communion. Although in 1826 Freeborn Garrettson had hinted, based on early Christian praxis, that “little children” could receive the Eucharist,86 Methodists had generally followed the advice contained in the “Extract on the Nature and Subjects of Christian Baptism” appended to the Discipline from 1790 to 1797, which reflected Wesley’s own practice: children became eligible when they could “understand the nature and design of the Lord’s Supper” and had a “measure of knowledge and faith” to discern the Lord’s body.87 But in the heat of controversy with the Baptists, new (and questionable) rationales were now given for excluding infants and children. An infant could participate in a passive ordinance (baptism), but was incapable of an active ordinance (Communion).88 Because Jewish children circumcised in infancy could not participate in the Passover until they understood its significance (the age of twelve “according to Luke 2:41–42”), by analogy, baptized Christian children could not partake until they had the proper spirit and understanding.89 Baptism did not automatically bestow church privileges: just as women, who had been baptized, were prohibited from holding church or ministerial offices, so, by the same reasoning, infants were not entitled to Communion.90 Methodists, to Baptist minds, were guilty of theological inconsistencies on these matters, though these paled in comparison to those that surfaced during disputations on the related subject of open versus “close” Communion. Methodist rhetoric and literature criticized as unscriptural and unpastoral the Baptist contention that only immersion baptism made one fit for the table: “the Master made no such distinction” regarding mode, and “his disciples did not teach it, nor enjoin on others to preach it”;91 and an insistence upon immersion denied the possibility of Communion to the sick or dying not previously baptized.92 Likewise, such a requirement fostered a sectarian spirit, consequently promoting bigotry and intolerance, denying religious liberty, and hindering the Christian unity and cooperation that John 17:21 records was prayed for by the Savior: When the table is spread, by any one denomination, and the bread and wine is placed thereon, it is emphatically the table of the Lord, and not the table of that particular denomination. The duty of the administrator is to invite all orthodox Christians who are in good standing in their respective Churches—as the Methodists invariably do— to join in the commemoration of the death and sufferings of Christ; and he is not at

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liberty to withhold the sacred elements from such, or order them to stand aside, as the Baptists do on all occasions.93

To these accusations Baptists retorted with their own charges of exclusivism, by condemning Methodists whose supposed liberality was compromised by their harassment of Baptists unwilling to accept Methodist invitations to the table, and by pointing to the Methodists’ own strict disciplinary laws and regulations, especially those associated with admission to the love feast.94 On the latter, Methodists defended their polity by drawing a distinction between the Lord’s Supper as a “divinely instituted means of grace designed equally for all Christians of every Church” and the love feast as “a prudential means adopted by us, and designed exclusively for us, and those of our friends whom we may choose to invite.”95 By the turn into the twentieth century and Methodism’s establishment as a “national” religion, Methodist practice generally was to recognize baptism as the proper antecedent to the Lord’s Supper, and to acknowledge the Invitation, taken literally, as the standard for self-examination. For this reason, the newsletter of a Durham, North Carolina, church would give notice for Communion, expecting its membership to engage in the time-honored practice of sacramental preparation: The Communion Table will be spread at both the morning and evening services next Sunday so that the entire congregation may have the advantages afforded by it. Members should examine their hearts and see that all malice and envy and uncleanness are put out of them, and be sure that they are in love and charity with all men. It should be a time of consecration and devotion on the part of every one of us. Turn to First Corinthians, 11th chapter and 23d verse, and read to the end of the chapter.96

But Methodists would also practice open Communion, now defined not only to mean that Christians in good standing from other congregations and churches were welcome (the usual understanding of “open” Communion, and the one used in the Baptist debates), but that any individual who could answer the Invitation could partake. “It is not in the spirit of Christ to reckon rigid conformity to ecclesiastical propriety above the dictates of Christian cordiality,” claimed Methodist theologian Henry Clay Sheldon.97 Aided by a theological liberalism that elevated personal experience, held an optimistic view of the human condition, promoted the ideals of democracy, and advocated a social gospel, many Methodists soon took such notions as “Christian cordiality” to refer to an indiscriminate admission to the table; any who so desired could come since “God does not arbitrarily require faith as a previous condition to be met before he is willing to save.”98 Newly published studies on the theology of John Wesley and the history of Methodism complemented this view, perhaps unintentionally, by recounting Wesley’s understanding of Communion as a “converting ordinance” yet without relating it precisely to the original controversy over “stillness,” and without taking into consideration that by their own time a shift in meaning had occurred so that “unconverted” generally no longer referred primarily to the “unawakened” or “unassured” baptized but to those altogether without religion. Concerns about the psychological damage rendered to people by their exclusion from the table, and the limitations to evangelization imposed by barring access to the “altar rail”—the customary place of prayer,

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repentance, and surrender—may each also have contributed to a redefining of “open” Communion. At the end of the twentieth century, the only official standard for admission remained the invitation to Communion within the eucharistic rite. Efforts to mandate a baptismal prerequisite continued to fail, because the broad definition of open Communion was deemed normative by many. Much depended upon local custom and pastoral discretion to determine which, if any, preconditions existed for admission to the table.

The Frequency of Reception Communion every Lord’s Day was an impossibility from the outset in America, but denominational leaders expected opportunities to be made for regular reception. Congregations were enjoined to attend the means of grace and were sometimes encouraged through the public reading of Wesley’s sermon on “Constant Communion.”99 Although the elders had the authority to celebrate Communion at any gathering of Methodists, many appeared content to offer the sacrament when requested, occasionally at certain festivals (e.g., Christmas Day or Eve), or at the time it normally was expected. For many Methodists, the quarterly gathering of the societies (and later, churches) on a circuit for business, worship, and fellowship provided the ordinary and sole occasion for Communion. In some of the larger city appointments, the custom established early was that of monthly Communion. A widespread pattern was for a given Sunday of the month to be marked by a sacramental service for at least one of the societies. Thus the societies in New York City, in the 1790s, held the sacrament at “old church” on the first Sunday of the month, and at “new church” on the second Sunday; by 1816, the sacrament was administered at John Street, Two Mile Stone, and Asbury African on the first Sunday, at Zion African on the second Sunday, Second Street and Duane Street on the third, and at Fourth Street and Greenwich on the fourth Sunday.100 An appointment plan for preachers on the “New York Circuit” supplied for May 1831 through June 1832 shows an adjustment to the older configuration: all of the churches except for two received the sacrament on the second Sunday of the month; the two exceptions held Communion at one of the afternoon services during the month.101 The rhythm of quarterly Communions in circuits and “at least once a month in stations” was the officially stated instruction of the Methodist Protestant Church throughout its history. Some popular writers on the sacrament, such as British Methodist Adam Clarke, whose work was widely read in America, commended reception once a month or once every six weeks as “the proper mean”; he considered weekly “too frequent” and quarterly “too seldom.”102 James Porter, writing in the 1850s, assumed the ordinance to be “usually administered in our regular stations the first Sabbath in each month.”103 Nevertheless, as churches grew from locations on a circuit to congregations with their own resident minister, the ingrained quarterly pattern was preferred both by pastor and people. Certain leaders of the Methodist Episcopal

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Church lamented that its constituents might not be supplied with the sacrament as often as desirable—an argument that would eventually be used to permit pastors other than elders to preside at the table under limited circumstances.104 A proposal was made in 1888 to see that, where possible, the Supper was observed once every two months, but despite such efforts, no formal legislation on frequency was ever established by that denomination, even though it implemented and maintained the regulation that members could be brought to trial for neglecting the sacrament.105 The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, however, followed the lead of Thomas O. Summers, who in 1859 had claimed that “according to our standard authors, and the heretofore almost universal usage of Methodism, the communion should be celebrated at least once a month in every congregation where it can conveniently be done.”106 Summers’s assessment was the substance of the rule adopted by his denomination in 1870, which also acknowledged that in places where monthly Communion was impracticable, the sacrament ought instead be held at every quarterly meeting. Efforts failed in that same year to require each quarterly conference to record the number of eucharistic celebrations for that quarter, but just such a prescription was approved in 1922. The “Complete Quarterly Conference Record Book” used by the Buckhorn Charge in the Illinois Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, if accurately kept, may speak more to the realities of Communion frequency (or infrequency) particularly in the rural areas where Methodism was strongest: for 1922–1923, 1923–1924, and the first three quarters of 1924–1925 (the record for the fourth quarter is missing), the question about sacramental administration was either left blank or answered “no”; Communion was celebrated in three of the four quarters of 1936–1937, only one quarter in 1937–1938, and in each of the first three quarters and twice in the fourth of 1938–1939.107 Legislation or not, the annual schedule for the Eucharist was mostly determined locally by pastors, who often were hesitant either to lengthen the service by adding Communion or to shorten the sermon to accommodate it, and by congregations, which might be indifferent to the sacrament or worried that too frequent reception could render Communion less “special.” External influences, such as the practices of churches representing other Christian denominations, were also a factor, positively or negatively. Within Methodism as a whole, therefore, the frequency with which the sacrament was received was highly variable: a monthly observance could be held in one of the larger churches in the South, or an annual celebration might be deemed sufficient. Such variability characterized Methodism even at the end of the twentieth century, in spite of the push begun in the early part of the century and continued throughout it for Methodists to hold more frequent celebrations, and ideally to emulate the weekly observances of ancient Christians, the Methodists of Wesley’s day, and (increasingly) other Protestant churches in North America. The United Methodist Church designed its Service of Word and Table to be used weekly for word and sacrament, but this intention was followed only in a small minority of congregations.

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The Elements for Communion and the Method of Reception The manual acts accompanying the Prayer of Consecration and the rubric following that prayer in the eucharistic rite of 1792 together identify what Methodists expected at the distribution of the sacrament whether kneeling, standing, or sitting: to receive in the hand a portion of the bread that had been broken by the elder and upon which his hands had been laid, and to be given a cup of wine similarly blessed. No instructions specified the type of bread or wine to be used. For the first half of the nineteenth century at the least, the Discipline of most Methodist denominations assigned the procurement of the elements to the circuit steward, who, presumably, contributed from the foodstuffs at hand or arranged for special items. Grape wine was difficult to acquire and expensive, so often the steward resorted to purchasing the only available “wine,” which might be grape wine diluted with distilled liquor, a locally produced wine made from other fruits, or an alcoholic concoction containing no wine. The varieties of substances brought to the sacrament, and the ever-present desire among some Methodists for uniformity of practice, undoubtedly reinforced the opinion among some that the only suitable elements were those that conformed to what the Lord himself had used. So wrote W. P. Strickland in 1851: If it is clear that the bread used by him on that occasion was unleavened, and the wine unmixed and unadulterated, we should follow his example, as far as we can, to the letter. How often have we been pained by receiving at the Lord’s table bread raised with yeast, salaeratus, or salt, or shortened with lard or butter, while what was called wine resembled vinegar mingled with myrrh, more than the pure juice of the grape!108

Concerned for the quality of the sacramental element, the Methodist Episcopal Church in the early 1860s recommended the use of a locally produced and pure grape wine.109 Consideration was given to the uniform use of unleavened bread, though no official legislation on the matter was ever enacted by any Methodist body, since many evidently concurred with Thomas O. Summers’s assessment that “the element in this case is not so clearly defined as to restrict it absolutely to wheaten bread, leavened or unleavened.”110 Even so, circuit, and later, Communion stewards often opted to use “unseasoned” bread.111 The contents of the cup also attracted considerable attention as questions were raised regarding the kind of wine Jesus would have used at the Last Supper. This inquiry by Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and others (including Baptists) was spurred on by involvement in the cause of temperance, an issue Methodists had addressed in legislation from their founding,112 and a subject that had provoked numerous articles in Methodist periodicals from the 1820s. At stake for many was whether or not Jesus had commanded his followers to imbibe an intoxicant. An article by Congregationalist and biblical exegete Moses Stuart published in the October 1835 issue of the Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review that questioned the use of fermented wine for the sacrament opened the gate to a flood of essays and statements by Methodists and non-Methodists in Methodist publications throughout the course of the century. Some Methodists, concurring with Stuart’s points in his essay and the assumptions of the “two-wine theory” in

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his publication Scriptural View of the Wine-Question (1848), sought to demonstrate by scriptural and historical evidence that both fermented and unfermented wines were to be found throughout the ancient world and in the Bible, and that a nonalcoholic drink had been on the table in the upper room. Such was the intention of the lengthy study Oinos: A Discussion of the Bible Wine Question (1883) by New Hampshire Methodist Leon C. Field, who concluded that Jesus had not made fermented wine from water at Cana, and neither had he commended nor himself used alcoholic substances.113 Arguments setting forth Jesus’ use of unfermented wine were readily embraced at the local level, as evident from Illinois preacher Leonard Smith’s comments regarding the miracle at Cana: Jesus made wine out of water. Perhaps as the water was drawn from the vessels it was made wine. That wine was evidently sweet wine, the unfermented juice of the grape. . . . Christ would not use any but new wine. Would he have if the people were intoxicated given them new wine to make them drunker? Blasphemy. Certainly the wine used was a new sweet wine. No where was any other wine used.114

Theological and social concerns were also translated into liturgical practice. With the first edition of their Discipline, the Wesleyan Methodist Connection included a rubric with the Lord’s Supper rite instructing that “unfermented wine only should be used at the sacrament.” At the same time that the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church was advocating a pure grape wine for the sacrament, some ministers from that denomination were already electing to substitute water, wine diluted with water, or an unfermented grape juice, usually without repercussions from their respective judicatories.115 Indeed, some Methodist Episcopal annual conferences, in the late 1860s and early 1870s, resolved through their temperance committees to discourage any use of alcohol, even at Communion. The denomination took heed of these strong feelings, and in 1872 approved the General Conference Committee on Temperance report that recommended unfermented wine be given at the sacrament.116 By 1874, an anonymous article in the Western Christian Advocate boasted that numerous churches in and around New York and Philadelphia had “banished the alcoholic cup from the Lord’s table” since they had determined, in an interesting moral comparison, “that the Bible no more sanctions the use of intoxicants at the Lord’s table than it does American slavery.” To encourage others to follow suit, a recipe for an unfermented raisin wine was appended.117 Commercially produced unfermented grape juice was also becoming available as a direct result of Louis Pasteur’s experiments in the 1850s with regulating the fermentation process. The former Wesleyan Methodist preacher Thomas Bramwell Welch, whose own concern against serving alcohol at the sacrament had in 1869 motivated him as a trained physician and dentist to produce “Dr. Welch’s Unfermented Wine,” began to find his fellow Methodists receptive to the new product when, beginning in 1875, Methodist publications were targeted for advertising.118 Over the years 1872 to 1916, the Methodist Episcopal Church’s recommendation of unfermented wine for the sacrament slowly evolved into a mandate that the “pure, unfermented juice of the grape” be used.119 The Free Methodists moved more quickly and had by the mid-1870s instructed stewards to offer the unfer-

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mented juice of the grape and “in no case” to use “intoxicating wine.” Petitions came before the general bodies of the Methodist Protestant Church and Methodist Episcopal Church, South, but no churchwide legislation was ever enacted, leaving room for both wine and juice usage—sometimes within the same service of worship. Many remained convinced as did Thomas O. Summers, and even members of the denominations with written policies, that the two-wine theory was nonsense, that what the Lord blessed in the cup was clearly defined as wine, and that to emend arbitrarily the Savior’s instruction would ultimately cause more damage than good. “It would be better not to pretend to celebrate the Lord’s-supper than to do it with water, unfermented grape or raisin juice, or any other slop,” insisted Summers. “Get the pure, fermented, generous juice, ‘the blood of the grape,’ and if possible let it be red, as best setting forth the thing signified.”120 Although by the turn into the twentieth century many Methodists were using or experimenting with an unfermented juice, others adhered adamantly to what they believed the Lord himself had instituted and was shared with other Christians throughout the world. The scientific advancements that led to the production of unfermenting juice for the Communion cup also triggered concerns about the cup itself—and again debates among Methodists. The discovery by investigators in the new field of microbiology that germs were the culprit behind illness and disease provided the incentive for a widespread campaign toward improvements in health and sanitation, among which was included the elimination of the common drinking cup in public places. By the late 1880s, members of the medical community and Protestant Christians of various denominations were asking whether sipping from the Communion chalice could also be a source of contagion. One physician in 1887 suggested the method of intinction (the “bread so prepared that it may be dipped in the cup of wine”) as a substitute for placing the lips on the “poisoned chalice.”121 Over the next two decades, Methodist writers offered other alternatives: glass siphons or straws, grape-shaped capsules filled with wine or juice, individual spoons, individual communion cups, and the omission of the wine altogether (though such risked violating the nineteenth Article of Religion). Of these options, the individual cup seemed the most attractive, practical, and “convenient,” and by the mid-1890s it was being used at Methodist sacramental celebrations. During their November 1895 meeting, the Board of Stewards of the Tryon Street Methodist Episcopal Church, South in Charlotte, North Carolina, officially approved individual cups for communion, having found them to be “cleanlier” and one means of encouraging the communion of persons who had previously stayed away.122 Increasing numbers of Methodists began to introduce individual glass cups to their services in the years following, often filled with Welch’s grape juice.123 Methodist enthusiasm for individual cups was far from unanimous in the 1890s and the following decade. Here a firm distinction was made between a personal receptacle and several cups that each might be used to serve dozens of communicants (including the custom, even in smaller congregations, of giving one cup to men and another to women). Arguments were proffered that before any con-

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sideration should be given to abandoning the historic and universal Christian custom, proof was needed that irrefutably identified the chalice as the source of a communicant’s illness. Questions were posed, tongue in cheek, whether capitulation to the “morbidly sensitive” also required purification of the baptismal water after each act of sprinkling, or limitations upon Christian charitable acts toward the sick, the dying, and the dead. Debates raged regarding the legality of a congregation or pastor introducing the “saloon method” to the sacramental service without the prior approval of the denomination’s legislative body. But most important, opponents of individual cups registered fear that departure from the common cup significantly altered the intended and essential meaning of the sacrament itself: as a sign of the union between Christ and believers, and an expression of the equality and lack of distinction among those who are one body in Christ. Thus, many Methodists shared the sentiment of J. M. Buckley, editor of the New York Christian Advocate, who described the individual cup “as one of the most inconsistent and repugnant innovations ever foisted upon any part of the Christian Church.”124 The voices opposing the innovation, however, very quickly became the minority. Proponents of the new device appealed effectively to the emotionalism of the health issue, as well as to Scripture, the “essentials” of tradition, and the individualism by then a key component of Methodist spirituality and of American democracy. It was pointed out that Jesus had not mandated the use of the common cup, and neither had his church at any time fixed the number of cups to be used. Individual cups, it was suggested, might have been used at the Last Supper to contain the sacramental drink, since what was believed to be the custom at the Passover meal—captured in Leonardo da Vinci’s artistic rendering of the event— supported such a claim. Even if Jesus had used a common cup, what mattered was the significance of the action and not its precise imitation. At issue was not how the sacrament was taken, but that it was taken in remembrance of him. Multiple modes (as with baptism) were therefore not only justifiable liturgically, but were also a sign of the reasonable Christian liberty in nonessentials that purportedly was a hallmark of Methodism. In addition, Jesus had not specifically identified the Supper as a symbol of unity or a vehicle of fellowship in the words of institution; hence, those meanings could be construed as secondary interpretations. The primary understanding of the sacrament was of the communion between the individual believer and the divine, which was best represented by the individual cup: “He takes that little cup in his hand, filled from the common wine, and, forgetful of all but the sacrifice of the cross, he enters into undisturbed fellowship with Jesus.”125 If an expression of unity was desired within the congregation, it could be achieved by the simultaneous eating of the bread and then the unison drinking of the individual cups. Petitions requesting official approval of individual Communion cups that were presented at the General Conferences of 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1912 by members of the Methodist Episcopal Church did not yield the desired legislation. The Discipline of most other Methodist bodies likewise did not establish an official policy. The Free Methodists, however, introduced a rubric in 1915 (still present in their

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1995 Discipline) recommending the use of individual cups “whenever practicable.” For many Methodists, no approval also meant no prohibition, and the use of personal cups flourished throughout the twentieth century, encouraged by advertisements for individual Communion services published in denominational papers and church supply catalogs. The Methodist Episcopal Church made no correction to its rubrical manual acts (altered in 1864) to account for the change taking place: the “cup” and the plate of bread were still to be taken into the hand; but now for the bread there typically was no formal fraction, since, to avoid “handling food unnecessarily,” the bread was precut into small pieces and the communicant permitted “to help himself.”126 To include the new method the African Methodist Episcopal and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church did not need to modify their manual acts, which had kept the language of 1792, for they conveniently contained the instruction for the presider to lay the hand “upon all the vessels which contain the wine.” At the creation of the Methodist Church in 1939, the manual acts were removed entirely from the Communion rite (perhaps as a concession to the two denominations that had previously dropped them), but reference to a singular cup continued in other rubrics; in the 1965 rite the manual acts were restored. Throughout the twentieth century, various elements and methods of reception were thus possible within any given Methodist congregation, depending upon local traditions and the assertiveness of pastoral leadership. Different combinations of forms could be employed in services throughout the year or even on a specific occasion. Grape juice generally was offered, and efforts to restore widespread use of fermented wine (for theological, liturgical, and ecumenical reasons) were largely unsuccessful: a rubric introduced in the 1984 Book of Worship of the African Methodist Episcopal Church authorized both “wine and the unfermented juice of the vine”; the rubrical designation “wine” in the United Methodist rite approved in 1988 was understood to comprehend both fermented and unfermented substances. Bread leavened and unleavened (including wafers and matzoth) could be placed on a plate or basket; the African Methodist Episcopal Church from 1961 narrowed the choice by stipulating unleavened bread. Experimental liturgies, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, saw the consumption of a wide range of questionable elements, but these never supplanted the more common forms. Continuing fears of infectious diseases kept most Methodists away from the common cup though some sought its restoration, applying the same rationales put forward for the reintroduction of wine. The mode of intinction, the growing popularity of which Romey Marshall linked to the practice of chaplains during the Second World War, was regarded as a suitable compromise in spite of the fact that it did not satisfy the Lord’s command to “drink this.”127 Communion could be received in the pews, at the railing, at the altar, or at serving stations scattered around the worship space. Another method ridiculed as “cafeteria” Communion, whereby communicants served themselves from tables placed in the chancel, was not widely accepted, particularly since its detractors insisted that according to Jesus’ precedent and Methodist custom, the elements should be given into the hand and not selfishly taken.128

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What Means Communion? Methodism arguably became a separate denomination in response to the strong desire of the Methodist societies to receive the sacraments. Yet within a century, the Lord’s Supper was largely perceived as a respected but occasional interruption to the Sunday morning preaching service. Ironically, while Methodists were beginning to understand themselves more confidently as church rather than as religious society, enthusiasm for both administration and reception generally waned. Each Discipline continued to describe the Eucharist in sacramental terms as a divinely initiated and effective means of grace, and as an instrument for the upbuilding of the community of saints. With some exceptions, the contents of the approved Lord’s Supper rite remained relatively close to Wesley’s original. But the prevailing Enlightenment rationality that permeated society and church—when added to Methodism’s evangelical accent on inward holiness and the validity of individual experience—encouraged the reasonable explanation that the Supper was a simple memorial meal observed in obedience to Christ’s command whereby each person (perhaps fearfully) confronted God and was inspired for moral living. Emphasis upon the welfare and faith of the individual and a diminished sense of the communion of the community was reinforced by the decline in references to the body of Christ in liturgical texts,129 by sensitivities about fermented wine and the germ-laden common cup, and by the relaxing, within many Methodist denominations, of requirements that restricted access to the table. The dismantling of fences to the table may also have been motivated by a keen sense of democratic idealism, urged on by theological and social perspectives that blurred Christian values with the work and destiny of the nation. Recovery of Wesley’s interpretation of eucharistic theology and praxis, while sought by some in the nineteenth century, received more attention in the succeeding century with encouragement from the ecumenical, liturgical, and Wesleyan-revival movements. Even so, the newer “inheritance” of an infrequent, individualized Communion focusing on personal piety dominated Methodist conceptions and practice during the twentieth century. In fact, a commonly used source for Wesleyan eucharistic theology throughout the nineteenth century— selections from the Hymns on the Lord’s Supper included in official hymnals—was inexplicably excluded from the specified Lord’s Supper hymns in the joint hymnals of 1905 and 1935. After two generations when no Wesleyan eucharistic hymns were identified as such, the Methodist Church’s 1965 hymnal included three among the Lord’s Supper hymns, but then the United Methodist Church’s 1989 hymnal reduced the number to two.130 The modest restoration of Wesleyan eucharistic hymnody in the second half of the twentieth century by some denominations, along with their efforts to promote a practice of word and sacrament and to express more effectively an ecclesial understanding of the corporate worship of the body of Christ, provoked tensions not only within the denominations but also in local congregations as questions were raised about whether or not a uniform American Methodist theology and practice of the sacrament was possible—a question that was continually asked by their spiritual ancestors.

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ethodists have always considered themselves to be a singing people. Even before they received the 1784 Sunday Service, American Methodists were using books and pamphlets containing evangelical hymns, thanks in large part to the prolific output of hymn writer Charles Wesley and the publishing enterprise of his brother John. American publishers prior to 1784 reprinted a few of the Wesley hymn collections, usually at the request of particular Methodist societies. Among the most frequently reproduced were A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1741), Hymns for Those That Seek, and Those That Have, Redemption in the Blood of Jesus Christ (1747), and Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1753), all three of which were brought out in 1773 by New Jersey printer Isaac Collins, and in 1781 by Philadelphian Melchior Steiner. John Wesley’s Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1737), published in Charleston, South Carolina, and issued for the Anglican community in Georgia while Wesley was a missionary there, apparently never saw a second printing as a distinct collection.1 Although no direct reference was made to cantillation in the Sunday Service, Wesley’s expectation that Methodists would sing in worship was clear, for his A Collection of Psalms and Hymns for the Lord’s Day (1784), a slightly abridged version of the 1741 Collection of Psalms and Hymns, was sent along with his Prayer Book revision. That the Methodists would defer to the Wesleyan collections was stated officially in the May 1784 Minutes of the preachers by their design to “keep close to Mr. Wesley’s tunes and hymns.”2 Public worship, as well as private, family, and social worship, would not have been considered Methodist unless accompanied with song. What prayer books were for some Christians, the hymn books were for generations of Methodists: a source for praise, prayer, devotional meditation, and doctrine. Hence, the arrangement of hymns or songs in official collections reveals much about the expectation of their use and more broadly identifies an editor’s or a church’s theological, liturgical, and ecclesiological principles. Likewise, Methodist preferences for certain types of song, and the manner deemed appropriate for their performance, expose essential aspects of Methodist self-identity. In the more than two hundred years of Methodist music

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in America, several tendencies or trends are evident, some of which stand in tension with one another.

Expressions of “Experimental and Practical Divinity” The contents of “official” hymnals produced by American Methodists from 1784 through the 1830s imitated, at least partially, the design of the 1780 Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists, what John Wesley described in the preface to the work as “a little body of experimental and practical divinity.” In the 1780 Collection, which was often referred to as the “Large Hymn Book,” the entire sequence of hymns followed the shape of the Wesleyan via salutis and was thereby organized “according to the experience of real Christians,” beginning with an invitation to repentance, and concluding with integration into the community of faith.3 The earliest American hymn books exposed the via salutis under various headings by a substantial proportion of hymns that were given priority through their placement at the front of the collections. By this method, basic Methodist claims about the mercy, redemption, and salvation made available by Christ’s universal atonement were outlined somewhat systematically, and the evangelical and evangelistic emphases characteristic of the classical Methodist movement were maintained. These hymns were followed by or interspersed with texts falling under various categories: some headings were ecclesiastical or liturgical and indicated hymns meant for Methodists as a worshiping church; other headings designated verse to be used at the “peculiar” Methodist services. Thus the pocketsized books of hymns were intended simultaneously to stimulate growth toward personal holiness and to provide a resource for singing at the multiple settings expected for worship. The Pocket Hymn-Book, Designed as a Constant Companion for the Pious (1790), which carried the imprimatur of Bishops Asbury and Coke and an introductory letter requesting Methodists to purchase no hymn books without the bishops’ signature, utilized a basic format that was adjusted and expanded in later editions and in other Methodist hymnals, such as the Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1821): 1790

1821

Awakening and Inviting Penitential Petition Rejoicing Praise Trusting in Providence Suffering Funeral Fellowship Backsliding Nativity New-Year

Awakening and Inviting Penitential Describing Formal Religion On Backsliding Prayer and Intercession Prayer and Watchfulness Watchnight Justification by Faith Goodness of God in Redemption The Attributes of God Sacramental: The Lord’s Supper Sacramental: Baptism

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Good-Friday Praise Morning and Evening Sacramental Parting Christmas Hymn Baptism Class-Meeting

Rejoicing and Praise For Full Redemption Trusting in Grace and Providence The Christian’s Warfare Christian Fellowship Pastoral On the Spread of the Gospel Christmas New-Year Family Worship: Morning and Evening Family Worship: Parents and Masters Birthday Resurrection For the Sabbath Reading the Scriptures Prospect of Heaven Funeral Hymns Describing Judgment Dismission Additional Hymns Doxologies

The hymns were evangelistic and addressed sinful humanity’s need for saving grace, but the purpose of the hymn books was not to encourage an individual piety divorced from a corporate expression of faith. The triune God remained the subject of the hymns and the recipient of praise and thanksgiving. The condition and decision of the individual was set within a broader context, whether it be those mourning for redemption, the newly awakened, or those striving for Christian perfection. Growth in personal holiness was inextricably linked with social holiness,4 and this fundamental Wesleyan concept permeated the hymns of Charles Wesley that, by sheer numbers, dominated each approved Methodist collection produced in the first half of the nineteenth century. To the hymns of Charles Wesley were joined those by other notable English and evangelical poets, among them the Independent (Congregationalist) Isaac Watts, whose achievements in promoting metrical scriptural paraphrases for Christian worship inspired the poetry and the praxis of the Wesleys.5 As a people striving toward holiness, Methodists of the late eighteenth century and the first three decades of the nineteenth generally sought to distinguish themselves from the world around them. The theological content of their hymns made this clear and their performance of sacred song was to testify further to that fact. Into the first Discipline (Question 57) the American Methodists inserted their adaptation of the answers to the question “How shall we guard against formality in singing?” taken from Wesley’s Large Minutes (Question 39): 1. By choosing such hymns as are proper for the congregation. 2. By not singing too much at once; seldom more than five or six verses. 3. By suiting the tune to the words. 4. By often stopping short, and asking the people, ‘Now! Do you know what you said


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last? Did you speak no more than you felt?’ 5. Do not suffer the people to sing too slow. This naturally tends to formality, and is brought in by them who have either very strong or very weak voices. 6. In every large society let them learn to sing: and let them always learn our tunes first. 7. Let the women constantly sing their parts alone. Let no man sing with them, unless he understands the notes, and sings the bass as it is pricked down [in 1788 changed to “as it is composed”] in the tune-book. 8. Introduce no new tunes till they are perfect in the old. 9. Recommend our tunebook everywhere. And if you cannot sing yourself, choose a person or two at each place to pitch the tune for you. 10. Exhort every person in the congregation to sing, not one in ten only. 11. If a preacher be present, let no singer give out the words. 12. When the singers would teach a tune to the congregation, they must sing only the tenor.

Methodist singing thus was decidedly congregational. In corporate worship, efforts were to be made to ensure the greatest possible level of participation. “Few things can be more pleasing to the Lord,” commented Bishops Asbury and Coke in 1798 on this section of the Discipline, “than a congregation, with one heart and one voice, praising his holy name.”6 To that end, choirs, ensembles, and soloists were discouraged, though not prohibited, since skilled choristers could, ideally, bolster congregational singing; the twelfth “answer” itself suggests the presence of music specialists within a congregation, which could be, as in some British Methodist chapels, a precentor or designated song leader. Wesley had removed from the Prayer Book references to anthems and other service music sung by clerk and choir, thereby indicating his strong preference for “hearing the whole congregation . . . ‘sing with the spirit and the understanding also’ ” rather than listening to a few who “kept [the singing] to themselves, and quite shut out the congregation.”7 Yet the American Methodists did not number among their instructions for singing an explicit restriction against the singing of anthems. Neither had they included the statement from the Large Minutes to “let no organ be placed anywhere,” possibly since such a regulation was largely unnecessary in the American context.8 Perhaps the overall orientation toward congregational singing was deemed sufficient to warrant an openness to a limited offering of other musical contributions. By 1792 the regulations on singing attained a form, under the general heading “Of the Spirit and Truth of Singing,” that would survive, with a few alterations, in the Methodist Episcopal Church until 1856 and in the African Methodist Episcopal Church until 1885.9 Three new rules had been added to define further the acceptable content and style of Methodist song. As a means of restricting questionable texts or doggerel verse and at the same time encouraging uniformity in practice, Methodist leaders were enjoined to “sing no hymns of your own composing.” This rule, which from 1784 had been under the question on “smaller advices relative to preaching” and was moved in 1787 to the section on singing, was often ignored, as evident from the number of hymn books that were privately published, such as the one produced in 1807 by Stith Mead and containing his baptismal hymn. Related to this instruction was the recommendation new in 1792 for Methodists “not to attend the singing schools which are not under our direction.”10 Music literacy was encouraged, but not under the guidance of singing masters who might overly encourage currently popular musical forms, thus prompt-

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ing the third restriction: “The preachers are desired not to encourage the singing of fuge-tunes [sic] in our congregations.” An additional note (which soon became a rule in its own right) explained that although the use of fugue tunes was neither sinful nor improper for private settings, such musical arrangements were not suitable for corporate worship “because public singing is a part of divine worship in which all the congregation ought to join.” According to Jesse Lee, preachers especially in the northern states had been guilty of introducing or allowing fugue tunes in the congregation, wherewith the younger people who understood the musical form sang out, and the old saints fell silent.11 Fugue tunes not only jeopardized effective congregational singing, they also obstructed the hearing of a melody wherein, many Methodists believed, was the natural power of music to move the passions.12 With “four parts all going at one time, and each part on different words,” fugal arrangements similarly impeded the clear declamation of the text, which led Ezekiel Cooper to conclude that the “new mood of singing” was “instituted more to please the ear, than anything else.”13 The selection of appropriate tunes, therefore, was as critical for Methodist worship as was the choice of words. Books of hymn tunes were published independently from collections of hymn texts, and Methodists borrowed freely from John Wesley’s published collections of tunes,14 and from books by American or other British compilers. Tune books could use round-note or shape-note systems, typically were designed with one stanza of a hymn text underlaid, and were often produced in an oblong format with the spine on the short end (“end-openers”). The collections were usually organized by meter, with the most frequently used meters (common, long, and short) at the front of the book, and a variety of “particular” meters coming next. Some of these books contained a brief section introducing the rudiments of music theory to further the cause of music literacy. Printed materials, however, were not the sole source of music. Orally transmitted “folk” and original melodies were a significant part of a core repertoire, especially in the more remote, rural areas. Because of the diversity of tunes, questions soon were raised by some in the Methodist leadership about tune resources to be standardized for Methodist use. From 1808 to 1820, for example, the Methodist Episcopal Church discussed whether to adopt officially a succession of tune books prepared by James Evans of New York that were aligned with the Methodist hymnals, and although never authorized, Evans’s books saw wide use among the Methodists.15 The first approved tune book for the Methodist Episcopal Church came as the result of the General Conference’s action in 1820, and in 1822 The Methodist Harmonist was published. After several reprintings of the 1822 book, the General Conference in 1832 authorized a revised and improved version of The Methodist Harmonist (1833) with “a selection of anthems, pieces, and sentences,” thereby attesting (at least officially) to an increasing openness toward new forms. Other tune books were then issued by the Methodist Episcopal Church’s book agents, who, under a ruling of the 1820 General Conference, could bring out new materials approved by the Book Committee without the formal action of the General Conference (hence they were “official” but not “authorized”). Among them was The Harmonist (1837), designed, as stated in the preface, to “suit the taste of the different sec-


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tions of the country.” As an accommodation to persons “very partial to them,” a number of fugue tunes were printed despite the restrictions against them still listed in the Discipline. Even though the Methodist Episcopal Church had standard and quasi-official tune books and expected its members to use them, pastors and people still felt at liberty to employ whatever best suited their musical tastes and spiritual needs. Reckoned among the ready alternatives were the large supply of camp meeting songsters and the growing number of song books for Sunday schools. With or without tune books, the custom during this period in many Methodist congregations, large and small, was to “line” the hymns, a type of performance practice urged for the cantillation of psalms in the Presbyterian Westminster Directory (1644). The common method was for one or two lines of a stanza to be said or sung by the preacher, his appointee, or a song leader, and when the congregation had sung them, to read out the next one or two lines. Methodist Protestant ministers, for the second hymn of the service, were specifically advised by their Discipline to read out all the verses before the people sang the hymn while seated (the first hymn would have been sung while standing). Another and older practice, the so-called “old way of singing,” called for a rapid, chantlike presentation of a line of the text, followed by the congregation slowly singing the text to a familiar tune with ornamentations added to the melody; there may be evidence for this style at the worship of black Methodists attending Philadelphia’s “Mother Bethel” in 1811.16 The lining out of hymns took into account the illiterate and the poor who could not afford a hymn book, but also risked unintended improvisation upon the standard tunes if the precentor was not a proficient musician. Since the method was meant to encourage melody making by all worshipers, the Ohio Annual Conference, in 1834, went so far as to approve a resolution instructing that hymns were always to be lined out in public worship.17 The Ohio legislation of 1834 came in response to a decline in congregational singing, a problem precipitated by the development of church choirs that emerged under the impetus of the singing schools—the schools themselves having the intended purpose of replacing singing by rote (especially lined-out hymns) with singing by note. Trained singers in quartets or choirs might offer an anthem and one or more hymns during Sunday worship; in some urban congregations during the 1830s, choirs and paid vocalists displaced congregational singing altogether. The admission of choirs to corporate worship had been and remained controversial, with congregations sometimes divided over their usefulness. The presence and placement of a choir were issues, as was the choir’s membership: although persons might be good singers, they might lack the piety expected of worship leaders; in other words, they might have the form but not the power of godliness. “Unconverted singers are more like porcupines than the ‘sheep of Christ’s fold,’ ” lamented Methodist Episcopal minister George Coles after spending an evening trying to improve the singing of his congregation.18 Responding to and also anticipating problems with singers in the Sunday choir, the African Methodist Episcopal Church by 1840 had added to its directions “Of the Spirit and Truth of Singing” the instruction that “no person or persons shall be allowed to sing in our choir, who will not be subject to our authority.”19

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The instrumental accompaniment of congregational singing and the instrumental introduction of a melody in lieu of a vocalized lining out were also controversial subjects. Although evangelical chapels in England sometimes used a bass viol (cello) to accompany voices in worship, many Methodists during this period showed a resistance to the practice, instead preferring a cappella singing. Upon learning that a Methodist Episcopal congregation near Detroit had allowed a bass viol into worship, preacher James Gilruth resolved to “break up this or break down in attempting it.”20 Conversely, as might be expected, advocates of refined or “better” music urged the use of instruments. Thus even by the first decades of the nineteenth century, Methodists were not of one mind regarding the substance and performance of song in Methodist worship.

To Remain a “Peculiar” People? As early as 1837, a new system began to be displayed for organizing the hymnic contents of authorized hymnals. Not that the arrangement primarily according to the via salutis disappeared: as the churches moved toward the new method, the older format was abbreviated to comprise a section of the new design; and some churches issued supplemental hymnals that retained the familiar pattern in the overall framework. The new dogmatic scheme, which shows an organic connection to the previous forms, was, like its predecessor, judged to correspond with the progress and importance of the Christian life. But now the organization of the hymns also reveals a desire for serious theological reflection, an awareness of Protestant scholasticism and a heightened ecclesiastical self-understanding. Hymnals were to function as primers of systematic theology, not only for congregations, but also for the training of pastors.21 Specified liturgical usages appear alongside the devotional; hymns for the Christian seasons are subsumed under their dogmatic heading. One of the most detailed configurations set forth was that by Thomas H. Stockton for the Hymn Book of the Methodist Protestant Church (1837), whose sophisticated theological system began with God and then developed the economy of salvation over the course of 725 hymns by a wide range of authors. This was followed by a separate section identified as “Miscellany,” which included those subjects not easily ordered under the previous scheme. All together the entire book was conceived for the purposes of public, social, family, and private worship: Existence of God Character of God Unity of God General Attributes Special Attributes (Eternity, Independency, Immutability, Spirituality, Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence, Wisdom, Holiness, Justice, Goodness, Truth, Faithfulness, Mercy, Love) Trinity Relations of God Maker


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Preserver Sovereign Works of God Creation Providence Redemption Love of the Father Mediation of Christ (Character, Promise, Types, Birth, Life, Death, Resurrection, Ascension, Intercession, Reign, Second Coming, Offices, Titles) Dispensation of the Spirit (Promise, Descent, Operations, Prayer, Addresses) Institution of the Church (Church, Bible, Ministry, Sabbath) Public Worship (Assembling, Before Sermon, Praise, Prayer, After Sermon, Dismission) Social Worship (Prayer Meeting, Class Meeting, Love Feast) The Ordinances (Baptism, Lord’s Supper) Admission to Membership (Application, Welcome) Houses of Worship (Foundation, Dedication) Times of Declension Times of Revival The Millennium Process of Salvation Introductory Sin Original Universal Destructive (In Life, In Death, In the Judgment, In Hell) Repentance (Conviction, Contrition, Confession, Reformation) Faith (Nature, Prayer for Faith, Exercise of Faith) Justification (Sought, Found) Regeneration Adoption Witness of the Spirit Graces of the Spirit (Beatitudes, Confidence, Courage, Fear, Godliness, Gratitude, Hope, Humility, Joy, Love, Mind of Christ, Resignation, Wisdom) Sanctification Triumph in Death Glory in the Resurrection Approval in the Judgment Immortality in Heaven Miscellany Personal and Domestic Duties Private Devotion (Retirement, Reading the Scriptures, Watchfulness, Prayer, Praise, Morning, Noon, Evening, Midnight)

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For Parents and Masters Family Worship (Morning, Evening, Morning or Evening) Emblems Of Christian Life A Pilgrimage A Race A Warfare Affliction Poverty Persecution Temptation Sickness Bereavement The Backslider Penitent Restored Special Occasions Fast-Day Funerals Watch-Night New-Year Meetings for the Poor Missionary Meetings Sabbath School Meetings Hymns Not in the Plan Doxologies Ten years later, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South issued its first hymnal, A Collection of Hymns for Public, Social, and Domestic Worship (1847), organized under a simpler plan, but one that nevertheless demonstrated the ecclesiastical status and priorities of the new denomination, the book’s expected uses, and the willingness of some Methodists to blur national and Christian identity: Part I: Public Worship Being and Perfections of God Mediation of Christ Offices of the Holy Ghost Institutions of Christianity The Church The Ministry Baptism The Lord’s Supper The Sabbath The Gospel Call Penitential Exercises Christian Experience Justification and the New Birth


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Entire Sanctification and Perfect Love Duties and Trials Death and the Future State Special Occasions Missions Bible Erection of Churches Education of Youth The Seasons National Solemnities On a Voyage Part II: Social Worship Communion of Saints Prayer Part III: Domestic Worship The Family The Closet Benedictions and Doxologies Other Methodist denominations during this period (and beyond) adopted methods of organization for their authorized hymnals similar to that of the 1847 book, although the configuration of the scheme could vary (especially the location of the slowly shrinking group of via salutis hymns), and new categories could be added. For example, the authorized Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1849) framed the dogmatic structure of that book’s contents with hymns designated for “worship,” beginning with a general heading “Introductory to Worship” and concluding with hymns specified for the “Close of Worship.” Even the Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection in America (New Edition, 1845), organized primarily according to an expanded via salutis pattern by compiler Cyrus Prindle, shows influences of the new organizational methodology: the categories “Attributes of God,” “Trinity,” “Fall of Man,” “Depravity,” and “Christ, Atonement, &c” precede the older opening headings of “Awakening and Inviting” and “Penitential.”22 During this period, Methodists continued to sing many of the British evangelical hymns of their ancestors, although the number of texts by the Wesleys, Watts, Doddridge, and others gradually declined in favor of new or newly discovered hymns by American and English poets. Selected hymns, songs with refrains, and choruses for the camp meeting, the revival, and the prayer meeting, previously published individually in separate songsters or in composite volumes, now, by popular demand and for reasons of marketing, started to come into official denominational books. Favorite Sunday school hymns likewise found a place; and in return, the Sunday school hymnals inherited many of the beloved via salutis hymns that were being displaced from the authorized hymnals. The general intention was to publish official books that would, in one discrete volume, represent the multiple

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purposes of sacred verse: doxological, evangelical, penitential, catechetical, and devotional. To meet the needs of their members and constituents who did not speak English, Methodist publishers produced translations of the authorized book or new collections that could be used for North American congregations or for mission abroad (e.g., Deutsches Gesangbuch der Bischo¨flichen Methodisten-Kirche [1865]). Methodist ministry with Native American congregations was aided through the publication by church book concerns of hymnals attentive to cultural particularities, such as Indian Melodies (1845) by Narragansett (Brotherton) compiler Thomas Commuck. Despite a positive reception to recommendations made in 1864 and 1868 from the North Indiana Conference that the Methodist Episcopal Church print their hymnal in braille, such a publication was not deemed financially feasible at that time.23 Numerous hymn and song texts introduced into the authorized hymnals were of irregular or unusual meters, which required the publication of appropriate tunes to accompany them. For this reason, and because of the diversity of Methodist musical tastes, many of the larger denominations responded with official and unofficial tune books devised to prevent their members from deferring to non-Methodist resources and to secure a greater uniformity in practice. Tune books were often cross-referenced with the authorized hymnals, but in response to demand, denominational book agents from the mid-1850s began issuing unofficial single volumes, bound on the long edge, that combined both texts and tunes.24 Some of these books, such as Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church. With Tunes for Congregational Worship (1857), were printed so that on the left-hand page were tunes organized by meter, interlined with the first stanza of a suitable hymn text, and on the right-hand page were entire hymn texts for the representative stanzas and other hymns of like meter. Other collections placed tunes at the top of each page with texts of the same meter below (e.g., L. C. Everett, The Wesleyan Hymn and Tune Book; Comprising the Entire Collection of Hymns in the Hymn-Book of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with Appropriate Music Adapted to Each Hymn [1860]). Anthems, quartets, octets, and other set pieces could be added in a separate section. The types of tunes used in these collections were subject to debate. Methodists sympathetic to the music reform movement spearheaded by Thomas Hastings, Lowell Mason, and others, preferred “refined” tunes based upon or inspired by European musical sources (e.g., chorales, oratorios, opera, symphonic works) to “crude” American folk melodies and ballads. But in this period, melodies originating from “secular” sources were considered by many to be of lesser value (if articles in Methodist weeklies are an accurate measure) than those simple and suitable tunes that “addressed the heart rather than the sense” and were “distinguished from the platitudes of worldly sentiment [and] identified with immortal truths.”25 Some Methodists were not satisfied with the direction of their official hymnody, text and tune, and nostalgically longed for the old hymns, especially those that bespoke an Arminian free salvation. “The songs of the day may please the ear by their new dress, but they lack that soul and depth that exists in the old ones,” observed Leonard Smith of Illinois.26


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Dissatisfaction was also voiced by those who deplored the continuing decline in congregational singing and the increasing use of musical instruments in corporate worship: “Organs, choirs, and promiscuous sittings have pretty well petrified Methodism in our cities and large towns. Oh, that Methodists were content to be a peculiar people. As we assimilate, our hold on the masses relaxes.”27 The demise of Methodist peculiarities was not the only cause of consternation. Of concern was the integrity of worship itself. Those who did not find the organ objectionable, believing it to be “appropriate to the sanctuary” and “never desecrated to profane uses,” decried the inclusion of a “promiscuous mingling together of flutes, clarinets, and fiddles” that secularized the sacred event.28 The surrender of singing to only a few compromised worship’s power and purpose: We doubt whether it would be erroneous to say that singing is not only an important part of divine worship, but the most important part. It unites prayer and praise, and, indeed, all the affections and acts of the soul which are involved in worship, and its devotional expression is more earnest, and fervent, and sublime, than the ordinary form of prayer, or, indeed, any other devotional act. It is the ecstasy of devotion, rising higher, uttering itself more rapturously, or more importunately, than any other religious exercise. It has, or at least is adapted to have, more of the communion of religious worship, than any other devotional form. In prayer the multitudes listen to, or quietly, if not passively, follow the preacher; in singing it is designed that they should openly unite, each taking an active part, each speaking for himself, and for the whole. What other act of public worship is so exalted, and should be so grand and so rapturous?29

A petition from Urbana, Ohio, sent to the 1840 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church requested action regarding choirs that “sit apart from the great body of the church,” “wholly govern the singing,” and introduce “such tunes as our members cannot sing.” Denominational leaders did not enact new regulations; rather, they urged reinforcement of the already-present rules in the Discipline extolling the singing of all persons in the congregation.30 The Pastoral Address delivered on the occasion of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s 1846 General Conference advised against instrumental music in worship (as contrary to “primitive usage”) and choirs supplanting the congregation’s song, yet no formal action was taken then or later at the General Conference of 1874 when the topic was again broached in that year’s Pastoral Address.31 Disputes persisted at the local level, however. Congregations embroiled in controversy sometimes split over musical issues such as whether or not to install an organ—the organ, like a choir, symbolizing formality (and consequently for some, a decline in spirituality) in worship.32 Concerns about protecting the apostolic and Wesleyan primacy of congregational singing continued to be voiced, but in the majority of Methodist denominations, the momentum toward use of choirs and instruments in corporate worship could not be disrupted. The more conservative Holiness denominations, fearing Methodism’s acculturation, made music in worship a constitutive concern, and addressed the subject through official legislation. The Wesleyan Methodists in their first Discipline recommended both the lining out of hymns and the elimination of instrumental music. Free Methodist D. F. Newton opined that instruments and choirs obstructed

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a return to primitive Christianity, for they were “clogs to the wheels of salvation and greatly retard[ed] millennial glory.”33 Acknowledging the complaints of Newton and others, the Free Methodists included specific restrictions in their Discipline and kept them through the first third of the twentieth century: under the heading “Of the Spirit and Truth of Singing” was entered “in no case let there be instrumental music or choir singing in our public worship.”

Increasing Diversity: Methodist and Musical The 1878 Hymnal of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the first authorized hymn book for that denomination that was published in two versions, one with text only and the other with texts and tunes, virtually gives an official endorsement to the disputed changes in Methodist musical praxis. Included in the “Preface to the Hymnal with Tunes” were the suggestions that “there should be a choir or a precentor, and an organ, if possible, to lead the people,” and that these supports to congregational song were best situated “in front of the congregation.” Four years later, Methodist Episcopal Church, South book agent and theologian Thomas O. Summers defended both organs and choirs rightfully used in worship, and even composed the hymn “Praise Him with Organs” for the inauguration of a new organ at McKendree Church in Nashville.34 Choirs had become fixtures in numerous Methodist churches and an expected component of Sunday and certain occasional services (e.g., revivals), so new debates focused upon such matters as the vesting of choristers and female singers wearing hats for worship. Children and youth were constituted into “junior” choirs and made appearances in worship. Organs or pianos mainly accompanied singing and sounded solo works in those churches that used instruments, and by 1900 Wesleyan Methodist congregations also figured among them. Other instruments were also used in increasing variety during this period. New inventions such as the reed organ and the “vocalion” were promoted as economical substitutes for larger keyboard instruments.35 Woodwinds and strings, formed into chamber groups or orchestras primarily associated with the Sunday school, occasionally played in corporate worship; their offerings could be selected from musical arrangements produced by Methodist publishing houses. Hesitations were at first expressed about the use of brass, however, even within congregations accepting of other instruments: in 1885, a dispute erupted in a North Carolina church about the place of a cornet in worship, which was resolved when the pastor confirmed the instrument’s suitability for “enriching” worship.36 Only the Free Methodists would maintain their musical restrictions for the majority of this period; even after choirs and instruments were permitted, their use was qualified and limited.37 Nevertheless, vigilance was urged lest instrumental music, choral singing, or solo monopolize worship or turn it into a concert. Enthusiastic and robust hymn singing was ever encouraged as “the people’s liturgy” to be participated in fully with heart and voice,38 and the blame for its decline was inevitably placed on the musical interlopers. “Whatever keeps the people from singing keeps them from worshipping God, and thus destroys the vital power of the church,” warned African Methodist


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Episcopal bishop Henry Turner.39 The reintroduction of lining the hymns, which had fallen into disuse, was recommended—by rubric in the African Methodist Episcopal Church—as was the careful and devotional reading out of hymn texts from the pulpit prior to their cantillation by congregation or choir.40 Choirs and instruments were not the only culprits to be blamed for hushing congregational song. Some Methodists criticized the contents of the authorized hymnals themselves, but for various reasons. The official hymnals continued, with some adjustments, the organizational pattern of the previous period which employed a dogmatic outline and framed the hymns according to the occasions of worship. The Methodist Episcopal Church’s movement toward more formal and definitive patterns for Sunday corporate worship in the late nineteenth century was expressed in its 1878 hymnal, a collection that both the Wesleyan Methodist Connection and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church would eventually adopt as their own. The book began with hymns under the category of “Worship” consisting of general praise hymns and hymns for “Sabbath” and “Morning and Evening”; the total number of hymns under “Worship” was 117 (out of 1,117), almost double the 63 (of the total 1,129) in the 1849 book. Efforts to incorporate service music more broadly in worship was indicated by a new category, “Occasional Pieces and Chants,” added at the end of the dogmatic scheme in the version of the 1878 hymnal with tunes. This or a comparable heading would subsequently be listed in other authorized denominational hymnals published with tunes, save (at least for a while) for those of the Holiness churches. The presentation of service music was not entirely new: separate listings of doxologies had already appeared in earlier authorized books; and because of their “frequent use in our churches” (according to the publisher’s notice), six psalms in the style of Anglican chant had been included in the appendix of the unofficial New Hymn and Tune Book: An Offering of Praise for the Methodist Episcopal Church (1867), edited by popular evangelist and song book compiler Philip Phillips. But the 1878 book marked a turning point for the contents of future authorized hymnals, and two years later another milestone was reached with the first placement of liturgical texts (an order for public worship; baptism and membership rites) into an official hymnal—The New Hymn-Book of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. For some, these changes, along with the appearance of hymns representing the treasury of the ages, particularly translations of Greek, Latin, and German hymns, marked progress in Methodist spirituality and liturgical respectability. For others, they signaled a loss of the vigors of historic Methodist “experimental” religion and represented unwelcome innovations that kept persons from active vocal participation in worship. The economic, social, theological, and spiritual diversity now characteristic of the Methodist membership was reflected in its preferences for texts and tunes. Multiple opinions were voiced in periodicals and legislative proposals about music’s purposes and performance. The view that Methodist worship music should be a cultivated expression of the sacred arts was countered with the proposition that the words and music popular with the people ought to be the norm for both worship and denominational hymnals. Even so, claims were made that limits ought to be applied to the wholesale adoption into church music of “worldly” musical forms (e.g., secular patriotic songs reflecting a rampant nationalism, and jazz)41 or

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those songs that, in violation of the long-standing General Rules, “did not tend to the knowledge or love of God.” Concerns that hymns of doctrinal depth (e.g., the Wesley hymns) form the core repertoire, rather than popular but theologically bankrupt “ditties,” were met with the argument that the salvation of souls could be accomplished only with recently composed songs of sound sentiment and fervent devotion, and for that reason denominational hymn books were rarely used at revivals. Texts deliberately written to articulate the theological emphases of liberalism and modernism contributed to the downplaying of hymns explicitly addressing sin and its penalties, and gave rise to the category of social gospel hymns. The ministries of social welfare promoted by the churches and engaged in by deaconesses, members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and other social reformers, also gave impetus to the inclusion of new types of hymn texts. In reaction, Methodist evangelicals lauded the gospel hymns of the urban revival that, in simple words and melodies, and with predictable harmonies, expressed the heartfelt yearning of the individual soul for God, though the gospel hymn’s stress upon personal, autonomous religion and freedom of choice accentuated, perhaps unwittingly, one of the basic tenets of liberalism. Methodists actively contributed to the gospel genre,42 with texts and tunes composed in both the “white” and “black” style: selections from the work of Fanny Crosby (“Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine”), Ira D. Sankey (the tunes “Tell It Out” and “Sankey”), and Charles Albert Tindley (“We’ll Understand It Better By and By”) made their way into the authorized hymnals and were still sung at the end of the twentieth century. As in former days, those dissatisfied with the new authorized books turned elsewhere, sometimes to the previously authorized books already owned and kept (for both financial and emotional reasons), and often to the unofficial collections also produced by denominational presses. The Cokesbury Hymnal, later renamed the Cokesbury Worship Hymnal, was, as stated in the 1923 edition, “an attempt to bring back the old hymns and tunes that people love to sing” in an effort to remedy entire defection from Methodist publications. A few hymnal editorial committees for the denominationally approved books endeavored to address the pluralities of their constituency and growing ecumenical activity while maintaining the trajectory already established, that the primary (but not exclusive) use of the hymnal was for public worship. Nowhere was this better seen than in the 1935 panMethodist hymnal, assembled on the verge of the merger between the two largest episcopal Methodisms and the Methodist Protestant Church.43 According to the preface, the commission charged with the book’s preparation “constantly held in mind the perpetuation of the Wesley tradition, the varied desires of the Church, the different ages of Church members, the continued value of evangelism, and the emphasis upon the application of the gospel to everyday life.”44 In response to complaints about the difficulty of following text and notation when located in different places on a page, as many stanzas as possible of any given hymn were interlined between the musical staves. The texts and tunes chosen reflected diverse theological interests and musical styles, although traditional evangelical emphases such as repentance were downplayed (only four hymns so identified), and the subject of death (with only three suggested hymns) is jettisoned in favor of hymns


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anticipating the bliss of eternal life. The general organizational headings of the book maintained a continuity with previous dogmatic plans, and added headings expressive of the new theological and liturgical trends: Worship God Jesus Christ The Holy Spirit The Gospel The Christian Life The Living Church The Christian Home and Family Hymns for Children The Kingdom of God The Eternal Life Special Seasons and Services Ritual Music for the Holy Communion Ancient Hymns and Canticles Ritual and Responsive Readings In their 1957 hymnal, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church took up this same structure and added two new general categories with a few representative hymns that conveyed the church’s commitments to the past (“The Wesley Graces”) and the present (“Youth”). Virtually the same subheadings were adopted as in the 1935 book, but with some specialties (“Spirituals”) that defined the hymnal as a worship resource for African Americans proud of their distinct musical heritage. The diversity within that denomination was likewise expressed in its hymns: selections by African-American poets and composers were interspersed with texts and tunes both ancient and modern, many of them unknown in the 1935 pan-Methodist book. The distance Methodist music and hymnals had come from 1784 is evident in a series of instructions delineated in the Address by the Zion bishops printed at the front of the hymnal; yet therein are echoes reminiscent of the historic “Of the Spirit and Truth of Singing”: 2. Let all provide themselves with books. Every member should have his hymn book. 3. Let all sing. 4. The minister must take and express deep and constant interest in congregational singing. We must redeem it from the failure into which it has drifted by the choir and chorus emphasis. 5. The choristers, directors of choirs, and ministers of music, must do the same. 6. There should be a choir, or a precentor and organ if possible to lead the people. The best arrangement is to have the choir and organ in front of the congregation.

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7. Frequent gatherings of the congregation in praise meetings and for instruction and practice in learning new hymns are most desirable. For the sake of variety and freshness, the pastor and chorister should make unyielding efforts to have the congregation learn new tunes. 8. This book should be the standard book of the Church School as well as of the congregation and should be constantly used in the social meetings as well.

New Songs and Sounds Methodist music in the latter half of the twentieth century maintained a few continuities with its early roots, particularly the emphasis upon active congregational singing. Hymnal organization based primarily upon the via salutis disappeared, but the original Methodist pattern, identified under various names, remained in fragmentary form imbedded within a larger dogmatic structure. The dogmatic schemes for the church hymnals varied; likewise did the placement of the via salutis material, and the location for the increasing number of hymns specified for seasons and occasions in the Christian liturgical calendar, which were prompted, in part, from the ecumenical and liturgical movements (these latter are located under a separate general heading within the hymnals for the Methodist Church [1965] and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church [1996]). The African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal (1984) ordered its hymns and resources roughly according to the pattern laid out in 1935, and the joint hymnal of the Wesleyan Church45 and the Free Methodists (Hymns of Faith and Life [1976]) used six general categories (“The Worship of God,” “The Christian Life,” “The Living Church,” “The Nation,” “Service Music,” and “Rituals”); both books situate hymns addressing the way of salvation under the heading “The Christian Life.” The Methodist Hymnal (1965) anticipated the location to be selected in its successor of 1989 by placing hymns on the Christian life as the final heading under the overarching category “The Gospel and Christian Experience,” which also included hymns on the Persons and the Unity of the Trinity. A five-part creedal structure governed the ordering of hymns in the United Methodist Hymnal (1989): General Services Hymns, Canticles & Acts of Worship The Glory of the Triune God The Grace of Jesus Christ The Power of the Holy Spirit The Community of Faith A New Heaven and a New Earth Psalter Other General Services & Acts of Worship Here the via salutis was set out under the pneumatological article (“In Praise of the Holy Spirit,” “Prevenient Grace,” “Justifying Grace,” “Sanctifying and Perfecting Grace”), and a significant number of hymns for liturgical times and


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rites were lodged under ecclesiology. Thus at the end of the twentieth century, a new governing framework based upon a liturgical structure had emerged. While it still incorporated the older devotional scheme, no longer did it do so under categories descriptive of the “experience of real Christians,” but rather using headings believed to encapsulate the essentials of Wesley’s (and Wesleyan) soteriology. The diversity characteristic of hymnals produced in the first half of the twentieth century continued in the second half, with the Methodist and later the United Methodist Church the most deliberate about introducing texts concerning the contemporary ecumenical issues of social justice, environmental stewardship, the discipleship and witness of women, and Christian unity. Recognizing its multicultural constituency, the United Methodist Church oversaw the production of separate hymnals for racial and ethnic groups (e.g., African American, Native American, Korean, Hispanic), many of whom expressed distinct linguistic and musical preferences; representative hymns and songs from these groups appeared in the 1989 book. Tunes in compositional styles familiar to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Methodists still predominated during this period for all the Methodist denominations, since such musical harmonies were construed by many as definitive of proper church music. Musical settings heretofore unfamiliar were also introduced, based upon the assumption that spreading the gospel in a modern age required the singing of new types of songs. Arrangements of blues, pop-gospel, 1960s folk, Taize´ worship music, and even plainchant could be found in some Methodist hymnals. Thus, a Charles Wesley text might be located adjacent to a contemporary gospel song, and a Lutheran chorale placed near a text by United Methodist Jane Marshall. Patriotic texts coexisted in the same book with new Christian songs written by Methodist poets and composers from outside the bounds of North America, and who resided in regions once served by missionaries from the United States. The technology that allowed quick access to new songs from around the world caused Methodists at the end of the twentieth century to revisit a problem of former days: how to establish a definitive corpus of Methodist music. When a congregation opted to use texts for songs and choruses splashed upon a wall by an overhead projector, there were no limits (after securing proper copyright permission) to what they might sing. Denominational theological distinctions evident through hymnody—especially as conveyed by the organizational arrangements of an authorized hymnal—thus were no longer possible as books were laid aside. Another problem once again was what constituted proper congregational song and the appropriate musical accompaniment to that song. The search for texts strong in theological substance while personally engaging became particularly relevant given the easy access to new music that had stood neither the test of time nor the rigors of an editorial committee. Determination of appropriate instruments was left to local congregations, who could choose anything from alto saxophone to zither. Technology also brought the possibility of prerecorded music. With all these innumerable options for multiple forms of media, some Methodists nevertheless elected to reclaim part of their simple past by restoring the role of the song leader.

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Tendencies and Trends As attested in the evolving methods for the organization of hymnals in all the Methodist denominations, the tendency has been for Methodists to move from a structure reproducing the individual and corporate way of salvation, to a dogmatic pattern, and then (for United Methodists) to a liturgical framework. Such a process is not unique to the Methodist family: in general, newly formed churches tend to organize their hymnals either alphabetically by first line or by following a scheme stressing a particular piety and devotion; churches then move to a dogmatic system following either the sequence of biblical revelation or a theological understanding of God, church, and world; and finally employ a liturgical pattern designed according to the liturgical calendar or the shape of the liturgy itself. But Methodists have not abandoned the oldest pattern, the devotional system, as they moved on to other structures. The via salutis remained for Methodists an accurate description of the Christian life, as well as a connection with their theological and hymnological roots. To a certain degree, retention of the via salutis has allowed Methodists to preserve something of their original identity as an ecclesiola in ecclesia—a religious society within the greater church—as they became institutionalized and bureaucratized as denominations. As hymnal organization was transformed from a devotional to a dogmatic format, and as worship for the larger Methodist bodies became more formal and elaborate, another shift occurred, particularly at the end of the nineteenth century: evangelical hymn texts that interwove individual and corporate piety were supplanted by a new type of “gospel” text that dwelt upon the personal religious faith of the autonomous individual. Precisely at a time when many of the churches were striving to invite denominational unity through the placement of orders of worship into the hymnals, there occurred a decline in hymns (among them the Wesley hymns) articulating the church as the body of Christ, and worship as the praise of the entire company of believers. The American emphasis upon the rights and dignity of the individual was being played out in Methodist hymnody as elsewhere in Methodist theology and practice. Then, with the rise of the American social conscience in the twentieth century, and the liturgical movement’s accent upon leitourgia as the worship and work of all the faithful, hymns bespeaking the community’s diakonia and doxology began to be added alongside the old gospel favorites. Thus twentieth-century hymnals such as the United Methodist 1989 book may address the diverse preferences of its users through different types of hymns, but also juxtapose contradictory theologies about the relationship between the individual and the church. Hymnals and music practice also show the tendency, seen elsewhere, of Methodists over time to accommodate to the broader culture. Methodists have done so at different rates, with some embracing acculturation as a positive method for ensuring relevance and meeting current needs, and others reluctantly conceding the adoption of popular styles and modes. The Methodist Episcopal Church has been the most ready to assimilate cultural forms; the Free Methodists, as might be expected, have been more resistant. Even before the Free Methodists had permitted the use of choirs and instruments in their worship, the successor of the Methodist


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Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church, had provided in its Book of Worship (1945) orders for the “Recognition of Choristers” and the “Dedication of an Organ.” What new songs Methodist denominations sing and how they render praise and prayer are thus inextricably linked to their theological self-understanding, and especially their perception of the relationship between persons of faith and the world that God sent his Son to save.

7

The Solemnization of Christian Marriage

he foregoing accounts of Sunday worship, the peculiar services, the sacraments, and music have reinforced the initial proposition that changes in the shape and content of Methodist worship reveal a process of “Americanization,” in other words, a tendency gradually to abandon countercultural distinctions and accommodate certain views and practices of the larger American society. The trend already evident in Methodist music and within the “ecclesiastical” rites, those distinctively Christian celebrations that essentially define the nature of the church, is even more apparent in the Methodist public rituals for life-cycle events. Because marriage and, similarly, burial are not unique to the church and are indeed common to every society and culture, they to a greater extent blend features from the general culture with the specifically liturgical. No liturgy in fact is void of local cultural color; and the localization of a church’s liturgy may testify to the incarnational nature of Christian worship. These “occasional” rites tend to be more open to the vox populi than others, and textual modifications are often the result of changes in or influences from the practice of the wider society. Yet at the same time, participants in these rites often show the inclination to adhere to the “tradition,” whether it be expressed by words, actions, or gestures. The marriage rites and the accompanying official legislation related to marriage purported to define for Methodists the nature and purpose of a Christian marriage. Amendments to older forms and policies were brought on by theological shifts, themselves influenced, at least in part, by changes in the society at large regarding the status of women, the meaning and function of marriage and family, and the customs and ceremonies considered “essential” for a wedding. Because Methodist ministers were called upon, as sometimes the only legally authorized officiants available, to preside at the nuptials of persons unfamiliar to them or to the church, the specific language of the Christian marriage rite soon became connected with the general marital vocabulary of the supposedly Christian nation, contributing further to the blurring between the churchly and the civil.

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Wesley’s Marriage Restrictions and Rite, and Their Reception John Wesley’s first publication on the subject of marriage was Thoughts on Marriage and a Single Life (1743), wherein he asserted that although marriage should not be despised, for it was ordained by God, continence, or the celibate state, was preferable for believers since it was God’s special gift for the redeemed.1 Wesley recognized the virtue of Christian companionship and he himself blessed marital unions, but throughout his life he advocated the superiority of the single life for Christians, mostly from the fear that some would substitute preoccupation with a spouse for attention to godly living.2 As a means of protecting Christian discipline for those who chose to marry, Wesley urged the avoidance of marriage with unbelievers and the acquisition of parental consent to the marriage. That some American Methodists took Wesley’s instruction to heart is evident from a homemade notebook fashioned by Elizabeth Smith and given to preacher Philip Gatch before their marriage in 1778; the first entry reads, “Believers to Marry with Unbelievers is not Lawful,” followed by citations from Genesis 6:1–2, Deuteronomy 7:3, and 2 Corinthians 6:14.3 Concern that such advice was frequently overlooked on both sides of the Atlantic prompted the Methodists to enact relevant legislation in the Large Minutes, which the Americans subsequently integrated almost verbatim into their first Discipline: Q. 20 Do we observe any Evil which has lately prevailed among our Societies? A. Many of our Members have married with unawakened Persons. This has had fatal Effects. They had either a Cross for Life, or turned back to Perdition. Q. 21 What can be done to put a Stop to this? A. 1. Let every Preacher publickly inforce the Apostle’s Caution, Be not unequally yoked with Unbelievers. 2. Let him openly declare, whoever does this will be expelled the Society. 3. When any such is expelled, let a suitable Exhortation be subjoined. And 4. Let all be exhorted to take no Step in so weighty a Matter without advising with the most serious of their Brethren. Q. 22 Ought any Woman to marry without the Consent of her Parents? A. In general, she ought not. Yet there may be an Exception. For if, 1. A Woman be under a necessity of marrying: If, 2. Her Parents absolutely refuse to let her marry any Christian: then she may, nay, ought to, marry without their Consent. Yet even then a Methodist-Preacher ought not to marry her. During the period 1784 to 1788, the preachers meeting in conference mollified the language regarding the consequences of marriage with an unawakened individual. Whereas in 1784 marriage with such a person had “fatal effects” and resulted in a “cross for life,” by 1788 these marriages had “bad effects” whereby the believer was “hindered for life.” The 1792 Discipline retained the phraseology of the 1788 Discipline and added a note defining what was meant by the “unawak-

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ened”: “one whom we could not in conscience admit into society.” Members like “Sister S. B.,” who opted to marry the unawakened, received the promised punishment of expulsion. “It went right hard with some of her friends,” confided Ezekiel Cooper to his journal, “but I must enforce the rules.”4 The regulation relating to parental consent received minor editorial changes between 1784 and 1792, though no addition was made specifying the age below which consent was required, perhaps because Methodists preferred consent in all cases and, besides, the legal age varied by state.5 One editorial change in 1788 cleared up the ambiguous last sentence of the rule, which stated that “a MethodistPreacher ought not to marry her [a woman not receiving consent].” Certainly, before the Christmas Conference of 1784, the understanding of the rule in the Large Minutes was that a Methodist preacher should not himself marry a woman without parental consent. That such was the case is revealed in a letter of May 18, 1784, from Irishman Robert Lindsay addressed to his former countryman and fellow Methodist preacher Edward Dromgoole, who at that time was serving in Virginia: Well, I have at last taken courage, and on the 6th inst. [of this month] ventured into the holy state of matrimony! . . . But—O pity me! In securing the possession of my dear companion, I have step’d aside from the Minutes of Conference which forbids a Methodist preacher to marry a woman without the consent of her parents. Here I stand exposed to any penalty my Brethren shall think fit to inflict upon me. But, I hope for a favourable issue. We dearly loved each other, and were determin’d to sink or swim together. Each of us ventured much, but I hope to find more lenity from my Brethren than She is ever likely to find from her friends.6

But after 1784 some uncertainty seems to have arisen whether the rule meant rather that an ordained Methodist preacher could not officiate at the wedding of a woman who had not received parental consent. By the alteration of the text to read, “yet even then a Methodist-Preacher ought not to be married to her,” the intent was clarified.7 Other proscriptions related to marriage came via Wesley to the American Methodists, but these were received through the rubrics and ritual text of “The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony,” revised from the marriage liturgy of the 1662 Prayer Book and incorporated in the 1784 Sunday Service. Wesley retained the opening rubric of the Prayer Book rite requiring the publication of banns, by which impediments to marriage such as consanguinity and legal betrothal to another could be revealed and investigated. Banns were to be read “in the congregation” over a period of three Sundays at an unspecified point “in the time of divine service,” thereby satisfying the legal prerequisite for appropriate public notification, and also discouraging clandestine, hasty, or by Methodist standards, inappropriate, marriages. Surprisingly, Wesley did not recognize by rubric the use of marriage licenses obtained from the civil magistrate that were becoming more popular than the public reading of the banns. The matter was redressed in the 1786 and subsequent editions of the Sunday Service by the provision that banns could be omitted if “a license be procured from the proper authority.” Further flexibility was granted in the 1792 revision through the allowance that banns need not be read if the


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couple were “otherwise qualified according to law.” Even if a license had been sought, the fourth public reading of the banns was preserved in the marriage rite, directed first to those gathered (“if any can show any just cause. . . .”), and then to the couple: I Require and charge you both (as you will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed) that if either of you know any impediment why you may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, you do now confess it. For be ye well assured, that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their Matrimony lawful.

After the final reading of the banns, the requisite verbal consent of the couple before witnesses was to be rendered. Inquiry was made whether each partner gave uncoerced, free, and mutual consent—what had long been recognized as constituting the legal essence of marriage. Wesley preserved the Prayer Book’s interrogative (“Wilt thou have”) in which the questions for the bride and groom were parallel except for the additional pledge by the former to obedience and service (“Wilt thou obey him, serve him, love, honour, and keep him, in sickness and in health”); the simple response remained in each case “I will.” But Wesley omitted a second form of consent that followed the couple’s action, that by the woman’s father or his representative. Perhaps Wesley found it unnecessary ritually to solicit parental consent (“Who giveth this Woman to be married to this Man?”), since presumably Methodists were already obligated to obtain such permission. But other factors may have motivated him as well: the absence of fathers at weddings; the superfluity of the custom; his view of women as spiritual equals to men; and his disdain for the practice of exchanging human beings as property.8 Thus, in Wesley’s (and the 1792) rite, the respective interrogatives (“Wilt thou have”) were immediately succeeded by an active form of consent with each word spoken aloud by the couple, in which the woman, as in the previous question, vows also obedience to her husband: “to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part.” The purposes and results of marriage had been expressed in the opening exhortation (which repeated the Prayer Book text in its entirety), and they would be implied in the prayers following the active consent by the couple. Wesley could easily concur with the interpretation in the exhortation that marriage was “an honourable estate, instituted of God,” since he believed that “Christ does not take away human Society, but sanctif[ies] it.”9 He retained the classical western ordering for the reasons of marriage, which defined marriage first as a medium for the production of children and their nurture in the love and fear of God. The other causes construed marriage as a remedy against sins such as lust and fornication, and as a means of providing mutual comfort and help. In spite of the placement of procreation as the primary purpose of marriage in the opening exhortation within the Methodist rite, Wesley’s writings on marriage tended to focus on mutuality and the covenantal aspects of marriage (both strong Puritan themes), especially the respective duties of the partners; the omission from Wesley’s revision

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of the final statement on marital duties that had concluded the 1662 rite was probably for the sake of brevity. Husbands and wives were regarded by Wesley as the “nearest relations” who had been joined by God in an unbreakable bond of mutual faith in which they were to love each other for better or worse.10 Prayers were offered in the rite that the couple might, as did Isaac and Rebecca, “surely perform and keep the vow and covenant betwixt them made,” and the knitting together of a man and woman, in its purest form, was a sign of “the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church.” God’s blessing was invoked that the newly married might, as Christians, “obey thy will,” “be in safety under thy protection,” and “abide in thy love unto their lives’ end.” Wesley’s emphasis upon companionship, as well as late eighteenth-century squeamishness about indelicate discussions of sexuality, may have prompted the leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church to subject the rite to surgery by an editor’s pen in 1792. Gone is the warning in the opening exhortation against entering marriage “lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding,” as well as the reference to the three causes for which matrimony was ordained. The Methodist Episcopal revision of the exhortation was similar to the one made in the marriage rite of the Protestant Episcopal Prayer Book of 1789, particularly in the omission of the causes for marriage, although the Methodist emendation retained the christological references that were struck from the Prayer Book. Again like the Episcopalian change, the 1792 revision also deleted the prayer for childbearing (“O Merciful Lord and heavenly Father, by whose gracious gift mankind is increased”).11 Some editorial adjustments were made within retained texts, for example, the replacement of references to the couple as God’s “servants” with the phrase, “this man and this woman.” Such a change suggests that lack of specificity regarding the theological convictions of the couple was necessary given the fact that itinerating Methodist ministers might not, in a short period of time, be able to ascertain the couple’s beliefs. Thus the 1792 rite assumed a structure similar to but abbreviated from the 1784 service: Instructions about public notification prior to marriage Banns formulary Rubric about the day and time of marriage, position of couple [man on the right hand, woman on the left] Introduction and exhortation [“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here. . . .”] Final publication of the banns Declaration of intention and consent Marriage vow Prayer [“O Eternal God, Creator and Preserver. . . .”] “Those whom God hath joined together. . . .” Pronouncement of marriage [“Forasmuch as M. and N. . . .”] Blessing [“God the Father, God the Son. . . .”] The Lord’s Prayer Prayer [“O God of Abraham, God of Isaac. . . .”]


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Prayer [“O God, who by thy mighty power hast made. . . .”] Blessing [“Almighty God, who at the beginning. . . .”] Notably absent from this order, and from Wesley’s Urtext as well, is any mention of the wedding ring. By deleting explicit reference to the ring, though without prohibiting its use, Wesley may have been expressing sensitivity to historic and contemporary objections made by Puritans and Presbyterians who questioned the ring’s identification as a sacramental sign, its lack of scriptural warrant, and its association with idolatry and superstition. Elimination of the ring also removed a long-standing symbol of bride purchase, and it conformed to Methodist regulations, stated in the 1744 “Directions Given to the Band Societies” and in the General Rules, that “needless ornaments” and “gold and costly apparel” should not be worn. The wearing of fancy dress, it was believed, engendered pride, vanity, anger, and lust, and marred the inward ornamentation through which God was glorified by a meek and quiet spirit. Needless ornaments defrauded God, who had entrusted “worldly goods” to faithful stewardship, especially service of the poor.12 Nowhere did Wesley specifically mention wedding rings under the categories of rings or gold, but as most of his advice was directed toward women’s apparel, it is possible to assume that wedding rings were included in the rules for the Methodist Societies— restrictions that the Americans added to the first edition of their Discipline (1784, Question 18, A.4): “Give no Ticket to any that wear High-Heads, enormous Bonnets, Ruffles or Rings.” Although the 1784 marriage rite did not specify the officiant of the marriage service beyond the term “minister,” the Discipline (1784) explained that both elders and deacons were empowered to solemnize matrimony. Unordained preachers were not allowed such privileges, a factor important for both ecclesiastical and civil interpretations of the legality of marriage. A slight but significant variation, that the deacon should “perform the office of Matrimony in the Absence of the Elder,” was printed in the 1787 Discipline (and remained as the Methodist Episcopal Church’s polity until 1860 when unrestricted authority for solemnization was returned to the deacon). Yet at a time when the solemnization of matrimony was thus becoming tied primarily to the “sacramental” office of the elder, curiously the marriage rite was being further purged of references to the ecclesial setting of the rite: in 1792, the phrase within the opening exhortation “in the face of this congregation” was replaced by “in the presence of these witnesses.” Nevertheless, accounts in personal diaries and journals suggest that many weddings still were conducted in a congregational context, before or after a scheduled occasion for corporate worship, and particularly at the time of the quarterly meeting when an elder was guaranteed to be present. Wesley had excised the rubric delineating the “accustomed duty” due to the priest and clerk for their presence at the marriage rite, yet the American Methodists were compelled to legislate (1784 Discipline, Question 48) against the solicitation or reception of marriage fees. It became clear that additional, more precise, provisions were needed on the matter of receiving marriage fees (it was still not permissible to make a charge), and in 1792 regulations were established to avoid financially related jealousies and to maintain equitable remuneration among the

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ministers and preachers, particularly those within the same circuit.13 By 1804, ministers were permitted to accept—and keep for themselves without making report—fees that they were offered, and they eagerly anticipated the money and goods from friends and strangers that would supplement their meager income.

Changing Perceptions of Marriage The changes in agricultural and industrial technologies, economic patterns and systems, demographics, and social structures that had an impact on North American society were felt with varying intensities at different times in different regions. The South, for example, generally addressed the issues stemming from urbanization and industrialization at a much later time than did the North. One consequence of these shifts, again with regional and temporal variations, was trends leading toward the reformulation of gender roles, definitions and responsibilities, and the alteration of family structures and values. Two quite different views of women and their relationship to society resulted; editorials and articles in Methodist periodical literature bear witness that national discussions outside of the Methodist family were taking place inside as well. In the first line of thinking, women came to be more strongly connected with sex-specific virtues such as altruism, self-sacrifice, and humility, associations encouraged particularly but not exclusively by evangelicals in the South. Women’s roles as mother, religious nurturer, moral exemplar (spiritually “superior” to her husband), and the enabler of family religion were exalted; the ideology of domesticity formed the foundation for a definition of womanhood. These attributions may have been intended to enforce perceived biblical precedents for gender roles and preserve patriarchal control and authority; they provided a means for maintaining stability and the social order as developments in industry and agriculture removed men from the domestic sphere. Nevertheless, the stress on domesticity also had the practical result of providing more power for women within the contexts of the household and of the marriage itself. The second approach, also with temporal and regional variations, took the form of a reaction to the rigid delineation of specific gender roles and ideologies. This response sought, instead, to check or abolish sex-specific limitations. As women gradually shifted from producers to consumers, they found purpose and meaning (and for some, religious expression) outside the home: the moral exemplars of the home became the moral exemplars of the nation. Involvement in religious revival (such as Finneyite revivalism and the Holiness movement in which women played prominent roles), social reform (particularly the movements for temperance, abolition, education, suffrage, and women’s rights), and creative endeavors (e.g., literature focused primarily upon a female readership) issued forth from the desire of women to better themselves as well as society. Changing views toward women and their roles during the 1800s had an impact upon Methodist marriages, and upon the approaches taken toward marriage advice printed in denominational publications.14 Yet the basic theology of marriage—as a holy covenant instituted and blessed of God, and characterized by mutual love and care—remained relatively stable. Marriage ideally ministered both to God and


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to the pair: “May the God of heaven bless and sanctify our union for the promotion of his glory and our spiritual and eternal good” was the prayer of preacher Thomas Morrell on his wedding day in 1802.15 Couples were to take seriously the wedding service and the lifelong commitment before God that it inaugurated, for “next to personal piety,” no other action was “more important or imperative.”16 Thus wrote Robert Taylor in his diary for 1879: This has been a memorable day in my history—I was united in holy wedlock to Cousin Emma Taylor by the Rev. John Williams about 9 p.m. at Cousin Martha’s residence, some twenty-five friends and relatives present to witness the ceremony. I feel that I have indeed taken an important and responsible step. My prayer is that heaven may assist me that I may be able to honor the relation which I now occupy as husband and that I may prove indeed a blessing and a suitable companion to her to whom I have linked my destiny for life.17

The expectations of marriage, utilizing imagery within the marriage rite itself, were detailed in a wedding hymn by evangelical Anglican and (Calvinistic) Methodist sympathizer John Berridge, whose text, from 1802, was published in various Methodist hymnals throughout the century and was included in the 1905 joint hymnal between the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South: Since Jesus freely did appear To grace a marriage-feast; O Lord, we ask thy presence here, To make a wedding guest. Upon the bridal pair look down, Who now have plighted hands; Their union with thy favor crown, And bless the nuptial bands. With gifts of grace their hearts endow, Of all rich dowries best! Their substance bless, and peace bestow, To sweeten all the rest. In purest love their souls unite, That they with Christian care, May make their domestic burdens light, By taking each their share. True helpers may they prove indeed, In pray’r, and faith, and hope; And see, with joy, a godly seed, To build their household up: As Isaac and Rebecca, give A pattern chaste and kind;

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So may this marry’d couple live, And die in friendship join’d. On ev’ry soul assembled here, O make thy face to shine, Thy goodness more our hearts can cheer Than richest food or wine.18 Yet despite such pervasive talk of mutuality and equality, gender distinctions, culturally and theologically driven, persisted within Methodist marriages. Because the opening exhortation of the rite provided concisely the scriptural warrant for God’s and the church’s association with marriage (Genesis 2:20–25; John 2:1–11; Ephesians 5:22–25; Hebrews 13:4), all the episcopal Methodist denominations and the Free Methodists kept it throughout the nineteenth century and did not tamper with it except for a few minor editorial emendations (e.g., replacement of the archaic “betwixt”). In the Wesleyan Methodist marriage rite of 1892, the exhortation was greatly abbreviated, but it continued to stress that marriage was “an honorable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency, and should not be entered upon unadvisedly or lightly.” The Methodist Protestants, however, from 1830 to 1870, substituted an alternative to the older formulary in the form of an address that delineated at length the shared interests and responsibilities of the couple, perhaps in accordance with the new denomination’s emphasis upon mutual rights in church governance. The sole mention of marriage as part of the divine economy for humanity was an oblique reference to the “principles and rules of conduct” furnished by the “word of God.” But marriage was not to be regarded as just a human institution: the couple was advised to “constantly seek the protection and assisting grace of God, to enable them faithfully and mutually to discharge the numerous and important duties required”; and the only prayer in the rite, given before the pronouncement of marriage, asked God to bless, guide, and protect the couple. There were limits to the Methodist Protestant definition of mutual rights. True, the opening statement appeared to assume a relative equality within the marriage, and the only “vow” in the rite, the interrogative of consent that required the brief reply “I will,” had removed the stipulation that the woman was to serve her husband; nevertheless, she still promised to obey him.19 The Methodist Episcopal Church in 1864 was the first to excise completely both references to obedience and service, undoubtedly in response to evolving perceptions about women in church and society, but also perhaps because of the spiritual constraints that might be imposed upon a wife whose husband was at odds with the mission and ministry of the church. Given how families were sometimes divided over the issue of slavery, and how women were often active in the abolition campaign, it is possible that the denomination, attentive to these concerns during the war years, chose to delete language that could possibly bind a woman to act in ways that were incompatible with her own political and moral beliefs. Although the proposed order sent to delegates in advance of the 1864 General Conference deleted only “serve” and not “obey,” the rite presented at the time of the Conference, and recorded in the


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Journal, omitted both terms. A related alteration, also granting conceptual and textual symmetry, was made in the pronouncement of marriage of husband (not “man”) and wife.20 No official explanations were given. As an anonymous reviewer of the 1864 Ritual noted, “the promise to obey on the part of the bride is quietly omitted.” The same reviewer then pleaded that the marriage rite, as emended, be used uniformly and intelligently: And now that we have this suitable form, let it be always used, and always in the Church. Our ministry have, we fear, sadly concurred to demoralize the public mind by not discountenancing slight, thoughtless, and too little solemn performance of this rite, tending to reduce it to a mere civil contract which an alderman can mediate with a few trifling words. We fear that our people have too slight a conscience, because our ministry have thought too little deeply on the subject. We hope this ancient and yet renovated form will be ever used with an earnest view to an impressive effect.21

Not surprisingly, the deletion did not meet with unanimous approval, for the authority and instruction of Scripture appeared to be undermined: By all means let there be harmony between the mandates of the great Legislator, God, and the requirements of his Church. Therefore, let one of two things be done: let the word “obey” still find a place in the marriage ceremony, it cannot be out of place there if it be in place in the sacred record; or let God’s word, which enjoins the duty, be so modified that the objectionable word may no longer be found there to be a source of annoyance to any. In a word, let the whims and fancies of men and women henceforth constitute their law, and let the Church inform them that the Bible is a dead-letter, and the necessity of all appeal to it no longer required.22

A resolution submitted to the 1868 General Conference requested “the restoration of certain words to the Marriage Ritual”;23 however, no words were reintroduced. The absence of the obedience language in the Methodist Episcopal rite appears to have encouraged other Methodists to make similar, at first unauthorized, emendations in performance. Evidently because of such practice among ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Thomas O. Summers stressed that “ministers who are so foolish as to omit the words ‘obey him and serve him,’ at the request of a weak woman, deserve severe censure.”24 Only in 1930 did the Methodist Episcopal Church, South delete the two words entirely from the rite.25 The African Methodist Episcopal Church, the last to remove the language, kept both expectations in its rite until 1960, thereafter dropping “obey” from the normative rite, and both terms from an “optional” text (based upon the Methodist Church’s 1945 service). In the normative rite published in the African Methodist Episcopal Discipline through 1996, the woman continued her promise to serve, although couples were offered one optional text without the term, and another option in that church’s 1984 Book of Worship where both individuals vowed service to the other. The Wesleyan Methodists, who apparently never required obedience or service by their authorized text, resolved the matter of gender parity by the asking of single question addressed to both persons. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was the introductory statement to the rite that bore the primary burden of articulating liturgically Methodist views of the purpose of marriage. For the sake of expediency and simplicity, the concluding

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prayers of the 1792 service had been dropped officially or unofficially from many of the formal texts, with Methodist presiders taking the liberty of substituting extemporary prayer. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South (in 1854) and, hence, the Colored (Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church (their text being derived from the South rite) were the only episcopal Methodist bodies to have omitted all the texts following the first benediction (“God the Father, God the Son”), except for the Lord’s Prayer, which was repositioned before the prayer “O eternal God.” The Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1864, removed from the concluding prayers the historic nuptial blessing, “O God, who by thy mighty power,” probably on account of its restrictive definition of marriage duties (including obedience) for the wife and its virtual restatement of the opening exhortation, but possibly because the language therein implied a sacramental view of marriage. In that same revision, the Lord’s Prayer was relocated to end the service,26 and a rubric was added prior to the Our Father formalizing the use of extemporary prayer. The benediction “Almighty God, who at the beginning,” which had been slightly modified in 1864, and another prayer for blessing upon the couple, “O God of Abraham,” were eventually removed from the Methodist Episcopal rite in 1916. With the striking out of these texts, and the deletion of the reference to the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca from the prayer “O eternal God” (apparently because some believed that the marriage of the biblical pair was not characterized by true faithfulness),27 most of the Old Testament references to marriage were lost from the rite.28 Only within the African Methodist Episcopal Church would these prayers be kept inviolate into the second half of the twentieth century. By the early twentieth century, many women had rejected the limitations of the “prescribed” gender role and sought employment outside the home, completed a college education, or pursued a professional career. Some women elected to delay marriage until later in life, while others, no longer concurring with the assumptions of male superiority and female submission in marriage, abstained entirely from marriage. The redefining of women’s roles created a crisis in terms of ecclesiology (e.g., the membership and voting rights of women in the church, the licensing of women to preach, and the ordination of women) and sociology (the demise of the traditional understanding of the family). Civil divorce legislation within the individual states, which began to proliferate in the late nineteenth century, was met with accusations of “individualism” and “socialism,” reactions comparable to those voiced regarding women’s increasing opportunities and independence.29 For the Methodists, rising rates of divorce resulted in efforts to establish, internally, official statements and policies on divorce and, externally, resolutions to promote uniform national marriage and divorce laws. Even the practices of polygamy in Mormon Utah and in the overseas mission field were topics for discussion. Concerns were expressed to preserve the human, “divine,” civil, and “religious” institution of marriage, since also at stake was the family, the “foundation” of church and state.30 The Methodist Episcopal Church was the only Methodist denomination in the early twentieth century to alter significantly its marriage rite. In 1916, and again in 1932, the denomination dropped Scripture references from the historic text, thereby risking that the church’s theology of marriage as expressed in the rite be seen as abandoning scriptural norms. At the same time, the former emphasis upon


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the godly covenant and companionship of the couple assumed a secondary place to a new accent upon the preservation and perpetuation of the family. The reference to Hebrews 13:4 in the opening exhortation that stated marriage is “commended of St. Paul to be honorable among all men” was omitted in 1916 because, conforming to the principles of biblical criticism, the revising commission felt compelled to use the version or translation that, in their judgment, “most truly represented the Scriptures in the original.” As commission member and Methodist Episcopal theologian Harris Franklin Rall, professor at Garrett Biblical Institute, explained: In our marriage service there is a statement which says that St. Paul commends marriage to be honorable among all men. Any scholar will tell you that that is a palpable mistranslation which does violence to the Word of God. That word does not say that marriage is honorable. It is in the form, not of a declaration, but of an injunction, which, properly translated, is: “Let marriage be had in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled.” We cannot, therefore, in justice to our loyalty to the Word of God, make any other recommendation.31

The opening exhortation was again altered in 1932 by removal of allusions to the first marriage in Eden and the “mystical union” of Ephesians 5 (the latter was restored in the Methodist Church’s rites of 1939 and 1945). Support for the waning institution of the family was intended by the addition of “the family is the foundation of human fellowship” following the Cana reference (the insertion survived only seven years), and the introduction of a new sociotheological statement as the charge to the couple: I charge you both, as you stand in the presence of God, to remember that love and loyalty alone will avail as the foundation of a happy and enduring home. If the solemn vows which you are about to make be kept inviolate, and if steadfastly you seek to do the will of your Heavenly Father, your life will be full of peace and joy, and the home which you are establishing will abide through every vicissitude.

Even though at the time of merger in 1939 both the Methodist Protestant Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South retained the greater part of the older form for the charge to the couple, modified versions of the 1932 Methodist Episcopal statement persisted in the rites produced for the Methodist Church in 1939 and 1945, and were coupled with the phrase, “no other human ties are more tender, no other vows more sacred than those you now assume.”32 The human and familial aspects of marriage were also expressed in a new concluding sentence added in 1939 to the historic “O eternal God” prayer, which asked God to “look graciously upon them, that they may love, honor, and cherish each other, and so live together in faithfulness and patience, and wisdom and true godliness, that their home may be a haven of blessing and a place of peace.”33 While the extension to the prayer “O eternal God” remained in the Methodist Church’s 1965 Book of Worship, the revised charge to the couple did not and was abandoned in favor of a charge that conflated the historic and contemporary versions. Marriage was again explicitly defined early in the ritual text as a “holy covenant” testified to by the “pledge of faith.” If the vows were “kept inviolate,

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as God’s Word demands” and the couple “steadfastly endeavored” to do God’s will, God would “bless the marriage, grant fulfillment in it, and establish the home in peace.” References to the covenantal aspects of marriage, as well as the familial, were entered into the Free Methodist Church’s revision of the marriage rite in 1955, which, in part, found its inspiration from the Methodist Church’s 1945 text. At the Free Methodist service, the couple was reminded that the marriage covenant was “more than a legal contract, being a bond of union made in heaven, into which you enter discreetly and reverently.” Methodist marriage rites at the end of the twentieth century kept or restored the scriptural warrants for Christian marriage, and spoke strongly of marriage as God’s gift and a covenant intended to imitate God’s covenant with humankind; the domestic references were largely incidental. The introductory statement in the Free Methodist rite supplied from 1969 identified marriage as God’s creation “for the blessing [later, “well-being”] of mankind,” which was “protected [later, “safeguarded”] by the laws of Moses, affirmed by the words of the prophets, and hallowed by the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The revised United Methodist rite (1992) claimed “the covenant of marriage was established by God, who created us male and female for each other,” and located the marriage covenant within the context of the baptismal covenant and its demands of Christian discipleship. The concept of covenant was integral for the series of United Methodist services of “Christian” marriage: within the “Service for the Recognition or the Blessing of a Civil Marriage,” a text new to Methodists, an overt distinction was made between the “solemn contract” made by those “married by the law of the state,” and the marriage covenant declared “before the witness of the Church.”

Qualifications for Marriage The rubric mandating the reading of the banns (unless legal conditions had been met otherwise) and the formulation for proclaiming the banns gradually fell out of most of the Methodist marriage texts. The Methodist Protestants and the Wesleyans never included them. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South eliminated them in 1854, and the Methodist Episcopal Church followed suit ten years later. The African Methodist Episcopal Church continuously preserved both rubric and formulary in their normative marriage text through to the 1996 Discipline, and the Free Methodists (of North America), who originally made no mention of them, introduced them in 1979, apparently out of respect for the legal requirements of some Canadian members. When banns-related material was removed, several of the denominations substituted a statement regarding the legal prerequisites for marriage (“having been qualified according to law”), thereby confirming that the regulation of marriage was the prerogative of the state, largely through the issuance of a license. Yet Methodists throughout maintained their own criteria that determined whether or not one of their ministers could properly solemnize matrimony. Some ministers overlooked or dismissed ecclesiastical restrictions, prompting the comment in a widely read book on the ministerial office published in 1923 that “he is no true minister of Jesus Christ who performs the marriage ceremony ‘for


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anyone who can secure a license.’ ”34 Possibly as a reaction against such laxity, the opening rubric within the 1939 marriage rite of the Methodist Church was formulated to state explicitly that the church had its own preconditions beyond civil regulations: persons to be married were to be qualified “according to the law of the state and the standards of the Church.”35 The Methodists’ ongoing interest in “appropriate” marriages reflected a desire to maintain and reinforce moral, ecclesiastical, and biblical standards in a rapidly changing world.

Regulations Regarding Marriage with the “Unawakened” Marriage with unbelievers continued to be discussed at General Conference meetings after 1792, and in particular the prescribed consequence for such marriages, namely, expulsion. At the request of the membership, a more thorough explication was approved at the 1796 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church to accompany the previous legislation: We do not prohibit our people from marrying persons who are not of our society, provided such persons have the form, and are seeking the power of godliness; but if they marry persons who do not come up to this description, we shall be obliged to purge our society of them. And even in a doubtful case, the member of our society shall be put back upon trial. N.B. We are well assured, that few things have been more pernicious to the work of God than the marriage of the children of God with the children of this world. We therefore think ourselves obliged to bear our testimony, both in doctrine and discipline, against so great an evil. But as our former minute on this subject was not clear, we have added this explication, hoping that thereby the preachers who have the oversight of circuits will be easily enabled to determine on every point which may come before them, to the satisfaction of the truly pious, and to the prevention of a practice so exceedingly injurious to vital religion.36

Attempts to lessen the severity of the punishment proved unsuccessful at the 1800 General Conference, but prevailed four years later when the requirement of expulsion was replaced with the provision to put individuals “back on trial for six months” accompanied with a “suitable exhortation.” Evidently some ministers feared that expulsion (especially when the non-Methodist partner was of “excellent moral conduct”) drove offended families away from the church; a “merciful and conciliatory reproof” instead was deemed sufficient.37 Other alterations in 1804 contributed to an overall effect of softening the restriction: the title of the disciplinary section was switched from “On Unlawful Marriages” to “Of Marriage” (a title that was retained in the Methodist Episcopal Church until 1864 when it became “Rules Relating to Marriage”); and the prohibition of marriage with unbelievers was tempered to a discouragement. The General Conference in 1808 rejected an amendment proposed by Jesse Lee to deny reception of the Lord’s Supper and participation in the love feast to those on trial for unlawful marriages.38 The rule that Methodists who married unbelievers would be placed on trial was omitted in 1836 from the Methodist Episcopal Church’s section of the Discipline on marriage. As a result, the regulation against marriage with the unawakened became nothing stronger than a statement discouraging such unions, although the

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church member was still reminded that such marriages produced “bad effects” and were contrary to St. Paul’s advice in 2 Corinthians 6:14. These guidelines, consisting of the material adopted in 1784 and the addition of 1796 without references to expulsion and placement on trial, survived, with minor alterations, until that Church’s Discipline of 1928. Then it assumed an entirely new form—a series of recommendations, including a provision for premarital education and counseling— that lasted until 1939. Even though the marriage restrictions had gradually been moderated, they remained important enough for the life of the church that they were mentioned in popular literature and in booklets used for the preparation of persons for church membership.39 Bishop Thomas Morris was compelled to remark on them in his Miscellany, wherein he deplored the marriage between a “practical Christian” and an unawakened sinner as “inconsistent,” “inconvenient,” “unfavorable to happiness,” and “dangerous.”40 The same point was made by the story of Louisa: When she was about eighteen years of age, she became the object of particular attention on the part of a young man, who had recently set up in business in the place as a merchant. He was a young man of fine personal appearance, and of prepossessing manners, but he had not the fear of God before his eyes. He heeded not the Sabbathday, and he dealt out the liquid poison that carried desolation and woe to many families in the community. It was with deep regret that some of the friends of Irvin saw his marked attention to Louisa. They feared that she might form a connection that would be fatal to her Christian character. But they knew not the strength of her Christian principles. She was not one of those that “help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord.” 2 Chron. xix, 2. She declined an alliance with him, notwithstanding the temporal advantages held out by the proposed connection. This was an occasion of surprise to many, and of joy to the faithful few.41

Although the Methodist Protestants never adopted the marriage instructions, and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South discontinued them in 1866 with their first Discipline produced after the disruption of the Civil War, the Methodist Episcopal Church was not alone in its retention of the regulations. When finally the Methodist Episcopal Church abandoned them in 1939 (not to be introduced into either the Methodist or United Methodist denominations), they endured in various configurations within the Holiness and African-American denominations, save for the Colored (Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church, which had not inherited them. The last decade of the twentieth century still saw the rules printed in more than one Discipline of the Methodist family, and in terms directly tied to the instruction contained in the first Discipline published in 1785.

The Requirement of Parental Consent Even though women had assumed a predominant role in choosing a partner, the expectation that a Methodist woman should receive parental consent prior to marriage was retained throughout the nineteenth century in the respective Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Free Methodist Church.42 Parental control in spouse selection generally


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took the form of a veto, and parents who objected to a daughter’s choice typically resorted to relocating their entire family or to sending the daughter away from home.43 For those churches that kept it, the requirement seems to have been taken seriously by some ministers, if the recollections made in 1875 by a “regular contributor” to one Methodist periodical be accurate: “We sent for you to marry us,” said the lady, decisively. The book was opened and the words read: “Dearly Beloved—We are assembled here in the presence of” when there was a sudden and furious ringing of the door-bell. Then it was opened and some one tried the door of the parlor, which, to my surprise, had been locked. “If any minister is marrying a couple in this room,” screamed a voice from without, “I forbid the ceremony.” There was an awkward pause. “Go on,” said the lady, in a commanding tone; “we are of age—pronounce us man and wife.” I refused until I could find out what the objection was; the woman entreated, her lady friend grew white with fear; the noise outside kept waning, and the expectant groom was motionless and indifferent. “It is only the father,” said the lady, “and he says the young man is weak minded, because—because—he wants to marry me. He has persecuted the young man terribly, but he shall do so no longer, for the young man is of age, and we shall yet get married, and I shall protect him.” Sure enough they were afterwards married, but not by Yours, truly.44

The most serious of the Methodist denominations in enforcing the rule were the Free Methodists, who added a stricter stipulation to their Discipline soon after their founding, which prohibited their ministers from officiating at the marriage of any person under eighteen unless the parents or guardians were present or had given written consent; two witnesses who knew the “contracting parties” also needed to attend. At the end of the twentieth century, the same regulation instructed Free Methodist pastors. The African Methodist Episcopal Church was the only other denomination to persist in recording the consent advice (the Methodist Episcopal Church removing theirs in 1928), but they had altered it so that women and men generally were to receive approval before the minister could appropriately preside. Even when parental sanction did not appear as a requirement in the Discipline, “formal” consent was obtained by the social convention of the man asking the woman’s father for permission. A ritualized form of consent—the giving away of the bride—appeared in some Methodist weddings long before the question and answer with accompanying action was officially inserted into some of the authorized marriage texts in the twentieth century. Although it was 1916 before the giving of the bride was printed in the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Ritual, and 1924 when the Methodist Protestants did the same, handwritten entries in personally owned books disclose that the practice certainly preceded codification in the liturgical text, even as early as the mid-1800s.45 Comments by T. O. Summers in 1873 reveal that although the Methodist Episcopal Church, South had not officially placed the giving of the woman within the official text of the marriage rite, its use was implied, “but not formally prescribed, because it was considered complex and unnecessary.”46 Despite ecclesiastical sensitivities to gender equality, brides were given by their fathers at Methodist weddings in the 1990s, more from

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social custom than any real understanding of the original intention of the ritual act. As an option, some couples had both sets of parents “give them away” or, according to the approved United Methodist rite (in a subtle act of consent), offer their blessing upon the creation of the new family.

Divorce Regulations Methodists in general tended to believe that the escalating rate of divorce throughout the 1800s was provoked by growing female independence, male employment away from the home, and worldly distractions that usurped the primacy of the family. All of the Methodist denominations responded to the seriousness of the problem by addressing the subject in popular prose and in legislation. The bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South called upon that body to recognize the threat to marriage and the family: We have lived to see the divinely ordered Institution of Marriage seriously endangered by the readiness with which divorces are granted by many of the State legislatures and courts, so that a very large per cent of marriages are being annulled annually. The true marriage relation strengthens the State and the Church. . . . All should be done that can be to sustain the primal institution of God and to avert the low estimate of it now taking possession of the public mind. Action is advisable looking in the direction already taken by some of the Churches—the forbidding the celebration of the rites of matrimony by their ministers between parties where either has been previously divorced, excepting for the one scriptural cause, as in Matt. v. 32 and xix.47

By the late nineteenth century, each Methodist body defined its position on divorce through legislation, and sometimes with rubrics preceding the marriage rite. Methodists uniformly disapproved of divorce, but made allowance for the “one scriptural cause”—adultery. Within some of the denominations, persons divorced on other than “scriptural” grounds could be placed on church trial or expelled, and those previously divorced were restricted from membership. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church recognized in its polity the inhumane circumstances sometimes imposed by the institution of slavery by allowing an individual with two or more living spouses to be admitted into church membership as long as there was “not the least prospect of being together again in this life.” Scriptural precepts also governed remarriage. Pastors were usually permitted to officiate at the remarriage of the party innocent of marital infidelity, or of divorced parties seeking reunion, but themselves risked trial on charges of immorality or, at the extreme, defrocking if they joined in marriage one who had not been “scripturally” divorced. These policies were continued by all the churches into the first half of the twentieth century. Even the usually liberal Methodist Episcopal Church perpetuated its previous stance and elaborated upon it: the Church’s 1928 statement coupled with cases of adultery the provision for the “full moral equivalent” of adultery, which, in the 1932 Discipline, was interpreted as “other vicious conditions which through mental or physical cruelty or physical peril invalidated the marriage vow.” Yet a possible relaxation of standards was hinted at in 1932 by that church’s


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dropping of the phrase from the charge to the couple declaring the marriage unlawful if the couple was united “otherwise than God’s Word doth allow.” The statement on marriage of divorced persons established in 1932 was retained by the Methodist Church in 1939 along with the provision for charges of maladministration when the church’s standards were violated. The second half of the twentieth century saw a variety of Methodist responses to divorce. The African-American Methodists generally kept intact their legislation of earlier generations, including the expulsion from membership of divorced members who remarried and the charges against the minister for officiating, though in practice the rules were often ignored. The spirit of the previous law was retained by the Free Methodists in their approved statement of 1985, but the church’s efforts to promote penitence, redemption, and wholeness were also now mentioned. The United Methodist Church invited controversy by the publication in 1976 of “Rituals with the Divorced” as a component of the larger work Ritual in a New Day published as an unofficial resource by the denomination’s Section on Worship. A greater tolerance toward divorce and remarriage had been expressed in the 1976 Discipline (¶71C, “where the partners are, even after thoughtful consideration and counsel, estranged beyond reconciliation, we recognize divorce and the right of divorced persons to remarry”), and church leaders were offered the new resource to aid individuals and congregations in coming to terms with and providing a Christian response to societal reality. But United Methodists were not unanimous about the change in stance on the subject, and the four brief rituals for use with the divorced, one of which accentuated the new freedom of the couple rather than the need for repentance or healing, were as salt in a wound. With debate fired by the secular press, volume editor H. Grady Hardin and the United Methodist weeklies received numerous letters of complaint. The rituals died a quiet death; the United Methodist Book of Worship (1992) contained no “divorce ritual,” but only a prayer and suggested Scripture readings for “ministry with persons going through divorce” in the section on Healing Services and Prayer.

The Wedding Celebration Until roughly the middle of the nineteenth century, Methodist weddings were generally characterized by simplicity, austerity, and an attention to Christian expression. Methodist preachers of this period railed against many popular social wedding practices as being contrary to Christian values. Drinking and dancing, both of which were disapproved of in the General Rules, especially drew the ire of the preachers.48 Overindulgence in the wedding festivities—which could last late into the evening—was rebuked, especially if it interfered with attendance at worship, prayer, or the meeting of the class.49 Some Methodist ministers were exceedingly scrupulous lest they conform to worldly conceits: Tusd eveing I joined in matrimony Rev Henry Colclazer & sister Aseneth True. Their Deportment on the occasion was calm & dignified—After the ceremony was over a supper in hand was served round—A certain Mrs—Requested me to be seated by the

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bride To which I pled an excuse—That I wished not to conform to vain ceremonies of this world.50

In contrast with weddings that engaged the prevailing social customs, Methodist weddings of the especially devout might incorporate the singing of hymns, lengthy extemporary prayer, exhortations or testimonies, and even the observance of the Lord’s Supper. Catherine Livingston, married to Freeborn Garrettson at Rhinebeck, New York, in 1793, recorded in her diary that they partook of Holy Communion after the wedding ceremony and then sang the “Covenant Hymn.”51 Because weddings were often performed in conjunction with other religious meetings and services of worship, conversions could sometimes occur during the nuptials, as happened at the marriage of John B. Matthias to Sarah Jarvis when two people were “awakened,”52 or could arise immediately afterward. E. F. Newell recalled the spiritual intensity that surrounded his wedding in 1810: Having been appointed to travel on Norridgewock circuit, Me., on my way to my appointment I called at Sidney, at which time we were published. I was then absent on my circuit near 4 months ere I returned. Then I visited Sidney on a Quarterly meeting occasion and we were married in the following manner, or style:—At the close of the afternoon sermon I rose and informed the people of our intention and gave some reasons for our wishing to be married in public. I then kneeled and prayed, and while praying a broken hearted sinner cried aloud for mercy. When I rose I went and took Fanny Butterfield by the hand—we stepped forward, and our beloved Bro. Gideon Wells, Esq., in a most solemn and impressive manner, performed the ceremony, and proclaimed us lawfully married husband and wife, agreeable to the laws of the State and the written Word of God. He then gave us good advice and Elder O. Beal followed with a most appropriate and affecting prayer. The loud sighings for mercy continued through the ceremony; but this did not disturb us in the least, for we had been fasting and praying, (although unknown to each other,) that our God, in whom we trusted, would give us, on the occasion, some public token of his favor,—or if displeased with the step, rather let us die in the presence of the congregation than sin against his holy will! To us, this was a token of favor—an answer to our prayers. After the ceremony I went and assisted in spreading the sacramental board on the green in the door yard, (for the meeting was held in a private house,) leaving Fanny in the midst of her young female friends and acquaintances, who were pleasantly congratulating her on having changed her name; she replied, truly, I have a new name, but it is only for a season; but if you will comply with the conditions of salvation you may each and all of you have a new name, a name glorious and enduring, even the new name of Jesus! Many wept while she exhorted. We then renewed our covenant with God at the Sacramental board, and the gentle dews of heaven watered our hearts while we bowed prostrate before our blessed and adorable Redeemer. Thus we were married with as little ceremony as possible, according to our desire.53

In another instance, a man converted at a Methodist preaching service who was thereafter determined to live a new life professed that he had never legally married the mother of his children. Immediately he and his common-law wife were married in the assembly, and that being done, the entire family was baptized.54 Many of the Methodist bodies approved legislation that required officiants to solemnize matrimony according to the approved ritual text—for both civil and


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ecclesiastical reasons. Formal enforcement of the rite only fueled the controversies with some opponents of Methodism, who accused the Methodists of capitulating to popery, given the fact that the episcopal Methodist marriage services shared structural and linguistic similarities with the liturgy of the “Romish Church.”55 Yet the repetition of statements in church law and elsewhere that ministers should perform the authorized marriage service provides further evidence for what is also borne out in the few narrative descriptions of Methodist weddings available: Methodists did not always do it “by the book.” In actual practice, rubrics did not limit what Methodist weddings could include. For example, women married according to the Methodist rites sometimes conformed to social custom and not rubrical direction by receiving wedding rings, since the rites themselves did not direct such until the action and accompanying pledge were introduced as an optional component, first in the Methodist Episcopal Church’s service of 1864, and two years later in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Following social convention, a single ring was given; only from the 1930s onward did the texts begin to allow for a double-ring ceremony. Although usage of a wedding ring was provided for in the liturgical text produced in 1864, the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Discipline had not been purged of its regulations regarding dress. While penalties for indiscretion in apparel had been eliminated in 1856, a charge was instituted to discourage “superfluity in dress” and to exhort the people to observe the precepts outlined in 1 Timothy 2:9 (in which gold is explicitly discountenanced). Yet as members of the Methodist Episcopal Church (as well as other Methodist denominations) became more concerned with respectability, more affluent and individualistic, and more accepting of their cultural milieu in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the desire to conform to what had come to be regarded as antiquarian regulations lessened, and the questionable legislation was modified and eventually removed.56 Nevertheless, a mostly ignored vestige of the concern for attire remained with all the Methodist denominations into the late twentieth century through the continuous reprinting in the Discipline of the General Rules, a part of which advised persons to refrain from “the putting on of gold and costly apparel” as “evidence of their desire of salvation.” The Holiness denominations persevered in their restrictions about dress in obedience to the General Rules, though some of their members, along with other Methodists, apparently used wedding rings and special clothing for the nuptial celebration. The Free Methodist Church in 1874 approved a resolution declaring that the rule against gold referred to gold wedding rings; in 1939 and again in 1943 the rule was interpreted more broadly to apply to any finger ring. These explanations of the General Rule were deleted in 1951. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Methodist weddings and related festivities were no longer simple affairs, and they had embraced many of the “vain ceremonies” that earlier Methodists had shunned. Yet some distinctions from the practices of the wider society were still present, as drinking and dancing still garnered disapproval, and wedding homilies might be preached and Christian counsel given (though not specified by rubric):

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Today I solemnized the marriage of Adam Beck and Clara Peterman. The ceremony was nice and pleasing to all, text Ruth 4:13. The crowd was a mixture of Christians and non-Christians. The brother of the bride insisted to dance and said he would leave if they would not dance. He is the only relative she has (they being orphans). So she had to allow it. Neither bride and groom nor any of my people danced. We enjoyed ourselves in another room. The others did not dance much. The good spirit was prevailing. I received $5.—from the groom—There were only 3 or 4 reckless boys there, but were hardly noticed by the large crowd.57

Weddings could take place in several locations: at the parsonage, the bride’s home, the home of the bride’s parents, and, less often, at the church. With the decline of the quarterly meeting and the camp meeting, those occasions only infrequently served as matrimonial venues. Weddings in this period were private affairs, more so than those of the earlier years when the infrequent appearance of the qualified minister often thrust the wedding into the public and congregational arena. Marriage ceremonies, as formerly, could be held at any time of day, any day of the week, though questions were raised in the 1870s about the legality of Sunday weddings, since contracts drawn on the Sabbath were considered illegal.58 The blurring of the civil and the sacred continued in the second half of the twentieth century, as the “church wedding” became socially desirable for the exchanging of vows. Books and essays detailing the “formal” wedding with its proper protocols and choreography (often requiring a wedding director or master of ceremonies) appeared as denominational publications. Just as some Methodists were open to the “enrichment” of worship on Sunday morning, so too were they willing to embellish the wedding service, although the actual structure and content of several printed denominational ritual texts varied very little. Music was intentionally integrated into the service in the form of preludes and postludes, processionals and recessionals, solos and anthems, and hymns. Candle-lighting ceremonies—and, thanks to the enterprising floral industry, the use of the wedding candle—became popular accoutrements. Pastors might be compelled to offer a wedding address, and upon request could serve the Lord’s Supper, sometimes to the couple alone. On the matter of Communion, a companion volume to the 1965 Book of Worship of the Methodist Church instructed that it should not be celebrated at the wedding service, lest it be exploited for sentimental or aesthetic reasons.59 At least from the 1950s, some Methodist pastors had begun to reconceive the wedding as a service of worship, and structured the event in imitation of Sunday morning. In 1955, J. Bernard Dryfield laid out his design for weddings incorporating worship elements familiar to members of the Methodist Church in Philippi, West Virginia, where he served: Prelude Invocation (response if choir is used) Hymn The Responsive Reading The Gloria Patri Hymn


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The Sermon Solo The Marriage Ceremony Hymn Benediction Recessional60 A little over thirty years later, the United Methodist Church authorized a ritual text for marriage designed to follow the structure of the basic pattern of worship approved for that denomination. The opening exhortation and the declaration of intention by the couple preceded the reading of Scripture, the sermon, and the intercessory prayer; the marriage vow, the blessing and exchange of rings, the declaration of marriage, and the nuptial blessing came as a response to the word. Optional Communion could be celebrated with a specially composed nuptial “Great Thanksgiving.” This marriage service showed a deliberate attempt to counteract cultural concessions previously made, and again define “Christian marriage”—the very title of the service—distinctly and uniquely. The “Order for the Reaffirmation of the Marriage Covenant” and the “Marriage Anniversary Prayers” provided in the 1992 Book of Worship of the United Methodist Church were not the first attempt by Methodists to give liturgical expression to such matters, though they were the first formally approved ritual texts to do so. Reminders of the important day in the life of the couple were observed at least by the mid-1800s in the form of golden wedding anniversary celebrations, and these were often recapitulated in announcements or notices made in Methodist newspapers. Prayers by area clergy, hymns, the renewal of wedding vows, and a benediction could be used to mark a marital union sustained for half a century. At the festivities honoring James and Elizabeth Pyle Atwood of Pennsylvania in 1862, a short address was given, “reciting a few facts of their former history, their piety, and persevering honest industry, which had been crowned with such abundant success, showing the contrast between the good and the careless or vicious in the evening of life.”61 An account from 1906 described the anniversary of Daniel and Elizabeth Helms of Indiana: After the dinner all gathered to listen to the wedding ceremony, in which the vows of a half-century ago were reaffirmed. Gifts of gold, as a reminder of the day, were presented. Letters of congratulation from different States were read. At night the general public came, bringing tokens of love and esteem. Before their departure “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” was sung, earnest prayer was offered, and with “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” the day closed.62

Through these informal rituals, the centrality of marriage for family life was proclaimed, and the sacrality of the marriage covenant was affirmed.

The Rite of the People and the Church While the marriage rites produced after 1792 are characterized by a reduction in the liturgical materials that had been inherited from Wesley’s Sunday Service, they

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are also marked by the inclusion of new formulations, the reinstatement of liturgical components that had originally been purged by Wesley from the 1662 rite, and, in some revisions, the optional usage of some traditional portions of the rite (e.g., the charge to the couple and the marriage vow). In general, the number of prayers or statements was not increased. Rather, material that elaborated upon the nature of Christian marriage was substantially reduced overall from the amount initially included in the Wesley Urtext, and what was retained was often modified; an exception to this reduction might be the United Methodist rite, which defined marriage primarily through a series of prayers rather than with a lengthy declarative statement. Alterations or additions in individual ritual texts were sometimes clearly borrowed, and the most frequent sources were the liturgy of the Protestant Episcopal Church and the rites of different members of the Methodist family, but typically the Methodist Episcopal and, later, the Methodist Church. Other materials, and the entirety of the earliest Methodist Protestant rite, were apparently generated from within the committee responsible for revision. Many of the insertions addressed the milieu in which Methodism found itself, either as an affirmation of changes in theological and cultural perceptions or in reaction against them. Movements toward the social and political rights of women may have encouraged the expression of the equality of husband and wife within the marriage rite by the deletion of the language of obedience and service, and eventually by the provision for the giving of two wedding rings, thereby obscuring the old association of the ring with bride purchase. The giving of the bride, which contradicted a positive view of the equality of the woman, came into the rite not because of a growing conservatism toward the inclusion of older ritual practices per se, but more likely because of popular praxis and the increasing desire of Methodists to be socially and ritually respectable. Liberalizing movements in society at large also provoked a concern on the part of the churches for the survival of the institution of the family and traditional family structures, and those concerns came to be voiced in many of the rites. Yet at the same time, the polity of many of the Methodist denominations had itself become liberalized as evidenced by the discarding of former marriage restrictions and an increasing openness toward the remarriage of divorced individuals. Even though many of the new additions to the rite were related to specific actions by the couple, the clericalization of the marriage rite that began with Wesley’s revision continued in subsequent American Methodist versions of the rite or its substitutes. Only the Lord’s Prayer was occasionally recited by the gathered community in the course of the liturgy, though hymns (not specified by rubric) may have been sung. Yet, in many respects, the marriage rite had become the rite of the people: Wesley’s rite, from which many popular practices had been deleted, had been transformed into one that permitted—and even welcomed—associated cultural customs. In the second half of the twentieth century, with a renewed sense among many Methodists of the service of Christian marriage as an act of worship, the blessing of the covenant of marriage became not only the rite of the people replete with their cultural expressions but also (as the earliest Methodists knew) the people’s “work” before God as well.

8

Methodist Funerals

ompared to methodist marriage services, American Methodist funerals overall tended to be slower to exhibit change in text and general performance, undoubtedly reflecting the human need for stability and familiarity at the time of death. Yet such textual conservatism masks the significant adjustments made to popular Methodist (and more broadly Christian) understandings of death, resurrection, and eschatology. Therefore, because funerals—like weddings—intertwine ecclesiastical and social aspects, examination of them requires attention to the circumstances in which rite and practice develop. The issues in the wider society that sparked conflict or required accommodation, the theological and conceptual shifts that occurred inside and outside the church, and the regional and local customs brought by the people to the Methodist gatherings—all these must be considered. Many of the same factors that precipitated modifications in the perceptions about women and their roles during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—industrialization, urbanization, increased mobility of populations, and transitions in family patterns and structures—were also operative in transforming views of dying and death. Additional elements were also influential, among them advancements in science and medicine (resulting in a gradual rise in life expectancy and a decline in infant mortality), technological progress (particularly in transportation and communication), the increasing secularization of American society, and what may be identified as the construction of new cosmological systems (e.g., scientific naturalism and religious liberalism).1 The emphasis upon individualism and rationalism that defined much of western thought in the eighteenth century contributed to the reconceptualization of the pre-Reformation understanding that a continuum existed between the living and the dead, a communion that had been manifested liturgically by masses, offices, and prayers for the dead (encouraged by the doctrine of purgatory), and by the invocation of the saints. The belief that earthly life served solely as a prelude for death and eternal life was slowly being eroded by an attachment to the material world, and with it an uncertainty about what, if anything, came after death. Anx-

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iety about the nature of death created a discomfort toward bodily decomposition and contact with the deceased, leading to the increased use of coffins, the establishment of professional morticians, and the commercialization of funerals. In America as in England, the preaching of funeral sermons, which typically included a eulogy, became more prevalent in response to the stress upon the individuality of the deceased and the importance of the immediate family. The family, or the executor of the will, increasingly took over from the individual at his or her impending death the responsibilities for funeral arrangements, thereby replacing a focus upon one’s own death with attention to the death of another.2 Mourning was dramatized by the use of distinctive apparel and appurtenances: among these figured funereal decorations hung on the deceased’s home; horses, coaches, and mourners swathed in black; and rings, scarves, and gloves given by family members as mementos of the dead. Questions regarding the nature of death, the dead, and the hereafter continued to be raised in the antebellum period, and the ways in which these queries were answered contributed to the growing expectation that death should be tamed or beautified. As before, energies were still to be concentrated upon maintaining connections with the deceased, thereby reducing the social distance between the living and the dead, but now in a context that tried to deny the harsher realities of death.3 This redefined contact between survivors and the departed generally was mediated through the investment of personal attention and financial resources. During the last half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, commitment to the care of the dead was accomplished in a variety of ways, with the preservation and the display of the body after death becoming special interests. Coffins—containers characterized by a tapering from the shoulder area— were superseded by rectangular, decorated, and aesthetically pleasing caskets capable of providing “protection” for the precious occupant. Embalming had been utilized during the Civil War as a practical method for preserving soldiers’ bodies for distant burial and became popularized by the slain President Lincoln’s funeral corte`ge, which traveled to various sites across the nation prior to the burial: it now came to be seen as a means by which the dead could be honored, and it allowed for the deceased to be gazed upon for an extended period after death, since physical appearance could be improved by advances in restorative techniques. Viewing of the remains became an important component of the social rituals associated with death, although the practice was frequently objected to on psychological and theological grounds. Because cremation compromised the popular desire to maintain physical contact with the deceased, it was not widely selected as a means of disposal in this period; however, by the end of the twentieth century, cremation was regarded as both economically and ecologically advantageous. Although in rural areas the extended family took primary responsibility for the washing and dressing of the body, urban citizens often turned to funeral professionals for assistance, given that their families were frequently removed by distance. Domestic dwellings continued, as in former days, to constitute the primary setting for funerals in both rural and urban areas. However, small, one-family dwellings in cities often could not contain the equipment for embalming, the casket, or the

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funeral, and so the funeral home more often became the locus for events surrounding the last rites.4 Mourning practices also became more stylized and elaborate, with variations according to geographic area and social class: guidelines were provided for mourning garb, the period of mourning, and types of accoutrements to be used.5 The landscaped “rural cemetery,” available to the general public, provided a personalized, beautiful, and consoling meeting place for the living and the dead. Literary works of the second half of the nineteenth century addressed the linkage between the living and the dead, stressing that the bereaved would be reunited with their loved ones either before or after their own deaths. Graphic details of the afterlife painted in popular consolation literature (often authored by women and clergy) produced a picture of the habitation of the dead not unlike the world of the living. The assurances of popular literature and the movement promoting scientific naturalism assisted in their respective and opposite ways the general notion that death was no longer to be feared: for scientific naturalism death was merely a “natural event,” while according to popular literature it was also a time for blissful sleep or the entry upon a familiar afterlife. By the second half of the twentieth century, death was taboo, and a reality to be avoided psychologically and physically; this interpretation had become possible in part through the advances of medicine that removed death from the home to the hospital and located it largely in one segment of the population: the elderly. Undertakers, who represented a specialized profession and made available a specialized facility, the funeral home, became the “ministers of death,” locating death conveniently in a restricted, specialized sphere. Another manifestation of the disassociation from death was the development of the so-called Memorial Park, begun in the 1920s: ground-level plaques (rather than headstones, for ease in keeping the parklike grounds), statuary, and the option for “perpetual care” defined the new strategy. Death had become unnamable, and the care of the dead was often left in the hands of strangers. In reaction, hospice and thanatological programs arose with the explicit purpose of humanizing the process of dying, and reclaiming death as a part of life. From the eighteenth century onward, Methodist responses to the changing views of dying and death wrought by social and cultural forces demonstrate once again what has already been documented elsewhere, namely, a gradual transition from a countercultural stance to one more willing to accommodate popular secular assumptions. The earliest approach, which never in fact entirely disappeared, was to regard the events surrounding death primarily as occasions to stress religious conversion, thereby perpetuating the older position that defined the purpose of life as preparation for death. Around the last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, consolation of the bereaved became the primary duty expected of clergy, family, and friends when confronted by death. By the end of the twentieth century, the largest Methodist denomination had moved to redefine the funeral by placing Christian death back within the entirety of the saving work of Christ summarized in the paschal mystery of his death and resurrection. Conversion, consolation, and conformity to Christ: these are the principal conceptual approaches to rituals surrounding death taken up by Methodists in the course of over two hundred years of ministry.

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Conversion At the 1784 Christmas Conference, members of the newly formed Methodist Episcopal Church showed themselves to be Wesley’s “Sons in the Gospel” by accepting from their “venerable Father” a liturgy, disciplinary rules derived from the Large Minutes, and the doctrinal standards contained in his sermons and New Testament notes. In the Sunday Service they received a revised and abbreviated version of the Prayer Book’s “Order for the Burial of the Dead” that provided an alternative to the two forms for burial already practiced by the unordained preachers: either an exhortation and a concluding prayer as Wesley had advised in 1755,6 or Scripture readings and prayers taken from the Prayer Book rite that might be added to an exhortation or stand separately.7 Whatever the form, hymn singing normally accompanied Methodist funerals. Lay preachers in America had always been expected to deliver funeral sermons, but their enthusiasm for doing so was qualified in 1777 by an American-generated proscription restricting sermons to the case of “those who we have reason to think died in the fear and favour of God.”8 The only other regulation related to funerals was imposed in 1784, and again this did not come from Wesley or the Large Minutes. As also with baptism and marriage, fees were not to be charged or received for burial since the aim was to “save souls and not to enrich ourselves.”9 Thus by 1784, the American Methodists had developed their own funeral praxis somewhat independent of their English kin. Their indebtedness to Wesley, therefore, was not so much in ritual performance per se, but in the theology articulated within the doctrinal standards that undergirded the Methodist approach to dying and death. In Wesley’s view, death was paradoxically both a punishment and a promise, although he generally placed the emphasis upon the latter. To begin with the penalty: death constituted more than the natural completion of life processes; temporal death, spiritual death, and eternal death were the consequences of the lingering sin of Adam’s fall.10 Therefore, death was deemed a penalty rather than a divinely ordained means to increase dissatisfaction with the earthly and material. Although godly and ungodly alike experienced consternation at the inevitability of death, Wesley believed that the Christian should not fear but strive to affirm that “to die is gain” and welcome the “lovely appearance of death.”11 To accentuate that end, he perpetuated the late medieval tradition of the ars moriendi by affirming that death, in addition to being the result of sin, was also for faithful Christians the promise of the cure of sin and an “entrance into a far more desirable country.”12 Thus, an ideal or “comfortable” death was characterized by “a calm passage out of life, full of even, rational peace and joy.”13 By painting a positive and evangelical picture of death utilizing biblical material and traditional Christian affirmations and interpretations, Wesley directly addressed the uncertainties about death characteristic of his day. Decisions made during life were therefore inseparably connected to what came after life. Upon death, according to Wesley, the souls of the deceased would enter an intermediate, penultimate state in which they would remain until reunited with the body at the resurrection of the dead. In that state variously identified as “the ante-chamber of heaven,” “Abraham’s bosom,” and “paradise,” the faithful dead

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would gain a foretaste of heaven, converse with the saints of all ages, and be “perfected” and “ripened” for the heavenly realm. For the wicked, the intermediate state was a foretaste of unavoidable hell.14 Wesley rejected the Roman Catholic conception of purgatory as he understood it: not only did he condemn the doctrine as without scriptural warrant and “repugnant to the Word of God” (as per the Articles of Religion), he also opined that a believer who died penitent had no need for purification from earlier wickedness in a “purging fire near hell.”15 Wesleyan funeral hymns looked toward an immediate reunion in soul with the brothers and sisters who had died in Christ. Thus in the third stanza of “Rejoice for a brother deceased”: There all the ship’s company meet, Who sailed with the Saviour beneath; With shouting each other they greet, And triumph o’er trouble and death: The voyage of life’s at an end, The mortal affliction is past; The age that in heaven they spend For ever and ever shall last.16 The resurrection to eternal life, “both the Fountain and the Object of our Faith,” was not guaranteed to all humanity, but only to the saints in Christ who would rise “in due season”; the notion of unconditional universal salvation was, for Wesley, unsupportable by either Scripture or sound reason.17 In Wesley’s thought, the general resurrection of the dead would be followed by the judgment at which all individuals would be held accountable. Eternal punishment, as a consequence of original sin, was the future prospect for those who did not in their earthly life acknowledge their alienation by sin, earnestly repent, and seek or appropriate God’s redeeming and perfecting love though faith in Jesus Christ. Conversely, for those who followed the via salutis, the eschatological goal (namely, salvation to eternal life and the transformation or restoration of sinful humanity into the imago dei) that had been anticipated and (in part) attained in earthly life was achieved. Nowhere are Wesley’s views on the last things better summarized than in the hymns on the subject, especially those in the section “Describing Judgment” in the 1780 A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists: according to the hymn “The great archangel’s trump shall sound,” sinners on that dreadful day “shall lift their guilty head and shrink to see a yawning hell,” and the faithful “shall stand in Jesu’s righteousness” and “smile to see a burning world.”18 Several of the hymns found in the Collection that address eschatological and funerary themes came from an independent pamphlet of Funeral Hymns, first published by the Wesleys in 1746; such Wesleyan perspectives in verse were also contained in a second pamphlet of forty-three Funeral Hymns (1759), and in forty hymns from Preparation for Death, in Several Hymns (1772). Since the death of a Christian anticipated his or her entry into the “everlasting habitations,” the response of the dying and the bereaved was not to be grief but joy. As a young man, Wesley emphasized, even at funerals, the inappropriateness

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of grief, and encouraged patience and resoluteness instead. Following the deaths of his sister’s children, he wrote to her that their passing was “a great instance of the goodness of God towards you,” since now “you have nothing to do but to serve our Lord without carefulness and without distraction, till you are sanctified in body, soul, and spirit.”19 Wesley modified the extremity of his position with age and experience, although he clearly preferred that Christians meet the death of a loved one and their own deaths with an acceptance of the mercy and grace of God. The funeral of a devout Christian, like eyewitness and written accounts of the last days and “happy” deaths of the faithful, was recognized by Wesley and the early Methodists as a source of continuing inspiration and a powerful instrument for convincing or converting unbelievers. Funerals or the events surrounding interment were regarded as occasions for evangelism. Wesley urged his preachers and other leaders of the Methodist societies to “improve” the opportunities accorded at funerals when “the windows of heaven are open” that the burial of the dead might prove to be “a blessing for many.”20 To accentuate Christian testimony, Wesley enjoined moderation at funerals, preferring neither the “stupid, senseless Pageantry” associated with the custom of lying in state nor the starkness of Scottish funerals.21 Simplicity with decorum was the standard for the Methodists, who often expressed the wish to be buried as “plain Christians” at a solemn occasion where tears of sorrow would intermingle with tears of joy. There seems to be no evidence to support the claim that early Methodist funerals were eucharistic occasions.22 Wesley’s revision of the burial office conformed to his perspectives on Christian eschatology and thus constituted a distinct shift in emphasis from the theology espoused in the Prayer Book’s rite. Wesley deleted phrases (from the Collect) and entire prayers (the Committal and the Prayer of Thanksgiving) apparently because they were too confident in naming the eternal destiny of every individual who might receive the last rite.23 Challenges to the presumption that all who died departed “in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life,” as stated in the Committal, had already been made by the Puritans and others before Wesley. Similarly, objections had previously been raised about the Prayer of Thanksgiving (even by Wesley himself in 1755),24 and in particular regarding the truthfulness of the phrase “We give thee hearty thanks, for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world.” With Wesley’s omission of these references, no longer was the dead individual the focus of the liturgy, even though the funeral remained the occasion for gathering to remember the departed and for returning the body to the earth: there was neither scrutiny regarding the person’s faith nor identification of his or her character—indeed, the deceased remained nameless. Intentionally or unintentionally, Wesley’s burial liturgy was a “generic” commendation; specificity, when warranted, could be articulated in the funeral sermon, though such was not identified by rubric within the rite. The attention in Wesley’s burial rite, in keeping with the Methodist stress upon an evangelical witness at the time of death, was placed upon the faithfulness of the community gathered, who, through hearing the word of God and singing hymns of faith and hope, were called to accountability before God and each other.

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The 1784 burial service was basically an extended reading of Scripture, since Wesley left virtually untouched the Prayer Book material drawn directly from holy writ. The exact location for performing the first part of the rite with its sentences and readings was undefined in order to adjust to the various circumstances of the American situation; the second part was specified to take place “at the grave”: Scripture Sentences [said when the minister meets and goes before the corpse] John 11:25–26 Job 19:25–27 1 Timothy 6:7; Job 1:21 Psalm 90 1 Corinthians 15:20–58 Sentences at the Grave [when the corpse is laid in the earth] Job 14:1–2 Media vita [“In the midst of life. . . .”] Revelation 14:13 Kyrie eleison The Lord’s Prayer Collect [“O Merciful God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the resurrection and the life. . . .”] Apostolic Benediction [2 Corinthians 13:14] The two exceptions to the explicit biblical content were the Collect (though it quotes John 11:25–26) and Media vita, the latter consisting of a series of sentences: In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased? Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death. Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts: shut not thy merciful ears to our prayers; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not at our last hour for any pains of death to fall from thee.

Wesley’s inclusion of this text kept alive a long-standing tradition of the western church, which was usually traced (probably falsely) to Notker (d. 912), a monk of St. Gall. During the Middle Ages, Media vita had been widely popular throughout Europe, particularly in Germany; Luther’s German paraphrase of the Latin was a source for Miles Coverdale’s English metrical version, which in part inspired the translation placed in the funeral liturgy of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer.25 Wesley, in writing about spiritual and physical death, would on occasion illustrate his thesis by alluding to the familiar Media vita.26 Because of his interest in primitive liturgical practice and in the Christian East, Wesley may have found the echo of the Trisagion preserved in the sentences—“O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour”—to be an important link with Christian antiquity. Hence Media vita was retained in his revision and continued in some Methodist burial liturgies into the late twentieth century.

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Journals of the ordained ministers indicate that they found Wesley’s 1784 burial rite suitable for their use, but how consistently they followed its order and content is unknown, since notations record only ambiguous phrases such as “read the burial service” and “performed the funeral rites.”27 No explicit regulations excluded the unordained from officiating other than, perhaps, the use of the term “minister” in the ritual text. A limitation may have been implicit in the rule approved in 1787 forbidding lay preachers from reading the “Liturgy” unless they had written direction from a bishop or elder. With the rescinding of this provision by the first General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1792, there were no official obstacles to lay leadership of the burial rite, since overt prohibitions were stated only for the celebrations of the Eucharist, baptism, and matrimony. Despite the absence of restrictions, the Methodist people soon showed a decided preference for either the elder or the deacon to preside at the rites or preach a funeral sermon for their beloved dead. If an ordained Methodist was on hand when a member of a non-Methodist denomination died who had no clergyman for that denomination nearby, the Methodist might be called upon to lead or assist in any part of those obsequies. The General Conference in 1792 abbreviated Wesley’s burial liturgy by the removal of the readings from Psalm 90 and 1 Corinthians 15. Not only was the amount of scriptural material reduced, but the rite moved quickly from the meeting of the corpse to the gathering at the grave: the 1792 rite was essentially a graveside service. Some Methodist funerals, therefore, entirely took place where the body was laid to rest, with a sermon sometimes added to all or a portion of the approved rite. Alternatively, an additional service supplementing the graveside component could be held in the preaching house, the home of the deceased, or other setting, with a sermon (if requested) often constituting the centerpiece. The order followed might be that expected for the community’s Sunday worship, another familiar pattern, or an improvised arrangement judged best for the occasion. Such a service could fall immediately before or after interment (the deceased’s remains were typically present in the former event), but in cases where a preacher was unavailable, the additional service came days or weeks after burial. Graveside and other funerary services took place during the day or early evening, and on any day of the week, and in the decades after 1792 (as before) often drew substantial numbers in attendance on account of the anticipated revival atmosphere. There are also examples of evangelistic funeral sermons preached before an individual’s last breath: after having premonitions about his own impending death, Edmund Henley in 1808 gathered his friends and acquaintances at a stand in the graveyard and preached his own funeral sermon.28 Thus the rubric stating “the following or some other solemn Service shall be used” that began the Methodist Episcopal burial rite from 1792 until 1852 codified the freedom and variety in liturgical expression Methodists were accustomed to at the time of death. Yet overlapping with the rubric for flexibility was the legislation first placed in the Methodist Episcopal Discipline in 1824 requiring the consistent and uniform use of the church’s authorized rite—a rule that denomination carried until 1912. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s rubric for ritual liberty was dropped in 1858, for according

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to Bishop Joshua Soule, who “regretted the existence of that rubric,” “the service is often reduced to—I do not know what.”29 Despite the variability in practice, Methodist funerals ideally were to be characterized by simplicity and proper decorum. Popular customs such as decorating coaches, wearing fancy hatbands, and giving mementos were discouraged as prideful vanities; the distribution and consumption of spirituous liquors at funerals was thoroughly condemned. The Wesleyan Methodists, from the outset, legislated the countercultural austerity desired for their funerals by listing under the section on “Dress and Furniture” in the Discipline a note stipulating “we disapprove of Christians changing their apparel in mourning for the dead.” The plainness—and cost— of Methodist funerals is reflected in a sexton’s fee list dated 1837 for the church at Schenectady, New York: Ringing bell Hearse and cloth, horse and driver For digging graves from the first of April until November 20th Single coffin Double coffin For child under 12 years, single For child under 12 years, double For digging graves from November 20th to April 1st Single Double For children under 12, single For children under 12, double For inviting bearers For attending funerals and filling up graves For inviting people in general and the bearers

$ .621⁄2 1.75 .75 1.00 .50 .75 1.50 1.75 1.00 1.25 .50 .75 1.0030

Solemn yet joyful hymn singing as the body was carried in procession or placed in the grave was recognized as the most appropriate decoration for Methodist funerals. Christian song also proved beneficial in uniting persons of different social backgrounds, racial groups, and ecclesiastical traditions who might attend or participate in the same funeral. William Colbert recorded in 1805 the hymns sung at a Philadelphia funeral attended by Methodist Episcopal and Protestant Episcopal ministers of different races: In the afternoon attended the funeral of Charles Boston a Black man, who was inered [sic] between the old and new walls of Bethel Church. A great multitude attended the funeral, which was conducted with a great degree of solemnity. Absolom Jones, Richard Allen, and James Champion walked before, James Smith, Jeffry Bula and myself followed. The singers followed us, and the bearers them. The hymns sung were “Rejoice for a brother disceased—Hark from the tombs, and My God my heart with Love inflame.” This was ended in the house. I then delivered a short oration, and we went to the grave singing “a solemn March we make.” At the grave Absolom Jones, the African Minister of the Episcopal Church, with a very audible voice went through the

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Form of the burial of the dead. We then returnd from the grave singing a Hymn very applicable to the accation and left the place.31

Although Methodists debated the use in church worship of formal part singing and fugue tunes, Methodist tune books by the 1830s incorporated funeral anthems in those musical settings that may have been intended for domestic funerals and burials not in a churchyard; such may have been the motivation behind the choice of words “for Particular Occasions” used in the titles of the tune books. The Methodist Harmonist (1831) contained two hymn anthems written for part singing, Barton’s “The Dying Christian,” and “The Dying Christian’s Happy End”; the former text proclaimed the Wesleyan view of death as ultimately promise and goal: Vital spark of heavenly flame, Quit, O quit this mortal frame; Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying, O the pain, the bliss of dying. Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife, And let me languish into life. An expanded version of “The Dying Christian” (utilizing the language of 1 Corinthians 15:54–55) was included in The Harmonist (1841) and set to a fugue tune. Several other anthems suitable for funerals appeared in the 1841 book, among them William Billings’ homophonic “Funeral Anthem” with the text of Revelation 14:13 taken from the burial liturgy. As the Methodist family divided in the first half of the nineteenth century, they kept in their burial liturgies the scriptural witness to the frailty of human life juxtaposed with the hope for believers obtained by Christ’s victory over the grave. For all but one denomination, some version of Wesley’s rite, as altered in 1792, proved adequate in conveying that message of repentance and trust. The Methodist Protestants reconfigured the burial rite (which by rubric was to be done entirely at the grave), but retained several of the older Scripture sentences and added to them in order to speak of death as both penalty and promise: during the procession to the grave, the minister could repeat one or more readings from John 11:25–26, Job 19:25–26 (no verse 27), Revelation 14:13, 1 Peter 1:3–5, and 1 Corinthians 15:51–57; after the apostolic benediction and while the sexton was filling in the grave, the minister had the option of selecting from among Genesis 3:19, Revelation 20:6; 21:4, 1 Corinthians 2:9, Revelation 22:14, and Psalm 116:16. By rubric the minister, upon arrival at the graveside, could “exhort those present to reflect on the shortness and uncertainty of human life; and to prepare for death, judgment, and eternity.” Those same themes were then addressed in a lengthy prayer, which wedded Scripture not found in either the Prayer Book or Wesley’s burial rite to snippets and allusions from those sources, thereby formalizing the style typical of Methodist extemporary prayer—and giving written form to the way the Methodist Episcopal service may, in fact, have been reworked by some ministers: Almighty and most merciful God, in whose hands are the issues of life and death; and before whose bar we shall all stand, and give an account of the deeds done in the

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body; we beseech thee to grant unto us, at all times, a salutary conviction of the frailty of life, and our great responsibility to thee, the judge of quick and dead. In the midst of life we are in death; we come up and are cut down like a flower; we flee as a shadow, and never continue in one stay. Death, judgment and eternity are just before us, and of whom may we seek protection and grace, but of thee, O most merciful God, who hath redeemed us with the most precious blood of Christ, that we might be delivered from the power of sin and the fear of death, and be made heirs of eternal life? We humbly confess, O righteous Father, that we have sinned, and come short of thy glory. We have been undutiful children; slothful servants; and unfaithful stewards of the manifold mercies of God. Be merciful, O Lord, to our unrighteousness, pardon our sins, and raise us from a death of sin to a life of righteousness, through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath said: I am the resurrection and the life, he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall not die eternally. We beseech thee, Father of all our mercies, and giver of every good and perfect gift, to grant us grace whereby we may serve thee acceptably, with reverence and godly fear, all our days; looking for the blessed hope, and glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, to judge the world in righteousness. For the hour is coming, in which all that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the son of God, and shall come forth; they that have done good, to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. Forbid, O most merciful God, that any of us should taste of the bitter pains of the second death; but grant that when we depart this transitory life, we may die in possession of triumphant faith, and rest in Christ. And, at the general resurrection of the last day, be found acceptable in thy sight, and receive that blessing which thy well beloved Son shall then pronounce to all that love and fear thee; saying, come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world. Almighty God, our heavenly Father, grant that this dispensation of thy righteous providence may be sanctified to the good of all present. May we take due warning, and consider the shortness and uncertainty of human life; the solemnities of death, and the awful realities of eternity; and prepare to meet thee in the judgment. May the relatives of the deceased not sorrow as those who have no hope, but have grace to submit to thy righteous will, and be fully prepared to say the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.32

For the preachers and for the Methodist people, the funeral sermon functioned as the core of the religious observances surrounding death, with the Scripture readings and prayers from the rites providing authoritative theological support for the sermon content. The centrality of the sermon is indicated in ministers’ diaries and journals by the mention of the Scripture verse that was selected or requested and usually little else about the funeral service itself. Preachers anticipated that funeral sermons would be “solemn,” “awful,” “warning,” and “melting” occasions that would bind the Methodist community together and warm the hearts of unbelievers; disappointment resulted when the congregation was unfeeling, or the preacher failed to move the congregation—the latter deemed a likely consequence if the “paper swords” of written sermon manuscripts were relied upon at funerals as a “substitute for the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.”33 Sermons were expected

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to convict and convince, to encourage preparation before death (“time swiftly flies, and death draws near”; therefore, “be ye also ready”),34 and to identify death as the portal to a better place for believers. These emphases are certainly evident in most of the sermons or sermon outlines that date from before the mid-nineteenth century. In the sermon based on 1 Thessalonians 4:13–14 that he preached in 1797 at the funeral of Conduce Gatch, the father of minister Philip Gatch, Bishop Francis Asbury first “observed the pleasing, cheering, and charming manner in which the apostle described the death of the righteous[:] . . . sleep in Jesus; a rest from labour, sorrow, affliction, and pain; happy opening visions of God.” Secondly, he spoke to “the hope the pious who are alive have for their pious dead who have had experience, and long continuance in religion, and a comfortable dying in the Lord.” For those “who have no hope for themselves nor their dead, how awful their sorrow.”35 Almost thirty years later, when preaching at the funeral of a sevenyear-old child, George Coles addressed the “happy removal of the child from the evils of the present life and the snares of a wicked world” and the “certainty of its felicity on the ground of the atonement and on the authority of Jesus Christ (Mark 10).”36 Coles’s subject on that occasion may have been chosen in light of the propensity of Methodists (and others) to believe that the death of a child was a “severe chastisement for the soul’s well-being” or a divine reprimand for idolizing one’s offspring.37 In fulfilling their function as a vehicle for converting unbelievers and edifying the faithful, Methodist funeral sermons would, when warranted, illustrate the gospel message with reference to the Christian character of the deceased. On the occasion of Bishop Richard Whatcoat’s death, for example, funeral sermons were preached in various locations with each message utilizing a different Scripture text, “but all leading to shew the excellency of the man, the christian and minister.”38 Funeral sermons of notable persons were reproduced in church periodicals, not only to provide a brief biography of the deceased, but also to further the sermon’s evangelical scope. A popular Methodist literary genre of this period, as earlier, comprised edifying studies of the faithful in their final days; editor Davis W. Clark contrasted believers with unbelievers in Death-Bed Scenes; Or, Dying With and Without Religion: Designed to Illustrate the Truth and Power of Christianity (1851). The apparent Methodist tendency to “improve” upon the vita for any recipient of the last rite may have been partly behind the decision made in 1830 by the New York City preachers to limit funeral sermons to “aged official members and aged matrons.”39 Such Methodist proclivity was publicly challenged at midcentury when Joseph B. Wakely performed the final office (including a sermon) for William Poole of New York, a notorious individual who had been murdered. Initially generated by essays in The Churchman, an organ of the “High-Church party” of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the debate focused upon the content of Wakely’s funeral “address” and whether he should have used the church’s burial rite for a disreputable person. Wakely published a thirty-four-page apologia in which he defended the Methodist Episcopal practice of burying “the poor and the degraded,” and denied that he eulogized Poole, but rather “spoke plainly of the evils and errors of his life, and warned his companions to shun his bad course. . . . I uttered, for the

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benefit of the living, and not for the ‘dull, cold ear’ of the dead, the words of Christian consolation.”40 In the name of Christian charity, Methodist ministers were generally willing to provide a decent burial and a funeral sermon for all except one category: suicides.41 Methodist ministers in the 1850s and 1860s continued to “read the burial services” and preach funeral sermons that, conforming to Thomas O. Summers’s recommendation, employed “acceptable words, hitting words, words profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, [and] for instruction in righteousness.”42 Making official what was already extant practice, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1858 inserted into its burial rite before the sentences at interment a rubric permitting a hymn, a sermon or exhortation, and extemporary prayer. Within that denomination and also within the Methodist Episcopal Church, requests for more scriptural options in the official burial service led to the reintroduction in both rites of readings taken from Psalm 90 and 1 Corinthians 15. The Methodist Episcopal Church in 1868 also printed Psalm 39 (which Wesley had deleted in his revision of the Prayer Book) and preceded it with a rubric indicating that “some other suitable portion of Scripture” could be read “in the house or Church.” But more than desires for ritual flexibility and a return to Wesley’s (or the Prayer Book’s) form may have prompted the restoration of verses from the Pauline chapter. In 1844, George Bush, a professor of Hebrew at New York City University, published Anastasis: Or, the Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body, Rationally and Scripturally Considered in which, by a philosophical principle of the “progressive development of Scriptural truth,” he determined that the doctrine of the resurrection of the body was not sanctioned by either reason or revelation, and that resurrection took place at death with the disengagement of an already-present spiritual (and immortal) body. Bush denied both the general resurrection and the general judgment, and insisted, based upon his interpretation of scriptural evidence, that the prevailing sense of resurrection in the New Testament was that of immortality and the entrance into a new sphere of existence and not the resuscitation of physical bodies. Methodists, among others, were swift to denounce Bush’s claims put forward in that book and elsewhere as attacks upon the classical Christian (and Wesleyan) view of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. Calvin Kingsley, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and a professor at the church-related Alleghany College, directly refuted Bush’s work in The Resurrection of the Dead: A Vindication of the Literal Resurrection of the Human Body, published in 1847, as did R. J. Cooke thirty-seven years later in Outlines of the Doctrine of the Resurrection (1884). Manuals exegeting denominational doctrine, and in particular official catechisms, reinforced belief in a general resurrection and a last judgment. Lest Free Methodists be tempted to abandon such doctrine, a statement on “Future Reward and Punishment” appeared among their founding Articles of Religion. Between the years of Kingsley’s and Cooke’s publications, and also afterward, numerous articles and essays by Methodists debated the nature of death itself, the existence of an intermediate state, the meaning of resurrection, and the relationship between body, soul, and spirit. Some Methodists succumbed, if only in part, to the new views: although he held the doctrine of the resurrection

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of the body to be totally dependent upon revelation, theologian Thomas Ralston was willing to concede that not only Scripture, but reason independent of Christian revelation, could support the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.43 Thus, the addition into Methodist burial rites of a committal of the body may not have come only as a response to cultural ambiguities about death and the hereafter, and to liturgical needs, but to address a theological issue as well. The committal already in use in 1840 by the African Methodist Episcopal Church had been borrowed from the Protestant Episcopal burial liturgy, which had removed the long-offensive reference to “sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life” and replaced it with language of the general resurrection that, specifically for those who had died in Christ, would be the occasion of a glorious transformation. The Episcopal text was slightly modified, so rather than have God “take unto himself” the soul of the departed, the soul was more generally “taken”: Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God, in his wise providence, to take out of this world the soul of our deceased brother, we therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; looking for the general resurrection in the last day, and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; at whose second coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the earth and the sea shall give up their dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed, and made like unto his own glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.

This form was adopted by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1858), the Methodist Protestant Church (1870), and the Free Methodist Church (by 1875), but the Methodist Episcopal committal approved in 1864 slightly adjusted it, so the text spoke inclusively of “the soul of the departed”; the Wesleyans and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church followed the Methodist Episcopal design.

Consolation By the last three decades of the nineteenth century, Methodists held divergent views of the last things. The Holiness Methodists and other conservatives maintained the belief that souls and bodies would be reunited at the resurrection of the dead, to be followed by the general judgment when the righteous would find bliss, and the wicked everlasting punishment. Because eschatology had received “much heterodox attention” and the “doctrine of the Resurrection [had] fared badly of late,” the “signs of the times,” they believed, called for a restatement of orthodox doctrine.44 Among liberal Methodists sensitive to the intellectual and theological discussions encouraged by George Bush and others, less certainty was expressed about the scriptural or rational basis for prior teachings about death and its consequences. Emphasis upon the penal aspect of death began to wane and was replaced by a stronger stress upon hope, the mercy of God, the likelihood of immortality immediately upon death, and a reunion with the beloved departed. Such change in perspective can be found in the work of Methodist

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Episcopal theologian John Miley, who downplayed death as punishment and instead accentuated the joys of immortality and the blessedness of heaven.45 With the beginning of the new century, some Methodist theologians stressed not resurrection but immortality, as did Olin Alfred Curtis, though he did not relinquish the concept of death as penalty.46 The first half of the twentieth century saw a further replacement of the doctrine of resurrection with a doctrine of immortality. Georgia Harkness, in 1947, claimed that even without “the resurrection experience of the early disciples,” the goodness of God would have sufficed to ensure belief in “the personal immortality” of God’s otherwise short-lived human creatures. “In the life beyond,” she posited, “there will be continuance of the individual soul, fellowship with those we love, a lifting of earthly chains of pain and suffering, a chance to grow in the things of Christ, the glory of God’s nearer presence.”47 The theological shift toward a stress on immortality and hope rather than on judgment may also be traced by examining the subject headings in the official Methodist Episcopal hymnals of the period. The Methodist Pocket Hymn-Book (1802) had included twenty-three hymns under the heading “Death and Judgment,” but by the time of publication of the 1878 Hymnal of the Methodist Episcopal Church, hymns of “Judgment and Retribution” figured only seventeen while hymns on the subject of “Heaven” numbered fifty. In the 1905 Methodist Hymnal, six hymns appeared under the heading “Judgment and Retribution,” with twenty-five identified under the topic “Heaven.” The Methodist Hymnal of 1935 relocated “Death” from the table of contents to the topical index (reference to “Judgment” completely disappeared) and replaced it with the heading “The Eternal Life,” under which twenty hymns were categorized. Popular articles and essays particularly in Methodist Episcopal publications reflected the new approach to dying and death—and to life as more than a preparation for death. The older genre of Methodist deathbed literature was criticized as overly preoccupied with the last days, since one was to be judged by the entirety of a life lived rather than by one’s piety when confronted by death. Warnings about the terrors of death declined as words of hope proliferated at the prospect of a glorious immortality. Descriptions of the eternal fate for unbelievers lessened as Methodists subscribed to the already-prevalent literature of consolation that depicted heaven as a glorified version of domestic life where relationships would continue and one would be cognizant of earthly affairs.48 “Heaven is more akin to earth than many Christians think,” commented minister Jesse S. Gilbert. He added: We will meet with many loved ones. There will be greetings as well as partings. The aged will find heaven a more familiar place in that respect than earth. Then the parting is all over, but the greeting will go on until the last Christian friend we have known and loved on earth, has reached the golden shore. One thought more, and it is this: Many persons are often troubled in spirit, because they do not, in the full flash of life and health, feel as they express it, “willing to die.” Why should we wish to die when God wants us to live? When the dying hour comes, dying grace will come. A deathbed state of mind would unfit us not only for life’s enjoyments, but also for its toils. When the “last enemy” appears, God will supply strength for the conflict.49

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Readers of periodicals and journals soon adopted the new vocabulary as their own. Emma Lee Taylor wrote upon the death of her father, John A. Taylor, in 1881: Death, death; what does it mean, our precious and beloved father has gone. The angel of the Lord came, and wafted his soul to a more beautiful home about three o’clock this evening. Oh, what peace is his, what rest he now enjoys, from all the pain and suffering; with what pleasure he looked up to a brighter world, prepared for all of God’s children. Yes, the hour came at last, and now he is gone; forever gone from our midst. No more will we hear his sweet voice, no more will his prayers ascend to a throne of grace in our behalf, for he has gone to inherit the kingdom prepared for him by our crucified Saviour. Not a week has passed since Uncle Bob his brother died. May God in his mercy, and goodness watch over the bereaved ones who are left to mourn their loss, though not without hope, of meeting them again at “The beautiful gate,” about which Pa was so fond of hearing us sing.50

Accompanying the theological shift on matters eschatological was a change in the practice of funerals among some Methodists. Funereal simplicity as the antithesis to the more customary ostentation was gradually being supplanted by assimilation to culture—or at least the adoption of funeral customs embraced in the wider Protestant ethos. Black garb and the simple wooden coffin were replaced by the appurtenances that veiled the realities of death such as the embalming of the body, beautiful caskets, and floral arrangements, all of which generated complaints in some quarters. The Wesleyan Methodists during this time supplemented their condemnation of mourning apparel in the Discipline with another statement protesting against “the extravagant waste of money, and needless expense, merely for display, on funeral occasions.” Yet one Methodist argued for funeral reform not only on account of the lavishness, expense, and unnecessary pomp of many funerals, but that the obsequies might have a less gloomy and a more hopeful complexion.51 Consolation was now seen as the proper outcome of ministry at the time of death, whether the deceased or the mourners be believers or unbelievers. Whereas in earlier years Methodists were encouraged to take one last look at their beloved before the coffin was lowered into the grave, now an open casket was believed by some to be barbaric and uncivilized (though it still continued to occur at Methodist funerals). Certain writers discouraged public funerals in favor of private rites, since “the more practical and intimate the services, the more effective are they in doing good.”52 Funeral sermons—renamed addresses, meditations, or remarks— were now intended primarily to comfort the bereaved with the gospel of peace rather than eulogize the dead or convert the unbeliever. Eyes were to be dried, not moistened: A “funeral sermon” is almost never in order, even in the rural districts to-day. The address should not take more than eight or ten minutes, and the whole service should be concluded in a half hour, as a rule. Any biographical sketch of the deceased that may be desirable should be incorporated into the address, and while proper appreciation is ever in order, overstatement and eulogy are distinctly bad form. If the departed was a saint, that fact will be already widely known. If not, only embarrassment can follow

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from an attempt to “whiten a sepulcher.” Any effort to stir up the emotions of the company, particularly of the family, is reprehensible. Rather the service should soothe the harrowed feelings of those who mourn by its quiet tenderness. The proper material for an address at a funeral consists of the fundamental doctrine that God is love, and all other doctrines are implied in it.53

Showing a complete reversal of earlier Methodist practice, pastoral care specialist Russell L. Dicks in 1948 went so far as to state that “the total purpose of the funeral service is to be helpful to the family; the ‘sinners’ who attend a funeral are of no concern to the minister at that time.”54 To provide solace for the mourners, brevity became the watchword for the ritual activities associated with death. A few words, carefully chosen from Scripture, poetry, or prose, could, alongside compassionate prayer, soothe and console. The favorite songs or hymns of the deceased might be sung to connect the living and the dead, and to sweeten the memory of one lost.55 Funeral manuals published in response to the demand for resources distinguished material for different ages, genders, circumstances of life, and causes of death.56 Only three Methodist denominations acknowledged the shifts in theology and in practice, not only by their excisions and rephrasings but also by introducing a substantial amount of new material into their official rites for the burial of the dead during the late nineteenth through the first half of the twentieth century. These were the Methodist Protestant Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Methodist Episcopal Church. The others added nothing except for a statement of committal if one had not already been introduced; the Wesleyan Church, in fact, abbreviated its rite, so that in 1892 the authorized text consisted of processional sentences (as received from Wesley), the committal at the grave, an optional reading of Revelation 14:13, and “an appropriate prayer.” The Methodist Protestants, in 1870, eliminated the rubric for the funeral exhortation and modified the sequence at the grave so that a few brief sentences (the first clause of Media vita conflated with Job 14:1, and John 5:25, 29) preceded a committal; then followed the first, third (without the quotation from John 11: 25–26), fourth (with John 5:25, 29 removed), sixth, and seventh paragraphs taken from the long prayer used in 1830. Although the prayer retained references to future judgment, the paragraph disappeared that delineated rest in Christ at the time of death and also the general resurrection. When the Methodist Protestants revised their rite again in 1892, the graveside liturgy was kept intact as the second part of the rite, with a new first part “arranged for the home” to be adjusted if used in the church. The service began with Scripture sentences,57 mixing messages of warning and hope, and was followed with Scripture verses to be chosen according to specified categories: young children, sudden death, the aged, the faithful, and “selections which set forth the design and gracious consolations of affliction.” An address and extemporary prayer closed that part of the service. In 1924, the opening of the first part of the service was expanded to begin with the reading of John 11:25, 26 and Revelation 14:13, and the offering of two prayers, the first focusing upon human accountability, and the second beseeching God the Father’s compassion and comfort in the name of Christ “who is touched with the feeling

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of our infirmities.” While the Methodist Protestant rites showed a growing tendency toward consolation and continued as in the earliest ritual text to offer words of hope, neither the penal character of death nor the threat of final judgment had been entirely eliminated. The textual modifications made to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s burial rite at their 1910 General Conference displayed the results of a concerted effort to beautify death and to offer words of comfort. Although requests were put forward to omit the opening sentence from Job 1:21 since it “makes God not only pleased at, but responsible for, every death which occurs,”58 that sentence was left untouched; rather, Job 19:25–27, with its references to worms destroying the body and seeing God in the flesh at the latter day, was replaced with the promise of a heavenly habitation and the “Apostle’s own message on immortality” offered in 2 Corinthians 5:1.59 Verses suggestive of divine wrath or retribution were removed from Psalm 90 and from a newly added Psalm 39. For instances of a child’s death, 2 Samuel 12:16–23 and Mark 10:13–16 were authorized as alternate readings. The committal was adjusted so that “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God, in his wise providence, to take out of this world the soul of our deceased brother” became a more assured “Forasmuch as the spirit of our deceased brother hath returned to God who gave it.” Yet these changes, significant though they were, paled in comparison to those made by the Methodist Episcopal Church, first in 1916, and again in 1932. The Methodist Episcopal Church’s alteration to the rubric at the outset of the 1916 rite signaled the direction taken “to introduce a little more Christian light and gladness into the gloom of our funeral ritual”:60 therein (and in other rubrics) the neutral term “body” superseded the graphically descriptive (and now offensive) word “corpse.” In response to the charge set before the Commission on Revision of Ritual to modify the service “principally through the use of additional Scripture selections, with the purpose of giving fuller expression to the Christian hope and comfort as found in the New Testament,” the opening sentences from Job 19 and from the conflation of 1 Timothy 6 and Job 1 were replaced with sentences from 2 Corinthians 5:1 and Revelation 21:22–23.61 Psalm 39 was dropped in favor of Psalm 23, and as in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South rite, Psalm 90 was purged of references or allusions to God’s anger and judgment. Psalm 39:4 did survive as one of the sentences at the grave, substituting for the reading from Job 14:1–2; Media vita was severely truncated by the excision of references to God as judge, and a new concluding petition was affixed that God would “grant us everlasting life.” Optional lessons from John 14:1–3, 15–20, 25–27 and Revelation 7: 9–17 accompanied the reading from 1 Corinthians 15 (now reduced to verses 41– 49 and 53–58). Thomas Benjamin Neely, in his criticism of the 1916 Ritual Commission’s propensity to remove Old Testament references and quotations, made extended comments about the deletion of passages that had been used to precede the departed’s remains “since time immemorial,” and, particularly about the omission of the “sublime” statement from Job 19:25–27. Although he lauded the inclusion of the new sentences, Neely felt their presence did little to compensate for the “obliteration” of the historic material, a complaint he also registered against

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his church’s adoption of the new opening formulation of the committal used by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.62 The Methodist Episcopal revision of 1916 did not add new prayers to the standard burial rite; the denomination, in 1884, had already inserted a prayer of thanksgiving (according to the form of the Protestant Episcopal Church) that spoke of the “souls of the faithful” being in “joy and felicity.” Thanksgiving was not given specifically for the deceased, but for “the good examples of all those thy servants” who had “finished their course in faith.”63 In spite of the apparent generality of this version of the prayer compared to that of the 1662 Prayer Book (to which Wesley objected), caution was still advised in its usage, for the exemplary life of the deceased was seen by some as the only justification for including the prayer at all.64 An alteration in the text occurred with the revision of 1916: “after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh” was simplified to “after death,” coinciding, perhaps, with the greater sense of ease in the material world that was continuing to develop. A new and independent rite for the burial of a child appeared officially in 1916 after services had been proposed, but not approved, at the 1908 and 1912 General Conferences.65 The liturgy of 1916 allowed for hymn, prayer, the reading of selections from Scripture (Mark 10:13–16, Psalm 23, Psalm 103:13–18, and Revelation 22:1–5), and at the grave, prayer concluding with the Lord’s Prayer and a benediction. The opening prayer (to be said at an unspecified location), in keeping with the concerns of the times, acknowledged the mystery of God, but also asked for comfort and strength that the bereaved might “rejoice in the promise of eternal life” in anticipation of being “united again with our loved ones in thy heavenly and eternal kingdom.” The Methodist Episcopal Church’s 1932 revision carried further the intentions of 1916, by altering previous texts and expanding the options available within the two official burial rites; the order for the burial of a child was also brought into line structurally with the normative burial service. Specified Scripture passages multiplied in both rites, and even a brief passage from the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon claimed a place as one of the opening sentences (“The righteous live forever, and the care of them is with the Most High: with his right hand he shall cover them, and with his arm shall he shield them”). To complement the biblical material in the approved orders, the 1935 Methodist Hymnal provided in the section on responsive readings four selections indicated for the funeral service.66 The number of prayers also increased substantially, some of these apparently originating from Methodist authors, and others borrowed from authorized ecclesiastical books and unofficial worship resources.67 Several of the prayers were constructed by the interweaving of and elaboration upon scriptural texts already present in the burial office, and the content of the prayers bespoke a faithful optimism: “that [those who sorrow] may be enabled to contemplate the joy of that better home where thou art seen and worshipped as the Light of all whom thou keepest in thine everlasting love” and “lift us above unrighteous anger and mistrust into faith and hope and charity.” With the words “forasmuch as the spirit of the departed has entered into the life immortal we therefore commit his body to its resting place,

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but his spirit we commend to God,” an assurance was given about the eternal fate of anyone who received the last rite. When the Methodist Church was created in 1939, the Methodist Episcopal Church’s 1932 revision served as the basis for the new rite. Even so, new Scripture readings (from the Old and New Testaments) replaced some of the older options or were added outright. Only four of the prayers of 1932 were taken over into the revision of 1939; attention was given to expanding the number of prayers in the rite by utilizing material published elsewhere in service books or collections.68 Although it is unclear which sources were originally used by the revision committee since a particular prayer may be found in a multiplicity of previous books, prayers may be traced to such American resources as the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship (Revised) (1932, 1936); the Book of Common Worship for Use in the Several Communions of the Church of Christ (1932), produced by Methodist Episcopal bishop Wilbur Thirkield and Oliver Huckel; and James Dalton Morrison’s edited Minister’s Service Book, for Pulpit and Parish Use (1937). Awareness of British publications is evident by the committee’s apparent use of John Hunter’s Devotional Services for Public Worship (9th ed., 1915), W. E. Orchard’s The Order of Divine Service for Public Worship (1919), A Free Church Book of Common Prayer and of the Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites, Ceremonies, and Services of the Christian Church (1929), and The Book of Offices (1936) of the Methodist Church of Great Britain. The understanding of the funeral as an occasion to convey hope, consolation, and the promise of immortality is clear from the content of these prayers, which are, for the most part, universal in scope. Christian faith on the part of the deceased or of the deceased’s loved ones is certainly not requisite for the praying of a large portion of the prayers, which thereby provided for pastors a generalized, optimistic service that could be used for all persons who asked for the care of the church.69 Yet the pain of death was not glossed over, undoubtedly because of attention to developing psychological theories about the resolution of grief. God does “not willingly grieve or afflict the children of men”; nevertheless, death is “part of thy plan for life.” A few modifications to the 1939 text were made when the Methodist Church published its Book of Worship in 1945; in both of those years a separate service for the burial of a child followed the normative rite. When revisions were made for the 1965 Book of Worship, the child’s order was subsumed into the other text, which was then further expanded with Scripture and prayer resources, though textual connections were retained to its predecessors of 1945 (#), 1932 (*), and earlier: *# Opening sentences [*#John 11:25–26; *#Deuteronomy 33:27a; #Psalm 27:1; Psalm 28:6–7a; *#2 Corinthians 5:1] Hymn [optional] *# Prayers [one or more] # “O God, the Lord of life. . . .” # “Almighty God, our Father, from whom we come. . . .” “O God our Father, creator of all mankind. . . .” “O Jesus Christ our risen Lord. . . .”

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*# Psalms [one or more] [*#Psalm 23; #Psalm 27; *#Psalm 90 [selections] ; #Psalm 121] # Gloria Patri Apostles’ Creed or another affirmation of faith *# New Testament lesson [one or more] *# John 14:1–7, 15–17, 27 *# Romans 8:14–18, 28, 31, 35, 37–39 *# 1 Corinthians 15:20–22, 35–36, 38a, 42–44, 49–50, 53–58 *# Revelation 21:2–7 # Revelation 22:1–5 # Ephesians 3:14–21 *# Hymn or anthem *# Sermon [in 1932 and 1945 identified as “address”] *# Prayers [extemporaneous, or one or more of following] *# “Eternal God, who committest to us. . . .” # “O God, who art the strength of thy saints. . . .” *# “Almighty God, the fountain of all life. . . .” “Remember thy servant, O Lord. . . .” # “Father of spirits, we have joy at this time. . . .” # “O Lord and Master, who thyself didst weep. . . .” # “O Thou who hast ordered this wondrous world. . . .” # “O Lord, we pray thee, give us thy strength. . . .” # “Almighty God, who art leading us. . . .” (for a child) # “O God, whose most dear Son did take little children into his arms. . . .” “O God, we pray that thou wilt keep. . . .” Benediction [Philippians 4:7] *# Sentences at the grave [#Psalm 124:8; #Psalm 103:13; *#Isaiah 35:4; #Psalm 103:7] *# Committal [one of three to be used] *# “Forasmuch as the spirit of the departed has entered into the life immortal. . . .” # “Forasmuch almighty God hath received unto himself the soul of our departed brother. . . .” *# “Forasmuch as the spirit of the departed hath returned to God who gave it. . . .” *# Revelation 14:13 # Kyrie eleison *# The Lord’s Prayer [also found after the opening prayer in 1932 and 1945] *# Prayer [one or more] *# “Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits. . . .” *# “O merciful God, the Father. . . .” # “O God of infinite compassion. . . .” Benediction [Hebrews 13:20–21 or *#2 Corinthians 13:14]

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The Methodist Church’s 1965 rite not only increased the number of optional texts offered, it also showed the growing tendency toward understanding the burial liturgy as a worship service of praise and thanksgiving comparable in form to Sunday morning. The funeral’s purpose “as a tribute to the dead” and for “comforting the bereaved” was, for some at least, secondary to “a service of worship in which the faith of the Church in the love and mercy of God is affirmed.”70 As worship, the funeral was to allow the congregation honestly to face death—that of the loved one and their own death—within the context of the “good news concerning the life everlasting.”71 But the rite did not fully address concerns that some members were raising about the denomination’s departure from a biblical and Christian understanding of death. The use of the perceived “pagan” term of “immortality” was questioned, with preference given to the nomenclature of “resurrection” and “eternal life.”72 As the result of intentional discussions about eschatological terminology and theology prompted in part by participation in ecumenical conversations, emphasis upon resurrection instead of immortality would be more fully evident in the service produced by the United Methodist Church that succeeded the 1965 rite.

Conformity to Christ In the latter half of the twentieth century, a funeral presided over by one of Wesley’s spiritual descendants might be seen as an evangelistic opportunity to convert the reluctant or the indifferent, but more often it was deemed an occasion to offer words of God’s mercy and love while confronting the stark and painful reality of death. To further this purpose, all the Methodist denominations realigned the first part of their authorized burial rites, now held in church or funeral home, to conform more recognizably to a Sunday pattern. Among the Holiness and African-American Methodists, remnants of the 1792 burial rite were still very much in evidence. The Free Methodists approved in 1974 an order of worship to be used in “church or chapel,” with the graveside service preserving Wesley’s processional sentences, collect, and the apostolic benediction. The rite published in the 1992 Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was virtually the same as that of 1840;73 that denomination’s 1984 Book of Worship, however, placed the familiar text within the framework of a broader worship structure of prelude, hymns, and choral selections. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church kept the historic readings and included for the first time in their 1996 Book of Worship a rubric about the practice of a wake, thereby acknowledging officially what had long been a custom among African-American Methodists and African-American Christians in general. A substantial shift in Methodist burial rites and the theology behind them took place with the production of the United Methodist Church’s “Service of Death and Resurrection,” offered as a supplemental text in 1979, officially approved in 1984, and published in the United Methodist Hymnal (1989) and the United Methodist Book of Worship (1992). The ritual text itself, aside from the continuity of some suggested Scripture readings, marked a significant departure

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from all previous Methodist funeral liturgies both in structure and in content. The rite did, however, provide stated options within the ritual text, as had some other twentieth-century rites, and further resources were supplied within the introductory guide that accompanied the first publication of the text, selections from which were later included in the Book of Worship.74 The service was designed in three parts rather than two: to the service of the word and the graveside service was added, for the first time in any American Methodist rite, Holy Communion, which was strongly encouraged as an integral component of the funeral. A unique eucharistic prayer devised for the occasion was printed that incorporated themes of resurrection, eternal life, and the communion of saints. The shape of the funeral liturgy thus followed the stated denominational pattern for “Word and Table” in its printing of 1979: Gathering of the People The Word of Grace Greeting Sentences [here if not used earlier with the placing of a pall] Hymn or Song Prayer Pardon [if prayer of confession used] Psalm 130 Proclamation and Praise Old Testament Reading Psalm 23 Epistle Reading Gospel Reading Sermon Naming [reading of a memorial or appropriate statement] Witness [persons voice thankfulness to God for the life of the deceased] Hymn Offering of Life Apostles’ Creed Prayers Holy Communion or Prayer of Thanksgiving The Lord’s Prayer Hymn Dismissal and Blessing An Order of Committal Sentences [first phrase of Media vita conflated with Psalm 121:1b; Psalm 124: 8; Romans 8:11b; 1 Corinthians 15:51, 53, 54b–55, 57; and/or Psalm 16: 9, 11] Prayer Scripture Readings [suggested: 1 Peter 1:3–9; John 12:23–26]

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Commendation [while earth is cast on the coffin] Committal Prayers The Lord’s Prayer Hymn or Song Dismissal and Blessing The Lord’s Supper in the funeral liturgy was intended to remind those gathered of the presence of the One whose paradigmatic death and resurrection defined the Christian’s approach to life and to death. Drawing upon theological and liturgical resources from other Christian communions, the United Methodist funeral task force, guided by principal author Paul Waitman Hoon, opted to locate the funeral in the context of the Easter liturgy, and in baptism as the recapitulation of the Easter event: “The funeral is the completion of the Christian’s passover undertaken when the baptizand died unto Christ in Baptism—the rounding out of the full paschal cycle.”75 The penalty of death as a consequence of human sin was thus reaffirmed, and set once again within the atoning and sacramental work of Christ. Death had to be confronted and not avoided: the God “who gave us birth” was supplicated to “help us live as those who are prepared to die” that “we may die as those who go forth to live.” Thus the baptismal approach to death, implicit throughout the rite, was expressed overtly in the opening sentences: Dying, Christ destroyed our death. Rising, Christ restored our life. Christ will come again in glory. As in baptism N. put on Christ, so in Christ may N. be clothed with glory. Here and now, dear friends, we are God’s children. What we shall be has not yet been revealed. But we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Those who have this hope purify themselves as Christ is pure. In distinction from popular concepts of natural immortality, the rite (and its accompanying introductory essay) stressed resurrection as an act of God that encompassed the gift of new life to the believer, the embrace of each believer at the point of death, and the final transformation of all Christ’s followers at his return.76 Although the “Service of Death and Resurrection” was intended to counteract what was perceived to be the increased secularization of the American funeral, it was not meant to ignore the real human elements of grief and loss. The revising committee took seriously the latest work in pastoral psychology, and heard reports on customary funeral practices among ethnic and racial United Methodist congregations.77 Yet the therapeutic was subordinated to the kerygmatic, lest the funeral yield to being a “secular therapy in a Christian idiom instead of Christian reality in a therapeutic idiom.”78 The “Service of Death and Resurrection,” in many respects, embodied both the countercultural posture found particularly in early American Methodism and the

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desire for cultural adaptation expressed in the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Death was recovered as both penalty and promise, and the sacraments were magnified as a means by which the individual (and the community) conformed to and imitated Christ. By its presumption of baptismal identity for the deceased and for those gathered, the rite appeared to be meant for those whose faith was evident. The celebration of the Eucharist reinforced that claim, though in reality few United Methodist funerals included the Supper. Yet the provision— still under the heading of “Death and Resurrection”—of some alternative prayers and Scripture texts for those “who did not profess the Christian faith” conceded the rite to the trajectory of accommodation. While the pastoral concern to comfort the bereaved was itself legitimate, and hope in God’s generosity toward the departed may always be entertained, the kerygmatic truth requires that the summons in the end must be one of conversion if the promises of the Maker and Judge of all are to be authentically represented and offered for acceptance.

9

Devotion and Discipleship

ccording to john wesley, Methodists, like all real Christians, were to be Christians “not in name only, but in heart and in life.”1 True Methodists translated their belief into sanctifying actions: love toward God and neighbor was concretized by regular engagement in spiritual disciplines and charitable deeds. Prayer, be it in the congregation, in the family, or in one’s closet, was typically listed as the first “work of piety,” among which also figured searching the Scriptures (by hearing, reading, and meditating upon them), reception of the Lord’s Supper, fasting or abstinence, and “conversation with the children of God.” These “ordinances” were understood to be the instituted and usual means by which God’s grace was channeled to the church; and all Methodists, but especially the lay leadership and (after the ordinations of 1784) the ministers, were expected diligently to employ them.2 “Works of mercy” toward persons of varying conditions, whether they be friend or foreigner, were to be extended to needy bodies and souls: the hungry fed, the naked clothed, the stranger entertained, the infirm and imprisoned visited, and the comforting yet demanding words of the gospel shared with all.3 Glorification of God and obedience to the law of Christ properly motivated such acts of devotion and discipleship, and resulted in authentic and spiritual worship. For, as Wesley noted by quoting St. Augustine, “Optimus Dei cultus, imitari quem colis—It is the best worship or service of God, to imitate him you worship.”4 Three of these works of piety and mercy in their American Methodist aspects will be the focus of attention here. Family worship or family religion, what Wesley perceived as the “grand desideratum among the Methodists,”5 was a matter of great concern. So was also the prayer meeting or the gathering of persons for public worship at a time in addition to the Lord’s Day; both family worship and the prayer meeting composed essential Methodist “usages” according to backwoods preacher Peter Cartwright.6 Visitation of the sick was a charitable work expected of all Methodists, but especially the clergy. These practices of devotion and disci-

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pleship that truly were the work of the people constitute important ingredients in the mix of American Methodist worship.

Family Worship Methodists have always regarded the domestic family as a microcosm of the family of God, and a divinely ordained institution for instructing and nurturing religion especially in the rising generation.7 Every Methodist family ideally was “a sanctuary in which God is continually dwelling,”8 and the family altar was considered the cornerstone for the development or intensification of personal piety and godly conduct. Public worship, no matter how regularly attended, was by itself deemed insufficient to prevent spiritual lukewarmness. Attention to regular family duty properly reinforced “experimental” religion, and also preserved the family (and hence the church) through the mutual dependence and love required of its members. By domestic prayer the family was bound together in faith, granted security from encroaching worldliness, and provided with an escape from life’s trials. The resolution “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15) thus became the motto for Methodists, who took seriously what was understood to be the Christian obligation of family worship based upon scriptural paradigms (in the absence of an explicit dominical warrant)—including the pattern of Jesus himself, who sang hymns and prayed with his family, namely, the disciples.9 During the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth, the benefits of family worship were lauded, and recommendations put forward on how to promote prayer within the household. Domestic prayer very quickly came to be understood more as a Christian duty to be fulfilled than as a means of grace to be received. Methodist couples just married, as well as the newly converted, were advised immediately to erect a family altar and to persist in daily prayer, preferably at a consistent time in the morning and in the evening. At some homes, family worship took place three times on the Sabbath if attendance at public corporate worship was impossible.10 The primary responsibility for leading prayers fell to the husband, as God’s appointed head of the household, with his wife joining and encouraging him in the sacred work. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, women assumed a greater role as husbands took employment at a distance from the family dwelling. Anyone in the house at the time of prayer was expected to attend. When children were present, the time for worship was to be chosen that best suited alertness and full participation. Because the temporal and spiritual well-being of servants rested with the head of the household, masters were to ensure that they too participated in devotions, either in the house itself or standing outside an open door. Daniel Wise, writing in 1854 about white domestics, went so far as to insist that Protestant servants should be dismissed who did not consent to take part in family worship, but allowed exceptions for Catholics.11 Visitors in the home were also not to be excluded from worship and were invited to the proceedings in recognition that, in the case of the unconverted, the foundation of an individual’s faith might be laid and the seed for future Methodist membership planted.12 The family altar was usually open to both neighbor and stranger; par-

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ticularly at the end of the eighteenth century and in the early nineteenth, family prayer could function as a public evangelistic opportunity in conjunction with a quarterly meeting or otherwise: At family prayer two or three mourners got under [great] distress of soul. A shout soon broke out & continued till near 11 o’clock. The way it came was as follows— soon as family prayer was over two young women went upstairs to prayer. I sent two others up to them. They presently were so affected that others went up also & then others and joined them till their prayer and cries passed through all the house and all got up in the chamber—the black people also crowded on the stairs to see & hear. Glory to God for these favours!13

In villages heavily populated by Methodists, a wayfarer passing by in the morning or evening might choose from among the several families heard at prayer.14 Even though receiving invitations to join another household for prayer, a single individual might rather feel obliged to engage in solitary family worship: In Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, a man lived by himself whose name began with M. He was one of the happiest men I saw at a quarterly meeting. Going along the road a man asked me: “Do you see that house across the field?” I said “Yes.” “There,” said he, “lives M., that you saw so happy at the meeting; he is a mechanic, lives alone, and has family prayer evening and morning. When some asked why he did so, as he had no family, he said he belonged to the household of faith, the family of God. He identified himself with all the praying families, and while hundreds and thousands were worshiping, he would worship too; their prayers all met at the throne of grace, and great blessings came down from heaven and made a heavenly place. He would not be deprived of the privilege and blessing of family prayer. He was often heard by the neighbors praying and praising God, and shouting, ‘Glory to God! glory to God!’ ”15

Methodist leaders feared that marriage with an unawakened individual potentially jeopardized the fulfillment of the requisite spiritual duties within the family, and they provided legislation against such unions (which later was repealed at various times by the different Methodist bodies). The conversion of one alreadymarried individual and not the spouse could likewise lead to spiritual complications. Yet accounts abound describing occasions where a believing partner fostered the conversion of the antagonistic or hesitant spouse by insisting upon the practice of family prayer. In one instance, a wife routinely disturbed her husband’s leading of family prayer. The husband went to his class leader and had his name removed from the class list, because he believed he had to do “what a member should not do, whip his wife.” After his wife again interrupted him, he whipped her soundly. When the woman went to the class leader to complain about her husband’s “unMethodist” behavior, she discovered that his name had been struck from the list. “For the Lord’s sake take him again, or he will kill me,” she pleaded. Eventually the woman was converted and her husband became an itinerant preacher.16 In another case, it was a wife who challenged her reluctant husband to lead family prayer when he feared he couldn’t pray. One morning she held prayers with the expectation that her husband would hold forth in the evening. When the hour


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came, he fell to his knees, and cried aloud for mercy and pardon. Now converted, he never again questioned his duty as the spiritual leader of the family.17 No formal instructions for the content of family devotions were authorized by any Methodist denomination during the nineteenth century, though there were, nevertheless, common elements that paralleled the substance of the rubrics stipulated for public worship from 1792. Of course, prayer, properly offered while kneeling, was a staple of family worship. Extemporaneous prayer was considered evidence of religious conviction and maturity, and was thus encouraged from every family member. Prayer books functioned as a stopgap only until an individual could pray without one; children, it was recommended, were to be given short and simple prayers to memorize and repeat morning and evening until they were capable of extemporizing.18 Bible reading was lectio continua or with lections chosen for the occasion. In the evening worship of some families, children were called upon to read a chapter, with interesting results if a child was fatigued (one sleepy little boy reportedly began Matthew 25, “Then shall the kingdom of heaven by likened unto the ten Virginians who took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridge gang”).19 Afterward, the spiritual and contemporary relevance of the reading might be discussed, or personal testimonies offered. Hymn or psalm singing was interwoven among the other components, with selections taken from different sources: the official hymnals, some of which designated sections for family devotions and for morning and evening worship; song books unauthorized by the denominations; and the unprinted repertoire memorized at the camp meeting and other venues of worship. Family worship was thus intentionally doxological, catechetical, and evangelical. Although Methodist writers urged a methodical approach to the discipline of family prayer, caution was raised against the “great evil” of formality: a family should not be “scrupulously bound” to any particular form, especially when “the Scripture has left [them] free.”20 Despite the enthusiasm with which many Methodists approached the duty of family worship, others were apathetic, or enumerated such excuses as inability, timidity, inconvenience, lack of time, and belief in the sufficiency of personal prayer. Because family religion was considered “shamefully wanting” in many places, legislation to provide concrete remedies was enacted in the first American Methodist Discipline (Questions 15 and 66, adopted from the Large Minutes) and in subsequent action by the various Methodist denominations. Preachers were to watch over each other and those under their care to ensure a positive answer to the query, “Have you family prayer?” Preachers who lodged in private homes while traveling were to attend family devotions or initiate them if nothing had been planned. Every Methodist leader was expected to visit from house to house and, by word and example, commend the virtues of family worship. Family prayer was serious business: one class leader in Ohio “allowed no family to live without prayer.”21 Persons notably lax in domestic duties might first be given a reproof, and on second offense be brought up on charges, as happened to Jonathan Kidwell of Kentucky, who was informed by his quarterly meeting conference that he must meet with a committee of three to converse “in a friendly manner” on the subject of his negligence.22 Repeated or intentional delinquency after the first two repri-

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mands might result in dismissal from the class or from the church. From 1864 to 1939 the Methodist Episcopal Church expressly identified the habitual neglect of the means of grace as cause for trial or, if uncorrected, expulsion, although it is unknown how often this ruling was actually carried out. As late as the 1890s, personal accounts testify to the concerted attention that was given by some pastors to family prayer: The most of the time my mother would take the lead in the family worship, and would read the Bible and have family prayer. My earliest recollection is of holy men of God like Bro. McClesky, Bro. John Mashburn and Bro. W. A. Dodge visiting in our home and having family prayer. . . . These mighty warriors for God would come riding up to our home on a horse, as the old-fashioned Methodist circuit riders would do. They would come in the house and my mother and father would call all the children in and there was a small table in the front of the house that contained an old-fashioned Methodist hymnal, a family Bible, and a Methodist discipline. The dear man of God would line off a hymn and sing it in long meter. He quite often would read the general rules of the discipline of the Methodist Church, after which he would read some passage from the Bible and kneel down and have prayer. My mother and father would be weeping many times after he left.23

In spite of such continuing diligence, the practice of family worship had nevertheless dwindled over the course of the nineteenth century as the denominations grew in membership: what had been the perceived rule in Methodist family life became an exception. Some parents believed the Sunday school to be a sufficient substitute for instilling Christian disciplines in their young, though church leaders were quick to refute such claims. Calls increased throughout the century and into the next for families to hold prayer regularly, and for pastors to be more assertive in accomplishing their pastoral obligation of promoting domestic piety. Fears that Methodist families—a supposed microcosm of church and nation—were succumbing to worldly amusements and distractions such as card playing, theatergoing, circus attending and dancing drove many of the appeals. By the beginning of the twentieth century, family prayer was identified by proponents as both a Christian responsibility and a means to preserve the institution of the family embattled by growing secularism and irregular work schedules (including the employment of women). The problem was not unique to Methodism, and many Methodists subscribed to the work of the ecumenical and international Family Altar League established in the first decade of the twentieth century to encourage regularized devotion and provide requesting families with resources.24 Printed aids specified for family worship did not suddenly appear in the twentieth century. In 1850, Charles F. Deems complemented his apologia for family worship in The Home Altar with stated Scripture lessons and prayers assigned to morning and evening for each day of the week over the course of a month. Since Deems preferred extemporary prayer, bracketed sections in each prayer designated the place for petitions “particularly adapted to the circumstances and exigencies of the family.” Practical necessity was not the only justification for printed prayers, according to Deems; the primitive church had used both extemporized and written forms, and Scripture had left the church at liberty to choose which was the most expedient.25 Thirty-six years later, Aid and Guide to Family Worship was published,


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edited by layman L. D. Palmer and printed by the Southern Methodist Publishing House, which contained formulated prayers and simple orders of worship designed specifically to prop up domestic leaders until they could improvise on their own; this book was reprinted into the 1920s. Other books followed, but now without disclaimers for written prayers, since forms could be justified by the increasing acceptance and use in Sunday worship of prayer texts and formal orders. The rationale that the reading of prayers was “thoroughly Methodistic” was given in the 1921 publication “Keep the Home Fires Burning”, which included, for every day of the week for six months, a Scripture lesson, a brief exposition of the passage, a short prayer, and at the end of each week’s presentation, a “Lesson Question” to stimulate conversation.26 In a significant departure from earlier practice, one person writing in 1928 even advised the use of a book of prayers lest family devotions sink into “ruts and meaningless repetitions.”27 The first official book with materials specified for family worship was the 1945 Book of Worship of the Methodist Church, which continued the custom in earlier resources of providing Scripture selections and prayers for each day of the month (though now reduced to one time per day), but also supplied prayers addressing family needs and other situations, and orders for morning and evening. These worship orders for “a family or other small group” fell under the category of services for occasional use, and introduced new acts of worship such as versicles and responsive readings to the practice of family prayer. No placement was specified for Scripture readings or extemporary prayer within the orders. The extensive helps for families furnished in the 1945 book were not repeated in the 1965 Book of Worship; what remained was an order for family or small group use that, as in years past, borrowed elements familiar from Sunday morning, though now these took a more elaborate shape: Scripture sentences or call to worship; prayer; psalm, canticle or other act of praise; Gloria Patri; Scripture lesson; extemporary or written prayers; and a hymn. Even though the Methodist Church’s successor, the United Methodist Church, maintained a commitment in the Discipline to family life as the forum for the Christian nurturing of its members, an explicit ritual expression of that concern no longer existed; no specified resources were identified for families in the 1992 Book of Worship, though persons who desired orders might use the forms for “Daily Praise and Prayer” derived from early Christian models. Even with the publication of resources throughout the twentieth century, the once-rigorous routine of twice- or thrice-daily family worship had been reduced, in homes that practiced it, to the saying of a table grace, or to a brief reading from a prepared devotional booklet at the dining table or at bedside. Although the admonition to observe family prayer remained in each Methodist Discipline produced in the twentieth century, if only in the General Rules, the mechanisms for enforcement were gradually abandoned. The Methodist Episcopal Church, for example, introduced into the 1920 Discipline instructions that the number of families who observed family worship was to be reported at every quarterly conference, and that pastors and other leaders were to encourage in each home a regular and systematic program of prayer, Scripture reading and study, and conversation upon “moral and spiritual” subjects (¶61 §2.9; ¶589); sixteen years later, both directions were gone. In 1948, the Methodist Church’s Discipline contained the recommen-

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dation that each family have a worship center in the home (¶2021.1); in the 1956 Discipline, the Christian family was defined as one that had daily prayer and grace at meals (¶2021.1). But family worship was not specifically addressed in the polity of the United Methodist Church, although Christian education and formation (especially moral development) in the church and home continued as a legislative priority.

Public Prayer The relaxation in both the practice and enforcement of devotional piety evident in over two hundred years of Methodist family worship holds true as well for social, public prayer observed outside of the Lord’s Day service. In many respects, prayer meetings up to the mid-nineteenth century were like family worship of that period, only on a grander scale and held in various settings, one of which might be a family dwelling. Extemporary prayer, Scripture readings, hymn singing, conversations, and testimonies also characterized these scheduled or spontaneous assemblies. Exhortations were not ordinarily a part of family worship unless a preacher came to call, but they were often a component of common prayer (and sometimes blurred indistinguishably with a prayer) and more frequently heard than a sermon. Shouts, vocalized “amens,” and hand clapping punctuated the proceedings which did not require—or need—pastoral direction, though the clergy and other leaders were admonished by the Discipline to guarantee that prayer meetings regularly took place. Preachers attending judicatory convocations convened prayer meetings. Saturday night of the quarterly meeting was typically designated the occasion for prayer meeting, with several gatherings occurring simultaneously. Camp meetings had prayer meetings organized by gender, generation, and race, with some mixed groups; racial exclusion increased as the nineteenth century progressed. The enthusiasm begotten by the camp meeting might lead to the emergence of prayer meetings in areas inhabited by persons just returned from the camp and possibly as a consequence inflame an extended revival; conversely, local prayer meetings might give birth to a camp meeting. In urban areas and in adjacent settlements, prayer meetings might be held once or twice weekly, with one of those meetings possibly taking place following a Sunday evening preaching service. The meetings could occur at sunrise or in the evening, and if circumstances required it, late at night: Some time in the Night—I judge near the Middle watch—I awaked in raptures of Heaven by the sweet Echo of Singing in the Kitchen among the dear Black people (who my Soul loves). I scarcely ever heard anything to equal it upon earth. I rose up and strove to join them—ah—I felt the miserable weight of oppression intolerable upon my heart—while the proud whites can live in luxury and abomination making a mock of God and his word, the African upholds him by his Swet and labour of his willing hands—and if they serve the Lord God it must be in the dead of night when they ought to be taking rest to their bodys, O blood, blood how aweful it Cryes up before God, against my poor unjust professing Bro—well I must have patience—hope God will work for his own Glory.28


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If necessary, prayer meetings could also be scheduled in lieu of a preaching service or a Lord’s Day gathering. Prayer meetings were thus the heart and soul of the Methodist revival in the young nation. Gifted leaders able to draw the entire assembly into full participation were believed essential to achieve the goal that persons at prayer meeting should be “refreshed & made glad, converted & sanctified.”29 Women known for the power of their exhortations and prayers led female meetings, as well as general gatherings. Leaders might call upon young girls or boys who had previously given evidence of vital piety, and their impassioned prayers were known sometimes to soften hard hearts.30 In some areas it was the custom for the leader to solicit all those assembled to offer prayer when inspired, resulting in a symphony of praise and petition.31 The ideals of democracy undergirded the prayer meeting in its early years and contributed to its success. In turn, the confidence and skills acquired in the church gathering might help a political or professional career. Other occasions for public prayer also accentuated conversion or growth in holiness. Prayer combined with fasting was stipulated by church leaders routinely in the early years as a corporate act of penitence and supplication, in addition to the private discipline of fasting and prayer that was expected at least on the Friday preceding the local quarterly meeting. Members of all the churches in New York City were called to fasting and prayer on September 20, 1793 “to intreat the Lord to put a stop to the Malignant disorder in the City of Philadelphia,” and in response, overflow crowds attended services of prayer and preaching; in 1810, a general fast was appointed for the “African Churches.”32 At the request of Jefferson Davis, many southern Methodists, along with other Christians, observed a day of fasting and prayer for the Southern Army in 1861.33 While the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church was in session in the year 1864, a fast day was set apart for the nation in “this hour of her peril.”34 The importance Methodists attached to the “public fast” was expressed by the designation of hymns under that heading in certain authorized hymnals published during the nineteenth century, with the theme of the texts principally lamentation for the sin of the nation and God’s impending judgment: Dread Jehovah! God of nations! From thy temple in the skies, Hear thy people’s supplications; Now for their deliv’rance rise. Lo! with deep contrition turning, In thy holy place we bend; Hear us, fasting, praying, mourning; Hear us, spare us, and defend.35 As was the case with domestic worship, the disciplined practices of public prayer and public fasting gradually lost their intensity and popularity. By the 1860s, writers mourned the fervency of former days and urged renewed attention to the prayer meeting, not only for its own sake, but also as a means of preserving the public expression of experiential religion since that practice was increasingly at risk in

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the larger Methodist denominations as the old institution of the class meeting began to decline. The gradual passing away of the historic mechanism for spiritual accountability among the people meant that new methods for encouraging the regular practice of public (and private) prayer were necessary, such as the Sunday school and missionary societies. The responsibility of spiritual oversight, once shared among a network of leaders, started to fall more singularly to the pastor, whose special training, it was surmised, better equipped him for the task. Leadership for the prayer meeting also came to be placed more firmly into his hands. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for example, introduced into its Discipline in 1866 a section on social meetings, in which preachers were directed to hold weekly prayer meetings when practicable, or appoint someone in their absence. Members were instructed that it was their duty to attend as frequently as possible, though that charge was dropped four years later. Although lay leadership was still solicited, the virtual turning over of the prayer meeting to the clergy may have ultimately contributed to its demise: the institutionalizing of the people’s unfettered expression of worship in part redefined both its purpose and its content. Attendance at prayer meetings continued to slip, though less so among the Holiness and African American denominations. Concerned that less than onefifth of its membership came to prayer meetings—ostensibly because the meetings were dull and lifeless on account of “long hymns,” “perfunctory prayers,” and “want of spirituality”—the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1875 proposed a united effort to cure “wide-spread prayer-meeting paralysis.”36 A frequently stated corrective, generated undoubtedly by fond memories of the practice of former years, was to encourage a brief service, one characterized by simplicity, freedom, variety, spontaneity, general participation, and above all, the “power of the Holy Ghost.”37 Yet despite the familiar worries about formality in worship, scripted helps began to circulate to bolster the beleaguered prayer meeting. Grace Methodist Episcopal Church of Baltimore published in 1892 an eighty-page resource for its own Wednesday evening prayer meeting, with an order of service, the Decalogue with responses, the General Confession from the Prayer Book daily office, and responsive Scripture lessons for each week of the year; these were placed alongside gospel and revival hymns expressive of personal faith. The arrangement of the service, made by the pastor and a layman, shows the growing complexity of urban Methodist Episcopal worship at the turn into the next century, interest in emulating Wesley’s services and the Prayer Book, and also a newly accepted posture for prayer: Doxology “Praise God from whom all blessings. . . .” Versicles Prayer (in unison, said standing) [“O Almighty God, who hast bidden us seek that we may find. . . .”] Hymn Prayer Gloria Patri (standing) Versicle Scripture lesson (responsive)


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Leader’s exposition (Ten minutes.) Remarks by the people. Testimony. Prayer Announcements. Offertory. Hymn Prayer (Prayer of St. John Chrysostom) Doxology Benediction38 Books with resources to infuse new life into the prayer meeting and other services of worship Sunday night or midweek were especially numerous in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Some volumes supplied orders of worship, prayer texts, and lectionaries, or offered a general guide for planning a successful gathering; others furnished meditations or short addresses upon topics related to spiritual growth or contemporary Christian life (particularly social issues) that could be read aloud or inspire an original discourse.39 The authors of these books did not consider themselves abettors of formalism in worship. Rather, they regarded their work as a contribution toward the greater variety that was believed to be a viable remedy for low attendance and a bland meeting. Variety, some believed, conformed to divine example: He who made the world likes variety. We see that everywhere. . . . The fact that God’s efforts are never formal, neither in nature or grace, in time or eternity, constitutes one reason why men love God’s handiwork, why the “old, old story” as experienced in life and related in testimony is ever new, and why we shall enjoy heaven forever. If our prayer meetings lack variety must we not in frankness admit that they are less than what God desires them to be, and should we not expect that men should fail in enthusiasm for them; and, on the other hand, if we build them as God builds his universe of nature and grace, shall we not more perfectly please him and more surely enlist and hold the interest of men? This question has but one answer.40

The public testimony of faith that had always been at the heart of the prayer meeting was seen by some early twentieth-century writers as, in fact, a possible contributor to absenteeism. The expectation that each week an inspirational witness of personal faith or religious experience would be given evidently led some testifiers to exaggerate or to repeat ad nauseam their account. There were also those dubbed “prayer-meeting killers”: persons unable to differentiate between personal comment and faith testimony, and those who monopolized the allotted time. Because of this problem, some congregations opted to restrict testimonies to a separate “experience” meeting. A Scranton, Pennsylvania, church held prayer meetings until 1920 consisting of a short address and extemporary prayer; an experience session followed.41 Not unexpectedly, the experience meeting could also be the victim of a “killer.” One North Carolina congregation discontinued its testimony meetings after an elderly woman detailed her difficulties with her family for an entire hour.42 The diminishing drawing power of public prayer outside of Sunday morning could also be explained by other factors internal and external to the church. To apathy and poor preparation on the parts of both clergy and laity, one author in 1910 added:

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Lack of interest in truly spiritual things; waning faith, pressure of business and social life; multiplicity of other church services, and of all kinds of social and business engagements; lack of genuine religious training in the home; abandonment of the habit of prayer; growing formality in the churches; the growth of young people’s societies, which in their devotional meetings take the place of the prayer meeting for those who attend; the increased attention to Sunday school work, and the absorption to such a large extent of the energies of the church to build up this service; the missionary societies, whose services are so often wholly, and always more or less, prayer services; the increase in the number of church organizations, the work of which leaves little time for interest in anything else.43

Herein the institutionalization of the church was listed as a source of the spiritual decay, or at least as a motivating force in a redefinition of spirituality. The business of mission, education, and outreach had, in some places, taken precedence over the discipline of public prayer that had in years past soundly undergirded works of mercy and discipleship. The relaxing in several denominations of social restrictions added to the temptation to abandon public gatherings for prayer. So did the increasing affluence of some Methodists, whose financial wherewithal gave them access to advances in technology, which thereby granted greater ease of travel and communication, and provided diversions through motion pictures, television, and other developing forms of entertainment. The frenetic pace of modern life, along with its many distractions, threatened to kill the practice. Nevertheless, many Methodist leaders continued to promote the prayer and midweek preaching service, not only because they were compelled to do so by Discipline, but also because it “teaches democracy, fosters spiritual life, creates Christian fellowship, perpetuates the family altar, stimulates Bible study, and promotes evangelism.”44 Recognizing that technology could also be used to the advantage of public prayer and not just its detriment, some pastors prepared services intended for radio broadcast: in one community, the pastor designed a service for the unseen congregation with choral singing, hymns, poetry, prayers, and a message “to meet some specific human need.”45 Other creative leaders developed programs that retained components of the prayer meeting, but integrated them with classes, talks, or programs focused upon the questions of their constituency regarding spirituality or modern life. Ecumenically and denominationally designated days or weeks of prayer, such as the World Day of Prayer on the first Friday in Lent promoted in the 1930s by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, generated services of public prayer sometimes shared among congregations. Some pastors reported a resurgence in attendance especially in the years during and after the Second World War and the Korean conflict. Worship suggestions continued to be printed, but only two official Methodist books in the twentieth century contain significant resources: the 1945 Book of Worship of the Methodist Church, which included seven orders of service for corporate evening prayer, as well as the services for “a family or other small group”; and the 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship, with its orders for “Daily Praise and Prayer” (morning, midday, evening, and night) and a “Midweek Service of Prayer and Testimony,” the latter structured very much like the Baltimore church’s 1892 service.


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In the late twentieth century, there was still the expectation and the demand among some Methodists for organized meetings of public prayer. A United Methodist writing in 1999 asked the same question possibly posed by his grandparents, “Whatever happened to Sunday night services and Wednesday prayer meetings?”46 since opportunities for public prayer in the older style existed only in a minority of congregations. During the 1990s new forms of public prayer started to emerge, with some of them reminiscent of former practices. Evangelistic “seeker” services of praise and prayer, and midweek alternatives to the “traditional” service on Sunday morning opened church doors for worship on days other than the Lord’s Day. Another forum for corporate prayer arose with the multiplication of small groups (some defined by gender) for sharing, study, and support. The small group phenomenon expressed a more broadly based desire within the American culture to find an intimate and mutually accountable community. The recovery of corporate devotions may give the appearance of a return to historic Methodist practices, yet the underlying assumptions were drastically different: public prayer was not understood to be a means of grace, but rather a means for self-fulfillment.

Visitation of the Sick The spiritual and physical care of the sick was regarded by American Methodists of the first several generations as a work of mercy incumbent upon all Christians— what Bishop Morris of the Methodist Episcopal Church identified in 1852 as a “plain duty of practical religion” and a “charitable work inseparable from true piety.”47 By calling upon the ailing, visible testimony was given of love for God and of obedience to the mandates of the gospel for which one would answer at the day of judgment (e.g., Matthew 25:31–46). Benefits were received by both the sick and the visitor: for the former ideally came relief of body and comfort of soul; and in the case of the latter, visitation could be a means of grace if approached with clarity of purpose.48 Women were regarded as naturally suited to the tasks of visiting and caring for the sick; female ministry to the infirm would be institutionalized by the office of deaconess in various Methodist branches from the final third of the nineteenth century through the twentieth. The content of the visit, whether made by a minister, class leader, or church member, was determined by the medical and spiritual condition of the infirm, though brevity was always the watchword. One or more of the basic worship components of reading, prayer, singing, and speaking (here conversation or exhortation) in innumerable combinations could be used. An abbreviated service of Holy Communion also might be celebrated by an elder if requested by the bedridden or the family. In all circumstances the sick person was to be directed to Christ, though the visitor was advised to avoid provoking an emotional state that might aggravate the illness.49 Yet a certain honesty was required, for the salvation of the individual was believed to be at stake. One minister, in attending an unconverted young man, reportedly offered an “affectionate exhortation,” and then, kneeling at bedside, prayed fervently for the safety of his soul. The sickness wors-

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ened, and despite the minister’s prayers and encouragement, the man breathed his last without uttering words of faith, much to the despair of the minister and the man’s family.50 Ministers especially were to use the “room of affliction” to move the unconvinced toward belief gently but persuasively. The Methodist Protestants alone among the Methodist denominations formalized this approach by including directions for the visitation of the sick among the occasional services in editions of the Discipline published from 1830 to 1877. Their work was not original; the instructions were taken almost verbatim from the chapter “Of the Visitation of the Sick” located in the “Directory for the Worship of God” that had been approved in 1821 by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States:51 If the minister find the sick person to be grossly ignorant, he shall instruct him in the nature of repentance and faith, and the way of acceptance with God, through the mediation and atonement of Jesus Christ. If the sick person appear to be a stupid, thoughtless and hardened sinner, the minister shall endeavour to awaken his mind; to arouse his conscience; to convince him of the evil and danger of sin, of the curse of the law, and the wrath of God due to sinners; to bring him to an humble and penitential sense of his iniquities; and then to state before him the fulness of the grace and mercy of God, in and through the merits of the Redeemer; the absolute necessity of faith, and repentance, in order to his being interested in the favor of God, and his obtaining everlasting happiness. If the sick person appear to be broken in spirit with a sense of sin, and apprehensions of the divine displeasure, then it will be proper to administer consolation and encouragement, by setting before him the freeness and richness of the grace of God, and the precious promises of the gospel made to all penitents. The minister must, in all cases, guard the sick against all ill-grounded persuasions of the mercy of God, without a vital union to Christ; and against unreasonable fears of death, and disponding discouragements; against presumption upon his own goodness and merit, on the one hand, and against despair of the mercy and grace of God in Christ Jesus on the other. In a word, it is the duty of all ministers and pious persons, when visiting the sick, to pray with and for them; and to administer instruction, conviction, support, consolation, or encouragement, as the case may seem to require. And to improve the occasion to exhort those about them to consider their mortality; to turn to the Lord, and make their peace with him; and in health prepare for sickness, death and judgment.

The removal of these instructions in 1877 came at a time when the approach to sickness—as with dying and death—was changing. The minister might still inquire about the state of the soul at bedside, and even instruct or warn, but now the comfort obtained through the mercy and grace of God acquired the greater stress. Those entrusted with the care of the sick were advised “to administer the consolations of religion in hours of trouble.”52 Deaconesses of the African Methodist Episcopal Church were charged to “use tact in presenting the claims of the Bible” since “too much talk may nauseate and cause the patient to wish you gone.”53 The transition in emphasis is particularly evident from the printed pastoral


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helps to sickroom visitation that emerged in the last decades of the nineteenth century and proliferated in the twentieth. In the revised edition of his Minister’s Manual and Pocket Ritual issued in 1902, C. E. Mandeville advised that the sickroom visit be characterized by “real sympathy for the suffering one and for the distressed family,” with a short Scripture reading followed by a brief prayer “generally sufficient.” If the invalid be an unbeliever or an “avowed infidel,” the pastor was not “to set forth any doctrine peculiar to his creed, but faithfully to urge the duty of repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.” For the visitor’s convenience, Scripture lessons specified “for the comfort of believers,” “for troubled hearts,” and “helpful to the unsaved” were printed in full.54 The Pastor’s Vade Mecum, first published in 1886, took a different approach and simply suggested fourteen psalms for “Comfort in Sickness” without differentiating who might receive the consoling words. A revised edition of the same book produced in 1929 showed a new tendency by using the heading “Healing in Sickness,” under which were printed Old and New Testament lessons as well as prayers soliciting strength and the healing presence of Christ. Visits to the sick were now expected to have therapeutic value, with the sensitive pastor doing all in his power to “create a state of mind favorable to the restoration of health.”55 God’s care for the sick— God’s suffering with human suffering—was to be set before the ill. Ministers were to be cautious in seeking the Christian profession of the unconverted sick lest the patient be placed under psychological—and hence physical—stress; likewise, pastors were to think twice about offering prayer since damage could possibly result if words were carelessly spoken.56 The prayers for ministry to the sick provided in the Methodist Church’s 1945 Book of Worship and in the revision of 1965, the only authorized Methodist books to be produced with such prayers, spoke neither of confession of sin nor the invalid’s spiritual condition (and its improvement), but of patient endurance, and God’s merciful compassion that could spare, heal, and restore. The authorization of healing services by the United Methodist Church in 1992 for its Book of Worship thus appeared to perpetuate the tendency to accentuate the restorative and consolatory over the confrontative. Yet, taken seriously, the healing service for the sickroom (or for a public gathering), through a formal prayer of confession or an informal conversation, expected that the participant, if possible, would take stock of his or her spiritual state. This recovery of the connection between sickness and weakness of faith, and between physical and spiritual healing, not only brought late twentieth-century practice into line with New Testament models, it also linked Methodists, though somewhat cursorily, with the theological approach taken by their Wesleyan ancestors. The intentional return to early Christian praxis also resulted in the first official Methodist instruction to lay hands on the sick and anoint them with oil, though some pastors throughout the Methodist family had, even in the nineteenth century, already made use of the scriptural custom found in the Gospels and in James 5:14–15, and the practice of laying on of hands had been commended in literature accompanying the 1965 Book of Worship.57

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The Privatization of Devotion and Discipleship The consequences of the transition of American Methodism from evangelical revival to national denomination, and from religious society to institutional churches, are perhaps most clearly evident by the slippage in the disciplined practice of the works of piety and the works of mercy that were intended to be performed by all those who called themselves Methodists. Although the mandates for spiritual disciplines and charitable works were never withdrawn from any Methodist Discipline, they over time lost priority of place as the denominations grew, the character of American life changed, and the emphases for ministry were altered to meet the challenges of each new age. Related to the increased bureaucratization of the churches was the transference of worship leadership more definitively to the clergy, so that what once had been expected of the entire people of God became the purview of the trained expert. Informal gatherings for prayer, praise, reading, and conversation became formalized, though not standardized, and improvisatory prayer was more acceptably replaced by printed forms. With these shifts came a decrease in the ability of individuals to articulate their personal faith, as well as a further encouragement toward the privatization of religion—already a risk because of the emphasis in American society upon the individual—since persons were no longer required to state openly and be accountable for what they believed. Outward expressions of the Christian faith in the home, the small group, or the sickroom became potentially a source of embarrassment and were engaged in with great hesitation. The services of prayer and acts of discipleship that had been understood as occasions for worship and channels of grace came to be regarded as personal options, to be elected if needs warranted it. The loss of these public expressions of the personal assurance of salvation coincided with or perhaps contributed to a redefinition of conversion. In the early years, conversion was viewed as a corporate, public, and yet personal process that was tested and strengthened in the context of a wider community: in the family, by intensive formation through morning and evening worship; in public prayer, by prayer, exhortation, and testimony; and in the sickroom, by confession and conversation. But by the end of the nineteenth century, conversion was being conceived as a private, individual, and instantaneous event. Devotion and discipleship, originally construed primarily as acts of worship, and secondarily as opportunities for spiritual refinement, were no longer considered critical elements in the conversion process, or as necessary components for continued growth in faith, but supplements. The privatization of conversion, along with the privatization of devotion and discipleship, was challenged in the late twentieth century by some Methodist theologians and liturgical scholars, who, following the consensus that grew out of the liturgical and ecumenical movements, advocated a renewed understanding of the corporate nature of the church.58 Such a recovery was difficult, however, on account of the exaltation of the individual that continued to permeate American life.

10

A House for Worship

he places set apart for American Methodist worship, like the liturgies they housed, were shaped by different forces. A denomination’s—and the local community’s—conception of the nature and purpose of corporate worship, along with the patterns of worship that gave form to that understanding, was usually key to the establishment, construction, or renovation of the area for worship. The other activities of the community, devotional and social, likewise affected the disposition of the space. But demographics also played a part in the configuration of the place for worship, with variations especially noticeable between urban and rural areas. Geography determined the location of the site, the availability of building materials, and the types of structures that could feasibly be built in a particular climate. Native peoples, and long-resident Hispanic and French populations, offered distinct designs and building methods; immigrants who became Methodists brought with them the architectural memories and techniques of their homelands. Economics was also a factor: as some Methodists became more affluent, aesthetic considerations came to be valued in addition to the functional. Multiple forces thus contributed to the organization of the worship space in any given locale. But once the place had been configured, it in turn influenced how worship would be carried out, by encouraging the perpetuation of a particular style of worship, and by inhibiting or impeding other forms, but occasionally also inviting new expressions. The space for worship itself made theological and liturgical statements about those who gathered therein and the God they worshiped; alterations in design both expressed and motivated shifts in theology and liturgical praxis. In the course of two hundred years perspectives changed on what constituted appropriate spaces for Methodist worship. Nevertheless, every place and building hallowed by prayer and praise was recognized as a symbol of an ever-present God and a testimony to the faith of God’s people called Methodists.

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Creating a Place for Worship In the early decades, the Methodist determination to spread scriptural holiness throughout the land meant that the inaccessibility or absence of church buildings and meetinghouses would be no hindrance to their mission. The pragmatic American Methodist preachers, like their “venerable Father,” saw only boundless opportunity: “Pure spiritual worship, which emanates from the pious heart, can be offered acceptably in any place; and wherever Christ meets his worshipping saints, there is peace, paradise, and heaven.”1 Sermon, supplication, and song could therefore be rendered in any imaginable venue, and it was this flexibility that permitted expansion, first over the eastern seaboard then westward as preachers followed the wagon train and later the railroad. Methodist worship took place wherever people could gather. Some services were held out-of-doors, with a preacher or exhorter elevated above the crowd by standing upon a log or rock, a chair, or a cart. Boats of all types were put to gospel use. A stand for speakers and simple plank benches for hearers could be built in a shaded area or under a brush arbor if a site was to accommodate frequent assemblies. Worship might be conducted from a second-story window or from a doorway, with the people clustered outside below. If available and commodious, buildings or shelters were always preferred since worship could then be held regardless of weather. In some communities, a single, multipurpose building might be shared by Methodists and their ecclesiastical rivals. But Methodists also did not hesitate to use buildings primarily intended for other than spiritual activities. Private homes or cabins were regularly used when size permitted. Schoolhouses, courthouses, Masonic halls, warehouses, barns, rigging lofts, and abandoned buildings all might be taken over for the purpose of worship. Even the barroom of an Ohio tavern that James Finley judged to look more like “the celebration of a bacchanalian orgie, than a place for the worship of God” was deemed suitable since “the Gospel was to be preached to every creature” and his mission “extended to every place this side of hell.”2 Methodists also acquired or built their own houses, as they had done soon after the first Methodist immigrants arrived from Britain. In the 1760s, windowless log meetinghouses for worship, with dirt floors, rough-hewn benches and pulpit, and holes sawed in the logs to permit entry of air and light, were erected in rural Maryland by members of the societies founded by Robert Strawbridge. Aided by the financial subscription of Quakers and other non-Methodists, New York City Methodists in 1768 completed a sixty-foot-long by forty-two-foot-wide stone building on John Street. Wesley Chapel was furnished with a simple wood pulpit opposite the central door, backless benches, and a gallery accessible at first only by ladder; a Communion table and a baptismal font were, of course, not permissible prior to 1784. These buildings conformed to the popular wisdom, later approved by Wesley for the 1770 edition of the Large Minutes, that Methodist buildings were to be simple and undecorated, and that there should be no (box) pews or backs to the seats. The log meetinghouses did, however, violate the expectation, also codified in 1770, that special attention be given to suitable light and ventilation. Wesley’s enthusiasm for building octagonal preaching houses, first noted in

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his journal in 1761 and first commended in the 1770 Large Minutes, apparently was never shared in colonial America.3 In adapting the Large Minutes (the 1780 edition) at the founding of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Americans deleted most of the instructions for building design and arrangement, and settled instead for two points that were subsequently printed in the Discipline. The first directed that “all our chapels be built plain and decent, but not more expensively than is absolutely unavoidable” lest the church become dependent on the rich, who consequently might expect to control the community and thus potentially compromise the established discipline and doctrine. The rule was consistent with both the overall Methodist preference for simplicity of lifestyle and the abiding concern for ministry to the poor; and it recognized that the majority of Methodists were, in fact, from the lower economic classes. The phrase “plain and decent” could, however, be variously interpreted, though for most Methodists it indicated what they could barely afford. Some leaders, among them Bishop Asbury, understood it to mean that anything not strictly utilitarian—steeples, bells, cushions, fancy fences—was inappropriate. Buildings that displayed unnecessary decoration, and the preachers in charge of them, were thus roundly criticized. When Asbury noticed that the bell hung on an Augusta, Georgia, church was cracked, he wrote, “may it break! It is the first I ever saw in a house of ours in America; I hope it will be the last.”4 According to the second policy, men and women, without exception, sat apart in Methodist chapels. The separation of the sexes was a practice believed to harken back to the primitive church, and it had long been a custom of Methodists in Britain and in the colonies. “A general mixture of the sexes in places of divine worship is obviously improper,” explained Bishops Asbury and Coke.5 To meet the prescribed condition, women and men were assigned to different sections of the building, on the floor and in the galleries. Physical barriers, such as a low wall or a railing stretching from the back to near the front of the space, were sometimes added to prevent the intermingling of the sexes. The construction of separate entrances for men and women in all new buildings was recommended in 1790 to ensure proper decorum.6 Although it was not explicitly stipulated in any Discipline, seating was often racially segregated as well, with nonwhites in attendance relegated to “separate sittings” usually in a special section of the gallery, or if there was no gallery and space was unavailable on the floor, outside the open windows or doors.7 In later years, the entrances once distinguished for genders might be used to separate the races in white-dominated churches. There is no evidence that reversed racial segregation in seating arrangements was practiced among the black denominations. After the provision was made in 1784 for the celebration of the sacraments, additional furnishings had to be supplied, usually a simple table (though not all houses had one) and, when needed, a bowl or basin. Already by January 1785 a New York congregation had railed in a Communion table in imitation of the thencurrent Anglican practice.8 A Communion or altar rail encircling both table and pulpit eventually came to characterize Methodist interior design; for many Methodists, the rail—the point of encounter with the divine—marked the most sacred spot in the worship space and might itself be called “the altar.” However, the

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pulpit or reading desk as the location for the reading and preaching of God’s word remained the focal point of attention, and for that reason it was usually centered in the front of the room and could be elevated upon a small platform. The pulpit could be of a well-crafted wineglass or tub design with an overhanging sounding board, but more often it was a crude wooden box, desk, or table, corresponding to the simple, basic structure in which it was placed—what was sometimes derogatorily referred to as a “Methodist barn.” Logs and unfinished lumber were the most frequently used building materials in towns and in remote areas, though a congregation with financial means might substitute stone or brick; on the prairie, mud or sod houses were fabricated. The floors could be paved with planks, but usually they were dirt, sometimes sprinkled with sand. Even so, prayers were said kneeling, with the congregation characteristically turning their backs to the pulpit and resting their folded hands on the benches upon which they had been sitting. Light came from windows, tallow candles in sconces or wooden chandeliers, and lamps that burned whale or lard oil. Few buildings had heating stoves; congregations shivered in the winter months or opted to suspend services until warmer weather. The arrangement of the interior space, which was well suited for heartfelt and body-moving Methodist worship, might also include one or two “Amen corners” set off near the pulpit at right angles to the rest of the assembly, from which the older members or the particularly pious might punctuate the proceedings with single-word or short-phrased outbursts of praise. The place for Methodist worship was to be austere and functional, with ostentation avoided. This was true (for a time) in the city houses: Saint George’s Methodist Episcopal church in Fourth street, and the only one at the time in Philadelphia, was without galleries within or railing without, a miserably cold looking place in winter time, when, from the leaky stove pipe, mended with clay, the smoke would frequently issue, and fill all the house. It was then customary with the female worshippers to carry with them small “wooden stoves” for the feet, such as are to be seen used by the women in market. The front door was in the centre; and about 20 feet from the east end, inside, there stood a square thing not unlike a watch box, with the top sawed off, which in that day served as their “pulpit of wood,” from whence the Rev. Mr. Willis used to read prayers previous to the sermon, from Mr. Wesley’s Liturgy, and John Hood (lately living) raised the hymn standing on the floor. Mr. Willis, during service, wore a black silk gown, which gave offence to many, and was finally laid aside.9

Such plainness typified the Methodist people themselves, though their “decency” was sometimes questionable. A description of a service held in a Morristown, New Jersey, church in the 1830s illustrates not only separation by sex and the style of Methodist prayer but also the propensity of some men to bring to church unspiritual habits: In the evening I went with Mr. Cook and my friend to the Episcopal Methodist Church. It is not large, and has been recently built. The men occupied one side of the place, and the women the other; an unsocial plan, and more likely to suggest evil than to prevent it. We were there before the service commenced. The silence was interrupted disagreeably, by continued spitting, which fell, to a strange ear, like the

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drippings from the eaves on a rainy day. They have the custom of turning their back to the minister in singing, that they may face the singers; and they have also the practice, to a great extent, of interlining the prayer with exclamations and prayers of their own. Such as these, for instance, were common:—Amen—Do so, Lord—Lord, thou knowest—Let it be so, Lord—Yes, yes, Lord—Come, come, Lord, &c.10

Tobacco chewing in church was evidently a recurring problem. One congregation in the 1840s provided spittoons lest the walls and floors be soiled; another, at the end of the nineteenth century, numbered among its spring cleaning duties the scraping of tobacco remnants from the floor.11

Reconfiguring the Inheritance The requirement for “plain and decent” churches remained in the Discipline of several denominations throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. However, increases in Methodist membership and affluence, the regularity of a Sunday service conducted by a resident preacher, and a growing sense of sophistication in some denominations all favored changes in architectural design and in the approaches made to the disposition of space. The costly brick, stone, or wood frame oblong buildings with longitudinally directed worship spaces that were erected in the larger cities had, by midcentury, started to become the models for construction in towns and rural areas of the East and South, and were taken westward with the migrating population. The old log houses were gradually displaced by buildings intended to be both comfortable and pleasing to the eye in order to attract new members (rich and poor) and preserve the old ones. A good house could have “a fine moralizing effect upon a community,” and so its exterior was expected to be neat and kept in good repair.12 Windows were to be positioned in such a way that the preacher or worship leader never disappeared to the observer on account of blinding sunlight or deep shadow. Proper ventilation, permitted by the opening of windows from the top or bottom of the sash, was essential lest the liveliness and health of those gathered be jeopardized. Such an arrangement, noted African Methodist Episcopal bishop Daniel Payne, would keep preachers from effectiveness-limiting respiratory distress and disease, and prevent women and children from experiencing “fits and fainting.”13 The organization of the space for worship was largely consistent across the Methodist denominations. The rectangular layout of the interior was perpetuated even though the exterior might not be designed as a plain meetinghouse but rather (particularly in the cities) imitate Colonial, Georgian, Greek Revival, or Gothic Revival architectural styles. The earlier plan of a central pulpit or desk raised upon a platform continued as the best arrangement for delivering an evangelical sermon, though now it almost always was located on the short wall opposite the entrance(s). Three chairs might be placed upon an enlarged platform for the minister, the visiting preacher or evangelist, and the song leader—a practical custom later interpreted as representing the Trinity. A Communion table typically was set in front of the pulpit and closely surrounded by the rail, since maximum space was to be accorded to seating. Methodists generally distinguished a table

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from an altar by the distance the furnishing was placed from the pulpit; an altar would be flush against the pulpit, while the table was moved out to allow the minister to stand behind it. Galleries on one or three walls provided additional seats and could be the location for the still controversial choir. By the 1850s, there was a growing expectation among some that the furnishings and the space were to be crafted with care as evidence of Methodism’s progressive spirit and as a tactic to entice the worldly: the building, after all, was not only to be fit as the house of God, it was also the “gate of heaven” for sinners (Genesis 28:17). A LaGrange, Missouri, building had “neatly grained” pulpit and seats, carpeted coverings for the aisles and the platform, a beautiful chandelier and “two handsome pulpit lamps”; Calvary Church, near Richmond, Virginia, boasted a desk “surmounted by a beautiful white marble slab” and a pulpit platform “adorned with a luxurious sofa”; a building at Lebanon, Tennessee, had windows “ornamented with beautiful Venetian blinds.”14 Memberships that could afford it added gaslight and heat. Greater attention was paid at this time to the location of what was increasingly called a church rather than a meetinghouse or preaching house. Buildings had often been placed on sites away from population centers because of the availability of cheap land, thus requiring that persons venture some distance from their homes for worship. On this matter Methodist Episcopal bishop Thomas Morris quipped, “Under the old dispensation, it was supposed that some difficulty in reaching the place of worship was a necessary sacrifice for the privilege of attending.” For the sake of evangelism and growth in membership, Methodists were advised to take well-considered financial risks and bring their churches to the people. “It is far better to pay the full value of a church lot in the proper place,” commented Bishop Morris, “than to have one for nothing in the wrong place.”15 The purchase of prime real estate and the erection of attractive buildings necessitated a level of financial support not immediately available to most Methodist communities. A solution that had been put to use by some New Englanders in the first decade of the nineteenth century was the one utilized by their Congregationalist neighbors: the renting or selling of pews. Up to this time the Methodists had vaunted their offering of free grace to every person who sat in the Methodists’ free seats. While traveling in 1808, Jesse Lee observed several churches that had departed from the generally assumed Methodist convention. A Newport, Rhode Island, church not only had large square pews arranged so that “a part of the people sit with their faces, and others with their backs towards the preacher” but also sold the pews and allowed men and women to sit together. The new “large and elegant” house in Boston that sold pews “to the highest bidder” had “an altar round the pulpit, in a half-circle, and . . . long pews of a circular form, to be uniform with the altar.” In an unnamed church: The people have fixed pews all around the house, and all the rest have no seats, except a few loose boards on blocks. Whilst I was preaching, if a well dressed person came in, the people would jump up in their pews and slam open their doors, and thump on their pews, and beckon with their hands to get the person into their pews. I was quite displeased with their pews, and with their conduct.16

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As part of a wider doctrinal and disciplinary crisis that threatened the “simplicity and glory of the gospel plan of salvation,” controversy erupted as some feared that pews compromised the Methodist economy by privileging the rich, offending or excluding the poor, and overturning the foundational principles of democracy. Thus, by 1816, arguments reached the floor of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s General Conference, whereupon a resolution was passed disallowing pews. At their next quadrennial assembly, after votes were taken upon multiple proposals, new advices were added to the Discipline (1820) that Methodist houses were to be built “plain and decent, and with free seats”—a stipulation taken over by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South upon their founding—and that, as far as possible, houses already with pews were to be made free.17 Nonetheless, numerous members of both denominations apparently read the instruction not as law but as a recommendation,18 and thereby continued the pewing of churches and their selling, though not without ongoing disputes in local congregations and at the meetings of the Annual Conferences and the General Conferences (the South and West being for a while the most resistant to the practice). In concession, the 1852 General Conference added “wherever practicable” to the direction (the Church, South made a similar change in 1870), apparently to stave off the threat of multiple litigations against the preachers who advocated the pew system.19 The controversy persisted, however, and in 1860, a group of New York Methodists, distressed over the Methodist Episcopal Church’s policy on pews—and on slavery as well as other matters— formed the Free Methodist Church, whose name revealed one of their intentions: free seats. Free churches, they believed, maintained the purity of biblical Christianity, facilitated the preaching of the gospel to every individual, and were essential for truly spiritual worship since pews intimated formalism.20 The year 1852 also signaled for the Methodist Episcopal Church another departure from what had been Methodist practice regarding arrangements in the worship space. What Jesse Lee noticed in the Rhode Island church had become more widespread: the “promiscuous sittings” whereby men and women, and entire households, sat conjointly in worship. The pew rent system had encouraged such impropriety, since the selling of individual places was impractical. But the custom of free seats had also raised the question why, in the name of democracy, families couldn’t worship together. Arguments that removing the barrier between the sexes would create disorder in worship were countered with claims that the new approach would be more beneficial in securing attendance. Besides, to legislate the mode of seating for every congregation inhibited the spirit of freedom bequeathed by Methodism’s founder.21 The removal of the restriction in 1852 (and subsequently by the other denominations that had taken up the rule) did not immediately alter either the practice of separate seating or the architecture that sustained it. When Elizabeth Chapel near Alma, Georgia, was built in 1886, a rail (with pillars attached to support the roof) divided the building and the sexes, and remained until the interior was renovated in the late 1970s, though the arrangement of congregational seating had changed much earlier.22 Some elderly southern Methodists, reminiscing in the mid-twentieth century about their childhoods and beyond, recalled the separate seatings even though the Methodist Episcopal Church, South had dropped the restriction in 1866. Nannie Belle Coghill remembered that,

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prior to the remodeling done shortly after World War I, Tabernacle Church in Townsville, North Carolina, had “a strip right down the center of the long pews” that required courting or married couples to sit close on opposite sides of the barrier.23 Hundreds of Methodist houses for worship had come to dot the American landscape during the 1840s and 1850s. In the four decades following, the number of new constructions rapidly increased on account of population growth, westward expansion after the Civil War, and the deepening pockets of the larger denominations as they attracted and kept a middle-class constituency. Agencies created within some of the denominations for church extension spurred on building programs in the new western settlements.24 Many of the new or renovated houses across the country were designed and decorated in a fashion that raised the eyebrows of some, and certainly would have repulsed earlier Methodists. Fernandez Holliday remarked upon this very visible transition evident in Indiana by 1873: In church architecture, Methodism has undergone a great change. Our first churches, like the homes of the early settlers, were made of logs. The second editions of our houses of worship were usually plain frame or brick buildings, without steeples or bells. Now the finest and most costly Protestant churches in our chief towns are those owned and occupied by the Methodists; their steeples are as high, and their bells as numerous and as rich toned as any; and it is evident that Methodists are investing more money in church-building than the members of any Church among us. And while the Methodist Church has required no high standard of literary qualification as a condition of admittance into the ministry, it has come to pass that in our principal churches the highest ministerial qualifications are demanded, and that demand is as fully met as in any of our sister Churches. We have also changed our customs in regard to sittings in congregational worship.25

In answer to the question whether the construction of such elegant buildings endangered Methodism’s spiritual integrity and impaired its commitment to provide resources for the poor, Abel Stevens and others responded that by attracting the wealthy, the means to care for the poor was enhanced. Indeed, Stevens believed that “Methodism should feel itself responsible to minister . . . to the public culture, by the improvement of its church architecture”: True art should be recognized as one of the noblest handmaids of religion; elevating impressions and associations, through the senses in our temples, may ennoble even divine worship; and imposing monuments of taste, consecrated to piety, are among the highest means of national culture, and the highest proofs of advanced civilization. It is a sacred peculiarity of architectural art that, unlike painting and sculpture, it will not lend itself to vice; its severe and stately beauty disdains effeminate or voluptuous tastes. It is the most sublime, the most religious, of the works of man. On really utilitarian grounds, then, may we plead for religious art. Yet we may plead for it also on really economical grounds. The most expensive temple is usually the most economical. The Church that builds its edifice in the most eligible locality and in the most attractive style, almost invariably finds its expense the best reimbursed, by its command of the people, their attendance, their intelligence, and their money. A well located, substantial, and commanding temple aids much in giving security to a

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Church, and is cheap in this respect. The stability of the religions of the old world, their power over local populations, are owing largely to their grand edifices. Methodism should not despise this power.26

Such positive words about architectural elegance and Methodist respectability inspired some church memberships to overstep their financial capabilities. A Grand Rapids, Michigan, congregation, whose first building was constructed for under $1,000, in 1869 completed for $33,000 a second edifice in Gothic Revival style with a dozen small spires (nicknamed the “Church of the Holy Toothpicks”), and despite repeated fund raising still owed $15,000 in 1882.27 “Plain and decent” houses still were built in this period on account of economic restrictions, as a protest against those Methodists who were believed to be abandoning their heritage by capitulating both to formality and pride, and because the legislation instructing such remained in the Discipline; the episcopal Methodist bodies kept the rule into the twentieth century, with the African Methodist Episcopal Church retaining a version of it (“Let all our churches be built with simplicity and dignity”) until the 1980s. The Free Methodists, who at their founding in 1860 assumed simplicity of construction to be the norm and therefore included no instruction in their Discipline, added a statement in 1882 (kept until 1955, with some editorial emendations) affirming that their churches were to be “built plain, and decent, without steeples, and not more expensive than is absolutely required for comfort, convenience, and stability, and with all seats free.” In spite of cautions about departing from historic Methodism and the Discipline, many urban Methodists of the larger denominations gladly adopted for their building exteriors the prominent architectural designs found in the wider culture, even though the Greek Revival “temple” was now sometimes deplored as too pagan, and the Gothic Revival as too Catholic. Gothic interiors, with the long nave and the deep chancel suggesting both hierarchy and formalism, and with the pulpit removed from close proximity to the people, were often dubbed unsuitable for effective Methodist worship. The Romanesque Revival style grew in popularity after the Civil War and was used into the early twentieth century. By the early 1870s, both the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South were looking to use denominationally produced architectural manuals and plans to guide the erection of future buildings: the former established a Department of Architecture in 1875, which, from 1877, annually published catalogs of architectural plans; the latter recommended and published clergyman W. M. Patterson’s Manual of Architecture (1875) for the use of building committees when it was deemed neither feasible nor desirable for a congregation to hire an architect.28 A trend in the design of city church interiors, which was then adopted elsewhere, directly resulted from the emergence of the pulpit princes in the heyday of the urban revival. The pulpit platform was substantially enlarged to hold a choir behind the pulpit or to the side, as well as the preacher, who, to accentuate the gospel message and make eye contact with the hearers, would employ action and motion while preaching. Organ pipes often supplied a backdrop behind both pulpit and choir. Charles Grandison Finney, with his Broadway Tabernacle, built in New York City in 1836, had been one of the first to experiment with the so-called

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auditorium or theater style, which rejected a long, narrow nave with a central aisle in favor of a square or wide oblong space with radiating aisles. Methodists embraced this plan after the Civil War, and found the rounded and wide Romanesque-style structure particularly compatible with the interior design, though elongated Gothic buildings were also accommodated to it. In the auditorium arrangement, large windows could be placed at the back and sides to provide illumination. Sunlight was diffused through leaded stained glass depictions of Scripture scenes in the buildings of the affluent, but more commonly by the use of tinted “art glass” or a faux stained glass created by affixing special colored paper with abstract designs to plain windows.29 Curved or angled open pews in a concentric semicircular arrangement brought preacher and congregation closer together. Affluent congregations might maximize comfort by cushioning the pews or installing individual seats. The main floor could be level or be graded to rise away from the platform so that sight lines were optimized. If there were balconies, they might be shallow, sloping, or in an oval configuration to reduce the distance between the second level and the speaker. Ideally, all seats could be rentable to help recoup construction costs. Under this scheme, the sermon was paramount; the usually small Communion table stood before the pulpit and off the main platform, and if there was a pedestaled baptismal font permanent in the space, it was placed to one side. The national flag might be displayed either on the platform or the floor, continuing the patriotic custom established during the Civil War years in the North. The prominence of the auditorium arrangement in the second half of the nineteenth century led to the use by Methodists of the term “auditorium” to refer to the entirety of the worship space. Designation of the space in this way signaled the expectations for worship itself: worship was highly individualized, with congregations mostly passive auditors to the sermon, the prayers, and the music of organ and choir. A variation on the auditorium plan placed organ pipes, choir, and pulpit on a platform in a corner diagonal with the entrance. This style, popularized by architect George Washington Kramer of Akron, Ohio, especially during the 1880s and 1890s, fanned the congregation around the pulpit on a sloped floor, thus maximizing both seating and sight lines. Kramer also promoted a “Combination Church” arrangement by which a Sunday school hall or “lecture room” was attached to one side of the worship space but separated from it by sliding doors. When additional space was needed, especially during revivals and funerals, the partition could be opened to supply additional seating. Kramer’s concept borrowed from but went beyond the arrangement first proposed by businessman and Sunday school superintendent Lewis Miller for the Sunday school of Akron’s First Methodist Episcopal Church, according to which classrooms opened out into a central space with a platform and desk for Sunday school exercises and worship.30 Denominational concerns about Christian education, and the desire for multifunctional and economical worship space, contributed to the popularity of the so-called Akron plan. At the turn into the twentieth century, Akron and other auditorium plans were widely represented in Methodist buildings across the country.31 Regional and local idiosyncrasies in decoration—some purported to be “common features” of Methodist churches—were also in evidence throughout the nineteenth

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century. One custom was to cut a false door in the wall behind the pulpit as a symbolic entrance for the Holy Spirit and as a reminder that Jesus Christ was the doorway to heaven, though of course this provoked jokes that the door provided a handy escape for any preacher who irked the congregation. When a new building for a Greenville, North Carolina, congregation was in the final stages of construction, it was observed that the door was missing. Following a congregational meeting, where the expense and delay of adding a door were duly noted, the decision was reached that local artists should be hired to paint a door on the rear wall.32 Many of the Methodist denominations had, by the end of the nineteenth century, formalized a long-practiced but unwritten set of liturgical services for the laying of a cornerstone and for the dedication or consecration of a building. Wesley’s Sunday Service, as a revision of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, did not contain such services because none were present in the Prayer Book. Although the English Convocation had endorsed a consecratory rite in 1712 and revised it in 1714, neither form had received the authorizing royal sanction; yet they were used in some English dioceses and became the foundation for the American rite approved by the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1799. In spite of the availability of a service to pass on, Wesley was persuaded that consecratory rites were superstitious innovations, since neither the Bible nor the law of the land recommended them. To Wesley’s mind, the act of worship itself was sufficiently consecratory; hence, he was not bothered about holding services in any space, consecrated or not.33 Nevertheless, the American Methodists from the eighteenth century onward marked the laying of the foundation and the opening of the house with special observances. Bishop Asbury described a service in 1796 that commenced with singing part of Isaac Watts’s “The Corner Stone” and then led to prayer; more song and prayer followed after the laying of the stone.34 A substantial number of hymns for use at these events was, by the 1830s, designated in several official Methodist hymnals. One widely used text spoke to the multiple purposes of the building as God’s dwelling place and as house for the gathering of God’s people in praise and prayer: Behold thy temple, God of grace, The house that we have reared for thee, Regard it as thy resting-place, And fill it with thy majesty. When from its altar shall arise Joint supplication to thy name, Deign to accept the sacrifice, Thyself our answ’ring God proclaim. And when from hence the voice of praise Shall lift its triumphs to thy throne, Show thy acceptance of our lays, By making all thy glory known. When here thy ministers shall stand, To speak what thou shalt bid them say,

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Maintain thy cause with thine own hand, And give thy truth a winning way. Now, therefore, O our God, arise! In this thy resting-place appear; And let thy people’s longing eyes Behold thee fix thy dwelling here. In addition to hymns and prayer, cornerstone and dedication services usually featured a sermon (with preachers recording the text that was used), a dedicatory prayer, and a collection to reduce the debt on the house. Since dedication services drew numbers of preachers (Methodist and otherwise) and substantial crowds, Communion was sometimes held at the conclusion of the service or at a later hour. In some places, Masonic rites were conflated with local Methodist customs: the cornerstone of the church at Sydney (a western suburb of Richmond, Virginia) was laid according to Masonic ceremonies, with a concluding address by a Methodist pastor; inside the box inserted into the cornerstone was, along with a Bible and a copy of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South Discipline, a copy of the Masonic textbook.35 Proposals began to circulate in the 1840s that formal orders for cornerstone laying and building dedication be approved, perhaps as a means of discouraging the indiscriminate blending of churchly and Masonic practices. The General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church commended in 1848 that J. M. Brown, Byrd Parker, and Daniel Payne write two services to be included in that year’s Discipline, thereby becoming the first Methodist body to authorize standardized services for the setting apart of church buildings. Both services placed on paper what was already common practice, with the lengthy composed prayers imitating the extemporaneous style. Bishop Payne later testified that the cornerstone service had been copied from the form used by the Evangelical Lutheran Church; the dedication order was inspired by the Lutheran rite and the 1799 Protestant Episcopal Church’s service, but a large portion of it was new since the authors “labored more to be scriptural than to be original, believing that in all the service of religion man ought to hide himself beneath the glorious manifestation of the God-head as made in his written word.”36 The order “For Laying Cornerstones of New Churches,” which was to be preceded or followed by an appropriate discourse, consisted of a hymn, a prayer (text given), the reading of Scripture (e.g., 1 Kings 5; Psalm 96; Haggai 1:1–10; or 1 Corinthians 3), a stated address on the biblical understandings of “cornerstone,” a prayer (text supplied), a rubric regarding the contents of the cornerstone and its placement, and a final declaration. The order “For the Dedication of New or Remodelled Churches” supposed the presence of the bishop, though the service could proceed in his absence under the direction of an elder. The service simultaneously claimed the house for the denomination and marked it as God’s domain: an opening rubric instructed that the keys to the building were to be presented to the bishop “in token of the fact that they will ever after submit to the discipline, doctrine and government of the African Methodist Episcopal Church

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and ‘will at all times hereafter permit such ministers and preachers belonging to said church to preach and expound God’s holy word therein’ ”; and a concluding rubric noted that, after dedication, the building was not to be used for “any other purpose than the glory of God.” The lengthy dedicatory prayer was the centerpiece of the liturgy: Procession with responsive reading of Psalm 84 [between the bishop and the other ministers present] Psalm 122 [chanted by the choir] Prayer [substantially quoting 1 Kings 8:23–51, by the bishop, kneeling] Dedicatory Prayer [by the bishop] “And now, O Lord God, Most High, whom the heaven, and heaven of heavens cannot contain, we dedicate this house to thy service: receive it, we humbly beseech thee, receive it unto thyself, and number it among thine earthly sanctuaries; that thine own presence, the presence of thy Son Jesus Christ, and the presence of thy Holy Spirit, may ever fill this house which we have builded and called by thy name; so that whensoever the Gospel is preached in this house, it may descend with all its purity, power, and demonstration upon the hearts of the impenitent, turning them from darkness to light, and from the power of sin and Satan unto God; that its sanctifying influences may be felt in the souls of all believers, lifting their desires, their hopes, and their affections, from earth to heaven, and leading back the wandering sheep of the house of Israel into the fold of eternal life.” [seven more petitions follow, each addressing some aspect of the worship to take place within the house] Consecratory Hymn [no more than six stanzas] Sermon Collection Hymn Extemporaneous Prayer Benediction The African Methodist Episcopal orders and the Protestant Episcopal rite of 1799 influenced the production of other Methodist services in the nineteenth century, among them those of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1864), the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1870), and the Methodist Protestant Church (1877). The service introduced into the Wesleyan Church in the twentieth century borrowed verbatim entire prayers from the American Prayer Book. Even with established orders, local congregations felt free to emend the standard text to produce a dedicatory service unique to their situation. When First Methodist Episcopal Church at Holyoke, Massachusetts, was dedicated at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, June 25, 1890, the service expanded the conventional order by including the reading of a financial statement and an address after the sermon; another service of hymns, prayer, Scripture, and sermon was held at 7:30 p.m. under the guidance of eight clergy who had not given leadership at the afternoon service.37

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Raising Architectural Monuments At the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of Methodist denominations strove to erect houses of worship exhibiting beauty and artistry, not only for their own ends as divine gifts but as statements of Methodism’s influence as the most “American” of denominations and as means to successful evangelism with the economically advantaged and the culturally astute. Romanesque and Renaissance exteriors surrounding pulpit-centered, auditorium-style interiors remained popular well into the 1920s, as the architectural plans reproduced in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s Church Extension Hand Book attest. But moves that had started in the last decades of the nineteenth century away from the dominance of pulpit oratory toward liturgical complexity on Sunday morning—expressed by the publication of standard orders, and the use of psalmody and other responsive readings—led some Methodists to suggest that the sermon-focused auditorium plan had outlived its usefulness. The content of preaching also was shifting and with it the method of delivery: the fiery exhortations seeking to convict lost souls were heard less often in some quarters than were manuscripted sermons addressing Christian life and values. Attention turned again to the Gothic style, which Boston architect Ralph Adams Cram and others were promoting as the most sublimely Christian architectural form. Although the long-naved Gothic longitudinal plan did not invite congregational interaction as well as the fanned auditorium, the associations of the Gothic with beauty, mystery, and an “enriched” liturgy made it attractive. Lucius Clark, writing in a Methodist Episcopal publication in 1912, declared that with the auditorium plan “the church lost much of that which was real churchly and became a hall,” and by focus upon “the man who stood on the platform,” the congregation became little more than “minor accessories.” Use of the Gothic design was not a reversion to medievalism, claimed Clark, but an “evolving to the place where the congregation is the unit rather than the priest of Romanism or the preacher in Protestantism.”38 Halford Luccock was more adamant in his denunciation in 1924 of the “deadly sins” of the auditorium, especially the Akron, design. In his opinion, “the most uplifting worship” could not be led from a pulpit in a corner; the display of organ pipes across the front of the space distracted worship; the “Age of Sliding Doors” should be quickly left behind; and windows should be functional and not simply decorative: “Now, in the conduct of worship there abideth three things, art, music, and air. But the greatest of these is air. Neither Chrysostom nor Henry Ward Beecher is any match for carbon dioxide.”39 The Gothic revival both encouraged and reinforced many of the liberal-mystical views of worship and theology circulating in the new century, and particularly the psychological-aesthetic approach to religion and worship promoted by Von Ogden Vogt and Willard Sperry. According to Vogt, the beauty of the Gothic inspired the celebration of life that was true worship; its verticality evoked emotion and mystery, and invited communion with the “infinite unknown.”40 Vogt’s utilitarian approach to worship and his appreciation for the Gothic was appropriated by some Methodist leaders, among them Elbert Conover, director of the Bureau of Architecture of the Methodist Episcopal Church and later the director of the Interde-

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nominational Bureau of Architecture. Because, claimed Conover, “the human personality enters into its most sublime experience” in worship, a service and the environment in which worship was held failed if it did not make “the Divine Presence appreciable” or “inspire or comfort or create humility of mind.” The space where true worship was best realized, Conover posited, consisted of an oblong nave bathed in the colors eminating from stained glass. Floors were to be level and pews straight so attention could be focused toward a chancel containing a centered altar (against the back wall) or Communion table (freestanding near the back wall) that was decorated with cross and candles. A lectern was placed on one side of the central aisle, the pulpit on the other, with both located at the juncture of the chancel and the nave, which might be demarcated by a railing and cushions for kneeling (or the railing could surround the altar or table). The choir could sit divided within the chancel or be placed on the side opposite the organ or piano. A baptismal font could be tucked somewhere in the chancel or be placed at the entrance into the nave. Worship leaders were placed in seats at the sides of the chancel lest the appearance be given of worshiping them instead of God.41 Led by the advice of Conover and other advocates of the Gothic and the beautiful,42 hundreds of Methodist buildings, large and moderately sized, were constructed in the Gothic design during the first half of the twentieth century, particularly in the boom years between World War I and the Great Depression, and again after World War II (most noticeably in suburban areas). But even more houses of worship were configured or renovated to conform to the altar-centered or so-called “divided chancel” plan—with the altar at the far end and choir seats on either side in the chancel, and the pulpit and lectern on opposite sides of its entrance—though the arrangement apparently did little to encourage more frequent reception of the Lord’s Supper. Interiors were decorated with a rich use of symbols arranged in glass, carved in wood, or embroidered on textiles. The Methodist Episcopal Church was now finally forced to admit that it no longer built houses of worship that were simply “plain and decent,” and in 1932 replaced those words with the instruction “Let our church buildings be designed in keeping with the lofty purpose of providing for divine worship, for the administration of the Holy Sacraments and be suited to the ministries of preaching, religious education, and Christian fellowship and service.” Not all were enthusiastic about the emphasis upon the Gothic and the chancel. Claims were made that these architectural forms contributed to the deadening of the spiritual power that had been a hallmark of earlier Methodism, and elevated the liturgical at the expense of the prophetic and the evangelical. In 1931, the minister of First Methodist Episcopal Church of Long Beach, California, queried: Is not the flaming evangel rather than the flickering candle Christ’s way; the burning heart rather than the burnished bronze of more importance; the glowing countenance rather than the glittering altar Methodism’s method of letting the world know that this is the place where God’s honor dwelleth?43

Because of concerns that the chancel design potentially devalued preaching and the historic Protestant focus upon the word of God, Georgian or Colonial-style buildings with a pulpit-centered configuration were also constructed during this

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period, usually with a long, narrow nave (still referred to in some plans as the “auditorium”). For the next twenty-five years or so, Methodists from all denominations actively debated the pros and cons of the altar-centered and the pulpitcentered plans—and with them the shift in most of the denominations toward liturgical formalism. The Free Methodists found it necessary in 1955 to alter the statement about buildings in their Discipline when controversy broke out at that year’s General Conference over the construction of several buildings with divided chancels.44 Yet they kept their characteristic restraint and emphasis upon evangelical proclamation in the revised text: All our houses of worship must be built plain and neat, and no more expensive than is absolutely required for comfort, convenience, and stability, and with all seats free. Let the architecture and interior arrangements of our churches be planned and constructed to contribute to a distinctively evangelical simplicity and reverence in worship which makes the preaching of the Word central in the service. It is understood that we will build in keeping with prevailing architecture of the surrounding area and with such attractiveness as to commend the gospel to the community.

By the 1950s, the Methodist Church, officially, and representatives from other Methodist bodies, unofficially, had cast their lot with the “divided chancel” arrangement, and with the elongated nave since a square was believed by some to be too closely identified with an auditorium. Attempts were made to squelch the disparities between “preacher-centered” worship and the “sacramental-type” of worship by advocating an all-encompassing “God-centered” worship in which pulpit (“to set forth the word of the Almighty”) and table (“to symbolize the presence of eternal God”) both had a central position; in this scheme, the lectern, as a “purely incidental” furnishing, was deemed unnecessary.45 A related issue, one that remained unsettled, was whether Methodists had altars or tables. Some congregations had both, with an “altar” immovably fixed to the back wall upon which accumulated various artifacts (and toward which the pastor might pray when presenting the monetary offerings), and a Communion table set out when necessary for the vessels and the trays of individual cups. For the exterior, the classical styles of earlier years continued to be promoted, but modern designs constructed from new building materials caught the imagination as congregations prepared for the next generations. The plan published in 1955 for a new Methodist church in Lawton, Oklahoma, showed the worship space in the shape of a broad arrow, with the altar at the point, and interior gardens between the diagonal transepts.46 Although congregations were encouraged by the Methodist Church’s Department of Architecture to explore new designs, they were also cautioned against adopting wholeheartedly those forms that did not express or were alien to the realistic functions of worship in the space. A 1962 publication of the department advised that the “church-in-the-round” plan, popular among the “more liturgical denominations,” be avoided as a “passing fad.” Arranged “to get the maximum number of worshipers as close to the altar as possible, ostensibly to create the effect of the family of God gathered around the altar,” the plan was believed to subordinate all other aspects of worship to the sacrament when, in fact, for Methodists the Supper was celebrated only monthly or quarterly.47

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No single style of architecture, exterior or interior, could be definitively identified as Methodist in the last four decades of the twentieth century—a statement that could be made about Methodist buildings in other, if not all, periods as well. Architectural eclectism characterized the Methodist family, in part because lovingly tended older houses of worship erected by previous generations still welcomed congregations, some with the original interior configuration, others gutted and reoriented in order to conform to the community’s new expectations for prayer and praise. Among these, pulpit-centered and chancel arrangements dominated, but Akron and fanned auditorium styles that had survived the campaign against them also were used. New constructions reflected the diversity of opinions about worship and its purposes found among Methodists. Exterior designs ranged from classical to modern; interiors were longitudinal or centralized. At one end of the spectrum, congregations attentive to the ecumenical and liturgical movements fashioned interiors that intentionally acknowledged the setting as both the house of God and the house of the people. While creating areas for people and for movement within the space, parts of the room were set apart for distinct liturgical functions: proclamation of God’s word by the reading of Scripture and preaching; celebration of the Lord’s Supper at a freestanding altar-table; and Christian initiation through baptism.48 In some places these three centers were in close proximity, with the baptismal font moved into the space where a lectern might have stood (one desk was regarded as sufficient for the proclamation). In the last decade of the twentieth century, a few United Methodist constructions included a baptistery in the nave that could accommodate adult baptism by immersion and infant baptism by submersion. The United Methodist Church, in its 1992 “Service for the Consecration or Reconsecration of a Church Building,” acknowledged the centrality of the space for word and sacraments by including three separate consecrations: for the pulpit (“When your Word is read and preached from this pulpit, purify the lives and lips of those who speak here, that your Word alone may be proclaimed and your Word alone may be heard and obeyed”); the baptismal font (“When we pour the water of baptism, making and renewing our covenant vows, pour out your Spirit and give new birth; wash away sin and clothe your people in righteousness”); and the Lord’s table (“When we eat this bread and drink from this cup, refresh all those who partake at this holy table”). At the other end of the spectrum, congregations that had embraced a style of worship focused upon preaching, drama, and music provided by singers and a band were drawn to an “auditorium revival” plan. Worship leaders situated themselves upon an extended platform that dominated the space and had few decorations; simplicity was not so much the issue as was the desire to remove symbols and furnishings that might be meaningless (or threatening) to those in attendance. The people were placed on a sloping floor in individual seats in a semicircle around the stage. The choice of the plan was deliberate: to attract concertgoing young people who would already be familiar with such an arrangement. Methodist houses of worship constructed during the first hundred years of Methodism in America largely conformed to Chicago architect Louis Sullivan’s dictum that “form ever follows function.” Buildings were designed for evangelistic preach-

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ing, with the people’s focus oriented to the pulpit, and the preacher’s gaze directed toward the congregation, who could be perched on benches on the floor and in the galleries, or on pews fanned around him in an auditorium. The Lord’s Supper and Christian baptism, though both important, were not weekly occurrences, so table and font were mostly inconspicuous. Although styles of worship continued to determine arrangement of the worship space even into the late twentieth century, by the late nineteenth century it was clear that the unidirectional principle framed by Sullivan was not the only possibility for Methodists. The architectural design elected for both the exterior and the interior of a given building influenced the shape and the character of worship celebrated in the space. The popularity of the Gothic style and the rising interest of some Methodists in a more formal service of worship allowed for such a change to come about, thereby bearing witness to architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s notion that “form is function.” The house in which prayer and praise is offered is more than a shelter from the elements; it is an integral part of the worship itself.

11

Roles in Public Worship

s has become evident from the previous chapters, American Methodist public worship prior to 1784—from the small class and the extended-family prayer meetings to the watch nights and the larger revival gatherings—was lay led. Yet such a statement, while technically true, requires qualification. Sympathetic Anglican and other clergy presided over sacramental services for those Methodists willing to attend. Until they suspended their actions, the handful of men ordained by presbytery at Fluvanna in 1779 held baptism and Communion services of their own design. This second type of assembly could be more accurately identified as a Methodist service than the first, though it was nonetheless irregular, at least from the standpoint of the Wesley-appointed and American-approved “General Assistant” Francis Asbury. The most noteworthy qualifier to the claim of exclusively lay-led Methodist worship was the leadership exhibited by the “preachers” or “helpers” so defined in the Methodist system. These persons were indisputably laymen (and in England, a few laywomen),1 who directly or indirectly had received John Wesley’s approval for ministry based upon evidence of a divine call and were thus set apart for duties as itinerant preachers and evangelists. According to Wesley, such work did not require ordination, for to his mind the offices of preaching and sacramental administration were separate and distinct, and only the latter required ministerial orders.2 Wesley’s use of lay preachers was contrary to Anglican canon law, which forbade unauthorized preaching, but he justified their employment by positive evidence from the history of the church, as well as by the visible fruits of their labors to seek and save the lost. Under Wesley’s supervision the lay preachers in America (as in Britain) were selected, organized, held to particular tasks and standards as specified in the Large Minutes and the “American” Minutes, and deployed into the field. Certain preachers were given oversight of the others. The “assistant,” the man who had charge over the societies and preachers within a particular circuit, was responsible, among other things, for ensuring that watch night services and love feasts were regularly held. The special duties given to the preachers differentiated them from the rest of the Methodist

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flock, particularly since many of them devoted their full energies to the work. They were laity, but they were extraordinary laity—“extraordinary messengers” Wesley called them—and their contributions stoked the fires of the early Methodist revival and effectively spread the gospel even at the close of the twentieth century. Thus any look at the leadership of Methodist worship must include this quintessentially Methodist and unordained group, whose devoted diligence provided Methodist prayer, praise, and preaching even in the remotest parts of the nation, and whose liturgical duties gradually expanded to meet the expectations for their ministry. But to be best understood, their liturgical responsibilities must be placed alongside the presumed roles in worship for clergy and laity.

Ordained Leadership The General Superintendent or Bishop Wesley’s decision to use the ordination services from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as the liturgical source for the Methodist ordinal carried with it significant implications for delineating the leadership of worship, and for subsequent definitions of ministry and church polity. With the adoption of the Sunday Service in 1784, Methodists had rites for the ordaining of deacons, elders, and “superintendants” (so spelled), and they drew up accompanying legislation for the Discipline accordingly. Methodists of that and later generations debated the motivations behind Wesley’s substitution of “superintendant” for “bishop” and the reasons for his ire when the Americans began to use the nomenclature of bishop from 1787. Questions were also raised about what Wesley meant by the ordaining of the “superintendant” (Wesley dropped the term “consecrate” throughout his revision of the Prayer Book’s “Form of Ordaining or Consecrating of an Archbishop or Bishop”), especially since he had indicated, following his reading of Peter King’s Account of the Primitive Church, that bishops and presbyters (elders) were of the same order. A consequence of these discussions was that various approaches to pastoral oversight were selected by the different Methodist denominations. The majority ordained bishops; these same denominations gradually redefined the liturgical occasion as a consecration rather than an ordination beginning with the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1864, though that denomination had been actively discussing the issue at least twelve years earlier. The African Methodist Episcopal Church at first ordained general superintendents, then soon altered the nomenclature throughout the Discipline to read “bishop.” The Methodist Protestants and the Wesleyan Methodists opted to have a president of conference whose office was conferred by election and not by rite (a distinction the churches that elected and then ordained bishops were required to clarify). The Free Methodists elected but did not ordain general superintendents (who usually also held the office of conference president), and in a controversial move agreed in 1907 to use instead the term “bishop.” An attempt to repeal the decision at the next General Conference was unsuccessful. Regardless of title and method of setting apart, only one unique liturgical function was ascribed to the office beyond those normally assigned to


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the elder: presidency at the rites of ordination and consecration. A slight variation existed in the Free Methodist Church, for technically, responsibilities for ordination fell to the president of conference, who usually was, but was not required to be, the general superintendent (bishop). Because Wesley had not included confirmation in the Sunday Service, that exclusive duty of Anglican bishops did not enter into Methodist praxis. When confirmation rites were authorized by the Methodist Church in 1965 and then by the United Methodist Church, local congregations sometimes invited the bishop to participate in the event, but his (and after the election of Marjorie Swank Matthews in 1980, her) involvement was not required.

The Elder By providing a purely liturgical definition for the elder’s duty, the first American Discipline reflected the need that had prompted Wesley to ordain and ensure an ongoing supply of sacramental ministers for the Methodist people in North America: Q. 30. What is the Office of an Elder? A. To administer the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and to perform all the other Rites prescribed by our Liturgy. This instruction complemented the elder’s task as defined by the words spoken at the imposition of the superintendent’s and other elders’ hands during the ordination rite, words that Wesley took verbatim from the Prayer Book, omitting only the sentence pertaining to the binding and loosing of sins, and substituting “elder” for “priest”: Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office and Work of an Elder in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands. And be thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God, and of his holy Sacraments; in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Then the Superintendant shall deliver to every one of them, kneeling, the Bible into his hand, saying, Take thou authority to preach the Word of God, and to administer the holy Sacraments in the Congregation.

The full spectrum of worship leadership was thereby entrusted to the elder, whose liturgical ministries were not limited to a particular place or congregation. The distinguishing characteristic of the elder was the unqualified capacity to baptize, celebrate the Lord’s Supper, solemnize matrimony, bury the dead, or perform any service of worship wherever there was need. Constraints, when they were imposed, came from outside the church, as with the restriction of movement placed upon blacks (and thus upon black elders) in some regions during the years prior to the Civil War. An elder might be appointed as the presiding elder of a circuit, and it was then his responsibility to oversee the Methodist great festival that was the quarterly meeting. Each of the Methodist denominations kept the office of elder, thereby maintaining continuity with Wesley and establishing a connection among the members

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of the Methodist family. Although with the issuance of the second Discipline the elder’s job description had started to expand, and the separate denominations over time would delineate the elder’s work in their own particular formulations, nevertheless the statement of the elder’s liturgical tasks always remained an integral component of the overall definition. The ordination rites as they evolved mentioned explicitly the elder’s responsibilities for sacramental ministry and the proclamation of God’s Word. Most typically this was done, using Wesley’s text or an approximation of it, at the laying on of hands and the delivery of the Bible. With the United Methodist Church’s 1980 Ordinal and its 1992 successor,3 these duties were articulated not at the imposition of hands, but at the ordination prayer, and also at the preliminary examination where worship leadership is set out as the first among several obligations: “As an elder in the Church you are called to share in the ministry of Christ and of the whole Church: by preaching and teaching the Word of God and faithfully administering the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion; by leading the people of God in worship and prayer.”

The Deacon The consistency found across the churches regarding the liturgical leadership of the elder was not replicated with the deacon. In fact, the Wesleyan Methodist Church never had deacons. The Methodist Protestant Church’s General Conference removed the order in 1874 despite the protest that such deletion was “a great innovation” and opposed to “New Testament precedent and teaching.”4 All the other denominations had, according to what had been received from Wesley, a transitional deacon whose years of service in that office were directly tied to the preparation and experience deemed necessary before ordination as elder. In a bold departure from what it had inherited, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church in 1996 approved the phasing out of the transitional diaconate and the establishment of a permanent order of deacon to stand alongside the order of elder.5 Because in the ancient church the deacon was under the care and supervision of the bishop and functioned as his assistant, only the bishop laid hands on the ordinand to the diaconate. This custom was retained in the majority of diaconal ordination rites that developed in the East and West, and found its way into the Methodist rite in 1784 via Anglican praxis.6 Even so, the first Discipline and ordination rite did not define the deacon’s liturgical role in relationship to the superintendent or bishop, but rather in terms of the ministry of the elder. Q. 31. What is the Office of a Deacon? A. To baptize in the Absence of an Elder, to assist the Elder in the Administration of the Lord’s Supper, to marry, bury the Dead, and read the Liturgy to the People as prescribed, except what relates to the Administration of the Lord’s Supper. In the examination of the candidate, according to the 1784 rite, the “superintendant” stated:


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It appertaineth to the office of a Deacon, to assist the elder in Divine Service, and especially when he ministereth the holy Communion, to help him in the distribution thereof, and to read and expound the holy Scriptures; to instruct the youth, and in the absence of the elder to baptize. And furthermore, it is his office, to search for the sick, poor, and impotent, that they may be visited and relieved.

Descriptions of the deacon’s liturgical leadership that referred to the availability and authority of the elder persisted and still could be found in both Discipline and ordinal in the late twentieth century. But the deacon was not meant to be simply an understudy to the elder, for like the elder, the deacon was to engage in a traveling ministry in a parish without walls. As the statement in the Discipline about the deacon clearly indicated, and as the exigencies of Methodist ministry to those in need of redemption demanded, most deacons led worship in the absence of the elder. The leadership of general public gatherings for worship, including Sunday and daily services of preaching and prayer, love feasts, watch nights, and revivals, belonged to the deacon’s prerogatives. Burial of the dead and funeral sermons comprised part of the work as well. For most of their histories, none of the denominations permitted the deacon, by admission to the order, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, though proposals sometimes were put forward to grant the uniform privilege of eucharistic presidency to the diaconate.7 The exception was the Free Methodist Church, which, from 1979 onward, listed presidency of Communion as a diaconal duty when an elder was unavailable. Some denominations, such as the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1926, made special allowance for deacons in charge of a church or churches to preside at the table, but with the firm understanding that such was an exception and not the rule. The deacon was permitted to conduct weddings as part of the normal functions prescribed in the first and second editions of the Discipline, but already by 1787 that decision had been tempered to read “in the absence of the Elder.” The change probably was made in recognition of the lack of precedent for the deacon as officiant and to reinforce the historic role of the presbyterate in matters matrimonial, thereby conveying the transitory and subordinate character of the diaconate in relation to the presbyterate. Nevertheless, circumstances required that more authorized ministers than just the elder be available to unite and bless a couple if civil law allowed. Eventually the earlier formulation was restored in most of the denominations: the Methodist Protestants from the outset gave their deacon unqualified responsibilities for the solemnization of matrimony; but the Methodist Episcopal Church, South never removed the limitation. Numerous approaches, at times different ones in the same denomination, were taken regarding the diaconal role at baptism. Some churches kept the deferential ruling established in the earliest Discipline and ordinal that the deacon could baptize only in the absence of the elder. Others applied no restriction or eventually removed it. When the Methodist Church, which permitted the deacon to baptize without qualification, merged in 1968 with the Evangelical United Brethren Church, which had no diaconate, the resulting legislation of the United Methodist Church read that the deacon was not automatically granted the authority to officiate at baptism. Yet in the examination posed within the approved ordination

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liturgy, the celebration of baptism was listed among the deacon’s liturgical roles. Only with the publication of the 1980 Ordinal was the inconsistency removed by the stipulation that the deacon ordinarily was to assist the elder at both sacraments. When the permanent diaconate was established in that denomination, the language of assistance was continued. The roles in worship assigned to the deacon, the elder, and the general superintendent or bishop (or president of conference) generally followed historic precedent, with variations adopted on the basis of practical necessity.8 Despite being “set apart,” the functions of the ordained were not intended to remove them from the liturgical work expected of the whole people of God: to worship in private, in families, and in public; to read, hear, and meditate upon the Scriptures; and to attend regularly the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, perhaps the most important liturgical responsibility shared by persons in these offices was that they would intentionally build up and encourage the laity in ways that could result in their more active participation and leadership in worship.

The Roles of the Laity Every attender at Methodist worship, no matter the time period or the denomination, was counted on to engage heart and voice, mind and body, in prayer and praise. Precisely how this was accomplished depended upon the style of service, the occasion, and the setting in which worship took place. But in each denomination, the lively participation of the congregation was a paramount issue. When possible, Methodists were to worship in their mother tongue. One of the reasons for efforts to preserve the discipline of family worship was that it served as a school for corporate, public worship. The rules established early on about singing and the endless debates about the place of soloists or choirs in worship give evidence of the desire not to compromise the congregation’s role. Methods of preaching were advocated that would solicit the attention and interest of those gathered and ideally produce effects. Requests for legislation that uniform patterns or components of worship be practiced across a denomination were put forward with the purpose of facilitating the people’s worship no matter which congregation they might attend. While some deplored the formalization of worship for fear of diminishing congregational participation, its advocates believed it assigned a more explicit role to the people through the responsive reading of Scripture (the psalter) and the praying of unison written prayers; in other words, a more formal style invited the people’s involvement. Methodist worship, however, could be less the work of the people and more the performance of preacher and choir; and the congregation’s passivity might not be considered a hindrance to the prospect of a personal, spiritual response. Among the laity were those with specific roles related to public worship—roles that had been constituted prior to the establishment of Methodism as an ecclesiastical body, though some were redefined after 1784. Class leaders prayed with their classes and the sick of the community. Exhorters, men and women who by design did not directly interpret Scripture, held forth at prayer meetings with


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spiritual encouragements and admonitions. Precentors and song leaders lined out and directed congregational singing. Stewards registered marriages and baptisms, collected and arranged for the distribution of alms that had been offered for the poor at the Communion service, and provided bread and drink for the Lord’s Supper and the love feast. In the second half of the nineteenth century, some of the churches permitted women to assume the role of steward, which in the African-American churches evolved into the distinctive work of the stewardess, who could easily be recognized since oftentimes she dressed in white for worship. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, which in 1868 approved female stewards, had in its Discipline by 1964 an elaborate description of her duties related to the celebration of the sacraments: It is the duty of the Stewards to provide the elements for the Communion. This duty traditionally falls to the Stewardess Board, which should also dress the pulpit and altar rail with suitable clean white coverings. It is recommended that the Stewardess Board prepare the bread itself as a service of love and devotion rather than purchase it. Always white and perfectly clean, the linen used for the table may be embellished with white embroidered or crocheted symbols and made very beautiful. The utensils should be kept polished and shining. An appropriate bowl and a number of small linen guest towels should be supplied for use for the ministers in preparation of their hands for service in the communion. The Stewardess Board shall also make adequate preparation for all baptisms. Where there is not a Baptismal Font, they shall provide a decent basin of water, clean white linen guest towels and such other items as may be required.

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church included in its 1996 Book of Worship a service for the “Confirmation of Stewardesses,” but had no ritual counterpart for the steward. In churches of other Methodist denominations, the role served by the stewardess was placed under the purview of an altar guild or a lay worship committee. New and distinct roles for laity not imagined prior to 1784 also emerged, among them choristers, instrumentalists, lay readers, acolytes, and ushers. Where permitted, lay servers assisted in the distribution of Communion. Except for the sacraments, weddings, and funerals, any service of worship and prayer could, in principle, be led by the laity. At least this was true for males. Though most denominations in their Discipline did not explicitly delimit lay presidency by gender, the female role in practice was much more circumscribed until the middle of the twentieth century, and even then eyebrows still could be raised at the prospect of a laywoman guiding the Sunday morning assembly. With the freedom for lay leadership, Methodists preserved a characteristic from their origins as a religious society and perpetuated the democratic ideals present at the founding of the denomination. The Sunday school superintendent, for example, directed worship “exercises” for the school and was often recognized as the logical replacement for the designated worship leader at the main service when that individual was absent. In the late twentieth century, some congregations deliberately scheduled Sunday morning services that were planned and conducted entirely by the laity. Methodists in their worship leadership, it may be said, embraced a theology of the priesthood of all believers, although such was rarely stated explicitly and in some places only occasionally embodied.

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The Leadership of the Extraordinary Laity The employment of lay preachers and deaconesses was practically expedient for advancing the gospel message—and Methodism—and for overseeing works of piety and mercy. Like all Methodists, these persons could lead worship services of prayer and praise. But because the “extraordinary laity” set apart for specific ministries were distinguished from the general laity but not ordained, their betwixt and between status opened the door to queries about the other liturgical roles permitted to them. For some of the denominations, the controversies that resulted, and the theological ambiguities that emerged as a consequence of decisions taken, remained unresolved at the end of the twentieth century.

The Unordained Preacher The work of a licensed lay preacher, after 1784, could be a lifelong or short-term vocation, and often served as the point of entry into the ordained orders.9 Like the deacon and the elder, the lay preacher was appointed by the ecclesiastical superior to a place of service. The ministry of lay preaching was believed to be as legitimate and substantive a ministry as that of elder; a divine call was considered a prerequisite to either endeavor. Charles Giles, reflecting upon his ordination to the diaconate in 1808, noted that his work as a lay preacher was the true manifestation of his ministerial call. Ordination “added no gift or faculty to the soul, nor conferred any intrinsic worth to moral character,” for to his thinking it was “only an outward, visible ceremony” recognizing a prior commitment: For several years, preceding my ordination, I had been preaching under divine authority, with only a license from the church, and God owned my labours then as evidently as he has done since. Though young and weak, still the gracious Redeemer gave me many seals to my ministry before the hands of the bishop were laid upon me. My high authority to preach the gospel I had received long before, in a direct line from the throne above, by the call and inspiration of the Holy Ghost while under the elm-tree. The sacred credentials which I there received, written by the finger of God on the tablet of my heart, accompanied from time to time with his approval and blessing on my feeble labours, were sufficient to confirm me in the fact, that I was in the “true succession.”10

The seriousness and the dedication with which most lay preachers carried out their call, even under adversity, is demonstrated by the notice that appeared in the August 15, 1800, issue of the Newbern Gazette regarding the escape of a slave named Simbo: “He is a Methodist Preacher and can read and write. . . . the most probable method to catch him, will be at Methodist meetings.”11 From 1784 to the end of the twentieth century, one single liturgical responsibility was consistently—and obviously—assigned to the preacher: to preach. Leadership for prayer and singing could be overtly stated or implied. Prior to the abandonment of Wesley’s orders for morning and evening prayer in 1792, certain lay preachers with written permission were allowed to “read the liturgy”; the preachers not receiving that permission evidently led worship as they saw fit. After 1792,


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no distinctions were made about the type of service that the ordained and the licensed could conduct: both could follow or improvise upon the guidelines and orders for public worship set forth by the respective denominations. Proposals in some denominations to establish liturgical uniformity for Lord’s Day worship never addressed the fact that both ordained and unordained presiders would lead those services. The content and shape of the preaching service was thus not dependent upon the ordination status of the leader. On account of the greater supply of Methodist communities than the number of ordained ministers to serve them, licensed preachers were placed in charge of circuits or stations, and therefore carried responsibilities for local oversight comparable to those borne by the deacon or elder who was given the same assignment. This blurring of identities and overlapping of duties eventually provoked questions why additional roles couldn’t be made available to the unordained since, to the people they served, the licensed preacher appeared on most occasions to be no different from the deacon or elder. The subject first broached in a few of the denominations was the feasibility of the unordained solemnizing matrimony. The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church entertained a proposal to that effect in 1856 and would continue to do so each quadrennium until the end of that century and into the next, finally granting the exception in 1904 but only in places where it was permissible by state law. Meanwhile, petitions were also put forward that the unordained so appointed also be allowed to administer baptism, since candidates were sometimes obliged to go to non-Methodist ministers for the sacramental service and as a result “our ministry is somewhat disparaged and our Church suffers loss.”12 Impatient preachers—even those not in charge of a circuit or station—sometimes took matters into their own hands. One minister described without regret the action he had taken when he was a licentiate of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South pastoring in Louisiana: There I was, authorized to preach the gospel, to call sinners to repentance, to lead them into the church and the Kingdom of God; and here was one ready and I had no authority to publicly pour a little water on her head as a symbol and a token. And she was ready right then, and if postponed until I got an ordained minister, the nearest one being fifty miles away—which was a long way then—when could it ever be done? I had to think fast. If it had been under any ordinary circumstances, I might have explained the situation to her, but here were the others present that maybe could never understand what it meant; could not understand why I was authorized to preach, yet could not baptize; and as I planned later to have a revival meeting there and take in a great number more, I just quickly decided to baptize her right then and there and did it; and never said a word about it. Did I do wrong? No! I have never to this day had the slightest compunction about it. If I was ever called of God to preach His gospel, I was called to perform all the functions of a minister, and the laying on my head the hand of a Bishop some years later added nothing to the authority to baptize that I did not already have.13

The claim of this man that the warrant to officiate at the sacraments rested upon an inward call was not unique. But most of the arguments for permitting baptism by the unordained preacher in charge centered upon pastoral need and the desire of local congregations to receive the sacraments from their regularly

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appointed pastor. Some contended that sacramental privileges would have the added benefit of legitimating the ministry of the lay preacher whose duties were largely indistinguishable from those of the ordained. One justification put forward for the practice was that in the history of the church the laity had been allowed to baptize under special circumstances. After lengthy debate, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1906, authorized the unordained preacher in charge to celebrate baptism in the absence of an elder or bishop, while at the same time rejecting pleas for dispensation to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. The Methodist Episcopal Church followed suit and conceded baptism in 1912, as would the Free Methodist Church in 1939. Although in 1914 the Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s bishops soundly denounced the action of 1906 as “illogical in its conception” and “confusing in its operation,”14 the church took the next step in 1926 and allowed the unordained in charge to administer the Supper “with the understanding that no permanent powers of ordination are conferred until granted by the laying on of hands after he shall have met the disciplinary requirements” (Discipline, ¶139). This privilege was reluctantly carried over into the Methodist Church in 1939 despite the absence of such an arrangement in the other two uniting bodies. Opponents then and in the ensuing years reminded the denomination that not only was their policy contrary to the practice of most Christian churches (of vital importance given the church’s ecumenical interests), it was furthermore at variance with historic Methodism, since Wesley’s actions that culminated in the creation of the Methodist Episcopal Church were the result of his insistence that sacramental ministers be ordained. Heeding those voices, certain strictures were applied in the 1944 Discipline (¶308), namely that sacramental administration was dependent upon written episcopal consent, and that permission would be revoked should the unordained exercise those privileges outside the bounds of the congregation or congregations where assigned. Nine years after the merger, the bishops noted in their Episcopal Address at the 1948 General Conference that having any unordained person sanctioned to administer the sacraments “involves us in an unsound and illogical position with respect to the meaning of the sacraments and the purpose of ordination.”15 When the dust settled from that meeting, the approval for celebrating the Supper had been rescinded (at least until the 1952 General Conference); baptism and marriage, with the requisite episcopal authorization, remained as options. Between 1948 and 1952, articles on ordination and the sacraments deluged the Methodist Church’s periodicals and newspapers, with no fewer than nine essays on the topic appearing in The Pastor. Amusingly, one of the complaints registered against the 1948 change was that the frequency of the Lord’s Supper for persons pastored by the unordained would be diminished if permission (or, as some put it, the “right”) was not restored—this from churches observing quarterly Communion. The church’s general body reconvened in 1952 and received a report from the commission established at the previous Conference to study the ministry, which recommended the continuation of the 1948 policy.16 However, two reports were brought from the 1952 Conference’s General Standing Committee on Ministry, with the majority report advising the restoration of Communion administration, and the minority report preserving the 1948 position.17 In the end, permission for


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the unordained to preside at Communion was printed in the Discipline (¶308), with an extended list of provisos added, but without the requirement of an episcopal signature. In spite of attempts in 1964 to revoke the permission as a consequence of another study on the ministry, the denomination retained the provision until 1968. The expanded privilege of the unordained was hinted at in the “Office for Licensing Persons to Preach” within the church’s Book of Worship (1965) by the statement that the candidate was “authorized to preach the gospel in the congregation and to perform such other acts of service in the church as you may be appointed to do.” With the formation of the United Methodist Church, the subject was revisited yet again. For the first eight years of the denomination, unordained preachers appointed to pastoral duties were expressly forbidden to administer the Lord’s Supper and baptism. But from 1976 through to the 1996 Discipline they were authorized to perform both sacraments, as well as the rites for marriage, burial, confirmation, and the reception of members. Such inconsistency and confusion for more than sixty years in the largest Methodist denomination created tensions at all levels. Contributing to the mix in those years was the sacramental renewal advocated in parts of the church as the result of the rediscovery of early Christian and early Methodist eucharistic praxis. These practical dilemmas and tensions were, however, symptomatic of a wider and more significant problem, namely, a weak ecclesiology that was compounded by the lack of developed theologies of the sacraments and ordination. The other members of the Methodist family were not entirely immune from these problems, for like the larger body, they claimed the double heritage of being both mission society and ecclesiastical institution. The Free Methodist Church followed the option taken by the United Methodist Church and in 1985 permitted the unordained preacher in charge of a church to administer both sacraments. Yet on the matter of sacramental administration, the AfricanAmerican churches were clear: according to the Discipline, ordination was always the prerequisite.

Deaconesses Inspired by the success of Lutheran pastor Theodore Fliedner at Kaiserswerth, Germany, a few Christian denominations in America began to revive the biblical (Romans 16:1) and early Christian office of woman deacon during the second half of the nineteenth century. Most Methodist denominations by 1920 engaged deaconesses in benevolent work, following the lead set by the Methodist Episcopal Church, which officially recognized the office in 1888 and, prior to that, the recommendation (and evidently the practice in Georgia) of John Wesley.18 Women had, of course, already been offering their ministry and leadership for decades, though their work generally had not been sanctioned by their judicatories; and sometimes when consent had been given, it was soon revoked.19 Jarena Lee approached Richard Allen around 1809, when Allen was a deacon of the Methodist Episcopal Church, about preaching the gospel in response to what she perceived was a divine call. Allen did not grant her permission on that occasion (“our Discipline . . . did not call for women preachers”), but eight years later the new Bishop

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Allen recognized her abilities and licensed her to exhort but not to preach (though to her mind she did both).20 Her sisters in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who likewise were not silenced by the absence of a piece of paper, were eventually granted licenses to preach in 1884. Helenor M. Davison was ordained deacon in 1866 by the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist (Protestant) Church, but the 1871 General Conference disapproved women’s ordination, leaving Davison uncertain of her status (though she too continued to preach). Margaret Newton Van Cott, a certified evangelist in the New York Conference, received in 1869 the first preacher’s license given to a woman in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Eleven years later the General Conference legislated that women could not be licensed as preachers and kept that policy until 1920.21 The Methodist Episcopal Church’s certification of deaconess work came as appeals were made for additional help in domestic and foreign missions, urban evangelism, and care for the sick and poor. By approving the diaconessate as a recognized, full-time female vocation, the General Conference strove to meet human need and at the same time conveniently thwarted efforts within the denomination to secure the licensing and ordination of women. Surprisingly, the impetus for endorsement came not from a petition generated by the Rock River Conference in the geographical bounds of which a training school for women had already been established in Chicago in 1885, but from a request sent by the Bengal (India) Conference that deaconesses be provided to administer the sacraments in zenanas to converted women who by cultural code could not receive them from male hands.22 When the duties of the deaconess were stipulated in the 1888 Discipline, neither the sacraments nor worship leadership was explicitly mentioned. There was certainly latitude for the latter, as it was encompassed under the stated tasks to “minister to the poor, visit the sick, pray with the dying, care for the orphans, seek the wandering, comfort the sorrowing, save the sinning, and ever be ready to take up any other duty for which willing hands cannot otherwise be found.” The “apostolicity” of, and hence the warrant for, these female endeavors was claimed by the use in the service of consecration (not ordination) of a prayer for the installation of deaconesses intentionally taken from the early Christian church order known as Apostolic Constitutions.23 The prayer was printed in the Methodist Episcopal Discipline only from 1896 to 1916; the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church adopted the formulary and still used it at the end of the twentieth century. Although the Methodist Episcopal Church after 1916 did not use the ancient prayer, and neither did the other denominations with an official rite (e.g., the African Methodist Episcopal Church), they still named notable biblical women in the prayers of the consecratory rite as justification for and examples of the female office. The ever-pragmatic Methodists never precluded the possibility that the theological and practical training of the deaconess might be put to service for the leadership of worship. Deaconesses who functioned as pastoral assistants had liberty to conduct worship, especially with children and youth, or to hold prayer meetings. Those who were trained musicians prepared choirs for the sanctuary. After obtaining the proper license to preach, a woman might work as a “pastor deaconess,” what was virtually a local church pastor usually in the mission field.24 In 1976, the


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United Methodist Church introduced the nongendered office of Diaconal Minister that, like the deaconess, was meant for full-time ministries of service. Numerous types of church work were defined under the rubric of diaconal ministry, including vocations in music ministry. Though more recognized overall for their contributions to nursing, education, visitation, and evangelism, deaconesses (and diaconal ministers) nonetheless played a role in assisting Methodists and others in public prayer and praise.

To Stir Each Other Up Lift up your hearts to things above, Ye followers of the Lamb, And join with us to praise his love, And glorify his name. . . . . . . . . . O let us stir each other up, Our faith by works to approve, By holy, purifying hope, And the sweet task of love.25 As this hymn by Charles Wesley suggests, all faithful Christians were charged to stir up both believer and stranger in order to elicit the praise and glorification of God. It was anticipated, therefore, that every Methodist would serve as a leader in enabling the worship of others, whether by speaking words of encouragement, providing an opportunity, or making a contribution in the assembly. Different and specific roles were necessary to carry out the public liturgical work that defined Methodists as church. According to the brief statement “Of the Church” handed on by the majority of the denominations as one of the Articles of Religion, church meant the congregation where “the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments duly administered.” To corporealize those essential characteristics, American Methodists imitated their father in the faith and looked to means that were both apostolic and evangelical. Occasionally pragmatic considerations caused an odd combination of the two norms. Methodists generally did not seek to reconcile apparent tensions since they were more interested in accomplishing the divine mandate to make disciples than in devising a systematic and cohesive theological rationale for the method undertaken. The strained juxtaposition of the evangelical and the apostolic was most obvious by the decision made in the largest of the denominations to allow sacramental administration by the unordained. A less conflictual decision would have been to ordain any person appointed to serve a local congregation—which was proposed in the largest body, and taken up in some of the others. Even in matters of ecclesiology, Methodists coveted the freedom to move in ways that would best care for the God’s people and spread scriptural holiness throughout the land.

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American Methodist Worship Memory and Modernization

xamination of the liturgical texts and practices of an ecclesiastical family, of a denomination within that family, or of a local congregation opens a window onto a particular people’s beliefs about God, themselves, and the world. This is so because the liturgical performance ideally summarizes in ritual language and action the spiritual, theological, and ecclesial perspectives of the corporate body in both its denominational and local manifestations. John Reeder, in an essay for the Methodist Review of 1896, came to just such a conclusion when he remarked that liturgy “has to do with all those acts of pastor and people which spring from and find expression in the common feelings of devotion” whether through the use of “certain formulas” or through “constructive, and, in a measure, spontaneous” means.1 Services of worship, of course, link the present generation in various ways with the acknowledged standards of the faith, since the ritual used (whether written or unwritten) serves to “impart and preserve the historic truths of Christianity” and to “witness to doctrinal truths.”2 Thus how and where a people worship, the ordo they select for Sunday or occasional services, and what they say (and who says it) speak volumes about their corporate piety and their diachronic and synchronic Christian (and denominational) identity. An integral connection exists therefore between what a community does in its worship and what that community believes. The history of Christian liturgy demonstrates that how a people prays not only shapes personal and communal belief but sometimes also the formulation of doctrine. Conversely, established doctrine or theological consensus may determine or at least contribute to the content of the liturgy. Among American Methodists, both “directions” in the relationship between liturgy and belief are present. The popular hymns and songs of the camp meeting and revival reinforced old or supplied new theological perspectives on soteriology and the spiritual accountability of the Christian. The rite of Christian initiation approved by the United Methodist Church in 1988,

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with its hint of baptismal regeneration and its allowance for infant communion, sparked a denomination-wide theological study of baptism and confirmation that led to an officially adopted doctrinal statement in 1996. Going the other direction, shifts in theological (and anthropological) understanding within some of the Methodist churches found expression in liturgical practice, most notably in the textual revisions made over time to the rites for baptism, marriage, and the burial of the dead. One central belief shared by all members of the Methodist family in every period was continually addressed in and by worship: the Christian duty, aided by the power of the Holy Spirit, to fulfill the divine mandate to spread the gospel. The priority of evangelism in worship resulted in a pragmatism that saw different patterns and words used to achieve the goal of making disciples and church members. Within the system of belief that influences liturgical practice must also be counted the particularities and self-definitions that distinguish a certain ecclesiastical family or denomination from others. One fundamental characteristic of American Methodism in its approach to worship—though it is not alone in this among churches—has been its simultaneously retrospective and prospective orientation. At the 1886 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the bishops acknowledged Methodism’s ecclesial distinctiveness within the broader Christian tradition and implied its propensity to be simultaneously backward- and forward-looking: In common with the evangelical bodies of Protestant Christendom we have held those truths which relate to God, to his moral government, to immortality, to eternal retribution, to the sacred authority of the Scriptures, to the sacraments, and the Christian ministry. We have, with them, preached the universality of the fall, the necessity, universality, and fullness of the atonement, the freeness of the will, and the freeness of grace. None of these have been omitted, and yet they do not constitute the characteristic Methodist doctrine. That is to be found in truths which more immediately underlie the Christian experience, by which all that is provisional and relative in God’s system of recovering mercy becomes actual and personal. . . . These doctrines of experience have constituted the charm of our ministry. They give being and form to our Church. The joy and life which they infuse into every part of our body have redeemed it from all sepulchral tradition, and have arrayed it as a company of virgins going forth to meet the Bridegroom. It is the vitality of this holiness that has brought relief to humanity and glory to the name of our God. Its swiftness, certainty, freeness, and fullness meet the necessities of a dying and guilty world. . . . We therefore exhort you, dear brethren, to hold fast the form of sound words, the established customs, and the clear experience which have come down to us from our fathers.3

Thus it may be said that adherence to perceived Wesleyan or Methodist principles and the intention to spread scriptural holiness in a “Methodist” way to each new generation have underlain the constancy and change of Methodist worship from the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth. Memory and modernization: these concepts will guide an assessment of more than two hundred years of American Methodist worship.

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Upholding the “Methodist Tradition” When in 1784 the American Methodists received the unbound copies of John Wesley’s Sunday Service and his letter to “Our Brethren in America,” they already had in hand the 1780 version of the Large Minutes from Britain and had kept several years’ worth of their own “Minutes of Some Conversations between the Preachers in Connexion with the Reverend Mr. John Wesley.” All these four guides were then brought to bear in determining the texts and practices to be used for worship in the Methodist Episcopal Church—combined, of course, with what Methodists had already found to be faithful and faith-filled expressions of Christian worship. The Sunday Service provided a collection of liturgical texts that gave a standard and printed form to Methodist worship, thereby at the start defining American Methodism as liturgical kin to the Anglican tradition and as a citizen in the church catholic. The letter of September 10 granted Wesley’s spiritual offspring “full liberty simply to follow the scriptures and the primitive church,” and in the post-Revolutionary context, the notions of freedom and democracy in worship were readily embraced, though they were qualified within the parameters of what was perceived to be biblical and apostolical. The Large Minutes and the American Minutes interspersed worship-related subjects (e.g., appropriate music, and general fasts and thanksgivings) among the other topics of Methodist polity, providing guidelines and rules for practice. Therefore, three authoritative and distinctly different sources for worship coexisted by early 1785: a book with orders of worship; permission from Methodism’s “venerable Father” to worship according to scripture-guided conscience and Spirit-inspired piety; and a book of Methodist law and discipline derived from the Large Minutes of 1780 and adapted for American usage. These three sources established that Methodist worship should not be haphazard, but rather be organized according to certain principles. Although the details changed, most Methodist denominations throughout their respective histories opted to continue what the three sources represented and provided. A section of the Discipline was devoted to ritual texts, or independent books were published containing denominationally authorized orders for worship. Legislation was printed in the Discipline regarding worship leadership, the house for worship, and worship practices, including the peculiar services and conventions of the Methodists not formalized by liturgical texts. And despite occasional calls within particular churches for liturgical uniformity, especially in regard to the administration of the sacraments, orders of worship were never strictly mandated by any Methodist body; a certain degree of flexibility for local custom and pastoral preference was always permitted—and, indeed, assumed. The linking of these three sources has throughout given American Methodism a hybrid approach in defining the basics of its worship, for worship was legitimately to be constituted from a juxtaposition of formal texts (a “form of sound words”), rubrics from a book of law (“established customs”), and popular practices (“clear experience”). Other denominations might combine liturgical texts with canon law or a book of church order. But few placed ritual forms in tandem with an officially articulated concept of freedom in worship—a connection Wesley himself had illustrated by, for instance, inserting a


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rubric for extemporary prayer at the conclusion of his revision of the Anglican Communion service. Methodists are, in a manner of speaking, simultaneously “liturgical” and “free.” Although the three sources have been in place to direct Methodist thinking about worship, reconciling the three has not been easy, especially since liberty in expression may be perceived to stand in direct contradiction to a book of law and to a collection of ritual forms. Many Methodists found holding freedom and form together so troubling that one position—most often that of freedom, encouraged by the American ideals of democracy and individual rights, and by the fear of a Spirit-inhibiting ritualism—was adopted and proclaimed to be the Wesleyan paradigm, despite the ongoing presence in the Discipline of orders for sacraments and occasional services that still carried the imprint of Wesley’s Sunday Service. Leaders and the communities they served who took this route—and they were legion— believed they then could elect whether to depart from, abbreviate, or improvise upon the approved texts. On the other hand, those who promoted the value of liturgical forms and advocated few verbal alterations pointed to liturgical texts as a valuable inheritance, and as a means of reinforcing a recognizable denominational identity. The tension between liturgical form and freedom has been a part of Methodism from 1784, and, as such, it may be claimed as a characteristic of Methodist worship praxis. Perhaps the tension was at the root of the custom within some denominations to revise their hymn books and liturgical texts roughly every generation: the regular revamping of service books gave the appearance of not being bound to a single formulation. Unfortunately, the tension has also occasionally been a source of division within denominations and congregations. There has been a tendency within liturgical studies, inspired in large part by the comparative work of Anton Baumstark, to view the history of a liturgical tradition in evolutionary terms, with movement from austerity to richness, simplicity to elaboration, though as Baumstark noted, a reversal is possible if curtailment of prolixity is warranted.4 In many respects, this evolutionary picture may be painted for American Methodism. The 1792 Lord’s Day rubrics were, after all, expanded and formally structured in the larger denominations by the end of the nineteenth century, with further embellishment in the twentieth. After decades of resistance, the Free Methodists eventually granted a place in worship for choirs and musical instruments. But to come to such a conclusion risks simplifying the complexity of the American Methodist experience and overlooking the three sources that have for generations guided the Methodist denominations. Form and freedom have stood together from the beginning, though at any given time, and in any denomination, one of the pair might be emphasized in practice or in discourse over the other. Therefore, a reversion to an “austere” form of worship may not be a reaction against “richness” per se, but rather, for Methodism, a reassertion of the freedom that had been slighted in favor of form. On the other hand, the reemergence of Wesley’s morning prayer in 1867 under the leadership of Thomas O. Summers is a case where a liturgically elaborate form was interjected into an overall climate of liturgical freedom and simplicity. Sometimes the austere and the rich, the free and the formulated, could, in fact, be found side by side. As attested by the an-

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nouncements and articles published in some denominational weeklies during the late nineteenth century, the same Methodists who extolled the camp meeting and the simple prayer service also had a pronounced preference for Gothic architecture. At the end of the twentieth century, an informal service of word, spontaneous prayer, and unaccompanied song, and a formal service with choral anthems, chanted psalmody, and formulated prayers designed according to the day or season of the Christian year could be observed in a single church at different hours on Sunday morning. Thus, rather than taking a singular, monodirectional course, Methodism has been, in effect, constantly meeting itself. Methodists were sometimes compelled to state that their worship practice or their theology departed from what they understood to have been presented by Wesley, as did John Emory regarding the subject of baptismal regeneration shortly before he was elected a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. But most often, Methodists sought to identify their worship as “Wesleyan,” with the appellation used as a justification whether or not the practice or theological position could actually be traced directly to Wesley and the early Methodists in Britain. To John Wesley has been anachronistically credited the camp meeting, the use of grape juice for Communion, advocacy for women in ministry, and the first performance of “contemporary” worship. The authentication of Methodist practice by being “Wesleyan” has been a significant factor in legitimating the shape of liturgical revision and innovation, and in defining Methodism over and against other ecclesiastical traditions. But as was the case regarding ritual form and liturgical freedom, the “Wesleyan” memory has sometimes been selective. Similarly, Methodists were inclined to describe what they did in worship as decisively and authentically “Methodist.” Or, if church leadership or certain individuals felt that a congregation or denomination had strayed too far from what were construed to be the denomination’s defining characteristics, appeals were made to return to “Methodist” practice. Such a fluid, and occasionally contradictory, attribution gives evidence that Methodists recognized their heritage in terms of historic fact, and that they also interpreted their liturgical identity dynamically in light of present circumstances, recent memories, and an idealized or romanticized understanding of their denomination’s past. In other words, to be “Methodist” in worship automatically carried with it a variety of meanings at different times and in different locations. That this was so should not be surprising. An ecclesiastical family that put such heavy stock in the work of the Holy Spirit and in the reason and experience of the individual would be expected to understand itself as being remade in each generation, not ex nihilo, but grounded in the events and practices of its past. In effect, Methodist liturgical self-perception was formed by a nonidentical repetition, whereby certain linkages with the past were carried forward, some of which were reinterpreted, while others were intentionally dropped or unwittingly forgotten in response to new definitions of personal and social religion. The liturgical changes sanctioned by a denomination or the style of worship adopted in the local congregation also contributed to this process of retraditioning, and indeed, it could be argued that the liturgy, each time it was revised, constituted the tradition.5 Each generation’s or each community’s practices were therefore, in their own eyes, truly Methodist. What had been normative in practice often re-


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mained so even when newer liturgical configurations were taken up, not just because of the slowness with which ritual changes oftentimes took hold but because both could be argued to be legitimately “Methodist.” For this reason, baptism alone, baptism with an additional rite of membership or confirmation, personal profession, an affirmative response to the Invitation, or simply attendance on Sunday morning could all be deemed “Methodist” prerequisites for admission to Lord’s table. The “Methodist tradition,” therefore, should not be conceived of as an evolutionary line, running from Wesley to the establishment of the American denominations and on into the future. Rather, the Methodist liturgical tradition should more properly be imagined in spiral form, with various and diverse points of development evenly carrying the weight of “tradition.” The “extraordinary genius for adapting the means at hand to the end desired,”6 celebrated as a characteristic of Methodism from the beginning, has complemented and contributed to the emergence of a multivalent American Methodist “tradition.” But it has meant that a singular and absolute description of Methodist worship for one ritual occasion or event is not possible within one denomination or even within one denomination in a narrowly circumscribed area, though the denominationally authorized services (particularly for the sacraments) lent a particular cast to the worship. Even a standard component regularly found in Methodist worship services, whenever and wherever, could not be ascribed a uniform function or location in the order. A case in point was the use of hymns or songs in Lord’s Day worship. Whereas in British Methodism hymns were generally understood to be an integral part of the ordinary, with their placement determinative of the shape of the entire ordo, in American Methodism hymns might structure a service (in a so-called hymn sandwich, with hymns at beginning and end, and perhaps somewhere in the middle), serve as transitions or bridges at various points in a service (with or without a thematic or structural connection), amplify another act of worship (e.g., the sermon), or be used simply to stir the emotions (with extended singing at the beginning of a service, or toward the end during an “altar call”). The use of hymns in worship thus may be a “traditional” Methodist enterprise, but how those hymns were used keyed into the set of traditions expected for the liturgical occasion, and the traditions resident in a particular place and time. Methodists were retrospective in planning and ordering worship, but their attention to the past stood in the service of the present. The denominations aimed to be consistent with, or at least not blatantly to contradict, what was recorded in holy writ, with the Holiness Methodists generally preferring a more literal approach throughout their histories. The churches strove to uphold the apostolic faith, and summarized it in sermon and expressed it in prayer, if not also in formulated liturgical text or creed. They intentionally imitated what was believed to be apostolic practice by the performance of the watch night and the love feast, the use of extemporary prayer, and the holding of services in the open air or in every imaginable building; in later years, orders from the early church served as paradigms for some Methodist praxis, and ancient Christian theological writings informed the content of certain rites (e.g., for the burial of the dead in the United Methodist Church). Methodists looked back to Wesley as evangelist and theolo-

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gian, to the three sources that he bequeathed to them, and to the revisions or adjustments made to the three sources within the respective denominations. Individual Methodists and Methodist congregations also treasured their own peculiar liturgical memories, thereby honoring and preserving the work of worship done by their fathers and mothers to the glory of God. But what was remembered of the past had at one time been an innovation of the present. Methodists took seriously their charge to proclaim the gospel and applied almost any available means to achieve that goal. Generations sang of their conviction, expressed poetically by Charles Wesley: A charge to keep I have, A God to glorify, A never-dying soul to save, And fit it for the sky. To serve the present age, My calling to fulfill; O may it all my powers engage, To do my Master’s will! Methodist worship, therefore, also needed to be prospective: to be a genuine expression of thanksgiving and petition for Christians of the present age in order to maintain a viable community of faith for the ages soon to come. But concern for the continuing task brought its own tensions, since numerous approaches could be and were taken in response to the question of how to spread scriptural holiness and elicit faithful worship in an ever-changing environment. Members of the Methodist family found different answers based upon their modifying selfdefinitions and their understanding of what constituted “traditional” Methodist worship.

Creating Faithful Worship for Each Generation Christian worship, which the bishops of one denomination defined briefly as “the adoration of God, the ascription of supreme worth to God, and the manifestion of reverence in the presence of God,”7 cannot be carried out in the abstract, but must be given concrete form in a manner that permits for the worshipers an honest and authentic articulation of their faith. The challenge for Methodists, as for other Christians, has been to determine the extent to which worship be allowed to speak in the language and circumstances of each time and place; in other words, to assess to what degree worship may take on popular idioms or mirror the social context. A certain amount of acculturation is inevitable, and some liturgical adjustments may be expected in response to modernization. But there is a difference between acknowledging and addressing in worship the current situation for the sake of effective praise and prayer, and conformity to the times—often with the explicit purpose of attracting a certain type of worshiper. Each of the Methodist denominations employed the two approaches, though at different


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paces, with a denomination’s willingness to embrace the second approach typically coinciding with that church’s reevaluation of its relationship with the wider society. American Methodist worship through roughly the first third of the nineteenth century embodied the intention of the respective Methodist denominations to reform the moral and spiritual character of their members and of the nation as a whole. To enliven religion and convert the unawakened, Methodists used innovative means counter to the practices of the institutionalized Congregational and Episcopal churches, and consistent with the contemporary spirit of democracy and freedom. They peppered their preaching, their prayers, and their polity with the Americanized language of liberty of conscience and personal responsibility before God; the Methodist Protestants went so far as to take the vernacular of mutual rights as an undergirding principle of that denomination. Yet at the same time Methodists preserved certain markers that unmistakably identified them as a people of God distinct from the world where ministry was to occur. Methodists displayed an egalitarianism by allowing the leadership of worship and testimonies to God’s goodness to be rendered by laymen, and in a more limited way by laywomen. However, preaching was limited to those recognized with a license, and sacramental presidency was restricted to the ordained ministers. Methodists preached in the open air to all who would hear and insisted upon family prayers in whatever home they lodged, but made the love feast and the Lord’s table accessible only by ticket or token. Baptism could occur in the mode of the candidate’s (or the parents’) choice, yet the reception of baptism was nonnegotiable for anyone who would be a Christian. Funeral sermons were not to be indiscriminately preached; neither were Methodist ministers to unite in marriage a Christian with an unbeliever. The dress of the Methodists was to be simple and unadorned, and their places of meeting plain and decent: they were to be a peculiar people. Methodists may have capitalized upon the popular language and the political agendas of the times to facilitate their work of evangelism—they may have borrowed components of the social medium—but the essential message was decidedly different. Firm delineations were made between the “temporal” and the “spiritual.” Even the collection of monies made for the poor during the love feast or the Communion service was handled by the steward, not by the preacher. By the mid-nineteenth century, a notable change was occurring, one that caught the attention of Philip Schaff in his study of American religious, political, and social life first written in German in 1854. Schaff commented on the rapid growth of Methodism and its “uncommon energy and activity”; he also observed that Methodists were so numerous that in Indiana they controlled the political elections. Whereas Methodism had formerly sought to challenge, confront, and reshape the broader culture, it was now becoming more closely aligned with its environs, which, Schaff predicted, could substantially redefine the denomination: The Methodists are now beginning to establish colleges and seminaries, to publish scientific periodicals, and to follow the steps of the culture of the age. But it is a question whether they will not thus lose more in their peculiar character and influence with the masses, than they will gain in the more cultivated circles.8

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Indeed, the peculiar character of Methodism was at risk as Methodists identified themselves more fully as a national church and protector of the nation’s moral values, and as the once strict demarcation between temporal and spiritual matters slowly dissolved. These shifts were borne out by the reorganizing and bureaucratizing of denominational structures, particularly manifested in the Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church, South in the years after the nation’s war, and also by the concerted efforts within some of the churches to woo the middle class and to retain those members who had become affluent. Rules started to relax on attendance, membership, and the “Methodistic” disciplines of Christian life, and many regulations fell by the wayside as the century progressed and spiritual temperatures cooled. The increase in the number of stationed pastors added new dimensions as circuit riding became a treasured memory. The dismounted preachers took up many of the temporal duties formerly relegated to selected resident laity, and began to adopt the institutionalizing tendencies that their forefathers and foremothers had not too long before critiqued. All these factors found liturgical expression in the larger denominations, as new assessments were made of the shape and content of ritual forms, and the aesthetic and practical contributions of architecture and art were weighed in regard to liturgical space. Though not indiscriminate in doing so, the Methodist Episcopal Church was the most willing to adapt its liturgical texts and practices to its new selfunderstandings, to emerging social and theological issues, and to popular practices from the wider society—all for the sake of constructing meaningful worship. The spirit of Methodism was not characterized just by the spirit of revival and the spirit of liberty, Methodist Episcopal bishop Thomas Morris declared in 1864, but also by the spirits of progress and improvement.9 Not unexpectedly, the opinion of the Methodist Episcopal constituency was not unanimous in that regard. At the most extreme, fear of the loss of “old school” Methodist peculiarities, and the desire to avoid “dead formalism” and “conformity to the world,” contributed to the reluctant separation of Free Methodism from the Methodist Episcopal Church. Perhaps it was no coincidence that as Methodist denominations began to accommodate to the larger society and shed their denominational peculiarities, the general percentage of Methodists among the declared church members in the nation’s population began to decline. In effect, the denominations wanted to have it both ways. To various degrees each denomination sought to “serve the present age”; yet they did not wish to forsake their “tradition,” however defined. Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, for example, cried “worldliness” when at the same time others in their denomination were proposing to “keep up with the times” and to become “interested [in] where the people are.”10 They bemoaned the demise of family prayer and the prayer meeting as their denomination removed (or did not enforce) the mechanisms that had ensured the perpetuation of those peculiarities. At the General Conference of 1900, the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church recognized that what could be regarded as progress could also be read as a decline: That many changes have occurred in the outward forms of Methodism is obvious. Which do they indicate, growth or decay? The class meeting, for instance, is consid-


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erably disused: have fellowship and spiritual helpfulness among believers abated, or do they find, in part, other expressions and other instruments? The rigid and minute Church discipline of former years is relaxed: is this a sign of pastoral unfaithfulness, or is it a sign of growing respect for individual liberty and of a better conception of the function of the Church? The plainness of the early Methodist congregations has disappeared: is this simply vanity and worldliness, or is it, in part, the natural and justifiable development of the aesthetic faculty under more prosperous external conditions? The strenuous contention for this or that particular doctrine or usage of Methodism, once common, is now rarely heard: is this indifferentism, or is it, in part, a better discernment of that which is vital to the Christian faith, and, in part, the result of an acceptance by others of the once disputed opinion?

The bishops viewed acculturation and modernization as a type of faithfulness to the gospel, and not a capitulation to secularity. Whoever in the presence of such conditions hastens to pronounce judgment on the general question of growth or decay is evidently unequal to the task. . . . There are reasons for both fear and hope, for both congratulation and solemn admonition. But we believe that in the clearer acceptance of Christianity as spirit and not letter, in the growing sense of individual right and responsibility, in the increase of the altruistic feeling, and in the multitude of sincere and earnest souls found in our ministry and in our laity there is evidence that the Church is advancing toward the end of its high calling.11

The course of Americanization begun in 1784, and intensified from the middle of the nineteenth century onward by the willingness of a few denominations at first to appropriate the views and customs of the larger society, continued unabated into the twentieth. Even the more wary Holiness and African-American denominations by the end of the century had surrendered numerous peculiarities and accommodated certain “worldly” customs, with the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s liturgy (using the official ritual texts as the standard) the least affected by external influences. The language of democracy and freedom so prevalent in Methodism’s early years was still spoken, but in the late twentieth century it shaped liturgical decisions in a new way. For some Methodists, the vision of a democratic kingdom of God allowed for no discrimination at the Lord’s table— not by race, gender, or age, but also in some churches not by baptismal status. Many Methodist parents felt free to withhold baptism from their offspring to allow the child to make a conscious choice, something that would have been unheard of in Methodist families of the nineteenth century. Engaged couples, both churched and unchurched, were oftentimes permitted to decide upon the shape and content of the nuptial rite officiated by Methodist clergy. The ethos of religious freedom and diversity that pervaded the nation, and the collapsing of denominational loyalties (possibly aided inadvertently by the ecumenical movement), invited a consumerist approach to ordering worship, as local congregations vied to attract attenders with a lively and “friendly” liturgy. At the end of the twentieth century, the once solid line between “temporal” and “spiritual” was virtually invisible. There were, of course, periods when liturgical progress was measured by looking backward to Wesley or further back to the exercises of the early church. These

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retrospectives, while perhaps a phase of retraditioning, may also have found reinforcement from broader societal factors. The first reissuance of the Sunday Service occurred during reconstruction after the Civil War. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Wesley’s texts in unofficial collections provided resources for liturgical and aesthetic “enrichment” and connected Methodists more directly with their upscale Protestant Episcopal neighbors. The incorporation of material from the Sunday Service into the Methodist Episcopal Lord’s Day services of 1932 came at a time when organic models of cultural growth and theories of psychological development were being popularized. The social turbulence of the 1960s may have encouraged a “back to the basics” reaction. For the United Methodist Church, this meant revising their official rites to reflect more directly the structures and theological content of Christian liturgy from the first four centuries—a time when the church and the ambient society were not so closely identified. Advocacy of a countercultural Methodism was renewed in the late twentieth century by Methodist writers who called for worship appropriate to the status of the Christian community as “resident aliens” in the world.12 The acculturation of Methodist liturgy may have been inevitable. As H. Richard Niebuhr suggested, a posture of separatism may be replaced by a willingness to accommodate if the wider society in which the church resides is judged to have been converted: A converted church in a corrupt civilization withdraws to its upper rooms, into monasteries and conventicles; it issues forth from these in the aggressive evangelism of apostles, monks and friars, circuit riders and missionaries; it relaxes its rigorism as it discerns signs of repentance and faith; it enters into inevitable alliance with converted emperors and governors, philosophers and artists, merchants and entrepreneurs, and begins to live at peace in the culture they produce under the stimulus of their faith; when faith loses its force, as generation follows generation, discipline is relaxed, repentance grows formal, corruption enters with idolatry, and the church, tied to the culture which it sponsored, suffers corruption with it. Only a new withdrawal followed by a new aggression can then save the church and restore to it the salt with which to savor society.13

Methodism’s explicit plan to reform the continent, and its efficiency for a time in doing so, tied it to the nation in a manner it could not have originally anticipated. As nation and denomination grew up together, each contributed to the development and identity of the other. Once the trajectory of Americanization had begun, Methodism relished its status as both prophet and patriot, and strove to keep pace with the increasing complexity of American life under the banner of progress. Even the occasional withdrawal of certain Methodists in reaction to accommodation did not, in the end, halt the movement within those younger groups toward modernization, undoubtedly because of the pressing mission to save souls. Thus, Methodism’s evangelicalism and social conscience has always caused it to address— and sometimes take on aspects of—its context in order to proclaim faithfully the perennial gospel.14


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Worship in the Quintessential American Denomination Liturgical scholar Robert Taft has posited that “liturgical history . . . does not deal with the past, but with tradition, which is a genetic vision of the present, a present conditioned by its understanding of its roots.” The purpose of liturgical history is neither to recover nor to imitate the past, “but to understand liturgy which, because it has a history, can only be understood in motion.”15 Study of the changes made to Methodist worship, from the practices of the first Methodist immigrant to those at the close of the twentieth century, reveal the tensive and dynamic quality of that worship as it sought to express fully what it meant to be a Methodist Christian living in the United States who prayed that God’s kingdom would come to transform the world. On the eve of the New Year, Methodists for generations often used the words of Charles Wesley to sing of the restlessness required by the gospel: Come, let us anew our journey pursue, Roll round with the year, And never stand still till the Master appear! His adorable will let us gladly fulfill, And our talents improve By the patience of hope and the labor of love. Methodist worship in the future, as in the past, will surely be shaped by the situations and movements of the nation. Insofar as it retains its own identity, Methodism will continue to play a part in influencing American society, though that society no longer looks to Methodism as it once did and, in fact, more recently prides itself on not elevating any religion, Christian or otherwise, over another. If in addressing society the tendency to adaptation becomes even stronger than it has been, American Methodism risks becoming more American than Methodist. The summons therefore may be, as Niebuhr proposed in the 1930s to the churches at large, for Methodism to become more countercultural and, where needed, more critical in order to “restore to it the salt with which to savor society.” By providing occasions for praise, prayer, and proclamation offered in the idioms of the American people, but utilizing the vocabulary of the Christian narrative and the peculiar Methodist traditions, and shaped by their syntax, the Methodist churches in the twenty-first century may still or again fulfill the divine purpose for which Methodism was raised up.


Notes

Abbreviations CAJ (NY) Christian Advocate and Journal and the Christian Advocate, published in New York. Discipline Inclusive title for the published collection of doctrinal and legislative materials approved by each Methodist denomination (e.g., Minutes of Several Conversations, General Minutes, Doctrines and Discipline, Constitution and Discipline. Discipline with Notes The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Church in America. With Explanatory Notes, by Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury. 10th ed. Philadelphia: Printed by Henry Tuckniss, 1798; facsimile ed., Rutland, VT: Academy Books, 1979. EH Epworth Herald. JGC/MC Journal of the General Conference of the Methodist Church for the year indicated. JGC/MEC Journal of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church for the year indicated. Various publishers. JGC/MEC (1796–1836) Journals of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1796–1836. New York: Carlton and Phillips, 1855. Year indicated in parentheses. JGC/MECS Journal of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South for the year indicated. Various publishers. JGC/MECS (1846–1850) Journals of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, held 1846 and 1850. Richmond: Published by John Early for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1851. Year indicated in parentheses. JJW The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. Edited by Nehemiah Curnock. 8 vols. London: Epworth Press, 1909– 1916. 283

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Notes JLFA

LJW LQHR MH Minutes MC

MQR

MR

NCA NT Notes OT Notes Poetical Works

PWHS WCA Works [J]

Works

The Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury. Edited by Elmer T. Clark. 3 vols. London: Epworth Press, 1958; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1958. The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. Edited by John Telford. 8 vols. London: Epworth Press, 1931. London Quarterly and Holborn Review. Methodist History. Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, Annually Held in America; From 1773 to 1813, Inclusive. New York: Published by Daniel Hitt and Thomas Ware for the Methodist Connexion in the United States, 1813. Methodist Quarterly Review. General title given to the multititled periodical published by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Titles were Quarterly Review of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1847–1885; 1888–1894); Southern Methodist Review (1886–1888); Methodist Review (1894–1902; 1906–1924); Methodist Quarterly Review (1903–1906; 1925– 1930). Methodist Review. General title given to the multi-titled periodical published by the Methodist Episcopal Church. Titles were Methodist Magazine (1818–1828); Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review (1830–1840); Methodist Quarterly Review (1841–1884); Methodist Review (1885– 1931). Northwestern Christian Advocate. Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament. London: William Bowyer, 1755. Explanatory Notes Upon the Old Testament. 3 vols. Bristol: William Pine, 1765. The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley. Edited by G. Osborn. 13 vols. London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1868–1872. Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society. Western Christian Advocate. The Works of John Wesley. Edited by Thomas Jackson. 14 vols. London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1872; reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, [1958–1959]. The Works of John Wesley; begun as “The Oxford Edition of The Works of John Wesley,” Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975– 1983; continued as “The Bicentennial Edition of The Works of John Wesley,” Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984– . Vol. 1: Sermons I. Edited by Albert C. Outler, 1984. Vol. 2: Sermons II. Edited by Albert C. Outler, 1985. Vol. 3: Sermons III. Edited by Albert C. Outler, 1986. Vol. 4: Sermons IV. Edited by Albert C. Outler, 1987. Vol. 7: A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists. Edited by Franz Hildebrandt and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, 1983. Vol. 8: The Methodist Societies: History, Nature, and Design. Edited by Rupert E. Davies, 1989.

Notes to Pages 3–8

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Vol. 11: The Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion and Certain Related Open Letters. Edited by Gerald R. Cragg, 1975. Vol. 18: Journal and Diaries I (1735–1738). Edited by W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, 1988. Vol. 19: Journal and Diaries II (1738–1743). Edited by W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, 1990. Vol. 20: Journal and Diaries III (1743–1754). Edited by W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, 1991. Vol. 21: Journal and Diaries IV (1755–1765). Edited by W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, 1992. Vol. 22: Journal and Diaries V (1765–1775). Edited by W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, 1993. Vol. 23: Journal and Diaries VI (1776–1786). Edited by W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, 1995. Vol. 25: Letters I (1721–1739). Edited by Frank Baker, 1980. Vol. 26: Letters II (1740–1755). Edited by Frank Baker, 1982.

1. The Lord’s Day:The Shape of Worship 1. Report 19, “The Lord’s Day,” Committee on State of the Church, General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Daily Christian Advocate 22 (24 May 1932) 605. 2. Letter to “Our Brethren in America,” 10 September 1784, LJW, 7:238–39. 3. “Ought We to Separate from the Church of England?” (3).2, Works, 9:570–71. 4. See Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, “John Wesley’s Prayer Book Revision: The Text in Context,” MH 34 (July 1996) 230–47, esp. 240–42. 5. Ted A. Campbell, John Wesley and Christian Antiquity: Religious Vision and Cultural Change (Nashville: Abingdon/Kingswood 1991), esp. 23–53. 6. For Wesley’s views on reason, see especially his two essays “Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion,” and his sermon “Catholic Spirit.” 7. Experience is designated as a corollary with Scripture in Wesley’s sermon “On Knowing Christ after the Flesh,” and with Scripture and reason in the sermon “The Repentance of Believers.” See also Wesley’s sermon “Spiritual Worship” and his letter of 25 June 1746 to John Smith. 8. Dated Bristol, 9 September 1784, the statement is found as a preface in most extant copies of The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America. With Other Occasional Services (London: [William Strahan] 1784), though differences in the watermark suggest it may not have been part of the original printing. Because the Sunday Service was shipped loose-leaf to avoid the duty required for bound books, the preface may have been bound in at a later date. 9. Ibid. 10. Ezekiel Cooper, 11 June 1788, Journal, Ms., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL; cf. the “Valedictory Address,” Francis Asbury to William McKendree, 5 August 1813, JLFA, 3:475–92. 11. For a thorough study of Wesley’s revisions of the Lord’s Day services and materials (especially the psalter) from the Prayer Book, see William N. Wade, “A History of Public Worship in the Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church, South from 1784 to 1905” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame 1981) 24–77. 12. A brief overview of the revisions is presented in Wesley F. Swift, “ ‘The Sunday Service of the Methodists,’ ” PWHS 29 (March 1954) 12–20; see also J. Hamby Barton, “ ‘The Sunday Service of the Methodists’ (with a response by Wesley F. Swift),” PWHS 32

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(March 1960) 97–101; and A. Raymond George, “The ‘Sunday Service,’ ” PWHS 40 (February 1976) 102–105. 13. Journal, 4 September 1785 [Sunday], JLFA, 1:494; and Richard Whatcoat, 7 February 1790, Journal, Ms., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL. 14. Thomas Haskins, 23 January 1785, Journal, Ms., Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 15. Jesse Lee, A Short History of the Methodists, in the United States of America; Beginning in 1766, and Continued Till 1809 (Baltimore: Magill and Clime 1810) 153. The Council, fashioned by Asbury, proved to be unpopular and controversial, and in 1791 was abandoned in favor of a general conference. 16. Ibid., 190. 17. George Coles, 3 January 1841 [Sunday], Journal, Ms., Drew University Library, Madison, NJ. 18. Leonard Smith, 12 February 1860 [Sunday], Journal, Ts., Archives, Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference, United Methodist Church, Bloomington, IL. 19. Lee, A Short History of the Methodists, 152–53. 20. JGC/MEC (1824), 298–99. 21. JGC/MEC (1832), 394. 22. Alexander McCaine, Letters on the Organization and Early History of the Methodist Episcopal Church (Boston: Thomas F. Norris 1850) 35–36. 23. Charles Grandison Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, 2d ed. (New York: Leavitt, Lord and Co. 1835). See especially the lecture “Measures to Promote Revivals.” 24. B. T. Roberts, “New School Methodism,” The Northern Independent (July 1857), repr. in Leslie R. Marston, From Age to Age a Living Witness: A Historical Interpretation of Free Methodism’s First Century (Winona Lake, IN: Light and Life 1960) 573–78; and The Doctrines and Discipline of the Free Methodist Church, 1862 (Buffalo: B. T. Roberts 1863) iii–vii, 71–72. 25. JGC/MEC, 1892, 311. 26. JGC/MEC, 1888, 125–27. 27. Episcopal Address, JGC/MECS, 1934, 374–75. 28. JGC/MEC, 1932, 651. 29. JGC/MECS, 1866, 23, 116–17. 30. Preface, The Sunday Service of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, ed. T. O. Summers (Nashville: A. H. Redford for the M. E. Church, South 1867) 3–5. Summers did not include Wesley’s Select Psalms, arguing that Wesley himself was not satisfied with his abridgement (“Forms of Prayer,” MQR 19 [January 1882] 74). 31. Henry M. Turner, The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity, Or, The Machinery of Methodism (Philadelphia: Publication Department, A. M. E. Church 1885) 235–36. There is no indication that another reprinting was done of the 1784 service, so assumably Summers’s version was used. 32. Charles S. Harrower, ed., Select Psalms Arranged for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church by John Wesley, with Other Selections and the Order for the Sacraments and Occasional Services of the Church (New York: Hunt and Eaton 1891; Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe 1891). 33. Charles S. Harrower, ed., The Sunday Service Recommended to the Societies in America by the Rev. John Wesley Edited by Comparison with the Public Book of Prayers and Services of the Wesleyan Church Including Select Psalms with the Order for the Sacraments and Other Occasional Services According to the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York: Eaton and Mains 1893; Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 1893; also New York: Hunt and Eaton 1894; Cincinnati: Cranston and Curts 1894); cf. JGC/MEC, 1892, 215.


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34. From the Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America prepared by John Wesley, 1784 (Chicago: Jennings and Pye, for the Methodist Episcopal Church 1903). The unknown editor indicates in a note that in this version the “General Thanksgiving” is “restored,” apparently unaware that Wesley had originally included it in his Sunday Service, though it was not placed in the prayer services. 35. Hugh D. Atchison, “Symposium Concerning Public Worship: A More Adequate Service of Worship in Methodist Episcopal Churches,” MR 110 (May 1927) 362. 36. Commission on Worship and Music, Proposed Order of Worship for the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1930). 37. Von Ogden Vogt, Modern Worship (New Haven: Yale University Press 1927) 31–104; and Willard L. Sperry, Reality in Worship: A Study of Public Worship and Private Religion (New York: Macmillan 1925) 277–303. Vogt for a time pastored First Unitarian Church in Chicago and lectured at Chicago Theological Seminary; Sperry was dean at what would eventually be Harvard Divinity School. In Art and Religion (1921; rev. 1948), Vogt laid the groundwork for his scheme in Modern Worship; Sperry claimed to have developed his sequence independently of Vogt. Earl Enyeart Harper in “The Methodist Order of Public Worship” (MR 109 [May 1926] 388–90), and J. Hastie Odgers and Edward G. Schutz in The Technique of Public Worship ([New York: Methodist Book Concern 1928] 109–10) had already proposed using Vogt’s scheme for ordering Methodist worship; cf. “Notes on the Proposed Orders of Worship,” in Proposed Order, 7–8; and JGC/MEC, 1932, 296. 38. Nolan Harmon, 10 March 1990, tape-recorded interview by author, Atlanta, GA. 39. The John Wesley Prayer Book, commentary by W. Maynard French (Nashville: Parthenon 1956); and Edward C. Hobbs, ed., The Wesley Orders of Common Prayer, National Methodist Student Movement (Nashville: Board of Education for the Methodist Church 1957). 40. Report of the Commission on Worship to the General Conference, The Methodist Church, 1960 (Nashville: Methodist Publishing House 1960) 4, 11–16. The Gloria Patri was placed after the creed in the proposed revision printed in 1960, but was returned to its classical place after the psalm when the service was approved in 1964. 41. For a thorough study of the process by which the United Methodist services were created, see Robert B. Peiffer, “How Contemporary Liturgies Evolve: The Revision of United Methodist Liturgical Texts (1968–1988)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame 1992). 42. Samuel A. Seaman, Annals of New York Methodism, Being a History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the City of New York, from A.D. 1766 to A.D. 1890 (New York: Hunt and Eaton 1892; Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe 1892) 470. 43. A. W. Leonard, “The Passing of the Sunday Evening Service,” MR 93 (May 1911) 436–39. 44. Washington Gladden, The Christian Pastor and the Working Church (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1924) 121–22. Gladden undoubtedly would have questioned some of the “strategic opportunities” suggested by Wilbur Fletcher Sheridan in The Sunday-Night Service: A Study in Continuous Evangelism (Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 1903; New York: Eaton and Mains 1903). 45. S. Joseph Platt, ed., A Book of Remembrance: Church Street United Methodist Church (1793–1816?)–1975 (Knoxville: n.p. 1982) 27. 46. For example, the contents of chapter 26 in the 1787 Discipline are devoted entirely to the instruction of children. 47. C. C. Goss, Statistical History of the First Century of American Methodism: With a Summary of the Origin and Present Operations of Other Denominations (New York: Carlton and Porter 1866) 119. Goss combined the totals for the Regular Baptists (estimated), Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Old School and New School Presbyterians, and the Reformed

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Dutch. He also provided the totals for the Methodist Episcopal Church from 1847 to 1865, noting the number of conversions obtained through the Sunday school program. 48. Leonard Smith, 13 June 1869, Journal, Ts. 49. Terry W. Mullins, Pisgah United Methodist Church: Two Centuries of Faith, 1793–1993 (Acton, MA: Tapestry 1993) 61. 50. “Welfare of Ohio Conference Methodism,” in Ohio Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Held at Portsmouth, Ohio, September 29, 1875 (Cincinnati: Western Methodist Book Concern 1875) 220. 51. For example, “The Children and the Preaching Service,” The Methodist 21 (5 June 1880) 2; Joseph F. Berry, “Children at Church,” EH 1 (24 January 1891) 1; and J. Montcalm Brown, “Young People and the Preaching Service,” NCA 57 (12 May 1909) 26 (602); cf. JGC/MEC, 1864, 117; JGC/MEC, 1872, 208; and JGC/MECS, 1878, 244–45. 52. “A Proposition to Consolidate Sunday Services,” WCA 76 (3 August 1910) 26–27. 53. Section on “Public Worship” in The New Cokesbury Hymnal for General Use in Religious Meetings (Nashville: Cokesbury 1928) unpaginated; cf. Josephine L. Baldwin, Worship Training for Juniors (New York: Printed for the Teacher Training Publishing Association by the Methodist Book Concern 1927) 15–25. 54. A. W. Martin, Worship in the Sunday School: For Workers in Small Schools (Nashville: Cokesbury 1930) 28–30; and JGC/MEC, 1932, 531–32. 55. For example, Alice Anderson Bays, Worship Programs in the Fine Arts for Young People (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury 1940); Worship Programs for Intermediates (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury 1942); Worship Services for Purposeful Living (New York: AbingdonCokesbury 1949); Worship Services for Life Planning (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury 1953); Worship Services for Teen-Agers (New York: Abingdon 1954); Worship Services for Junior Highs (New York: Abingdon 1958). 56. United Methodist Conferences that produced worship materials include the Baltimore Conference (Commission on Worship’s “Worship Concepts” 1971), the Minnesota Conference (Commission on Worship’s “The Worship Manual” 1972), and the Virginia Conference (“Living Acts of Worship” 1972).

2. The Lord’s Day: Ordinary and Propers 1. “The Character of a Methodist,” §8, Works, 9:37. 2. For Wesley’s defense of extemporary prayer, see “The Principles of a Methodist Farther Explained,” 3.3–4, Works, 9:187–88. 3. In an egregious, but all-too-frequent, misreading of historical fact, a writer of local church history notes that “Wesley had frowned on hymn books and written prayers. He had prescribed extemporaneous prayers except Wednesday and Thursday for his followers” (Wyatt Brown, Early Methodism in Greenville, North Carolina, and a History of the Jarvis Memorial United Methodist Church, ed. John D. Ebbs [Greenville: Jarvis Memorial United Methodist Church 1978] 83). 4. Notes on Chapter 1, section 12, Discipline with Notes, 89. 5. T. O. Summers provides an excursus on the “Use of the Lord’s Prayer” in “Forms of Prayer,” MQR 19 (January 1882) 87–91. 6. The notion of the quadrilateral is refuted in Ted A. Campbell, “The ‘Wesleyan Quadrilateral’: The Story of a Modern Methodist Myth,” MH 29 (January 1991) 87–95. Without leveling them to a single plane, Wesley himself alludes to five “norms”—Scripture, Christian antiquity of the first three centuries, the Church of England, reason, and experience—in “Farther Thoughts on Separation from the Church,” written in December 1789 and published in the Arminian Magazine in 1790. For a fuller account of Wesley’s understanding of


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Scripture, see Scott J. Jones, John Wesley’s Conception and Use of Scripture (Nashville: Kingswood 1995). 7. Notes on Chapter 1, section 24, Discipline with Notes, 121; cf. Pastoral Address, JGC/ MECS (1846), 113. 8. See especially the journal entry for 1 August 1742, Works, 19:290. 9. Hans W. Frei, in The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press 1974), details the changes in interpretation (and concomitantly worldview) that would have threatened the more literal Methodist understanding. 10. Address of the Bishops, JGC/MECS (1850), 139; cf. Thomas O. Summers, “Signs of the Times,” MQR 19 (April 1882) 379–80; and C. H. Buchanan, “Worship and Its Abuse,” MQR 27 (July 1888) 367–69. 11. Report of the Committee on the American Bible Society, JGC/MECS, 1858, 480. 12. Review of Ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church, MR 46 (October 1864) 688. 13. Samuel W. Marble, in “Revise the Psalter” (MR 109 [January 1926] 112–17), questioned the appropriateness of several psalms selected for responsive readings in the 1905 hymnal, finding them incompatible with the Methodist Episcopal Church’s pronouncements on world peace. 14. Report of the Special Committee on Standards of Doctrine, JGC/MECS, 1922, 156. 15. Episcopal Address, JGC/MECS, 1934, 360; see also John Poucher, “Methodism as Affected by Recent Biblical Criticism,” MR 75 (November 1893) 964–65; and “Biblical Criticism and the General Conference,” NCA 60 (17 April 1912) 488. 16. Memorials of the General Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church, 1912, unpublished materials, United Methodist Archives, Madison, NJ. See also, from the same year, the concern expressed for congregational participation in Scripture reading in Lucius C. Clark, The Worshiping Congregation (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1912; New York: Eaton and Mains 1912) 91–95. 17. G. A. Raybold, Reminiscences of Methodism in New Jersey (New York: Lane and Scott 1849) 43; also his Annals of Methodism; Or, Sketches of the Origin and Progress of Methodism in Various Portions of West Jersey; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources (Philadelphia: T. Stokes 1847) 134. Exaggeration and boasting about preaching prowess are typical of early Methodist lore; see Donald E. Byrne, Jr., No Foot of Land: Folklore of American Methodist Itinerants, ATLA Monograph Series, no. 6 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press and the American Theological Library Association 1975) 244–55. 18. Isabella Lucy Bird Bishop, The Aspects of Religion in the United States, repr. of 1859 edition (New York: Arno 1972) 40; for her discussion on the characteristics of American preaching, see pp. 157–60. 19. Freeborn Garrettson, Substance of the Semi-Centennial Sermon, Before the New-York Annual Conference, at Its Session, May, 1826 (New York: N. Bangs and J. Emory, for the Methodist Episcopal Church 1827) 33. 20. George Coles, 25 June 1826, Journal, Ms., Drew University Library, Madison, NJ. 21. William C. Doub, 12 February 1832, Journal, Ms., Special Collections Library, Duke University Library, Durham, NC. 22. Thomas Rankin, 30 June 1776 [Sunday], “The Diary of the Revd. Thomas Rankin,” Ts., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL. 23. Maria Dyer Davies, 29 December 1850, 29 August 1852, and 21 April 1853, Diary, Ms., Special Collections Library, Duke University Library, Durham, NC. 24. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin 1985).

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25. Richard Adicks, A Time to Keep: History of the First United Methodist Church of Oviedo, Florida, 1873–1973 (Oviedo, FL: History Committee, First United Methodist Church 1973) 14. 26. J. A. Phillips, “ ‘The Holy Catholic Church,’ ” MQR 71 (April 1922) 217–29. 27. See, for example, the entry for 22 January 1785 in the journal of Thomas Coke, cited in the Arminian Magazine 1 (June 1789) 293. 28. Edward W. Poitras, “How Korean is the Methodist ‘Korean Creed’?”, MH 36 (October 1997) 3–16. 29. Nineteenth-century accounts indicate that sometimes the tune “Sessions” was appointed for the singing of “Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow,” and was exported from the United States to Methodist missions in Korea and elsewhere. See L. L. Nash, Recollections and Observations during a Ministry in the North Carolina Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church, South, of Forty-three Years (Raleigh, NC: Mutual 1916) 18; and Edward W. Poitras (Pak Tae In), “Ten Thousand Tongues Sing: Worship among Methodists in Korea,” in The Sunday Service of the Methodists: Twentieth-Century Worship in Worldwide Methodism, ed. Karen B. Westerfield Tucker (Nashville: Kingswood 1996) 205. 30. Henry Boehm described German-English services in Reminiscences, Historical and Biographical of Sixty-Four Years in the Ministry, ed. Joseph B. Wakeley (New York: Carlton and Porter 1865) 106–107. 31. For a study of American Methodist influences on worship practices among Methodists in Germany, see Walter F. Klaiber, “Building up the House of God: Sunday Worship in German Methodism,” in The Sunday Service of the Methodists: Twentieth-Century Worship in Worldwide Methodism, esp. 287–98. 32. Records and History Committee, Bishop Hill Community Methodist Church (Marceline, MO: Walsworth 1951) unpaginated; for a brief overview of Swedish Methodist work in Illinois, see C. G. Wallenius and E. D. Olson, A Short Story of the Swedish Methodism in America, repr. from vol. 2, The Swedish Element in America (Chicago: Swedish-American Biographical Society 1931) 33–44. 33. A History of the Congregation, 1858–1983. First United Methodist Church. Lindstrom, Minnesota, ed. 125th Anniversary Committee, Robert Porter, chairperson (Lindstrom, MN: United Methodist Church 1983) 53–54; see “Babies Can Make a Sunday Sermon,” Together 6 (September 1962) 2. According to the church secretary Carol Schmidt, the annual service is highly anticipated by the congregation (telephone interview by author, 28 January 1998). 34. “The Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Societies (1743),” Works, 9: 70. Most Methodist bodies continued to include the General Rules as part of their constitutive documents. 35. Journal, 20 April 1777, JLFA, 1:237; and JGC/MEC (1828), 348–51. 36. H. M. Hamill, ed., Manual of Southern Methodism including Church History, Doctrine, Polity, and Missions (Nashville: Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1914) 125; and Report of the Committee on Sabbath Observance, JGC/MECS, 1906, 246. 37. Mary Louise Butler Edwards, Salem: A Goodly Heritage, 1848–1976; A History of Salem United Methodist Church (Fayetteville, NC: Salem United Methodist Church 1976) 29–30. 38. The latter, somewhat plausible, theory is proposed by William Wade, “A History of Public Worship in the Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church, South from 1784 to 1905” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame 1981) 45–46. Wesley himself does not give the rationale for the deletion. 39. On Wesley’s appreciation of the festival of All Saints’, see Geoffrey Wainwright, “Wesley and the Communion of Saints,” in Methodists in Dialogue (Nashville: Kingswood 1995) 237–49.


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40. Thomas Rankin, 25 December 1773 [Saturday], 3 April 1774 [Easter], 25 December 1774 [Sunday], and 26 May 1776 [Whitsunday], “Diary,” Ts. 41. Nathan Bangs, The Life of the Rev. Freeborn Garrettson: Compiled from His Printed and Manuscript Journals, and Other Authentic Documents (New York: J. Emory and B. Waugh 1832) 122. 42. Ezekiel Cooper, 25 December 1788 and 25 December 1792, Journal, Ms., GarrettEvangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL; cf. Benjamin Lakin, 25 December 1803, Journal, Ms. on microfilm, Washington University Library, St. Louis, MO; and “Letter from Seely Bunn, to the Rev. Dr. Coke, 6 March 1805,” Methodist Magazine 28 (October 1805) 474. 43. Notes on Chapter 1, section 12, Discipline with Notes, 89. William Wade boldly claims that after 1792 the liturgical year was “totally rejected,” not to be officially recognized until the early twentieth century (pp. 102–103). But he is forced to soften this statement when confronted with Asbury and Coke’s commentary and other documentation (p. 215). The evidence makes it clear that a rudimentary liturgical year was maintained, albeit by the observance of a few special days. 44. Thomas A. Morris, Miscellany: Consisting of Essays, Biographical Sketches, and Notes of Travel (Cincinnati: L. Swormstedt and J. H. Power 1852) 113. Morris was a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. For another expression of concern regarding the solemn honoring of Christmas, see Raybold, Reminiscences of Methodism in West Jersey, 29. 45. Russell E. Richey, The Methodist Conference in America: A History (Nashville: Kingswood 1996) 126–31, 202–204. 46. JGC/MECS, 1870, 173; and JGC/MEC, 1872, 355. 47. See, for example, Robert E. Taylor’s diary entry for 5 June 1898 (and for 27 May 1900 and 25 June 1905) in Taylor Kinsfolk Association at Tabernacle Church, The Taylors of Tabernacle: The History of a Family (Brownsville, TN: Tabernacle Historical Committee 1957) 375, 388, 405. A variation on this practice is described for a Children’s Day on 14 June 1885, in which the children, on the day following their exercises of “songs of praise, recitations and dialogue,” met at the church to decorate the graves of Sunday school children who had died during the previous year (Mary Katharine Kern, The Market Street United Methodist Church: Methodism in Winchester, Virginia, from 1772 to 1953 [Stephens City, VA: Commercial Press 1985] 110). 48. For example, eighteen hymns in Hymns for the Nativity of Our Lord (1745), seven in Hymns for Ascension-Day (1746), sixteen in Hymns for Our Lord’s Resurrection (1746), and thirty-two in Hymns of Petition and Thanksgiving for the Promise of the Father (1746). 49. Joseph F. Berry, “A Christian Festival,” EH 2 (19 December 1891) 1. Heather Murray Elkins notes a gradual qualitative shift in the Methodist Episcopal Church from the “honoring” of days to the “observing” of them (“ ‘On Borrowed Time’: The Christian Year in American Methodism, 1784–1960” [Ph.D. diss., Drew University 1991] 68ff). 50. Bostwick Hawley, A Treatise on the Lenten Season: Including Ascension-Day, Whitsuntide, and Trinity Sunday (Cincinnati: Walden and Stowe 1882; New York: Phillips and Hunt 1882) 10. Chapters tracing the historical development of Lent, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Passion Week, Good Friday, Easter, the Forty Days, Ascension, Pentecost, and Trinity also contained suggestions for practice. 51. “Ecclesiastical Feast Days in Protestantism,” MR 77 (May 1895) 475–76. 52. Matthew Simpson Hughes, The Higher Ritualism (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1904; New York: Eaton and Mains 1904) 47. 53. A virtual explosion of observances is suggested in Marion Lawrance, Special Days in the Sunday School (New York: Fleming H. Revell 1916); Lawrance served as general secretary of the International Sunday School Association. This genre of literature continues into the

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late twentieth century with books such as Celebrating Special Days in the Church School Year: Liturgies and Participation Activities for Church School Children (Colorado Springs: Meriwether Publishing 1981), by Judy Gattis Smith, a United Methodist. 54. Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1995) 246–56. Moves were made, as early as the 1908 Methodist Episcopal General Conference, for the churches to recognize Mother’s Day. 55. Clark, The Worshiping Congregation, 165. 56. For the Methodist days, see JGC/MEC, 1912, 450; and JGC/MEC, 1916, 351, 457. On the promotion of Good Friday as a legal holiday, see JGC/MEC, 1928, 625, 1832; and the JGC/MEC, 1936, 523–24, 1307. 57. The Methodist constituent bodies were the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Colored (Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Methodist Protestant Church. 58. Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, Annual Report, 1935 (New York: Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America 1935) 53–54. 59. Fred Winslow Adams, “The Altar of Worship,” MR 109 (May 1926) 385. 60. Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, Annual Report, 1937 (New York: Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America 1937) 57–58; and Fred Winslow Adams, The Christian Year: A Suggestive Guide for the Worship of the Church (New York: Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America 1937; rev. 1940). In the revised edition, Adams reduced the number of Sundays that had been designated for Kingdomtide. 61. Other Methodist resources in this period included Thomas Albert Stafford, Christian Symbolism in the Evangelical Churches (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury 1942); Hersey Everett Spence, Holidays and Holy Days: Plays, Pageants, and Programs for Many Occasions (Greensboro, NC: Piedmont 1946); and a 1951 book that went through numerous printings, Dessie Ash Arnett, Lenace Robinette Clark, and Betty Isaac Stewart, Methodist Altars, rev. ed. (Charleston, WV: Lenace Robinette Clark 1956). Clarence Seidenspinner, in Great Protestant Festivals (New York: Henry Schuman 1952), organized his book not according to the liturgical cycles, but following nature’s seasons. 62. Douglas R. Cullum, “From Simplicity to Multiplicity: Sunday Worship among Free Methodists,” in The Sunday Service of the Methodists: Twentieth-Century Worship in Worldwide Methodism, 181–94. 63. George G. Smith, The Life and Times of George Foster Pierce, D.D., LL.D. (Sparta, GA: Hancock 1888) 508–509. 64. “Discipline for Mr. Roosevelt,” NCA 57 (10 March 1909) 6. 65. Robert T. Handy, A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities, 2d ed., rev. (New York: Oxford University Press 1984) 182. 66. Freeborn Garrettson, Substance of the Semi-Centennial Sermon, 25–26. 67. “The Order of Public Worship,” MR 76 (September 1894) 810. 68. Thomas B. Neely, “The Order of Public Worship,” 82 MR (January 1900) 84–85. 69. Episcopal Address, JGC/MECS, 1934, 375. 70. S. M. Merrill, A Digest of Methodist Law; Or, Helps in the Administration of the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, ed. R. J. Cooke (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1908; New York: Eaton and Mains 1908) 131. 71. Romey P. Marshall, “Liturgical Question Box,” The Pastor 14 (January 1951) 19; and Ivan Lee Holt, “The Book of Worship and the Book of Law,” The Pastor 18 (January 1955) 25; cf. Nolan B. Harmon, “Uniform But Unfettered,” The Pastor 15 (March 1952) 19.


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72. Nolan B. Harmon, “Are We Headed Toward Formalism in Worship?” The Pastor 19 (March 1956) 4. 73. JGC/MEC, 1868, 566. 74. Cited from an 1889 newspaper article by William C. Bakes entitled “Mr. Wesley’s Sunday Service,” which is affixed to the inside back cover of one of Duke University’s copies of Wesley’s Sunday Service of 1784. 75. Part 6, chapter 8, section 2, The Doctrine and Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1884 (Philadelphia: A. M. E. Book Concern 1885) 376–77; cf. “Ritualistic Tendencies of our Time,” MR 81 (May 1899) 467–68. 76. Charles M. Giffin, “More Liturgy or More Life,” MR 84 (January 1902) 71–79; response by Ernest Vernon Claypool, “More Liturgy and More Life,” MR 84 (May 1902) 462– 65. 77. Episcopal Address, JGC/MECS, 1930, 360. 78. “The Character of a Methodist,” §18, Works, 9:42. 79. Sermon 77, “Spiritual Worship,” §3.4, Works, 3:99.

3. The Great Festivals of the Methodists 1. David Lewis, Recollections of a Superannuate: Or, Sketches of Life, Labor, and Experience in the Methodist Itinerancy, ed. S. M. Merrill (Cincinnati: Methodist Book Concern 1857) 61. 2. William Cave, Primitive Christianity (1672), abridged in John Wesley, A Christian Library, 50 vols. (Bristol: E. Farley 1753) 31:219–20. Wesley, whose diary records the reading of Cave in 1732, considered the history essential reading for all Methodists, and so included it, abridged, as part of the Christian Library. 3. Wesley borrowed the concept of the band—the oldest basic unit of Methodist organization—from Moravian practice, and it was a collection of bands (and others) in a geographic region that constituted a particular Methodist society. Regulations and behaviors for the bands were defined by Wesley in the “Rules of the Band Societies” (1738) and “Directions Given to the Band Societies” (1744). Soon another small group, the class, developed, the purpose of which was delineated in “The Nature, Design, and General Rules of the United Societies” (1743). At first bands and classes coexisted with the Methodist societies, but by the nineteenth century, the bands were in decline and eventually disappeared. For a brief overview of the economy of the Methodist societies, see the introduction in Works, 9:8–15. 4. A letter to the Rev. Mr. Vincent Perronet, vicar of Shoreham in Kent, published as “A Plain Account of the People called Methodists” (1749), 6.5, Works, 9:267–68. 5. Frank Baker, Methodism and the Love-Feast (London: Epworth 1957) 15. 6. Poetical Works, 1:350–51. 7. Joseph Pilmore, The Journal of Joseph Pilmore, ed. Frederick E. Maser and Howard T. Maag (Philadelphia: Message Publishing for the Historical Society of the Philadelphia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church 1969) 40, 45. 8. The 1784 Discipline (published in 1785) gave the responsibility of keeping the love feast to the “assistants.” In Wesley’s usage this designated preachers who had oversight of a circuit (namely, a specified collection of Methodist societies). As understood in 1787, it seems that the duty of the love feast was given specifically to deacons. In 1792, it was made clear that responsibilities for a love feast resided with the preacher in charge of the circuit who would usually be an ordained elder, though it could also be a deacon or a lay preacher.

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9. Thomas Rankin, 22 May 1774, “The Diary of the Reverend Thomas Rankin,” Ts., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL. 10. Nathan Bangs, A History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 3d ed., vol. 1 (New York: T. Mason and G. Lane 1840) 249. 11. Emory Stevens Bucke, “American Methodism and the Love Feast,” MH 1 (July 1963) 12. 12. Henry M. Turner, The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity, Or, The Machinery of Methodism (Philadelphia: Publication Department, A. M. E. Church 1885) 210–12. 13. “Love-feasts,” CAJ (NY) 23 (7 June 1848) 92. 14. Leonard Smith, 26 June 1859, Journal, Ts., Archives, Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference, United Methodist Church, Bloomington, IL. 15. Journal of the Reverend Benjamin F. Brooke, 8 January 1861, cited in Mary Katharine Kern, The Market Street United Methodist Church: Methodism in Winchester, Virginia, from 1772 to 1953 (Stephens City, VA: Commercial Press 1985) 50. Kern determined that the last recorded love feast at Market Street Church occurred on 10 July 1896—the same year the congregation experienced their first early morning Christmas service (p. 121). 16. Tobias Spicer, “Love-feasts,” CAJ (NY) 13 (23 November 1838) 53. This article was the final installment of a seven-week series on love feasts. 17. Wesley transcribed in his journal “An Extract of the Constitution of the Church of the Moravian Brethren at Herrnhut,” which included as number 18 a description of the nightly watch. See Works, 18:297. 18. “A Plain Account of the People called Methodists,” 3.1–2, Works, 9:264; and also “A Letter to the Rev. Mr. Baily of Cork” (1750), 2.15, Works, 9:305. 19. Journal, 9 April 1742, Works, 19:258–59. 20. Turner, The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity, Or, The Machinery of Methodism, 221. 21. Thomas Rankin, 31 July 1776 [Wednesday], 10 November 1776 [for Monday], and 4 August 1777 [Tuesday], “The Diary of the Reverend Thomas Rankin.” 22. Journal, 22 November 1787, JLFA, 1:554; and notes on Chapter 1, section 10, Discipline with Notes, 76–77. 23. Ezekiel Cooper, 1 January 1793, Journal, Ms., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL. 24. Pilmore, 31 December 1770, The Journal of Joseph Pilmore, 70. 25. Centennial History of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Schenectady, New York, ed. William C. Kitchin, Benjamin H. Ripton, and Fred Winslow Adams (Schenectady, NY: Official Board of First Methodist Episcopal Church 1907) 74. 26. All three of these rituals might be included in a single watch night. See Leonard Smith, 31 December 1867, Journal, Ts. 27. G. A. Raybold, Annals of Methodism; Or, Sketches of the Origin and Progress of Methodism in Various Portions of West Jersey; Derived from the Most Authentic Sources (Philadelphia: T. Stokes 1847) 16. 28. George Coles, 31 December 1829, Journal, Ms., Drew University Library, Madison, NJ. 29. Thomas A. Morris, Miscellany: Consisting of Essays, Biographical Sketches, and Notes of Travel (Cincinnati: L. Swormstedt and J. H. Power 1852) 118–19. 30. For example, Frederick Hunter, “The Origins of Wesley’s Covenant Service,” LQHR 164 (January 1939) 82; and Frank Baker, “The Beginnings of the Methodist Covenant Service,” LQHR 180 (July 1955) 215. 31. For studies detailing the covenant texts of Richard Alleine and Joseph Alleine, see Hunter, “The Origins of Wesley’s Covenant Service,” 78–82; and Marion A. Jackson, “An


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Analysis of the Source of John Wesley’s ‘Directions for Renewing our Covenant with God,’ ” MH 30 (April 1992) 176–84. 32. The text, inspired by Jeremiah 50:5, was first published in Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures (1762) and is here cited from the reprinting of that text in Poetical Works, 10:46. Wesley records in his journal for 12 July 1778 the use of this hymn at a covenant service, during the singing of which “God poured down upon the assembly the Spirit of grace and supplication” (Works, 23:99). 33. A comparison of the Lee and Wesley texts, an analysis of the editions of Wesley’s Directions, and a full history of the development and practice of the covenant service in British Methodism is provided by David Tripp, The Renewal of the Covenant in the Methodist Tradition (London: Epworth 1969). 34. Ezekiel Cooper, 1 March 1786 [Wednesday] and 30 June 1786 [Friday], Journal, Ms. 35. Miriam Fletcher, The Methodist; Or, Incidents and Characters from Life in the Baltimore Conference (New York: Derby and Jackson 1859) 81. 36. Kern, The Market Street United Methodist Church: Methodism in Winchester, Virginia, from 1772 to 1953, 96, 146, 163. 37. H. Hughes Wagner, “Gaiety—and Worship—on New Year’s Eve,” The Pastor 13 (December 1949) 24–25. The Holiness branches of Methodism, which consistently called for their members to avoid such frivolities on New Year’s Eve and Day (e.g., “New Year’s Visitations,” The Earnest Christian and Golden Rule 3 [January 1862] 36), persisted in their solemn assemblies. 38. “Watch Night at the Coliseum,” NCA 57 (6 January 1909) 27. 39. The British Methodist bodies united in 1932 were the Wesleyan Methodists (the largest group), the Primitive Methodists, and the United Methodists (the result of a merger in 1907 joining the Methodist New Connexion, the United Methodist Free Church, and the Bible Christians). 40. The material finally approved for the 1992 book as “Wesley’s Covenant Service” was a significant reduction and recasting of United Methodist bishop Ole E. Borgen’s 1990 abbreviation and adaptation of Wesley’s 1780 Directions. 41. Frederick Hunter and Frank Baker, “The Origin of the Methodist Quarterly Meeting,” LQHR 174 (1949) 28–37. 42. Jesse Lee, A Short History of the Methodists, in the United States of America; Beginning in 1766 and Continued Till 1809 (Baltimore: Magill and Clime 1810) 42, 131, 145–46; see also George A. Phoebus, Beams of Light on Early Methodism in America (New York: Phillips and Hunt 1887; Cranston and Stowe 1887) 94–95. 43. Elizabeth A. Roe, Recollections of Frontier Life (Rockford, IL: Gazette Publishing House 1885) 85–87. 44. The Methodist Episcopal Church kept the rule on the quarterly fast until the 1888 Discipline; the Methodist Episcopal Church, South retained it until 1934. 45. Sometimes funerals were held and funeral sermons preached at the quarterly meeting, and though this task was not restricted to the ordained, many Methodists preferred a clergyman’s words at the marking of the final passage. 46. Lester Ruth, A Little Heaven Below: Worship at Early Methodist Quarterly Meetings (Nashville: Kingswood 2000) 120–25. Using the diaries and journals of the early Methodists, as well as official documents, Ruth carefully describes and analyzes the liturgical practices and piety of the quarterly meeting to around 1830. 47. Russell E. Richey, “From Quarterly to Camp Meeting: A Reconsideration of Early American Methodism,” MH 23 (July 1985) 207. 48. Leigh Eric Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the

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Early Modern Period (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1989) 50–68; and Robert B. Semple, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia, rev. by G. W. Beale (Richmond, VA: Pitt and Dickinson 1894) 23–24. 49. Controversies about the date and location of the first camp meeting arise primarily from debates on definitions, but also from geographic and denominational allegiances. See in particular Charles A. Johnson, The Frontier Camp Meeting: Religion’s Harvest Time (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press 1955) 25–40; Bernard A. Weisberger, They Gathered at the River: The Story of the Great Revivalists and Their Impact upon Religion in America (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1958); Catharine C. Cleveland, The Great Revival in the West, 1797–1805 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1916; repr. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith 1959); and Kenneth O. Brown, Holy Ground: A Study of the American Camp Meeting (New York: Garland 1992) 3–22. 50. Neither this instruction nor any other statement about camp meetings is found in the Discipline of either the Methodist Episcopal Church or the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; the practice of camp meetings was a matter of expectation, not legislation; see Lee, A Short History of the Methodists, 362. 51. Despite their immediate benefit, the prodigious use of camp meetings may, in the end, have inhibited the development of a strong Methodist ecclesiology. See Russell E. Richey, Early American Methodism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1991) 79–80. 52. See the study by Ellen Eslinger, Citizens of Zion: The Social Origins of Camp Meeting Revivalism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press 1999). 53. Letter to Jacob Gruber, 1 September 1811, JLFA, 3:453. By the time of Asbury’s letter to Gruber, the camp meeting had already been exported to Britain where it was censured by most British Methodists. A faction supporting its use broke off in 1811 to form the Primitive Methodists. 54. See Ellen Weiss, City in the Woods: The Life and Design of an American Camp Meeting on Martha’s Vineyard (New York: Oxford University Press 1987); and Glenn Uminowicz, “Recreation in a Christian America: Ocean Grove and Asbury Park, New Jersey, in Hard at Play: Leisure in America, 1840–1940, ed. Kathryn Grover (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press 1992; Rochester, NY: Strong Museum 1992) 8–38. 55. William Cooper Howells, “Camp-Meetings in the West Fifty Years Ago,” Lippincott’s Magazine 10 (August 1872) 211. 56. “A Short Account of a Camp-Meeting Held at Cow-Harbour, Long Island, which commenced August 11th, 1818,” MR 1 (1818) 357. 57. The origins and content of camp meeting hymns and spirituals are discussed in Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800– 1845 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press 1974) 96–122; and Ellen Jane Lorenz, Glory, Hallelujah! The Story of the Campmeeting Spiritual (Nashville: Abingdon 1980). 58. Abel Stevens, Life and Times of Nathan Bangs (New York: Carlton and Porter 1863) 183. 59. John Brooks, The Life and Times of the Rev. John Brooks, in Which Are Contained a History of the Great Revival in Tennessee; with Many Incidents of Thrilling Interest (Nashville: Nashville Christian Advocate 1848) 27. 60. “A Camp Meeting Incident,” Zion’s Herald and Wesleyan Journal 32 (14 August 1861) 129. On church relations during the nation’s war, see William Warren Sweet, The Methodist Episcopal Church and the Civil War (Cincinnati: Methodist Book Concern 1912) 47– 110. 61. John H. Wigger describes Methodism’s contributions to popular Christianity and American society, and its metamorphosis from counterculture to American subculture in


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Taking Heaven by Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America (New York: Oxford University Press 1998), esp. 173–95. 62. Pastoral Address, JGC/MEC, 1880, 433; cf. pp. 181, 212. 63. W. R. Goodwin, “The Old-Time Camp-Meeting,” EH 1 (9 May 1891) 3; and J. H. Potts, Pastor and People; Or, Methodism in the Field (New York: Phillips and Hunt 1879; Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden 1879) 162. 64. Program for the 36th Annual Camp Meeting of the Galesburg District, Central Illinois Conference; Gilson Camp Grounds, 18–24 August 1903, Archives, Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference, United Methodist Church, Bloomington, IL. 65. Cited in Taylor Kinsfolk Association at Tabernacle Church, The Taylors of Tabernacle: The History of a Family (Brownsville, TN: Tabernacle Historical Committee 1957) 422. 66. “The Amen Liturgy,” in Annals of Southern Methodism for 1855, ed. Charles Force Deems (New York: J. G. Gray 1856) 373. 67. J. V. Watson, Helps to the Promotion of Revivals (New York: Nelson and Phillips 1856; Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden 1856) 17. 68. Kern, The Market Street United Methodist Church, 87. 69. William Reddy, “Methodism—Its Peculiarities,” The Earnest Christian and Golden Rule 14 (July 1867) 17. 70. Journal, 19 July 1761, Works, 21:336. 71. Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press 1989) 81–93. 72. Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster 1992) 45–75.

4. The Rites of Christian Initiation 1. “Ought We to Separate from the Church of England?” (3).4.8, Works, 9:571–72. 2. Letter from Mr. Hall included in Wesley’s Journal, 27 December 1745, Works, 20:109– 10; and Journal, 12 April 1789, JJW, 7:486. 3. One of the accusations against Wesley presented to a grand jury in Savannah, Georgia, was that he refused to administer the Lord’s Supper to William Gough after it was disclosed Gough had been baptized by a Presbyterian and had refused “rebaptism.” See under the journal entries for 16 August to 2 September 1737, Works, 18:189–93; also the manuscript voyage journal entry for 18 October 1735, Works, 18:313. 4. Journal, 21 October 1738, The Journal of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A., vol. 1, ed. Thomas Jackson (London: Mason 1849; repr. London: Wesleyan Methodist Book-Room n.d.) 133; and Journal, 29 September 1749, Works, 20:305. As late as 26 December 1785, Wesley noted in his journal that he “baptized a young woman brought up an Anabaptist,” though he doesn’t indicate whether she had previously received the sacrament. 5. The introduction is included with the printing of the “Treatise on Baptism” in Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press 1964) 318. Though the essay did not originate with John Wesley, the fact that the younger Wesley republished his father’s text arguably means that he concurred with its contents, particularly as he did not scruple to make changes in the works he took over from others. 6. Letter to James Clark, 3 July 1756, LJW, 3:182; see Frank Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England (London: Epworth 1970) 145–49. 7. Letter to Joseph Benson, 19 May 1783, and Letter to John Valton, 6 January 1784, LJW, 7:179, 203–204; and Letter to Alexander Suter, 24 November 1787, LJW, 8:23. 8. “Serious Thoughts Concerning Godfathers and Godmothers,” Works [J], 10:508; and “Ought We to Separate from the Church of England?” (3).4.8, Works, 9:571.

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9. In the infant rite proposed by the Non-Juror Thomas Deacon, one of the parents is the preferred sponsor (A Compleat Collection of Devotions, both Publick and Private [London: Printed for the Author 1734] 102). The matter of the sponsors’ answers is discussed in John Jones’ Free and Candid Disquisitions Relating to the Church of England, and the Means of Advancing Religion Therein (London: Printed for A. Millar 1749) 131. 10. Wesley’s manuscript notes on the Apostolic Canons include a claim that it is his duty “to baptize by immersion” (cited in Baker, John Wesley and the Church of England, 40). On threefold immersion, see Diary, 22 February 1736, Works, 18:360; see also John Wesley’s comments on immersion related to Romans 6:4 and Colossians 2:12 in his NT Notes. 11. Journal, 5 May 1736, Works, 18:157; cf. Charles Wheatly, A Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England (Oxford: Clarendon 1802) 357–59 [chap. 7, sect. 3]. 12. In Baptism in Early Methodism ([London: Epworth 1970] 154–55), Bernard G. Holland questioned the identification of William Wall as the direct source of Wesley’s “Thoughts Upon Infant Baptism,” though few writers since then have recognized the legitimacy of his claims. As Holland notes, it is possible that Wesley’s “late writer” may have been an individual who had already combined Wall, Watts, and even material of Richard Baxter (from Plain Scripture Proof of Infants’ Churchmembership and Baptism [1651]), but that document has not yet been found. 13. “Thoughts Upon Infant Baptism” in The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, vol. 13 (London: Printed at the Conference Office, Thomas Cordeux 1812) 428–29; cf. The Works of the Late Reverend and Learned Isaac Watts, D.D., vol. 1 (London: Printed for T. and T. Longman et al. 1753) 821; and “Treatise on Baptism,” 1.2–5, Works [J], 10:188–90. 14. “I baptized seven adults, two of them by immersion” (Journal, 21 March 1759, Works, 21:180). 15. J. Hamby Barton, “The Two Versions of the First Edition of John Wesley’s ‘The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America,’ ” MH 23 (1985) 153–58. 16. Letter to Walter Churchey, 20 June 1789, LJW, 8:144–45. 17. “A Letter to the Reverend Dr. Conyers Middleton,” 4 January 1748/49, Works [J], 10:9; and Jones, Free and Candid Disquisitions, 131. According to his journal, Wesley began reading Jones’s book on 15 August 1750. Puritan objections to signation were recorded in an “Admonition to the Parliament” (1572), the “Millenary Petition” (1603), and the “Exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer,” section 18 (1661). 18. “Treatise on Baptism,” 1.1; 3.1, 3; 4.2, 10; Matthew 3:16, NT Notes; and Letter to Gilbert Boyce, 22 May 1750, LJW, 3:35–36. 19. “Treatise on Baptism,” 4.1–10; cf. “Thoughts Upon Infant Baptism,” 1-7. 20. Poetical Works, 11:30, #982. The original printing of the text was in the two-volume Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures, 1762. In Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church of 1849, the final line has been altered to “Let them in thy glory share.” 21. “Treatise on Baptism,” 2.3. 22. Poetical Works, 7:71–72, #62. The text was first published in 1767 as one of the “Occasional Hymns” in the Hymns for the Use of Families, and on Various Occasions and was composed for the baptism of an unidentified girl; later printings of the hymn in America (and in Britain) would substitute masculine pronouns and remove particular verses (for reasons that shall become clear). 23. To trace the full course of the via salutis according to Wesley, see Sermon, “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” 1.3–4, 6, 8–9; 3.9–10, Works, 2:157–60, 166; Sermon, “God’s Love to Fallen Man,” 2.14, Works, 2:434; and “Treatise on Baptism,” 2.4; cf. Sermon, “The Means of Grace.”


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24. “Treatise on Baptism,” 2.1, 4. The statement conveying the certainty of salvation for deceased infants, taken from one of the final rubrics in the Prayer Book’s rite for the public baptism of infants, was kept in the “Treatise,” but omitted from Wesley’s 1784 revision of the rite. 25. Sermon, “The New Birth,” 4.2, Works, 2:197. 26. Wesley quotes from the Catechism in the sermon “The Means of Grace” (2.1, 3, Works, 1:381–82) and the sermon “The New Birth” (4.1, Works, 2:196–97). 27. See Wesley’s sermons “The Marks of the New Birth,” “The Great Privilege of Those That Are Born of God,” “The New Birth,” and “On Sin in Believers.” 28. Bernard Holland regards the two new births as, for Wesley, distinct and unrelated moments of regeneration (Baptism in Early Methodism, 53–68), while Ole E. Borgen, disagreeing with Holland, sees the two new births as components of a synthetic whole in Wesley (John Wesley on the Sacraments: A Theological Study [Nashville: Abingdon 1972] 177–82). See also Robert E. Cushman, “Baptism and the Family of God,” in The Doctrine of the Church, ed. Dow Kirkpatrick (New York: Abingdon 1964) 83–88. 29. Acts 22:16, NT Notes. In A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part 1 (2.4, Works, 11:111), Wesley acknowledges that the Church of England requires candidates of “riper years” to come to the font with both repentance and faith. 30. Journal, 5 February 1760, Works, 21:240. 31. “Come, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Honour the means ordained by thee!”, Works, 7:646–47, #464. A succession of American Methodist hymnals included this hymn, though with not all of the stanzas, and some stanzas received editorial modifications: in several books, “effectuate now the sacred sign” becomes a less instant “effectual make the sacred sign.” 32. Acts 10:47, NT Notes; cf. Sermon, “The New Birth,” 4.2, Works, 2:197; and Journal, 8 November 1774, Works, 22:436. 33. Nevertheless, numerous American (and British) Methodists have insisted that Wesley did not believe in baptismal regeneration. See, for example, the commentaries on infant and adult rites in Nolan Harmon, The Rites and Ritual of Episcopal Methodism, with Particular Reference to the Rituals of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Respectively (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1926). 34. On the former position, see A. Raymond George, “The People Called Methodists—4. The Means of Grace,” in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, vol. 1, ed. Rupert Davies and Gordon Rupp (London: Epworth 1965) 269; on the latter, see Holland, Baptism in Early Methodism, 135. 35. WCA 4 (26 May 1837) 19. This publication (also in 19 May 1837) of Philip Gatch’s manuscript copy of the Minutes for the Conferences of 1773–1779 seems to be the first reproduction of the material. Gatch’s record is the only one to give the full account of the sacramental controversy, since ostensibly the information was purged from the official Minutes; cf. Journal, 29 June 1815, JLFA, 2:783. 36. Journal, 17 January 1776, JLFA, 1:176; cf. Nathan Bangs, The Life of the Rev. Freeborn Garrettson: Compiled from His Printed and Manuscript Journals, and Other Authentic Documents (New York: J. Emory and B. Waugh 1832) 102, 144–45. 37. Ezekiel Cooper, 6 July 1788, Journal, Ms., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL; cf. 27 July 1788, Journal. 38. Journal, 15 December 1797, JLFA, 2:143. 39. Thomas Ware recorded that he baptized the child of a poor man who was unable to pay “the accustomed fee of fifty cents” to his Reformed Dutch pastor (Thomas Ware, Sketches of the Life and Travels of Rev. Thomas Ware [New York: T. Mason and G. Lane 1839] 192–93).

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40. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South kept the restriction about payment in the section “On Baptism” until 1858, when it was dropped entirely. The Methodist Episcopal Church retained the rubric at various locations in the Discipline until it was lost with the 1939 merger. 41. Notes on Chapter 1, section 22, Discipline with Notes, 118. 42. Stith Mead, A General Selection of the Newest and Most Admired Hymns and Spiritual Songs Now in Use (Richmond, VA: Printed by Seaton Grantland 1807) 98–99, #66. William Warren Sweet lists Mead’s book as one of the three most popular songsters during the period 1805–1843 (Religion in the Development of American Culture: 1765–1840 [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1952] 155). A notice on the cover page indicates that the profits from the sale of the work were to be used to decrease the debt on the Lynchburg meetinghouse. 43. The Collection, a doctrinal anthology that went through at least fifteen editions with different publishers during the nineteenth century, separated the “doctrine” from the “discipline” that until 1812 had been combined in one volume. The tracts were removed to provide a Discipline that was “small and cheap.” For a brief history of the Collection and its contents, see Frank Baker, From Wesley to Asbury: Studies in Early American Methodism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 1976) 176–80. 44. George Brown, Recollections of Itinerant Life: Including Early Reminiscences, 4th ed. (Cincinnati: R. W. Carroll 1868) 340. Detailed linguistic analysis of the various Greek terms related to “baptism” and, regarding infant baptism, oikos and oikia—“household”—may be found, for example, in Freeborn G. Hibbard, Christian Baptism: In Two Parts (New York: G. Lane and P. P. Sandford 1841; repr. New York: Carlton and Phillips 1853) Part 2, 11–106; and Thomas O. Summers, Baptism: A Treatise on the Nature, Perpetuity, Subjects, Administrator, Mode, and Use of the Initiating Ordinance of the Christian Church (Richmond: John Early 1853) 78–123, 220–40. 45. George Coles, 4 November 1832, Journal, Ms., Drew University Library, Madison, NJ. 46. Gayle Carlton Felton, This Gift of Water: The Practice and Theology of Baptism among Methodists in America (Nashville: Abingdon 1992) 65–66, 88. 47. See, for example, Henry Slicer, An Appeal to the Candid of All Denominations: In Which the Obligation, Subjects, and Mode of Baptism Are Discussed, 3d ed. (New York: G. Lane and P. P. Sandford 1842) 99–167; Orceneth Fisher, The Christian Sacraments: Or, A Scriptural Exhibition of the Nature, Design, Mode, and Subjects of Christian Baptism, 2d ed. (San Francisco: Whitton, Towne and Co. 1858) 12–80, and History of Immersion, as a Religious Rite, 2d ed. (San Francisco: Whitton, Towne and Co. 1858); John Levington, Scripture Baptism Defended, and Anabaptist Notions Proved to be Anti-Scriptural Novelties (Chicago: Poe and Hitchcock 1866) 19–37; and Daniel D. Whedon, “The Double Baptism,” in Essays, Reviews, and Discourses, ed. J. S. Whedon and D. A. Whedon (New York: Phillips and Hunt 1887; Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe 1887) 216–48. 48. J. H. Potts, Pastor and People; Or, Methodism in the Field (New York: Phillips and Hunt 1879; Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden 1879) 124–25. 49. For example, JGC/MEC, 1868, 218; JGC/MEC, 1880, 222; JGC/MEC, 1884, 325; and JGC/MECS, 1886, 133–34. 50. References to trine immersion practiced through the fourth century are made, without comment, in James A. Clement’s An Exposition of the Pretentions of Baptists to Antiquity; As Viewed from Scripture and History (Nashville: Published for the Author 1881) 156–58. 51. Henry M. Turner, The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity, Or, The Machinery of Methodism (Philadelphia: Publication Department, A. M. E. Church 1885) 220; and JGC/ MEC, 1908, 485.


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52. Pastoral Address, JGC/MEC, 1840, 160; and Centennial History of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Schenectady, New York, ed. William C. Kitchin, Benjamin H. Ripton, and Fred Winslow Adams (Schenectady, NY: Official Board of First Methodist Episcopal Church 1907) 78. 53. “Welfare of Ohio Conference Methodism,” in Ohio Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Held at Portsmouth, Ohio, September 29, 1875 (Cincinnati: Western Methodist Book Concern 1875) 223–24. 54. For example, Leonidas Rosser, Baptism: Its Nature, Obligation, Mode, Subjects, and Benefits (Richmond: Published by the Author 1853) 405–414; Samuel Gregg, Infant Church Membership: Or, The Spiritual and Permanent Character of the Abrahamic Covenant (Cincinnati: Swormstedt and Poe 1854) 360–70; and G. H. Hayes, Children in Christ; Or, The Relation of Children to the Atonement, the Ground of Their Right to Christian Baptism (Cincinnati: Elm Street Printing 1884) 201–39. 55. For example, Ware, Sketches of the Life and Travels of Rev. Thomas Ware, 158; and Josephus Anderson, Our Church: A Manual for Members and Probationers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, ed. Thomas O. Summers (Nashville: Southern Methodist Publishing House 1860) 98–99. 56. Rosser, Baptism, 386. 57. This, for example, was the position espoused by John Miley in his influential Systematic Theology, vol. 2, Library of Biblical and Theological Literature, ed. George R. Crooks and John F. Hurst, vol. 6 (New York: Hunt and Eaton 1894; Cincinnati: Cranston and Curts 1894) 409. 58. Fisher, History of Immersion, 145–71, 183–84. 59. Summers, Baptism, 74, 77. 60. Rosser, Baptism, 379–80. 61. JGC/MEC, 1872, 272–73; and JGC/MEC, 1876, 94. 62. So insisted Bishop Stephen M. Merrill in A Digest of Methodist Law; Or, Helps in the Administration of the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, rev. ed. (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1904; New York: Eaton and Mains 1904) 141–43, 281. 63. Every Discipline of the Methodist Protestant Church, from its inception, included rubrics in the baptismal rites that imply the normativity of baptism in the church building with the congregation present. 64. For Hibbard’s contributions to baptismal theology and to the baptismal rites, see Charles R. Hohenstein, “The Revisions of the Rites of Baptism in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1784–1939” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame 1990) 118–21. 65. Report of the Commission on Worship to the General Conference of the Methodist Church, 1960 (Nashville: Methodist Publishing House 1960) 18–19. 66. Richard Watson, Theological Institutes: Or, A View of the Evidences, Doctrines, Morals, and Institutions of Christianity, ed. Thomas O. Summers (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1903) 700–703. 67. J. R. Graves, The Great Iron Wheel; Or, Republicanism Backwards and Christianity Reversed, 7th ed. (Nashville: Graves, Marks, and Rutland 1855; New York: Sheldon, Lamport, and Co. 1855) 419–27; and Slicer, An Appeal to the Candid of All Denominations, 9, 111. In his critical response to Graves, William G. Brownlow remarkably does not comment directly on the accusations of Methodist advocacy of baptismal regeneration (The Great Iron Wheel Examined; Or, Its False Spokes Extracted [Nashville: Published for the Author 1856]). 68. Hibbard, Christian Baptism, Part 1, 277–78, 328. 69. A. A. Jimeson, Notes on the Twenty-Five Articles of Religion as Received and Taught by Methodists in the United States, 3d ed. (Cincinnati: Applegate, Pounsford, and Co. 1868) 257, 284.

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70. Summers, Baptism, 124–25. Yet elsewhere, Summers, in defining sacraments, posits that sacraments are “an instrument to convey the grace which it represents . . . he who worthily receives baptism, receives with it and by it the sanctifying grace which it signifies” (Systematic Theology: A Complete Body of Wesleyan Arminian Divinity, vol. 2, rev. John J. Tigert [Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1888] 295). 71. Rosser, Baptism, 21; see JGC/MEC, 1856, 292–93. 72. William Capers, Catechism for the Use of the Methodist Missions, and Infant Classes in Sunday-Schools, Part First, rev. T. O. Summers (Nashville: Southern Methodist Publishing House 1861) 15. 73. The Methodist Episcopal Church, which in 1864 dropped the reference to sanctifying water from the opening prayer only, included this hymn in their 1878 hymnal under the revealing title “Rites inefficacious.” The second reference to sanctifying water in the prayer for the candidates survived until 1916 when the entire prayer was deleted. 74. Summers, Baptism, 154. 75. On the importance of covenant theology, particularly for southern Methodism, see E. Brooks Holifield, The Gentleman Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795–1860 (Durham: Duke University Press 1978) 155–85. 76. H. Shelton Smith, Changing Conceptions of Original Sin: A Study in American Theology since 1750 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1955) 164–66. 77. Address of the Bishops, JGC/MEC, 1860, 318. 78. For comments on the significance and meaning of the 1864 formulations, see R. J. Cooke, History of the Ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church; With a Commentary on Its Offices, 3d ed. (Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 1900; New York: Eaton and Mains 1900) 192–222. Hohenstein, in “The Revisions of the Rites of Baptism in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1784–1939,” details the alterations made for the 1864, and for the later 1916 and 1932 revisions. 79. By the end of the nineteenth century, the opening prayer had been reworded to imply that regeneration had occurred prior to baptism, thus casting a different meaning upon the opening address. 80. Robert E. Chiles, Theological Transition in American Methodism: 1790–1935 (New York: Abingdon 1965) 65. For the conservative response, see, for example, George W. Wilson, Methodist Theology vs. Methodist Theologians: A Review of Several Methodist Writers (Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 1904). 81. “Baptism and Regeneration,” The Methodist 18 (27 October 1877) 675. 82. Thomas O. Summers, “The Ritual,” MQR 19 (April 1882) 357; and James A. Burrow, “That Methodist Creed,” MQR 58 (July 1909) 532. 83. Thomas B. Neely, The Revised Ritual of 1916 (Philadelphia: E. A. Yeakel, Agent; Methodist Episcopal Book Store 1920) 102. Neely, an expert on denominational polity, also objected to the process by which the new ritual was approved: on account of extended debate at the General Conference, the matter was referred to the bishops, who then printed the revision without the informed approval of the entire body of denominational representatives; and because alterations in the ritual effectively created a new doctrinal standard, the denomination’s first restrictive rule was violated since constitutional protocols had not been followed. 84. JGC/MC, 1960, 192. 85. Robert W. Goodloe, The Sacraments in Methodism (Nashville: Methodist Publishing House 1953) 106, 113, 116–17; and Elmer L. Harvey, “Do We Have Infant Baptism?” The Pastor 11 (January 1948) 35. 86. Report of the Commission on Worship to the General Conference of the Methodist Church, 1960, 19–20.


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87. An alternate text, drawn from the former Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren traditions, is provided in the 1992 book as well. For a detailed history of the development of the United Methodist rite, see Robert B. Peiffer, “How Contemporary Liturgies Evolve: The Revision of United Methodist Liturgical Texts (1968–1988)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame 1992), esp. 271–91. For a discussion of the changes in baptismal theology by the principal author of the United Methodist baptismal rites, see Laurence Hull Stookey, Baptism: Christ’s Act in the Church (Nashville: Abingdon 1982), esp. 133–74. 88. See, for example, Ted A. Campbell, “Baptism and New Birth: Evangelical Theology and the United Methodist ‘Baptismal Covenant I,’ ” Quarterly Review 10 (1990) 34–45; and Charles R. Hohenstein, “New Birth Through Water and the Spirit: A Reply to Ted A. Campbell,” Quarterly Review 11 (1991) 103–112. 89. By Water and the Spirit: A United Methodist Understanding of Baptism (Nashville: Discipleship Resources 1996) 12. 90. Nathan Bangs, An Original Church of Christ: Or, A Scriptural Vindication of the Orders and Powers of the Ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 2d ed., rev. (New York: T. Mason and G. Lane 1837) 322. Bangs’s comment appears in a chapter where he refutes the Protestant Episcopal Church’s claim of practicing “scriptural” confirmation. 91. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South dropped the specified six-month period of probation in 1866; the Methodist Episcopal Church did so in 1908. 92. Graves, The Great Iron Wheel, 352; and the Autobiography of Peter Cartwright (repr. Nashville: Abingdon 1984) 304. 93. See chapter 5, pp. 143–48. 94. T. F. R. Mercein, “The Relation of Baptized Infants to the Church,” MR 37 (January 1855) 101–102. 95. “Introduction of Children into the Church,” MQR 15 (January 1861) 81–84; cf. “Introduction of Children into the Church,” MQR 14 (October 1860) 505–15. 96. Thomas O. Summers, Commentary on the Ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Nashville: A. H. Redford for the M. E. Church, South 1873) 55. 97. “The Wesleyan Condition of Church Membership—Its Modifications,” MR 65 (July 1883) 491–513. Inquiries raised about the constitutionality of the ritual question at the 1920 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church were meticulously addressed by Bishop Thomas B. Neely in The Only Condition (Philadelphia: E. A. Yeakel 1920). The question was altered in 1924 to a less sectarian—and less elaborated—“Do you receive and profess the Christian Faith as contained in the New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ?” 98. For the different viewpoints, see Felton, This Gift of Water, 127–31. However, all four of these factors were often accentuated as essentials in the guidebooks for probationers and new members. See, for example, S. Olin Garrison, Probationer’s Hand-Book: Religious, Historical, Doctrinal, Disciplinary, and Practical, rev. ed. (New York: Eaton and Mains 1883; Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 1883); and J. E. Godbey, The Methodist Church Member’s Manual: A Hand Book for Every Methodist (St. Louis: South-Western Methodist Publishers 1886). 99. B. T. Roberts, “Church Membership Qualifications,” The Earnest Christian 2 (September 1861) 262. 100. L. F. Sensabaugh, “Membership in the Christian Church,” MQR 78 (July 1929) 401–405. 101. Report of the Commission on Worship to the General Conference of the Methodist Church, 1960, 26–27. 102. “United Methodist Church [USA],” in Churches Respond to BEM, vol. 2, ed. Max Thurian, Faith and Order Paper 132 (Geneva: World Council of Churches 1986) 179–80.

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By “modes,” the bishops here appear to mean entire patterns of practice, not simply the method for the application of the water.

5. The Lord’s Supper 1. See The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 3: Hymns and Poems for Church and World, ed. S. T. Kimbrough, Jr., and Oliver A. Beckerlegge (Nashville: Kingswood 1992) 81–101. 2. Wesley’s sermon “The Duty of Constant Communion,” published in 1787, was an abridgment of an extract Wesley made in 1732 of Non-Juror Robert Nelson’s The Great Duty of Frequenting the Christian Sacrifice. The sermon was prefaced with a note “To the Reader” in which Wesley claims that his opinions expressed therein had not changed in fifty-five years (Works, 3:428). See also NT Notes for Matthew 6:11 and Acts 2:46; and the unpublished “On a Weekly Sacrament” by Charles Wesley, printed in John C. Bowmer, The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in Early Methodism (London: Dacre 1951) 225–32. Cf. the final rubrics in the Communion rites of William Whiston (The Liturgy of the Church of England, Reduc’d Nearer to the Primitive Standard, 1713) and the Non-Juror Thomas Deacon (A Compleat Collection of Devotions, 1734), which would have been familiar to Wesley and which carry an identical instruction: that “all the faithful are to frequent [the Eucharist] constantly.” 3. Preface to the Journal, and Journal, 24 May 1738, Works, 18:127, 244. 4. “Directions Given to the Band Societies, 25 December 1744,” 3.1, Works, 9:79. 5. Letter to “Our Brethren in America,” 10 September 1784, LJW, 7:238–39. 6. See Jesse Lee, A Short History of the Methodists, in the United States of America; Beginning in 1766, and Continued Till 1809 (Baltimore: Magill and Clime 1810) 41, 47; Minutes MC (1773), 5. 7. See the note dated 9 September 1784 that was included as a preface in many copies of the Sunday Service. 8. See the reply to Question 77, A Roman Catechism, Faithfully Drawn Out of the Allowed Writings of the Church of Rome. With a Reply Thereto, Works [J], 10:124. Wesley also struck from the General Confession the phrase “the burthen of them [our misdoings] is intolerable” (see Sermon, “The Means of Grace,” 3.11, Works, 1:389; and Sermon, “Sermon on the Mount, II,” 3.17, Works, 1:507). 9. From 1784 to 1939, the Methodist Episcopal Church would instruct in the Discipline that while kneeling was preferred, persons could also legitimately receive the sacrament while standing or sitting. The preachers meeting at Fluvanna (1779) had likewise determined that the mode of reception was purely a matter of conscience. 10. For example, William Whiston in The Liturgy of the Church of England, Reduc’d Nearer to the Primitive Standard (1713), and the 1764 Scottish Communion rite. 11. On this subject, Bishop Nolan Harmon remarked: “I recall once when meeting with the Commission on Unity of the Protestant Episcopal Church to talk about working out intercommunion, we found our Episcopal compeers astonished to learn that we Methodists had kept the Church of England’s office for the solemnization of the Lord’s Supper, whilst they had followed the Scottish Liturgy in the service they have. ‘Is it possible,’ one of these brethren asked, ‘that you have kept the Church of England’s office as it has always been?’ ‘Yes,’ I took pleasure in replying, ‘it is a case where the illegitimate daughter is more like the Queen, her mother, than is the Princess of the blood royal!’ ” (Nolan B. Harmon, “John Wesley’s ‘Sunday Service’ and its American Revisions,” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 39 [June 1974] 143).


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12. The Pocket Hymn Book appears to be a conflation by American editors of two sources, John Wesley’s A Pocket Hymn Book for the Use of Christians of All Denominations (1785) and Robert Spence of York’s A Pocket Hymn-Book, Designed as a Constant Companion for the Pious (1785), but the designation of “sacramental” is unique to this collection. The earliest known copy is from 1786 (New York: Printed by W. Ross) and is identified as the fifth edition, which suggests an earlier printing, possibly 1785. See Carlton R. Young, Companion to the United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: Abingdon 1993) 98–105. 13. An example of usage may be evident from the contents of a manuscript sermon outline book by Philip Gatch, possibly dating from the 1770s, that includes fifteen hymns copied by hand from the Wesleys’ collection; see Lester Ruth, A Little Heaven Below: Worship at Early Methodist Quarterly Meetings (Nashville: Kingswood 2000) 140 n. 146. The classic study of the Communion hymns is J. Ernest Rattenbury, The Eucharistic Hymns of John and Charles Wesley (London: Epworth 1948). 14. From the hymn “Jesu, at whose supreme command” in Hymns on the Lord’s Supper (Bristol: Printed by Felix Farley 1745) #30, and in A Pocket Hymn Book, Designed as a Constant Companion for the Pious (New York: Printed by W. Ross 1786) 221. The other eight Communion hymns in the “sacramental” section of the 1786 Pocket Hymn Book were “In that sad memorable night” (HLS #1; PHB, p. 217); “Let all who truly bear” (HLS #4; PHB, p. 218); “Who is this that comes from far” (HLS #17; PHB, p. 222); “Rock of Israel, cleft for me” (HLS #27; PHB, p. 219); “Author of our salvation, thee” (HLS #28; PHB, p. 220); “O Thou, who this mysterious bread” (HLS #29; PHB, p. 221); “Jesu, dear redeeming Lord (HLS #33; PHB, p. 223); “Jesu, we thus obey” (HLS #81; PHB, p. 223). Snippets from these hymns will be quoted in the text without direct attribution; longer portions of hymns will be cited in the text with the HLS number. 15. From the hymn “Happy the souls to Jesus join’d,” HLS #96; PHB, p. 123, in the section “Rejoicing.” 16. From the hymm “God of all-redeeming grace,” HLS #193; PHB p. 81, in the section “Petition.” 17. The 1784 Discipline (1785, Question 44.2); and Discipline 1787 (Section 20); and Ezekiel Cooper, 11 May 1788, Journal, Ms., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL. 18. Ezekiel Cooper, 28 June 1789, Journal, Ms. 19. Methodist preacher Richard Boardman served Communion during a Maryland quarterly meeting in 1772 (JLFA, 1:60), as did Philip Gatch at a quarterly meeting north of the James River (Virginia) in 1779 (Nelson Reed, 31 July 1779, Journal, Ts., Methodist Historical Society, Baltimore, MD). Thomas Rankin, in a diary entry dated 31 October 1775, noted that for the “quarter day for Alexandria circuit” the sacrament was given by “Mr. Griffiths, the clergyman” to “as many as choosed to receive it” (“The Diary of the Revd. Thomas Rankin,” Ts., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL. 20. Thomas Ware, Sketches of the Life and Travels of Rev. Thomas Ware (New York: T. Mason and G. Lane 1839) 115. The 1784 Discipline (1785, Question 33) and that published in 1786 (Question 32) noted that “No Helper, or even Deacon, shall on any pretense, at any time whatsoever, administer the Lord’s Supper.” The spirit of this rule would continue, for roughly a century, in later editions of the Discipline. 21. William Wade sees the 1792 changes as a significant break with Methodist praxis since 1784 (which he considers to have been a weekly Eucharist) and fingers Bishop Asbury as the source of apparent waning interest in the sacrament (“A History of Public Worship in the Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church, South from 1784 to 1905” [Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame 1981] 115–206). In fact, there is no evidence

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that pastoral circumstances in these early years ever allowed American Methodists to develop a pattern of weekly Communion in a given congregation or society. 22. WCA 4 (26 May 1837) 19. 23. Wesley was known to have abbreviated the Prayer Book’s eucharistic liturgy when “straitened for time” (see “Some Remarks on Mr. Hill’s ‘Review of all the Doctrines Taught by Mr. John Wesley,’ ” Works [J], 10:411). On the other hand, the value he set on the Prayer of Consecration is demonstrated by his instruction, already noted, that the prayer be repeated in its entirety if more bread or wine were needed for Communion. 24. Freeborn Garrettson, Substance of the Semi-Centennial Sermon, Before the New-York Annual Conference, at Its Session, May, 1826 (New York: N. Bangs and J. Emory, for the Methodist Episcopal Church 1827) 26; cf. Notes on Article 22, Discipline with Notes, 27; and JGC/MEC (1824), 298: “In the administration of the ordinances some use the form in the Discipline, some mutilate it, and others wholly neglect it.” 25. Such is the description given in James B. Finley, Autobiography of James B. Finley; Or, Pioneer Life in the West, ed. W. P. Strickland (Cincinnati: Printed at the Methodist Book Concern for the Author 1856) 401. The hymn sung on that occasion was “Glory to God on high, Our peace is made with Heaven,” a hymn found in the sacrament section of several early nineteenth-century Methodist Episcopal hymnals. It was not unknown for some elders to reduce the Prayer of Consecration itself to the Words of Institution—a move totally out of line with Wesley. 26. “[Constitution] and Proposed Plan for the New Denomination to be called United Societies of the People commonly called Methodists, late in connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church,” Ms., 1801, in the “Book of Antiquities,” St. George’s United Methodist Church Archives, Philadelphia, PA. 27. Phrases from the Prayer of Humble Access, the Prayer of Consecration, and the PostCommunion Prayer are spliced into the text in the first three paragraphs. 28. HLS #16. The hymn text displays familiarity with Apostolic Constitutions, book 8.12.39, and the invocation there of the Spirit as the “witness” of Christ’s sufferings. See Geoffrey Wainwright, “ ‘Our Elder Brethren Join’: The Wesleys’ Hymns on the Lord’s Supper and the Patristic Revival in England,” Proceedings of the Charles Wesley Society 1 (1994) 27. 29. Benjamin Lakin, 9 October 1809, Journal, Ms. on microfilm, Washington University Library, St. Louis, MO. 30. For example, Journals of the Rev. Thomas Morrell, ed. Michael J. McKay (Rutland, VT: Academy Books, for the Historical Society, Northern New Jersey Conference, United Methodist Church 1984) 32; Charles Giles, Pioneer: A Narrative of the Nativity, Experience, Travels, and Ministerial Labours of Rev. Charles Giles (New York: G. Lane and P. P. Sandford 1844) 259–60; and George Coles, 11 April 1820, Journal, Ms., Drew University Library, Madison, NJ. 31. Life and Observations of Rev. E. F. Newell (Worcester: C. W. Ainsworth 1847) 158. 32. Adam Clarke, A Discourse on the Nature and Design of the Eucharist, or Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper (New York: G. Lane and P. P. Sandford 1842) 89, 98–99, 134, 142. The British Methodist Clarke first published his study in 1808 (which appeared in an American edition in 1812), and revised it in 1814. 33. “O Thou eternal Victim” (HLS #5) was included in an abbreviated version in A Selection of Hymns, from Various Authors, Designed as a Supplement to the Methodist Pocket Hymn-Book (New York: John Wilson and Daniel Hitt 1808) and appeared throughout the first half of the nineteenth century in hymn books of several Methodist denominations either in the abbreviated form or with the full text (as in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church [New York: N. Bangs and T. Mason 1821]) given here.


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34. Charles Wesley’s hymn “Victim Divine, thy grace we claim” (HLS #116) was one of two hymns (#123) from the section “The Holy Eucharist as it implies a sacrifice” in the Hymns on the Lord’s Supper introduced into American Methodist hymnals during the years 1847 to 1889. 35. Richard Watson, Theological Institutes: Or, A View of the Evidences, Doctrines, Morals, and Institutions of Christianity, ed. Thomas O. Summers (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1903) 734. 36. Methodists denied that the rite produced any physical change in the elements, but some concluded that setting them apart for sacred purposes required that they be respected: just prior to the distribution at a Communion service in 1834, James Gilruth “felt [himself] in an awkward situation” having spilled a portion of the wine. “But instantly reflecting that it was accidental I calmed My Mind & proceeded with the service as tho nothing had happened” (“The Journal of James Gilruth, 1834–1835 [2 November 1834],” in Religion on the American Frontier, 1783–1840, vol. 4: The Methodists, ed. William Warren Sweet [Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1946] 406). 37. From the hymn “Glory to God on high,” by English Independent Joseph Hart, found in the 1808 Selection of Hymns and other early Methodist Episcopal hymnals; see note 25. 38. “Acts of Faith,” The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen (repr. Nashville: Abingdon 1960) 42–43. 39. Pastoral Address, JGC/MEC, 1856, 301. 40. J. G., “The Sacrament,” CAJ (NY) 37 (20 February 1862) 59. 41. Orceneth Fisher addressed this topic as the fortieth question in his Sacramental Catechism. Part Second. The Lord’s Supper: Or, A Scriptural View of the Nature, Design, Perpetuity & Subjects of the Holy Communion of the Church of Christ (San Francisco: Whitton, Towne, and Co. 1858). 42. Josephus Anderson, Our Church: A Manual for Members and Probationers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, ed. Thomas O. Summers (Nashville: Southern Methodist Publishing House 1860) 221. 43. Although the Methodist Protestants kept their legislation only until 1877, the Methodist Episcopal Church retained theirs until 1939. 44. Samuel Luckey, The Lord’s Supper (New York: Phillips and Hunt 1859; Cincinnati: Walden and Stowe 1859) 34–54. 45. Ibid., 180. 46. Thomas O. Summers, Commentary on the Ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Nashville: A. H. Redford for the M. E. Church, South 1873) 23. 47. Such, at least, was the interpretation given by R. J. Cooke in History of the Ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church; With a Commentary on Its Offices, 3d ed. (Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 1900; New York: Eaton and Mains 1900) 255. Another Methodist, a member of the faculty at Drew Theological Seminary, would describe this “dislocation” (which he attributed to Wesley) as “a most inappropriate position” (J. A. Faulkner, “Where Did We Get Our Lord’s Supper Service?” MR 93 [November 1911] 886). 48. The Gloria in excelsis was altered in 1864, but restored to its original form in 1868. 49. J. C. Havemeyer, “The Communion Service,” The Methodist 22 (9 April 1881) 4. 50. JGC/MEC, 1932, 275. 51. Ibid., 275, 1515–16. Methodists knew much of the literature of the day, including, apparently, a proposed eucharistic rite produced by German Lutheran Rudolf Otto (Religious Essays, trans. Brian Lunn [London: Oxford University Press 1931] 53–67). Two years after the revision, Methodist New Testament scholar Clarence Tucker Craig would observe that his denomination, on the subject of the Lord’s Supper, had “become conscious of our barren

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services and unpsychological orders of worship” (We Have an Altar [New York: Abingdon 1934] 57). 52. For example, “The Ritual for the Pews,” CAJ (NY) 39 (8 December 1864) 388; and, closer to the actual revision, James Albert Bebee, The Pastoral Office (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1923) 107; and J. Hastie Odgers and Edward G. Schutz, The Technique of Public Worship (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1928) 227–29. The Commandments, in litany form, were supplied in the reproduction of material from the 1784 Sunday Service (including an outline of the Communion rite) in Charles S. Harrower’s Select Psalms Arranged for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church by John Wesley, with Other Selections and the Order for the Sacraments and Occasional Services of the Church (New York: Hunt and Eaton 1891; Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe 1891), his The Sunday Service Recommended to the Societies in America by the Rev. John Wesley Edited by Comparison with the Public Book of Prayers and Services of the Wesleyan Church Including Select Psalms with the Order for the Sacraments and Other Occasional Services According to the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York: Eaton and Mains 1893; Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 1893; also New York: Hunt and Eaton 1894; Cincinnati: Cranston and Curts 1894), and in the 1905 Methodist Hymnal. 53. The Summary of the Law was found in the 1718 eucharistic liturgy of the NonJurors, which would have been familiar to Wesley and to the compilers of the 1789 American Book of Common Prayer. Harrower included it in Select Psalms following the Decalogue. 54. Jeremy Taylor’s revision of the eucharistic rite in his Collection of Offices (1658) used the Beatitudes in this location, as did the authors of the so-called “Liturgy of Comprehension” (1689), who were familiar with Taylor’s work. The litany response of the 1689 Beatitudes is similar to the Methodist refrain; yet the source for the Methodists probably was an early twentieth-century Presbyterian liturgical book, perhaps the 1906 Book of Common Worship of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. 55. John W. Suter, ed., Devotional Offices for General Use (New York and London: Century 1928) Foreword, 85–86. Suter abridged this material from an “Act of Faith” provided in both daily offices contained in A New Prayer Book (London: Oxford University Press 1923), which was a collection of liturgical proposals drafted for a revision of the 1662 Prayer Book but that were never approved. 56. JGC/MEC, 1932, 1515. 57. For example, E. B. Chappell, The Church and Its Sacraments (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1928) 99–105. Chappell’s book was required reading for the Church, South’s course of study program for pastors. 58. Proper prefaces were included for Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, and Whitsunday. Harrower, in his Sunday Service (1894), had reprinted Wesley’s proper prefaces for Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Whitsunday, and the Feast of Trinity. 59. See, for example, Paul S. Sanders, “The Heart of the Liturgy,” The Pastor 17 (March 1954) 20–22; for what probably was the more general Methodist view, see Robert W. Goodloe, The Sacraments in Methodism (Nashville: Methodist Publishing House 1953) 50–53. 60. Romey P. Marshall, “A Proposed Order for Holy Communion,” The Pastor 15 (April 1952) 13–16. Among the new components included were a prayer for the whole state of Christ’s Church, an epiclesis upon the elements, and the use of the Agnus Dei. Sources Marshall admitted to using were, in addition to the 1945 Methodist ritual, the 1549 Prayer Book, W. S. Porter’s The English Eucharist, and Mar Eshai Shimum’s The Liturgy of the Church of the East. 61. JGC/MC, 1960, 190–92. 62. Report of the Commission on Worship to the General Conference of the Methodist Church, 1960 (Nashville: Methodist Publishing House 1960) 32–33.


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63. The contents of the brief form were stipulated by rubric as the substance of the service at the Communion of the sick. 64. Massey Shepherd to Lawrence Snow, 15 March 1964, Order of St. Luke Collection, Drew University Library, Madison, NJ. 65. The component parts of the historic Antiochene anaphora, in sequence, are: introductory dialogue, preface (of praise and thanks), Sanctus, continuation of the thanksgiving, institution narrative, anamnesis, oblation, epiclesis, diptychs or intercessions, and the concluding doxology. 66. The United Methodist Church, The Book of Services (Nashville: United Methodist Publishing House 1985) 8–9. 67. Texts of the manuscript drafts are found as appendix A in Robert B. Peiffer, “How Contemporary Liturgies Evolve: The Revision of United Methodist Liturgical Texts (1968– 1988)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame 1992) 320–75. 68. The principal author of the 1972 text, James F. White, summarizes the process of producing the United Methodist rite in “United Methodist Eucharistic Prayers: 1965–1985,” in New Eucharistic Prayers: An Ecumenical Study of Their Development and Structure, ed. Frank C. Senn (New York: Paulist 1987) 80–95. For a fuller description, see Peiffer, “How Contemporary Liturgies Evolve.” 69. The 1972 “Great Thanksgiving” included the novel sentence “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we experience anew the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.” This was an interesting attempt to convey in contemporary and perhaps characteristically Methodist language the sense of the biblical anamnesis. It was, however, abandoned in the revision approved in 1984 for fear that it was too subjective. See James F. White, “Response to the Berakah Award: Making Changes in United Methodist Euchology,” Worship 57 (July 1983) 343–44. 70. The structure of the Ante-Communion prior to the Invitation is as follows: Greeting (Scripture sentences), Hymn, Opening Prayer (the Collect for Purity), the Lord’s Prayer, an Act of Praise (Gloria in excelsis), Scripture lessons (interspersed with a Psalm, hymn, or anthem), Sermon, Response to the Word (a hymn, creed, act of Christian discipleship, etc.), and a Pastoral Prayer or a responsive Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church. 71. The pattern of the new order of service, as printed in the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s Book of Worship (1984), is as follows: Salutation, Hymn of Praise, Prayer of Purification (Collect for Purity), Collect, Anthem, Old Testament Lesson, New Testament Lesson, Gloria Patri, Announcements, Choral Selection, Prayer of Intercession, Choral Response, Hymn of Preparation, Sermon, Invitation to Christian Discipleship, Affirmation of Faith (Apostles’ Creed), Offertory, Presentation of the Offering (1 Chronicles 29:14), the Peace, General Confession (older form, altered), Prayer of Pardon (older form, slightly altered), Great Thanksgiving (introductory dialogue, Common Preface enlarged, Sanctus), Consecration (older form, altered), Lord’s Prayer, Prayer of Humble Access (older form, altered), Communion of the Ministers, Invitation (older form, slightly altered), Communion of the People, Prayer of Thanksgiving, Hymn of Fellowship, Nunc Dimittis, and Benediction. 72. Journal, 27–28 June 1740, Works, 19:158–59; cf. Letter to John Simpson, 28 November 1774, LJW, 6:124. 73. Journal, 22–26 June 1740, Works, 19:153–58; “An Answer to the Rev. Mr. Church’s Remarks on the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s Last Journal” (1745), 2.1–2, 3.3, Works, 9:82–85, 112; and Letter to Richard Tompson, 25 July 1755, Works, 26:575; cf. Sermon, “The Means of Grace,” Works, 1:378–97. 74. Letter from the Revd. Ralph Erskine, 31 January 1741, Works, 26:48.

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75. According to John Bennet’s Minutes of Conference (1747), two answers were given to the question “How shall we keep off unwary [unworthy] communicants?”: “by being exactly careful whom we admit into the Society”; and “by giving notes to none but those who come to us on the days appointed in each quarter” (John Bennet’s Copy of the Minutes of the Conferences of 1744, 1745, 1747 and 1748; with Wesley’s Copy of those for 1746, Publications of the Wesley Historical Society, no. 1 [London: Charles H. Kelly 1896] 49). 76. This legislation requiring examination and tokens had previously been rescinded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1848, and by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1854. 77. Finley, Autobiography, 401–402; cf. Life and Observations of Rev. E. F. Newell, 39–40. 78. Jonas Oramel Peck, The Revival and the Pastor (New York: Eaton and Mains 1894; Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 1894) 259–63. 79. Giles, Pioneer, 241; and Alfred Brunson, A Western Pioneer: Or, Incidents of the Life and Times of Rev. Alfred Brunson, A. M., D. D., vol. 1 (Cincinnati: Walden and Stowe 1880; New York: Phillips and Hunt 1880) 58–59; cf. Fisher, Sacramental Catechism. Part Second. The Lord’s Supper, Questions 53–54. 80. Legislation from 1792 associated the Friday fast with the quarterly meeting as a whole and not specifically with the sacrament, though some Methodists apparently linked the fast to the sacrament; see Minton Thrift, Memoir of the Rev. Jesse Lee. With Extracts from His Journals (New York: N. Bangs and T. Mason 1823) 207 [12 December 1794]. A failed proposal to the 1876 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church had sought a direct connection between the fast and the sacrament (JGC/MEC 1876, 139). 81. Freeborn G. Hibbard (Christian Baptism: In Two Parts [New York: G. Lane and P. P. Sandford 1841; repr. New York: Carlton and Phillips 1853] Part 2, 184–89) insisted that, as a church ordinance, the Lord’s table was open only to church members. Similar views were held by Orceneth Fisher (Sacramental Catechism. Part Second. The Lord’s Supper, Questions 42–44); Daniel Whedon (“The Lord’s Supper Only to the Lord’s People”; a Review of N. Burwash’s The Relation of Children to the Fall, the Atonement, and the Church, MR 65 [October 1883] 760); Henry M. Turner (The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity, Or, The Machinery of Methodism [Philadelphia: Publication Department, A. M. E. Church 1885] 224, 275); and S. Olin Garrison (Probationer’s Hand-Book: Religious, Historical, Doctrinal, Disciplinary, and Practical, rev. ed. [New York: Eaton and Mains 1883; Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 1883] 22–23). Thomas O. Summers allowed for limited exceptions to baptism (Systematic Theology: A Complete Body of Wesleyan Arminian Divinity, vol. 2, rev. John J. Tigert [Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1888] 409–10). See also Life and Observations of Rev. E. F. Newell, 69–70. 82. Leonidas Rosser, Open Communion (Richmond, VA: Published by the Author 1858) 42–59. 83. JGC/MEC, 1852, 25; cf. JGC/MEC, 1868, 107–108, 165–66. 84. Bostwick Hawley, Manual of Methodism; Or, The Doctrines, General Rules, and Usages of the Methodist Episcopal Church, with Scripture Proofs and Explanations (New York: Carlton and Lanahan 1869; Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden 1869) 159. James Porter, in arguing that baptism was not a prerequisite to the Supper, nevertheless granted that baptism prior to Communion was “a prudent arrangement” (A Compendium of Methodism: Embracing the History and Present Condition of Its Various Branches in all Countries, 15th ed. [New York: Carlton and Porter 1851] 290–91). 85. J. R. Graves, The Great Iron Wheel; Or, Republicanism Backwards and Christianity Reversed, 7th ed. (Nashville: Graves, Marks, and Rutland 1855; New York: Sheldon, Lamport and Co. 1855) 369; The Graves-Ditzler: Or, Great Carrollton Debate, on the Mode of Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, Infant Baptism, Believers’ Baptism, Church of Christ, Final Perseverance of


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Saints, between J. R. Graves, LL.D., and Jacob Ditzler, DD. (Memphis, TN: Southern Baptist Publication Society 1876) 817, also 807–907; and Rosser, Open Communion, 22–42. Graves the Baptist delighted in citing against the Methodists one of their own, F. G. Hibbard, who had vehemently argued for a baptismal prerequisite (see note 81 above). 86. Garrettson, Substance of the Semi-Centennial Sermon, 32. 87. Wesley admitted children to the table after instruction and personal interview (Journal, 29 May 1737; and Journal, October 2 1784). Summers (in Systematic Theology, 2:410) stated that “the Lord’s supper requires repentance, faith, obedience—a ratification of the threefold vow of baptism—and a discerning of the Lord’s body and blood, of which infants are incapable; hence the folly, not to say the profanity, of giving infants the sacred symbols.” Along this line, it was proposed that Communion serve for older children as “the symbol of their confirmation” and “the beginning of their full membership” (“Introduction of Children into the Church,” MQR 14 [October 1860] 512). 88. Benjamin Lakin, Sermon 3 (On Baptism), in Religion on the American Frontier, 1783– 1840, 4:728. 89. Leonidas Rosser, Baptism: Its Nature, Obligation, Mode, Subjects, and Benefits (Richmond, VA: Published by the Author 1853) 388–90. This was likewise the opinion of Henry Slicer, who also found infant Communion to be “an innovation, the result of superstition” (An Appeal to the Candid of All Denominations: In Which the Obligation, Subjects, and Mode of Baptism Are Discussed, 3d ed. [New York: G. Lane and P. P. Sandford 1842] 51–54). 90. Hibbard, Christian Baptism, Part 1, 281. 91. Leonard Smith, 26 July 1867, Journal, Ts., Archives, Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference, United Methodist Church, Bloomington, IL. 92. Rosser, Open Communion, 40–41; see also the Autobiography of Peter Cartwright (repr. Nashville: Abingdon 1984) 81–82. 93. William G. Brownlow, The Great Iron Wheel Examined; Or, Its False Spokes Extracted (Nashville: Published for the Author 1856) 178; also Rosser, Open Communion, 170–79; and Z. A. Parker, The People’s Hand-Book or Immersion, Infant Baptism, Close Communion, and Plan of Salvation; Or, Justification by Water versus Justification by Faith, rev. ed. (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1893) 116–34. The ecclesiological assumptions begged by these writers were not addressed. 94. For example, Graves, The Great Iron Wheel, 470–99. 95. T. Spicer, “Love-Feasts,” CAJ (NY) 13 (23 November 1838) 1. 96. The [Duke] Memorial Church Messenger 1 (July 1916) 171. 97. Henry C. Sheldon, System of Christian Doctrine (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1903; New York: Eaton and Mains 1903) 531. 98. Gilbert T. Rowe, The Meaning of Methodism: A Study in Christian Religion (Nashville: Cokesbury 1926) 28. 99. Leonard Smith’s journal entry for 2 May 1869 seems to indicate that Wesley’s sermon was read during an afternoon or evening (p.m.) celebration of the sacrament. 100. William Jessop, various entries for 1790–1791, Journal, Ms., St. George’s United Methodist Church Archives, Philadelphia, PA; Ezekiel Cooper, 14 October 1792, Journal, Ms.; and Samuel A. Seaman, Annals of New York Methodism, Being a History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the City of New York, from A.D. 1766 to A.D. 1890 (New York: Hunt and Eaton 1892; Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe 1892) 479. A comparable pattern is recorded for Philadelphia in William Colbert’s journal of 1805 (“A Journal of the Travels of William Colbert Methodist Preacher Thro’ Parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, and Virginia in 1790 to 1838,” Ts., 5:86–139, United Methodist Archives, Madison, NJ), and as late as the 1830s according to published preaching appointments for the several Baltimore stations and for Cincinnati.

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101. Seaman, Annals of New York Methodism, 480–81. Ezekiel Cooper’s biographer, George A. Phoebus, claims that by 1795 a pattern had been established of holding Communion on the first Sunday of the month at the “old church” in the morning, the “new church” in the afternoon, and following the general society meeting in the evening, but this cannot be substantiated (Beams of Light on Early Methodism in America [New York: Phillips and Hunt 1887; Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe 1887] 197–98). 102. Clarke, A Discourse on the Nature and Design of the Eucharist, or Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, 131. 103. Porter, A Compendium of Methodism, 292. 104. JGC/MEC, 1844, 31; and S.T.K., “The Lord’s Supper,” CAJ (NY) 37 (6 March 1862) 74; see also chapter 11, pp. 261, 266–67. 105. JGC/MEC, 1888, 199; and see note 43. 106. Thomas O. Summers, Review of The Lord’s Supper by Rev. Samuel Luckey, MQR 13 (October 1859) 608; see also JGC/MECS, 1866, 118, and JGC/MECS, 1870, 203. 107. Buckhorn Charge (Buckhorn, Morrellville, Fishhook churches), Waverly District, Illinois Conference, “The Complete Quarterly Conference Record Book Embracing a Record of Four Years; Questions Arranged According to the Revisions Made in the Discipline by the General Conference of 1922, Methodist Episcopal Church, South” for the years 1922–1926, and “The Complete Quarterly Conference Record Book Embracing a Record of Four Years; Questions Arranged According to the Revisions Made in the Discipline by the General Conference of 1934, Methodist Episcopal Church, South” for the years 1936– 1939, Archives, Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference, United Methodist Church, Bloomington, IL. 108. W. P. Strickland, The Genius and Mission of Methodism; Embracing What Is Peculiar in Doctrine, Government, Modes of Worship, etc. (Boston: Charles H. Peirce 1851) 98. See also Clarke, A Discourse on the Nature and Design of the Eucharist, 79. Strickland here is not referring to the comixing of water and wine as practiced in some Christian churches. R. J. Cooke, in commenting on the Methodist Episcopal rite in 1900, notes that Methodists should not add water to the cup, even though the custom is found in Christian antiquity (History of the Ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 240). 109. JGC/MEC, 1860, 395; JGC/MEC, 1864, 265; and Methodist Episcopal Church Discipline 1864, appendix, xvii. 110. Summers, Systematic Theology, 2:413. On the use of unleavened bread, see Fisher, Sacramental Catechism. Part Second. The Lord’s Supper, Question 32; JGC/MEC, 1892, 214; and S. M. Merrill, A Digest of Methodist Law; Or, Helps in the Administration of the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, rev. ed. (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1904; New York: Eaton and Mains 1904) 148. 111. Methodist Protestant L. P. Driskell recalled the “old-fashioned” method of Communion: bread without seasoning and blackberry wine (Victory Out of Defeat [Sanford, FL: n.p. 1950] 50–51). 112. The 1784 Discipline (1785), Questions 23, 61, 66, 69. The Discipline of 1791 that first introduced the “Directions Given to the Band Societies” included therein the prohibition “to taste no spirituous liquor, no dram of any kind, unless prescribed by a physician.” 113. Field’s book (New York: Phillips and Hunt 1883; Cincinnati: Walden and Stowe 1883) comprised a series of essays that had previously appeared in MR 64 (1882) to which was added new material. For other controversial literature, see Betty A. O’Brien, “The Lord’s Supper: Fruit of the Vine or Cup of Devils,” MH 31 (July 1993) 205–23. 114. Leonard Smith, 10 August 1862, Journal, Ts. 115. See, for example, Luther W. Peck, “Nott’s Lectures on Temperance,” MR 40 (July 1858) 450.


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116. JGC/MEC, 1872, 384. 117. “Unfermented Wine,” WCA 41 (27 May 1874) 161. 118. William Chazanof, Welch’s Grape Juice: From Corporation to Co-operative (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press 1977) 1–19. 119. For the intervening years, see Methodist Episcopal Discipline 1876, ¶484 (“General Conference recommends the use of pure, unfermented juice of the grape on Sacramental occasions”); 1880, ¶494 (“Let none but the pure, unfermented juice of the grape be used in administering the Lord’s Supper, whenever practicable”); and 1884, ¶183 §5 (“see that the Stewards provide unfermented wine . . . whenever practicable”). In 1916, the “whenever practicable” was dropped. 120. Summers, Systematic Theology, 2:415; see also “The Two-Wine Theory,” MQR 40 (November-December 1894) 280–82. 121. M. O. Terry, “The Poisoned Chalice,” The Physicians and Surgeons’ Investigator 8 (15 June 1887) 165. 122. Mildred Morse McEwen, First United Methodist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina (Charlotte, NC: First United Methodist Church 1983) 48–49. 123. Individual cups were introduced in 1905 to the congregations of First Methodist Episcopal Church, Schenectady, and Elm Park Methodist Episcopal Church, Scranton; the latter had been using Welch’s product since 1874. In 1911, Richmond’s Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, South adopted the individual cups (Centennial History of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Schenectady, New York, ed. William C. Kitchin, Benjamin H. Ripton, and Fred Winslow Adams [Schenectady, NY: Official Board of First Methodist Episcopal Church 1907] 103; Henry Reed Van Deusen, Elm Park Historical Sketches [Scranton, PA: Board of Elm Park Methodist Church 1955] 40; and Floyd S. Bennett, Methodist Church on Shockoe Hill: A History of Centenary Methodist Church, Richmond, Virginia [Richmond, VA: n.p. 1962] 120). 124. J. M. Buckley, “The Common Cup or Individual Cups,” CAJ (NY) 73 (1 September 1898) 1407. Over the course of several years, editor Buckley wrote numerous columns summarizing the historic practice of the church, setting out the current debate and articulating his own views. See, for example, from CAJ (NY) 70 (1895), his eight-part series: 24 January, 49–50; 31 January, 66; 7 February, 81–82; 14 February, 97–98; 21 February, 114– 15; 28 February, 130–31; 7 March, 146–47; and 14 March, 161–62. Betty A. O’Brien summarizes Buckley’s contribution to the debate in “The Lord’s Supper: Traditional Cup of Unity or Innovative Cups of Individuality,” MH 32 (January 1994) 81–95. 125. Joseph Pullman, “The Individual Cup and the Common Cup,” CAJ (NY) 73 (6 October 1898) 1613. For other essays promoting the individual cup, see E. W. Ryan, “Individual Communion Cups,” CAJ (NY) 70 (21 March 1895) 180; W. C. Holliday, “The Common Cup, or Individual Cups?” CAJ (NY) 70 (21 March 1895) 180–81; and Joseph Pullman, “The Law of the Church Concerning the Individual Cup—A Reply,” CAJ (NY) 76 (30 May 1901) 851–52. 126. James Albert Beebe, The Pastoral Office: An Introduction to the Work of a Pastor (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1923) 109. 127. Romey P. Marshall, “Liturgical Question Box,” The Pastor 14 (September 1950) 26. For the theological and liturgical implications of intinction, see Robert F. Taft, “Communion via Intinction,” Studia Liturgica 26 (1996) 225–36. 128. Romey P. Marshall, “Liturgical Question Box,” The Pastor 13 (September 1949) 27; and Edward Laird Mills, “Frequency of Communion,” The Pastor 19 (September 1955) 1. 129. See Marian Y. Adell, “Mystery—Body Lost, Body Found: The Decline, Loss, and Recovery of the Body of Christ in Methodist Worship” (Ph.D. diss., Drew University 1994), esp. 67–134.

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130. The 1905 hymnal did include two hymns from the Hymns on the Lord’s Supper, but the eucharistic associations are not identified: HLS #157 is in the section “Entire Consecration and Perfect Love” (#373); and the first stanza of HLS #155 is numbered among the doxologies (#726). A fourth eucharistic hymn (HLS #96) was included in the 1965 hymnal, though it was located in the section “Reformation and All Saints” (#535).

6. The Music of Methodist Worship 1. The 1737 Collection, which may rightly be considered the first American—and Methodist—hymn book, contributed to Wesley’s ecclesiastical (and hence legal) problems in the Georgia colony because it was another example of his deviation from the practices of the Established Church: here he had introduced “into the church and service at the altar, compositions of Psalms and Hymns not inspected or authorized by any proper judicature” (Ms. Journal, 22 August 1737, Works, 18:555). 2. Minutes MC (1784), 47. 3. Works, 7:73–78. Wesley outlined the essentials of his understanding of the via salutis in his 1741 sermon “Hypocrisy at Oxford”: “sorrow on account of sin; humiliation under the hand of God; hatred to sin; confession of sin; ardent supplication of the divine mercy; the love of God; ceasing from sin; firm purpose of new obedience; restitution of ill-gotten goods; forgiving our neighbour his transgressions against us; works of beneficence, or almsgiving” (Works, 4:397). 4. The preface to the Wesleys’ Hymns and Sacred Poems of 1739 includes the remark that “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness” (Works [J], 14:321). 5. Among the verse by John Wesley himself were some original hymns and some translations from the German. Significant numbers of hymn texts were also included by William Cowper (Anglican), Philip Doddridge (Independent), Joseph Hart (Independent), Thomas Olivers (Methodist), and Anne Steele (Baptist). 6. Notes on Chapter 1, section 25, Discipline with Notes, 124. 7. Journal, 9–10 August 1768, Works, 22:152; see also Wesley’s journal for 20 September 1757, 22 October 1768, 19 March 1778, and 8 April 1787. 8. Although Wesley expressed a restrained appreciation for the organ in Anglican worship (see Wesley’s journal for 7 April 1751, 29 August 1762, and 29 March 1782), a few months before his death he wrote in a letter to Joseph Taylor that he did not object to an organ in a Methodist chapel as long as “it be played upon no more.” In the same letter he demanded “that there be no more chanting in our chappel if ever they expect or desire to see me in it” (“An Unpublished Wesley Letter” [21 August 1790], PWHS 39 [June 1974] 144). 9. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South would take up the entire contents of “Of the Spirit and Truth of Singing,” but abbreviated them in 1854. The Methodist Protestants apparently never introduced such regulations into their Discipline. 10. Singing schools first arose in New England in the early eighteenth century and were originally designed to improve congregational singing, but instead created a caste of trained vocalists. For those interesting in reading music, the school also became a significant social institution. Tune books compiled for the singing schools preserve some of the earliest original tunes written by American composers to accompany metrical psalms and hymns for both congregational and private gatherings. Notated folk hymns—by the early nineteenth century sometimes put into shape notes to simplify the reading of music—were introduced into tune books in the 1810s, as, for example, John Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second (1813).


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11. Jesse Lee, A Short History of the Methodists, in the United States of America; Beginning in 1766, and Continued Till 1809 (Baltimore: Magill and Clime 1910) 190. A fugue tune is one where “in at least one phrase, two or more voice parts enter non-simultaneously, with rests preceding at least one entry, in such a way as to produce overlap of text” (Nicholas Temperley and Charles G. Manns, Fuging Tunes in the Eighteenth Century [Detroit: Information Coordinators 1983] x). 12. See John Wesley, “Thoughts on the Power of Music” [1779], Works, 7:766–69. 13. Ezekiel Cooper, 3 July 1785, Journal, Ms., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL. 14. Two tune books issued by the Wesleys, with melody only in a variety of meters, were A Collection of Tunes, Set to Music, As They Are Commonly Sung at the Foundery (1742) and Select Hymns with Tunes Annext: Designed Chiefly for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1761); the tune section of the latter work was referred to as Sacred Melody and included in the preface the “Directions for Singing,” of which one instruction was to sing the tunes without alteration. With the 1770 edition of Select Hymns, the florid anthem tune “Cheshunt” was added, evidently as a concession to popular demand. A third tune book, Sacred Harmony, or A Choice Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes in Two or Three Parts for the Voice, Harpsichord & Organ (1780), showed an even greater accommodation to popular forms by the inclusion of a bass line along with the melody. Tune names from Sacred Harmony were associated with particular hymn texts in the fifth edition of the Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1786). The melodies for these tune books, some of which came from previously published sources, were drawn from metrical psalm tunes, German chorales, folk tunes, Italian opera, Handel’s oratorios, and original compositions by local musicians. Tunes in the popular style of the theater also came from the hand of Methodist composer John F. Lampe, who published twenty-four of them to accompany Charles Wesley’s Hymns on the Great Festivals and Other Occasions (1746). See Nelson F. Adams, “The Musical Sources for John Wesley’s Tune-Books; The Genealogy of 148 Tunes” (S.M.D. diss., Union Theological Seminary 1973). 15. Evans’s tune books were David’s Companion (1808), David’s Companion, Or, The Methodist Standard (1811, 1817), which was aligned with the “Large Hymn Book,” and Wesleyan Selection, Being a Supplement to David’s Companion (1820). 16. So concludes J. Roland Braithwaite in his introduction to a recent edition of Richard Allen’s 1801 A Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs (Philadelphia: Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church 1987) xlvi. Further information on the “old way” is given in Nicholas Temperley, “The Old Way of Singing: Its Origins and Development,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 34 (1981) 532–39. For accounts describing the lining of hymns in Methodist worship during this period, see George Brown, Recollections of Itinerant Life; Including Early Reminiscences, 4th ed. (Cincinnati: R. W. Carroll 1868) 64; and Samuel A. Seaman, Annals of New York Methodism, Being a History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the City of New York, from A.D. 1766 to A.D. 1890 (New York: Hunt and Eaton 1892; Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe 1892) 471. 17. “The Journal of James Gilruth, 1834–1835 [29 August 1834],” in Religion on the American Frontier, 1783–1840, vol. 4: The Methodists, ed. William Warren Sweet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1946) 393. 18. George Coles, 19 January 1830, Journal, Ms., Drew University Library, Madison, NJ; see also Brown, Recollections of Itinerant Life, 95–97. 19. The African Methodist Episcopal Church kept the guideline in principle, although not in the exact form, until the end of the twentieth century. On the use of choirs, see Daniel A. Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, ed. C. S. Smith (Nash-

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ville: Publishing House of the A. M. E. Sunday-School Union 1891; repr. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation 1968) 452–59. 20. “The Journal of James Gilruth, 1834–1835 [18 March 1835],” in Religion on the American Frontier, 1783–1840, 4:428. 21. The hymnal figured among the books required in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South for the ministerial Course of Study. Regarding the method for examination on the hymn book, it was proposed that consideration be given to the book’s arrangement: “parts, sections, sub-sections, consecutive order of the hymns; as they are all arranged in philosophical order, with headings suggestive of the particular subjects, and specially framed to assist in selection for particular purposes and occasions” (“The Hymn-Book,” MQR 14 [July 1860] 466). 22. The remaining headings, in order, are as follows: Justification by Faith, Prayer and Intercession, Prayer and Watchfulness, Christian Warfare, Christian Zeal, Trusting in Grace and Providence, Rejoicing and Praise, Christian Fellowship, Christian Perfection, Prospect of Heaven, Formal Religion, Backsliding, The Church, Baptism, Lord’s Supper, Love Feast, Family Worship, Holy Scriptures, Pastoral, Spread of the Gospel, Dedication, Birth Day, Thanksgiving, Nativity, New Year’s, The Sabbath, Sabbath Schools, Children and Youth, Missions, Anti-Slavery, Temperance, Seamen, Peace, Afflictions, Ministers in Sickness and Death, Death and Funeral, Resurrection, Second Advent, General Judgment, Miscellaneous, and Doxologies. 23. JGC/MEC, 1864, 46; and JGC/MEC, 1868, 58–59, 500–501. 24. Some books with texts and tunes, considered supplementary to the authorized hymnals and tune books, had appeared before the 1850s: e.g., The Wesleyan Psalmist; Or, Songs of Canaan, compiled by M. L. Scudder of the New England Conference and first published by Methodist Episcopal agents in 1842, printed tunes harmonized in two and three parts along with hymn texts. 25. “On Singing in Public Worship,” CAJ (NY) 22 (13 October 1847) 161; Andrew Wheeler, “The Meaning of Our Music,” CAJ (NY) 40 (7 September 1865) 281. For a study of tune preferences, see Terry L. Baldridge, “Evolving Tastes in Hymntunes of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas 1982); and for an inventory of the most frequently used tunes, see Fred Kimball Graham, “ ‘With One Heart and One Voice’: A Core Repertory of Hymn Tunes Published for Use in the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, 1808–1878” (Ph.D. diss., Drew University 1991) 55–148. 26. Leonard Smith, 9 December 1867, Journal, Ts., Archives, Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference, United Methodist Church, Bloomington, IL. 27. George G. Smith, The Life and Times of George Foster Pierce, D.D., LL.D. (Sparta, GA: Hancock 1888) 537. On “promiscuous sittings,” see later chapter 10, p. 245. 28. W. P. Strickland, The Genius and Mission of Methodism; Embracing What Is Peculiar in Doctrine, Government, Modes of Worship, etc. (Boston: Charles H. Peirce 1851) 107. 29. “Methodist Psalmody,” CAJ (NY) 32 (26 February 1857) 34; cf. Bostwick Hawley, “Church Music,” MR 49 (October 1867) 514. 30. JGC/MEC, 1840, 73; cf. JGC/MEC, 1848, 36; Pastoral Address, JGC/MEC, 1852, 160; JGC/MEC, 1868, 115. 31. JGC/MECS (1846), 116 and JGC/MECS, 1874, 571, also p. 457; cf. JGC/MECS, 1858, 439. 32. See, for example, Helen M. Waggoner, For Worship and For Service: 1931–1963 (Indianapolis, IN: North Methodist Church 1963) 17; and John Theodore Oakey, “History of the Methodist Protestant Church of Lynchburg, Virginia, 1828–1939,” in A History of the


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First United Methodist Church of Lynchburg, Virginia, 1828–1988, with Genealogical Index and Descriptions of the Church Archives, ed. James Siddons (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books 1992) 12. 33. Twelve other objections to choirs were identified in D. F. Newton, “Church Music,” The Earnest Christian and Golden Rule 3 (May 1862) 138–41. 34. Thomas O. Summers, “The Organ,” MQR 19 (April 1882) 358–67. 35. The vocalion, “constructed upon the principles of the human voice,” was advertised in Methodist periodicals; see, for example, EH 2 (7 November 1891) 12. 36. Wyatt Brown, Early Methodism in Greenville, North Carolina, and a History of the Jarvis Memorial United Methodist Church, ed. John D. Ebbs (Greenville, NC: Jarvis Memorial United Methodist Church 1978) 63–64. 37. The 1955 Free Methodist Discipline sets out in four statements under paragraph 93 the expectations about music, including a provision about instruments in worship, from which can be inferred the volatility of the subject: “The use of instrumental music is left to the decision of the local church or other ecclesiastical unit conducting worship, but change of policy shall require a majority vote and may not be considered twice in the same conference year.” The changes in Free Methodist policy on this matter are chronicled in Leslie R. Marston, From Age to Age a Living Witness: A Historical Interpretation of Free Methodism’s First Century (Winona Lake, IN: Light and Life 1960) 343–44. 38. F. D. Hemenway, “How Shall We Improve Our Congregational Singing?” Zion’s Herald 55 (3 January 1878) 1; cf. the Bishops’ Address, JGC/MECS, 1902, 24. 39. Henry M. Turner, The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity, Or, The Machinery of Methodism (Philadelphia: Publication Department, A. M. E. Church 1885) 217. 40. Daniel Curry, “Reading the Hymns,” MR 67 (January 1885) 108–110. 41. For criticism of jazz as church music, see, for example the Journal of the One-Hundredth Session of the North Carolina Annual Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, 1925 (n.p.: C. W. Bates 1925) 43, 79; cf. Alleen Moon, Worship; One of the Program Manuals of the Young People’s Division (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1932) 27. 42. For the contributions of women and women’s issues to gospel song, see June Hadden Hobbs, “I Sing for I Cannot Be Silent”: The Feminization of American Hymnody, 1870–1920 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 1997). 43. “To testify to the world the essential unity of the two great branches of Episcopal Methodism,” the 1905 Methodist Hymnal had been a joint production of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 44. Cf. Address “The New Methodist Hymnal” by commission member John W. Langdale, JGC/MEC, 1936, 1254–59. 45. The Wesleyan Church was formed in 1968 by the union of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection and the Pilgrim Holiness Church.

7. The Solemnization of Christian Marriage 1. John Wesley, Thoughts on Marriage and a Single Life (Bristol: Printed by Felix Farley 1743) 3–9. 2. These issues were addressed in Thoughts on Marriage and a Single Life, in Wesley’s revision of that work found in Thoughts on a Single Life (London: Printed and sold at the Foundery 1765) 5–7, 10–11, and in “A Thought upon Marriage,” Arminian Magazine 8 (September 1785) 533–35. 3. Elizabeth Connor, Methodist Trail Blazer: Philip Gatch, 1751–1834; His Life in Maryland, Virginia and Ohio (Rutland, VT: Academy Books 1970) 86.

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4. Ezekiel Cooper, 22 January 1792, Journal, Ms., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL. In his journal for 5 January 1790, Asbury bemoaned the injury caused by the marriage of young people to unbelievers (JLFA, 1:619). 5. Generally, by law, parental consent was no longer necessary at age twenty-one for males and at either eighteen or twenty-one for females. See George Elliott Howard, A History of Matrimonial Institutions, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1904; repr. New York: Humanities Press 1964) 396–97, 429–33, 472–73. 6. Letter from Robert Lindsay to Edward Dromgoole, 18 May 1784, Ms., Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill, NC. 7. Robert Emory, in History of the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church ([New York: Lane and Scott 1851] 188), is incorrect in stating that this change first occurred in the 1789 Discipline. 8. For these and other details of Wesley’s revision of the 1662 marriage rite, see Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, “ ‘Till Death Us Do Part’: The Rites of Marriage and Burial Prepared by John Wesley and Their Development in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1784–1939” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame 1992) 103–69. 9. John 2:2, NT Notes. 10. Sermon, “On Friendship with the World,” 25, Works, 3:138. 11. The 1789 Prayer Book revision went further than that of the American Methodists, for all material after the first blessing (accompanying the procession to the Lord’s table in the 1662 Prayer Book) was deleted. The Methodists even kept the prayer “O God, who by thy mighty power” that included the much-debated “sacramental” reference to marriage as an “excellent mystery.” 12. See Wesley’s Advice to the People Called Methodist with Regard to Dress (1760, 1780), and the sermons “On Dress” and “The Danger of Increasing Riches.” 13. See 1792 Discipline, Section 9; also Jesse Lee, A Short History of the Methodists, in the United States of America; Beginning in 1766, and Continued Till 1809 (Baltimore: Magill and Clime 1810) 185; and Nathan Bangs, A History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 3d ed., vol. 1 (New York: T. Mason and G. Lane 1840) 348–49. 14. For example, Daniel Wise’s Bridal Greetings: A Marriage Gift, in Which the Mutual Duties of Husband and Wife Are Familiarly Illustrated and Enforced (New York: Carlton and Phillips 1854) and The Young Lady’s Counsellor: Or, Outlines and Illustrations of the Sphere, the Duties, and the Dangers of Young Women (New York: Carlton and Lanahan 1869; Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden 1869); R. Donkersley’s Facts about Wives and Mothers (New York: Carlton and Lanahan 1869; Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden 1869); and the subtle or direct marriage advice found in the Ladies’ Repository. 15. The Journals of the Rev. Thomas Morrell, ed. Michael J. McKay (Rutland, VT: Academy Books, for the Historical Society, Northern New Jersey Conference, United Methodist Church 1984) 40; cf. W. D. W. Schureman, “Thoughts on Marriage” in The SemiCentenary and the Retrospection of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, ed. Daniel Alexander Payne (Baltimore: Sherwood 1866; repr. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press 1972) 120. 16. S. W. Cope, “Marriage and the Home,” MQR 37 (July 1893) 262. 17. Diary entry of Robert E. Taylor for 16 January 1879, cited in Taylor Kinsfolk Association at Tabernacle Church, The Taylors of Tabernacle: The History of a Family (Brownsville, TN: Tabernacle Historical Committee 1957) 271. 18. Cited from The Methodist Pocket Hymn-Book. Revised and Improved. Designed as a Constant Companion for the Pious of All Denominations, 34th ed. (New-York: Published by Ezekiel Cooper and John Wilson 1807) #317.


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19. The official Methodist Protestant rite used from 1830 to 1870 followed the pattern of brief introduction, final publication of the banns, exhortation, declaration of intention and consent, prayer, “Those whom God hath joined,” and pronouncement of marriage. In 1870, a truncated version of the 1792 opening exhortation began the service; the Methodist Protestant statement on mutuality was entirely removed, but no “active” marriage vow was introduced. The woman’s promise to obey was retained until 1892. 20. Petitions suggesting the switch of “man” to “husband” were put forward periodically at sessions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South’s General Conference from 1854 until the change was made in 1914. 21. Review of Ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church, MR 46 (October 1864) 687. 22. “The Change in Our Marriage Ceremony,” CAJ (NY) 43 (20 February 1868) 58. 23. JGC/MEC, 1868, 184. 24. Summers also asserted that “the woman is first asked if she will obey and serve her husband as submission on her part is necessary to conjugal fellowship.” He substantiated his claim by reference to Scripture: Genesis 3:16; 1 Corinthians 14:34; Ephesians 5:22–24; Colossians 3:18; Titus 2:4,5; and 1 Peter 3:1–6. See Thomas O. Summers, Commentary on the Ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Nashville: A. H. Redford for the M. E. Church, South 1873) 60. 25. Nolan Harmon noted prophetically that although the Methodist Episcopal Church, South retained the obedience language at the time of publication for his 1926 study on Methodist rites, the words were “often omitted by the Southern ministry” and that undoubtedly they would be “discarded in time” (The Rites and Ritual of Episcopal Methodism, with Particular Reference to the Rituals of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Respectively [Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1926] 266). The Methodist Episcopal Church, South may have eliminated “obey” and “serve” from the question of consent (the words had already been deleted from the marriage vow—which itself had been deleted in 1854 and restored in 1910) after witnessing the debates on the topic that ensued from the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church; the Episcopalians altered their marriage rite in the revision of 1928. 26. The form of the Lord’s Prayer was amended in 1864 with the addition of the doxological conclusion; resolutions presented in following years to restore the prayer to the “language of Jesus as given in St. Matthew, vi, 9–13” were unmet (JGC/MEC, 1868, 138; and JGC/MEC, 1876, 234). 27. “Rebecca was not faithful when she terribly imposed upon her husband Isaac, made her son Jacob lie to him in word and deed, made Esau a murderer in heart, broke up her home, and drove both of her sons into exile” (H. J. Zelley, “Form of Marriage,” CAJ (NY) 67 [5 May 1892] 293). The revision of the rite proposed in 1912 eliminated the reference to Isaac and Rebecca with the rationale that though the biblical pair were “good people,” “we do not know that in all respects they ought to be especially commended in our marriage service” (General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Daily Christian Advocate [24 May 1912] 604–605; and [30 May 1912] 795). 28. Thomas B. Neely, who had many causes for complaint regarding the 1916 revision, found in the deletion of the reference to Isaac and Rebecca an example of one of his greatest criticisms: the widespread excision of Old Testament references from the entire Ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church (The Revised Ritual of 1916 [Philadelphia: E. A. Yeakel, Agent; Methodist Episcopal Book Store 1920] 55, 97). 29. Margaret Deland, a popular writer during the early twentieth century, believed female selfishness was the cause of the demise of the family. She wrote: “The individualist believes

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that happiness is the purpose of marriage,—whereas happiness is only an incident of marriage. The purpose of marriage is the protection of the family idea. Happiness and marriage may go together . . . But if the incident of happiness is lost, duty remains! the obligation of contract remains; marriage remains . . . Marriage is civilization’s method of remaining civilized” (“The Change in the Feminine Ideal,” The Atlantic Monthly 105 [March 1910] 296; cf. “Shall We Have a New Code of Marriage?” WCA 72 [24 January 1906] 4). 30. The Standard Catechism of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1905) 16; and S. M. Merrill, A Digest of Methodist Law; Or, Helps in the Administration of the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, ed. R. J. Cooke (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1908; New York: Eaton and Mains 1908) 149. 31. General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Daily Christian Advocate (9 May 1916) 137 and (10 May 1916) 153. 32. Nolan B. Harmon claimed that several persons preparing the rite to be approved in 1939 objected to the “dreadful day of judgment” language in the historic charge to the couple (10 March 1990, tape-recorded interview by author, Atlanta, GA). 33. Even with the familial emphases, the sacred character of the wedding remained a paramount issue, as attested by criticism of the growing popularity of a burlesque of the marriage ceremony sometimes performed as a church fund raiser—the “mock” wedding. See, for example, Paul F. Wohlgemuth, “The ‘Mock’ Wedding Practice,” The Pastor 15 (December 1951) 16–17; and Frank R. Greer, “Some Things Are Sacred,” The Pastor 15 (February 1952) 28. 34. James Albert Beebe, The Pastoral Office: An Introduction to the Work of a Pastor (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1923) 110. Spenser B. Meeser, in 1927, also condemned the laxity of clergy and the state in contributing to “hasty,” “secret,” and “easy” marriages, and consequently, to divorce. An appropriate remedy, Meeser believed, was the reinstatement of the banns or some public announcement of intention to marry as well as premarital conversations on the moral implications of marriage (“Divorce and Remarriage,” MR 110 [November 1927] 854–57). Concerns such as these had existed for some time; a comparable complaint was made about New York ministers who knew little or nothing about the couples they married (“New York Correspondence,” Nashville Christian Advocate 21 [24 September 1857] 2). 35. The statement was continued in the Methodist marriage rites published in the Book of Worship of 1945 and that of 1965, and was introduced into the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s practice through its optional text first issued in 1960. 36. JGC/MEC (1796), 28; the approved text was first printed in 1798 in Discipline with Notes (p. 157) with the accompanying note (N.B.) as part of the commentary. The original accompanying note (N.B.) approved in 1796 was not published beyond the 1798 Discipline. 37. G. A. Raybold, Reminiscences of Methodism in West Jersey (New York: Lane and Scott 1849) 27–28. 38. JGC/MEC (1808), 95; cf. JGC/MEC (1800), 43. 39. See, for example, S. Olin Garrison, Probationer’s Hand-book: Religious, Historical, Doctrinal, Disciplinary, and Practical, rev. ed. (New York: Eaton and Mains 1896; Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 1896) 71–72. 40. Thomas A. Morris, Miscellany: Consisting of Essays, Biographical Sketches, and Notes of Travel (Cincinnati: L. Swormstedt and J. H. Power 1852) 57–66. 41. Daniel P. Kidder, ed., The Minister’s Study, and Scenes Connected with It (New York: Lane and Scott 1849) 16–17. 42. Neither the Methodist Protestants nor the Wesleyans included a provision for parental consent in their first or any Discipline; the Methodist Episcopal Church, South


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dropped it in 1866, and so it was not transmitted to the Colored (Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church. 43. Carl N. Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press 1980) 10–12. 44. “A Chapter on Marriages,” The Methodist 16 (16 October 1875) 658; cf. Benjamin Lakin, 26 December 1802, Journal, Ms. on microfilm, Washington University Library, St. Louis, MO. 45. A Ritual published in 1864 bears the handwritten entry, “who giveth,” following the questions of consent. This entry was probably made before 1916; the volume was acquired by the library of the Garrett Biblical Institute (now Garrett-Evangelical Seminary) in 1915 from the estate of the Reverend William Goodfellow. A comparable insertion with the question handwritten in full is found in an 1870 edition of the Methodist Protestant Constitution and Discipline, although its approximate dating cannot be ascertained. 46. Summers, Commentary on the Ritual, 61. Regarding the ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (which never officially printed the giving away in the text), Harmon concluded that since the woman is “tacitly, if not verbally” given away, “it is perhaps wise to insert this old form here, making it optional” (Harmon, The Rites and Ritual of Episcopal Methodism, 266). 47. Bishops’ Address, JGC/MECS, 1886, 29. 48. For a commentary on dancing, see Josephus Anderson, Our Church: A Manual for Members and Probationers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, ed. Thomas O. Summers (Nashville: Southern Methodist Publishing House 1860) 278–93. 49. For example, Benjamin Lakin, 9 February 1814, Journal, Ms.; see also the Autobiography of Peter Cartwright (repr. Nashville: Abingdon 1984) 36. 50. Entry for 17 February 1835, “The Journal of James Gilruth, 1834–1835,” in Religion on the American Frontier, 1783–1840, vol. 4: The Methodists, ed. William Warren Sweet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1946) 424. 51. Catherine Livingston Garrettson, 30 June 1793, Diary, Ms., United Methodist Archives, Madison, NJ. The unspecified “Covenant Hymn” likely refers to the Charles Wesley text “Come, let us use the grace divine.” 52. John B. Matthias, Memoirs, Ms., United Methodist Archives, Madison, NJ. 53. Life and Observations of Rev. E. F. Newell (Worcester: C. W. Ainsworth 1847) 139– 40. 54. George Brown, Recollections of Itinerant Life: Including Early Reminiscences, 4th ed. (Cincinnati: R. W. Carroll 1868) 86–87. 55. J. R. Graves, The Great Iron Wheel; Or, Republicanism Backwards and Christianity Reversed, 7th ed. (Nashville: Graves, Marks, and Rutland 1855; New York: Sheldon, Lamport, and Co. 1855) 336–39. 56. In 1879, J. H. Potts included in Pastor and People; Or, Methodism in the Field matters related to dress under the heading of “obsolete customs” ([New York: Phillips and Hunt 1879; Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden 1879] 183–185). Yet still the regulations for dress were published in 1896 in Garrison’s Probationer’s Hand-book, between the rules related to tobacco and amusements (p. 73). 57. Charles A. Thiel, 25 February 1903, Diary, Ms., United Methodist Archives, Madison, NJ. In 1903, Thiel, a deacon in the Northern German Conference, was stationed in North Dakota. 58. See the comments in “Sunday Marriages,” CAJ (NY) 47 (25 January 1872) 30. 59. Such is the rationale given by Paul W. Hoon, “The Order for the Service of Marriage,” in Companion to the Book of Worship, ed. William F. Dunkle, Jr. and Joseph D. Quillian, Jr. (Nashville: Abingdon 1970) 77.

322 60. 1955) 61. 62.

Notes to Pages 197–202 J. Bernard Dryfield, “Wedding Music and the Marriage Service,” The Pastor 18 (May 29. A. Atwood, “The Golden Wedding,” CAJ (NY) 37 (30 October 1862) 346. “Golden Anniversary,” WCA 72 (14 February 1906) 20.

8. Methodist Funerals 1. James J. Farrell, Inventing the American Way of Death, 1830–1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1980) 44–98. 2. Philippe Arie`s, Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1974) 55. 3. Charles O. Jackson, “Death Shall Have No Dominion: The Passing of the World of the Dead in America,” in Death and Dying: Views from Many Cultures, ed. Richard A. Kalish (Farmingdale, NY: Baywood 1980) 48–49. 4. Vanderlyn R. Pine makes two significant observations about the development of the funeral industry and the church’s role at burial: “An important reason for his [the undertaker’s] rise to prominence was the church’s unwillingness or inability to maintain authority over all aspects of the burial process” and “since the church did not encourage the development of special rooms for the care of the dead, funeral directors found an additional reason to develop facilities to house such activities” (Caretaker of the Dead: The American Funeral Director [New York: Irvington 1975] 16, 18). 5. A reprint of guidelines from 1917 is found in Frank A. Heywood, “The Etiquette of Mourning Up-to-Date,” American Funeral Director 96 (1973) 42–43. 6. Letter to Charles Wesley, 28 June 1755, Works, 26:565; and Letter to Joseph Benson, 19 May 1783, LJW, 7:179. See, for example, Joseph Pilmore, 17 December 1772, The Journal of Joseph Pilmore, ed. Frederick E. Maser and Howard T. Maag (Philadelphia: Message Publishing for the Historical Society of the Philadelphia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church 1969) 170; and Journal, 9 February 1780, JLFA, 1:335. 7. Nathan Bangs claimed that the Methodist preachers did not perform the burial rite prior to 1784, yet Asbury’s journal records several entries in which he “read the burial service.” See Nathan Bangs, The Life of the Rev. Freeborn Garrettson: Compiled from His Printed and Manuscript Journals, and Other Authentic Documents (New York: J. Emory and B. Waugh 1832) 125; and Journal for 26 January 1780, 17 February 1780, 12 December 1780, and 23/24 May 1783, JLFA, 1:332, 336, 393, 441. 8. Minutes MC (1777), 15. Methodists in Great Britain later established a similar policy, which was recorded in their Minutes of 1786. 9. Notes on Chapter 1, section 22, Discipline with Notes, 118. As was also true with baptism and marriage, the stipulation (explicit or implicit) that ministers should not make a charge for burial remained with the denominations, with each eventually dropping the restriction against receiving a monetary gift. 10. Sermon, “ ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest,’ ” 1.8–9, Works, 1:145; Sermon, “Justification by Faith,” 1.4–9, Works, 1:184–87; and Wesley’s response to the Unitarian John Taylor in “The Doctrine of Original Sin, according to Scripture, Reason, and Experience,” Works [J], 5:192–464. 11. Sermon, “Death and Deliverance,” 4, Works, 4:207. See also Sermon, “The Way to the Kingdom,” 1.10, Works, 1:223; and Sermon, “The Spirit of Bondage and Adoption,” 3.4, Works, 1:262. See also the Charles Wesley hymn “Ah, lovely appearance of death!” 12. Sermon, “Death and Deliverance,” 4, Works, 4:208. See also Sermon, “The Trouble and Rest of Good Men,” 2.4–6, Works, 3:539–41. 13. Sermon, “On Love,” 3.5, Works, 4:386–87.


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14. Job 26:5, OT Notes; Luke 23:43, NT Notes; Sermon, “The Important Question,” 2.4–5, Works, 3:186–87; Sermon, “Dives and Lazarus,” 1.3–5, Works, 4:7–9; Sermon, “On the Discoveries of Faith,” 8–9, Works, 4:32–33; Sermon, “On Faith,” 4–6, 10–11, Works, 4: 189–92, 195–97. 15. “Popery Calmly Considered,” 2.5–6, Works [J], 10:144–45; cf. Letter to George Blackall, 25 February 1783, LJW, 7:168. 16. Works, 7:140. John Wesley’s position, exemplary of an “Eastern Orthodox view,” stood counter to the popular Anglican position that, according to Clarence Bence, had developed from an interpretation of the Pauline desire to be “present with the Lord” as referring immediately to heaven itself. Bence may be correct when he surmises that conformity to biblical chronology may be the motivating factor for Wesley’s delineation of the intermediate state. See “John Wesley’s Teleological Hermeneutic” (Ph.D. diss., Emory University 1981) 188; also Albert Outler’s note 24 in Sermon, “Dives and Lazarus,” Works, 4: 9. 17. Romans 1:4 and Matthew 27:52–53, NT Notes. See also a letter to the Moravian Church recorded in Wesley’s journal for 3 September 1741 (Works, 19:222). 18. Works, 7:149–50; cf. Hymn nos. 53–55, 57–64, Works, 7:146–61. 19. Letter to Mrs. Martha Hall, 17 November 1742, Works, 26:90–91; cf. Sermon, “On Mourning for the Dead,” Works, 4:237–43. 20. Letter to Miss March, 5 July 1768, LJW, 5:96; Letter to Hannah Ball, 23 May 1773, LJW, 6:27; Letter to Christopher Hopper, 16 March 1777, LJW, 6:259; and Journal, 23 January 1781, JJW, 6:303. 21. Luke 16:22, NT Notes. Comparing Scottish funerals with those of England, Wesley wrote: “The English does honour to human nature, and even to the poor remains, that were once a temple of the Holy Ghost! But when I see in Scotland a coffin put into the earth, and covered up without a word spoken it reminds me of what was spoken concerning Jehoiakim, ‘He shall be buried with the burial of an ass’ ” (Journal, 20 May 1774, JJW, 6: 20). 22. John C. Bowmer refuted the contention made by W. H. Holden (in John Wesley in Company with High Churchmen, 2d rev. ed. [London: Church Press 1870] 112) that early Methodist funerals were eucharistic, citing the absence of concrete data. However, the practice of administering the sacrament to the sick and dying was seen by Bowmer as a regular and significant aspect of Methodist pastoral ministry (The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper in Early Methodism [Westminster: Dacre 1951] 143–46). 23. For additional explanations about these and other alterations made by Wesley, see Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, “ ‘Till Death Us Do Part’: The Rites of Marriage and Burial Prepared by John Wesley and Their Development in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1784–1939” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame 1992) 185–239. 24. “Ought We to Separate from the Church of England?” (3.8), Works, 9:572. 25. John Dowden’s suggestion, that the last six lines of Coverdale’s poem exhibit close affinity with the version of Media vita in the 1549 Prayer Book, has been generally accepted. See The Workmanship of the Prayer Book in Its Literary and Liturgical Aspects (London: Methuen 1899) 162–64, 233–34. 26. See, for example, Sermon, “ ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest,’ ” 1.9, Works, 1:145; and Job 14:10, OT Notes. 27. For example, Journal, 21 August 1785 and 26 January 1790, JLFA, 1:493, 622; and Richard Whatcoat, 25 December 1790, Journal, Ms., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL. 28. Minutes MC (1809), 444; cf. Journal, 16 March 1790, JLFA, 1:628. 29. Nashville Christian Advocate 21 (17 June 1858) 1.

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30. Centennial History of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Schenectady, New York, ed. William C. Kitchin, Benjamin H. Ripton, and Fred Winslow Adams (Schenectady, NY: Official Board of First Methodist Episcopal Church 1907) 57–58. 31. William Colbert, 19 December 1805, “A Journal of the Travels of William Colbert, Methodist Preacher, Thro’ Parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, and Virginia in 1790 to 1838,” Ts., 5:129, United Methodist Archives, Madison, NJ. The hymn “A solemn march we make” was included in Richard Allen’s A Collection of Hymns & Spiritual Songs (1801). 32. References may be found in the prayer to 2 Corinthians 5:10, Media vita, Job 14:1, 1 Peter 1:19, Titus 3:7, Romans 5:25, John 11:25, James 1:17, Titus 2:13, John 5:25, 29, Revelation 2:11; 20:6, Matthew 25:34, 1 Thessalonians 4:13, and Job 1:21. 33. Life and Observations of Rev. E. F. Newell (Worcester: C. W. Ainsworth 1847) 159. 34. “Death,” The Methodist Protestant 4 (20 January 1838) 236. 35. Journal, 29 October 1797, JLFA, 2:137. In 1788, a comparable theme had been taken up by James Meacham in a sermon taken from the burial rite’s reading of Revelation 14: 13 and developed under four points: “show the certainty of death”; “what is implied in being in the Lord”; “how they are blessed and why they are called blessed”; and “the blessed as consequence of dying in the Lord” (22 August 1788, Journal, Ms., Special Collections Library, Duke University Library, Durham, NC). 36. George Coles, 30 March 1826, Journal, Drew University Library, Madison, NJ. 37. Maria Dyer Davies, 2 March 1853, Diary, Ms., Special Collections Library, Duke University Library, Durham, NC; and, for example, The Journals of the Rev. Thomas Morrell, ed. Michael J. McKay (Rutland, VT: Academy Books, for the Historical Society, Northern New Jersey Conference, United Methodist Church 1984) 46. 38. Minutes MC (1807), 389. 39. Samuel A. Seaman, Annals of New York Methodism, Being a History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the City of New York, from A.D. 1766 to A.D. 1890 (New York: Hunt and Eaton 1892; Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe 1892) 477. 40. Joseph B. Wakely, The Ethics of Funerals: A Vindication of the Methodist Episcopal Church and of the Rev. J. B. Wakely against the Slanders of the New-York Churchman with Regard to the Funeral of William Poole (New York: Printed 200 Mulberry-Street, and for sale by the Principal Booksellers 1855) 20. 41. See, for example, Joseph Travis, Autobiography of the Rev. Joseph Travis, A.M., ed. Thomas O. Summers (Nashville: E. Stevenson and F. A. Owen, Agents, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1856) 93. Wesley had deleted the rubric from the 1662 burial rite prohibiting use of the service for suicides, yet in the first half of the nineteeenth century, some Methodist ministers regarded those who took their own life as unworthy of Christian burial. 42. Thomas O. Summers, “The Pastoral Office,” MQR 15 (July 1861) 446. 43. Thomas N. Ralston, Elements of Divinity (Louisville, KY: Published by E. Stevenson for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1851) 444–47. 44. Thomas O. Summers, “Signs of the Times,” MQR 19 (April 1882) 380–81, and see also his Systematic Theology: A Complete Body of Wesleyan Arminian Divinity, vol. 1, rev. John J. Tigert (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1888) 331–84; cf. Amos Binney and Daniel Steele, Binney’s Theological Compend Improved, Containing a Synopsis of the Evidences, Doctrines, Morals, and Institutions of Christianity (Cincinnati: Curts and Jennings 1875; New York: Eaton and Mains 1875) 135–47; and Daniel D. Whedon, “The Resurrection,” in Essays, Reviews, and Discourses, ed. J. S. Whedon and D. A. Whedon (New York: Phillips and Hunt 1887; Cincinnati: Cranston and Stowe 1887) 328–41.


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45. John Miley, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, Library of Biblical and Theological Literature, ed. George R. Crooks and John F. Hurst, vol. 6 (New York: Hunt and Eaton 1894; Cincinnati: Cranston and Curts 1894) 93–96, 428–29, 474–75. 46. Olin Alfred Curtis, The Christian Faith: Personally Given in a System of Doctrine (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1905) 287–88, 291, 296–99, 453–54. 47. Georgia Harkness, Understanding the Christian Faith (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury 1947) 141–44. 48. See Ann Douglas, “Heaven Our Home: Consolation Literature in the Northern United States, 1830–1880,” American Quarterly 26 (December 1974) 496–515. 49. Jesse S. Gilbert, “The Fear of Death,” The Methodist 22 (6 August 1881) 4. 50. Cited in Taylor Kinsfolk Association at Tabernacle Church, The Taylors of Tabernacle: The History of a Family (Brownsville, TN: Tabernacle Historical Committee 1957) 304. 51. “Funeral Reform,” The Methodist 16 (20 February 1875) 121. 52. For example, J. H. Potts, Pastor and People; Or, Methodism in the Field (New York: Phillips and Hunt 1879; Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden 1879) 179–80. 53. James Albert Beebe, The Pastoral Office: An Introduction to the Work of a Pastor (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1923) 112. For a detailed excursus on the expected roles of undertaker, minister, the bereaved, and friends at a funeral in the first decade of the twentieth century, see Joseph N. Greene, The Funeral: Its Conduct and Properties (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1905; New York: Eaton and Mains 1905). 54. Russell L. Dicks, “Questions of the Month,” The Pastor 11 (February 1948) 20. 55. In recounting his grandmother’s funeral, Charles Thiel of North Dakota noted that his “text was Rev. 14:13. The spirit helped me to deliver a short fitting sermon. We sang some songs which Grandma always loved to hear and were dismissed quietly” (Charles A. Thiel, 11 February 1903, Diary, Ms., United Methodist Archives, Madison, NJ). 56. For examples by Methodist authors and publishers, some of which also included sample funeral addresses, see W. C. Knapp, Funeral Services: Being a Collection and Arrangement of the Scriptures Suitable for Funerals, with Appropriate Hymns and Tunes (Peoria: Franks 1874); C. E. Mandeville, Minister’s Manual and Pocket Ritual: A Ready Help in Time of Need for the Sick-Room, Funerals, etc., Together with Full Ritual for Marriage, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, etc., rev. ed. (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1904; New York: Eaton and Mains 1904); Jesse Halsey, A Living Hope: Suggestions for Funeral Services (New York: AbingdonCokesbury 1932); William H. Leach, ed., The Cokesbury Funeral Manual (Nashville: Cokesbury 1932); Earl Daniels, The Funeral Message: Its Preparation and Significance (Nashville: Cokesbury 1937); and Nolan B. Harmon, ed., The Pastor’s Ideal Funeral Manual (New York: Abingdon 1942). 57. Job 14:1–2; Psalm 103:13–18; Psalm 90:1–9; 2 Corinthians 5:10; John 5:25–29. 58. James A. Burrow, “That Methodist Creed,” MQR 58 (July 1909) 532. 59. Nolan Harmon, The Rites and Ritual of Episcopal Methodism, with Particular Reference to the Rituals of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Respectively (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1926) 300. 60. John Alfred Faulkner, “Our Somber Burial Service,” MR 93 (September 1911) 790. 61. JGC/MEC, 1916, 1335; cf. General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Daily Christian Advocate (10 May 1916) 150. In the proposed revision produced in 1908 (JGC/MEC, 1908, 978–82), the conflated sentence from 1 Timothy 6 and Job 1 was retained; the only text to be deleted was Job 19:25–27, which was replaced with the reading from 2 Corinthians 5:1—the revision taken in 1910 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The revision suggested at the 1912 General Conference deleted both Job references

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and the citation from 1 Timothy 6, and replaced them with 2 Corinthians 5:1 and John 14:1–3 (Daily Christian Advocate [24 May 1912] 605 and [30 May 1912] 795). 62. Thomas Benjamin Neely, The Revised Ritual of 1916 (Philadelphia: E. A. Yeakel, Agent; Methodist Episcopal Book Store 1920) 55–59. 63. Questions may have been raised among some Methodists whether the prayer of thanksgiving constituted a prayer for the dead. An article that appeared in a Methodist Episcopal publication in 1927 defended prayers for the dead (and cited the prayer of thanksgiving from the burial rite as an example) on the basis of the biblical witness and apostolic tradition. Prayers “for the saints, but not to them” were deemed appropriate and spiritually edifying (“Prayer for the Dead,” MR 110 [July 1927] 629–31). 64. Richard J. Cooke, History of the Ritual of the Methodist Episcopal Church; With a Commentary on Its Offices, 3d ed. (Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 1900; New York: Eaton and Mains 1900) 277. Cooke commended the prayer for its ability to comfort, for “[e]ven at the mouth of the remorseless grave the Church of God proclaims the doctrine of immortality” (ibid.). 65. JGC/MEC, 1908, 983–84; and General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Daily Christian Advocate (24 May 1912) 605–607 and (30 May 1912) 796. 66. The readings included a conflation of Psalm 23 and John 10:7–11, 14–16, 27–30; Psalm 118:14–26, 28; Psalm 16:1–3, 5–11; and a conflation of Revelation 21:1–7 and Revelation 22:1–5, 12–14. 67. For example, among the prayers from the burial rite for a child, one prayer, “O Loving Father, comfortingly look upon us in our sorrow,” has some affinity with a prayer provided in the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship (Revised) (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education 1932) and may come from the committee that prepared this book, or from a common source. The 1928 Protestant Episcopal service “At the Burial of a Child” may have influenced the Methodist Episcopal revision of 1932: both rites contain an opening sentence from Isaiah 40:11, lessons from Psalm 23, Psalm 121, and Matthew 18, and an opening sentence at the grave from John 16:22. 68. According to Nolan Harmon’s recollections, the revision committee was charged to submit for review prayers printed in other books; original compositions generally were not to be used (10 March 1990, tape-recorded interview by author, Atlanta, GA). 69. In 1923, James Beebe approved the church’s burial of all persons, identifying it as the pastor’s “spiritual service” (The Pastoral Office, 111). 70. “The Christian Funeral” in “Standards,” Commission on Worship and the Fine Arts, New York Annual Conference, The Methodist Church, June 1965, Order of St. Luke Collection, Drew University Library, Madison, NJ. 71. “A Manual for the Funeral” (Nashville: Abingdon 1962) 1; and “An Approach to a Christian Funeral” (n.p.: Commission on Worship of the Northern New Jersey Conference of the Methodist Church 1967). 72. See, for example, William M. Wilder, “Resurrection or Immortality?” The Pastor 16 (May 1953) 13; and Howard L. Stimmel, “Communicating the Christian Hope,” The Pastor 18 (March 1955) 7–8. 73. In the burial rite of the 1940 African Methodist Episcopal Discipline, a line was accidently dropped from Media vita at a page break, and the omission was perpetuated in the publication of the ritual text for the next twenty years; Media vita was returned to its original form in 1960. 74. A Service of Death and Resurrection: The Ministry of the Church at Death, Supplemental Worship Resources 7 (Nashville: Abingdon 1979) 73–91. Optional prayers and readings were provided for the general service, and for a child or youth, an untimely or tragic death, and for the non-Christian or unchurched.


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75. Paul Waitman Hoon, “Theology, Death, and the Funeral Liturgy,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 31 (Spring 1976) 169; cf. [Paul Waitman Hoon], “The Ministry of the Church at Death,” in A Service of Death and Resurrection, 12–13. 76. “The Ministry of the Church at Death,” 12–16. 77. The task force was supplied with a series of papers by group member and pastoral counselor Edgar N. Jackson on bereavement and grief, and on children (youth) and death; L. L. Haynes, Jr., another member and pastor of an African-American congregation in Baton Rouge, contributed an essay on “The Black Funeral Service.” These papers are now on file at the United Methodist Archives, Madison, NJ. 78. Hoon, “Theology, Death, and the Funeral Liturgy,” 172.

9. Devotion and Discipleship 1. “The Character of a Methodist,” §17, Works, 9:41. 2. “General Rules of the United Societies,” §6, Works, 9:73; Sermon, “The Means of Grace,” Works, 1:378–97; Sermon, “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” 3.9, Works, 2:166; and Sermon, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation,” 2.4, Works, 3:205–206. Also Question 48 in the so-called Large Minutes, transferred into Methodist Episcopal legislation as Question 66 in the first Discipline. 3. “General Rules of the United Societies,” §5, Works, 9:72; “The Character of a Methodist,” §16, Works, 9:41; and Sermon, “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” 3.10, Works, 2: 166. 4. Sermon, “Sermon on the Mount, 9,” §6, Works, 1:635; Augustine, De civitate Dei, 8.17. 5. Journal, 16 November 1766, Works, 22:68. 6. Autobiography of Peter Cartwright (repr. Nashville: Abingdon 1984) 334–35. 7. Two especially helpful studies on the Christian (and Methodist) family in the nineteenth century are Colleen McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840– 1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1986); and A. Gregory Schneider, The Way of the Cross Leads Home: The Domestication of American Methodism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1993). 8. “Pastoral Address,” JGC/MEC, 1860, 466. 9. Jacob Moore, “An Essay on the Obligation of Family Worship,” MR 9 (July 1826) 257. 10. Joseph Travis, Autobiography of the Rev. Joseph Travis, A.M., ed. Thomas O. Summers (Nashville: E. Stevenson and F. A. Owen, Agents, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1856) 16. 11. Daniel Wise, Bridal Greetings: A Marriage Gift, in Which the Mutual Duties of Husband and Wife Are Familiarly Illustrated and Enforced (New York: Carlton and Phillips 1854) 151– 54. 12. See, for example, the story of John Maris, benefactor of Arch Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, recounted in L. L. Nash, Recollections and Observations during a Ministry in the North Carolina Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church, South, of Forty-Three Years (Raleigh, NC: Mutual 1916) 57–59. 13. Ezekiel Cooper, 28 December 1790, Journal, Ms., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary Library, Evanston, IL. Punctuation added. What Cooper described may represent an early manifestation of the episcopal suggestion eight years later that “every family in our connection had occasionally a prayer-meeting at stated times for the benefit of their neighbours” (Note on Section 10, question 2, answer 11, Discipline with Notes, 82); for later

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evidence of this practice, see Robert Boyd, Personal Memoirs: Together with a Discussion upon the Hardship and Sufferings of Itinerant Life (Cincinnati: Methodist Book Concern 1868) 28. 14. Elizabeth A. Roe, Recollections of Frontier Life (Rockford, IL: Gazette Publishing House 1885) 106. 15. W. P. Strickland, The Life of Jacob Gruber (New York: Carlton and Porter 1860) 69– 70. 16. Ibid., 70–71. 17. David Sullins, Recollections of an Old Man: Seventy Years in Dixie, 1827–1897 (Bristol, TN: King 1910) 25–26. Sullins remembered from his student days (1847–1850) at Methodist-related Emory and Henry College that the college “family” held prayers morning and evening (p. 83). 18. Thomas A. Morris, Miscellany: Consisting of Essays, Biographical Sketches, and Notes of Travel (Cincinnati: L. Swormstedt and J. H. Power 1852) 37. 19. George T. Ashley, Reminiscences of a Circuit Rider (Hollywood, CA: Published by the Author 1941) 112. 20. “John Newton’s Letter on Family Worship,” Methodist Protestant 4 (28 April 1838) 348. 21. James B. Finley, Autobiography of Rev. James B. Finley, or Pioneer Life in the West, ed. W. P. Strickland (Cincinnati: Printed at the Methodist Book Concern for the Author 1856) 259. 22. Quarterly Meeting of the Madison Circuit, 15 August 1812, Minutes, Ms., Archives, Louisville Annual Conference, United Methodist Church, Kentucky Wesleyan College, Owensboro, KY. 23. L. P. Driskell, Victory Out of Defeat (Sanford, FL: n.p. 1950) 17–18. 24. Frank Hayes, “The Family Altar League: Its Purposes and Progress,” WCA 76 (24 August 1910) 12–13. 25. Charles F. Deems, The Home Altar: An Appeal in Behalf of Family Worship; with Prayers and Hymns, and Calendar of Lessons from Scripture for Family Use (New York: M. W. Dodd 1850) vi–vii. Deems provided two courses of prayers for morning and evening of every day of the week (one course borrowed or adapted from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer), a two-year daily lectionary, extra Scripture readings for Sunday mornings throughout the month, and selected hymns and doxologies. He also suggested orders of worship to be used Sunday mornings and evenings. For Sunday morning: selected readings from the Old and New Testaments; the Decalogue; a hymn; the prayer for the day; the Lord’s Prayer; and the apostolic benediction. Sunday evening was structurally similar, though a psalm could be added to the Sunday evening lesson stipulated in the lectionary. Although not as extensive a worship resource as Deems’s book, Ohio minister C. R. Lovell nonetheless provided in his Methodist Family Manual (Cincinnati: H. S. and J. Applegate 1852) a system for Bible study and Scripture readings assigned by topic. 26. “Keep the Home Fires Burning”: Readings, Explanations, and Prayers for the Use of Daily Bible Reading and Prayer League and Family Worship League (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South [1921]) 7. Resources for family worship were designated within two larger collections of services and prayers by Methodist Episcopal editors: Wilbur P. Thirkield, ed., Service and Prayers for Church and Home (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1918) 117–69; and Wilbur P. Thirkield and Oliver Huckel, eds., Book of Common Worship (New York: E. P. Dutton 1932, 1936) 289–323. 27. O. E. Goddard, The Methodist Evangel (Nashville: Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South 1928) 160. 28. 15 August 1789, “A Journal and Travel of James Meacham; Part 1. May 19 to Aug.


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31, 1789,” Historical Papers, ed. William K. Boyd, Trinity College Historical Society and the North Carolina Conference Historical Society, series 9, no. 5 (1912) 88. 29. Leonard Smith, 13 September 1867, Journal, Ts., Archives, Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference, United Methodist Church, Bloomington, IL. 30. See, for example, William Keith, The Experience of William Keith. Together with Some Observations Conclusive of Divine Influence on the Mind of Man (Utica: Printed by Asahel Seward 1806) 15. 31. Finley, Autobiography, 286. 32. The Journals of the Rev. Thomas Morrell, ed. Michael J. McKay (Rutland, VT: Academy Books, for the Historical Society, Northern New Jersey Conference, United Methodist Church 1984) 22; and Journal, 10 January 1810, JLFA, 2:628; cf. Minutes MC (1782), 37; (1783), 42; and (1795), 162–63. 33. Taylor Kinsfolk Association at Tabernacle Church, The Taylors of Tabernacle: The History of a Family (Brownsville, TN: Tabernacle Historical Committee 1957) 177. 34. JGC/MEC, 1864, 22–23. 35. Cited as #1019 in Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1849). Six hymns are included under the subheading “Public Fasts” within the general heading “Miscellaneous.” 36. “Welfare of Ohio Conference Methodism,” in Ohio Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Held at Portsmouth, Ohio, September 29, 1875 (Cincinnati: Western Methodist Book Concern 1875) 221. 37. See, for example, J. S. Gilbert, “The Prayer Meeting,” The Methodist 16 (18 September 1875) 594; J. H. Potts, Pastor and People; Or, Methodism in the Field (New York: Phillips and Hunt 1879; Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden 1879) 167–72; and G. O. King, “Hints on the Conduct of a Prayer-Meeting,” EH 2 (29 August 1891) 202. 38. Prayer-Meeting Annual for the Year 1892, Arranged for the Wednesday-Evening Service of Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, by the Pastor, Rev. Richard Harcourt, D. D., and Mr. Joseph Hindes (Baltimore: Methodist Episcopal Book Depository 1892). 39. See, for example, Wilbur Fletcher Sheridan, The Sunday-Night Service: A Study in Continuous Evangelism (Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 1903; New York: Eaton and Mains 1903); Norman E. Richardson, ed., Present-Day Prayer-Meeting Helps: For Laymen and Minister (New York: Eaton and Mains 1910; Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1910); J. George Haller, The Redemption of the Prayer-Meeting (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1911; New York: Eaton and Mains 1911; and Nashville: Smith and Lamar 1911); Halford E. Luccock and Warren F. Cook, The Mid-Week Service (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1916); Robert Elmer Smith, Midweek Messages (New York: Abingdon 1925); and Robert Seneca Smith, The Art of Group Worship (New York: Abingdon 1938). 40. William T. Ward, Variety in the Prayer Meeting: A Manual for Leaders (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1915) 7. 41. Henry Reed Van Deusen, Elm Park Historical Sketches (Scranton, PA: Board of Elm Park Methodist Church 1955) 42. 42. Wyatt Brown, Early Methodism in Greenville, North Carolina, and a History of the Jarvis Memorial United Methodist Church, ed. John D. Ebbs (Greenville, NC: Jarvis Memorial United Methodist Church 1978) 118–19. 43. William W. King, “The Redemption of the Prayer Meeting,” MR 92 (November 1910) 964–65. 44. Edmund E. Prescott, The New Midweek Service (Nashville: Cokesbury 1929) 14–16. 45. Wilson O. Weldon, “Broadcasting the Midweek Service,” The Pastor 12 (October 1948) 27.

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46. Michael Shaw, “Whatever Happened to Sunday Night Services and Wednesday Prayer Meetings?” North Carolina Christian Advocate 144 (12 January 1999) 3. 47. Morris, Miscellany, 109. 48. See, for example, John Wesley’s Sermon “On the Visitation of the Sick”; and Morris, Miscellany, 110. 49. “On Pastoral Visiting,” MR 20 (October 1838) 378–79. 50. Daniel P. Kidder, ed., The Minister’s Study, and Scenes Connected with It (New York: Lane and Scott 1849) 35–38. 51. No rationale has been found for this explicit borrowing from the Presbyterians. One Methodist Protestant historian generally noted the courtesies that had been extended by the Presbyterians to emerging Methodist Protestantism, and the respect the new denomination accorded the older body (John Paris, History of the Methodist Protestant Church [Baltimore: Printed by Sherwood 1849] 313–14). 52. Abraham Grant, Deaconess Manual of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (n.p.: African Methodist Episcopal Church 1902) 28. 53. “The Ministry of Public Prayer,” MR 79 (September 1897) 805. 54. C. E. Mandeville, Minister’s Manual and Pocket Ritual: A Ready Help in Time of Need for the Sick-Room, Funerals, etc., Together with Full Ritual for Marriage, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, etc., rev. ed. (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1902; New York: Eaton and Mains 1902) 9–24. 55. James Albert Beebe, The Pastoral Office: An Introduction to the Work of a Pastor (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1923) 284. 56. “Ten Commandments for Pastors Visiting the Sick,” The Pastor 13 (October 1949) 16; and “Questions of the Month,” The Pastor 15 (January 1952) 15; cf. Richard C. Cabot, “Spiritual Ministrations to the Sick,” Religion in Life 4 (Winter 1935) 32–44; Russell L. Dicks, “The Clergyman in the Sickroom,” Religion in Life 8 (Spring 1939) 244–47; and Edmond H. Babbitt, The Pastor’s Pocket Manual for Hospital and Sickroom (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury 1949). 57. M. Lawrence Snow, “Uses of ‘The Book of Worship’ in the Home and with Small Groups,” in Companion to the Book of Worship, ed. William F. Dunkle, Jr. and Joseph D. Quillian, Jr. (Nashville: Abingdon 1970) 189. 58. John R. K. Fenwick and Bryan D. Spinks, Worship in Transition: The Liturgical Movement in the Twentieth Century (New York: Continuum 1995) 5–7. For American Methodist writers, see, for example, Paul Waitman Hoon, The Integrity of Worship: Ecumenical and Pastoral Studies in Liturgical Theology (Nashville: Abingdon 1971), esp. 102–14; and Don E. Saliers, Worship as Theology: Foretaste of Glory Divine (Nashville: Abingdon 1994), esp. 25– 31.

10. A House for Worship 1. Charles Giles, Pioneer: A Narrative of the Nativity, Experience, Travels, and Ministerial Labours of Rev. Charles Giles (New York: G. Lane and P. P. Sandford 1844) 138. 2. James B. Finley, Autobiography of James B. Finley; Or, Pioneer Life in the West, ed. W. P. Strickland (Cincinnati: Printed at the Methodist Book Concern for the Author 1856) 229. 3. Between 1761 and 1776, fourteen octagons for Methodist worship were built in England and Scotland. Records show no such octagonal buildings in eighteenth-century North America. See Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, “ ‘Plain and Decent’: Octagonal Space and Methodist Worship,” Studia Liturgica 24 (1994) 129–42.


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4. Journal, 16 November 1806, JLFA, 2:521. 5. Notes on Chapter 3, section 1, Discipline with Notes, 177. 6. Minutes; Taken at a Council of the Bishop and Delegated Elders of the Methodist Episcopal Church: Held at Baltimore, in the State of Maryland, December 1, 1790 (Baltimore: Printed by W. Goddard and J. Angell 1790) 7. 7. In 1846, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South approved the recommendation of the Committee on Missions (not printed in the Discipline) that preachers should “induce our coloured friends to attend public worship at the churches with the whites” and that separate sittings be provided “as our practice usually has been” (JGC/ MECS [1846], 66). 8. See the entry for 22 January 1785 in the journal of Thomas Coke, cited in the Arminian Magazine 1 (June 1789) 293. 9. John F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, Being a Collection of Memoirs, Anecdotes, & Incidents of the City and Its Inhabitants (Philadelphia: E. L. Carey and A. Hart 1830; New York: G. and C. Carvill 1830) 397. 10. Andrew Reed and James Matheson, Narrative of the Visit to the American Churches, by the Deputation from the Congregational Union of England and Wales, vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Brothers 1835) 48. 11. Floyd S. Bennett, Methodist Church on Shockoe Hill: A History of Centenary Methodist Church, Richmond, Virginia (Richmond, VA: n.p. 1962) 36; and Hersey Everett Spence, McBride: A Mother in Methodism (Durham, NC: Seeman 1957) 7. 12. “Plan of a Comfortable Church” in Annals of Southern Methodism for 1855, ed. Charles F. Deems (New York: J. A. Gray 1856) 374. 13. Bishop Payne’s First Annual Address to the Philadelphia Annual Conference of the A. M. E. Church. May 16, 1853. (Philadelphia: C. Sherman 1853) 5. 14. Annals of Southern Methodism for 1857, ed. Charles F. Deems (Nashville: J. B. M’Ferrin 1858) 108, 110, 133. 15. Thomas A. Morris, Miscellany: Consisting of Essays, Biographical Sketches, and Notes of Travel (Cincinnati: L. Swormstedt and J. H. Power 1852) 19. 16. Leroy M. Lee, The Life and Times of the Rev. Jesse Lee (Charleston, SC: John Early 1848) 451–52 (on the last episode, cf. James 2:1–7). 17. JGC/MEC (1816), 155–58; and JGC/MEC (1820), 199–200, 208–11. 18. In a sustained argument, J. S. Inskip (Methodism Explained and Defended [Cincinnati: Applegate 1856] 63–110) set forth the view that the provision delineating free seats, as well as the disciplinary directions and services for the administration of the sacraments and the burial of the dead, were advisory and not mandatory. 19. Autobiography of Peter Cartwright (repr. Nashville: Abingdon 1984) 312–13. 20. B. T. Roberts, “Free Churches,” The Earnest Christian and Golden Rule 3 (May 1862) 133–36. 21. For example, W. P. Strickland, The Genius and Mission of Methodism; Embracing What Is Peculiar in Doctrine, Government, Modes of Worship, etc. (Boston: Charles H. Peirce 1851) 110–21. 22. Virginia Gust Byers, Elizabeth Chapel . . . A Place to Worship (1986) unpaginated. 23. Michael G. Cartwright, ed., History of Tabernacle United Methodist Church (1984) 129. 24. For a survey of church extension programs in the Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church, South, see Paul Neff Garber, The Methodist Meeting House (New York: Board of Missions and Church Extension, Methodist Church 1941) 44– 121.

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25. Fernandez C. Holliday, Indiana Methodism: Being an Account of the Introduction, Progress, and Present Position of Methodism in the State (Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden 1873) 157. 26. Abel Stevens, The Centenary of American Methodism: A Sketch of Its History, Theology, Practical System, and Success (New York: Carlton and Porter 1865) 233–36; and “Methodist Church-Building,” The Methodist 12 (4 February 1871) 36. 27. James D. Bratt and Christopher H. Meehan, Gathered at the River: Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Its People of Faith (Grand Rapids: Grand Rapids Area Council for the Humanities 1993) 29. 28. JGC/MECS, 1874, 515–16. 29. The paper imitations of stained glass were advertised in the section for the Board of Church Extension within successive volumes of the Manual of the Methodist Episcopal Church: A Quarterly Magazine of Information Concerning the Benevolent and Publishing Interests of the Church, published from 1880 to 1888. Sample patterns were sometimes included as part of the notice, which indicated that samples and price lists were available from the Methodist Episcopal Church’s chief architect, Benjamin Price, through the denomination’s Board of Church Extension office in Philadelphia. 30. Kenneth E. Rowe, “Redesigning Methodist Churches: Auditorium-Style Sanctuaries and Akron-Plan Sunday Schools in Romanesque Costume, 1875–1925,” in Connectionalism: Ecclesiology, Mission, and Identity, United Methodism and American Culture, vol. 1, ed. Russell E. Richey, Dennis M. Campbell, and William B. Lawrence (Nashville: Abingdon 1997) 117–34. 31. For example, see the plans included in the section for the Board of Church Extension in the Manual of the Methodist Episcopal Church; also Catalogue of Architectural Plans for Churches and Parsonages (Philadelphia: Board of Church Extension, Methodist Episcopal Church 1885, 1889). 32. Wyatt Brown, Early Methodism in Greenville, North Carolina, and a History of the Jarvis Memorial United Methodist Church, ed. John D. Ebbs (Greenville, NC: Jarvis Memorial United Methodist Church 1978) 18–19, 51–53. 33. See Journal, 20 August 1764, Works, 21:486; and “Thoughts on the Consecration of Churches and Burial-Grounds” (1788), Works, 9:531–33. 34. Journal, 9 August 1796, JLFA, 2:93. 35. Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856, ed. Charles F. Deems (Nashville: Stevenson and Owen 1857) 84–85. 36. Daniel Alexander Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, ed. C. S. Smith (Nashville: Publishing House of the A. M. E. Sunday-School Union 1891; repr. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation 1968) 222–23. 37. “Programme for the Dedication of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Holyoke, Massachusetts,” United Methodist Archives, Madison, NJ. 38. Lucius C. Clark, The Worshiping Congregation (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1912; New York: Eaton and Mains 1912) 118–19. Clark also contended that Sunday school ought not be held in the worship space lest “reverence for both place and service of worship” be lessened (p. 120). 39. Halford E. Luccock, “The Seven Deadly Sins of Church Architects,” CAJ (NY) 99 (3 April 1924) 417–18. 40. Von Ogden Vogt, Art & Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press 1921) 187–89; and Modern Worship (New Haven: Yale University Press 1927) 3–28. For the contributions of Vogt and Cram to the second Gothic revival, see James F. White, “Theology and Architecture in America: A Study of Three Leaders,” in A Miscellany of American Christianity:


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Essays in Honor of H. Shelton Smith, ed. Stuart C. Henry (Durham: Duke University Press 1963) 371–90. 41. Elbert M. Conover, Building the House of God (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1928) 33–36, 100–116; also The Church Building Guide (New York: Interdenominational Bureau of Architecture 1946); and The Church Builder (New York: Interdenominational Bureau of Architecture 1948). 42. See, for example, William S. Mitchell, “Glorifying God in Architecture,” MR 110 (March 1927) 263–67; J. Hastie Odgers and Edward G. Schutz, The Technique of Public Worship (New York: Methodist Book Concern 1928) 43–72; Henry Nelson Wieman, “Beauty and God in Public Worship,” MQR 77 (April 1928) 179–92; Burnell L. Schubel, “The Nature of Worship,” MQR 78 (January 1929) 76–86; Ralph D. Harper, “Worship as an Aesthetic Experience,” MR 113 (November 1930) 896–901; Thomas Albert Stafford, Christian Symbolism in the Evangelical Churches (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury 1942); and William H. Leach, Protestant Church Building (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury 1948). 43. Fred Winslow Adams and R. N. Merrill, “Is the Present Trend Toward Gothic Architecture and a More Elaborate Ritual a Real Advance?” MR 114 (March 1931) 205. 44. Leslie R. Marston, From Age to Age a Living Witness: A Historical Interpretation of Free Methodism’s First Century (Winona Lake, IN: Light and Life 1960) 350. 45. Clarence Seidenspinner, “It Is Time We Considered a Sound Church Architecture,” The Pastor 18 (April 1955) 28–29; see also Romey P. Marshall, “Gothic Architecture or Gothic Thinking?” The Pastor 13 (January 1950) 21–22; and John Robert Van Pelt, “Pulpit or Altar?” The Pastor 14 (June 1951) 4–5. 46. J. J. Stowe, Jr., “A Building for the Future,” The Pastor 19 (December 1955) 28–29. 47. Methodist Church, Sanctuary Planning (Philadelphia: Department of Architecture, Methodist Church 1962) 40–42. 48. See, for example, James F. White and Susan J. White, Church Architecture: Building and Renovating for Christian Worship (Nashville: Abingdon 1988).

11. Roles in Public Worship 1. See Paul W. Chilcote, She Offered Them Christ: The Legacy of Women Preachers in Early Methodism (Nashville: Abingdon 1993). 2. Letter to Nicholas Norton, 3 September 1756, LJW, 3:186–87; and Letter to William Thompson, 21 February 1787, LJW, 7:372. See also A. B. Lawson, John Wesley and the Christian Ministry: The Sources and Development of His Opinions and Practice (London: SPCK 1963). 3. For a study of the development of the 1980 Ordinal, including a history of the revisions in the ordination rites of the United Methodist Church’s Methodist ancestors, see John D. Grabner, “A Commentary on the Rites of An Ordinal, The United Methodist Church” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame 1983). 4. Journal of the Eleventh General Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church Held in Lynchburg, Va., May, 1874 (Baltimore: William J. C. Dulany 1874) 17. However, by 1925, one explanation given for the absence of deacons in the denomination was that “the New Testament recognizes but one order in the ministry, that of elder, deacons not being ministers of the Word” (Thomas Hamilton Lewis, Handbook of the Methodist Protestant Church [n.p.: Thomas H. Lewis 1925] 39). 5. For the debates on the change, see General Conference of the United Methodist Church, Daily Christian Advocate 3 (26 April 1996) 693–710. 6. See the explanation given in notes on Section 7, Discipline with Notes, 57.

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7. See, for example, JGC/MEC, 1872, 204. 8. The issues of conference membership and of itinerancy added complications to the matter of roles that will not be addressed here. 9. The designations “licensed preacher” and “lay preacher” found in early Methodism are used throughout this section even though variant terms and new descriptors were used in the denominations at different periods. 10. Charles Giles, Pioneer: A Narrative of the Nativity, Experience, Travels, and Ministerial Labours of Rev. Charles Giles (New York: G. Lane and P. P. Sandford 1844) 155–57; cf. Nathan Bangs, An Original Church of Christ: Or, A Scriptural Vindication of the Orders and Powers of the Ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 2d ed., rev. (New York: T. Mason and G. Lane 1837) 245–49. 11. “Eighteenth Century Slave Advertisements,” Journal of Negro History 1 (April 1916) 205. 12. JGC/MEC, 1884, 94. 13. George T. Ashley, Reminiscences of a Circuit Rider (Hollywood, CA: Published by the Author 1941) 59–60. 14. Bishops’ Address, JGC/MECS, 1914, 58. 15. JGC/MC, 1948, 174; cf. pp. 670–71. 16. JGC/MC, 1952, 1655–59. The commission recognized that one facet of this complicated issue was the unwillingness of some unordained pastors to pursue the educational requirements for ordination when they could already be accorded the privileges of sacramental administration. 17. For the reports and debates, see JGC/MC, 1952, 537–45, 550–55, 1268–73. That the decision in 1952 had to do both with sacramental theology and with ecclesiology may be signaled by the two individuals who brought the Standing Committee’s reports: Robert W. Goodloe for the majority and Oscar Thomas Olson for the minority. 18. Wesley’s “appointing Deaconesses” while in Georgia was used as evidence to support the charge that he was a Roman Catholic. See Patrick Tailfer, Hugh Anderson, David Douglas, et al., True and Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia (Charles-Town, SC: Printed by P. Timothy, for the Authors 1741) 42. 19. For accounts of pioneering preaching women, see Hilah F. Thomas and Rosemary Skinner Keller, eds., Women in New Worlds: Historical Perspectives on the Wesleyan Tradition, vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon 1981); and Rosemary Skinner Keller, Louise L. Queen, and Hilah F. Thomas, eds., Women in New Worlds, vol. 2 (Nashville: Abingdon 1982). 20. Jarena Lee, Religious Experiences and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee: Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel (Philadelphia: 1836; repr. Nashville: A. M. E. C. Sunday School Union 1991) 12–22. 21. In its final Discipline (1938, ¶722), the Methodist Episcopal Church, South carried the legislation that “Our Church does not recognize women as preachers, with authority to occupy the pulpit, to read the Holy Scriptures, and to preach, as ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ.” 22. So noted Lucy Rider Meyer in Deaconesses: Biblical, Early Church, European, American, 2d ed. (Chicago: Message 1889) 63. Neither the Journal of the 1888 General Conference nor the Daily Christian Advocate for that gathering gives the detailed information on the petition provided by Meyer. 23. Meyer, Deaconesses, 24–25. 24. J. M. Thoburn, The Deaconess and Her Vocation (New York: Hunt and Eaton 1893; Cincinnati: Cranston and Curts 1893) 23, 82, 112–17; and Stella Wyatt Brummitt, Looking Backward, Thinking Forward: The Jubilee History of the Woman’s Home Missionary Society of


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the Methodist Episcopal Church (Cincinnati: The Woman’s Home Missionary Society 1930) 45. See Laceye Cammarano Warner, “Methodist Episcopal and Wesleyan Deaconess Work in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: A Paradigm for Evangelism” (Ph.D. diss., University of Bristol 2000). 25. Hymn #558 in The Methodist Hymnal (1905), the joint hymnal of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

12. American Methodist Worship 1. John L. Reeder, “Liturgical Developments of New Testament Times,” MR 78 (November 1896) 927. 2. Matthew Simpson Hughes, The Higher Ritualism (Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 1904; New York: Eaton and Mains 1904) 48. 3. Bishops’ Address, JGC/MECS, 1886, 16–17. 4. Anton Baumstark, Comparative Liturgy, rev. Bernard Botte, trans. F. L. Cross (Westminster, MD: Newman Press 1958) 19–23. 5. See Geoffrey Wainwright, “Tradition as a Liturgical Act,” in his Worship with One Accord: Where Liturgy and Ecumenism Embrace (New York: Oxford University Press 1997) 45–64. 6. Charles Edwin Schofield, We Methodists (New York: Methodist Publishing House 1939) 20. 7. Episcopal Address, JGC/MECS, 1930, 360. 8. Philip Schaff, America: A Sketch of the Political, Social, and Religious Character of the United States in North America (New York: Scribner 1855) 167–68. 9. Sermon by Bishop Morris, JGC/MEC, 1864, 281–91. 10. F. A. Cone, “About Ourselves and Our Times,” NCA 60 (24 January 1912) 98. 11. Episcopal Address, JGC/MEC, 1900, 59–60. 12. See, for example, James F. White, “Worship and Culture: Mirror or Beacon?” Theological Studies 35 (1974) 288–301, revised in Christian Worship in North America (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press 1997) 59–74; Thomas C. Oden, Pastoral Theology (San Francisco: Harper and Row 1983); William H. Willimon, The Service of God (Nashville: Abingdon 1983); Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens (Nashville: Abingdon 1989); and Don E. Saliers, Worship as Theology (Nashville: Abingdon 1994). For a slightly different approach on the same issue, see James H. Cone, “Sanctification, Liberation, and Black Worship,” Theology Today 35 (1978–1979) 139–52. 13. H. Richard Niebuhr, “Toward the Independence of the Church,” in The Church against the World, ed. H. Richard Niebuhr, Wilhelm Pauck, and Francis P. Miller (Chicago: Willett, Clark, and Co. 1935) 123–24. 14. For studies at the end of the twentieth century on “United Methodism and American Culture,” see the multivolume series edited by Russell E. Richey, William B. Lawrence, and Dennis M. Campbell. 15. Robert Taft, “The Structural Analysis of Liturgical Units: An Essay in Methodology,” in his Beyond East & West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding (Washington, D.C.: Pastoral Press 1984) 153–54.


Index

accommodation to the wider society, 13, 25, 78, 174, 176, 196, 198–99, 201, 214, 223, 234, 238, 243–44, 278 Adams, Fred Winslow, 52–53 affirmations of faith. See creeds affusion, baptism by, 85–86, 98–99, 102 African Methodist Episcopal Church, 12, 14–16, 39, 53, 57, 66, 102–3, 107–8, 110, 113, 115, 127, 133, 142–44, 154, 159, 161, 168–69, 185–86, 188, 190–91, 193, 212, 220, 232, 236, 247, 250–51, 258, 263, 267–68, 279, 320n.35 African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal (1984), 172 African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 12, 53, 108, 113, 127, 135–36, 143, 145, 154, 169, 190, 192–93, 212, 220, 232, 247, 263, 267–68, 279 A. M. E. Zion Hymnal (1957), 171–72 A. M. E. Zion Hymnal (1996), 46, 172 afternoon worship, 9–10, 12, 24–25, 132 Alleine, Joseph, 68, 70 Alleine, Richard, 68–70 Allen, Richard, 130, 207, 267–68 altar, 76, 244, 253–55 altar call, 76, 79 altar rail, 79, 147, 241, 243 anaphorae, West Syrian/Antiochene, 138– 39, 309n.65

Anglican chant, 169 Anglican-Methodist relations, 74, 83–84, 104, 118 Ante-Communion, 6–8, 119–20, 125, 133– 34 anthems, 159–61, 166, 196, 208 Apostles’ Creed, 15, 19, 39–40, 85, 109– 10, 120, 131 Apostolic Constitutions, 5, 268, 306n.28 Apostolic Tradition, 138 architecture auditorium, 248, 252, 254–55 divided chancel, 253–55 Gothic Revival, 243, 247, 252–53, 256, 274 octagonal, 240–41, 330n.3 Arminianism, 79, 103, 166 Articles of Religion (Anglican), 40–41, 90, 203 Articles of Religion (Methodist), 10, 33, 41, 82, 87, 90, 104–5, 112–13, 122– 23, 125, 144, 152, 269 arts in worship, 25, 29, 169, 255 Asbury, Francis, 8, 32, 34, 45, 66, 75, 94, 159, 210, 240, 249, 257 aspersion, baptism by, 86, 93–94, 96, 98– 99, 102 Athanasian Creed, 41 atonement, universal, 89, 101, 106, 110, 113, 131, 210

337

338

Index

Baker, Frank, 61–62 bands, 61, 71, 124, 293n.3 Bangs, Nathan, 63, 77, 111 banns, reading of, 178–79, 188, 320n.34 baptism according to adult rites, 82–87, 92–93, 95–96, 102, 107–9 of adults, 39–40, 87, 89, 91–92, 99, 106, 108–9, 115 in general, 67, 73, 77, 81, 83–84, 88, 93, 95, 104–6, 108–11, 113–14, 116, 143, 145–47, 188, 194, 223, 256, 261– 62, 265–66, 277, 279 and godparents, 85 according to infant rites, 82–88, 92–93, 95, 102, 106–10, 114, 302n.73 of infants, 87–89, 91–94, 96, 98, 100– 102, 106, 109–10, 112–16 modes of, 85–86, 93–97, 99, 101–2 in private, 83 and sponsors, 85, 101, 103, 114 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982), 116– 17 baptismal font, 240–41, 253, 255 baptismal regeneration, 87–88, 90–92, 94– 96, 104–11, 113–14, 116, 271, 302n.79 Baptists, 61, 74–75, 82, 93, 98–99, 143, 145–47, 150 baptizo, 98 Beatitudes, 14, 131, 134–35, 308n.54 benedictions, 42 Bennet, John, 71, 310n.75 bishop liturgical role, 250, 258–59 office, 206, 258, 260 John Wesley’s objection to the term, 83, 258 Bishop, Isabella Lucy Bird, 36 Boardman, Richard, 62, 305n.19 Boehm, Henry, 43 Book of Common Prayer (1549), 85, 205, 308n.60 Book of Common Prayer (1662), 5–8, 42, 47, 65, 82–83, 85, 87, 118–19, 121, 178, 217, 249, 258–59, 328n.25 Book of Common Prayer (1789), 180, 318n.11 Book of Common Prayer (1892), 17, 232

Book of Common Prayer (1928), 326n.67 Book of Common Worship (Thirkield and Huckel, 1932, 1936), 41, 218 Book of Hymns. See Methodist Hymnal (1965) Book of Offices (1936), 70, 218 Book of Worship of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1984), 15, 64, 70, 110, 154, 185, 220, 309n.71 Book of Worship of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (1996), 53, 143, 220 Book of Worship for Church and Home (Methodist Church, 1945), 20–21, 25, 53, 56, 69, 135, 175, 185, 187–88, 218, 229, 234, 237, 320n.35 Book of Worship for Church and Home (Methodist Church, 1965), 21–23, 25, 36, 53, 57, 64, 70, 110, 115, 187, 218– 19, 229, 237, 267, 320n.35 bride, giving of the, 179, 191–92, 198, 321n.46 Brooks, John, 77 Brown, George, 98, 321n.54 Bucke, Emory Stevens, 64 Buckley, J. M., 153 burial rites, 202, 204–6, 208–9, 211–12, 215–22, 325n.61, 326n.63 Bush, George, 211 Bushnell, Horace, 100, 103, 106 calendars Christian, 6, 16, 20, 47–54, 71, 142, 162, 172, 174, 274, 291n.43 civil, 49–54 denominational, 27, 49–54 camp meeting, 74–81, 96–97, 112, 161, 165, 196, 227, 230, 270, 274, 296n.53 Cartwright, Peter, 72–73, 112, 224 children and youth, 26–29, 78, 81, 100, 106, 110, 112–14, 116, 168, 210, 217, 225, 227, 231 choirs, 15, 159, 161, 167–69, 171, 174, 244, 248, 262 Christian antiquity, 3–4, 6, 23, 60, 80, 83, 85, 96, 100, 110, 115, 118, 133, 135, 138, 146, 149, 228–29, 237, 241, 260, 267–68, 279

Index Christian home, 100, 186–88, 192, 197, 224–30 Christian Library, 68 Christmas, 47–51, 66, 148 Christmas Conference (1784), 6, 119, 202 circuits, 6, 71, 73, 257, 259, 265 civic occasions, 20, 49 civil marriage, blessing of, 188 Civil War, 77, 200, 248 Clarke, Adam, 148 classes, 61, 112, 124, 228, 232, 257, 262, 293n.3 Coke, Thomas, 8, 32, 34, 42, 82, 85, 87, 92, 94, 121, 159 Cokesbury Hymnal, 27, 170 Colbert, William, 207 Coles, George, 10, 98, 161, 210, 294n.28 collection of alms, 61, 63–64, 125, 127, 131, 263, 277 collection of fees, 94, 181–82, 202, 300n.40, 322n.9 Collection of Hymns for Public, Social, and Domestic Worship (1847), 51, 164–65 Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1821), 41, 157–58 Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1780), 122, 157, 203 Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection in America (1845), 165 Collection of Interesting Tracts, Explaining Several Important Points of Scripture Doctrine, 98, 105, 300n.43 Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1737), 156, 314n.1 Collection of Psalms and Hymns for the Lord’s Day (1784), 7, 122, 156 collects, 6, 16, 47 Colored (Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church, 14, 108, 131, 186, 190, 193, 220, 232, 267, 279, 321n.42 “common order,” 15, 19, 56 communion, “close” and “open,” 145–48 communion table, 79, 240–41, 243–44, 248, 253–55 Conference, annual, 49, 63, 77 Conference, quarterly, 49, 63, 74, 229

339

confession, 139 confirmation, 83, 113, 115, 143, 259, 303n.90 congregational singing, 159–62, 167–69, 171, 173 Conover, Elbert, 252–53 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1963), 23 conversion, 76, 79, 81, 91, 101, 112, 116, 147, 201, 204, 209–10, 226, 235–36, 238 Cooke, R. J., 211, 312n.108, 326n.64 Cooper, Ezekiel, 48, 66, 69, 160, 178, 299n.37, 305n.18, 327n.13 cornerstone, laying of a, 249–50 covenant, 68, 77, 88, 94, 100–102, 106–7, 109–10, 129, 179, 187–88, 198 covenant renewal, 60, 67, 68–73, 79–80, 103 creeds, 39–41 cremation, 200 Curtis, Olin Alfred, 213 Davies, Maria Dyer, 38, 324n.37 deacon liturgical roles, 84, 181, 206, 260–62, 305n.20 office, 260, 264, 268, 293n.8, 333n.4 deaconess liturgical roles, 235–36, 268–69 office, 264, 267–69, 334n.18 dead, care of the, 200–201, 322n.4 debates regarding forms for worship, 9–13, 32, 57–58 Decalogue, 14, 45, 131, 134, 232 dedication or consecration of a building, 249–51 Deems, Charles F., 228 democratic character of Methodism, 9, 10, 54, 80, 146–47, 155, 231, 245, 263, 272–73, 277, 279–80 Directions for Renewing Our Covenant with God (1780), 69–70 Directory for the Public Worship of God (1644), 86, 161 Disciples of Christ (Campbellites), 82, 98, 101 Divine Service (1903), 33, 51

340

Index

divorce and Methodists, 114, 186, 192–93 rite for, 193 Dix, Gregory, 139 doxologies, 13–14, 41–43, 169 Driskell, L. P., 312n.111, 328n.23 Dromgoole, Edward, 178 dying and death general cultural views, 199–202 Methodist views, 201–2, 208, 210–18, 220, 222–23 Easter, 47–51 ecumenism, 17, 23, 40, 52–53, 75, 102, 109–10, 133–34, 139, 143, 149, 155, 173, 207, 228, 234, 255 Edwards, Peter, 98 elder liturgical roles, 84, 119, 124, 148, 150, 181, 206, 250, 259–60 office, 7, 258–62, 264, 293n.8 Emory, John, 104–5, 274 enrichment of worship, 17, 25, 168, 196, 252, 280 enthusiastic worship, 71–72, 74, 76–77, 243 epiclesis, 87, 92, 95, 127–28, 140, 142, 308n.60 Eucharist. See Lord’s Supper eucharistic prayer, 138–42, 221 Evangelical Church, 103 Evangelical United Brethren Church, 23, 102–3, 137–38, 261 evening worship, 9, 12, 18–20, 24–25, 132, 227, 230, 232–33, 235 exhortation, 36, 61, 66, 68, 76, 94, 194, 202 exhorter, 24, 67, 240, 262 experience, Christian, 5, 33, 274 extemporary prayer, 32–33, 68, 121, 186, 194, 208, 211, 215, 227, 229–30 family worship, 20, 182, 224–30, 262, 277– 78 fasting, 47, 50, 73, 90, 145, 194, 224, 231, 295n.44, 310n.80, 329n.35 Federal Council of Churches, 52–53, 234 Fetter Lane Society, 61, 65, 118, 144 Field, Leon C., 151

Finley, James, 240, 310n.77 Finney, Charles Grandison, 11–12, 25, 247 Fluvanna Conference (1779), 93, 119, 124– 25, 257 formalism, 11, 32, 113, 132, 135, 158, 167, 169, 174, 195, 227, 232–33, 247, 253– 54, 262 Free and Candid Disquisitions (1749), 87, 298n.9 Free Methodist Church, 12–13, 39, 74, 76, 78, 100–101, 103, 107–8, 114, 131, 144, 151–54, 167–69, 172, 174, 184, 188, 190–91, 193, 195, 211–12, 220, 232, 245, 247, 254, 258, 261, 266–67, 273, 275, 278–79, 317n.37 freedom in planning worship, 9–12, 32, 55– 58, 126, 206–7, 240, 269, 272–73, 277 fugue tunes, 160–61, 208, 315n.11 funeral sermons, 200, 202, 204, 206, 209– 11, 214–15, 277, 324n.35 funerals, 142, 202, 204, 206–11, 214–15, 220, 223 funerary customs, 200–201, 204, 207, 214, 323n.21 Garrettson, Catherine Livingston, 194 Garrettson, Freeborn, 48, 55, 126, 146, 194, 289n.19 Gatch, Philip, 177, 210, 299n.35, 305nn.13, 19 General Council (1789), 9–10, 286n.15 general superintendent liturgical role, 258–59 office, 83, 258 German-American Methodism, 43, 166 Gilbert, Jesse S., 213 Giles, Charles, 264 Gilruth, James, 162, 307n.36 Gladden, Washington, 25 Gloria Patri, 14, 19, 42, 287n.40 Good Friday, 47–49, 52 Goodloe, Robert, 110, 334n.17 grace, 90–92, 102, 105–6, 108–9 Graves, James R., 105, 321n.55 Great Litany, 6, 9, 16 Hardin, H. Grady, 193 Harkness, Georgia, 213

Index Harmon, Nolan B., 19, 304n.11, 319n.25, 320n.32, 321n.46, 326n.68 Harrower, Charles, 16–17, 51 Haskins, Thomas, 8 Hawley, Bostwick, 51 healing services, 193, 237 Hemmenway, Moses, 94, 98 Herrnhut, 61, 65 Hibbard, Freeborn G., 103 Holiness churches, 76, 78, 108, 114, 167, 169, 190, 195, 212, 220, 232, 275, 279 Holy Communion. See Lord’s Supper Holy Spirit, 32, 42–43, 107, 115, 140, 274 Hoon, Paul Waitman, 222 Hymn Book of the Methodist Protestant Church (1837), 162–64 hymn books in braille, 166 organization and content of, 157–58, 162–65, 169–74, 316n.21 use of, 41, 43, 50, 66, 76, 97–98, 155– 74, 213, 227, 231, 249 Hymnal of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1878), 168–69, 213 hymns gospel, 170, 174, 232 “lining out” of, 161, 169 use of, 43, 45–46, 50–51, 62, 66–68, 76– 77, 79, 81, 88–89, 91–92, 97–98, 105– 6, 121–24, 126–28, 131–32, 134, 155– 75, 183–84, 194, 196, 198, 202–4, 207–8, 211, 213, 215, 217, 227, 230– 31, 249–50, 269–70, 275–76, 281 Hymns of Faith and Life (1976), 172 Hymns on the Lord’s Supper (1745), 119, 122–24, 128–29, 155 Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1849), 41, 44, 165 identity, denominational, 13, 54, 58, 80, 155, 175, 270–81 immersion, baptism by, 85, 93–94, 98–99, 102, 146, 255, 298n.10 immortality, 211–13, 222, 326n.64 imposition of hands, 111, 115, 237 Indian Melodies (1845), 166 individualism, 81, 101, 153, 155, 170, 174, 186, 195, 199–200, 238

341

indoor revivals, 79 infant dedication, 102–3, 107, 110 instrumental music, 15, 159, 162, 167–68, 171, 173–74, 196, 248, 314n.8, 317n.37 intermediate state, 202–3, 211, 323n.16 invitation to Christian discipleship, 19 Jimeson, A. A., 105 justification, 90, 104 Justin Martyr, 9, 23, 138 King, Peter, 258 Kingdomtide, 53 Kingsley, Calvin, 211 Korean Creed, 41 laity, liturgical roles of the, 262–69, 277 Large Minutes, 36, 48, 71, 158–59, 177, 227, 240–41, 272 last judgment, 203, 211–12, 235 lay preachers. See unordained preachers lectionary, 6, 9, 16, 34, 36, 53 Lee, Jarena, 267–68 Lee, Jesse, 10, 71–72, 160, 189, 244–45 Lewis, David, 60, 71 life after death, 200–201 liturgical inculturation, 43–44, 169, 176, 198–99, 276, 279 liturgical movement, 23, 57, 102, 109–10, 133, 135–37, 155, 174, 255 liturgical year. See calendars, Christian local preachers. See unordained preachers Lord’s Day, 3, 6, 9–59, 71, 73, 78, 80–81, 84, 118–19, 125, 132, 142, 168, 196, 206, 220, 225, 231, 262, 273– 74 Lord’s Prayer, 32–33, 42, 120, 198, 319n.26 Lord’s Supper, 7–8, 23, 41, 49, 64, 68, 73, 75, 77, 81, 90, 93, 112, 189, 194, 196– 97, 204, 221–24, 235, 253–54, 256, 261, 263, 266, 277 American Methodist theologies of, 129– 32, 134–36, 139, 142, 146–47, 153, 155 and children, 146 conditions for reception of, 124, 143–48, 271, 275, 279

342

Index

Lord’s Supper (continued ) as a confirming and “converting” ordinance, 144, 147 desire for, 118–19, 124–25, 128–29, 135, 155 elements for, 120–21, 130, 150–52 frequency of reception, 118–20, 124–25, 130, 144, 148–49, 253–54, 266 method of reception, 152–54 neglect of, 130–31, 149 Prayer of Consecration for, 119–21, 126, 131–32, 134–36, 150, 306nn.23, 25 presence of Christ in, 123, 140, 142 reception of, 119, 124, 128–30 rites for, 126–27, 132–40, 142 and the sick, 119, 121, 124–25, 129, 132, 323n.22 love feast, 60–65, 67, 71–73, 77–80, 124– 25, 147, 257, 263, 277 Luckey, Samuel, 131 Luther, Martin, 87, 95, 205 manual acts, 121, 125, 127, 131, 150, 154 marriage licenses for, 178–79, 188 of Methodist preachers in the eighteenth century, 37 nature and purpose of, 176–77, 179–80, 182–88, 198, 225 parental consent required for, 177–79, 190–91 qualifications for, 188–93 rites for, 178–81, 184–88, 191–93, 195– 98, 319n.19 with unbelievers, 177–78, 189, 226, 277 Marshall, Romey, 135–36, 154 Masons, 240, 250 Matthias, John, 194 Meacham, James, 324n.35, 328n.28 Mead, Stith, 97–98, 159 means of grace, 31, 79, 90, 106, 109, 114, 124, 131, 134, 144, 148, 155, 224, 235 Media vita, 205, 215–16, 221, 323n.25, 326n.73 membership, church separate rites of, 63, 67, 77, 113, 303n.97 understandings of, 87, 94, 101–3, 111– 16, 143, 146, 190

membership, society, 111 Merrill, Stephen M., 56 Methodist Almanac, 49–50 Methodist Church, 19, 103–4, 110, 114– 16, 135–37, 154, 187, 189, 193, 218– 20, 229, 254, 261, 266–67 Methodist Episcopal Church, 6, 13–15, 17– 19, 24–26, 28, 32, 35, 39–40, 46, 48, 63, 78, 94, 98, 100, 102, 106–9, 111– 15, 126–27, 130–35, 144, 149, 150– 51, 153–54, 159–61, 167, 169, 174, 184–93, 195, 206, 211–12, 215–17, 228–29, 231–32, 245, 247, 251, 253, 265–68, 271–72, 278, 325n.61 Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 12, 14–16, 19, 24, 35, 39–40, 48, 51, 63, 105–8, 113–15, 127, 131, 134–35, 144, 149, 152, 164–65, 167, 185–88, 190–92, 195, 206, 211–12, 215–16, 232, 245, 247, 251–52, 261, 266, 278, 319n.25, 320n.42, 325n.61 Methodist Hymnal (1905), 15, 19, 35, 40, 52, 183–84, 213, 289n.13, 314n.130, 317n.43 Methodist Hymnal (1935), 15, 19, 36, 135, 170–71, 213, 217 Methodist Hymnal (1965), 155, 172, 314n.130 Methodist Pocket Hymn-Book (1802), 213 Methodist Protestant Church, 12–15, 24, 39, 102, 107, 113, 127–28, 130–31, 135, 148, 152, 161–64, 184, 187–88, 190–91, 198, 208–9, 212, 215–16, 236, 251, 258, 260–61, 268, 277, 319n.19, 320n.42 Miley, John, 108, 213 “Modern Affirmation,” 41 Molther, Philip Henry, 118, 144 Moravians, 61, 65, 68 Mormons, 101, 186 morning worship, 9–10, 12, 18–20, 24, 28 Morrell, Thomas, 183, 324n.37, 329n.32 Morris, Thomas, 67, 69, 190, 235, 244, 278 Mother’s Day, 52 mourners’ bench, 76 mourning, 200–201 multicultural worship, 44, 173, 222

Index Neely, Thomas Benjamin, 56, 216–17, 302n.83, 303n.97, 319n.28 Nevin, John Williamson, 12 new birth, 91–92, 105, 110–12 New Hymn-Book (1880), 14, 51, 169 New Year’s Day, 50, 66 New Year’s Eve, 50, 65–67, 69–70, 281 Newell, E. F., 194, 306n.31 Newton, D. F., 167–68 Nicene Creed, 40–41, 120 Niebuhr, H. Richard, 280–81 Non-Jurors, 84–85, 298n.9, 304n.2, 308n.53 Olson, Oscar Thomas, 53, 334n.17 ordained clergy, 24, 80, 257–62, 277 Order (Brotherhood) of St. Luke, 135–36 original sin, 88–90, 94, 106–10, 116, 130, 203 “Ought We to Separate from the Church of England?” (1755), 5, 83, 85, 204 paschal mystery, 110, 201, 222 patriotism and nationalism, 3, 49, 54, 77– 78, 147, 278 Payne, Daniel, 243, 250 penitential rite, 64, 121 Pentecost (Whitsunday), 47–50, 53, 99 pews in churches, 240, 244–45, 248 rental of, 244–45, 248, 331n.18 Pierce, George Foster, 54 Pilmore, Joseph, 62–63, 67 Pocket Hymn Book Designed as a Constant Companion for the Pious (1785?), 122, 304n.12 Pocket Hymn Book, Designed as a Constant Companion for the Pious (1790), 157– 58 polygamy, 186 Porter, James, 148, 310n.84 postures used for worship, 12–15, 26, 67, 76, 121, 150, 196, 227, 232, 242, 304n.9 prayer general practice of, 31–33, 58, 81, 90, 202, 224–25, 242–43, 264 morning and evening, 6–9, 16–18, 25, 40, 225, 227–29, 328nn.17, 25 prayer meeting, 71, 73, 76, 79, 165, 224, 230–35, 257, 262, 274, 278

343

preaching, 8, 36–39, 43, 58, 71, 73–74, 76, 79, 81, 252–53, 255–56, 262, 264–65 Presbyterians, 74–75, 101, 144, 150, 181, 236 president of conference liturgical role, 258–59 office, 258 presiding elder, 63, 72–73, 259 Protestant Episcopal Church, 13, 17, 40, 57, 100, 121, 134, 180, 198, 212, 217, 249–51, 280, 319n.25, 326n.67 protracted meetings, 79 Psalms, 6, 9, 14, 25, 34–36, 42 psychology, 38, 96, 114, 133, 137, 222 pulpit, 75–76, 79, 240–41, 243–44, 247– 48, 253–56 Puritans, 40, 47, 68, 83, 85, 87, 179, 181, 204 quarterly meeting, 71–74, 77, 79, 124–25, 132, 148–49, 181, 196, 226–27, 230– 31, 259 Rall, Harris Franklin, 187 Ralston, Thomas, 212 Rankin, Thomas, 37–38, 48, 63, 66 reason, 5, 33, 203, 274 rebaptism, 84, 93–94, 101–3, 297n.3 respectability in worship, 13, 195, 198, 243, 252 responsive readings, 14, 34–35, 52, 217, 262, 289n.13 resurrection, 203, 211–13, 222 revival meeting, 75, 79, 112, 168, 257 ritualism, accusations of, 15, 33, 35, 57, 135 Roberts, Benjamin Titus, 13 Roe, Elizabeth, 72–73 Roman Catholicism, 39–40, 57, 90, 101, 130, 195, 203, 225 Rosser, Leonidas, 101–2 Sabbath theology, 44–47 sacraments in general, 90–92, 104–6, 108– 11, 116, 118, 129, 302n.70 sanctification, 90, 104, 106 Sanders, Paul, 135 Schaff, Philip, 277

344

Index

Scripture as authority, 4, 23, 33–36, 42, 60, 83, 90, 101, 131, 138, 146, 185– 87, 192, 203, 212, 224, 228 Scripture lessons, 6, 9–10, 13–14, 34–36, 47, 64, 125, 202, 205–6, 208–11, 216– 18, 227, 237 Seaman, Samuel, 24 seating, separate, 167, 241–42, 245, 316n.27, 331n.7 Second Vatican Council, 23 Select Psalms, 6, 9, 17, 35 sermon, 36–39, 81, 124–25, 132, 149, 195, 252 Service and Prayers for Church and Home (1918, 1928), 17, 33 Sheldon, Henry Clay, 108, 147 Shepherd, Massey, 137 signation, 86–87, 93 simplicity, 11, 181, 193, 204, 207, 232, 241–43, 245, 247 singing, 7, 58, 76–77, 121, 127, 131, 156, 158–60, 202, 204, 207–8, 227, 230, 262, 264 singing schools, 159, 161, 314n.10 small groups, 20, 61, 76, 79, 235 Smith, Leonard, 10, 26, 69, 151, 166, 294n.14, 311nn.91, 99, 329n.29 social gospel, 33, 108, 147, 170 societies, Methodist, 71, 148 Society of Friends (Quakers), 71, 104, 143, 240 song leaders, 159, 173, 263 Soule, Joshua, 45, 207 space, liturgical disposition of, 241–46, 248, 252–55 types of, 58, 72, 74–76, 84, 99, 196, 206, 208, 215, 227, 239–56, 301n.63 Sperry, Willard L., 18, 28, 252 stations, 6, 24, 73, 132, 148, 265 Stevens, Abel, 246–47 steward, liturgical roles of the, 150–52, 263, 277 stewardess, liturgical roles of the, 263 Stillingfleet, Edward, 84 Strawbridge, Robert, 93, 240 Strickland, W. P., 150 Stuart, Moses, 150–51 submersion, baptism by, 255. See also immersion, baptism by Summary of the Law, 134, 308n.53

Summers, Thomas O., 16, 26, 33, 106, 113, 149–50, 152, 168, 185, 191, 211, 273, 302n.70, 311n.87, 319n.24 Sunday, sanctity of, 3, 44–47, 51, 78, 196 Sunday school superintendent, 24, 26–28, 263 Sunday school worship, 26–29, 52, 81, 161, 165 Sunday Service of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1867), 16, 51, 273, 280 Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America (1784, 1786), 5–9, 16–17, 22, 31–32, 40, 42, 47, 82–88, 92, 94, 119– 25, 143, 159, 178–81, 198, 202, 204– 6, 249, 258–60, 272, 280 Swedish-American Methodism, 43–44, 75 Taft, Robert, 281 Taylor, Emma Lee, 214 Taylor, Robert, 183 technology, advances in, 38, 46, 173, 182, 199, 201, 234 temperance, 150–51, 170 testimonies, 61, 63, 79, 81, 194, 230, 233 Thiel, Charles A., 321n.57, 325n.55 Thirkield, Wilbur, 17, 33, 41, 52–53, 218 “Thoughts Upon Infant Baptism” (1751), 86, 94, 98 tickets and tokens, 61, 63, 65, 71–73, 111, 124, 143, 277, 310n.76 tobacco, spitting of, 242–43 “Treatise on Baptism” (1756), 84–85, 92, 94, 98, 104–5, 143 trine immersion, baptism by, 85, 99 tune books, 160–61, 166, 208, 315n.14 tunes, 159–61, 166, 168–69, 173, 208 Turner, Henry M., 64, 168–69, 300n.51 “two-wine theory,” 150–52 uniformity in worship, 9–12, 15, 32, 42, 55– 58, 81, 96, 150, 155, 159, 166, 174, 206–7, 262, 265, 272–73 United Brethren in Christ, 43, 75, 102–3 United Methodist Book of Worship (1992), 23, 25, 44, 53, 57, 64, 70, 103, 110, 142, 188, 192–93, 197, 220–22, 229, 234, 237, 255, 260

Index United Methodist Church, 23, 40, 103, 111, 115–17, 137–42, 149, 154, 173, 193, 197, 220–23, 229–30, 260–62, 267, 269–70, 275, 280 United Methodist Hymnal (1989), 23, 25, 46, 142, 155, 172–74, 220 “United Societies of the People commonly called Methodists,” 127 unordained preachers liturgical roles, 24, 84–85, 149, 181, 202, 206, 257, 264–67, 293n.8, 334nn.9, 16 presidency at sacraments, 265–67 Vasey, Thomas, 85 via salutis, 89, 103, 157, 162, 165, 172, 174, 203, 314n.3 vigils, 65 visitation of the sick, 122, 224, 235–37, 268 Vogt, Von Ogden, 18, 20, 28, 252 Wakely, Joseph B., 210–11 Wall, William, 86, 298n.12 Ware, Thomas, 124, 299n.39 watch night, 50, 65–67, 69, 71, 73, 77, 79– 80, 257 watchafternoon, 66 Watson, Richard, 104 Watts, Isaac, 77, 86, 158, 249 wedding anniversary, 197 ceremonies, 73, 77, 142, 193–96, 261, 265–66 customs, 176, 191, 193–96, 198 wedding ring, 181, 195, 197–98

345

Welch, Thomas Bramwell, 151 Wesley, Charles, 41, 44, 62, 66, 68, 88–89, 91, 118, 128, 156, 158, 269, 276, 281 Wesley, John, 4–8, 42, 58–59, 67–68, 80, 82–83, 85, 156–57, 224, 249, 257, 259, 267, 272, 274–75, 279 on baptism, 84–92, 98, 105, 116 on dying and death, 202–4 in Georgia, 83–84 on the Lord’s Supper, 118–20, 122–24, 148, 311n.87 on marriage, 177, 179–81 ordinations by, 119 on the sacraments, 90–92 Wesley, Samuel, 84 Wesleyan Methodist Connection (Church), 12, 39, 76, 78, 108, 114, 127, 151, 167–69, 172, 184–85, 188, 190, 195, 207, 212, 214–15, 232, 251, 255, 258, 260, 275, 279, 320n.42 Wesleyan Methodists (Great Britain), 17 Whatcoat, Richard, 8, 85, 210 Wied, Hermann von, 87 women, roles of, 46, 65, 80–81, 173, 176, 179, 182, 184–86, 190–92, 198, 201, 225, 231, 235, 259, 263, 267–68, 334n.21 word and sacrament, 120, 126, 132–33, 135–36, 139, 142–43, 149, 155, 197, 221 works of mercy, 5, 90, 224, 235, 238, 264, 268 works of piety, 90, 224, 238, 264 worldliness, 13, 46, 66, 167, 169, 192–93, 195, 225, 228, 234, 278–79 written prayers, 32–33

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Baptist and Methodist Faiths in America (Faith in America)

Jews in America (Religion in American Life)

Catholics in America (Religion in American Life)

Protestants in America (Religion in American Life)

Baptist and Methodist Faiths in America

Religion in Twentieth Century America (Religion in American Life)

Religion in Nineteenth Century America (Religion in American Life)

Religion in Nineteenth Century America (Religion in American Life)

Religion in Colonial America (Religion in American Life)

African-American Religion (Religion in American Life)

Native American Religion (Religion in American Life)

Muslims in America: A Short History (Religion in American Life)

Orthodox Christians in America (Religion in American Life)

Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs in America (Religion in American Life)

Muslims in America: A Short History (Religion in American Life)

The Muslims of America (Religion in America)

The Muslims of America (Religion in America)

Religion in America Since 1945

Protestantism in America (Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series)

Buddhism in America (Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series)

John Williamson Nevin: American Theologian (Religion in America)

Judaism in America (Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series)

Buddhism in America (Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series)

Judaism in America (Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series)

Protestantism in America (Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series)

The Quakers in America (Columbia Contemporary American Religion Series)

Women and American Religion (Religion in American Life)

Worship

Worship

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