by
Grant Underwood

Why does a Brigham Young University professor specializing in the history of Mormonism take an interest in things Methodist? Simply this: in the early years of Mormonism, some of the Saints' (Mormons') most enthusiastic converts, as well as ardent opponents, were Methodists. I want to be able to explain the difference. The pattern that eventually became apparent was that those Methodists who went on to join the Mormon church almost invariably expected the imminent return of both pentecost and paradise. Of course, only a fraction of the acknowledged minority of all Methodists who were millenarians became Mormons. Nonetheless, the search leads me to the fascinating study of early nineteenth-century Methodism, which appears only recently to have begun to be explored. As elsewhere in religious studies, the focus on ordinary people and minority manifestations promises to broaden our view of a movement whose current portrait largely reflects institutional histories and systematic theologies.

Eschatologists tell us that millennialism is a later, predominantly a Christian development growing out of Jewish apocalypticism.¹ Its novelty is the expectation of a future "golden age" on earth before the final, apocalyptic transformation at the end of time. As various versions of the millennial dream developed over the centuries, some proponents retained the vivid and dramatic spirit of their eschatological progenitor, lashing out against contemporary society and promising imminent vindication for the beleaguered faithful.

Others proponents, however, drifted toward a more irenic view of the world around them and interpreted the Biblical prophecies more figuratively. By the nineteenth century, there were basically two rival millennial visions of the future. What is today labeled "post-millennialism" constituted one approach. What is best called "millenarian apocalypticism," but more commonly is simply designated "millenarianism" or "pre-millennialism" (often used interchangeably), represented the other.²

Simplistic differentiations about whether Christ will come before (pre-) or after (post-) the millennium are hardly sufficient to distinguish these two schools of thought. As historian Robert Clouse warns, "the distinctions involve a great deal more than the time of Christ's return. The kingdom expected by the pre-millennialist is quite different from the kingdom anticipated by the post-millennialist, not only with respect to the time and manner in which it will be established but also in regard to its nature and the way Christ will exercise control over it" (Clouse 7). The source of the differences seems to be hermeneutical. "As a general rule," summarizes W. H. Oliver, pre-millennialists were "literalists [who] stressed the discontinuities between the mundane world and the future," while post-millennialists were "allegorists" who emphasized "the continuities, with respect to both the means of change and the result of change" (Oliver 18-19).

From the beginning, millenarianism has served as a vehicle for prophetic excoriation of the religious establishment. Like its eschatological ancestor, apocalypticism, millenarianism reacts strongly against the comfortable accommodation to the world evidenced by the dominant faith. It calls for a purification and a return to "old-time religion," and seeks to free God to do remarkable things as in the past. Millenarian eschatology promises that God will do them again. Not surprisingly, throughout Christian history, millenarianism often has been associated with a yearning to recapture the miraculous gifts of the "primitive church."

Both millenarianism and primitivism maintain a similar philosophy of history. The march of time is not upward; history is actually a downward spiral of spiritual decay. It is the story of apostasy, and severe judgments are proclaimed against a present considered to be the faint and fallen image of a distant golden age. Both millenarianism and primitivism see resolution only in reformation by a dramatic return to pristine purity. Primitivism focuses on what is to be restored, while millenarianism emphasizes when and how the former glory will be recovered. This link between primordium and millennium is well illustrated along the popular fringe of early nineteenth century British Methodism.

Early British Methodism

At first, explains Clarke Garrett, "'methodism' was as much a style of spirituality and an affirmation of the possibility of the immediate experience of divinity as it was an organized religious body. It was the most visible sector of a broad movement of popular piety that affirmed that the age of miracles was not past and that Christianity would regain the purity and vitality of its beginnings" (Garrett 104). As time passed, however, Methodism followed the sociological model of movement from sect to denomination. Renewal rigidified into regimentation, and the initial outpouring of the Spirit was subordinated to institutional concerns.

Even before Wesley's death in the final decade of the 1700s, cries were heard that "primitive" Methodism had been lost. Splinter groups began to break away within a few years, and by the turn of the century it was no longer possible to talk of Methodism as a single entity. In nineteenth-century England, it is necessary to distinguish Wesleyan Methodism or, more simply, "Wesleyanism," from Primitive Methodism, New Connexion Methodism, Bible Christians, and a host of others.³

Nor were all Methodists who were dissatisfied experientially or eschatologically with the parent body "come-outers." Some could not bring themselves to formally dissociate with Wesleyanism, even though their views may have differed from the official theology.⁴ As British social historian J. F. C. Harrison observes, "There is a danger for the historian in assuming that the written word was actually what people believed. We know, for instance, that many thousands of laboring people sang hymns which enshrined the basic doctrines of Methodism. But we are not warranted in assuming that when humble Methodists sang of grace, salvation, and the blood of the Lamb, these words had the same meaning for them as for John Wesley, or the same significance that theologians, psychologists and historians have attributed to them later" (Harrison xiv).

Numerous private gatherings of the pious in class and other meetings became hothouses for holiness and eschatological excitement at the same time that their participants continued to retain nominal affiliation with Wesleyan denominations.⁵ As David Hempton remarks, Methodism should not be treated "as a monolith" since there were "many Methodisms in many places at many times" (216, 230).

Therefore, it may be more helpful to look at Methodism from the perspective of a spectrum of religious attitudes and ideas rather than one particular set of beliefs and behaviors. Toward one end of the spectrum would be found those individuals, whatever their denominational affiliation, who were interested above all else in enjoying a vital, gifted Christianity and who tended to espouse a millenarian eschatology. Such a model is valuable precisely because it points to the source of a disproportionate number of millenarian Methodists.

This is especially so when one approaches the data from the perspective of popular religion. "The autobiographies of most working-class millenarians and seekers in the period," notes Harrison, "record contact at some stage with a local Methodist Society" (30). In striving to recapture the early spirit of Methodism in the face of a definite establishmentarian drift in the nineteenth century, some Methodists found compelling the millenarian analysis of a world in apostasy and the expectation of the imminent eschaton.

Numbers of searching souls had "pondered long over the scriptures, especially the prophecies and promises of the coming of Christ's kingdom." Many of them "had already had some form of inner-light experience, and all were ready to be influenced by visions and dreams" (Harrison 132). "I was earnestly looking out," wrote one such individual, "for some one to be visited by the Spirit, to revive the work, and raise up the cause of God. . . . I went everywhere that I heard of any one being visited by the Spirit of God . . . in hopes of finding the truth" (Harrison 153). Postulating the dismal and "dead" state of both mainstream Methodism and institutional Christianity, their millenarian faith was that "something would turn up, either the gospel would be [more fully] introduced, or afflictions would come upon the nation" (Valenze 87).

Smaller conventicles of less well-known schismatic Methodists often made explicit their millenarian motives and hopes for holiness. Consider, for instance, the "United Brethren" of Herefordshire, England. They broke off from the Primitive Methodists not only for the usual reasons of ecclesiological localism, but also on the grounds that the original spirituality had been lost and that a proper understanding of eschatology was lacking.⁶

There was the "Christian Society" of Robert Aitken which boasted chapels from London to Liverpool during the 1 830s.⁷ Aitken had sought ordination in the Wesleyan Connexion, was rebuffed, mingled temporarily with the Wesleyan Methodist Association, and eventually broke away to create his own society. He thought that even most Methodists were "living beneath their privileges" and that there was "much worldly conformity amongst them." In short, "their standard of holiness is very far beneath the Gospel standard."⁸ Like his followers, Aitken had moved steadily toward the pentecostal end of the spectrum of religious expectation, and had also become an avid student of the prophecies and a premillennialist.

For Aitken and his followers, the absence of contemporary charismata was definite proof of the overwhelmingly apostate condition of the religious world around them and of the nearness of the end. "And now," he remarked, "if we want a standard whereby to judge of the apostasy of the present churches, we must take the church of Christ when the apostatizing spirit was least manifested-that is to say, in the apostolic age. With this pattern in our eye, where, I ask, are the gifts of the Spirit-where the miraculous power-where the gift of healing-where the gift of prophecy-where the signs that were appointed to follow them that believed?... Alas! alas! my brethren, the gifts of the Spirit are gone, and, I fear, most of the graces have gone with them.... Such things have long been mere matters of history" (Aitken 11). Only the latter-day outpouring of the Spirit in conjunction with the personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ was thought able to rectify the situation.

From the beginning Wesley had tried to steer his followers between the Scylla of formalism and the Charybdis of "enthusiasm." His approach was to distinguish the "extraordinary gifts" such as tongues, miracles, and healings, which he felt were generally confined to the Apostolic Age, from "ordinary graces" such as sanctification which were available to all believers in every age. The line, however, was frequently crossed in popular Methodism. Donald Dayton's observation about the later drift toward pentecostalism fits well what was already taking place in certain sectors of popular Methodism: "Those who stayed closest to the Wesleyan tradition," he notes, "emphasized the ethical consequences and the graces rather than the gifts of the Spirit, but the push was increasingly toward the spiritual gifts and graces especially where the fascination with Pentecost was most intense" (93).

Aitkenites also expected that "every prophecy and promise respecting his second coming" along with "the changes predicted in the world--elements, nature, condition of animals, and the like, shall be literally accomplished."⁹ For the Christian Society, the lamb really would lie down with the lion, and Christ really would reign personally over the earth from some terrestrial capital. To all of these prophetic promises the post-millennialist majority gave a spiritualized interpretation. Literali5fn, nonetheless, was the cornerstone of both chiliasm and the quest for New Testament charismata.

Pre-Confederation Canada

Similar beliefs, both experientially and eschatologically, can also be found among Methodists in pre-Confederation Canada. In the years following 1790, William Losee and his associates led in the evangelization of the St. Lawrence River valley. Methodism was firmly entrenched in the region by the 1 830s. In the leading cities of Kingston and Toronto (York, before 1834), a significant undercurrent of radical Methodism was present.¹⁰ It was fostered in private study groups and prayer meetings and included some of the most prominent citizens of the area. One such group met at the home of lay preacher William Patrick who was also clerk of the House of Assembly and former treasurer of the Toronto Temperance Society. Patrick was a prominent member of the Toronto Methodist establishment (Clark 307). One participant remembered that the group "laid great emphasis upon the doctrine of the first resurrection, the judgment, and Christ's millennial reign" (Fielding 50).

Another met at the home of the widow Isabella Walton whose recently deceased husband had been chamberlain of Toronto. Their literal approach to the Scriptures led them to question the post-millennialism of their Methodist peers. A typical critique is found in an unsigned broadside which declared: "Many are flattering themselves with the expectation that all the world is going to be converted and brought into the ark of safety. Thus the great millennium, in their opinion, is to be established. Vain, delusive expectation! The Savior said to his disciples that 'as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the coming of the Son of Man.' Query. Were all the people converted in the days of the of Noah, or mostly destroyed?" The answer was clear, and events "will soon show to this generation that the hour of God's judgment hath come."¹¹

Even Thomas Vaux, Secretary to the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, found himself influenced for a time by pre-millennialist doctrines. This may seem ironic since the conventional wisdom has it that because pre-millennialists were pessimistic about society, they were therefore largely uninvolved in evangelism or social reform, expecting Christ to single-handedly and supernaturally set up his Kingdom. The latest millennial scholarship, however, has made it clear that such characterizations and conclusions are unwarranted on several counts.¹² "The millennial hope is a paradoxical one," explains Moorhead, "and one can extrapolate a dismal or optimistic view of history, encompassing temporal disaster or progress, or both. . . . Efforts to seize the Kingdom by violence, passive withdrawal from corruption to await the Second Coming, or melioristic reform efforts-all these and other responses have been adduced from eschatological symbols" (Moorhead 1978, 8).13

Those who have studied pre-millennialism in depth find, for instance, that millenarians could be just as dedicated to missionary work as any post-millennialists. In exploring the renaissance of American pre-millennialism in the final quarter of the nineteenth century, one scholar found that it actually brought a heightened interest in missionism: "Just as [). L. Moody [said he] 'felt like working three times as hard' after becoming a pre-millennialist, others experienced a new desire to bring the gospel to a dying world" (Weber 67). George Duffield, an American contemporary of Vaux, defended his pre-millennialism against the charge that it dampened missionary efforts in these words: "The groans of a world perishing in its corruption calls for quickened, multiplied effort, and for zeal irrepressible and inextinguishable. The Gospel of the Kingdom must be preached in all the world, for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come" (in Marsden 194).

In Canada, the mixing of millenarianism and Methodism received impetus from George Ryerson. The Ryersons were one of the most influential Methodist families in Upper Canada and George was well acquainted with Patrick, Vaux, and others (Sissons). Ryerson had gone to England in 1831 to help raise money for Methodist Indian missions and to petition Parliament on behalf of the non-Anglicans of Upper Canada. He stayed on to settle the estate of his wife's mother, but became increasingly disillusioned with British Wesleyanism. At one point he was attracted to the millenarian preaching of Reverend Edward Irving, founder of the Catholic Apostolic Church.¹⁴ Ryerson eventually joined the CAC and endeavored to bring the glad tidings to his Methodist friends in Canada. He was responsible for sending William Caird, CAC evangelist and wife of famed Scottish charismatic, Mary Campbell, to the Toronto Methodists in 1834.

Several groups, including Patrick's, were hospitable to Irvingite millenarianism and proto-pentecostalism, but did not then abandon their Methodist associations. Shortly after the Irvingite visit, however, several of their number had their pulpit privileges withdrawn for heterodoxy by the local Methodist conference.¹⁵ At least one of Patrick's group acknowledged that his interest in the millennium had been heightened by Irvingite teachings. Recalled Joseph Fielding, "I had for some time been much interested in the subject of the millennium, etc., which had been revived by Edward Irving, a Scotch minister in London, and partly from his writings, etc., and partly by reading the Word of God, I was fully convinced the Christian world as it is called was in a very different state to what [it was] supposed. As to the second coming [of] Christ it [was] almost entirely denied or misunderstood."¹⁶ According to the Toronto Minutes of Conference, some eventually defected to the Irvingites and later to the Mormons, but most retained their Methodist associations and their millenarian eschatology.

So what is to be concluded from all this? Perhaps nothing more than to acknowledge that in England and Canada, at an unofficial, popular level the forces that would eventuate in the holiness and pentecostal movements were already well underway by the mid-nineteenth century. Given the spiritual imperatives unleashed by Wesley, it is understandable that certain devotional trajectories would lead toward a kind of millenarian pentecostalism, but the degree to which such paths were pursued at the grass-roots level is yet to be fully appreciated.

Notes

¹lnformation found in this and subsequent paragraphs is taken from Paul D. Hanson, The Dawn of Apocalyptic: The History and Sociological Roots of Jewish Apocalyptic Eschatology, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979); John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination. An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1984); Jean Danielou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp.377-404; D. H. Kromminga, The Millennium in the Church.' Studies in the History of Chnistian Chiliasm (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1945); Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Bryan W. Ball, A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thought in English Protestantism to 1660 (Leiden: Brill, 1975); and W. H. Oliver, Prophets and Millennialists. The Uses of Biblical Prophecy in England from the 1 790s to the 1840s (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1978).

²Millennial eschatologies do not always neatly fit scholarly taxonomies. See Richard Cogley, "Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism," Religion 17 (Oct.1987), 379-396; James W. Davidson, The Logic of Millennial Thought: Eighteenth Century New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); and James H. Moorhead, "Between Progress and Apocalypse: A Reassessment of Millennialism in American Religious Thought, 1800-1880," Journal of American History 71 (Dec.1984), 524-542.

³Studies of English Methodism are myriad. Perhaps the most comprehensive and up-to-date is the three-volume A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, eds., R. E. Davies, A. R. George, and E. G. Rupp (London: Epworth Press, 1965, 1978, 1983). In volume 2, separate chapters treat "The Wesleyan Methodists" and "Other Methodist Traditions," pp.213-329. Also helpful are David N. Hempton, Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750-1850 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984); and Anthony Armstrong, The Church of England, The Methodists, and Society, 1700-1850 (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973).

⁴Robert Currie, Methodism Divided (London: Faber, 1968) and John C. Bowmer, Pastor and People (London, 1975) make clear that the Methodism of the pulpit was not always the Methodism of the pew.

⁵See Deborah M. Valenze, Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); and D. A. Gowland, Methodist Secessions: The Origins of Free Methodism in Three Lancashire Towns: Manchester, Rochdale, and Liverpool (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1979). As David Luker expresses it for the group he studied, "Comish Wesleyan Methodism was clearly something very different from orthodox Wesleyanism" (Luker, "Revivalism Theory and Practice: The Case of Comish Methodism," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37, 1986, 603-19).

⁶See Julia S. Wemer, The Primitive Methodist Connexion: Its Background and Early History (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984); From Mow Cop to Peake, 1807-1932: Essays to Commemorate the 175th Anniversary of the Beginnings of Primitive Methodism, May 1982 (Wesley Historical Society, Yorkshire Branch, 1982); and Job Smith, "The United Brethren," Improvement Era 13 (July 1910): 818-823.

⁷Very little is known about Robert Aitken beyond what is published in the British Dictionary of National Biography 1:206. Some information is contained in Gowland, Methodist Successions.

⁸Laws, Regulations and General Polity of the Christian Society, in connection with the Rev. R. Aitken (1836).

⁹Extracts from the Minutes of the Fourth Annual Convocation of the Christian Society (Liverpool, 1839), p.6.

¹⁰5ee I.E. Sanderson, The First Century of Methodism in Canada, I: 1775-1839 (Toronto: Briggs, 1908); 5. D. Clark, Church and Sect in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1948).

¹¹Prophetic Warning (Toronto, 1836), n.p.

¹²The most recent historiographical pieces are Dietrich G. Buss, "MEETING OF HEAVEN AND EARTH: A Survey and Analysis of the Literature on Millennialism in America, 1965-1985," Fides et Historia (1988): 5-28; James H. Moorhead, "Searching for the Millennium in America," Princeton Seminary Bulletin 8 (1987): 17-33. See also, Leonard I. Sweet, "Millennialism in America: Recent Studies," Theological Studies 40 (1979): 510-531, and in Hillel Schwartz, "The End of the Beginning: Millenarian Studies, 1969-1975," Religious Studies Review 2 (1976): 1-15.

¹³The difficulty in classifying people's eschatologies is well illustrated in the case John Wesley. Kenneth O. Brown surveyed a century's worth of studies on Wesley and found that scholars were almost equally divided in their characterization of him as either premillennialist or post-millennialist. See Brown, "John Wesley: Post or Premillennialist?" Methodist History 28 (Oct.1989): 33-41.

¹⁴Still the most important study of the Irvingites is P. E. Shaw, The Catholic Apostolic Church (New York: King's Crown Press, 1946). Irving's nephew, G. Carlyle, produced The Collected Writings of Edward Irving, 5 vols. (London,1866). Recent studies intent on emphasizing the experiential primitivism of Irving are Amold Dallimore, Forerunner of the Charismatic Movement: The Life of Edward Irving (Chicago: Moody Press, 1983); Charles Gordon Strachan, The Pentecostal Theology of Edward Irving (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973); and Strachan, "Theological and Cultural Origins of the Nineteenth Century Pentecostal Movement," in Essays on Apostolic Themes, ed. Paul Elbert (Peabody, Mass., 1985), pp.144-57.

¹⁵See P. E. Shaw, The Catholic Apostolic Church, 112-116; Stott, "John Taylor's Religious Preparation," 124-26. According to Joseph Fielding, the dangerous doctrines they had imbibed, all Irvingite basics, included such millenarian teachings as "the first and second resurrection, the destruction of the wicked in the last days by the judgments of God, the coming Christ to reign on the earth in the millennium and the apostasy of the Gentile churches" (Millennial Star 2, August 1841, 50-52).

¹⁶Fielding, "Diary," p.1.

Fielding, Joseph. 1841 (August). 2 Millennial Star.

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