Reviewed in this essay:
Methodism: Empire of the Spirit, by David Hempton. Yale University Press, 278pp. Yale University Press. $30.00.
CELEBRATED war hero and soon-to-be President Ulysses S. Grant once quipped that there were only three great parties in the United States: “the Republican, the Democratic, and the Methodist Church.” The claim seems valid once again, at least when one notices the dozens of newly released books and articles examining and reevaluating the Methodist church. That these publications coincide with the tercentenary of John Wesley’s birth should hardly be a surprise; that 2003 also saw Lincoln College, Oxford finally erecting a monument to John Wesley offers the cynic the opportunity to confound, yet again, university politics and religious influence with the smug quip that even the Victorian academics denied Wesley a memorial. Nevertheless, the representation of religious enthusiasm has undergone a sea change: current scholars are questioning that presumptively inevitable march toward secularism so celebrated in the Enlightened Academy, while simultaneously making efforts to recognize the individuals and the culture that sought after piety and personal salvation.
The recent scholarship on Methodism has yielded some noteworthy work. Alan Harding’s guidance through the thicket of doctrinal controversies and how these interpretations of doctrine were understood by a well-organized though short-lived Methodist branch in The Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion (2005) and John Wigger’s impressive vista of post-Revolutionary America Methodism in Taking Heaven by Storm (2001) are two contributions in that category. Both of these scholars achieve success by combining careful work in the archives and records while engaging with the journals, diaries, and personal ephemera of adherents and contemporaries. The result each time is something of a scholarly aper�u, a sketch that captures the nuances of a lived religious experience and the often inexplicable shifts in alliances and interpretations. Other recent contributions include John Kent’s provocative and intemperate Wesley and the Wesleyans (2002), a book that has galvanized factions, whether in defense of his conception of “primary religion” or to criticize his revival of the old Marxist claim that Methodism prevented revolution in late eighteenth-century Britain. Renewed interest in the topic has also activated one of the preeminent historians on British Methodism to weigh in. We are fortunate to have David Hempton’s Methodism: Empire of the Spirit: it is obviously the result of much thoughtful research, analysis, teaching, and reflection done over the course of three decades.
At the outset, Hempton limits the scope of his book to be a “history of Methodism as an international movement… concentrating on eight important themes, each one designed to get beneath the hard surface of mere institutional expansion.” The thematic arrangement of his chapters allows Hempton to weave together selective episodes from assorted biographies and diaries, summarize distinctive aspects of the various understandings of the Methodist tradition, and combine recent scholarly work to his commentary. The result is a frequently dazzling movement from the narrative of particulars to the general axiom. Hempton sketches, for example, a few incidents illustrating the struggles of early nineteenth-century missionaries among Native Americans in order to make clear that “the language problem was particularly formidable, for the Methodists so much relied on preaching, teaching, and reading that the lack of linguistically qualified personnel and materials in native languages was a serious barrier to progress.” The disappointing returns and setbacks among the missions, Hempton effectively explains, led to a change in approach that would later be replicated in other parts of the world.
At other times, however, Hempton�s narrative can be uneven. For instance, in his third chapter on Methodist hymnody, sermon writing, and other publications, Hempton offers little in the way of direct considerations of Charles Wesley’s beautiful hymns and instead discusses of the arrangement and the table of contents of the Collection of Hymns (1780).
But ultimately, the most important contribution of this work is its even-handedness, especially when Hempton treats religious experience on its own terms. In a passage on the trial of Ephraim Kingsbury Avery, the Methodist minister accused of seducing and later murdering Sarah Cornell in Fall River, Massachusetts, Hempton teases out the irony that “those aspects of Methodism that many early-nineteenth-century Americans found most appealing, its religious egalitarianism and its capacity to inculcate personal and social discipline, were the very qualities found wanting by its Fall River opponents.” Instead of pursuing the salacious and dubious claims of sexual misconduct at camp meetings, Hempton centers his discussion on what was at stake, politically and spiritually. In the very act of considering the spiritual dimension of Methodism’s history, and, as he puts it, “refus[ing] to grant that the political, social, or gender element is the most fundamental,” he offers a social history that is sympathetic but not partisan, at once concise and graced with nuance.
Hempton’s style is accessible and immediate. His sense of sequence and his ear for cadence are unusual for modern scholarship and produce prose that is a pleasure to read: “Twenty-five years of sifting Methodist archives in six countries have persuaded me that much of what one sees in them stems from Methodism’s roots in enthusiasm and enlightenment.” Hempton uses rhetorical figures and forceful language sparingly and effectively (e.g., “poverty, as with other forms of suffering, is a far nobler thing in retrospect than in prospect”). In his first chapter, he relies upon metaphors of evolutionary biology to describe the rise of Methodism in the eighteenth century. At times, the effect is impressive: “The fact that Methodism, as a religious species, thrived in some environments and not in others is revealing both of the kind of movement it was and of the kind of changes remodeling the world order in the age of revolutions.” At other times, his use of metaphor can be disastrous; one need not comment much on phrases such as “Methodists, like clever parasites” or comparisons between the faith and its locales and viruses and their host environments.
Hempton’s style very infrequently suffers from academic bunkum. At those moments, the author seems to be trying to convince not only his audience but also himself. The jargon heavy conclusion to the third chapter, for instance, clunks and clangs against the general eloquence of the book:
The argument presented here is that the Methodist message was subtly altered by its multi-varied locations and that those alterations had profound consequences, not only for how the message was contextualized, but also for the nature of the message itself. Exploring those fine adjustments and how individuals and communities appropriated them is an inexhaustible process. In the meantime all that can be done is try to construct a basic “map” of the content and means of transmission of the message, and to try to hear it through the layered testimonies of those who actually did hear it.
The stilted academic language at its conclusion detracts from an otherwise exceptional chapter, in which Hempton skillfully moves from Wesley’s recommended theological works, fascinating conversion narratives, an overview of deathbed narratives, the dissemination of hymns and sermons (constructing purpose and reception from outlines of a few sermons), and the way in which the medium of the messages affected their reception as well as their production. Hempton’s arrangement of Methodism into eight distinct vantage points offers a surprisingly complete overview of its history. Some of these themes, such as its theology and its method of organization, are expected and necessary for a responsible history of the movement. Others, such as the fourth chapter on opposition and conflict, suggest fresh and promising approaches to understanding commonality despite distribution across six continents, social and historical contingencies across three centuries, and the inevitable drift of interpretation among thirty million adherents. The most surprising and satisfying chapter deals with race, class, culture, and gender. Even in the most formal of academic works, the inclusion of a chapter on this postmodern quartet is now as de rigueur as the criticism classes that initiate tyros in the art of decoding those chapters. Many readers encountering such obligatory components may feel the impulse to pass quickly over them but those who skip the banal-sounding sixth chapter “Boundaries and Margins” will miss a memorable passage regarding the popular struggle for religious power and control in Buckland, Massachusetts in the 1830s. Hempton follows the passage with a word of caution and a maneuver that disarms knee-jerk truculence:
Unfortunately, we social historians inhabit the intellectual space of the Enlightenment, which as we have seen in Chapter 2, has condemned as fanciful the very enthusiasm that we are now called upon to interpret.
Despite his stated concern about the “three-strikes rule of American baseball” and how it may affect the reception of his book, one hopes that Hempton’s contribution to the renewed interest in Methodism is not merely a hit but at least a standing triple. How scholarship will act upon or react to Hempton’s Methodism: Empire of the Spirit remains to be seen. As it stands, the work is first-rate, providing a noteworthy overview of the development and features of Methodism and restoring the balance and sensitivity to the scholarly discussion of a living, practiced religion. One would be remiss, however, not to mention the decline of academic editorial practice witnessed in Yale University Press’s part in the production of this text. In more than a dozen instances, footnotes provide the source to information mentioned paragraphs and sometimes even pages before, without any consistent pattern or practice. In any event, it appears that No�l Coward was prescient when he quipped, “Having to read a footnote resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.” Yale’s practice, which mars an otherwise accomplished work of scholarship on the historical lineage of Methodism, implies that no one goes downstairs anymore.
Copyright 2004-2005 :: The New Pantagruel 2.3.