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The Ritual of Happy Dying among Early American Methodists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

A. Gregory Schneider
A. Gregory Schneider
Affiliation:
Mr. Schneider is professor of behavioral science in Pacific Union College, Angwin, California.
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Extract

Jane M'Neil died a “glorious death” in 1814 when she was just twelve years old. Perfectly composed during her last illness, she spoke warmly of her attachment to her Methodist class leader and calmly informed visiting neighbors that soon she would be laid in the graveyard. Her biographer recalled that when the local preacher came to pray with her, “the joys of the upper world [seemed] to have been manifested… She was thrown into ecstasies of joy; she shouted the praises of the Redeemer aloud.” Her mother's unregenerate prejudices against religious shouting were removed. Her physician, a non-Christian, “was melted into tears, and gave vent to the loudest exclamations of grief” when Jane exhorted him to flee to “the good physician of souls.” Squire M'Neil, her proud and haughty father, struggled with deep conviction of sin after her death and became converted, influencing many in the neighborhood to seek religion.1

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 1987 , pp. 348 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1987

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References

1. Theophilus Arminius [Thomas Hinde], “Reminiscences of the Past,” (Cincinnati) Western Christian Advocate, 19 Dec 1834, p. 133; hereafter cited as WCA.

2. Bode, Carl, The Anatomy of American Popular Culture, 1840–1861 (Berkeley, 1960), pp. 122, 193–194;Google Scholar and Lynn, Kenneth, “Editor's Introduction,” Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life among the Lowly (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), p. xi,Google Scholar as quoted in Saum, Lewis, The Popular Mood of Pre-Civil War America, Contributions in American Studies 46 (Westport, Conn., 1980), pp. 78–79.Google Scholar

3. Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York, 1977), pp. 1–13, 240–272.Google Scholar

4. Stannard, David E., The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion, Culture, and Social Change (Oxford, 1977), pp. 167–188.Google Scholar For this judgment Stannard relies upon Saum, Lewis, “Death in the Popular Mind of Pre-Civil War America,” in Death in America, ed. Stannard, David E. (Philadelphia, 1974), pp. 30–48.Google Scholar

5. Farrell, James J. shows better awareness of the evangelicals in his Inventing the American Way of Death, 1830–1920 (Philadelphia, 1980), pp. 35–43, 214–218.Google Scholar His chief concern, however, is with the meaning of death after the passing of evangelical orthodoxy.

6. For the growing literature that shows nineteenth-century evangelicalism in the light of “self-control” and for a critique of an older “social control” view, see Sweet's, Leonard I. historiographical essay, “The Evangelical Tradition in America,” in The Evangelical Tradition in America, ed. Sweet, Leonard I. (Macon, Ga., 1984), pp. 1–86,Google Scholar esp. 37–41.

7. In assent with a recent call to respect regionalism in studies of American religion, this article also focuses on the upper south and lower midwest, a region of early Methodist growth and spread. See Gaustad, Edwin Scott, Historical Atlas of Religion in America (rev. ed., New York, 1976), pp. 77–79;Google Scholar Russell Richey, “The Southern Accent of American Methodism,” paper presented at American Academy of Religion, National Convention, Anaheim, California, Nov. 1985; and Brauer, Jerald C., “Regionalism and Religion in America,” Church History 54 (1985): 366–378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. See, for instance, Ahlstrom, Sydney E., A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, 1972), pp. 387–509.Google Scholar Exceptions to this observation might include Sweet's, William Warren classic article on “The Churches as Moral Courts of the Frontier,” Church History 2 (1933): 2–21;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Miyakawa's, T. Scott more recent Protestants and Pioneers: Individualism and Conformity on the American Frontier (Chicago, 1964)Google Scholar. Boles, John, The Great Revival, 1787–1805: The Origin of the Southern Evangelical Mind (Lexington, 1972),Google Scholar shows a greater sensitivity than many studies to the distinctive structures and dynamics of evangelical community. As the title shows, its main focus remains the evangelical mind.

9. Mathews, Donald G., “The Second Great Awakening as an Organizing Process, 1780–1830: An Hypothesis,” American Quarterly 21 (1969): 23–43;CrossRefGoogle ScholarReligion in the Old South (Chicago, 1977). See also his “Evangelical America–The Methodist Ideology,” in Rethinking Methodist History: A Bicentennial Historical Consultation, ed. Russell E.Richey and Kenneth E.Rowe (Nashville, 1985), pp. 91–99.Google Scholar

10. Isaac, Rhys, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982).Google Scholar The articles include three published in William and Mary Quarterly in 1973, 1974, and 1976, and a fourth published in The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism, ed. Alfred A.Young (DeKalb, Ill., 1976), pp. 125–156.Google Scholar See also Stout, Harry S., “Religious Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 34 (1977): 519–541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Isaac's insights also facilitate the work of William H. Williams in “The Attraction of Methodism: The Delmarva Peninsula as a Case Study, 1769–1802,” in Rethinking Methodist History, pp. 100–110, which is a reflection of his The Garden of American Methodism: The Delmarva Peninsula, 1769–1820 (Wilmington, Del., 1984). Two important studies of northern localities which portray similar processes of conflict between traditional and evangelical cultures with evangelicalism as a catalyst of change are Johnson, Paul E., A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837, American Century Series (New York, 1978);Google Scholar and Ryan, Mary, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865 (Cambridge, 1981).Google Scholar

11. Isaac, Rhys, “Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists' Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765 to 1775,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 31 (1974): 348.CrossRefGoogle ScholarBreen, T.H., “Horses and Gentlemen: The Cultural Significance of Gambling among the Gentry of Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly. 3d. ser., 34 (1977): 239–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This characterization of the ethos of honor draws on Wyatt-Brown's, Bertam massive exploration, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (Oxford, 1982),Google Scholar esp. pp. 32–50, 62–64. On the persistence of deferential norms into the early decades of the nineteenth century, see Pole, J. R., Foundations of American Independence: 1763–1815, History of American Society Series, ed. Greene, Jack P. (Indianapolis, 1972), p. 161;Google Scholar and Formisano, Ronald P., “Deferential-Participant Politics: The Early Republic's Political Culture, 1789–1840,” American Political Science Review 68 (1974): 473–487.Google Scholar

12. In addition to depending on the works of Isaac and Mathews, this view of social religion relies on Sizer, Sandra S., Gospel Hymns and Social Religion: The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Revivalism (Philadelphia, 1978),Google Scholar esp. pp. 50–52; Scott, Leland, “The Message of Early American Methodism,” in The History of American Methodism, ed. Bucke, Emory S., 3 vols. (New York, 1964), 1:291–317,Google Scholar and on the present author's Ph.D. thesis, “Perfecting the Family of God: Religious Community and Family Values in Early American Methodism” (University of Chicago, 1981).

13. Methodism deserves distinct attention for two reasons. One is Methodist numerical superiority and the dominance of Methodist-style revivalism and social religion in the most widely noted American revivals. For example, Charles G. Finney's “New Measures” or the lay-led revivals of 1857–1858, helped give the nineteenth century the title of the “Methodist Age” in American church history. See Sizer, , Gospel Hymns, pp. 50–137;Google ScholarCarwardine, Richard, “The Second Great Awakening in the Urban Centers: An Examination of Methodism and the ‘New Measures,’” Journal of American History 59 (1972): 327–341;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSweet, Leonard I., The Minister's Wife: Her Role in Nineteenth-Century American Evangelicalism (Philadelphia, 1982), pp. 78–89;Google ScholarHudson, Winthrop S., “The Methodist Age in America,” Methodist History 12 (1974): 2–15;Google Scholar and Gaustad, Edwin Scott, Historical Atlas of Religion in America (rev. ed., New York, 1976), pp. 79–80.Google Scholar Two, rather than lump all evangelicals together under a generic label, one ought first to respect the sense of uniqueness the various communities derived from their distinctive usages and thus to lay the groundwork for a more sensitive work of comparison and contrast among evangelical groups. On the Methodist sense of uniqueness, see Mathews, , Religion in the Old South, pp. 54–55.Google Scholar

14. The following account is taken from “Reminiscences,” WCA, 1 Sept 1837, p. 76.Google Scholar

15. “Think of Death,” WCA, 25 July 1834, p. 50. For further examples of this sort of literature, “Reflections on Death,” WCA, 15 July 1836, p. 45; “Funeral Reflections,” WCA, 8 Aug 1834, p. 47; and, any of the items published in the “Biographical” or obituary departments of the various Methodist Advocates. The Western Christian Advocate, the paper cited most frequently in this article, was an official organ of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the most subscribed paper of any type in the Old Northwest, with several times the circulation of any other religious newspaper in the region. Irish-born Charles Elliot, its leading editor, fulfilled a tenure exceptionally long for religious editors in the region. See Norton, Wesley, Religious Newspapers in the Old Northwest to 1861: A History, Bibliography, and Record of Opinion (Athens, Ohio, 1977), pp. 9–10, 26–27, 29.Google Scholar

16. Mary Morriss Smith, Untitled MS, Mary Morriss Smith Papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee.

17. Death as transition and death as symbol for all significant changes in life is an understanding that the evangelicals shared with many other religious traditions. See Eliade, Mircea, “Mythologies of Death: An Introduction,” in Religious Encounters with Death: Insights from the History and Anthropology of Religions, ed. Reynolds, Frank E. and Waugh, Earle H. (University Park, Pa., 1977), pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

18. For methodical explication of the stages of religious experience, see Lovell, C. R., Methodist Family Manual (Cincinnati, 1852), pp. 181–194.Google Scholar Examples of persons who experienced religion in the manner described may be found in the scores of biographies and autobiographies of fellow believers produced for the edification of the Methodist faithful.

19. For instances of the Methodist use of the language of passions and affections, see “Vital Religion-No. 1” (Chillicothe, Ohio), Western Christian Monitor, 01 1816, pp. 3–6;Google Scholar“Religious Experience—No. 1,” WCA, 18 07 1934, p. 45;Google Scholar“Heavenly Mindedness—No. 1,” WCA, 3 03 1837, p. 177.Google Scholar

20. For the significance of the dance and the more public events in the east, see Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, chaps. 4 and 5. For the persistence of these patterns among common folk in the midwest, see Farragher, John Mack, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (New Haven, 1979), pp. 112–121, 144–160.Google Scholar

21. For examples of the emotional difficulty people experienced in making such public gestures, see Haney, M. L., The Story of My Life (Normal, Ill., 1904), pp. 26–30;Google Scholar and Boyd, Robert, Personal Memoirs (Cincinnati, 1867), pp. 35–45.Google Scholar

22. The basic instructions for meeting class were provided in the Discipline. See Emory, Robert, History of the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York, 1844), pp. 177–185.Google Scholar It should be noted that the Band societies also mentioned in the Discipline seem never really to have caught on in American, as opposed to British, Methodism. For other reflections of class meeting practice, see “On Meeting Classes,” WCA, 17 06 1842, p. 36;Google ScholarMiley, John, Treatise on Class Meetings (Cincinnati, 1851).Google Scholar

23. “Disciplinary Advantages of Class Meetings,” WCA, 19 11 1841, p. 122;Google Scholar Miley, Treatise on Class Meetings. For evidence of the resistance members felt to class meeting discipline, see “Class Meetings–No. III,” WCA, 16 05 1834, p. 9;Google Scholar“Thoughts on the ‘General Rules of the Methodist Episcopal Church’—No. I,” WCA, 19 09 1834, p. 81;Google Scholar and “Attend Your Class Meetings,” WCA, 28 02 1840, p. 177.Google Scholar These articles and dozens more which may be found sprinkled through Methodist weeklies indicate an embattled corps of itinerants wringing their hands in print over growing lack of compliance with the rule that required class attendance as a condition of membership. Holsciaw, David F., in his somewhat polemical study, “The Demise of Disciplined Christian Fellowship: The Methodist Class Meeting in Nineteenth-Century America” (Ph.D. diss. University of California, Davis, 1978),Google Scholar suggests that this loss of disciplinary meaning for class meeting was underway in the decade of the 1820s, but that the overall process of decline lasted into the 1870s. Probably the initial phases of decline were related to the crisis in the authority of the Methodist ministry associated with the so-called “Radical Reform” movement and the schism which led to the formation of the Methodist Protestant Church. A pattern in the long-term process of decline was the gradual supersession of class meeting by more specialized, task-oriented voluntary associations like Sunday school and less intense general meetings like prayer meetings. For evidence of long-term persistence, but overall decline and supersession, see the Minutes of the Southern Illinois Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church where the yearly reports of the Standing Committee on Class Meetings begin in 1877 and continue until 1916.

24. “Love Feast,” WCA, 9 05 1834;Google ScholarHardy, Charles, “Contributions to the Western Methodist Historical Society,” WCA, 3 04 1840, p. 197;Google ScholarFinley, James B., Autobiography of Rev. James B. Finley, ed. Strickland, W. P. (Cincinnati, 1854);Google ScholarSmith, John L., Indiana Methodism (Valparaiso, Ind., 1892), pp. 25–26;Google ScholarWilliams, Samuel, Pictures of Early Methodism in Ohio (Cincinnati, 1909), pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

25. For evidence of the emotional climate of class and love feast, see Finley, , Autobiography, pp. 240–242;Google ScholarSmith, Henry, “Contributions to the Western Methodist Historical Society,” WCA, 25 12 1840, p. 153;Google ScholarKobler, John, “Annals of Methodism in the West: Journal of Kobler,” WCA, 30 08 1839, p. 73;Google ScholarGaddis, Maxwell P., Brief Recollections of the Late Reverend George Walker, ed. Elliot, Charles (Cincinnati, 1857), pp. 58–59.Google Scholar

26. “Extracts from ‘Notes to the Discipline’ by Bishops Coke and Asbury,” in Emory, , History of the Discipline, pp. 327–328.Google Scholar For later, similar remarks on the power of testimony, see “Class Meetings-No. IV,” WCA, 23 05 1834, p. 13;Google Scholar and J. T., “Class Meetings,” (Lexington, Ky.) Gospel Herald, 10 1830, pp. 57–58.Google Scholar

27. “Extracts,” in Emory, , History of the Discipline, p. 304.Google Scholar See also “Class Meetings and Love Feasts,” WCA, 8 08 1834, p. 59;Google Scholar and “Class Meeting and Love Feast,” WCA, 1 04 1836, p. 196.Google Scholar

28. J. T., Gospel Herald, 10 1830, p. 58.Google Scholar For evocations of the ideal condition of the Christian soul, see the poem, “Patience,” Ladies Repository (04 1842), p. 123;Google Scholar and the object lesson in Lovell, Family Manual, pp. 203–204.

29. These observations draw on the categories of “liminality” and “communitas” developed by anthropologist Victor Turner. See his The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago, 1968),Google Scholar and Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, N.Y., 1974).Google Scholar Turner suggests the way of the cross is Christianity's basic insight into the preconditions of communitas. See Dramas, pp. 67–68.

30. Webb, Benjamin, “Contributions to the Western Methodist Historical Society,” WCA, 18 09 1840, p. 85.Google Scholar For similar instances of this attraction to goings on behind closed doors, see Meek's, John letter in Extracts of Letters Containing Some Account of the Work of God since 1800; Written by the Preachers and Members of the Methodist Church to their Bishops (New York, 1805), p. 32;Google ScholarYoung, Jacob, Autobiography, p. 36;Google ScholarFinley, James B., Autobiography, pp. 203–204;Google Scholar and Hardy, Charles, “Contributions to the Western Methodist Historical Society,” WCA, 3 04 1840, p. 197.Google Scholar On quarterly conference as public demonstration of radical community, see Richey, Russell E., “From Quarterly to Camp Meeting: A Reconstruction of Early American Methodism,” Methodist History 23 (1985): 199–213.Google Scholar

31. Brown, George, Recollections of Itinerant Life: Including Early Reminiscences (Cincinnati, 1866), pp. 45–46;Google Scholar see also Saum, , “Death in the Popular Mind of Pre-Civil War America,” p. 44.Google Scholar

32. H. H. B., , “Memoirs of Davidson,” (Chillicothe, Ohio) Western Christian Monitor, 12 1816, p. 362.Google Scholar

33. “Biographical Department,” WCA, 24 04 1835, p. 205.Google Scholar For similar testimonies of assurance of heaven, see “Biographical Department,” WCA, 26 09 1834, p. 85;Google ScholarGaddis, Maxwell P., Footprints of an Itinerant (Cincinnati, 1857), p. 110;Google ScholarStewart, John, Highways and Hedges: or, Fifty Years of Western Methodism (Cincinnati, 1872), pp. 214–215;Google ScholarM. T., , “A Short Account of the Life and Death of Miss Anne Warner,” Western Christian Monitor, 04 1816, pp. 180–181.Google Scholar

34. Dustin, Mighil, letter quoted in Gaddis, Footprints, pp. 307–308Google Scholar. For similar accounts of inquiry see Gaddis, , Footprints, p. 111;Google ScholarFinley, James B., Sketches of Western Methodism: Biographical, Historical and Miscellaneous, Illustrative of Pioneer Life, ed. Strickland, W. P. (Cincinnati, 1854), p. 177;Google ScholarCarroll, Andrew, Moral and Religious Sketches and Collections, with Incidents of Ten Years' Itineracy in the West, 2 vols. (Cincinnati, 1857), 1: 107;Google Scholar“Biographical Department,” WCA, 9 10 1835, p. 96.Google Scholar

35. M. T., , “Short Account of Anne Warner,” pp. 180–181;Google Scholar see also Smith, John L., Indiana Methodism, p. 86.Google Scholar

36. Joseph Morgan to Daniel Hitt, 17 March 1802, Typescript, Daniel Hitt Letters, Upper Room Library, Nashville, Tennessee. Original MS in Archives of Ohio United Methodism, Ohio Wesleyan University Library, Delaware, Ohio.

37. Stewart, , Highways and Hedges, pp. 215–216;Google ScholarGaddis, , Footprints, p. 112;Google ScholarFinley, , Autobiography, p. 26.Google Scholar

38. “Biographical Department,” WCA, 10 04 1835, p. 200.Google Scholar For the parallel in the Discipline, see Emory, , History of the Discipline, pp. 177–180.Google Scholar

39. J. T., , “Account of Anne Warner,” p. 181.Google Scholar

40. See note 1. See also Gaddis, , Footprints, p. 429.Google Scholar

41. Quoted in Emory, Robert, History of the Discipline, p. 90.Google Scholar

42. The identification of this model of community with the middle-class domestic circle and its uses as a political as well as a religious symbol are processes analyzed in Sizer, Gospel Hymns, Johnson, Shopkeepers' Millennium, Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class, and in the present author's book-in-progress, “The Way of the Cross Leads Home: Religious Community and Domestic Ideology in Early American Methodism.” The power of this domestic vision of community to motivate social reform is evident in such recent works as: Susan Dye Lee, “Evangelical Domesticity: The Woman's Temperance Crusade of 1873–74,” and Gifford, Carolyn DeSwarte, “For God and Home and Native Land: The W.C.T.U.'s Image of Woman in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Women in New Worlds: Historical Perspectives on the Wesleyan Tradition, ed. Thomas, Hilah F. and Keller, Rosemary Skinner (Nashville, 1981), pp. 293–309, 310–327;Google Scholar and in Fishburn's, Janet F. study of a masculinized version of the vision, The Fatherhood of God and the Victorian Family: The Social Gospel in America (Philadelphia, 1982).Google Scholar

43. Farrell, American Way of Death, chaps. 2, 3, and conclusion.