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Revivalism in Theory and Practice: The Case of Cornish Methodism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

David Luker
David Luker
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Esq., 338 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 7NS
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Extract

Religious revivals in early industrial England have received considerable attention from historians concerned with explaining their appearance in relation to social, economic, and political trends. R. B. Walker, for example, in a general assessment of the impact of external forces on Wesleyan Methodist growth after 1830, argued that political tension in the years 1832 to 1834 may have contributed to religious revival, and that the outbreak of cholera in 1832 certainly increased religious excitement. Chartism, on the other hand, probably competed with the chapels and made revival less likely, while general economic trends of boom and depression had no apparently conclusive impact. Some historians have noted these connections between religious revivals and secular stimuli and have gone on to ask what functions revivals might serve for those participating in them. Eric Hobsbawm in 1957 suggested that, in the half-century after 1790, intense political and religious excitement often coincided and that at such times ‘preachers, prophets, and sectarians might issue what the labourers would regard as calls to action rather than to resignation’. E. P. Thompson, by contrast, forwarded an ‘oscillation’ theory by which it was conceivable that religious revivalism reflected ‘the chiliasm of despair’ amongst working people and occurred ‘just at the point where “political” or temporal aspirations met with defeat’. More recently, Hobsbawm appeared to concur with this theory when he interpreted the revivalism which superseded Swing riots in several parts of the country in 1830 as ‘an escape from, rather than a mobilisation for social agitation’.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , October 1986 , pp. 603 - 619
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

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12 For example, the Conference in 1800 noted: ‘We fear there has sometimes been irregularity in some of the meetings. And we think that some of our hearers are in danger of mistaking Emotions Of The Affections for experimental and practical godliness’: Minutes, ii. 55.

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25 For example in 1830 the average number of members per minister in Great Britain was 333. In the Truro circuit it was 658, in Redruth 613, St Agnes 929, Gwennap 840, Penzance 843. (Figures for Great Britain in Peirce, W., The ecclesiastical principles and polity of the Wesleyan Methodists, 3rd edn, London 1873, 309Google Scholar ; figures for Cornwall calculated from Minutes.)

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