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Vernacular American Landscape: Methodists, Camp Meetings, and Social Respectability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Roger Robins
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Extract

In 1822, from his Conway home in the shadow of New Hampshire's White Mountains, one Dr. Porter surveyed the nation's religious landscape and prophesied, “in half a century there will be no Pagans, Jews, Mohammedans, Unitarians or Methodists.” The prophecy proved false on all counts, but it was most glaringly false in the case of the Methodists. In less than a decade, Porter's home state became the eighth to elect a Methodist governor. Should Porter have fled south into Massachusetts to escape the rising Methodist tide, he would only have been buying time. True, the citizens of Provincetown, Massachusetts, had, in 1795, razed a Methodist meetinghouse and tarred and feathered a Methodist in effigy. By 1851, however, the Methodists boasted a swelling Cape Cod membership, a majority of the church members on Martha's Vineyard, and a governor in the Massachusetts statehouse.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Summer 1994 , pp. 165 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 1994

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References

Notes

1. Porter is quoted by Holmes, Oliver Wendell in “The Pulpit and the Pew,” North American Review 132, no. 290 (January 1881): 121.Google Scholar Samuel Dinsmoor, whose parents were Scots-Irish Methodists, was elected in 1831. Information on governors, here and below, is derived from Robert Sobel and John Raimo, eds., Biographical Dictionary of the Governors of the United States, 1789-1978, 4 vols. (Westport, Conn.: Meckler Books, 1978); Provincetown effigy is from Weiss, Ellen, City in the Woods: The Life and Design of an American Camp Meeting on Martha's Vineyard (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 20–22 Google Scholar; Massachusetts's governor was George Boutwell, elected in 1851.

2. Jensen, Richard, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 136.Google Scholar

3. The notion of an establishment or mainstream as anything other than the collective projections of America's self-appointed “outsiders” is, of course, an embattled one (although it is worth noting that some who bury it historiographically resurrect it in order to Charge it with political crimes, perhaps because the political hand does not know what the historiographical hand is doing). In my opinion, it remains a serviceable and necessary concept when it is understood not in static terms but in the dynamic, organic, and dialectic terms of cultural maintenance. If culture in the broadest sense is both what Matthew Arnold called a people's “furniture of the mind” (Thorstein Veblen's “prevalent habits of thought”) and the material and symbolic furniture produced to express that “mind,” then an “establishment” refers to the groups and institutions that maintain the dominant cultural habits (mental, symbolic, and material) as well as to the dominant cultural habits themselves, which often give the illusion of continuing by way of a kind of self-perpetuating inertia. The means of establishment is hegemony, described by Gunn, Giles, The Culture of Criticism and the Criticism of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, as “the lived domination and Subordination of particular concerns… never wholly dissociated from the hierarchies of significant values that differentiate one class or group from another” that serve some interests at the expense of others and that are reciprocally confirming the more they are practiced.

Culture in this broad sense embraces several “establishments”: political, economic, religious, intellectual, and “cultural” in the narrower sense of art, taste, Convention, manners, etc. As Peter Gay suggests, we live in multiple and simultaneous worlds. Furthermore, each establishment can include multiple voices. Nevertheless, these are overlapping and interrelated cultural processes, and together they establish the predominant modes of conducting and interpreting human life in a given environment: See the discussion of “culture” in Trachtenberg, Alan, “American Studies as a Cultural Program” in Ideology and Classic American Literature, ed. Bercovitch, Sacvan and Jehlen, Myra (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

Thus, by establishment or mainstream in the nineteenth-century American environment, I intend a process of cultural maintenance that included, on the one hand, the motley, shifting, and often competing coalitions of individuals and institutions that imagined themselves to have the authority to shape the values and set the agenda for the nation as a whole and that generally controlled access to key vehicles of cultural influence such as mass media, political and judicial power, economic opportunity, and the certification of intellectual achievement. On the other hand, it included the cultural inheritance itself of which these coalitions were products, custodians, and producers. That inheritance was, of course, altered in the very process of its maintenance, by its custodians as well as its critics.

Particularly important for this essay is the way in which, through subtle forms of cultural pedagogy, great numbers of Americans came to agree on the material and religious Symbols that should accompany affluence, on the political commitments and ethical values that should be held by “respectable” guardians of American society, and on the range of possible images (the literally “imaginable”) that could be applied to an “American.” On the concept of a Protestant establishment, see Hutchison, William R., ed., Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900-1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; my own views on this and other points are heavily indebted to numerous conversations with and articles by Grant Wacker.

4. “Embourgeoisement” is the French term used by Donald Dayton in “Pneumatological Issues in the Holiness Movement,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 31, nos. 3-4 (Fall-Winter 1986): 362. On the general process, see Harrell, David Edwin, “The Evolution of Plain Folk Religion in the South, 1835-1920,” in Varieties of Southern Religious Experience, ed. Hill, Samuel S. Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Jones, Charles Edwin, “The Holiness Complaint with Late-Victorian Methodism,” in Rethinking Methodist History: A Bicentennial Historical Consultation, ed. Richey, Russell E. and Rowe, Kenneth E. (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1985)Google Scholar; Jones, Charles Edwin, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American Methodism, 1867-1936 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and Smith, Timothy Lawrence, Called unto Holiness: The Story of the Nazarenes: The Formative Years (Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing House, 1962).Google Scholar

In the Century of America's Civil War, the regional factor cannot be ignored, but Methodism north and south (and east and west) followed remarkably similar trajectories in relation to its respective regional establishments. Even though initially Methodism in the South, as a movement within Anglicanism, was not technically outside of the legal establishment, it was clearly marginal and moved culturally from outside to inside the mainstream. On the frontier, southern and northern alike, the Situation was often different, since Methodism was commonly involved in local social structures virtually from their inception. Even there, however, it was generally associated at first with “plain folk” or, as Donald Mathews has argued, with the consolidation and raising to consciousness of a lower middle class, generally alienated from social and political power. See Mathews, Donald G., Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), xv.Google Scholar But the division of Methodism into northern and southern churches demonstrates how deeply Methodism by the mid-1840's had become identified with regional establishments and a custodial relationship to society. Accordingly, the conflicts that led to the Wesleyan Methodist and Free Methodist churches, the factions within the Holiness movement, and the later Holiness “comeouters” show that the most important tensions within Methodism were increasingly related to class as much as region. The precise nature of the conflicts and the cultural nuances of the parties varied according to region, but the fact that Methodism everywhere was plagued by class hostilities pitting the spokespersons of rural or agrarian or “plain folk” or working-class culture, on the one side, against the spokespersons of urban or entrepreneurial or genteel or bourgeois culture, on the other, shows that the process of embourgeoisement was common to Methodism throughout America and that the denomination's leadership was guiding it toward a position of cultural dominance and an “insider” role. Furthermore, upwardly mobile Methodists in all regions expressed their new social location in surprisingly similar ways, such as Gothic architecture and rigorous academic higher education.

So, while the specific contours of the story told in this essay fit most closely with the northern Situation, the general outline, with local adjustments in chronology and cultural context, fits the southern, western, and southwestem situations as well.

5. Richey, Russell E., Early American Methodism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 21, 24.Google Scholar

6. Jackson, John B., Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 156, 150, xii.Google Scholar

7. Smith, Elias, editorial comment in The Christian's Magazine, Reviewer, and Religious Intelligencer 1, no. 4 (1806): 140.Google Scholar

8. Statistics are derived from Gaustad, Edwin S., Historical Atlas of Religion in America, rev ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1976)Google Scholar; the Quarterly Register and Journal of the American Education Society; Harmon, Nolan B., ed., The Encyclopedia of World Methodism (Nashville: United Methodist Publishing House, 1974)Google Scholar; and Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970: Bicentennial Edition, part 1 (United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1976).

9. Michigan study is in Formisano, Ronald P., The Birth ofMass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 155 Google Scholar; “pilgrimage” is from Hatch, Nathan O., The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 93.Google Scholar By the postbellum period, Methodism constituted the wealthiest family of denominations in America. See Craig, Robert H., “The Underside of History,” Methodist History 27, no. 2 (January 1989): 76.Google Scholar This would be an aggregate, not a per capita, calculation.

10. Weiss, Ellen, City in the Woods, 22.Google Scholar Other examples of this architectural trend include Christ Church, Pittsburgh, built in 1855, and the church built by future Holiness leader Phineas Bresee in 1874 in Red Oak, Iowa. See Jones, ‘The Holiness Complaint,” 61-62.

11. Statistics on education are from Ferguson, Charles W., Methodists and the Making of America: Organizing to Beat the Devil, 2d ed. (Austin, Tex.: Eakin Press, 1983), 314 Google Scholar; and The Encyclopedia of World Methodism, 2689-703. I have based my projections on the tenure of presidents, which seems to me to be a more realistic gauge of when an institution actually became functional than the official founding date. By 1860, Methodists trailed only Presbyterians in the number of Colleges founded. See Tewksbury, Donald, The Founding of American Colleges and Universities before the Civil War (New York: Arno Press, 1969), 90 Google Scholar; quotation is from The American Quarterly Register 4, no. 1 (August 1831): 11.

12. My discussion of Methodist theology depends on Chiles, Robert, Theological Transition in American Methodism, 1790-1935 (New York: Abingdon Press, 1965)Google Scholar; on rivalry note early works such as Bangs, Nathan, Errors of Hopkinsianism Detected and Exposed (New York: John C. Totten, 1815)Google Scholar, and Wilbur Fisk, Calvinistic Controversy (n.p.: Waugh and Mason for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1835). For later conditions, note the openness of The Princeton Review to Methodists such as Borden Parker Bowne: see the volume for 1881. Another aspect of theological change involved the mid-century emergence of a Methodist public theology that, in large part, simply appropriated, rather uncritically, Reformed idioms of Christian America. See Richey, , Early American Methodism, xvii, 35–36, 61, 95.Google Scholar

13. On Methodists and the Republican party, see Formisano, , Birth of Mass Political Parties, 312 Google Scholar; on temperance, see Gusfield, Joseph R., Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement, 2d ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 41 Google Scholar; on voting habits, see Kleppner, Paul, Who Voted? The Dynamics of Electoral Turnout, 1870-1980 (New York: Praeger Publishing, 1982), 37.Google Scholar

14. Kleppner, Paul, The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 145.Google Scholar

15. Of the colonies, North Carolina followed in 1879, Connecticut in 1887. Only New York does not appear to have had a Methodist governor prior to 1900. The order was: 1799, Delaware; 1803, Ohio; 1818, Illinois; 1819, Maryland; 1822, Indiana; 1827, Georgia; 1830, Maine; 1831, New Hampshire; 1837, Alabama; 1845, Tennessee; 1846, Michigan; 1846, Vermont; 1847, Rhode Island; 1851, Massachusetts; 1851, New Jersey; 1857, Missouri; 1858, South Carolina; 1860, Minnesota; 1862, Oregon; 1863, West Virginia; 1864, Nevada; 1865, Virginia; 1867, Pennsylvania; 1868, Kansas.

16. Information on presidents draws on DeGregorio, William A., The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (New York: Dembner Books, 1984).Google Scholar

17. Schmidt, Leigh Eric, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, and Westerkamp, Marilyn J., Triumph of the Laity: Scots-Irish Piety and the Great Awakening, 1625-1760 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, argue persuasively for origins in a tradition of Scots Presbyterian sacramental meetings stretching to the early part of the seventeenth Century; Brown, Kenneth O., “Finding America's Oldest Camp Meeting,” Methodist History 28, no. 4 (July 1990): 252-54Google Scholar, argues for the origins of the camp meeting in the 1790's in the Deep South. However, the difficulty of distinguishing a camp meeting from other types of outdoors “great meetings” complicates any such inquiry.

18. Johnson, Charles A., The Frontier Camp Meeting: Religion's Harvest Time (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1955)Google Scholar; “openness” is Richey, Russell E., “From Quarterly to Camp Meeting: A Reconsideration of Early American Methodism,” Methodist History 23, no. 1 (July 1985): 203 Google Scholar, who challenges Johnson's “frontier” designation.

19. Richey, , Early American Methodism, 36.Google Scholar This point is made in the context of an argument about the emergence of a Methodist civil theology (which could be added to the list of indexes of change below) but powerfully confirms the “frontier” mentality of early Methodism. I am admittedly doing to Richey what Richey did to Johnson: using his evidence to make the opposite point.

20. “Battle ax” is Francis Asbury, quoted in Hatch, Democratization of American Christianity, 49; cf. Weiss, City in the Woods, 20: “Establishing Methodism in New England was a frontierlike venture.” Statistics are drawn from Ferguson, , Methodists and the Making of America, 142 Google Scholar; Bruce, Dickson D. Jr., And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800-1845 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1974), 52 Google Scholar; and Weiss, City in the Woods, 4.

21. This description is drawn from Johnson, , Frontier Camp Meeting, 43 Google Scholar; and Bruce, , They All Sang Hallelujah, 70–73.Google Scholar

22. “Gentle zephyrs” is from Moriarty, John D., “Newburgh Campmeeting,” Methodist Review 8, no. 11 (November 1825): 440 Google Scholar; “salvation” is quoted in Johnson, Frontier Camp Meeting, 122.

23. One of the distinctions between the frontier camp meeting and the Presbyterian sacramental occasion was that the symbolic center of the sacramental occasion was the eucharistic table, emphasizing discipleship and covenant renewal, whereas the symbolic center of the camp meeting was the altar and the preaching stand, emphasizing conversion and mission.

24. For a detailed definition of these roles, see Bruce, , They All Sang Hallelujah, 73–79 Google Scholar; for “sons of Belial” as an insider term, see “Account of a Camp-Meeting Held on Long-Island, New York State,” Methodist Magazine 4 (October 1821): 389; and “Description of a Campmeeting Held on Fairfield Circuit, Lancaster District, State of Ohio,” Methodist Magazine 2 (December 1819): 475.

25. For the insider term “melted down,” see William Onnond, Typescript of Journal, 1791-1803, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, vol. 4, 52; see also Richey's study of this and other vernacular terms in Early American Methodism, 3-10; and Richey, Russell E., “The Four Languages of Early American Methodism,” Methodist History 28, no. 3 (April 1990): 155, 163Google Scholar; “burning lamps” is from “Account of a Camp-Meeting Held on Long-Island,” 388; “ecclesiastical Standards” is Hatch, Democratization of American Christianity, 50.

26. See Bjorkqvist, Kaj, “Ecstasy from a Physiological Point of View,” in Religious Ecstasy, ed. Holm, Nils G. (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1982), 74–86 Google Scholar; and Nils G. Hohn, “Ecstasy Research in the Twentieth Century, in Religious Ecstasy, ed. Holm, 7-26.

27. 1 Peter 2:4. See Donald G. Mathews's treatment of this theme in his chapter by this title in Mathews, Religion in the Old South, 1-38.

28. Bruce, , They All Sang Hallelujah, 81–89.Google Scholar An excellent, concise summary of Turner is in Turner, Victor, “Passages, Margins and Poverty: Religious Symbols of Communitas,” 2 parts, Worship 46, nos. 7-8 (1972): 390–412; 482-94.Google Scholar

29. On the imagery of warfare, see Richard Huffman Hulan, “Camp-Meeting Spiritual Folksongs: Legacy of the ‘Great Revival in the West’” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1978), xxvi; “power of God” is from French S. Evans, “Campmeeting in Anne Arundel County, Maryland,” Methodist Magazine (December 1826): 476.

30. Richey, “From Quarterly to Camp Meeting,” 207-8.

31. Richey, , Early American Methodism, 19 Google Scholar; see 30, 79-80, where Richey expresses his growing ambivalence about the long-term effects of the camp meeting on Methodist ecclesiology.

32. “Idle recreation” is Nathan Bangs, quoted in Johnson, Frontier Camp Meeting, 244; on “sweet Christian Conference,” see Richey, , Early American Methodism, 10.Google Scholar

33. “General Muster Day” is Maria Carr, “Recollection of Rocktown, now Harrisonburg, Virginia, from 1817-1820” (1892), 88, in Maria Carr papers, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; “black eyed girl” is John White to Nathan Smith White, September 27, 1838, in Nathan Smith White correspondence, 1821-1838, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.

34. Marty, Martin, A Nation of Behavers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 112.Google Scholar

35. Richey, “From Quarterly to Camp Meeting,” 205.

36. See the discussion of the function of public Squares in Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, 15ff.; “mysterious trauma” is Mathews, Religion in the Old South, 70.

37. Quoted in Loveland, Anne C., Southern Evangelicals and the Social Order, 1800-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 74.Google Scholar

38. See Ryan, Mary P., Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

39. “Salubrious air” is Zions Herald (Boston) 55, no. 35 (August 29, 1878): 277, of Asbury Grove in Hamilton, Massachusetts; “dead level of existence” is B. W. Gorham, quoted in Weiss, City in the Woods, 9.

40. For “good order,” see “Account of a Camp-Meeting held on Long-Island.” One early report helps resolve the contradiction. After describing typical enthusiasms, it concludes, “to the pious mind these were not unpleasant sounds.” See “Description of a Campmeeting Held on Fairfield Circuit, Lancaster District, State of Ohio,” Methodist Review 2 (December 1819): 475; “disgrace” is quoted in Van Dussen, D. Gregory, “The Bergen Camp Meeting in the American Holiness Movement,” Methodist History 21, no. 2 (January 1983): 87.Google Scholar

41. Wright, M. Emory, “Is the Modern Camp-Meeting a Failure?” Methodist Quarterly Review 43 (October 1861): 582-604.Google Scholar

42. Richey, , Early American Methodism, 82–97.Google Scholar

43. The following account is based on Van Dussen, “The Bergen Camp Meeting,” 69-89.

44. On the Victorian character of Ocean Grove and other NCMA camp meetings see Jones, , Perfectionist Persuasion, 19–35.Google Scholar In the years following the Civil War, the National Camp Meeting Association was the Single most important impetus to the preservation and expansion of the camp meeting as an institution. However, the camp meeting, like revivalism itself, was a protean instrument capable of being applied to variant ends. It could express difference as well as unity, progress as well as tradition. So, while the NCMA could successfully promote the use of camp meetings, it could not successfully control the nature of their use and so could not dictate which Methodist “voices” would prevail therein. Indeed, as the independent Holiness associations increased in size and influence, the NCMA became, in effect, a regional association that united northeastern interests.

45. Quotations are from Weiss, , City in the Woods, 27, 138, 115.Google Scholar

46. “Mother of all” is The Christian Advocate (New York) 54, no. 36 (September 4, 1879): 569. The Advocate listed 60 camp meetings in 1873, 73 in 1877, 93 in 1879, and 143 in 1889; cf. Parker, Charles A., “The Camp Meeting Frontier and the Methodist Religious Resort in the East—Before 1900,” Methodist History 18, no. 3 (April 1980): 185 Google Scholar; on Bowne, see Chiles, , Theological Transitions in American Methodism, 50–67.Google Scholar

47. Lears, T. J. Jackson, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981)Google Scholar. For the southern home, see Ownby, Ted, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).Google Scholar

48. This analysis draws on Lears, No Place of Grace;, and Shi, David E., ed., In Search of the Simple Life: American Voices, Past and Present (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1986), 177-78Google Scholar; on the development of suburbs, see Stilgoe, John R., Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 23 Google Scholar, who interprets suburbia “as a spatial means of … lessening the difficulties of… urbanization based on industrialization and corporate capitalism” (5); on landscaped parks, see Jackson, , Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, 127-30Google Scholar; on vacations, see Parker, “The Camp Meeting on the Frontier and the Methodist Religious Resort in the East,” 179-92; “God and goodness” is Shi, In Search of the Simple Life, 179.

49. Stokes is quoted from Balmer, Randall, “From Frontier Phenomenon to Victorian Institution: The Methodist Camp Meeting in Ocean Grove, New Jersey,” Methodist History 25, no. 3 (April 1987): 194 Google Scholar; Melville is from Moby Dick, quoted in Leo Marx, “Pastoralism in America,” in Ideology and Classic American Literature, ed. Bercovitch and Jehlen, 53; “gathering place” is from Zions Herold 47, no. 33 (August 18, 1870): 391.

50. The description of Wesleyan Grove derives from Weiss, City in the Woods. In 1879, the canvas tabernacle was replaced by an imposing iron tabernacle, complete with a three-tier roof supported by lattice-trussed arches and crowned by a cross fixed on a wooden cupola. It was described as “a kind of religious crystal palace, though made of iron.” Weiss, City in the Woods, 135. The architecture of the tabernacle was reviewed in detail by the Christian Advocate 54, no. 36 (September 4, 1879): 569, in an article entitled, “Martha's Vineyard—Spirit and Iron.”

51. On Grant's visit see Weiss, , City in the Woods, 127 Google Scholar; for typical camp meeting activities, see Parker, ‘The Camp Meeting on the Frontier and the Methodist Religious Resort in the East,” 191; on Ocean Grove, see Balmer, “From Frontier Phenomenon to Victorian Institution,” 196; “mild and healthful” is Zions Herald 47, no. 33 (August 18, 1870): 391.

52. Weiss, , City in the Woods, 78.Google Scholar

53. Evangelus [pseud.], “A Short Account of a Camp-Meeting Held at Cow-Harbour, Long Island,” Methodist Magazine 1 (September 1818): 359.

54. Zions Herald 45, no. 35 (August 27, 1868): 421.

55. On the eviction of tent owners, see Weiss, , City in the Woods, 65 Google Scholar; “harmless and healthful” is Zions Herald 47, no. 33 (August 18, 1870): 391.

56. The description of the cabins is based on Weiss, , City in the Woods, 41–45 Google Scholar; Times review and photograph of plaque are in ibid., 51, 57.

57. See Ryan, , Cradle of the Middle Class, 234.Google Scholar

58. Weiss, , City in the Woods, 69.Google Scholar

59. “Class distinction” is from Mathews, , Religion in the Old South, 38.Google Scholar

60. Marx, , “Pastoralism in America,” 38.Google Scholar

61. White is quoted by Weiss, , City in the Woods, 118 Google Scholar; an account of Oak Bluffs diversions is given in Christian Advocate 54, no. 36 (September 4, 1879): 569; “utopian antidote” is James Jackson Jarves, in Weiss, City in the Woods, 73.

62. Christian Advocate 43, no. 37 (September 10, 1868): 293.

63. Richey, “From Quarterly to Camp Meeting,” 210.

64. Quoted in Weiss, City in the Woods, 19.

65. Percival Wesche, “The Revival of the Camp-Meeting by the Holiness Groups” (M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 1945), 43.

66. Fielder, Boyd Ward, “Mission of the Early Camp Meetings in Virginia,” The Methodist Review (Nashviile) 43, no. 3 (July-August 1896): 474-75.Google Scholar

67. Emory Wright, Standing at midpoint, saw the “business-like and worldly aspect” of camps like Wesleyan Grove as proof that money changers were defiling the temple. See Wright, “Is the Modern Camp-Meeting a Failure?” 602-4. Having survived its enemies, he hoped the camp meeting could now survive “the mismanagement and folly of its friends.”

68. Richey, , Early American Methodism, 21, 32.Google Scholar A good illustration of how meanings changed while words remained the same is seen in New York resolutions passed in the 1870's condemning “Camp Meeting Abuses,” a phrase that in a telling evolution of terminology now implicated not the holy pandemonium of the frontier camp but merchandising on the Sabbath, photograph galleries, promenading, and excessive sociability See Christian Advocate 54, no. 29 (July 17, 1879): 451.

69. For the argument that the pioneer camp meeting was itself a ritual reenactment of earlier forms of Methodist Community, particularly the quarterly meeting, see Richey, , Early American Methodism, 21.Google Scholar

70. Catherine L. Albanese makes this point of the Revolutionary Fathers in Sons of the Fathers: The civil Religion of the American Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976), 220. Similar points are made by Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977)Google Scholar, and Foster, Gaines, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865 to 1913 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, regarding the roles of sentimentalism in Victorian America and the Lost Cause in the fin de siècle South, respectively. For both authors, the transition to modernity was accompanied by essentially self-deceiving celebrations in which Americans valorized ideals as compensation for losing them or, more precisely, to give the illusion that they had not lost them after all. While much can be granted to this argument, it should be observed that Symbols are hardly mere illusions and that a value or ideal symbolized in a society's collective memory is not exactly lost. Indeed, such symbolization preserves voices from the past that may yet speak, in concrete and unexpected ways, to a future time and place.