Methodism

The talisman of Northern Methodism's success was an object of frequent search by publicists of the contemporary scene. Better equipped than most to speak authoritatively on this matter was Jesse T. Peck, a product of upper New York who dated his service in the itinerant ranks from the outset of the Jacksonian era. His ministerial activity had reached to both coasts and by 1872 had elevated him through various church offices to the episcopacy.

The heralds of Methodism had cannily perceived that "the minds of men are not first and chiefly logical but sensitive." Consequently, "an emotional Christianity arrests and impresses more promptly and successfully than a form in which the intellectual predominates."The camp meeting was the most popular incarnation of this theory. Protracted sessions, corps of preachers who held forth in rotation, and "shouts of newly-born saints" were invaluable for quick and violent assaults on unbelief and indifference. The periodic revival, when complemented by "church services, class meetings ... love feasts, prayer meetings, and the rest," gave to the church a formidable machinery for keeping up piety at a fever heat.

Theological poverty left broad room for the accommodation of divergent views. This comparative indifference to recondite speculation helped Methodism to escape the dogmatic quarrels which exhausted and sundered other Christian denominations. While the existence in 1865 of a half-dozen groups calling themselves Methodists testified that the family was not immune to division, none of the separations had resulted from doctrinal hostility. Each was traceable to a contention over social policy or church polity.

Methodism best demonstrated its marvelous pragmatism in its frame of government. The Methodist system was at once flexible enough to keep pace with an ever dynamic geographic frontier yet sufficiently rigid to restrain an often turbulent membership. In a sense the Methodists had succeeded in institutionalizing the gospel of revivalism. However, differences were found in the governmental structures of the various Methodist churches and if there was any feature of ecclesiastical economy by which the Methodist Episcopal Church could be distinguished from its kin, it was in the fuller development of its polity.

The local preachers comprised the aristocracy of the lay ministry and were the unsung heroes of American Methodism. Particularly, these preachers gave to individual churches a regularity of pastoral care which otherwise would have been denied. Of the lay clergy they alone were supposed to preach and after ordination were permitted to administer the sacraments. From the itinerants the local preachers were most easily differentiated because of their small part in policy making and administration.

The traveling or itinerant ministry of Methodism has been glorified in the person of the circuit rider. However, from very early in Methodist history, the appellation of traveling preacher described the privileges accruing to a rank rather than a mode of performing its duties. The term mirrored an ideal of the Fathers, not a universal practice. Only an uncertain percentage of the circuit riders had been ordained traveling deacons or elders and conversely many in the itinerant connection never experienced circuit life.

As a constituent body, the itinerant pastors admitted candidates to the traveling connection, tried preachers for breaches of discipline, heard reports on the progress of Methodism within their jurisdiction, voted on constitutional changes, and every fourth year elected some of their brethren to attend the exalted council of the church, the General Conference.