One Family under God: Love, Belonging, and Authority in Early Transatlantic Methodism (review)

Anna Lawrence’s exploration of fictive, yet powerfully felt, kinship relations among early Methodists in Great Britain and North America is timely, arriving in the midst of political and religious debate about the definition of family. Methodism’s impact on the development of modern notions about family is relevant, as it was the largest Protestant denomination in the United States for more than a century (from about 1840 to 1950), and it still claims more than 8 million adherents.

Lawrence laments the dearth of scholarship on family relations in the eighteenth century, the period during which financial concerns and parental authority gave way to romantic feelings as the primary criteria for spousal choice. That transition coincided with the rise of evangelical Protestantism—of which the Methodist Movement was a significant part—a contextual connection that previous scholars have avoided. “Evangelicalism was the predominant emergent moral and religious movement of the era,” Lawrence points out, “and it brought a new sensibility to the domestic and social ideas of family” (p. 4).

Lawrence’s discussion of affective kinships among early Methodists is excellent. The followers of the childless John Wesley referred to him as their father, and he spoke of them as his children. The itinerant preachers formed a brotherhood under his paternal direction, and lay Methodists called one another “Brother” and “Sister.” A convert addressed the preacher under whose ministry she came to faith as her “spiritual father,” and women leaders were “Mothers in Israel.” As Lawrence explains, in the eighteenth century, becoming a Methodist often brought considerable opposition, if not entire alienation, from the believer’s birth family. Converts turned to their new Methodist family for the affection and support the religious change had cost them. For the enslaved, who had been ruthlessly ripped from their families and cultures, fictive religion-based kinship was invaluable. Methodist societies, classes, and bands became not only their sacramental home but something far more.

Courtship and marriage practices among Methodists may have contributed to the cultural notion that spouses should be chosen for amorous attachment rather than for parental or economic reasons, although Methodists looked for spiritual partnerships, not romance. Wesley’s own disastrous marriage strengthened his insistence that “it was necessary to enter into a union with the utmost caution and to find a mate who was equally devoted to the Methodist mission” (p. 145). Methodists looked to their spiritual family to vet potential spouses; then, only after much prayer and, perhaps, a sign of God’s approval, would they say “I do.”

Her effective discussion of courtship and marriage, however, leads Lawrence to overemphasize Methodist encouragement of celibacy. Yes, Wesley and American Methodist leader Francis Asbury both believed that marriage and family distracted the faithful, especially the preachers, but celibacy was never required for theological reasons; rather, it was encouraged for practical ones. Some early Methodist preachers did cease itinerating due to acquisition of wife and children, but at least as many located due to chronic health problems or death caused by the hardships of circuit-riding.

Lawrence occasionally stumbles. She frequently uses the terms Methodist and evangelical interchangeably. The love feast involved bread and water, not, as she implies, Eucharist. Her assessment of American Methodist polity as egalitarian belies the unresolved conflict between hierarchical polity and egalitarian theology that has riven the denomination more than once.

These modest concerns aside, Lawrence has opened exploration of Protestant evangelicalism’s influence on modern family life. One hopes she will pursue it further.