The Overflowing of Friendship: Love between Men and the Creation of the American Republic

3 “The Best Blessing We Know”: Male Love and Spiritual Communion in Early America

chapter three “The Best Blessing We Know” Male Love and Spiritual Communion in Early America Stith Mead, a young Methodist itinerant who preached throughout western Virginia in the early 1790s, spent much of his time journeying on his own from one community to the next; only occasionally did he have a traveling companion. Riding the circuit—often along primitive roads or barely passable tracks, sometimes in ghastly weather, with no guarantee of a friendly reception at the next stop—was “difficult” enough “when two are together,” Mead wrote, “but much more so when one is left alone.” Yet he was never truly alone. Not only could he feel the “sweet” presence of his savior, but he also sensed the love, support, and example of fellow preachers toiling elsewhere, especially his beloved friend John Kobler, who was Mead’s senior by a few years. Despite their physical separation , Mead and Kobler remained “united in faith and love,” sustaining each other through prayer and correspondence. “How are you, my dear,” Mead wrote, “I am daily with you in spirit.” The two men wrote long and effusive letters to one another as they each labored to awaken Southern souls. In one of these letters Mead expressed his feelings for Kobler in the form of a poem: Although we ride so far apart, I love you in my very heart. I’ve often thought, if I could be A pattern as in you I see, I’d often feel [God’s] spirit beam And catch hold of the living stream. O could I see your solemn face, I’d take you in my arms embrace. 83 Mead dwelt lovingly in his letters on the “ineffable sweetness” of reunions with his beloved Kobler: “Nothing less than rivers of love,” he wrote, “could give us such heavenly feelings and glorious consolations as we enjoyed together.” The prospect of more “sweet moments” together “revive[d]” his “drooping spirits and add[ed] new strength” to his “wasted body.” “I daily think of you,” Mead declared, “with sweet delight.”1 The close and loving relationship that Mead and Kobler enjoyed would not have struck their fellow itinerants as unusual or problematic. Indeed, evangelical preachers who traveled throughout the South in the closing years of the eighteenth century laid great stress upon the need for “sweet” and “sympathizing” love between brothers in Christ that would provide support and a sense of familial belonging as they strove to save souls, often in the face of virulent hostility from those who did not welcome their particular brand of Christianity. Many of these itinerants committed formally as covenant brothers to sustain each other through prayer and loving correspondence as they traveled in service to their God. Mead, who entered “into band” with Kobler, thought of his friend as a “dear brother” and “sympathizing mate.”2 As late eighteenth-century evangelicals embraced an ethos of brotherly love in service to Christ, they followed in the footsteps of pre-revolutionary revivalists and also seventeenth -century Puritans. All three movements venerated love between men as a sanctified expression of membership in a transcendent spiritual family. Not only should the faithful cultivate fraternal affection, modeled on the relationship between Jonathan and David, but they should also envisage their relationship to Christ himself as a passionate union akin to marriage that enveloped male as well as female believers. As we will see, the emphasis that all three movements placed upon brotherly love reflected an egalitarian spirit that had profound social and political implications . Their conception of spiritual community as a family that held together through bonds of affectionate mutuality between brethren in Christ would provide an important context for late eighteenth-century republican ideology as Americans sought in the wake of Independence to create a new and democratic society.3 G In early 1630, as John Winthrop prepared to cross the Atlantic and join the Puritan settlement of New England, he found himself saying goodbye to friends and loved ones. Some, including his wife, would remain in 84 the overflowing of friendship England for a time and then join him in North America. Others he would never see again. Among the latter figured his “most sweet friend” Sir William Spring. Winthrop sent Spring a parting letter in which he declared: “I loved you truly before I could think that you took any notice of me: but now I embrace you and rest in...