Methodists: The Challenge of Fortune

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Methodists grant that there are statistical downs to match statistical ups. The church's growth rate is far smaller than that of the U.S. population as a whole, and Methodism is beginning to face a severe clerical shortage: there are only 900 ordained preachers graduating from seminaries each year to fill 2,697 ministerial openings. Nonetheless, the gravest issue facing the church is not a matter of numbers; it is whether Methodism has rightly adapted its structure and spirit to fit the shifting conditions of modern life.

Fellowship at the Center. In the time and place of its founding, Methodism was a great response to a great challenge. The 18th century was a time of torpor in the Church of England, which was slow to answer the antireligious skepticism of the Enlightenment and to meet the new missionary challenge of the unchurched poor in new industrial towns. John Wesley, a High Church priest turned highway preacher, found the answer. Instead of confounding the deists with reason, he responded to their arguments with religious fervor; and when the poor were reluctant to enter the church, he brought the church to them on city streets and country roads. In place of liturgy and creed, he put fellowship and the personal experience of salvation at the center of Christian life. It was an emotional faith, summoning men to work hard and live well for their Saviour's sake.

By 1760, lay preachers had carried Wesley's brand of religion to the New World, and 24 years later, at Lovely Lane Chapel in Baltimore, Francis Asbury convened the first conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Methodism proved to be a faith ideally suited to the U.S. frontier. In a land without churches, theological argument and orderly Communion services were as out of place as a Pope. What Asbury's tireless circuit riders provided instead, at impromptu worship hours in country kitchens and camp meetings, were florid sermons, full-throated hymns, and an upright way of life. They represented a puritanical church that separated the men from their women in prayer services.

"Methodism brought what the frontier needed," says New York's Bishop Lloyd Wicke, "a certain discipline and a moral sense. You didn't gamble because that was taking unfair advantage of a man. The church also forbade drinking, dancing and card playing: it was not the deed itself that the church was worried about, but what it did to a man's soul."

Preceding the Flag. While many other churches waited for the railroad, Methodism trekked west with the settlers—and thereby grew faster than any other Protestant denomination during the 19th century. The far-ranging circuit rider not only followed the flag; he sometimes preceded it. In 1838, Methodist Missionary Jason Lee rode from the Pacific Northwest to warn Congress about the southward expansion of Britain's Hudson's Bay Company, thereby spawned a westward migration that helped save Washington and Oregon for the U.S.