In 1773 he summoned the first of what would become regular annual methodist conferences.45 Those who attended the first meeting adopted the published minutes of Wesley’s English conferences as their rule of order and vowed that they would admit no one to their number who did not agree to do the same.46
Wesley’s appointees were more supportive of the continued link between the methodist societies and the colonial Church of England than were some of the earlier immigrants who had introduced methodist structures on their own initiative. Wesley’s designates encouraged members of the methodist societies to worship in congregations of the Church of England, invited sympathetic Church of England clergy to sessions of annual conference, and tried to restrain preachers like Robert Strawbridge from celebrating the sacraments without episcopal ordination.47 This attitude won the cooperation of many of the Church of England clergy supportive of the Awakening.
The expanding methodist system also filled an important vacuum. Whitefield had provided a personality that linked awakened congregations in the colonies but no lasting structure or institution in the colonies that could endure after his own death in 1770. The methodist system, in contrast, provided a structure that was not dependent on one individual and could, therefore, provide continuity and direction over time. Not all who embraced the Awakening joined the methodist societies, however. Colonial clergy regarded the methodist societies as a lay movement that they should assist, rather than join. Lay supporters of Whitefield might have questions about membership as well, for, though Whitefield and the Wesleys agreed on the importance of new birth and the value of private meetings, they disagreed over the doctrine of predestination. Nonetheless, many did join and by 1775 the societies could boast of 3,148 members.48
The Great Awakening changed the theological character of the colonial Church of England. While advocates of awakening of the 1760s and 1770s never did abandon episcopal succession or the fixed liturgy in the way that Whitefield had been willing to do in 1739, they did adopt sentimentalist styles of preaching and Whitefield’s call for adult conversion. Even critics of the Awakening began to pay greater attention to personal religious experience. The attempt to integrate this new appreciation for affections with the received covenant tradition would, in turn, be a major topic of interest for theologians at the end of the century.
Changes were not only theological, however. Indeed, there were few aspects of church life that were left untouched. The membership, the institutions, and even the architecture and church music of the denomination were affected.
One way in which the Great Awakening changed the membership was by subtly raising the status of women. Female literacy was considerably lower than male literacy in the eighteenth century; by some estimates it was one-half that of men.49 The intellectual religion of the Moderate Enlightenment had, therefore, limited appeal to women. The Awakening, however, with its emphasis on affections and its household prayer meetings, provided new opportunities for female involvement. Martha Laurens Ramsay (1759–1811), the daughter of a prominent South Carolina family that attended St. Philip’s Church in Charleston, found, for example, that her awakened faith opened doors to a world with greater possibilities. She corresponded with such pious Englishwomen as Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (1707–91) and began a personal religious journal, which was published by her husband after her death.50
Similarly, the Awakening would affect the Church of England’s ministry to black Americans. The Church of England had begun to expand that ministry about the time of Whitefield’s tour of 1739–40, in large measure due to rapid increase in slave population.51 In 1741, the SPG purchased the slaves Harry and Andrew to serve as evangelists among blacks in South Carolina. In the mid-1740s, the clergy of Christ Church, Philadelphia, saw such an increase in their ministry among blacks that they asked the SPG to appoint a catechist to oversee the work. The SPG responded with the appointment of William Sturgeon (d. 1772) in 1747. Sturgeon, a Yale graduate who had traveled to England for ordination, carried on that work until 1762. In the early 1750s, Hugh Neill baptized 162 black persons in his Delaware congregation. Between 1758 and 1765, Dr. Bray’s Associates opened schools for blacks in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and New York.52
The fact that the most effective work among blacks was often carried on in the same parishes in which Church of England clergy began to support the Awakening after 1759 may not be entirely coincidental.53 Clergy may have tested the simple message of personal reliance on Christ as a tool for evangelism for blacks before using the message with white parishioners. Whatever the facts of the matter, however, one thing was clear: an expansion in ministry to blacks coincided with the Great Awakening.
Thus during the Awakening, the Church of England laid the groundwork for an expansion of the role of blacks and women that would take place in the years following the American Revolution. The formation of independent black congregations at the close of the eighteenth century and the growing women’s movement in the nineteenth century were both built upon that foundation.
The membership of the colonial Church of England was affected in another way as well. Prior to the Great Awakening, American denominations were arranged in a roughly geographical pattern; the Congregational Church predominated in New England, the Church of England in the South, and the Presbyterian Church in certain areas of the middle colonies. The Awakening shattered this pattern. It brought Presbyterians and Baptists to Virginia and contributed to the growth of the Church of England in New England and the middle colonies. The religious enclaves of the first half of the century gave way to a more heterogeneous pattern.
Provincial Assemblies and the Call for the Episcopate
The Awakening also sparked a renewed call for a colonial episcopate. Whitefield’s confrontations with colonial clergy in 1739 and 1740 demonstrated the weakness of the commissary system. Commissaries could complain about Whitefield’s preaching, but they lacked the clear authority over him that a colonial bishop would have been able to exercise. Moreover, as members of the Church of England had pointed out earlier in the century, a colonial bishop would provide a more satisfactory supply of clergy and would avoid the inevitable loss of life of some who took the dangerous trip to England for ordination. Yale convert Samuel Johnson was well aware of the danger; his son had died on such a trip.
Johnson’s fellow Yale convert Timothy Cutler was a leading advocate of the establishment of a colonial episcopate. Another vocal figure was Thomas B. Chandler (1726–90), a New Jersey clergyman whose An Appeal to the Public, on Behalf of the Church of England in America (1767) sought to rally popular support for the idea. In England, Bishop Joseph Butler (1692– 1752), a critic of John Wesley, took up the call for a colonial episcopate, and Bishop of London (1748–61) Thomas Sherlock stopped appointing commissaries in every colony except Virginia in order to pressure the Parliament to take action.54
Those who were not members of the Church of England reacted negatively to the campaign for a colonial episcopate. In the tense political climate of the 1760s, any proposal for a new British institution in the colonies was suspect. For Congregationalists and Presbyterians, a bishop of the Church of England, one who might exercise the political authority of his episcopal counterparts in the House of Lords, was particularly odious.
In Massachusetts, Congregational clergy Noah Welles (1718–76), Jonathan Mayhew (1720–66), and Charles Chauncy (1705–87) were fierce critics of the colonial Church of England. In an anonymous pamphlet titled The Real Advantage (1762), Welles claimed to have joined the Church of England for purely social reasons. Mayhew’s Observations on the … S.P.G.
