implied that God abandoned people and incited the nonelect to antinomianism.80 Unlike Wesley, Whitefield separated from the Anglican Church, openly criticizing its efficacy in America. He further charged that Anglican missionaries were “corrupt in their principles and immoral in their practices.”81 After his death in 1770, Whitefield’s followers were folded into what became the predominant strain of American Methodism, Wesleyan Methodism. Despite theological differences, Wesley and Whitefield remained friends; the Wesleys and George Whitefield considered themselves a “threefold cord,” working toward the same goal.82 As perhaps a final testament to their friendship, Whitefield had designated Wesley to conduct his funeral.
Even while distinguishing his own movement from Whitefield’s, John Wesley kept a close eye on the spread of American revivalism.83 Wesley had read Jonathan Edwards’s collection of New England conversion accounts, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, and Wesley was deeply affected by this collection. He drew parallels between American conversion experiences and those in his own circle.84 Wesley not only admired Edwards’s book, he reprinted it in London in the 1740s and 1750s.85 As Wesley saw the connections between the experiences of converts in America and England, he began to conceive the scope of his mission as transatlantic, even worldwide. Surveying the numerous reports of large revivals in the 1740s, Wesley wrote, “Many sinners are saved from their sins at this day, in London … in many other parts of England; in Wales, in Ireland, in Scotland; upon the continent of Europe; in Asia and in America. This I term a great work of God; so great as I have not read of for several ages.”86
Throughout the transatlantic world, the publication of conversion narratives exploded during the mid-eighteenth century. Sharing conversion experiences was an important way for evangelicals to connect to one another. Publishing conversion narratives served various functions, asserting both the universality of this experience and the common components evangelicals found in their journeys toward salvation. Conversion narratives provided Methodists and other evangelicals with the sense that their experiences were unique but not singular. This transatlantic network of writing created a spiritual community that crossed denominational and national boundaries.87
By the late 1730s, Wesley began to conceive of a religious community centered on the conversion experience, social discipline, and spiritual fellowship. In 1738, Wesley established the Fetter Lane Society in London; this society was cooperatively run with the Moravians. The society attracted converts, organized them into bands, and laid out the rules for social and religious discipline. Fetter Lane established the possibility of merging Moravians and Methodists in England, but, by 1740, John and Charles Wesley rejected this idea. The more radical elements of Moravian communalism and sexuality were problematic to the Wesleys.88 But even more troubling was the theological divide between Methodists and Moravians. The Wesleys contended that the Moravians had antinomian tendencies, while Moravian leader Count Zinzendorf was bothered by John Wesley’s insistence that it was possible to achieve Christian perfectionism, a state where one could no longer sin.89 Moravians were also troubled by the enthusiasm central to Methodist conversion experiences: the noisy groaning, crying, and physical fits. Though Wesley had initially been somewhat skeptical of enthusiasm, by 1739 he had become convinced that enthusiasm was a true expression of the Spirit of God in the believer. Wesley had concluded this from seeing the similarities in physical responses to conversion, found in both Jonathan Edwards’s conversion accounts in America and those he witnessed in England. He reasoned that these remarkable similarities meant the responses were legitimate.90 Moravians countered that stillness was the appropriate response to conversion and that conversion was instantaneous, while Wesley thought this was not the only valid manifestation of conversion.91 With the additional and distinct step of sanctification, which offered to converts a final stage of sinless perfection, Methodists saw conversion as a longer process than that of the Moravians. The theological rift was evident in their different social plans as well. Wesley sought an evangelical society that was open to all, in contrast to the sort of bounded community that was necessary to reach Moravian goals.92
In 1739, following Whitefield’s lead, John Wesley began to preach in open air settings and established himself as an itinerant preacher.93 Wesley had a sense of mission now and would not be a traditional Anglican minister, whose scope was bounded by a single parish. He wrote, “I have now no parish of my own, nor probably ever shall.… I look upon all the world as my parish”94 He began to establish a group of itinerant preachers that would become a spiritual brotherhood. They would share poor pay, poorer conditions, and even mob violence to follow their sense of spiritual calling. Officially starting in 1744, Wesley began to organize a few ministers and a rapidly expanding group of lay preachers.95 Itinerant preachers were predominantly lay preachers who had little formal training. But they were by no means without regulation. Wesley held control over their activities, prohibiting their administration of sacraments, and ordering itinerants into rotating circuits, ones he reassigned regularly. Preachers were expected to cover a large area, never staying in one community for very long; they coordinated and supervised the ongoing spiritual development of a set of communities. The basic structures of the laity, the classes and bands, were the local forms of Methodist organization. The preacher was the connection between these societies and the leadership, consisting of John Wesley and, eventually, the Conference of Preachers.96
Wesley established an explicitly paternal system from the beginning.97 He maintained control of many of the decisions on both the organizational level (preachers’ circuits) and the personal level (marital choices). In 1766, at a conference in Leeds, he defended his power over Methodists by stating that Methodist followers asked for this sort of leadership. He stated that prospective preachers aspired to “serve me as sons and to labour when and where I should direct.” In Wesley’s self-defense of his centralized power, he maintained that his control was not tyrannical in that evangelicals willingly submitted themselves to it. He argued, “the Preachers have engaged themselves to submit … to serve me as sons in the gospel.”98 Wesley argued that the basis for his authority was voluntary, while the terms were compulsory and nonnegotiable, like the bonds of a natural family.
While Wesley’s control seemed absolute in some realms, he also established important sources of power within the laity. In England and America, early Methodist societies included significant lay leadership and a considerable number of women. In Bristol, which was the center of Wesley’s revivals, women were the predominant lay leaders. In 1742, in the London Foundery Society, women leaders outnumbered men by fortyseven to nineteen.99 In the first decades of Wesleyan Methodism in America, women were likewise the largest group, outnumbering men by three to two in some areas.100
As Methodism became more established, bands and classes became the primary units of lay organization. As discussed above, bands were sites of close spiritual fellowship, based on the early models of the Holy Club and the first meetings in Georgia. Bands were usually single sex and formed of like-minded people from similar backgrounds and shared marital status, much like the Moravian organizations. The bands were supposed to foster intimacy, providing a comfortable space for sharing confessions of sins and self-searching.101 The American Methodist superintendent Francis Asbury described bands as “little families of love.”102
The classes, on the other hand, were the basic unit of official Methodist membership. Depending upon the area, they could be mixed sex or single sex. When an area was newly organized, the class might include all the Methodists from a particular community, and when the membership grew, the classes would become subdivided by different characteristics such as marital status, sex, and race. They were generally larger than bands, composed of usually a dozen members, and part of the economic undergirding of Methodism.103 In class meetings, Methodists would relate conversion narratives and receive instructions on Methodist social interactions. Classes would be instructed on the rules outlined in the official guidebook for Methodist social behavior, the Methodist Discipline, including correct behavior, avoiding profanity, refraining from excessive
