A Church’s Broken Heart: Mason-Dixon Methodism

Abstract

Over the past generation, no figure has shaped the study of American Methodism as much as Russell Richey. His latest book adds to his legacy by examining missional developments in the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, on the eve of the Civil War. Focusing upon a careful study of the minutes of Ohio and Kentucky annual conferences—two states on the border of America’s sectional divide over slavery—Richey constructs an analysis of late antebellum Methodism, providing portraits into “the programmatically complex ways in which leaders and laity structured congregations and conferences” (xix). Focusing upon the missional characteristics of Ohio and Kentucky Methodism, Richey offers a unique interpretation of how the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, crafted their mission on the eve of the Civil War. Even as both branches of episcopal Methodism effectively recalibrated their missions and ultimately merged in the twentieth century, “unity came with a racist price” (xxv), manifested in Methodism’s ongoing struggles to reconcile its mission with the realities of racism that continue to fragment the church and the nation.Richey’s scholarship stresses the centrality of conferencing as the way that Methodists structure mission. Reminiscent of his earlier work The Methodist Conference in America (Kingswood 1996), he casts a specific eye on how Ohio annual conferences (representing the Methodist Episcopal Church) and Kentucky annual conferences (representing the Methodist Episcopal and Methodist Episcopal Church, South) adapted and expanded their ministries, in the aftermath of the regional split over slavery at the 1844 General Conference. Richey lays out a template of three interconnected emphases that form the basis of Methodism’s mission: connection, formation, and outreach. Through these themes, he explores the ways that border Methodists responded to issues of itineracy, education, evangelism, and, particularly, slavery and racism. Richey spotlights how Methodists “modeled a ground-up, conference-out” strategy, whereby Methodist conferencing revolved around efforts to provide resources to different segments of the church. He affirms the adaptability of Methodism, noting how its successes—in publishing, manifested in periodicals and journals aimed at all segments of the church; education, embodied in the expansion of Sunday Schools and the building of colleges; and outreach, represented through initiatives toward immigrants, Native Americans, and slaves—facilitated Methodist growth. Richey notes Northern and Southern Episcopal Methodism’s dexterity in its ability to resource different components of the church, as seen through expansion of missions, such as outreach to German Methodists; a plethora of church publications, for example, Ladies Repository and Sunday School Advocate; and the founding of biblical institutes and colleges, including the Cincinnati Conference’s establishment of the historically African American Wilberforce College in 1855–1856.At the same time, Richey is not telling a story of triumphant Methodism. Noting that Methodism frequently preferred action over careful theological reflection, he points out the ways that Ohio and Kentucky Methodists, mirroring Northern and Southern Methodists of the time, were hampered by an inability to take prophetic stands against slavery. His research underscores Methodist whiteness, whereby white Southerners continued to offer theological justifications for slavery with Northerners frequently viewing the missional formation of Black Methodists of secondary importance, as well as facilitating the development of a segregated annual conference structure after the Civil War. Although he admires individual prophetic examples of Mason-Dixon Methodism (spotlighting the ministry of the Northern minister, James B. Finley), he laments an institutional history that, with a few exceptions, fell short of the ideals laid out by Wesley, Thomas Coke, Francis Asbury, and other early architects of American Methodism.One of the curiosities of the book is despite the title’s reference to a “church’s broken heart,” this phrase seldom appears in the text. Yet this theme is clearly in Richey’s mind in his autobiographical postscript that candidly discusses his own engagement with racial justice issues. Growing up a preacher’s kid in the segregated South, he discusses his father’s efforts to dismantle racism, his subsequent education in the North, and his involvement in causes of Civil Rights—as an activist, teacher, and historian. I suggest that the reader begin with this postscript; hearing Richey discuss his own efforts to come to terms with American racism, one hears his personal lament for a church he loves and has repeatedly fallen short of its mission of spreading scriptural holiness. As twenty-first century United Methodists once again face the prospect of schism, Richey’s work reminds us of the chasm existing between prophetic ideals of the Wesleyan/Methodist heritage with institutional manifestations of that tradition. The reader of this judiciously researched and quite personal book will not only gain insight into the painful realities of Methodism’s past institutional failures, but perhaps glimpse hope in ways that the people called Methodists might ultimately find the prophetic voice to combat racism—as well as other injustices confronting the church.