"P" is for Preacher Peter Cartwright

     The United Methodist Church and the many other offshoots of the Methodist movement comprise one of the largest groupinigs of Protestant Denominations in the world today.  The Methodist movement was started in the 18th Century by John and Charles Wesley, in large part to minister to the needs of the poorer classes of England and in reaction to the apathy shown them by the upper socio-economic classes who controlled the Church of England.  The movement quickly spread to the American colonies.  Though John Wesley intended the Methodists to remain a reform movement within the Chruch of England, the American Revolution decisively separated the Methodists in America from the life and sacraments of the Church of England.
     In 1784, after unsuccessful attempts to have the Church of England send a bishop to start a new church in the colonies, Wesley appointed fellow priest Thomas Coke to organize an independent Methodist group in America.  This new American church was destined to make a distinctive contribution to our American Christian heritage, largely because of its willingness and desire to serve those whom others ignored. This philosophy led to the ministry of the circuit rider, many of whom were laymen who traveled the backwoods of what was then a mostly rural nation by horseback to preach the Gospel and to establish churches in settlements in which the larger established churches had little interest.  Hundreds of such preachers worked tirelessly until there was scarcely any village in the new nation without a Methodist presence.
     Methodist preachers made a point of taking the message to anyone left outside organized religion at that time.  This included laborers and even criminals as well as those people living in the backwoods frontier.  In the United States, Methodism became the religion of many slaves who later formed "black churches" in the Methodist tradition.
     Because of the Circuit Riders religion changed in America.  But it was not only religion that was affected, the culture as a whole was shaped by the efforts of these circuit riding preachers.  Because these traveling preachers visited people whom others discounted, a new understanding of religion developed in the hearts and minds of the common classes in America.  As a result, this new religion in which laity had an equal voice helped shape the ideals of democracy in America.
     Peter Cartwright was among the greatest of these early Circuit Riders.  In his autobiography, Cartwright writes, "Many nights, in early times, the itinerant had to camp out, without fire or food for man or beast.  Our pocket Bible, Hymn Book, and Discipline constituted our library.  It is true we could not, many of us, conjugate a verb or parse a sentence, and murdered the King's English almost every lick.  But there was a Divine unction that attended the word preached, and thousands fell under the mighty power of God, and thus the Methodist Episcopal Church was planted firmly in the Western Wilderness, and many glorious signs have followed, and will follow, to the end of time....  From the time I had joined the traveling ranks in 1804 to 1820-21, a period of sixteen years, from thirty-two traveling preachers, we had increased to two hundered and eighty... and there was not a single literary man among the preachers."

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     While it may not have been an intentiaonal result, people living on the American frontier soon learned from observation that they didn't particularly need the educated elite, either in politics or religion.  They learned to hold their heads high and to think of themselves as entitled to the same protection of law the wealthy enjoyed.  Methodists offered the common people, especially the poor, a compelling vision of individual self-worth and collective self-confidence.  Methodism in America gave voice to passions that the common person had previously been unable to express.  This amounted to a social revolution which is as important to our nation's history as the political revolution that won our independence.

     The Methodist camp meeting and tent revivals were a natural bi-product of this American social revolution.  During the early years of the Republic, camp meetings and traveling tent revivals reached out to an involved the lower socio-economic classes of America contributing immeasurably to the democratization of our nation.  Here, in these tent meetings, everyone was equal.  Those who got there first were able to sit up front, unlike the many churches controlled by the upper classes whose front pew was reserved for those individuals who had financed the construction of the church.

     It is safe to say that the revivalism movement mightily contributed to by the Methodists during these early years of our American Republic not only helped shape the democratic ideals we cherish, but rescued the infant nation from the brink of moral disaster.  At a time of moral chaos on the frontier due to the lack of church influence amont the people living on the frontier, Methodism helped to set the standard for the return of morals to the frontier, and more importantly, took the religious power from the few and gave it to the many.

     The Methodist movement in America rediscovered revival and forged it into a heroic weapon.... revivalism swept in at the right time to bring the nation back from that brink.  It is the hope of Our Christian Heritage Foundation that concerned Christians will do the same today.  Join us in mounting a new offensive in the Methodist tradition.  And perhaps someday history will record that this offensive to restore Christian America began here, at this time, with your help.

(Historic comments above from Wikepedia Free Content Online Encyclopedia.  All photos are of books held by the OCHF Library.)

 

Below, a typical Circuit Rider's Bible with Wesley's Commentary Notes

 

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Below, a typical Hymnbook used by many frontier Methodists

 

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Circuit Riders might also carry with them a copy of Wesley's Primitive Physic, a book of herbal medicine for the poor who could not afford or did not have access to a physician--see below.

 

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     Post Script:  John Wesley Hill, a friend of Abraham Lincoln, writes in his book Abraham Lincoln - Man of God,, p. 77:  "In August 1837, Mr. Lincoln, with six other lawyers and two doctors, went in a wagon from Springfield to Salem to attend a camp-meeting.  On the way Lincoln cracked jokes about the horses, the wagon, the lawyers, the doctors--indeed about nearly everything.  At the camp-meeting, Dr. Peter Akers, like Peter Cartwright, a great Bible preacher of his day, then in the fullness of his powers, preached a sermon on 'The Dominion of Jesus Christ.'  The object of the sermon was to show that the dominion of Christ could not come in America until American slavery was wiped out, and that the institution of slavery would at last be destroyed by civil war.  For three hours the preacher enrolled his argument and even gave graphic pictures of the war that was to come.  'I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet,' said he, 'but a student of the prophets.  As I read propehcy, American slavery will come to an end in some near decade, I think in the sixties."  Like Lincoln, Cartwright had moved westward to illinois after a childhood in Kentucky.  In addition to his preaching activities, Cartwright served two terms in the Illinois State Legislature, having defeated Lincoln who had also stood for the office.  Cartwright stood in opposition to Lincoln for the office of U. S. Congress in 1846.  This time Lincoln prevailed, and the rest is history.