From the issues surrounding the re-establishment of the doctrine, attention shifts in Part II to the coincidence between its eighteenth-century flowering and the Age of Enlightenment. To what extent was this a necessary relation-ship, with the two movements intimately connected? How far did the coincidence depend upon accidental factors and even demonstrate contra-dictions? The individualism expressed in the work and writings of the early Methodist preachers, class leaders and Sunday school teachers may have been consonant with Enlightenment values, as recent scholars suggest, but it seems unlikely that there was any significant intellectual debt. The new vein of evangelical self-awareness had less to do with contemporary secular indi-vidualism than with the corporate identity of the emerging community of faith.

doi:10.4324/9780203166505-12

Chapter

From the issues surrounding the re-establishment of the doctrine, attention shifts in Part II to the coincidence between its eighteenth-century flowering and the Age of Enlightenment. To what extent was this a necessary relation-ship, with the two movements intimately connected? How far did the coincidence depend upon accidental factors and even demonstrate contra-dictions? The individualism expressed in the work and writings of the early Methodist preachers, class leaders and Sunday school teachers may have been consonant with Enlightenment values, as recent scholars suggest, but it seems unlikely that there was any significant intellectual debt. The new vein of evangelical self-awareness had less to do with contemporary secular indi-vidualism than with the corporate identity of the emerging community of faith.

Chapter

From the issues surrounding the re-establishment of the doctrine, attention shifts in Part II to the coincidence between its eighteenth-century flowering and the Age of Enlightenment. To what extent was this a necessary relation-ship, with the two movements intimately connected? How far did the coincidence depend upon accidental factors and even demonstrate contra-dictions? The individualism expressed in the work and writings of the early Methodist preachers, class leaders and Sunday school teachers may have been consonant with Enlightenment values, as recent scholars suggest, but it seems unlikely that there was any significant intellectual debt. The new vein of evangelical self-awareness had less to do with contemporary secular indi-vidualism than with the corporate identity of the emerging community of faith.

ABSTRACT

When these irregular activities coincided with periods of social and political crisis, pressure to take action became irresistible. In the ensuing debates not only were the alleged deficiencies of the lay agents thoroughly rehearsed and returned with spirit, but the discussion turned at a deeper level towards a reassessment of the entire lay-clerical relationship which had characterized the ancien régime. Some of the bitterest moments of controversy occurred during the late 1790s and in these it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the new assertion of lay power within the church had become more than a little anticlerical.27 Given the tendency for this lay activity to be associated either with membership of non-established denominations, or with reforming movements such as Pietism or Methodism, running counter to the mainstream within the territorial churches and showing a strong tendency towards the formation of small groups for more serious Christians, it is tempting to draw conclusions that link the empowerment of the laity with a fundamental shift in ecclesiastical polity. The examples offered by America up to the midnineteenth century suggest that while no simple connection can be drawn between the spread of evangelicalism and the extension of lay opportunity, their parallel development owed much to the growth of three new aspects of church organization: itinerancy, voluntary association and disestablishment.28

Even within the voluntary churches, however, old habits died hard. Methodism in particular witnessed the reassertion of clerical dominance following the death of its founder, as Conference, Wesley’s effective successor, restricted its membership to the body of travelling preachers. In response to this blatant attempt to exclude laymen from the central decision-making process, the small but democratic Methodist New Connexion was formed in 1797 with opposition to clericalism as its primary objective. Its affirmation of the general priesthood appears from the beginning to have had as much to do with the spread of secular liberalism as with the assertion of biblical doctrine, and it maintained its principled position only until the clerical hegemony within the Methodist mainstream had succumbed to the mounting democratic pressures of late Victorian society.29