ABSTRACT
The transformation of village economies uprooted labourers and cast them out into earthly pilgrimages. Through the experiences of displacement, they arrived at similar precepts of sectarian Methodism, but with a different emphasis: while adopting the rugged individualism and domestic solidarity of cottage religion, they capitalized on its portable potential rather than its stabilizing power. The idealization of the domus became the source of a wealth of pilgrim imagery for those who were completely deprived of material security. Historians seldom use religion to gauge a strictly popular mood in nineteenth-century England; usually religion is seen as a conventional force pulling together conflicting interests under banners of worn-out Victorian virtues. In Brazil, the Umbanda spiritualist movement has emerged in response to rapid industrialization in southern regions; like cottage religion, it has gathered strength from substantial rural-to-urban migration. As champions of village virtue in mid-Victorian England, cottage evangelists confronted trying times. Large-scale movements appropriated many of the aims of sectarian religion.
