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James McGready: Theologian of Frontier Revivalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

John Opie Jr
John Opie Jr
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, Duquesne University
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Extract

When the historians of frontier revivalism turn to James McGready, they find him difficult to comprehend. Since the Kentucky Great Revival of 1797 to 1802 first arose in his frontier congregations, the historians point to McGready as the original frontier revivalist, imitated by all other revivalists. Because the origins of the frontier camp meeting were inextricably tied to his career, McGready has been described as the leading innovator of the western awakenings, who gave frontier religion its peculiar flavor. And the revivals have been described as a bizarre form of undisciplined religious barbarism, dominated by emotional intensity, primitive excesses, and pious anti-intellectualism. The difficulty with these widely accepted generalizations is that McGready was neither the model nor the advocate for the revivalism the historians said he created.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , December 1965 , pp. 445 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1965

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References

1. For Sweet's interpretation, see particularly, Revivalism in America (New York, 1944), pp. xi–xii, 20–25, 40, 88–89, 95–96, 106–107,Google Scholar and Chapter, “Revivalism and the Westward March”; and Religion in the Development of American Culture (New York, 1952)Google Scholar, Chapter IV, “Religion Follows the Frontier,” Chapter V, “Barbarism versus Revivalism,” especially pp. 137, 141, 146. Sweet also argues his case in the four volumes titled Religion on the American Frontier (1931–1946)Google Scholar. Similar interpretations, often dependent on Sweet, are found in Johnson, Charles A., The Frontier Camp Meeting (Dallas, 1950)Google Scholar, especially Chapters I V, IX, XII; Weisberger, Bernard A., They Gathered at the River (Boston, 1958),Google Scholar Chapter II, “Walking and Leaping and Praising God.” See also Mode, Peter G., The Frontier Spirit in American Christianity (New York, 1923),Google Scholar and the contemporary Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, edited by Charles L. Wallis (Nashville, 1956).

2. Cleveland, , The Great Revival in the West (Chicago, 1916), pp. 22–24, 34–37, 47–61,Google Scholar and Chapter IV, “Phenomena of the Revival”; Davenport, , Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals (New York, 1905), pp. vii–viii, 1–8, 28–31, 60–78, 221–234.Google Scholar Similar non-theological interpretations are found in Mode, Peter G., “Revivalism as a Phase of Frontier Life” Journal of Religion, Vol. 1, No. 4 (07, 1921), pp. 337–354CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gewehr, W. M., “Some Factors in the Expansion of Frontier Methodism,” Journal of Religion, Vol. 8, No. 1 (01, 1928), pp. 98–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Letter to Religious Intelligencer (1809), pp. 326ff.Google Scholar

4. There is no full-length biography of McGready, critical or otherwise. Biographical sketches are in Gillett, B. H., History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia, 1864), Vol. 1, pp. 234, 266, 358–360Google Scholar; Sprague, William B., Annals of the American Pulpit (New York, 1857–1865), Vol. III, p. 278Google Scholar; The Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XII, pp. 56–57Google Scholar; Smith, Joseph, Old Redstone, or, Historical Sketches of Western Prebyterianism … (Philadelphia, 1854), pp. 166–179, 360–364Google Scholar; Weisberger, op. cit., pp. 22–42; and Johnson, op. cit., pp. 32–38. Other important biographical data is in Thompson, Ernest Trice, Presbyterians in the South (Richmond, 1963), Vol. I, pp. 128–134.Google Scholar

5. Davidson, Robert, History of the Presbyterian Church in the State of Kentucky (New York, 1847), p. 132.Google Scholar

6. Quoted in Cossitt, Franceway H., The Life and Times of Rev. Finis Ewing (Louisville, 1853), pp. 494–499.Google Scholar The date of McGready's move to Kentucky is debated. See the various accounts in McDonnold, Benjamin W., History of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 2nd ed. (Nashville, 1888), pp. 16–18, 39Google Scholar; Smith, Z. F., “The Great Revival of 1800. The First Camp Meeting,” Kentucky Historical Society Register, Vol. VII (1909), pp. 19–23Google Scholar; and Redford, A. H., The History of Methodism in Kentucky (Nashville, 1868–1870), Vol. I, 264–272.Google Scholar Weisiberger, op. cit., p. 24 says 1798 while Johnson, op. cit., pp. 33–34 is unclear, indicating 1797 and 1800 as possible dates. Speaking of revival “seasons,” McGready himself suggests he arrived at least by 1797: “Three of these great days I have witnessed. One, on the Monongahela, was at a sacrament in 1786. The second in North Carolina, in 1789. The third in Kentucky, from 1797 to 1802,” in The Posthumous Works of James McGready, 2 vols. ed. by James Smith (Louisville, 1831), Vol. 1, p. 40.Google Scholar

7. For well-documented interpretations of Cane Ridge, see Johnson, op. cit., pp. 62–66 and Weisberger, op. cit., pp. 31–34.

8. For McGready's position as frontier Presbyterianism divided over revivalism and theology, see Davidson, op. cit., pp. 166, 234–240; Gillett op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 171 ff; Weisberger, op. cit., pp. 38–42; and Thompson, op. cit., Chapter 10, “Frontier Sehisms.” Relevant source materials are available in Sweet, William Warren, Religion on the American Frontier: The Presbyterians (1793–1840) (New York, 1936),Google Scholar “Minutes of the Synod of Kentucky,” “Minutes of the Transylvania Presbytery,” “Minutes of the Cumberland Presbytery.”

9. “Minutes of the Synod of Kentucky, 1802–1811,” quoted in Sweet, , The Presbyterians, pp. 342–343Google Scholar and see Thompson, op. cit., pp. 144–149.

10. For details on McGready7apso;s later career, see Davidson, op. cit., pp. 244–259 and Thompson, op. cit., pp. 149–152.

11. McGready's last years are described in Gillett, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 395–400.

12. Whether McGready studied under Smith is questionable. See Thompson, op. cit., p. 130 and Weisberger, op. cit., p. 22.

13. James McGready, Letter dated October 27, 1801, quoted in Cossit, op cit., pp. 494–499.

14. McGready, , Works, Vol. I, p. 40.Google Scholar

15. Alan Simpson draws a provocative parallel between Puritanism and revivalism in Puritanism in Old and New England (Chicago, 1955)Google Scholar; see also the detailed commentary on Scotch-Irish traditions in Thompson, op. cit., pp. 35–38, 42–48, 67–79, 124–125 and the perceptive analysis in Wright, Louis B., Culture on the Moving Frontier (Bloomington, md., 1955, 1961), pp. 11–16.Google Scholar

16. McGready was not alone in his crusade; for other advocates of revivalism in the west, see Gewehr, Wesley M., The Great Awakening in Virginia (Durham, N. C., 1930)Google Scholar, Chapters V-Ill and the representative “Report of Redstone Presbytery,” published in Western Missionary Magazine, quoted in Speer, William, The Great Revival of 1800 (Philadelphia, 1872), p. 22.Google Scholar

17. See, for example, MeGready, , Works Vol. I, p. 63Google Scholar; the comments in Thompson, op. cit., p. 131; and West, William Garrett, Barton Warren Stone (Nashville, 1954), p. 7.Google Scholar

18. McGready, , Works, Vol. I, p. 53.Google Scholar

19. Edwards, Jonathan, The Nature of True Virtue (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1960), pp. 15–22, 42–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. McGready, , Works, Vol. 1, p. 316.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 317.

22. Letter to Religious Intelligencer (1809), pp. 326ff.Google Scholar This report, incidentally, indicates that McGready did not change his views in later years.

23. Edwards, Jonathan, Religious Affections (New Haven, 1959), p. 101.Google Scholar

24. McGready, , Works, Vol. I, p. 63.Google Scholar

25. Edwards, , Religious Affections, pp. 96, 99.Google Scholar

26. McGready, , Works, Vol. II, pp. 19ff.Google Scholar

27. See, for instance, Ibid., Vol. II, p. 142.

28. Could McGready have acquired his knowledge of Edwards' interpretation of revivalism through the Edwardean tradition, of Bellamy Hopkins, and Dwight? At first glance, this is a likely supposition, but the very theological features of Edwards' landscape which McGready used were those omitted by the Edwardeans. It appears that McGready must have gone back to Edwards himself. For recent interpretations of the inability of the Edwardeans to understand Edwards, see particularly Haroutunian, Joseph, Piety Versus Moralism (New York, 1932)Google Scholar; Mead, Sidney E., Nathaniel William Taylor (Chicago, 1942)Google Scholar; and Opie, John Jr, “Conversion and Revivalism: An Internal History from Jonathan Edwards through Charles Grandison Finney,” (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Divinity School, University of Chicago, 1963).Google Scholar

29. The best biography of Stone is that in West, op. cit., see esp. pp. 16, 30ff.

30. McGready, , Works, Vol II, p. 72Google Scholar; see also West, op. cit., pp. 8–9, 63–83.

31. McGready, , Works, Vol II, pp. 42ff.Google Scholar

32. West, op. cit., pp. 8–10.

33. Quoted in Ibid., p. 108; see also pp 92–93.

34. Quoted in Ibid., pp. 10–11.

35. McGready, , Works, Vol I, p. 316.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 54.

37. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 73; see also pp. 60–65.

38. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 72.

39. Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 92, 132–133; see also Vol. II, pp. 76ff.

40. Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 288–289.

41. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 318.

42. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 319.