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Hearing and Believing: Listening Experiences as Religious Experiences in Nineteenth-Century British Methodism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2020

Martin V. Clarke*
Affiliation:
The Open Universitym.v.clarke@open.ac.uk

Abstract

This article uses Jeff Astley's concept of ordinary theology (Jeff Astley, Ordinary Theology: Looking, Listening and Learning in Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002)) to examine and interpret listening experiences from nineteenth-century Methodist sources. It argues that the participatory experiences of singing together with fellow believers were crucial to the development and sustenance of personal faith, and that believers shared accounts of such experiences in ways that they knew would be understood by their readers as indicative of the depth and sincerity of their spirituality. It further contends that the widely recognized importance of hymnody in Methodism demands attention to its practice as well its content, and that while the lyrics of hymns set out Methodist theology and doctrine, the participative experience of communal singing was itself invested with meaning and value by many lay Methodists. Ordinary theology provides a framework through which common features of these accounts are identified and discussed, emphasizing the importance of various forms of life writing in understanding the ways in which religious practice shaped the lives and interactions of individual believers. The article also explores differences between different types of published and unpublished life writing. While examples are drawn from different branches of nineteenth-century Methodism, it is argued that hymnody's potential for creating spiritually intense experiences was commonly recognized and affirmed across them. This article contributes to the wider discussion of the significance of listening experiences by emphasizing music's vital role in the construction and communication of meaning between individuals on matters of deeply personal value.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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References

1 David Hempton argues that ‘the most distinctive, characteristic, and ubiquitous feature of the Methodist message, indeed of the entire Methodist revival, was its transmission by means of hymns and hymn singing’; Hempton, David, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005): 68Google Scholar. J.R. Watson, meanwhile, argues that ‘the singing of hymns has been one of the great strengths of Methodism, from the time of John and Charles Wesley, through the problems of the nineteenth century and the turmoil of the twentieth, to the uncertainties of the twenty-first’; Watson, J.R., ‘Music, Hymnody and the Culture of Methodism in Britain’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to World Methodism, ed. Gibson, William, Forsaith, Peter and Wellings, Martin (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013): 233–49, at 249Google Scholar. Brian Beck draws attention to the tensions that have often surrounded hymnody in Methodism, which bear further witness to the depth of attachment to both repertoire and practice: ‘Methodism has a long tradition, back to the eighteenth century, of using popular music to accompany hymns. What has frequently happened, however, has been that yesterday's popular has become today's traditional.’ Beck, Brian, ‘Methodism: Shifting Balances, 1939–2010’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to World Methodism, ed. Gibson, William, Forsaith, Peter and Wellings, Martin (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013): 6586, at 78Google Scholar.

2 The two most well-known phrases attesting to hymnody's status within Methodism are John Wesley's description of his most extensive hymnal as ‘a little body of experimental and practical divinity’ and the opening sentence of the preface to The Methodist Hymn Book (1933): ‘Methodism was born in song’; Wesley, John, ed., A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists, ed. Hildebrandt, Franz and Beckerlegge, Oliver A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983 [1780]): 74Google Scholar. Church, Methodist, The Methodist Hymn Book with Tunes (London: Methodist Conference Office, 1933): iiiGoogle Scholar.

3 Studies of Methodist hymnody cover a wide range of perspectives and methodologies. Literary and theological studies of Charles Wesley's hymns are unsurprisingly plentiful; see, for example, Rattebury, J. Ernest, The Evangelical Doctrines of Charles Wesley's Hymns (London: Epworth Press, 1941)Google Scholar and Stevick, Daniel B., The Altar's Fire: Charles Wesley's Hymns on the Lord's Supper, 1745: Introduction and Comment (Peterborough: Epworth, 2004)Google Scholar. Others have pursued contextual and theological studies of hymnals, including Leaver, Robin A., ‘Psalms and Hymns and Hymns and Sacred Poems: Two Strands of Wesleyan Hymn Collections’, in Temperley, Nicholas and Banfield, Stephen, eds., Music and the Wesleys (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010): 4151Google Scholar, and Pratt, Andrew, O For a Thousand Tongues: The 1933 Methodist Hymn Book in Context (Peterborough: Epworth, 2004)Google Scholar. Recent studies of Methodism more generally have broadened the focus beyond the contributions of John and Charles Wesley and other prominent leaders such as George Whitefield to consider the ways in which Methodism impacted upon the lives of its membership at large. Notable contributions include Mack, Phyllis, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar and Riso, Mary, The Narrative of the Good Death: The Evangelical Deathbed in Victorian England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015)Google Scholar.

4 Astley, Jeff, Ordinary Theology: Looking, Listening and Learning in Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002): 56Google Scholar (emphasis in the original).

5 See Astley, Jeff and Francis, Leslie J., eds, Exploring Ordinary Theology: Everyday Christian Believing and the Church (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013)Google Scholar.

6 See, for example, David Walker, ‘How Far is it to Bethlehem? Exploring the Ordinary Theology of Occasional Churchgoers’, in Exploring Ordinary Theology, ed. Astley and Francis, 137–46.

7 As Paul Westermeyer notes, ‘A hymn tune is not much in the world's view of things. It is not a large symphony or an oratorio. It is not even a short choral piece. It holds little attraction in the world. It consists of very few phrases, several lines of notes that serve the church's need to sing. Appearances can be deceiving, however. … Hymn tunes are weak little things that in their powerful weakness enable the church to sing the faith’; Westermeyer, , Let the People Sing: Hymn Tunes in Perspective (Chicago: GIA, 2005): 395Google Scholar.

8 For an overview of this period in Methodist history, see Watson, Kevin, ‘The Price of Respectability: Methodism in Britain and the United States, 1791–1865’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to World Methodism, ed. Gibson, William, Forsaith, Peter and Wellings, Martin (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013): 3350Google Scholar, and Morris L. Davis, ‘Methodism; Consolidation and Reunion, 1865–1939’ in ibid. 51–64. The United Methodist Church that was among the bodies that merged in 1932 should not be confused with the organization of the same name founded in the USA in 1968.

9 Watson, ‘The Price of Respectability’, 39. While there were undoubtedly tensions between the different Methodist groups, there is also evidence of cooperation between them in specific contexts. For example, in his account of Primitive Methodism in rural Yorkshire, Henry Woodcock recounts a revival in the village of Cranswick, noting that ‘one night twelve persons were converted at the Wesleyan chapel and eight at our own’. Woodcock, Henry, Piety among the Peasantry: Being Sketches of Primitive Methodism on the Yorkshire Wolds (London: Joseph Toulson, 1889): 106Google Scholar. The extent to which connexional authority directly influenced local practice is also a matter of debate; see Rodell, Jonathan, The Rise of Methodism: A Study of Bedfordshire, 1736–1851 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

10 Wolffe, John, God and Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland 1843–1945 (London: Routledge, 1994): 176Google Scholar.

11 McInelly, Brett C., Textual Warfare and the Making of Methodism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014): 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 On Mary Tooth see Blessing, Carol, ‘“Oh That the Mantle May Rest on Me!”: The Ministry of Mary Tooth’, in Religion, Gender, and Identity: Exploring Church and Methodism in a Local Setting, ed. Hammond, Geordan and Forsaith, Peter S. (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2011): 156–72Google Scholar.

13 Letter from Benjamin Bangham in Coalbrookdale to [Mary Tooth at Madeley], 20 Aug. 1829, Fletcher-Tooth Collection, Methodist Archive, GB 135 MAM/FL/1/2/3.

14 J.R. W[atson] ‘And are we yet alive’ in The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, www.hymnology.co.uk/a/and-are-we-yet-alive (accessed 7 Nov. 2017).

15 Letter from K[atherine] Whitmore in Cotsbrook to [Mary Tooth], [n.d., before 1815], Fletcher-Tooth Collection, Methodist Archive, GB 133 MAM/ Fl/7/15/43.

16 McInelly, Textual Warfare, 132.

17 Letter from Mary Whittingham at Potten vicarage to Mary Fletcher in Madeley, 4 Aug. 1810, Fletcher-Tooth Collection, Methodist Archive, GB 133 MAM/Fl/7/16/12. On Mary Fletcher, see McInelly, Brett C., ‘Mothers in Christ: Mary Fletcher and the Women of Early Methodism’, in Religion, Gender, and Identity: Exploring Church and Methodism in a Local Setting, ed. Hammond, Geordan and Forsaith, Peter S. (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2011): 123–36Google Scholar.

18 Thorne was the granddaughter of William O'Bryan, founder of the Bible Christian Connexion. Her parents, Samuel Thorne and Mary Thorne (née O'Bryan), were also prominent figures in the organization.

19 Letter from Serena Thorne in Middle Street, Padstow, to [her father Samuel Thorne], 15 May 1866, Lewis Court Bible Christian Collection, Methodist Archive, GB 133 MAW Ms 92.13.

20 Letter from Serena Thorne in Middle Street, Padstow, to [her father Samuel Thorne], 15 May 1866.

21 Letter from Serena Thorne in Middle Street, Padstow, to [her father Samuel Thorne], 15 May 1866.

22 Hempton, David, The Religion of the People: Methodism and Popular Religion c.1750–1900 (London: Routledge, 1996): 67Google Scholar.

23 Rachelle Louise Barlow, ‘The “Land of Song”: Gender and Identity in Welsh Choral Music, 1872–1918’ (PhD diss., Cardiff University, 2015): 60. See also Helen Barlow, ‘“Praise the Lord! We are a musical nation”: the Welsh working classes and religious singing’, in this issue.

24 Thorne's account is strikingly similar to John Spencer Curwen's reaction to the singing at a cymanfa ganu despite his inability to understand the Welsh language. See Barlow, ‘Praise the Lord!’, pp. 462–463.

25 Letter from Elizabeth Ritchie to Mary Fletcher, 19 Jul. 1797, Fletcher-Tooth Collection, Methodist Archive, GB 133 MAM/FL 6/7/15.

26 Calder, Sandy, The Origins of Primitive Methodism (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2016): 1618Google Scholar.

27 Cook, Ralph, ‘Obituary’, Primitive Methodist Magazine 8 (Jun. 1838): 236Google Scholar.

28 See Riso, The Narrative of the Good Death.

29 Antliff, W., ‘Memoir of William Swain (Class Leader and Local Preacher, Derby Circuit)’, Primitive Methodist Magazine 8 (Jun. 1838): 227Google Scholar.

30 Ramsey, R., ‘Camp Meetings and Lovefeasts in Lincoln and Horncastle Circuits, 1837’, Primitive Methodist Magazine 8 (Feb. 1838): 70Google Scholar.

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32 Smith, The Life Story of Gipsy Cornelius Smith, 17.

33 John, and Wesley, Charles, Hymns and Sacred Poems (London: Strahan, 1739): 118Google Scholar. This stanza draws its inspiration from the story of Paul's and Silas's imprisonment in Acts 16, which Smith refers to elsewhere in his autobiography, as he describes his own evangelical work while temporarily imprisoned in Baldock. In that account, he describes how they sang another of Wesley's best-known hymns, ‘O for a thousand tongues to sing’, which contributed to conversion of the jailer's wife. Smith, The Life Story of Gipsy Cornelius Smith, 22.

34 Smith, The Life Story of Gipsy Cornelius Smith, 2.

35 McInelly, Textual Warfare, 73.

36 Astley, Ordinary Theology, 13.

37 Zahl, Simeon, ‘Experience’, in The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought, ed. Rasmussen, Joel D.S., Wolfe, Judith and Zachhuber, Johannes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017): 177–95, at 178Google Scholar.

38 Astley, Ordinary Theology, 58–61.

39 Letter from Benjamin Longmore in Coalbrookdale to Mary Tooth, 1 Jul. 1811, Fletcher-Tooth Collection, Methodist Archive, GB 133 MAM/FL/4/13/5. The letter is annotated with a verse of a hymn beginning Retreat beneath his wings’, published in [Newton, John and Cowper, William], Olney Hymns (London: W. Oliver, 1779)Google Scholar.

40 Astley, Ordinary Theology, 66.

41 Ward, W.R., The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Women were prominent in the work of Methodism from its earliest days, and they occupied a wide variety of roles in the movement throughout the eighteenth century. The contributions of Mary Fletcher, Mary Tooth, Serena Thorne and others should be understood as continuing this tradition. See, for example, Chilcote, Paul Wesley, ed., Her Own Story: Autobiographical Portraits of Early Methodist Women (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 2001)Google Scholar and Chilcote, Paul Wesley, ed., Early Methodist Spirituality: Selected Women‘s Writings (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 2007)Google Scholar.

43 A parallel may be drawn here with the cymanfa ganu popular in nineteenth-century Wales, also a special event, which, by its nature, encouraged particularly intense experiences. See Barlow, ‘Praise the Lord!’, pp. 457–470.

44 Astley, Ordinary Theology, 68–70.

45 Hempton, The Religion of the People, 67.

46 Astley, Ordinary Theology, 85.

47 Astley, Ordinary Theology, 70–72.

48 Connexion, Wesleyan, A Collection of Hymns for the use of the People called Methodists, with a New Supplement (London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1877): ivGoogle Scholar.

49 Connexion, Primitive Methodist, The Primitive Methodist Hymnal with Accompanying Tunes (London: M.T. Pickering, 1889): iiiGoogle Scholar.

50 Wesleyan Conference, A Collection of Hymns, vii. Primitive Methodist Connexion, The Primitive Methodist Hymnal, v.

51 Astley, Ordinary Theology, 61–2.

52 Astley, Ordinary Theology, 77–82.

53 McInelly, Textual Warfare, 73.

54 Stromberg, Peter G., ‘The Role of Language in Religious Conversion’, in The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, ed. Rambo, Lewis R. and Farhadian, Charles E. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014): 117–39, at 121Google Scholar.

55 McInelly, Textual Warfare, 132.

56 This practice continued following the merger of several Methodist bodies in 1932 and has remained in place ever since.

57 For example, Spence's, Robert A Pocket Hymn Book Designed as a Constant Companion for the Pious (York: R. Spence, 1781)Google Scholar attained such popularity among Methodists that John Wesley produced his own revision of it in 1785. See Temperley, Nicholas, ‘John Wesley, Music, and the People Called Methodists’, in Music and the Wesleys, ed. Temperley, Nicholas and Banfield, Stephen (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010): 325, at 21Google Scholar. More recently, the report of the Music Resources Group to the British Methodist Conference in 2007, which recommended the preparation of a new authorized hymnal, noted that ‘Nowadays, some Methodist churches have moved on from Hymns & Psalms and the majority are using a supplementary book. Mission Praise, Songs of Fellowship, The Source and other similar collections are widely used.’ Music Resources Group, ‘Singing the Faith: Resources for Worship’ in Methodist Conference Reports 2007, www.methodist.org.uk/downloads/conf07_48_Singing_the_faith_pc.doc (accessed 31 May 2019): 344. Wesley's revision of Spence's book, and the incorporation of many items from the commercial publications mentioned in the 2007 report into the subsequent authorized hymnal indicate their conformity to Methodist theology and doctrine.