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A more detailed version of the following paper will appear shortly in the Journal of Nineteenth Century American History. NATIONAL IDENTITY AND PRIMITIVE METHODISM IN THE UNITED STATES: A TRANSATLANTIC PERSPECTIVE The British immigrant experience in the United States was never entirely pleasant. Charlotte Erickson has argued that “the Englishman in America, like the Irishman in England, was more exposed because his difficulties were not so apparent.”(1) The fact that the British could speak English meant that there seemed to be less need for individuals or agencies to act as mediators for new arrivals; less need to form societies whose purpose was to gather and support people of a particular national identity. Perhaps it is true that British immigrants required less practical help than some other immigrant groups but it would be a mistake to assume that they did not need any support in their new environment for immigration was never less than traumatic. In this the naturalisation papers of William Calvert from Yorkshire who arrived in Galena, Illinois, in the 1840s are telling. He had to promise "that it is my bona fida intention to become a citizen of the United States of North America and to renounce all allegiance to all and every king, prince, potentate, and state and especially to the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland." (2) The use of the word “especially” must surely have been quite an emotional sting. New British immigrants, like immigrants from anywhere else, had to go through a process of mourning the national identity they had at least partly lost and discovering what their new identity as citizens of the United States meant. This paper concerns itself with the role of one religious denomination in aiding this process. Primitive Methodism sold itself as a home away from home for British, particularly English, immigrants whilst simultaneously declaring itself to be the perfect example of what an American and Americanising church should be. To understand why this position was adopted, we must first look to the roots of the denomination. In the early part of the nineteenth century news of the great camp meeting revivals that had taken the United States by storm reached Britain. Despite the impact of these revivals on American Methodism, British Methodist officials looked on the camp meeting phenomenon with disdain turning to alarm when they realised that one American, Lorenzo Dow, was encouraging some British Methodists to take up the practice. The first British camp meeting took place at Mow Cop in Staffordshire in May 1807 and was followed by more meetings of the same sort leading to greater local enthusiasm, increasing official disapproval and eventually expulsion from membership of Wesleyan Methodism for all who persisted in supporting camp meetings. The result was the new British denomination of Primitive Methodism. Thus it can be argued that an American idea brought about a British denomination. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that even the first camp meeting at Mow Cop was very different to the early American camp meetings. A biographer of Lorenzo Dow, Charles Coleman Sellers, notes, “Lorenzo failed to realise that [the English camp meeting] was a part of that very formalization which he abhorred, and joined heartily in the attempt. His action was probably motivated, as much as by any other consideration, by his firm belief in the invincible supremacy of everything American. But the meetings were arranged and conducted in too mechanical a manner by their native leaders; everything was prescribed beforehand, and the spontaneity of the frontier gatherings was lacking.” (3) Nevertheless, British camp meetings were exciting enough to establish a new denomination and in 1829, impressed at the speed of their growth, the British Primitive Methodist Conference sent a mission to the United States to minister to British Primitive Methodists who had emigrated there. This mission was eventually given up by the British authorities at which point it became a new American denomination, the American Primitive Methodist Church. Just as the British camp meetings were not the same as the American ones, the revivals of the new Primitive Methodist church in America were not the same as those of other churches. The Reverend Joseph Hewitt found this repeatedly when he attempted to involve ministers of other denominations in Primitive Methodist revival services. On one such occasion, Hewitt thought things were going very well and invited a fellow minister to say a few words of prayer. He later wrote in his diary, “He stood up and gave the church and all the rest a dreadful scolding for about fifteen minutes declaring that God could not revive his work in our midst while we were in that cold and lifeless condition. Poor fellow, he was measuring our cloth with his yard. God had heard our prayers…in fact the revival had already begun, the fire from heaven had already fallen, and a man of God professedly came and threw an iceberg right in our midst. This was not the first instance we have had of the evil of introducing persons into a protracted meeting who are not well acquainted with its particular tempreture or features.” (4) The point of all this is to demonstrate through the example of revival meetings that Primitive Methodism in the United States was neither British nor American in its origins and practices. Rather, it combined cultural influences from both countries. This is why the denomination came to feel justified in seeing itself both as a reminder of home for the new immigrant and a tool of Americanization. In addressing the question of Primitive Methodists and national identity, it is necessary to make some attempt at untangling the cultural strands and determining what was particularly British about them and what the specifically American influences were. This is inevitably very difficult and cannot be done in any absolute way. A person’s Britishness, for example, cannot be determined by measuring the width of their stiff upper lip. Still, there are some records within Primitive Methodism which give us some indication. For example, the obituaries which featured in the various American Primitive Methodist publications can give some indication of how many Primitive Methodist members were born in Britain. At the moment, I have a database of about 2000 of these obituaries and they fortunately tend to be written in a rather formulaic way meaning that place of birth is mentioned 69% of the time. Since only a few publications have survived from before 1890, the figures are heavily weighted towards 1890 to 1919 so it is from that period that I can now give you some figures. (refer to handout and point out that of the 50% 46% are English). I am currently trying to create the same kind of database to find out how many Primitive Methodist ministers were British and the early indications are that the figures are slightly higher than among regular members with around 60% being born in Britain. When, in 1894, the Reverend J.J. Arnaud became President of the eastern conference, the Primitive Methodist Journal noted that he was the first American-born person to be honoured with the position in its 22 year history. (5) Click here to read the next section Click here to return to my homepage |