Methodism: One Peopledoi: 10.1177/1744136606063377 in All the World? 357 © 2006 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi)

Article Review Methodism: One People in All the World? DAVID TRIPP

David Hempton, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), xiii + 278 pp. ISBN 0–300– 10614–9 (hbk). £19.95/US $30.00. Kenneth Cracknell and Susan J. White, An Introduction to World Methodism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), xii + 283 pp. ISBN 0–521–52170–X (pbk). £16.99/US $24.99. ISBN 0–521–81849–4 (hbk). £45.00/US $65.00.

oth these books investigate Methodism sympathetically, but with coolly critical eyes, consciously avoiding what all the authors agree on calling B‘hagiography.’ In consonance with the historic stance of Methodism, they all abstain from polemic against other traditions. Their methods differ, as their respective disciplines (in which they are all eminent) are different. Hempton is a social historian; White’s husband, Cracknell, a Methodist minister and theologian of missions and history of religion; White (formerly an Episcopalian) a liturgical historian. Their books are correspondingly addressed to different readerships: Hempton primarily to social historians, White and Cracknell to all students of religion, but most directly to ecumenists and church historians. Their common concern is to combine accuracy with accessibility. White and Cracknell omit all foot- or end-notes, and rely for further guidance on a full bibliography. Both books are skilfully illustrated with apt pictures – most of them not from the conventional stock found in most works on Methodist history. Cracknell and White pursue a familiar format. The first four chapters outline succinctly, and with delicate balance, the history of world Methodism: the beginnings with the Wesley brothers and their ‘United Societies’ in eighteenth- century England; British and American developments after the Wesleys, with 358 Ecclesiology careful interpretation of the ways in which these branches of the Wesleyan family diverged in ethos, ecclesiastical structure, worship and theology; and the situation of the world Methodist community at the opening of this new century. These historical chapters have to do justice to remarkably different stages of growth, in which social, ethnic, cultural and doctrinal and liturgical factors are duly noted. The characterization on p. 99 of the smaller British Methodist denominations (New Connexion, Primitive Methodists, Bible Christians and United Methodist Free Churches, whose title ought to be correctly given) as ‘sectarian’ is an untypical lapse in an account, which is otherwise even-handed and sympathetic. The authors have to choose one of the conflicting theories as to when Methodism began, and they incline to agree with Maximin Piette about John Wesley’s first conversion (linked with reading The Imitation of Christ and similar challenging works), and they see the Holy Club at Oxford as the start of the movement – although John Wesley himself describes that event as the first rise of Methodism, ‘so called’ (Wesley’s own term). White and Cracknell also join those who maintain that the conversion experiences of the two brothers in 1738 fade from prominence in their teaching of later years. This is a tenable position, but we must observe that the structure of the 1780 Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists continues to lead seekers through the same sort of pilgrimage which the two brothers, under Moravian tutelage, had undergone. The authors note justly that the Wesleyan movement was neither the whole nor the beginning of the Evangelical Revival. They also deal wisely with the ambivalence in the early British Methodists’ stance towards the Established Church (though we cannot follow them in seeing separatist intentions in the plan of the New Chapel in City Road, which is a typical example of the eighteenth-century ‘proprietary chapel’). The following chapters examine phenomenologically the principal aspects of Methodism throughout the world, and seek the unifying principle that holds together a remarkably diverse assortment of churches. The order of the chapters is carefully planned. Chapter 5 considers ‘Methodist Theology’, that it is to say, the doctrinal formulations (among which the Confession of Faith inherited by the present American United Methodist Church from the Evangelical United Brethren should be added on p. 93), and the varied paths which theological interpretation has taken throughout Methodism, with British theologians concentrating on biblical and historical research, and American scholars favouring philosophical approaches. One problem which Cracknell and White notice is the debated status of John Wesley’s (and others’) Notes on the New Testament (p. 115). The discussions of this matter have suffered from the failure to notice the distinctive character of this work: it is not a historical-critical exegesis, but a dynamic reading, designed to enable the growing apprehension that led the Scripture writers to choose and order their words and sentences and paragraphs to be reproduced in the personality of the hearers and readers. Cracknell and White sum up Methodist