Accounts of Spiritual Experience in Early British Methodism, 1735-1765
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Boston University OpenBU http://open.bu.edu Theses & Dissertations Boston University Theses & Dissertations 2016 Sensing salvation: accounts of spiritual experience in early British Methodism, 1735-1765 https://hdl.handle.net/2144/19569 Boston University BOSTON UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Dissertation SENSING SALVATION: ACCOUNTS OF SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE IN EARLY BRITISH METHODISM, 1735-1765 by ERIKA KAY RATANA STALCUP B.A., Emory University, 2004 M.Div., Yale University, 2007 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 © 2016 Erika Kay Ratana Stalcup All rights reserved Approved by First Reader _________________________________________________________ Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, Ph.D. Professor of Worship Second Reader _________________________________________________________ Christopher H. Evans, Ph.D. Professor of History of Christianity and Methodist Studies DEDICATION This work is dedicated to Oraleen Urban, who first inspired my love of research and to Pierre, who ran alongside cheering. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is a humbling task to consider the number of people who contribute to the making of a dissertation. I am grateful to the staff of the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester for their support during my research trips. Peter Nockles deserves special mention for his help and encouragement over the past twelve or so years that I have been acquainted with him. Thanks are also due to the following persons for their hospitality and welcome: Chris Hartley from the Methodist International House in Manchester; the staff at the Nazarene Theological College in Didsbury; John and Isobel MacFarlane, and Gail McCoy-Parkhill, for their comfortable accommodation and pleasant conversation during my time in Oxford. I am especially grateful to John Walsh and Henry Rack for their invitations to tea and for offering invaluable research material from their private collections. Bill Gibson and Peter Forsaith from the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History were generous with their time and expertise, directing me to people and resources that proved most useful. My travels to Oxford and Manchester would not have been possible without the following assistance: Shivani Patel’s unexpected offer of her frequent flyer miles, which enabled me to travel to Manchester in 2012 when other funding options were not available; a Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship from Boston University in 2014; scholarly travel funds from the Graduate Division of Religious Studies at Boston University in 2014; a Visiting Research Fellowship from the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History in 2014. Conferences provided helpful opportunities to test the waters. Chapter Three was presented as “‘I Was Forced to Lift My Eyes’: Sight v and the Self in Early British Methodism, 1735-1765” at the Oxford Symposium on Religious Studies in December 2014, and Chapter Two was presented as “Compelled to Speak, Constrained to Keep Silent: Editing the Self in Early British Methodism, 1735- 1765” at the Spring Methodist Studies Seminar at Oxford Brookes University in April 2015. On the home front, I have been greatly encouraged by friends and family who persisted in asking how the dissertation was coming, probably long after they ceased to hope that it would ever be finished. I am particularly indebted to the parishioners of the Eglise Evangélique Méthodiste de Lausanne for urging me to take the time I needed to complete the writing, and for never once allowing me to feel guilty for not being as present as I would have liked. My advisor, Karen Westerfield Tucker, never forgot about me, even when I moved across an ocean. She has continued to support and sustain from afar and has consistently challenged and comforted as necessary. La vie quotidienne has been enriched by the presence of Pierre, who helped me not to take myself too seriously. I close with two acknowledgements. First, I thank Oraleen Urban, librarian of the First United Methodist Church in Wellington, Kansas. She is to be credited for having awakened my interest in early Methodist history fifteen years ago by insisting that I take a peek at John Wesley’s journals. Second, I credit the early Methodist writers themselves for having had the courage to write of their experiences, despite fears of being maligned or misunderstood. I hope my work has done justice to their stories. vi SENSING SALVATION: ACCOUNTS OF SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE IN EARLY BRITISH METHODISM, 1735-1765 ERIKA KAY RATANA STALCUP Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2016 Major Professor: Karen Westerfield Tucker, Professor of Worship ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the spiritual experiences of the first British Methodist lay people and the language used to describe those experiences. Within the historiography of Methodism, such physical manifestations as shouting, weeping, groaning, visions, and out-of-body experiences have often been relegated to the periphery of scholarship. It would seem, however, that for many laity, they played a significant role in their process of spiritual development. This work aims to explore the perspective of Methodist laity through manuscript accounts of conversions and deathbed moments. It reveals lay people’s first impressions of Methodism, their conflicted feelings throughout the conversion process, their approach toward death and dying, and their mixed attitudes toward the task of writing itself. Relying heavily on firsthand accounts solicited by Charles Wesley in the 1740s, this work features the voices of women and men of varying literate abilities and social status. This study examines firstly the multiple media through which lay people received evangelical messages, expanding the term “media” to include not only traditional printed sources such as sermons and devotional reading, but also such phenomena as divine voices, visions and other direct supernatural encounters. It then turns to the task of vii expressing spiritual experience, revealing the problematic nature of early Methodist spiritual autobiography and the passive strategies employed by laity to legitimate writing about the self. This dissertation demonstrates the struggle to rely on unreliable “feelings” (both emotions and physical sensations) as an indicator of spiritual progress. Far from peripheral, the body and bodily language played important roles in spiritual transformation, even as they were constantly renegotiated as part of that transformation. For instance, the visualization of the “vile self” signified the activation of the “eye of faith,” which enabled many early writers to transition from a “worldly” conception of self-sufficiency to a new kind of subjectivity based on being subject to a divine authority. This study follows the trajectory of spiritual development into the final moments of life, which often proved a prime opportunity for mutual evangelization between the dying individual and her spectators. Taken together, these experiences offer an intimate perspective on the origins of the evangelical revival. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. v ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .............................................................................................. x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................ xi INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER ONE ............................................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER TWO .............................................................................................................. 60 CHAPTER THREE .......................................................................................................... 94 CHAPTER FOUR ........................................................................................................... 137 CHAPTER FIVE ............................................................................................................ 184 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 240 CURRICULUM VITAE ................................................................................................. 249 ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS All illustrations are taken from an untitled manuscript by Samuel Roberts, a disenchanted Methodist. The manuscript is privately owned by Dr. John Walsh of Jesus College, Oxford University and has been used with permission. Figure 1. Methodists under convictions, p. 15 .................................................................... 1 Figure 2. Devil tempting a Methodist with false assurance of holiness, p. 28 ................. 49 Figure 3. Devils rejoicing in having turned Israelites away from God, p. 244 ................. 84 Figure 4. Methodist