The Heart Of Methodism Series | “Early American Growth” with John Wigger

Shownotes:

This conversation is part of a special series, The Heart of Methodism. Eddie and Chris, who are both pastors in the United Methodist Church, will talk to guests who can help us dive a little deeper into Methodism and its history, theology, traditions, and future.

Today’s guest, Dr. John Wigger, is a professor at the University of Missouri, where he specializes in US social and cultural history, including religious history and the history of flight. His most recent book is about the mystery of hijacker D.B. Cooper, but he is also spent a lot of time researching and writing about the history of the Methodist movement in the United States. Dr. Wigger traces the roots of Methodism through other Protestant denominations, including the rise and growth of Pentecostalism.

Resources:

American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists

Transcript:

Chris McAlilly 00:00 I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester 00:01
And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight.

Chris McAlilly 00:03

Today we are taking a little different approach. We're doing a series on the heart of Methodism. Most of the podcasts that you hear on The Weight will come out on Thursdays. And they will be on a wide range of topics, on faith and culture and all kinds of stuff. And if you are stumbling upon this, you should go check that out.

Eddie Rester 00:25
Go check that out for sure.

Chris McAlilly 00:26

In this series, what we're going to do is release a series of conversations on the heart of one particular religious expression that Eddie and I happen to be a part of. We're both pastors in the Methodist tradition. And so we're going to be doing a series of conversations on the heart of Methodism. And this is one of those conversations.

Eddie Rester 00:48

Today we're talking with Dr. John Wigger. He's a professor of history at the University of Missouri, and he's written a lot of interesting books. Most recently, he's written about D.B. Cooper who hijacked, the first American hijacker back in the 1970s. He's written about Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, but a lot of his work has been on the early days of the Methodist movement in America, really looking at right after the American Revolution into almost the first half of the 19th century. Chris, what what for you was important in the conversation today, again, for us, we seem so disconnected from that history, but what what do you bring forward from that conversation?

Chris McAlilly 01:34

I think one of the things that he mentioned that I've heard before, but that I would highlight is that in the 20th century, really the most explosive religious movement globally is Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism around the globe has been the expression of Christianity that's really taken an explosive growth trajectory in the southern hemisphere, in Africa, around the globe, in African, Asia, and other parts of the world. In the 19th century, and particularly in the American context, 19th century Methodism was that explosive religious movement that shaped America. There are other forms, but it really was a central part of shaping American religious life. And so those connections between early Methodist... Pentecostalism, he mentioned, comes out of the same religious tradition or kind of theological heritage as Methodism. And so just thinking about those connections, of what is at the heart of an explosive growth movement in religious or spiritual life. I think those parts of the conversation I'll take forward. What about you?

Eddie Rester 02:51

You know, a lot of that, for me kind of the same, but just Methodism's ability to kind of shift and reinvent itself over the first century and a half or more. So important. They knew who they were but allowed themselves to be in the moment they were in. And I think that, for me, was important. Dr. Wigger has a lot of great wisdom, though. He's done a lot of research. And so I learned a lot just listening to him today, and we think you will, as well. So, particularly if you're part of our tribe, or the extended tribe of the Methodist movement, we think these conversations are going to be very important. We're glad you're sharing them with us make sure you like them, share them. Send them to your mom and 'em.

Chris McAlilly 03:41
Send 'em to your mama. Send 'em to your mom and who?

Eddie Rester 03:43 Your mom.

Chris McAlilly 03:44
Your mom and who? Your mom and who?

Eddie Rester 03:46 And them.

Chris McAlilly 03:47 And them.

Eddie Rester 03:48 Yeah, "and them."

Chris McAlilly 03:49
Oh that's them. And what is the county?

Eddie Rester 03:53 Choctaw County.

Chris McAlilly 03:54
Choctaw County. There you go, in Choctaw County parlance.

Eddie Rester 03:56
Make sure if you're from Choctaw County, you give us a shout out.

Chris McAlilly 03:59
[LAUGHTER] All those Choctaw county listeners, we love you. You know, you're special and dear to Eddie's heart.

Eddie Rester 04:08
Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks for listening.

Chris McAlilly 04:10
[INTRO] Life can be heavy. So heavy, in fact that the weight we carry can sometimes cause us to lose hope.

Eddie Rester 04:19
But we've all come across those people in life who seem to be experiencing the same world we live in, except they maintain a great depth of joy and hope.

Chris McAlilly 04:27
A former generation called this gravitas. It was their description of a soul that had gained enough weightiness to be attractive, like all things with a gravitational pull.

Eddie Rester 04:39
Those are the people we want to talk to. On this podcast, we talk to pastors, entrepreneurs, artists, mental health experts, and many others.

Chris McAlilly 04:48
We'll create space for heavy topics, but we'll be listening for a quality of soul that could be called gravitas.

Eddie Rester 04:55
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO] We're here today with Dr. John Wigger. He's a Professor at the University of Missouri. Dr. Wigger, we're so glad that you've joined us today.

John Wigger 05:06
Well, it's wonderful to be with you.

Eddie Rester 05:08

You've written a lot about Methodism. We're gonna get to that in just a minute. But you've also written about D.B. Cooper, really the first person to hijack in the modern, I guess ever, an airplane. How did you end up moving from Methodism in religious studies to D.B. Cooper?

John Wigger 05:29

Well, actually, flying has always been a part of my life. I grew up flying with my dad. Some of my earliest memories are in airplanes flying with my dad. And I was a pilot for a long time. We owned airplanes growing up. My dad had several different airplanes. So flying was something I've always been interested in. And I, a few years ago, started teaching a history of flight course at the University of Missouri. And it actually began a project on early flight in the second decade of the 20th century, just right before and after World War One. But I noticed that students, their favorite lecture, much more so than Amelia Earhart or anyone else, was D.B. Cooper. So I thought, well, this is interesting and just started trying to expand the concept. Eventually got in touch with another airline hijacker, Martin McNally. Talked to Marty, actually had Marty Zoom in and talk to the class about his hijacking in June of 1972. He also parachuted out of the back of a 727, like D.B. Cooper. And from that teaching experience, just kept sort of expanding outward until I realized there was a pretty good book in the story. So that's how I ended up doing that.

Eddie Rester 06:58
Well, I'm going to check that one out, because I'm familiar with Methodism work, but that one seems like something I'd be interested in.

Chris McAlilly 07:05
Yeah. And I think, yeah, I'm sure most students are more interested in the history of flight than history Methodism, you know, just kind of as a general rule.

John Wigger 07:13
Well, yes. I mean, nowadays, it's hard for most of them to appreciate that Methodism was exciting at some point. And yeah, so that's probably the case. It's definitely the case.

Chris McAlilly 07:26

So for you, what was the... I mean, you wrote three books on kind of the history of Methodism, in various ways, and we'll kind of get to those. But I guess what animated that interest for you personally?

John Wigger 07:40

Well, I think in the sense of American religion, I've always been interested in groups that grew really quickly by doing something new in their cultural setting. And certainly in the late 18th, early 19th century, that was Methodism. I mean, a lot of ways, Methodism, is the religious movement of the 19th century in the same way that, in the US, Pentecostalism--and a lot of the rest of the world--Pentecostalism is the religious movement of the 20th century.

Eddie Rester 08:14

You really focus in your books on that period from the Revolutionary War to about 1820. What is it about that era that, for you, makes Methodism so fascinating or interesting? What was happening during that time, that really kind of animated the denomination?

John Wigger 08:38

American culture changed in some pretty dramatic ways after the revolution. And Methodists were able to follow that change, and in a lot of ways lead it as well. So they were involved in shaping culture and interacting with American culture. And one of the results of that was that was the period in which Methodists grew the most spectacularly. They just exploded from a few 100 members at the beginning of the American Revolution to hundreds of 1000s by by the 1820s.

Chris McAlilly 09:15

What are some of the things I guess as a historian that you look at when you see when you see a cultural movement or religious movement like that, what are what are some of the the ways in which you try to get at the source of of that explosive growth as a historian?

John Wigger 09:35

I think I was just trying to figure out how they connected why people were drawn to Methodism, why people who attended another church or didn't attend any kind of organized religion suddenly wanted to go to a Methodist meeting, just trying to figure out what that connection was.

Chris McAlilly 09:56
What are some of the things that you notice? What are some of the things that you would lift up as kind of essential to that attraction?

John Wigger 10:08

Well, Methodists changed the nature of religious leadership. So in colonial America, ministers had mostly been college educated elites at a time when almost nobody went to college. And that's what colonial Americans expected. They expected their leaders to be elites to be, you know, probably the best paid and best educated person in their town. After the revolution, people just didn't seem to want that anymore. And Methodist preachers were never college educated in the first phases of Methodist growth. They looked a lot like the people they were preaching to, and that was appealing to people. They also preached in a new style. Rather than reading their sermons in a kind of measured academic tone, they were enthusiastic. They yelled. They screamed. They stomped around the stage. They waved their hands. And it is exactly the sort of delivery that people wanted, that people responded to. And that's not to say that it was some kind of contrived act, because that was simply who these preachers were. I mean, they were like the people they were preaching to, and they preached in the way they wanted to hear preaching.

Chris McAlilly 11:33
You're describing Eddie's preaching style, you know. Stomping.

Eddie Rester 11:37
A lot of stomping, a lot of yelling.

Chris McAlilly 11:38
A lot of yelling. a lot of arm waving times.

Eddie Rester 11:40
Sometimes I throw hymnals at people during worship.

Chris McAlilly 11:43 Yeah.

Eddie Rester 11:43
Just to keep people on their toes.

John Wigger 11:45
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it connected with audiences. And they facilitated an enthusiastic worship style as well, which also connected with audiences in that period.

Eddie Rester 12:02

One of the things that's coming to mind is that what you're describing is very different from what we know of John Wesley, kind of the founder of the movement in England with his, you know, very much printed sermons, although he was very dramatic when he was out preaching. There does seem to be a shift, though, from what was happening in England, to what took off in the United States in terms of, I guess, a more democratic culture. You talk a little bit about that in your your book, "Taking Heaven by Storm." How did that... How did early Methodism, its culture, and the democratic culture emerging in the United States, how did those feed off each other? How did they work together?

John Wigger 12:52

Yes, I think John Wesley, of course, was brilliant at mediating between Methodism as he formulated it in Britain with the cultural expectations of the time and place. But in the American landscape, things are simply different. And here I think Francis Asbury was brilliant, in that even though he was one of Wesley's preachers, grew up outside of Birmingham, he was able to appreciate how American culture was different and how Methodism in America needed to kind of reformulate itself. And of course, since most of his preachers were young Americans, there wasn't any reformulation for them. This was simply the religion that they knew.

Eddie Rester 13:42

When you think, and really, you put a lot of the explosive growth, kind of, really, you go back to those preachers. A lot of people want to point to Francis Asbury. Some people want to talk particularly when you get to mid-to-late 19th century, they want to talk about the camp meetings. But you really return to those early itinerant circuit riders. So what was life like for those young circuit riders? What did they endure? What sent them out to do the work that they did?

John Wigger 14:22

Yes, I think to start with, Methodism involved a lot of people in leadership who had never been a part of shaping their religious communities before and it started with class leaders and band leaders and local preachers. But then if you sort of continued on up, exhortors continued on up through the different levels of responsibility. You could become an itinerant preacher. These young men could become an itinerant preacher. And they really were the ones who shepherded the movement across the American landscape so to speak. It was a hard life. You were traveling every day, preaching nearly every day. So the typical circuit was a four week circuit, took four weeks to ride around, with usually about 30 preaching appointments. So that means you're preaching just about every day and traveling just about every day. Your salary is not very much. $64 a year if you've got it, up to 1800, which was very much a kind of working person's income. So it was in many regards a hard life. And for that reason, not many itinerant preachers stuck with it for more than a few years. The vast majority preach for a few years, and then married and located, in the Methodist parlance, and became local preachers. Almost none of them left the church. They didn't locate because they were disenchanted with Methodism, but because they simply couldn't keep up the itinerant lifestyle for very long. It was a hard life, but most of those itinerant preachers never regretted it afterwards, or at least this is not what they said later in life.

Chris McAlilly 16:26

One of the things that you say about Asbury is that he was more widely recognized face-to-face than any person in his generation, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, which is than any person in his generation, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, which is just a remarkable statement. And I mean, certainly it reflects his widespread travel through the broader Methodist connection and through the frontier. But just talk about why that was, why Asbury had such a wide ranging, I guess, influence.

John Wigger 16:59

Yeah, I think the key there is more widely recognized face-to-face. Of course, people had heard of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but how many Americans had actually met them, or sat down and had a conversation with them around a fireplace? And that was true of Francis Asbury. He traveled relentlessly for his 45 years in America, made an annual circuit north to south, east to west. And not the same circuit. Every year was different, so that--deliberately so- -so that he could meet new people and visit new places. And he stayed in people's homes. He stayed in the homes of ordinary Methodists. I think one of the remarkable things about that is that the closer people got to Asbury, the better they liked him. And how many celebrities is that true of? Right? The more time you spend with them, the better you like them. You see them when they get up in the morning, when they're tired, when they're exhausted, and you'd like them the better for it.

Eddie Rester 18:10

Asbury has a pretty, through history, a pretty hard-edged reputation, particularly in how he administered the connection. Do you find that in your research of him to be true? Or is that just the myth that passes down through the generations?

John Wigger 18:30

I think it was mostly the way his image was shaped after he died. Methodism was an Episcopal system. And for most of his life, he was recognized as the Elder Bishop, the leader of the church. And one of his responsibilities was to appoint all of the preachers, something he tried to hold on to through most of his career to their annual circuit. So in that sense, it's a pretty hierarchical system. And I think later people reacted against that and sort of traced the blame back to Frank. But I don't think... And he had his critics during his lifetime, but I don't think most people, most Methodists by and large, resented his leadership of the church in that way.

Chris McAlilly 19:28

One of the things that you mentioned about him is that a component of his system that went to the heart of what it meant to be Methodist was to practice a method. It was the necessity of a culture of discipline. One of the things that Eddie and I've thought about is what's at the heart of Methodism and what's distinctive about it. And I feel like a culture of discipline would have been one of those things that was a part of both Francis Asbury's personal spiritual formation and discipleship but also part of what he inculcated both in the preachers and in Methodist societies. I wonder if you could just speak to some of the ways in which a culture of discipline is distinctive to Methodism of that period.

John Wigger 20:18

Yeah, I think you're right about both aspects of that. Part of it for Asbury was his personal piety. He got up every morning to pray in the hours before dawn or shortly thereafter. He never owned more than he could carry on horseback. Never married, never settled down, never engaged with any of the trappings of power. And again, people could see this because he spent his entire life out among them living as a houseguest in their home. Coupled with that, though, was his conviction that his followers needed to have a level of discipline in their lives. And part of that was, for example, attending your weekly class meeting. So what made you a member of a Methodist Church was not attending Sunday preaching. It was attending your weekly small group meeting, which they call the class meeting. So there was that discipline that you had to be involved at some kind of significant level of accountability, that, at least Asbury thought, was important to maintain the Methodist system.

Chris McAlilly 21:32

Yeah, I think I want to just underline that, because I do think that that's something that shifts in the 19th century, especially as Methodism becomes more established in local communities. And as Methodism becomes just one of the many options available to American religious life is that the distinctiveness of early Methodism was to be a member is to join, basically, a small group. And what kind of begins to change over the course of, I guess, the 1820s, 1830s, 1840s is really a redefinition of what it means to be a member of a Methodist Church. And so you move from membership... There's this ambiguity between Methodism membership is being a part of a Methodist society or class meeting to membership as being a part of a church, established church. What was, I guess, gained or lost in that transition Iin terms of the distinctiveness of Methodist discipleship and kind of Methodist, the heartbeat of that movement?

John Wigger 22:47

Yeah, I think Methodists became more comfortable. They became not so much cultural outsiders as one of the groups that defined the emerging middle class in the 19th century. And part of that comfortableness in American society was sort of, in their mind, getting rid of those hard edges of discipline that just didn't appeal to successful middle class people. And that doesn't mean the church quit growing. In fact, it grew faster than the aggregate American population up through the 1950s. And then in the 1960s, those numbers sort of fell off a cliff. But certainly through the 19th century, Methodist growth continued at a faster rate overall than the aggregate American population. But its nature changed. It became less of an outsider religion of revolutionaries, to more of an insider religion of the middle class.

Eddie Rester 23:56

One of the things that we haven't talked about yet is what was the role of theology in the explosiveness of movement? I know there were multiple strands of theology in existence, then and now. One of them then was a strong Calvinist bent. So how did Methodist theology enable, or do you find in your research that well, that just really wasn't that big of a deal? It was more of the the way that they drew people together and held them accountable.

John Wigger 24:29

I think it really is more of the latter. But I think the theology did, it certainly didn't hurt Methodism's appeal. And it certainly was a big part of how Methodists saw themselves. So they were Arminians, in a theological sense. They privileged free will. You had to choose to believe, to be a believer. You had to choose salvation. And this did appeal to democratically minded Americans after the American Revolution and you know, as American society developed, because we very much believe that we're in charge of our own lives, that we choose everything important about us, right? We don't actually do that. But it's part of our sort of American ethos that you can be whatever you want to be. And I think Methodist theology, it wasn't... Certainly John Wesley did not formulate his theology to appeal to Americans, but it did work out that way.

Chris McAlilly 25:41

I do think that, you know, the class, the transition between a religious movement that is for the working class or the poor and the working poor to an established church for the middle class, one of the things that happens in that move, through the 1820s, 30s, 40s is that you do have the rise of holiness movements. These... You know, part of that is I assume, kind of class-based as well, like there's both a theological bend and the holiness movement and also think there's a kind of class dimension. I could be reading that wrong. I wonder if you could maybe talk about that, some of the rise of folks like Phoebe Palmer in the 1830s, and others.

John Wigger 26:33

No, that is true as Methodists become more kind of middle class. As Methodists become more middle class, and they sort of leave behind that, what we would think of as working class element of people, they simply don't have contact with them anymore. So it's not a decision. I, when I talk about this, I don't want it to come across as some kind of class-based decision. "We don't want to be around. We don't want those people anymore." I think the better way to say it is as Methodist become one kind of people, they lose contact with other sorts of people. And one of the movements that sort of fills that gap is the holiness movement, which comes from Wesleyan roots. So it's just a reformulation of Wesleyanism, of Methodism, to engage an audience that the mainstream Methodist Church no longer has contact with. And then in the early 20th century, Pentecostalism is a further outgrowth of Wesleyan theology and Wesleyan patterns and belief that, again, engages audiences that mainstream Methodism is simply no longer able to touch. Pentecostalism's baptism of the Holy Spirit is really largely model modeled on Wesley's concept of sanctification.

Chris McAlilly 28:07

Yeah, I think that's one of the things that people don't readily connect, is the larger kind of charismatic or Pentecostal movement back to Wesleyan roots. You know, that's, maybe it's surprising for some folks to hear. But I do think that's something that has become more apparent in Wesleyan studies is thinking not only about the origins of Methodism, looking backwards, but kind of, you know, where the waters of Methodism go as they travel downstream. And, you know Pentecostalism is one of those realities. I wonder, perhaps you could talk a little bit about that.

John Wigger 28:57

Well, I think it just makes the story more interesting, more exciting. The narrative arc that Methodists were outsiders who grew to be really big in the 19th century, and then eventually declined in the second half of the 20th century is one way to look at it. But it's overly simplistic. If you take the longer or the broader view of Wesleyanism, then you see that there are these other groups that come out of it that don't do that. As mainstream Methodism is declining in numbers, Pentecostalism is growing. And it comes largely, not exclusively, but largely from the same roots.

Eddie Rester 29:42

That's interesting. I think when you look at it that way, it's almost as if the movement that some people only relate to a singular denomination, the larger Wesleyan movement continues to grow and expand in often unexpected ways, but also in ways that people don't want to connect with each other, you know. I think if you talk to some highbrow traditional United Methodists to say, "Oh, the Pentecostal church down the street is your theological cousin or brother or sister." They're gonna look at you like you're rather odd. But that's really the truth for us, isn't it?

John Wigger 30:28

It definitely is. And I think, you know, a generation or so ago, those Pentecostal cousins seemed really disreputable. And maybe not the sort of relatives that everybody who was a Methodist wanted to acknowledge. I think that's less so the case now. And maybe that's part of it. But certainly, there are connections there that are very real and have had a great impact.

Eddie Rester 31:04

One of the things you write about is as Methodism made that kind of shift in the mid-19th century between from being a movement among the poor, or the folks who were moving up, to the folks who had kind of made it or had begun to make it, the more middle class church, one of the things that you talk about the croakers, who wish things were the way they were. They kind of downplay this new thing Methodism has become. But one of the points you make is that, as it made that move, it continued to outpace the growth of the United States. It continude this very fast growth trajectory. How did it maintain that, even if it began to not look like what it had looked like before?

John Wigger 31:56
Yes, I love that phrase, "croakers." When I first came across that 30 years ago...

Eddie Rester 32:03
I'm gonna hold on to that, by the way, yeah.

John Wigger 32:05

It just seem so wonderfully apt to describe the complaints about Methodism's new prosperity and yeah... Sorry, I strayed away a little bit. I think the reason... Well, let me start over. Methodism is able to continue growing because its constituency is growing. So the American middle class, which really is created in the middle of the 19th century, Methodists are very much a part of that. And certainly up through the middle of the 20th century and post Second World War prosperity, the American middle class is still a vibrant, big part of American society. So as Methodists are largely a part of that, not exclusively so. It's not to say that there were working class Methodist, because there certainly were. But their constituency is still very big and broad. And, you know, they're connected to a community that they're still growing into. The other question, of course, is why that suddenly comes to a dramatic end, in the middle of the 1960s.

Chris McAlilly 33:32
You know, I've got kind of two different directions that I'm thinking about. One is maybe just to get you to speculate about kind of why you think that might be, from a historical perspective.

John Wigger 33:44
Yeah, I don't really know. I often thought if I would have stuck with studying Methodism, but I just needed to move on to other things.

Chris McAlilly 33:52 You took flight.

John Wigger 33:54 Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

Eddie Rester 33:56
Then you check out Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. We'll get to that in just a second.

John Wigger 33:59

Jim and Tammy. After living with a saint for a decade, I needed something that was... I needed to see something crash and burn and Jim and Tammy seemed to be the logical choice. And I forgot. I'm sorry, I've forgotten your question.

Chris McAlilly 34:18

No, just the question of you know, I think this is, in some ways, the question that folks are struggling with, if they are connected to American Methodism in any kind of way, that part of the origin and seemingly the DNA of Methodism is to be this explosive movement of religious fervor and spiritual vitality. And at a certain moment that stops, and there's been a long kind of slow decline. And so then the question becomes, I mean, it has been analyzed since the 1960s in every way it can be analyzed: theologically, sociologically, you know, according to internal and external factors. People will say we've lost touch with Wesley or Asbury, or doctrine, or the Bible, or Jesus. People will say we've lost touch with the culture. And we've kind of lost touch with where things are moving. And we need to either go back to our roots or we need to get connected again to what's going on beyond the church. I just wonder, you know, kind of how you read that. I know that you kind of went in a different direction and you're not sure. But I do think it's worth spending a little time thinking about and, you know, you've done more of this reading than Eddie and me. I can ask Eddie, but he wouldn't know, so.

Eddie Rester 35:23
I wouldn't know. Yeah, so.

John Wigger 35:41

Well, if you look at Methodism from the late 18th century up through the middle of the 20th century, it's able to maintain a vibrant connection to its constituency, to the people it's reaching out to. At some point that breaks down. So I think in some kind of baseline sense, Methodism just seems to lose touch with the people it's trying to engage. Now, why exactly that happens and how you reverse that? I don't know that I'm really... I don't know that I've really looked at recent Methodism enough to offer anything useful about that. But there is some very real sense in which it just hasn't maintained that connection that it had in the past.

Chris McAlilly 36:36

Yeah, I wonder, you know, I mean, one of the things about that transition from into the middle class and kind of late late 19th century Methodism is that there's an entrepreneurial spirit about it. You know, I definitely think that Asbury had some of that, and those early preachers did. And then there's this other kind of expression of it in the form of the creation of universities, hospitals, and institutions that kind of shape the landscape of the social life of American cities and communities. I don't know. I wonder... I do think that that... Maybe go back and talk a little bit about that. Part of the move into the middle class was both the establishment in communities and the creation of certain institutions that helped American life flourish. Maybe start there, and maybe we could talk forward.

John Wigger 37:42

Talking about class formation can sound pretty abstract and not very interesting. But I think maybe the better way to say it is that Methodists were doing things that people were interested in. So in an era when colleges and universities, more people wanted to send their kids to college, Methodists built colleges. And they built some of the best colleges and universities in the nation, Duke, SMU, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, all of these schools that become kind of mainstays of American higher education. So they're doing things that people are interested in. You mentioned Methodist hospitals. Yeah, I mean, this is something that as medicine expanded as a kind of thing that people wanted more of in their lives, got better, Methodists were a part of that as well. So they were doing things that people were interested in, and that kept people connected to the church and the movement. At the point of which Methodists, the main-stream Methodism begins to decline rather than expand, a counterpoint to look at might be Pentecostalism, which continues to expand during that same period and sort of compare the two. If they have the same basic theological roots, as much as people want to contest that, why does one group continue to grow and the other doesn't?

Chris McAlilly 39:15

I wonder if anybody's ever written about that? I'm sure they have. I'm sure that's a question that somebody's explored. Are you aware of anybody that, for whom that is like the point of the spear for their interests?

John Wigger 39:25

Yes. A number of years ago, I was involved in a study group that resulted in a book a collection of essays, edited by Hal Knight called "From Aldersgate to Azusa Street." So basically from Wesley's conversion through the beginning of Pentecostalism, and really up through into the 20th century.

Chris McAlilly 39:46 That's great.

John Wigger 39:47
So if you're interested in that and following those connections.

Chris McAlilly 39:50 That's awesome. Thank you

Eddie Rester 39:51

I want to back up. Just a question that just kind of flitted through my mind. You know, there's so many positives that we've talked about, between the end of the Revolutionary War into the 1820s, from Methodism, so many positives from really 1820 to the end of the 19th century. Were there any, in your research and reading, I mean, the dark blots on the history? Are there pieces of the history that we paper over well, that maybe we need as a people now to kind of acknowledge, notice, remember?

John Wigger 40:30

Oh, I think the clearest example is slavery. So Methodists in the South became white Methodists in the South, became reconciled to the idea of slavery, and in many cases, enthusiastic supporters of it. And this was something that people like Francis Asbury were never able to effectively counteract, to eliminate from the church. So yeah, I mean, if you're going to embed yourself in culture, then there's only so far that you can expect your people to move in one direction or another in that cultural setting. And for southern white Methodists, accepting that slavery was a moral evil was just too much.

Eddie Rester 41:24 Too far.

John Wigger 41:25

Too far. And so, you know, as American society divides over the issue of slavery, Methodists do as well. The church splits in 1844, what, 15 years before the Civil War, exactly over this issue of slavery, north and south.

Eddie Rester 41:44

And then they stay divided much longer than the nation stays divided. Takes them until 1939 to finally pull it back together, which is also a fascinating thing that the wounds, religious wounds, seem to take much longer to heal. Anything else that you would put in that category of "Gosh, this is maybe worth talking about more," things that you know, you have seen from your vantage point?

John Wigger 42:13

Well, I'll say the issue that concerned Francis Asbury was prosperity. He tended to think that the loss, that financial prosperity--and Wesley believe this as well--would undermine spiritual discipline.

Eddie Rester 42:33

John Wigger 42:33

And I think what Asbury couldn't appreciate is that what you think of as prosperity is rooted in a certain cultural setting. So most Americans don't think of themselves as rich or prosperous. But in most places in the world, they still would be. Right? Most people don't think of themselves as living a life of luxury, but compared to the way people lived two or three hundred years ago, we absolutely live in luxury. So it's always culturally defined. But the notion that Methodist discipline and drive would lead people to become comfortable in their lives outside the church was something that always worried Asbury and Wesley. And that's generally not a direction that most people today want to go, because we still look at that. I mean, look at the prosperity gospel. People look at that and say, "well, that's a good thing, right? That's what we're all aiming for." And there's a sense in which prosperity was not the goal for Wesley and Asbury, and, in many senses, kind of a dangerous thing.

Eddie Rester 43:55

And, Wesley, he feared it, but he also even predicted it. He predicted that if people followed the Methodist route, and lifestyle, cutting out, you know, the gin or the other things, he predicted that they would become more successful, hence the his sermon on the proper use of money because he was worried that because of their frugal, faithful lifestyle, it was going to result in more money than they knew what to do with or would be helpful for their Christian faith.

John Wigger 44:27
Yeah, he saw it happening around him.

Eddie Rester 44:29 Yeah.

John Wigger 44:30
And Asbury saw it happening, too.Toward the end of his life, Asbury was revered, but everybody realized that as soon as he was dead, everything was going to change.

Eddie Rester 44:42 Yeah.

John Wigger 44:42

Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 44:46

Yeah. Do you think that, you know, one of the quotations that I learned from Eddie several years ago when we were first working together was that if you want value... I can't remember. I'm paraphrasing. I'm gonna butcher it. Basically, if you want things to stay the same, if you want to maintain the core values at the heart of something, then you're gonna have to change your approach from generation to generation. I think that's one of the threads of that I hear in kind of what you're talking about Dr. Wigger. But what John Wesley did in the in the English context in the 18th century and what Francis Asbury did in the late 18th century and early 19th century, at the core of it were a lot of the same convictions, a lot of the same theological convictions and even some of the core methodology around kind of a disciplined life. But there were a lot of things that changed in terms of the engagement with the culture, and some of those things that changed probably weren't for the better, you know. There's a warning in that, that embedding yourself in a particular culture comes at a certain cost or certain things that you have to pay attention to. But change is inevitable. And that's an important thing that I think I'll probably take away from this conversation, that in every generation, there needs to be a rediscovery of what's at the heart of it, and, you know, a responsiveness to the culture. What about you, Eddie, what are what are you thinking about?

Eddie Rester 46:17

Yeah, that's what I really have, this whole time, been thinking about is how Wesley in England was responsive to the moment he was in. Wesley's wisdom was sending Thomas Coke over to Francis Asbury to allow an American to begin to lead. And even Francis Asbury's wisdom at the Christmas conference was he wasn't going to accept Wesley's not ordination, but his becoming a bishop. He had the pastor's there vote on that, or he wouldn't have become Bishop Asbury.

Chris McAlilly 46:58 Dude was a smart politician.

Eddie Rester 47:00

Yeah, he... Every step along the journey, I think that's what I'm seeing, is that, wherever they were, that's where they lived. And they were in life enough, particularly in the first century, to realize we've got to keep doing that, and maybe some of our inertia that finally caught us after World War Two and the baby boom, and really the explosion of the middle class after the baby boom, maybe that's a part of what finally stopped the innovation. I don't know. Dr. Wigger, it looks like you've got thought there. Or a correction.

John Wigger 47:36
No, not a correction. Not at all. I think you're absolutely right. And I won't pretend to know why Nobody wanted to keep living the way Francis Asbury lived. mainstream Methodism stopped growing in the middle of the 1960s. But I think one part of it is that a lot of its energy had been sort of funneled off into these new movements. So at the same time you look at that, I think you really need to look at the growth of other Wesleyan traditions. And Pentecostalism, as we've already talked about, would definitely be one of those, because it continues to grow. So in a sense, if you take a broader view, the Wesleyan model doesn't collapse in the mid 1960s. It's just that that oldest part of it, so to speak, that begins to falter.

Chris McAlilly 48:30

So the goal is not to crash and burn like Tammy Faye Bakker and to take flight and to hijack the planes of future success and faithfulness as other forms of religious life take off. That's what I'm hearing. What about it?

John Wigger 48:52 No, that sounds good.

Eddie Rester 48:55

Doctor Wigger, thank you, thank you, thank you for taking some time with us today. I really appreciate the conversation. I love digging into history and wish I had more time to read and to hear from what has been, as we think about what can be.

John Wigger 49:13

Yeah, thank you. You know, I kind of see it as my job here to answer your questions. But if I could take a minute, what the kind of feedback that you get around these discussions? And especially your, I'm sure you're much closer to the current debates in Methodism and how it's kind of dividing up now. What's the feedback that you get? I'm interested. I'm not a Methodist, so I don't know this from much personal experience.

Chris McAlilly 49:44

I think there's a lot of, you know... Honestly, I think it's a religious identity and set of commitments, where there's a story of explosive growth at the origin. And to live within a time, I said this earlier, a time of decline creates a lot of confusion. It's almost like a cognitive dissonance between who you're supposed to be and what you're experiencing. And so that I think leads to infighting, and it leads to name calling, and it leads to people who otherwise really love one another, trying to figure out why the other person may be the reason to blame for the things that may or may not be going on. And so, you know, I think in the midst of it, my hope would be that conversations with people like you and engaging with others who've both done the history and the research, and then also who may be interested in seeing a Methodist identity and mission and ministry continue into the future, that it could be rediscovered, and some of that kind of initial energy could be tapped into again. Ultimately, the way I think about it is, you know, it's God's work, man, you know, and I don't know that God has abandoned any form of religious life. I just, that's just not the way I think about these things. I don't think God has abandoned Methodism, or I wouldn't be in it. And, you know, the hope would be to ultimately find your way to an openness to the Holy Spirit and perhaps, new life within old forms. So that's my take. What about you, Eddie?

Eddie Rester 51:40

You know, I was gonna say we were kind of sociological vice right now, in terms of aging population. And there's a huge study, back in 2005, I think came out of Stanford about birth rates in mainline denominations. Couples were having less than two kids per family. Meanwhile, our Pentecostal brothers and sisters were having over four kids per family. And so at some level, there's a sociological piece to the conversation. I think, Chris, you're right. We have these expectations. The numbers are against us. And so we fight. But I also think that there's a moment. There has been drift in terms of who we're called to be, and how we're called to live that out, and who we're called to serve. And I think, right now, there's a great sorting of that. And unfortunately, what that sorting has devolved to sometimes is we look a lot like the culture. We just yell at each other and divide. And I'm not sure that's helpful for the body of Christ, as we look to the future. How can we rediscover who we are, how we're called to live, without tearing each other apart and tearing apart from each other?

Chris McAlilly 52:56
At the risk of putting... I don't want to ask too personal a question of you, but have you found a home in another religious expression? Is there another place you call home?

John Wigger 53:11

Yeah, we attend a church in Colombia called The Crossing. It's one of these churches. It's not the Willow Creek seeker model. But it is... You have to scroll down their webpage quite a ways before you find out they're Presbyterians. So it's that kind of church. When we first started attending, they were meeting in a high school auditorium, and it was 200 people. So we weren't a part of somebody's basement, 20 people start. But now I think it's three or four thousand in Columbia, which is only 120,000. So that's a pretty dynamic place. To be honest, we were a lot more involved when it was two or three hundred people than we are now, which is almost nothing. And so yeah, we have found a home although not a... I didn't grow up Presbyterian. I didn't grow up Methodist. My family was one of those families that just attended. We moved a fair amount, not like a military family, but a fair amount. And my parents just found whatever church they felt comfortable in. And I think that was part of my trying to figure out what makes people feel comfortable in a church that eventually led me to early American Methodism in grad school.

Chris McAlilly 54:30

Yeah, and I think that that's a good, that's maybe a good place to land because I do think that what's at the heart of Methodism or Presbyterianism or Lutheranism or Catholicism or Pentecostalism is really, you know, it's not that different, really. There's some... There isn't a dynamism that really is just connected to the real thing, whatever the real Christian thing is. And people can find their way to that in a lot of different contexts and expressions. So, thanks for that reminder, Dr. Wigger. Thank you for your work on Methodism. And we'll have to check out your more recent books on the history of flight and the crashing and burning of evangelicalism. That'll be fun.

John Wigger 55:18
Thanks for inviting me. I admire what you're doing.

Chris McAlilly 55:21 Thanks a lot.

Eddie Rester 55:24
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Chris McAlilly 55:30

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