John Marrant and the narrative construction of an early black Methodist evangelical

African American Review, Winter, 2004 by Cedrick May

After his conversion, Marrant dedicated his life to evangelizing. He was so dedicated to his newfound religion that his family and former friends grew weary of his enthusiasm and began ostracizing him. Marrant's home environment became so stressful for him that he fled into the wilderness where he faced starvation until befriended by an "Indian hunter" who taught him how to live in the forests and to speak Cherokee. After several weeks of living with and ministering to the Georgian Cherokee, Marrant decided to spread his ministry further among the Native Americans of the region. He moved on for several months to live among and preach to the Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw before returning home. His family had given him up for dead after months of his absence, so they welcomed him back, and he remained with them, working as a carpenter with his brother and preaching to slaves, until the Revolutionary War. He fought in the war as a British sailor and cannoneer for six years before he was seriously wounded during an engagement with a Dutch vessel. Upon his release from military service, Marrant retired to London where he worked for a cotton merchant, intensely studied the Bible, and preached at "Spa-Fields chapel," where he came to the attention of the chapel's benefactor, the Countess of Huntingdon. The Countess arranged Marrant's ordination at one of her other chapels in Bath. The Narrative ends with Marrant's preparations for departure to Nova Scotia, where he was sent to minister to the Loyalist Blacks who had escaped slavery during the Revolutionary War.

Because his autobiography includes accounts of his adventures among the Cherokee, Marrant's Narrative has been studied as both autobiography and captivity narrative. There are, however, no studies of Marrant's Narrative as an ordination sermon, and the function(s) that it served as such. Nor is there much about Marrant's other writings. In particular, his 1790 Journal of John Marrant and several other sermons have much to say about his involvement in the religious debates going on in late 18th-century British America and England. Given the lack of attention given to Early Black evangelical texts by literary scholars, it might be assumed that African American field preachers and exhorters didn't have much to say about the theological debates of the time, but this conclusion would be a mistake, as the written works of John Marrant illustrate.

Competing Christianities and African Converts in the Transatlantic

Black evangelicals were very much involved with the theological discussions between 1760 and 1855, contributing their own arguments and nuances to the various theological positions. For one example, Black evangelicals practiced their own theories of British North American Calvinism, which had very close connections to the Calvinist Methodism that originated from English Protestantism. Furthermore, in 1729 Charles and John Wesley started a study group among their Anglican brethren at Oxford that became known for its methodical religious study and observance. This group called Methodists, were influenced by their exposure to Moravians (a communal Christian sect originating from the Czech region that emphasized pietism, or the personal one-on-one emotional experience between the individual and God). After a series of successful sermons to mass audiences, the Methodist movement began to grow into a significant protestant branch of the Anglican Church. However, the "Methodists" split into competing factions when the Wesley brothers began to abandon predestination for the doctrine of salvation by faith alone.