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

African American Review, Winter, 2004 by Cedrick May

The Methodists developed notoriety for their energetic and zealous preaching and their ability to draw massive crowds. Although Methodism began as a movement to revitalize the Anglican Church, the new doctrines of faith that went against the traditional state-sponsored Calvinism eventually led John Wesley to split formally from Anglicanism and to register his congregations as dissenting chapels in 1795. (2) The Lord Bishop of London printed a General Evening Post article condemning Methodist field-preaching and enthusiasm as illegal under the Act of Toleration since, as the Lord Bishop argued, field preaching and enthusiasm inspired and could mask seditious activities against the government. (3)

In the midst of all the government regulation, another set of Methodists, led mainly by George Whitefield, competed with the Methodist movement of the Wesley brothers. Although an old friend and former schoolmate of the Wesleys, Whitefield remained staunchly orthodox in his traditional Calvinist principles, and drew patronage from Selena Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon. Hastings agreed with and supported a strict doctrine of predestination. She assembled around her a cadre of Methodist ministers whose ideology mirrored her own, a group often referred to as the Huntingdon Connection. Although never intending to separate from the Anglican Church, the Huntingdon Connection became increasingly alienated from the state-sponsored church that the Countess wished to reform with her brand of the Methodist movement. Nevertheless, doctrinal and procedural differences led the Methodist chapels under her patronage to begin registering as dissenting chapels in 1783. Not only did the Huntingdon Connection of Methodists compete with the Wesleyan Methodists, but they also faced the legal pressures of registration as a dissenting sect.

Many missionary efforts that involved Black evangelism came out of the complicated set of beliefs within these English Methodist movements. The dogged competition with the Wesleyan Connection, in addition to political pressures, contributed to the Huntingdon Connection's missions and patronage to slaves and free Black people in England and in the North American Colonies. Certainly, the Wesley Connection of Methodists took an overtly antislavery position. However, while the Countess, as well as some of her clergy, owned slaves, it was the Huntingdon Connection that vigorously supported black missionaries and artists. Aggressive ministering to Black people and slaves by popular Huntingdonian evangelicals like George Whitefield and Black Methodist missionaries like John Marrant helped to spread Methodism to Blacks in the North-American colonies prior to and through the revolutionary period.

While the Huntingdonian Methodists did not officially spread an antislavery message to Black people in North America, three forces combined to link Methodism to antislavery values. First, the Wesley Connection of Methodists, with its large following, did have an antislavery doctrine that was incorporated into the Church's official laws for a time in North America. Although Southern pressures caused the church to rescind its official antislavery position, the denomination discouraged slavery. Second, the fact that Methodist evangelicals were spreading the doctrine of Methodism widely to black populations led many to associate Methodism with the growing number of Black converts. This trend also brought great attention to compassionate Methodist ministers, both Huntingdonian and Wesleyan, committed to ameliorating the conditions of slaves. Third, the fact that both Connections authorized emotionalism and enthusiastic preaching appealed to the African and African-descended peoples living in North America who recognized Methodism as a style of worship compatible with traditional forms of worship they had brought with them from Africa. As a result, African descended people incorporated traditional African practices into the developing Methodist traditions, further encouraging large numbers of Black people to adopt Methodism. The emotionalism and egalitarianism that Methodists espoused seems also to have increasingly appealed to poor Whites, who apparently benefited from the catharsis of the emotional and spiritual outpourings in Methodist service. Thus, within 100 years, Methodism was transformed from a small study group of Anglicans in 1729 into a broad transnational egalitarian movement with significant political influence by 1829. The growth of Methodism in North America was due in part to the efforts of British evangelicals who energetically spread the practice, and in part to the transformative efforts of North American Black converts who recognized the spiritual and organizational potential of the movement.