Part 1
The story of
Peter Cartwright is a tale that could only happen in America. It not only tells us of our frontier past but
actually speaks a bit to who we Americans are today. Good storytelling often luxuriates in details
and so to put more of them in and yet accommodate the tradition of brevity that
is expected in blog writing, I will divide this article into two parts. The first part of this article will focus on
how circuit riding came to be and why the Methodist (and their Baptist
counterparts) Church came to be the dominant brand of Christianity in the
United States well into the 20th Century. In part two, I will focus on Peter
Cartwright, one of the most colorful circuit riding preachers of this era. Both parts are available to read in this same
article, but if the second part interests you more than the first, feel free to
scroll down and begin reading there.
John Wesley Preaching in open air
Methodism
begins in England with John and Charles Wesley.
It didn’t start out as a stand-alone church but rather a revival
movement within Anglicanism. The Wesley
brothers and others began practicing “their methods” while students at
Oxford. What they were doing was hardly
spectacular but seemed so at the time because it was so rarely practiced in the
church. Such things included weekly
Bible classes, discussions, group prayer, mutual encouragement to grow in
holiness and exhortation to good works.
They called their small group at university the “holy club” but a few
detractors called them “Methodists” as a derogatory term indicating that they
were more excited about their newly found methods than about God himself. Nothing was further from the truth, but the
word had sticking power and thus became the name of a movement which eventually
became a separate church.
John Wesley
was a great and tireless preacher and though a learned man, was gifted in such
a way as to be able to speak to every strata of English society both high and
low. But Wesley was also equally gifted
as an organizer and was able to mobilize those touched by this revival for
explosive numerical growth and multiplication.
It is this organization that explains the development of the circuit
rider in the American experience.
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| Early Methodist class meeting |
The base of
the Methodist church was the weekly class.
These classes were usually limited to a maximum of 12 people and usually
met in homes. There the Bible was
studied, testimonies were shared, morals were discussed and personal behavior
was regulated. These classes were training
grounds for lay leaders who would start as exhorters for classes and then if
found effective would later be promoted to lay preachers who would be used to
further the movement. The use of lay
preachers instead of educated clergy allowed for a very quick expansion as it
took 4-6 years to educate a regular clergy and only a couple of years to train
a layman. Just to show the great
contrast, by the time of the Civil War there were more Methodist churches than
post offices in America while other well-known churches such as the
Congregational and Presbyterian were much fewer and remained largely on the
eastern seaboard.
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| Wesley was a tireless circuit rider |
Methodism
was a hierarchy of classes, stations, circuits, conferences and circuit
riders, elders and superintendants. Circuit riders were less
pastoral and more like visiting bishops and evangelists. The heart of the organization was the
weekly class. A church was a preaching
station that was supplied with a circuit rider.
Circuit riders would be the preacher for multiple stations often on a
circuit no bigger than 500 miles. It
should be noted that circuit riding was something invented in England and
brought over to America. John Wesley
himself rode about 5000 miles per year during his lifetime and preached usually
around 15 sermons per week. Considering
how small England is, it is obvious that Wesley didn’t spend much time at home
which also might explain why he and his wife had a very strained marriage.
Besides
circuit riding, America had another style of event which was well-suited to the
spread of Christianity on the frontier.
This is called the “Camp Meeting” and it was used by a lot of groups but
was a real mainstay with the Methodists.
A different pattern of farming in America made this very popular with
the people on the frontier. In Europe,
the farming class lived in villages and then gathered everyday outside of town
to work their fields. On the American
frontier, farmers built a home and cleared the area around the farmstead to
work cattle and plant crops. This often
led to loneliness and isolation where people simply did not have time or even
live close enough to enjoy friendships with their neighbors. The camp-meeting then was far more than a
religious meeting. It was an opportunity
for a vacation from the farm and to meet and enjoy their neighbors. The ideal person to organize these events was
the circuit rider who knew the individual families and could organize and
invite them to these events. Camp
Meeting manuals were actually written showing diagrams of the perfect camp
setup and how a speaker’s stage should be set and so forth. Many revivals sprang forth from these events
in different regions of the United States attesting to their
effectiveness. It also might be added here
that many of our ancestors sprang forth about 9 months after some of these camp-meetings
attesting to the value of taking a week off from farm chores now and again!
Last of all
it should be noted that the success of Methodism in America was largely
attributable to the leadership of Francis Asbury, the first bishop for the
group in America. The Methodists arrived
in the American Colonies in 1750. In the
years leading up to the Revolution of 1776 they became a persecuted sect
because Wesley urged loyalty to the king of England. As a result, many Methodist missionaries went
back to England.
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| Francis Asbury |
But Asbury
strongly opposed John Wesley on this matter and came out in favor of the
revolution. As many Anglican ministers
left the colonies (they were part of the state of England) Asbury organized his
ministers to venture out during the war and bring the church to the people even
at great risk. With Methodism becoming
its own church it also changed public perceptions. No longer was it associated with the crown of
England but became a home-grown church on American soil.
Although
Asbury never required holy vows of his ministers, the circuit riders
essentially took monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The value system of this church was a willingness
to go to the people anytime and anywhere.
The circuit riders improvised based on what was available at each
station. Sometimes church was held in
the open-air or a log cabin. In other
places church was held in a local courthouse or tavern. Unlike the puritans, these “men of the people”
were Arminian in theology (as opposed to Calvinist with a great emphasis on
being the elect of God) and
enthusiastically called all to repentance.
Although the frontier of America was de-christianized through the
process of migration, there was a memory of the faith in many families that
served as a basis of approach.
And so with
its humble approach of meeting people where they were at, selfless lay
ministers willing to risk their lives to spread the gospel of Christ, and a
method of reproducing and deploying more clergy than they needed, the Methodist
church quickly became the most recognized brand of Christianity in America
during the 19th century.
Part 2
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| Peter Cartwright |
Peter Cartwright (1785-1872) was the son of a farmer and revolutionary war
veteran and born in Virginia. As a young
teen, his family, like so many others at the time, left for the frontier of
Kentucky seeking fresh opportunities. Cartwright’s family came to settle in
Logan County which was later dubbed by a well-known revivalist as “rogues
harbor” because this remote location tended to attract a strong criminal
element due to its distance from the law.
As a young man Peter Cartwright was given a nominal education and was
certainly encouraged towards the Christian faith by his devoutly Methodist
mother but by his own admission, Cartwright enjoyed his status of being one of
the local troublemakers.
In his late
teens Cartwright attended a camp meeting in the area and experienced a deep and
radical conversion. He immediately
joined a Methodist weekly class in his area.
At age 17 he became a licensed exhorter in the church and within the
next three years was promoted to deacon (ordained directly by Francis Asbury)
and later a ruling elder which he remained the rest of his life.
Soon as a
single young man, Peter Cartwright found himself joining the ranks of the
circuit riders. The salary (if it was paid
in full and usually wasn’t) was $100 per year.
If the circuit rider had a wife he was given another $100 per year and
if he had children an allocation of $18 per year was made for each. It is said that Peter Cartwright worked for
$60 per year but gave $25 of that as a tithe to the church.
Cartwright
reports that in his early days money was so scarce on the frontier that many
persons went an entire year without seeing so much as a coin. Circuit riders usually had enough food as many people would
feed them, but if not for the loving gifts of handmade clothing by pioneer
housewives, many of the evangelists would be naked as their clothes wore out
rather quickly on the frontier.
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| Circuit preaching |
The work was
varied, sometimes rewarding, sometimes strange.
Cartwright found himself encountering all sorts of infidels such as Universalists
and Mormons and with all the zeal of youth would engage in a battle of wits and
doctrines. In other places he would find
people quite receptive and would baptize and enroll them in a Methodist class. In yet other places he would encounter
threats of violence and would be pleased to accommodate them as needed with a
good old-fashioned fistfight. He prayed
for healings of the sick and people were cured, he encountered congregations
whose pastors were drunkards and he would exhort the erring minister and see
revival of religion. It was not uncommon
to be on the road for years at a time and according to Cartwright, almost
always relying on the kindness of strangers for place to sleep or a few coins
for his pocket to buy food or care for his horse.
Cartwright
was well-suited for the frontier. He was
non-pretentious in his style and fearless in confronting rowdies and detractors
at his meetings. He was very comfortable
and sympathetic with emotional outbursts and manifestations of the spirit. He had a strong egalitarian spirit, yet
enthusiastically promoted upward mobility in his congregations if it was done
within the bounds of strong Christian commitment.
Cartwright
was known as a fiery preacher, but also one of good humor and often opened his
sermons with anecdote calculated to bring a laugh or two. He spoke almost always extempore and like
many of his ken, would not be averse to speaking of the sin matrix he
encountered right in front of him.
 |
| Magazine cover depiction |
According to
Mark Noll, the America in which Peter Cartwright worked was largely unchurched
and unchristian. In addition to
preaching, evangelical groups worked to shape the American mind using the
latest technology (steam driven printing presses) to print Bibles, Gospel
tracts, and religious books enough to blanket every citizen in the new
republic. Distributing literature and
selling inexpensive books on his circuit was also one of Peter Cartwright’s
tasks.
As a young
man Cartwright was able to speak with General (soon to be President) Andrew
Jackson and warned him that his soul would go to hell just as quickly as any
other mans. Another minister apologized
to Jackson for the bluntness of Cartwright’s message but Jackson actually
praised and respected Cartwright’s straightforward approach saying that all of
Christ’s ministers should be such that they fear no mortal man. This would not be the last time Cartwright
encountered a future president of the United States.
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| General Jackson |
Age 33 he
married Frances Gaines and proceeded to have 7 daughter and 2 sons by that
marriage. Frances was very supportive of
Peter’s ministry even though it required him to travel so much. Eventually because of his views on slavery,
the Cartwright family left Kentucky and moved to southern Illinois. It is interesting to note that Cartwright was
neither abolitionist nor pro-slavery. He
viewed slavery as wrong but felt that slave-owners should be converted and
taught until they willingly freed their slaves.
His views may seem very mild by today’s standard but it is important to
remember that prior to the Civil War and the polarization it caused, there were
many differing perspectives on the slavery issue.
Cartwright was a strong democrat and was always very
politically active as a minister. He
stood in the centrist position of most political issues in his day and in the
vanguard of Methodist thought which sought conversion and social reform. In
1828 and 1832 Peter Cartwright twice defeated Abraham Lincoln for a seat in the
Illinois legislature. Later he ran
against Lincoln for U.S. Congress but was defeated by him in that race. It makes one wonder how a victory by Peter
Cartwright in that race would have changed American history. Lincoln would have never gone to Washington
D.C. and might have remained an unknown quantity in U.S. politics.
Cartwright
worked as a preacher (both in a circuit riding and fixed ministry) for 53
years. He preached by his own accounting
about 8000 sermons and saw around 10,000 conversions and 12,000 baptisms. By his estimation his salary, after
accounting for what was unpaid to him, losses of horses, being held up at gun
point, people stealing religious books he was selling, and loss of clothing by
theft, was (negative) -$6,400. However, his labors were crowned with a family
of adult children and grandchildren who were walking in the faith and members
of the Methodist church. Better to have
success in faith and family than money any day.
 |
| Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright |
Cartwright
serves as a bridge between the first and third generations of Methodists in
America. He lived during the frontier
days and period of explosive growth of Methodism with their circuit riders and
enthusiastic camp-meetings, but lived long enough to see the church become more
established and respectable along with the Baptists. Cartwright of course lamented this change and
considered it a triumph of “Yankeeism”, but the reality of it was America was
changing as well losing its frontiers and growing its cities. Circuits were growing smaller as Methodists
were building beautiful buildings and calling ministers to a settled
pastorate. Camp-meetings too were a
thing of the past as Bible conferences and Revival tabernacles emerged as the
next big thing in American evangelicalism.
The church
Cartwright served in Southern Illinois is still an active congregation within
the Methodist denomination today.
Sources:
http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1701-1800/peter-cartwright-colorful-preacher-11630304.html
Latourette, Kenneth Scott.
A History of Christianity Vol. II
: Reformation to the Present (New
York : Harper and Row, 1975)
Pierard, Richard V. and Thomas A. Askew. The
American Church Experience : A Concise History.
(Grand Rapids : Baker Academic, 2004)
“Circuits”. Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and
Ecclesiastical Literature. McClintock
and Strong Eds. (Grand Rapids : Baker
Book House, 1981)
“Peter Cartwright” Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals. Larson, Bebbington, and Noll eds. (Downers Grove : Intervarsity Press, 2003)
Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke. The
Churching of America 1776-2005 : Winners and Losers in Our Religious
Economy. (New Brunswick : Rutgers
University Press, 2007)
Noll, Mark A. A History of Christianity in the United
States and Canada. (Grand Rapids :
Eerdmanns, 2003)
Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American
Christianity. (New Haven : Yale
University Press, 1989)
Cartwright, Peter. The Autobiography of Peter Cartwright. (Nashville : Abingdon Press, 1981)
“Peter Cartwright” Dictionary of Christianity in America. Reid, Linder, Shelley, and Stout eds. (Downers Grove : Intervarsity Press, 1990)
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