Methodism: Empire of the Spirit

DAVID HEMPTON. Methodism: Empire of the Spirit. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2005. Pp. xiii + 278, appendix, chronology, bibliography, index. $30.00. David Hempton of Boston University has written an outstanding book on the rise and decline of Methodism, one that should be read care by all historians of the so-called mainline Protestant denominations. Insightful and often iconoclastic, Hempton offers fresh interpretations of some of the most fundamental issues of the Methodist past. His scope is transatlantic, emphases especially on England and the United States. He also includes significant discussions of the other three nations of the British Isles and territories farther afield like Canada and India. His research is deep, wide, and up-to-date. His extensive endnotes feature citations to manuscripts in obscure collections, as well as to twenty-first century books and articles. While not a survey in the strict sense of the term, Hempton's book is essentially a series of linked essays. Among other things, he furnishes new details on the ways in which early Methodists appealed to those who were in some sense marginal, whether geographically, socially, or psychologically. At the same time, Hempton has little patience hagiography and refuses to present John Wesley as a traditional religious hero: Wesley's much vaunted genius for organization turns out upon closer inspection to have been a ragbag of pragmatic innovations borrowed from Moravians and Quakers, or suggested to him by other free-market itinerant evangelists, most of whom he later fought with (16). When discussing anti-Methodist attacks, Hempton arrives at the unusual but sensible conclusion that opposition served to energize early Methodists and that it as much enabler as it was destroyer of the Methodist cause (99). To elucidate Methodist finances (109-30), he uses the analogy of a business organization and points out that recurring deficits were not too problematic when rapid expansion was occurring. Then, as expansion slowed and the number of religious projects multiplied, financial problems could become acute. This provides yet another explanation, one typically not adduced, for the dominance of wealthy Methodists in the mature Methodist movement. Hempton provides a fresh analysis of the decline of Methodism in the twentieth century, a topic which is not well represented in current Methodist historiography. After reading his critical discussion of various theories of religious decline, this reviewer was drawn to the rather simple conclusion that popular new religious movements almost inevitably follow an arc-like trajectory of growth and contraction, and that Methodism was no exception. While impressively complex and subtle, Hempton's views ultimately do not seem to offer more than embellishments and qualifications to this simple description. …

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