Change and Decay: Primitive Methodism from Late Victorian Times Till World War 1

David Young, a former Baptist minister who continues to exercise his ministry as a Methodist local preacher in Wales, has written extensively on Primitive Methodist (PM) history in recent years. While his previous work, The Great River, viewed the denomination through the local focus of his own northern Hampshire roots, in his latest work he focuses more fully on the national church, seeking to argue that the story of Primitive Methodism from the mid-nineteenth century is one of theological decay leading to spiritual and numerical decline.Young looks at a number of impacts on the wider British church during the late Victorian period, including developments in evolutionary theory, geological discoveries, and the advent of what became known as ‘higher criticism’ of the Bible. He then assesses how these affected some of the core evangelical doctrines held by Primitive Methodism, including eternal punishment, the substitutionary nature of atonement, the trustworthiness of scripture and entire sanctification. Young uses a variety of sources to explore these questions, and his attention to the wealth of material in The Primitive Methodist Magazine and The Holborn Review as the two main organs of the PM connexion is very thorough. His study of the liberalism of some key figures of early twentieth-century Primitive Methodism is also very valuable, reminding us that one of those who, with Joseph Ritson, helped to create the romantic view of the denomination's history during its centenary celebrations, was foremost in espousing the move away from the theology that had sustained that story thus far: John Day Thompson, author of The Church that Found Itself (1911), joined forces with higher criticism advocate A. S. Peake in an attempt to revise the PM Deed Poll, which ultimately seems to have been unresolved at the beginning of Methodist Union talks.The concept of four ‘voices of theology’—normative, formal, espoused, and operant—identified by Cameron, Bhatti, Duce, Sweeney, and Watkins in Talking about God in Practice (2010) may have been a helpful lens for Young to explore the complexities of Primitive Methodism toward the end of its separate existence. In examining those ‘voices’, a more mixed picture emerges than the title of Young's book acknowledges. In terms of normative theology—official church teaching, authorized publications, and church policy—there was, as was noted above, no substantial change to the doctrinal foundations of the church in the Deed Poll, although there is some evidence from the 1912 hymn supplement that traditional understandings were being supplemented with the new ‘social gospel’, not least in the extraordinary inclusion of atheist Edward Carpenter's stirring but entirely secular socialist anthem ‘England Arise’. In the formal theology expressed by the theologians of the denomination there is plenty of evidence by the dawn of the 1900s in magazine and journal articles that, as Ritson perceived it, ‘methods of interpretation which passed muster at the beginning of the century have long since been discarded’ (147). On the other hand, the espoused theology of the Association for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, active from 1889, suggests that there were still those who valued formulas rooted in the connexion's established theological positions. One minister so inclined, J. Dodd Jackson, became connexional editor in 1911, demonstrating that the leadership of the church, while certainly more theologically varied than in previous generations, had not entirely turned its back on the theology of Bourne and Clowes.The broadening of the range of theological outlooks leads Young to declare that ‘Primitive Methodism … had morphed into a different faith’ (167), yet toward the conclusion of the book he admits the possibility that developments may have had a more complex and less easily quantifiable effect, leading to two PM ‘streams’ with rural preaching being less susceptible to liberal influence. Here the difficulty of assessing the variety at local church and circuit level of operant theology—how what groups and individuals actually do and say reflects their real beliefs—is brought into sharp focus. Kenneth Lysons, writing of the Lowton PM circuit in the early part of the twentieth century, suggests that while the approach of the likes of A. S. Peake may have been influential among some ministers, the majority of their hearers and many local preachers still held that ‘The Bible was the authority for faith. Most members if asked to vindicate their beliefs would probably have begun by saying “the Bible says”’ (A Little Primitive [2001], 141).Young's book, with its wide and thorough research, is an invaluable addition to our understanding of the theology of Primitive Methodism during its later years as Methodist Union approached. It also reminds us that then, as now, Methodism encompassed a wide variety of theological views and in the case of deeply held beliefs, the ‘new’ does not necessarily drive out the ‘old’ everywhere.

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