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G M Ditchfield, The Origins of Primitive Methodism, by Sandy Calder, The English Historical Review, Volume 132, Issue 558, October 2017, Pages 1351–1353, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cex245
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Extract
Primitive Methodism was a major force in English society during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from its origins in the Napoleonic period to its merger with the Wesleyan and United Methodist churches in 1932. The only specifically religious census conducted in Britain recorded 229,646 Primitive Methodist attenders at evening service on 30 March 1851—making it by far the largest grouping among the notoriously fissiparous Methodist movement apart from the original Wesleyan Connexion. Hence it is rather odd that, despite extensive scholarly interest in Methodism as a whole, nationally and internationally, there have been comparatively few recent studies which focused specifically upon the Primitive variant. Consequently, as Sandy Calder argues convincingly in an extended historiographical survey, much of what has been published on the subject is considerably older and written from within the Primitive Methodist tradition. As a result, he finds it necessary to explode several myths concerning the earliest years of Primitive Methodism after its emergence in Staffordshire in 1810–11. Its earliest protagonists (notably Hugh Bourne) and their successors portrayed their movement as a heroic expression of the religious fervour of the very poorest elements in society, constantly facing persecution, and inspired by the famous camp meetings which were anathema to the respectable Wesleyan Connexion. Calder’s statistical analyses show that Primitive Methodism drew more support from skilled than from unskilled workers, that its adherents were less likely than previously supposed to have been illiterate, and that it did not appeal disproportionately to workers in industries or regions that suffered from economic depression. That the Primitive Methodist Connexion was ‘democratic’ is, says the author, a canard. Nor was there any necessary correlation, pace historians such as R.F. Wearmouth, between Primitive Methodism and early trade unionism. Even the importance of the camp meetings has been exaggerated; when the Wesleyan conference denounced these meetings in 1807, the cause of its disapproval was the flamboyant American preacher Lorenzo Dow rather than Bourne and his followers. Certainly, one cannot but take notice of the number of wealthy individuals such as James Steele, a prosperous citizen of Tunstall, who provided succour for the movement in its earliest stages but whose contributions, because of their relatively elevated social status, have been played down in the denominational histories as inconsistent with the ‘heroic’ mythology.
