In 1739, following Whitefield’s lead, John Wesley began to preach in open air settings and established himself as an itinerant preacher.93 Wesley had a sense of mission now and would not be a traditional Anglican minister, whose scope was bounded by a single parish. He wrote, “I have now no parish of my own, nor probably ever shall.… I look upon all the world as my parish”94 He began to establish a group of itinerant preachers that would become a spiritual brotherhood. They would share poor pay, poorer conditions, and even mob violence to follow their sense of spiritual calling. Officially starting in 1744, Wesley began to organize a few ministers and a rapidly expanding group of lay preachers.95 Itinerant preachers were predominantly lay preachers who had little formal training. But they were by no means without regulation. Wesley held control over their activities, prohibiting their administration of sacraments, and ordering itinerants into rotating circuits, ones he reassigned regularly. Preachers were expected to cover a large area, never staying in one community for very long; they coordinated and supervised the ongoing spiritual development of a set of communities. The basic structures of the laity, the classes and bands, were the local forms of Methodist organization. The preacher was the connection between these societies and the leadership, consisting of John Wesley and, eventually, the Conference of Preachers.96
Wesley established an explicitly paternal system from the beginning.97 He maintained control of many of the decisions on both the organizational level (preachers’ circuits) and the personal level (marital choices). In 1766, at a conference in Leeds, he defended his power over Methodists by stating that Methodist followers asked for this sort of leadership. He stated that prospective preachers aspired to “serve me as sons and to labour when and where I should direct.” In Wesley’s self-defense of his centralized power, he maintained that his control was not tyrannical in that evangelicals willingly submitted themselves to it. He argued, “the Preachers have engaged themselves to submit … to serve me as sons in the gospel.”98 Wesley argued that the basis for his authority was voluntary, while the terms were compulsory and nonnegotiable, like the bonds of a natural family.
While Wesley’s control seemed absolute in some realms, he also established important sources of power within the laity. In England and America, early Methodist societies included significant lay leadership and a considerable number of women. In Bristol, which was the center of Wesley’s revivals, women were the predominant lay leaders. In 1742, in the London Foundery Society, women leaders outnumbered men by fortyseven to nineteen.99 In the first decades of Wesleyan Methodism in America, women were likewise the largest group, outnumbering men by three to two in some areas.100
As Methodism became more established, bands and classes became the primary units of lay organization. As discussed above, bands were sites of close spiritual fellowship, based on the early models of the Holy Club and the first meetings in Georgia. Bands were usually single sex and formed of like-minded people from similar backgrounds and shared marital status, much like the Moravian organizations. The bands were supposed to foster intimacy, providing a comfortable space for sharing confessions of sins and self-searching.101 The American Methodist superintendent Francis Asbury described bands as “little families of love.”102
The classes, on the other hand, were the basic unit of official Methodist membership. Depending upon the area, they could be mixed sex or single sex. When an area was newly organized, the class might include all the Methodists from a particular community, and when the membership grew, the classes would become subdivided by different characteristics such as marital status, sex, and race. They were generally larger than bands, composed of usually a dozen members, and part of the economic undergirding of Methodism.103 In class meetings, Methodists would relate conversion narratives and receive instructions on Methodist social interactions. Classes would be instructed on the rules outlined in the official guidebook for Methodist social behavior, the Methodist Discipline, including correct behavior, avoiding profanity, refraining from excessive conversation and conduct, and plain dressing.104 To become a member of a class meeting, one had to be deemed fit for this select circle. This fitness was symbolized by the granting of a class ticket, which was a piece of paper that stated one’s name and location. Proving one’s mettle this way sometimes took months of regular attendance at preaching, prayer meetings, and interviews. Preachers and experienced Methodists were the judge and jury as to a new Methodist’s real intentions or seriousness. Many eighteenth-century Methodists describe the moment of acquiring their membership ticket as an essential step in their road to a rarefied spirituality.105 Getting this ticket, this symbol and certificate of acceptance, meant joining a specific Methodist family that would include mentors and guides (brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers) throughout each dedicated Methodist’s life. Class meetings defined the basis for membership within this family, who was inside and outside this group. When Francis Asbury arrived in America in 1771, one of the first things he did was to be sure that the class meetings were made up of qualified Methodists and that outsiders were not allowed to meet with them.106
The bands, class meetings, and circuits were extra-institutional structures of Methodism that established its character as a social movement from the beginning. The people of Methodism were the basis for its organization. While many Methodists, especially those in England, might be nominal members of the Church of England and attend services regularly, Methodist social structures provided the backbone for their religious association outside of more traditional brick-and-mortar sites for worship. Aside from the central motivation for spiritual growth, the goals of the Methodist structures were social ones: discipline, identification, association, and fellowship.
While Wesleyan Methodism did not officially take root in America until the end of the Great Awakening, this wave of revivalism paved the way for the Methodist movement to come. Evangelical Baptists, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Moravians all had a hand in establishing the predominant evangelical message of new birth. In particular, Baptists paved an important path for Methodists in the South, where they used some similar elements of emphasizing emotional preaching styles and the centrality of rebirth.107 Despite this wave of evangelical growth in America, Wesley waited a while to include America in his missionary plan.108 In essence, Whitefield was the primary evangelizer and Methodist leader, underlining the Calvinist flavor of the First Great Awakening. Until the late 1760s, he seemed content to allow lay Methodists to drive the American Methodist movement. In the 1760s and 1770s, some Wesleyan Methodists began immigrating to America, and this seems to have prompted Wesley to advance his mission there.109
In the 1760s and 1770s, Wesleyan Methodism found areas of expansion, like the Delmarva Peninsula, where there were great