As models of experience, evangelical narratives were particularly helpful in leading converts through the periods of transition, from their unawakened self to their converted self. Often these autobiographies were clearly organized around the (re)production of religious experience, framing the key moments of one’s life in terms of religious awakenings and transgressions. As the genre of conversion narratives developed through the eighteenth century, certainly the replication of language and emotional accounts became evident; by the middle of the nineteenth century, these narratives were obviously mimetic.27 Yet, while the genre was still in its infancy in the eighteenth century, conversion narratives tended to include autobiographical detail that made the accounts highly individualized. These life stories were recounted in numerous journals and daybooks and through individual conversion narratives, which were written originally in letters and then published in pamphlets and magazines. Charles Wesley, in particular, was a great solicitor of conversion narratives. Laywomen responded volubly to his requests, and many noted the particular time and care it took them to write this sort of account, some demonstrating a painful lack of familiarity with writing altogether. Through these apertures, one can see the common patterns of language and custom in early Methodism and the emergence of a new sort of family.28
Methodist conversion narratives followed similar stages in describing converts’ steps toward the Methodist family and away from their birth families. In these narratives, women and men went through the initial religious pangs of alienation from their old ways as they felt the conviction of their sins. In the next stage, they individuated, by separating from their old friends and family and more securely forming their own sense of spiritual expression. In the final stage, they rejoined a family, which was their evangelical family. These stages of alienation and individuation were similar to anthropological notions of separation, liminality, and reintegration.29 Conversion narratives were central components in the formation of modern religious identity. As the eighteenth century witnessed an unprecedented expansion of mobility that loosened individuals from the traditional strictures in many ways, the conversion narrative was a way to reconstitute their sense of self and their new identities as religious converts. Religious historian Bruce Hindmarsh asserts, “Religious experience became, therefore, far more voluntary and self-conscious, and far less a matter of custom or givenness, as women and men were presented with alternatives. In this context the turn to spiritual autobiography played a crucial role by allowing believers to negotiate an identity that could no longer be merely assumed.”30
In the primary stage of alienation, Methodists valorized the image of the lone saint struggling through multiple obstacles to realize his or her religious life. There is a strong theme in early Methodist literature that associates patient, Christ-like suffering with increasing godliness. Many early Methodist narratives feature the figures of the stalwart individual and the precocious child saint. The journals of Methodist women in particular reveal the difficulties that many early converts faced when attempting to join this group. Methodist women, more so than their male counterparts, tended to focus on this departure from their birth families. Their accounts make clear that the spiritual calling of Methodism tended to be individualized, which not only alienated relatives, but also transgressed the gender codes of eighteenth-century England and America. Women’s entry into Methodism was a phenomenon of particular concern to English and Anglo-American society.31
Some women framed their journey toward Methodism as a continuation of their moral upbringing, but more often the call to religiosity was ignited by an impulse from within. This heightened the individuality of spiritualism within the account and made each woman the central actor in her own conversion. Men were expected to take distinct paths for themselves in young adulthood, but women had to justify this individuation. In the surviving literature of conversion narratives, Methodist women were more likely to root their spiritual lives within their childhoods than their male counterparts were. In these portraits, women describe themselves as following their own, particular callings of religiosity, which often pitted their wills against their parents’. As young women, they described this disobedience as always balanced by their desires to be dutiful daughters. Yet, Methodists, who felt that their callings had divine origins, could justify even the most flagrant filial disobedience.
Separation from one’s parents was not a requirement for becoming a Methodist, but this was a persistent theme in autobiographical accounts of childhood. In some cases, the convert phrased this separation as a necessary weighing and shifting of priorities, the inevitable realization that the divine authority had superseded earthly ones. Hester Roe, for example, framed her conflicts with her mother as instances in which God permitted and encouraged her to disagree with her mother’s wishes. Methodists referred to the multiple passages in the Bible that state that a Christian’s devotion to God should supersede any concerns about family and friends. At a turning point in Mary Bosanquet’s individuation, she proclaimed that loving her parents more than God was now inconceivable and that she had to accept their disapproval. Bosanquet cited the example of Jesus, who asked his disciples to give up the ties of family, saying “he that loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.”32 Eighteenth-century biblical commentator Matthew Henry interpreted this passage as an acknowledgment that disciples should expect persecution and avoid the concerns of the world. This directive is similar to the commandment to worship no other idols before God, and Methodists interpreted this commandment as a caution against idolizing people by allowing them to become more important than God. In Elizabeth Hayden’s narrative, she wrote that she had worshipped her mother. In 1789, she recounted, “Neithr of my Parents were in the narrow Way, and my Mother whom I idolized, was very tender and Affectionate (and many Years I had to wean me from my Idol).”33
Through exposure to religious literature and practice, children garnered the right to be spiritual authorities over their parents, inverting the parentchild relationship.34 In a letter to Charles Wesley in 1738, Mrs. Clagget wrote about her experience of being converted by her daughter, who had been secretly attending Methodist meetings. At first, she opposed her daughter’s evangelicalism, until the mother was converted by the combination of seeing Charles Wesley preach and listening to her daughter. She admitted to the curious inversion of finding her daughter spiritually wiser than herself. Clagget wrote, “[A]t about 13 [she] seemed utterly to have renounced the World and gave her Selfe wholy to God. I know See what before I had no notion off how far she has been made Instrumental to the bringing about my own Salvation, She everyday watched for opportunities of Shewing me the Danger I was in by being too Anxious about Temporal things whilst I neglected the one thing needfull, telling me that she desired not to be Rich or great, at the Hazard of my Eternal happiness.”35
This story of a mother’s eventually joyful conversion under her daughter’s spiritual leadership was rare. More commonly, parents strenuously objected to their children’s evangelical conversion. As a result, young evangelical converts struggled with how to frame their relationships to their birth families. Converts could justify their seemingly rebellious behavior toward their parents by claiming that they owed their ultimate obedience to a higher spiritual authority. The theme of obedient disobedience within conversion narratives marked the sense that Methodists grappled with the conflict between the rules and customs of their birth family and the alternate codes and behaviors of their religious family.
The narratives of three young Methodist women, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, Hester Ann Roe Rogers, and Catherine Livingston Garrettson, recount a common theme of alienation from their birth families, as they joined in the mores and customs peculiar to their new evangelical family. These women were educated enough to create coherent narratives of considerable length and were prominent lay leaders of the eighteenth-century Methodist movement. They represented the exemplars of aspiration so precious to the wider family of transatlantic evangelicals. Mary Bosanquet became a leader within Methodism, influential in her control of a major Methodist center and known for her power as an exhorter and preacher. Hester Roe and Catherine Livingston were never as prominent as Bosanquet, and never as close to the Wesley brothers. Yet, in their own way, they were also extremely important. Livingston encouraged the establishment of Methodism in upstate New York, an arena that would become more important to Methodists as the nineteenth century progressed. Roe’s published narrative became exemplary of the