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5. El sujeto vasco posmoderno y la autonomía de la literatura
The Primitive Methodist definition of a circuit was that it ‘…consists of a number of societies united together for mutual assistance’. 55 Much of the internal arrangement of the PM circuit, including the societies, was the same as a Wesleyan circuit. There was a superintendent (the senior itinerant) and a quarterly meeting (referred to as the quarter-day board). Both local and travelling preachers also served the circuit as a whole, and were not appointed by individual societies. However, the
52 General Minutes of the Conferences of the Primitive Methodist Connexion
consolidated at and by the Conference held at Lynn-Regis, in Norfolk, May 20-25 1836 (Bemersley: 1836). See Chapter Three: The Development of Circuits. A rare objection to the term ‘Connexion’ came from H.B. Kendall, the Primitive Methodist historian. For him, the term was reminiscent of ‘a mere mechanical connection of parts such as a carpenter might achieve by nails or…use of dovetail and mortice’. He preferred the word ‘Church’ as being a ‘higher and more spiritual vocabule’, Holliday Bickerstaff Kendall, The Origin and History of the Primitive Methodist Church (London: Robert Bryant, 1905) General Books, print on demand edn., vol.1, 69.
53 Paragraphs 293, 294 in The General Rules of the Primitive Methodist Church;
revised by order of the ninety-third Annual Conference, held at Norwich, June 12-20, 1912 (London: W.A. Hammond, 1912), print on demand edn., 40.
54 Ibid.
55 General Minutes of Meetings, held by the Primitive Methodist Connexion, Halifax,
1821, Answer 7, 3. (Bemersley: 1821).
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Primitive Methodist Connexion constitution also provided for sub-circuit units called branches. This arrangement is described in greater detail in Chapter Three: The Development of Circuits, para 3.3.2. Although the internal arrangement of the PM circuit was similar to a Wesleyan circuit, the character of the circuit was different in that its function included a vigorous home missionary element. This affected the shape and size of the circuit, and the way in which it was organised and developed (see Chapter Three: The Development of Circuits).
2.4.3 The Districts
Primitive Methodism also followed the Wesleyans in having districts, but the origins and reasons were somewhat different. In Primitive Methodism, districts came into being when in answer to the question
‘How shall the connexion be arranged?’ the 1821 Annual Meeting [Conference] agreed that it should be divided into districts, initially five:
Tunstall, Nottingham, Hull, Scotter (Lincs) and Sheffield. The main reason was to organise representation to the conference by grouping circuits, as it had become clear that the increasing number of circuits made direct representation unwieldy.56 The Primitive Methodist districts also had district meetings, but in their case the rules were weighted heavily toward lay representation. Three delegates were to be sent from each circuit, but only one was to be a travelling preacher. More than this, the two lay delegates had to prove that they were not harbouring any intention of being a travelling preacher in the future.57 Primitive Methodism was not a breakaway movement for greater lay participation as was the Methodist New Connexion; rather, it was a revival movement. Nevertheless, its emphasis on lay representation shows that memories of what some had previously experienced as clerical domination during their time as Wesleyans influenced their later decision-making.
56‘How shall the Connexion be arranged? It shall be divided into Districts…’ ibid.
57 Ibid.
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For the greater part of the nineteenth century, a Primitive Methodist district was far more than a ‘committee’ layer. It functioned as a national Connexion in miniature and unlike Wesleyan Methodism, had the right to station travelling preachers.58 Many travelling preachers spent their entire ministry in one district.59 This period of ‘districtism’
and consequent weak sense of ‘national’ connexionalism had, however, a limited life. The 1869 annual pastoral address of the Primitive Methodist conference to the societies addressed the issue of preachers being ‘confined in their circuit work to their respective districts’ as unsatisfactory and that:
…our sectional character [districtism] has we fear operated
prejudicially on both ministers and people, if not destroying, at least stunting the growth of Connexional attachment, an imparting to us the selfishness of distinctive interests inconsistent with that broad affection that should distinguish us as one body. 60
Legislation establishing connexional stationing was brought forward at the following Conference.
2.4.4 The Conference
The Primitive Methodist annual meeting or conference was first established in 1819. Kendall described how in the ‘rudimentary period’
up to 1819, Hugh Bourne had acted as General Superintendent over the whole Connexion consisting of first one, then three circuits. But with Bourne’s health failing a representative annual meeting or conference was created, the first, held in Nottingham, being referred to as a ‘preparatory meeting’ in the manner of the Quakers who Bourne
58‘Each District Meeting shall station the preachers in its respective District, for one year only…They may station a preacher to be six months in one circuit, and six months in another…[etc.] ibid,4. The districts continued to have that right until 1878.
59A description of the ‘District Man’ can be found in H.B. Kendall, What Hath God Wrought! c1900, 64, extract in Geoffrey Milburn, Primitive Methodism (Peterborough:
Epworth Press, 2002), 24.
60“Annual Address of the Primitive Methodist Conference to the Societies under its Care”, Minutes of the 1869 Annual Conference of the Primitive Methodist Connexion, Grimsby (London: William Lister, 1869), 82-83.
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admired. The reason Bourne himself gave for instituting the annual meeting / conference was that ‘an enlargement of discipline was found necessary in order to preserve the unity of the connexion and promote proper variety and exchange among the travelling preachers’.61 These two features, unity and itinerancy, were of course at the heart of Wesleyan Methodism and its conference, from which Primitive Methodism had parted company. The PM conference was however a somewhat different body from that of the Wesleyans, being representative from the beginning. The rule was that delegates were elected at the district meetings in the proportion of two lay persons to one travelling preacher.62 This feature clearly demonstrates the intention for lay dominance in the Connexion.
Rules for eligibility were very demanding for both lay and ministerial representatives. In 1845, rules laid down for those eligible to attend the conference meant that a preacher needed to have travelled 18 years and been a superintendent 12 years to qualify, and a lay person a member for 12 years and an official for 10. Even at the turn of the twentieth century, conditions laid down for prospective lay delegates were decidedly restrictive. With the intention of ensuring a high standard of debate, decision-making and spiritual maturity, those deemed ineligible ranged from people who were ‘inattentive to discipline’ or ‘troublesome in the church’ (echoes of the Wesleyan past), or were insolvent, to needing to hold office and ‘As far as practicable’ to be ‘…those brethren who possess general intelligence and business habits, and who habitually devote their energies to promoting the work of God’.63 Such restrictions may have had the desired result, but seem somewhat at odds with the image of the spirit of openness and acceptance usually associated with Primitive Methodism.
61 John Petty, History of the Primitive Methodist Connexion from its origin to the
Conference of 1860, a new edition, revised and enlarged (London: R.Davies, Conference Office, 1864), 97. Petty was quoting Hugh Bourne verbatim.
62Geoffrey Milburn, Primitive Methodism, 22.
63 The General Rules of the Primitive Methodist Church (1912), print on demand edn.,
19.
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2.5 Connexionalism
The term ‘connexionalism’ or the ‘connexional principle’ in Methodism described the practice of being a Connexion and is a multi-faceted term. It described the relationship between the travelling preachers and John Wesley: they were ‘in connexion’ with him. It pointed to unity of doctrine and discipline under the authority of the conference. (The question ‘what to teach?’ on the agenda of the first (1743) conference implied an intention to have a single doctrinal basis). It expressed connectedness through the itinerancy of the travelling preachers both within and between their circuits. It described the sharing of human resources as demonstrated by the ‘stationing’ of travelling preachers to their circuits by the conference. It was expressed in a spirit of mutual support and encouragement across and within the circuits.
The term was also used to refer to the centralisation of certain functions such as connexional funds, which went with being ‘one body’.
With a stronger emphasis on centralisation as control, Robert Currie described connexionalism as ‘...co-ordination of effort and centralisation of control and direction through a series of courts culminating in one supreme authority’.64 The ‘series of courts’ reflects the similarities between Methodist and Presbyterian polity.
Critics have used the term to refer to the perceived controlling power of the annual conference and its executive when considered excessive.
Julia Stewart Werner, her own sympathies clear, used it in this way in her 1984 study of early Primitive Methodism:
The corollary of the new clericalism [in Wesleyan Methodism]
was connexionalism, a strengthening of central power at the expense of local autonomy. Many Methodists, irked by
64 Currie, Methodism Divided, 141. E.R. Taylor was very critical of the centralisation
he perceived as having been introduced and promoted by Jabez Bunting. Taylor, Methodism and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933). It should be noted however that Wesley himself encouraged central control through his demands for reports and statistics from the circuits.
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itinerants who set themselves up as “reverends”, were likewise vexed when, with increasing frequency, the hand of Conference was visible in their affairs65