The Conference in Methodism

American Methodism ordered and structured itself through conferences. In the Methodist lexicon, 'conference' refers to a body of preachers (and later, of laity as well) that exercises legislative, judicial and (to some extent) executive functions for the church or some portion thereof. Established by John Wesley, the conference remained his creature during his lifetime but on his death inherited much of his decision-making and policy-setting authority. It became a central feature, perhaps the central feature, of Methodist polity. Its political dimensions have been often noted and measured. Indeed, the drama in Methodist histories typically derives from conference, its struggle to political competence and the on-going struggles between conference and episcopacy for authority and power. When analyzed or indexed, 'conference' has that polity meaning. Unfortunately, it frequently bears that meaning alone. But 'conference' possessed a richer significance in Methodist life and discourse than the lexicon admits. This volume explores the American conference both in its narrow political or constitutional roles and in its larger dimension. A hint of the latter is in order.

Conference defined the Methodist movement in other ways than political. On conference hinged religious time, religious space, religious belonging, religious structure, even religiosity itself. Religious time lasted from one conference to the next. That was the duration of appointments of preacher to circuit or church. Appropriately, then, Methodist histories, particularly early ventures, structured time from conference to conference. Periodization was but one of conference's several uses. Conference delineated Methodist space as well. Gradually specific boundaries were drawn and conference came to have geographical meaning. Then preachers belonged to one conference; congregations related to specific conferences. In part because everything, in a sense, belonged to conference, early Methodists built on conference, employing it as foundation for other structures, tying missions, education, publication and financial efforts to that basis. Conference, as least in its early years, gathered in the entire Methodist system. Even spirituality revolved around it. Although largely obscured from historical attention, casual notations in letters and journals suggest the importance of conference as a preaching and sacramental occasion. Revivals and conversions often occurred at conference and conferences functioned to sustain and cultivate the religious life.

As American Methodism grew in numbers and national scope, both temporal and spatial dimensions increased. Methodism structured itself in terms of a tier of successively more inclusive conferences. For much of American Methodism, the three basic conferences came to be (1) the quarterly conference which gathered in the leadership and often membership of a single Methodist circuit, (2) the annual conference which brought together the preachers in a geographically defined region, and (3) the general conference whose meetings every four years functioned as legislature and judiciary for the church and typically also set executive policy, defined doctrine and elaborated the structures for the entire church. At every level conference possessed such important power and authority as to make it inevitably and intensely political. Politics did, at times and over time, eviscerate conference, gutting its other functions. But as we shall see, well into the 19th century conference retained the meanings outlined above. Hence one way to understand Methodism is to view the emergence and changes in its basic structure—conference. Methodist histories uniformly recognize, typically even feature, conference's centrality but render that in constitutional, political and polity terms. Such treatments do effectively chart the way in which the conference event developed into a governmental form. Here conference will be viewed as possessing a far more complex identity. It will be the purpose of this volume to present conference as a/the distinctive [American] Methodist manner of being the church, a multifaceted, not simply political, mode of spirituality, unity, mission, governance, and fraternity that American Methodists lived and operated better than they interpreted.

The Wesleyan Conference

Like so much else in Methodism, the conference both reflects older impulses toward Christian organization and bears the personal stamp of the Wesleys. In its immediate background lay Protestant efforts to re-order church and world according to New Testament precept, impulses expressed in complex ways in the home of Susanna and Samuel Wesley, a home that refracted both Puritan and Anglican spirituality.

Also influential for Susanna and her sons was the witness of Pietism. Traditionally associated with the efforts of Philipp Jakob Spener, who gave shape in Pia Desideria (1675) to a religion of the heart drawing on ideas and practices then reverberating throughout Europe, Pietism prospered by creating new gatherings. It did so less preoccupied than Puritanism and the larger Reformed tradition with finding biblical warrant for every detail of Christian life and less intent upon having every ecclesial structure conceptually and organizationally coherent with 'Church'. Pietism sought a recovery of the spirit/Spirit with a variety of practices, including especially small groups for prayer, Bible reading, testimony and Christian conversation. That spirit affected both Susanna's gatherings in the Wesley home and Samuel's society. The Moravians served as another mediator of Pietist practice of Christian gathering.

Precedents abounded. The Quakers, for instance, employed weekly, quarterly and yearly meetings for both governance and the spiritual life. Within the larger Methodist movement, Howell Harris and the Welsh evangelical Calvinists preceded Wesley in establishing a conference. And behind the experiment with conference lay Wesley's own success with smaller and more local gatherings—the bands, classes, and societies. Conference belonged to this web of precedented practice, within and without the Wesleyan movement.

Nevertheless, John Wesley, as Richard Heitzenrater has shown, had a penchant for putting his own distinctive stamp on and establishing claim over widespread practices and established precedent. So he presented conference as an extension of his own deliberative processes.

In June, 1744, I desired...