Abstract
The Wesleyan Methodist Mission Society (WMMS) assembled October 1813 and narrowly missed celebrating its 2013 bicentenary. In Methodists and Their Missionary Societies, 1760–1900, John Pritchard has undertaken a thorough, engaging study of 140 years of Methodist missionary labor. Volume 1 was followed by a sequel that appeared in 2014 and covers 1900–1996. Both chronicles flowed from an initiative documenting a now-defunct Methodist Missionary Society (MMS), terminated on July 9, 2013, by order of the British Methodist Conference. Pritchard directed the Methodist Missionary History Project since its 1994 inception; these books are part of Ashgate’s Methodist Studies series.
Volume 1 examines the late eighteenth-century inauguration of MMS activity and ends at the dawn of the twentieth century. Wide-ranging, albeit selective continentally, it touches on British North America; West, South, and East Africa; Asia; and New Guinea. Pritchard introduces readers to MMS engagement in present-day Ghana (formerly, Gold Coast), Nigeria, India, and China, within contexts heralding an ecclesiastical internationalism and extending across a known world facing industrialization. The text’s arc follows the march of informal empires, imperialism, and colonialism. Expansively, it employs distinct registers for generalists and specialists with expertise in particular regions and epochs. An Africanist, this reviewer gravitated readily to the sections resonating with geographic, cultural, and social milieus of greatest familiarity. Students of mission or missiology can profit from Pritchard’s portraits of far-flung fields.
Pritchard scrupulously outlines MMS’s global contours. Africa spoke to Pritchard directly, insistently, and persistently, as he was serving in Ivory Coast and editing Urban Africa, the quarterly print organ of the All Africa Conference of Churches. These experiences lend poignance to African portions of the narrative. From 2000 to 2006 he chaired the Interdenominational Friends of the Church in China. Command of his vast subject is considerable and rooted both in documentation and in ground-level exposure.
In sixteen concise chapters Pritchard offers succinct sketches of early MMS pioneers, predictably starting with brothers John and Charles Wesley, Methodism’s founding fathers. The Wesleys’ reach extended to the New World but ignobly faltered in Georgia. Aided by Nathaniel and Francis Gilbert, the message reached Antigua in 1759, including the former plantation slaves of Nathaniel. Wesleyans formed societies and classes, and their message eventually reached Calabar. An itinerant presbyter in the 1770s, Thomas Coke (called “the flea” for his traveling) made eighteen transatlantic voyages initiating foreign mission. Coke was appointed superintendent (effectively, Methodism’s first bishop) in 1784 and solidified the church’s presence in America, largely by stressing African conversion.
Former British slave Thomas Birch Freeman, a Gold Coast Methodist missionary from 1838 until 1890, is profiled in chapter 5, entitled “Pioneers.” Grenadian Henry Wharton joined Freeman from 1845 until 1875, manumitters of mixed descent. Freeman started over eighty schools. Mission broke Wharton’s health; his Accra-born son Arthur was Britain’s first black football star.
Pritchard’s history hones in on the 1813 schism from Anglicanism, wherein rebellion yielded a new denomination. Chapter 6, “Gospel and Justice,” probes social gospel and social justice trends from antislavery to South Pacific island internecine warfare.
Delineating the WMMS’s first half-century, Pritchard sails into Asia, India, and China and then devotes chapters to Africa, the Caribbean, inter-Methodist competition in China, mission life, gender, women, martyrdom, and a summary anticipating the twentieth century and volume 2.Pritchard’s work is suitable for students of mission or for university or seminary reading groups and discussion circles. The author directly confronts historic ethnic and racial chauvinism applied to other peoples and faiths. The sum total is a vital, lively text.