Image from Free Images https://www.freeimages.com/photo/communion-1-1458089
What's in the communion cups? Well, if you're a Methodist, you can bet it's grape juice. Read on to find out why.


Donald Scott states that evangelicalism was not merely a religious movement, but also a social movement. By that he means religionists sought to address some of the issues shaking nineteenth-century life. Among these were urbanization, floods of immigrants, westward migration, industrialization, the rise of monopolies and powerful industrialists, social fluidity (changing one’s social class), the Civil War and Reconstruction, women’s suffrage, and human rights. In short, evangelicals were trying to reduce the instability created by the Industrial Revolution and improve life for themselves and others.
 
Scott writes: “Historians have usually looked to political parties, reform societies like temperance organizations, or fraternal associations like the Masons for the origins of this new associational order. In fact, evangelicals were its earliest and most energetic inventors. Indeed, as historian Donald Mathews has pointed out, the Second Great Awakening was an innovative and highly effective organizing process. Religious recruitment was intensely local, a species of grass-roots organizing designed to draw people into local congregations. But recruitment into a local Baptist, Methodist, or Universalist church also inducted people into a national organization and affiliational network that they could participate in wherever they moved. Moreover, adherence to a particular evangelical denomination also inducted them into the broader evangelical campaign.”
 
But one's own denomination or congregation was not the only place nineteenth-century evangelicals went to work. It was not unusual to find them serving alongside people from other denominations as well as those who were outside traditionally-defined Christian groups, such as transcendentalists, abolitionists, free-thinkers, and secularists.
 
So, for clarification, let’s turn again to Maggie’s experience. She is part of a local Methodist Episcopal congregation. She participates in camp meetings. She also is part of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) denomination. Her membership in the MEC means Maggie would receive official periodicals and other written materials from them. Beyond that, she also might have affiliations with other organizations, within which one would find people from other denominations or no religious affiliation at all.
 
One small example of cross-denominational cooperation exists in the Saint Maggie series. We learn in The Dundee Cake, which takes place in 1852, that Maggie reads a national anti-slavery periodical called The National Era (a real magazine, by the way) and came into contact with the serialized version of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. (Side point: Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter of famous Congregationalist clergyman Lyman Beecher.) At this point, Maggie already is staunchly anti-slavery. This is also the year she hires Emily Johnson as her cook and soon invites Emily and her husband Nate into the household.

Saint Maggie begins in 1860. Here we find that Maggie now works with Emily and Nate Johnson as station masters on an Underground Railroad station. Emily and Nate are members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a different denomination from Maggie’s. The AME was founded in Philadelphia in 1787 by Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others in protest to the racist treatment they had received by white members of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church. Despite split between white and black Methodists in the previous century, Maggie, Emily, and Nate’s friendship has overridden their denominations' history. All of this indicates that Maggie’s experience in the Underground Railroad is both cross-denominational and interracial.
 
Historically there is evidence that evangelicals regularly participated in various social reform movements. Not only were they active in the anti-slavery movement, but they also fought for women’s rights, including the vote. They started schools, colleges, and universities for African American students. They also addressed social issues such as alcoholism, prostitution, poverty, education, and child welfare. Later in the century, people of faith rallied against child labor, and promoted on-the-job safety and fair treatment for factory employees. (Child labor laws, a 40-hour work week, and safety laws eventually were passed in the 20th century.)
 
But not everything nineteenth century evangelicals did was helpful or enlightened. For instance, originally the movement for temperance was understood to be a force aimed at encouraging people not to drink to inebriation. Evangelicals had noticed that excessive alcohol consumption, especially among men, could lead to spousal and child abuse, poor performance on the job (which then would result in being fired), and poverty. However, the extreme wing of the movement began pushing temperance people into the idea of teetotalism, or total abstinence from alcohol, and carried the day. This radical campaign on the part of evangelicals to banish alcohol consumption from the life of Americans led in 1919 to the ratification of the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol. However, Prohibition turned out to be a great legal and social disaster. And in 1933, a scant fourteen years later, the 21st Amendment passed, repealing Prohibition.
 
Vestiges of total abstinence still survives today. I am a United Methodist, When we observe the sacrament of communion, also known as the Lord's Supper, we use grape juice, rather than wine. (To be fair, some other Protestants do this too, notably Presbyterians and Baptists.) The non-alcohol innovation was made possible by Thomas Welch, a nineteenth-century New Jersey Methodist who developed a process to pasteurize grape juice. That’s right folks, a Methodist invented Welch’s Grape Juice. Today, however, we often explain our use of grape juice - as well as our prohibition against the consumption of alcohol on our property - as an act of solidarity with those who struggle with addiction. While this is an admirable sentiment, churches that permit the presence of alcohol on their grounds and wine in the sacrament, often will offer soft drinks and a cup with grape juice for the same reason. I strongly suspect that my denomination's "in solidarity with" statements regarding alcohol is a twenty-first century attempt to make lemonade out of an embarrassing Prohibition lemon.
 
In short, when Maggie and her friends try to change their town and their world for the better by taking stands supportive of the oppressed in their midst, much of the impetus comes from evangelical religious beliefs. Maggie, in particular, focuses on what she calls “the law of love.” In other words, her vow to love all unconditionally stemming from her love for God. And this is based in Jesus' statement that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love others. Maggie doesn’t always succeed at living this way but, wow, does she ever try! I strongly believe that her attitude was prevalent among many nineteenth-century evangelicals as well.
 
But somewhere in the middle of that same century things began to shift and the shifting eventually led to the emergence of twentieth and twenty-first century Evangelicals. We’ll take a look at that story on Monday.
 

Sources:
 
Scott, Donald. “Evangelicalism as a Social Movement. Queens College, City University of New York. National Humanities Center. Downloaded 17 May 2019.
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/nevansoc.htm

Image is John Wesley,founder of Methodism. From https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/john-wesley-17031791-80701
 

I often refer to my character Maggie Blaine Smith, as well as her daughters Lydia and Frankie, and best friend Emily Johnson, as “evangelical.” Today, that word often calls up images of people who apply their understanding of the Bible to social issues such as abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, racism, the general rights of women, and more. Some groups of Evangelicals are attempting to change laws in the United States to make them more closely fit their beliefs on these social issues. As a result, an increasing number of people who don’t share Evangelical beliefs are shying away not only from Evangelicals, but also from other people and organizations who identify as “Christian.”
 
I want to clarify that in Maggie’s day, evangelicalism and evangelicals were different. For my own uses, I will use the term “Evangelical” (with a capital E) to identify people and concepts that developed around the early 20th century and still with us in 21st century. When I use the term “evangelical” (with a lower-case e), I am referring to people and concepts at large among many Protestants in the 19th century.
 
Justin Taylor provides a nice summary for us of what evangelicals were: “In 19th century North America, evangelicalism basically referred to a loosely associated, intradenominational coalition of Protestants who held to the basic reformational doctrines of sola fide [faith alone] and sola scriptura [Scripture alone], mediated through the revival experiences of the Great Awakenings.”
 
Taylor is saying that people like Maggie basically believed a person was “saved “ (aligned with God and God’s will) by faith alone, and their main frame of reference for understanding the world was the Bible. They were influenced by the Great Awakenings, which were a nationwide religious revival, one in the mid-1700s and the other in the early 1800s. The impact of the Awakenings continued into Maggie’s era as camp meetings and revivals by evangelists such as Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875).
 
In addition, the spiritual and practical life of many Methodists most likely were mediated through something called the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral,” a four-sided way of looking at an issue developed by Methodist founder John Wesley. The Bible (scripture) was of course one’s primary tool, but Methodists also employed reason (God gave us a brain), experience (what your own life tells you about the issue), and tradition (what the church historically has said about the issue).
 
Added to this were John Wesley’s Three General Rules: 1) Do no harm; 2) Do good; and 3) Attend to ordinances of God (i.e., the things that God gave us to help us grow in love and faith, such as public worship, sacraments especially the Lord’s supper, preaching, private and communal prayer, reading the Bible, and fasting from food or other things.
 
Note: The third rule has been shortened by author Reuben P. Job to “stay in love with God” in his book Three Simple Rules. The slogan has been picked up by the United Methodist Church in general and has become universal among us. Although “stay in love with God” is a nice little piece of shorthand, I feel that I must disagree with Job. I think Wesley’s idea was more nuanced. In the twenty-first century, which is so fractured and individualistic, “stay in love with God” might be understood as a “God and me" or a "Jesus and me" thing. For instance, I pray and meditate on my own. When I go to worship, the music and the prayer makes me feel happy and good. But I believe it's more than that.
 
It is my understanding that Wesley was talking about “me, God, and my community of faith” in this third rule. I believe that he was emphasizing a person’s need to have individual faith practices (i.e., personal prayer and fasting) in addition to taking part in communal practices. Communal practices might include Bible studies, prayer groups, communal worship and the sacraments, mission and service projects, and all the other groups in which we might share our lives, hopes, and fears with one another and pray for one another. I believe – firmly believe – that Wesley’s third rule “attend upon the ordinances of God” is precisely what gives us the power to do good and refrain from doing harm on a both personal and communal levels.
 
But I digress. As a theologian and a historian I do that. Sorry-not sorry.
 
Anyway, all of the above explains Maggie’s penchant for doing good and attempting to ease the pain she sees around her, not to mention her habits of praying, referring to the Bible, sharing her life with her household around the dining table, writing in her journal, and attending church.
 
On Friday, we’ll look at nineteenth-century evangelicals in social change movements.
 
 
Sources:
 
 
Scott, Donald. “Evangelicalism as a Social Movement. Queens College, City University of New York. National Humanities Center. Downloaded 17 May 2019.
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/nevansoc.htm

Playing around with a new cover. If you think authors don't experience peer pressure - this might be a result of my author chums messing around with their covers. "But, Mom, all the other authors are doing it!" Mom: "And if all the other authors jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it, too?" So we'll see if I really mean this or not. Haha.

I apologize for the late posting. I have been working like mad to finish a draft of A Good Community so I can give it to my beta readers. My plans were thrown off mightily by a pile of events in late April: Holy Week and a series of activities at the church where I serve as (for lack of a simpler term because I actually have three titles) assistant minister. There was a family faction sandwiched in there, as you probably have noticed. And then I was knocked off the rails when I learned my dear old dog Tippy had a recurrence of cancer. She slid downhill quickly and on May 1, I had her put down to relieve her of further pain and suffering.
 
So… yeah… getting back to the book, not to mention something resembling a post-dog life has been challenging.
 
One of the things I did today was add the Introduction section to A Good Community. I copied it from the previous book and then gave it a tweaking because it’s a good introduction for those who might pick up the new book but know nothing about the series itself.
 
Then it dawned on me that I might as well post it today for people new to Squeaking Blog.
 
So here we go. Welcome to “Saint Maggie 101.”
  
If you’ve never read one of the books before, let me give you a little background on the “Saint Maggie universe” or as I like to call it the “Maggie-verse.”
 
The original story is rooted in research I did while working on my Ph.D. in North American Religion and Culture. I took a tutorial focused on scandals in Methodist ministry. For the required research paper, I found a sad, tragic story about a talented, charismatic young minister named Jacob Harden who lived in Warren County, NJ during the 1850s. Harden ended up in a shotgun marriage, a result of his own love for the ladies and some devious plotting on the part of his future mother-in-law. Predictably, the marriage was not a happy one. However, Harden’s response to the miserable situation was far from what one would expect of a nineteenth-century clergyman. And that’s putting it mildly.
 
The story stayed with me long after the paper had been turned in and graded. In the years directly after grad school, I found myself wondering how the story might be fictionalized into a novel. And during 1999-2000, I tried my hand at telling the Harden’s story as fiction.
 
The result was a character-driven tale set in 1860-61. I called it Saint Maggie, after the novel’s good-hearted Methodist widow, Maggie Blaine. She runs a boarding house and one day receives the new minister, Jeremiah Madison, as her newest boarder. The other people living in the house are a group of societal outcasts: an aging, failed writer named Chester Carson; Jim “Grandpa” O’Reilly, an old Irish immigrant of no fixed job; a broke, struggling young lawyer by the name of Edgar Lape; and the undertaker’s apprentice, Patrick McCoy. In addition, the 39-year-old Maggie two teenage daughters: Lydia, the sensible one with a knack for nursing, and the younger one, outspoken, opinionated Frances (nicknamed Frankie).
 
Also residing in the house are Emily and Nate Johnson. Emily is Maggie’s closest friend and the boarding house’s cook. Nate is a carpenter. But because the Johnsons are black and Maggie is white, Maggie and Emily’s close friendship does not sit well with the town folk. To make it worse, the boarding house sits prominently on the town square, so its inhabitants and their activities are clearly visible to everyone.
 
Living in Maggie’s outbuilding is have Elijah Smith. When the story begins, he is the editor of a penny weekly called the Gazette. A former Quaker and self-proclaimed free-thinker, Eli also is sweet on Maggie. The story of their romance and eventual marriage is told in the novel
 
Just to complicate matters, Maggie and her entire household have abolitionist beliefs. Emily and Nate have been running a station on the Underground Railroad for a while and eventually invite Maggie and Eli into this act of civil disobedience. So they have a secret that they keep from the rest of the town. If it is discovered and reported, they all would face a hefty fine and a jail sentence.
 
Maggie works to keep the Underground Railroad secret and runs a boarding house with nearly broke boarders. At the same time she is starting to court the local free thinker. She hopes adding a minister to the mix will give her boarding house (an her) a touch more respectability. Little does she know!
 
After years of pulling the story out, revising it, having friends read it, and putting it away, I finally self-published the book in 2011. I released Saint Maggie through my micro-publishing company, Squeaking Pips Press, Inc.
 
At the time of the book’s publication, I never imagined that I would end up writing a series. However, as I visited books clubs, one little question came up several times and this changed everything. That question was: “What happens next?” Apparently, readers loved the characters and wanted to hear more about them and their adventures.
 
The series is getting quite large now. So is the cast of characters. Some come and go for one book, while others are recur. As a result, I have taken to including a characters list and sometimes maps for readers’ reference.
 
The list below shows where A Good Community falls in chronologically with the other Saint Maggie stories.
 
“The Dundee Cake” (short story)                          1852
Saint Maggie (novel)                                              1860-61
The Enlistment (novella)                                         1862
Walk by Faith (novel)                                             1863
“The Christmas Eve Visitor” (short story)             1863
A Time to Heal (novel)                                            1863
Seeing the Elephant (novel)                                   1864
The Great Central Fair (novella)                            1864
A Good Community (novel)                                   1864
 
 
So now you know. Or have had a refresher course.
 
Next week I'm plan a couple of blogs about the difference between 19th century evangelicals and their 20th (and 21st) century counterparts. You might be surprised at the difference between an “evangelical” and an “Evangelical.”
 
Until then… Have a great weekend.