Transatlantic Methodists

It is well known that Methodism met with resounding success in North America. By 1861 in Upper Canada, as author Todd Webb notes, Methodists had become the largest religious group in the colony (163). This story has tended to be told as an unfolding and flowering of Canadian nationalist identity. Webb, an assistant professor of history at Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada, believes this reading belies a more tangled reality. In Transatlantic Methodists, which was shortlisted for the Canadian Historical Association's 2014 John A. Macdonald Book Prize for best scholarly book in Canadian history, Webb employs meticulous research and a lively style to build a compelling argument about the formation of Methodist identities in the Canadas (now the provinces of Ontario and Quebec). He suggests that to understand this history, one must take into account events and relationships on both sides of the Atlantic during the nineteenth century.Webb mined minute books, journals, correspondence, and publications on both sides of the Atlantic to tease out a fuller story. What emerges is a nuanced coming-of-age narrative for Methodism's Canadian daughter, one that details negotiations about what it meant to be British, to be Methodist, and to be Canadian, for both Canadians and their British parent Church. In the end, argues Webb, Methodism in Upper and Lower Canada was ‘integrated into a British world’ (15). Having laid aside their American and other attachments, by the 1870s Canadian Methodists were British and Wesleyan, formally linked to British Wesleyanism, and looking much like it in structure and worship life. However, intriguingly, they were also ready to ‘leave home’—to part ways amicably with their British Connexion in order to form new Methodist unions in Canada. Webb takes the reader on a journey from mission field to autonomous denomination that entails fascinating voyages not only back and forth across the cold North Atlantic, but into colonialism, identity formation, and the relentless quest to keep John Wesley's theology and ecclesiology alive and flourishing. The book is accessible to non-specialist readers interested in the development of Methodism, British colonial history or Canadian history, yet its scholarship is rigorous enough to appeal to specialists.While the thesis of Transatlantic Methodists is complex, its structure is clear. After introducing the topic and context, Webb outlines four intersecting nineteenth-century issues that helped shape Methodism in the Canadas: (1) the British Wesleyan foray into Lower and Upper Canada, where American Methodists had already begun missions; (2) the battle for unity and hegemony between the British Wesleyans and the Canadian Methodists; (3) the thorny issue of transatlantic mission financing; and (4) debates about the competing authority of revivals and the ordained clergy. As they negotiated these challenges, Methodists in both Britain and Canada struggled to understand what it meant to be engaged in a colonial relationship and in the formation of new ecclesial and national identities. Do ‘true’ Wesleyans support Establishment, both in Britain and in Canada? When should a colony start to fund its own missionary enterprise? (As soon as possible, said many Brits; not so fast, the Canadians replied). At what point does a deeply felt ‘religious awakening’ become unwanted ‘extravagance and enthusiasm’ (142)? In the end, Webb concludes, Methodists in Canada developed a ‘conservative, but subversive sense of self,’ as they saw themselves as ‘the guardians of a pure version of Britishness and Wesleyanism, uncorrupted by the worldly diplomacy of the home connexion’ (163).Todd Webb's work is significant in several ways. It claims a British Wesleyan identity for Methodism in Canada, and in so doing speaks to the depth and power of the colonial project. It suggests the value of a trans-oceanic appraisal by historians of all missionary enterprises, Methodist and otherwise. The book also challenges theologians to consider the ways that wider political and economic circumstances helped to shape the ecclesiology of Methodists worldwide. And while Webb focuses on the British-Canadian relationship, his research invites further investigation into the ongoing effects on Canadian Methodism by their American Methodist neighbours.Finally, as he makes his substantial scholarly contribution, Webb weaves his narrative in a way that honours the deeply personal and affective nature of Methodism itself. At every turn we hear the real voices of Methodists in full rhetorical flight, pleading for transatlantic solidarity, for generosity, or for loyalty to sovereigns, temporal and heavenly. Webb surveys the scene with a gently ironic touch, yet enough poignancy that when, in the final pages, the Canadian Methodists go their own way, our hearts break a little at the parting

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