Disciplining Youthful Methodist Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Cornwall

Discourses of Methodist temperance and teetotalism in Cornwall, U.K., show geographical relationships that link religious constructions of moral sanctity with specific forms of bodily performance. Understanding religious attitudes toward youthful spirituality and the histories of children informs theoretical debates concerning the embodied religious subject, citizenship, and public performance, expressed in the activities of Sunday schools and the Band of Hope (a temperance organization in which children took a pledge of total abstinence from alcohol). Methodist communities sought to regulate young people's behavior beyond the spaces of the chapel. Methodists' beliefs in autodidacticism, temperance, and social engagement have a spatiality as well as a history that demands attention. Key Words: bodychildrenMethodismreligiontemperance Acknowledgments This research was funded by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust (F/00144/U). We are grateful to Professor Paul Cloke for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. Notes 1. This article forms part of a wider project, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, into the construction of Methodist communities and place-based identities ca.1830–1930 (Reference F/00144/U). 2. Indeed, with a few exceptions (e.g., CitationHopkins 2004), religion is ignored as a marker of difference within children's geographies, which concentrate on the negotiated use of public space, identity formation, forms of consumption, global networks, familial relationships, methodology, and ethical concerns (CitationHolloway and Valentine 2000; CitationAitken 2001; CitationValentine 2004). 3. Most existing geographical analyses of religion tend to focus on the material and institutional construction of religious practices (see CitationLevine 1986), overlooking the complex relationships that link hierophantic experiences to religious doctrines, narratives, and beliefs. 4. Harold CitationTurner (1979) expresses the difference between domus dei (sacred space containing the presence of God) and domus ecclesiae (sacred space as a vessel to contain worship). 5. The Independent Order of Rechabites was a friendly society established in 1835 to promote total abstinence from alcoholic beverages. 6. CitationShiman (1988) identifies four phases in the temperance movement in England in the nineteenth century. (1) 1800 to the early 1830s: a middle class movement led by clergy and urban reformers, with an emphasis on moral suasion, which entailed a reasoned appeal to the individual drinker based on the merits of modest consumption. (2) Mid-1830s to mid-1850s: a movement dominated by working-class teetotallers and linked to an ethos of self-improvement promoted by Christian Nonconformism. (3) Late 1850s to the mid-1870s: the moral suasion argument gave ground to legislative action and prohibition. Milburn notes, however, that although Methodists were concerned about the drink trade, "there was widespread reluctance amongst non-conformists to encourage state control over areas of private choice, even on such an urgent issue as the drink problem" (CitationMilburn 2002, 60). (4) Mid-1870s to 1895: moral suasion revived through the gospel temperance movement. Failure of the prohibition movement resulted in declining public interest in teetotalism. 7. John Wesley was the eighteenth-century founder of Methodism, whose itinerant preaching tours and printed sermons provided the early impetus for Methodist expansion and the foundation of a Methodist theological and ethical tradition (see CitationRack 2002; CitationMarsh et al. 2004). 8. Although John Wesley renounced the use of strong spirits, he enjoyed a glass of wine with his meals. His application of temperance (i.e., moderation) to all aspects of his life, however, was a key feature of his spiritual discipline. CitationRack (2002, 353) notes that during 1733 Wesley adopted a grid system for charting his spiritual temper, on which he recorded his hourly devotion on a scale of one to nine. 9. All references to scripture are cited from the Authorised King James Version (see CitationPrickett 1996). In the Hebrew scriptures, the story of Noah provides a salutary reminder of the danger of inebriety (Gen. 9:20–28). Becoming drunk, Noah left himself naked in his son's sight. The metaphor that links nakedness with sin, or the loss of innocence, is founded in the creation story surrounding the archetypal disobedience and punishment of Adam and Eve, a metaphor that is carried throughout Judaeo-Christian scripture (see CitationMiles 1992). The prophets also linked sinfulness to metaphors of drunkenness (see Hab. 2:15). 10. In the modern context, these notions of the innocent and malleable child are found in a succession of didactic treatises. Writing in the sixteenth century, Desiderius Erasmus advocated early education and compared children to wax, to be molded while it is soft (CitationCunningham 1995, 44). Likewise, for the seventeenth-century empiricist philosopher John CitationLocke (1693), the purpose of child rearing was to inculcate virtuous habits from an early age in order to produce an adult who will submit to his or her own reason. For Locke, virtue resides in denying the satisfaction of our own desires, where reason does not authorize them (CitationCunningham 1995, 63). Jean Jacques CitationRousseau (1762) disaggregated Locke's notion of child rearing by perceiving four stages in the pupil's development, beginning with infancy, which was characterized by the formation of habit and the training of the emotions. Unlike Locke, Rousseau argued that children should be raised according to their pre-social nature and that the imposition of moral rules and learning is not helpful until later in their development, once the emotions, sense, and intellect have been formed. 11. Sometimes referred to as inherited sin, original sin is constructed in Pauline theology as a universal human condition with its origins in the sin of Adam, the first human. The consequence of original sin is the inability to act morally in obedience to God. 12. Pelagius (AD 383–424) argued that God holds a human responsible for only those things that he or she is able to do. God is good and commands us to do good, so it follows that we must be able to do the good that God commands. Pelagius, therefore, rejects the doctrine of original sin on the grounds that the human capacity to act morally is not impaired to the extent that we can be relieved of the responsibility to behave morally regardless of religious experience, beliefs, or practices. Jacobus Arminius (ca. 1559–1609) revived this tradition, stressing the freedom of the individual to choose God and to act morally. Arminius influenced the philosophy of John Locke and the theology of John Wesley. Wesley's success as a theologian was to find a theological synthesis between Arminianism and the doctrine of original sin (see CitationSemmel 1973; CitationMarsh et al. 2004). 13. The Redruth Times and Camborne Advertiser was published during the period 1867–1925. It changed its name to the Citation Cornubian and Redruth Times in 1879, and in 1924 became the Cornwall County Times. 14. The Band of Hope was a teetotal organization for young people, which advocated total abstinence from alcoholic beverages, and sometimes from tobacco. The young person was required to sign a document pledging commitment to the principles and practice of total abstinence. Band Meetings often took place in Methodist chapels and Sunday school buildings, utilizing songs, hymns, recitations, catechisms, lectures, and lantern slides to advocate teetotalism. 15. The first temperance societies were introduced to Cornwall at Truro and Bodmin in April 1832, when Rev. G. W. Carr from New Ross, Ireland, an agent for the British and Foreign Temperance Society, made a visit (CitationLander 2003). 16. The geography and impact of James Teare's itinerant agitation are recorded in the "Local Intelligence" sections of The Cornwall Teetotal Journal (CTJ). The CTJ was first published in 1839, continuing as the Cornwall Temperance Journal and Rechabite Recorder in 1843, becoming the Cornwall and Devon Temperance Journal: Rechabite Recorder and Peace Advocate between 1844 and 1849. 17. The United Kingdom Alliance was a teetotal organization founded in 1853 in Manchester. It became the leading advocate of prohibition in the United Kingdom. 18. In 1891, there were 3,714 Wesleyan Bands of Hope (CitationWinskill 1891). Essentially, adult members were those who took the pledge of abstinence and supported the organization, whereas juvenile scholars were required to attend weekly meetings that were not compulsory for adults. 19. For the very young, a proxy signature would have been used. 20. Mudge was born in Bodmin in 1806, and in 1829 trained as a surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He returned to Bodmin to practice medicine for the rest of his life. A Wesleyan Methodist, Mudge performed the roles of local preacher, class leader, teetotal advocate, and (1861–1862) mayor of Bodmin Borough Council (CitationLander 2003).