|
|
|
"An Aggressive Warfare"
Eli Farmer and Methodist Revivalism in Early Indiana
RILEY B. CASE
|
Though the Catholics came to Indiana first, it was the growth of the Methodists which dominated the history of religion in Indiana in the first half of the 1800s.... Preaching is what made the Methodists grow—preaching that was regular, frequent, and exciting.... Early Methodist preaching was generally successful; the morale of Methodist preachers was generally high. They reviewed the rising membership statistics and concluded "The Lord of Hosts is with us."
|
| L. C. Rudolph, Hoosier Faiths1 |
|
|
| In 1820, Eli Farmer, a child of the Kentucky frontier and now a riverboat worker with his brother, was spiritually reclaimed from a "backslidden" religious life at a Methodist campmeeting along the Ohio River. Like thousands of other Methodist converts, his life would be shaped by the church's practices and doctrines; like hundreds of other young men, he stepped beyond the mourner's bench and the foot of the altar to take up a call as a circuit preacher. Until his break with the denomination in 1839, Methodism would dominate Eli Farmer's life, and he would make important contributions to the group's growth on the midwestern frontier.2 |
1
|
|
Farmer (1794–1881) was officially a Methodist circuit rider for only nine years. He was not one of the Methodist "authorities," having never attained the office of elder.3 Probably because he left and started a new denomination, he is mentioned only in passing in histories of early Indiana Methodism. In an early history of Monroe County he appears as a Bloomington businessman in the 1840s, and a founding member of the town's Old Settler's Club in the 1850s. In addition, he was also a farmer, an editor, a Whig, a Republican, a freemason, and a state senator.4 As a young man, he had trained as a soldier during the War of 1812 but never saw battle; late in life, he helped raise a Civil War regiment and served as a volunteer chaplain. Precisely because of his ordinary stature, however, he provides an excellent example of a typical frontier circuit rider (whose average length of service in Indiana was 12 years), who gave over several years of his life for the preaching of the gospel to the exclusion of almost all else and then, worn down by a variety of factors, returned to a more ordinary way of life. |
2
|
|
Eli Farmer began his autobiography in 1874 when he was eighty years old, "as a memento for my children." If the manuscript is an indication of what he valued in his long life, Farmer remembered himself foremost as a preacher and evangelist. There is no mention of the Masonic Lodge or of the Old Settlers' Club in his autobiography. He hardly mentions his life as editor, or his political philosophy as a state senator.5 |
3
|
|
This article will follow the years that Eli Farmer spent as a Methodist circuit rider, using some of his experiences to discuss features of Methodism that contributed to the denomination's rapid growth in early Indiana. |
. . . |
There are about 11192 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
