Manna and the Manual: Sacramental and Instrumental Constructions of the Victorian Methodist Camp Meeting during the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Abstract

“The character of the place on which one Stands is the fundamental symbolic and social question,” Claims historian of religion Jonathan Z. Smith. From this sense of place, there follows a “whole language of Symbols and social structures.” Studies of Methodist history have also considered sensitivity to Methodism's distinctive sense of place essential to their subject. It is now commonplace to observe that Methodism shattered the geographic bounds of church and parish in order to situate religion for activity across an open, unbounded terrain. This proved one of the most offending characteristics of its ministers, whose itineracy commonly violated civil laws intended to locate spatially religion. Within some traditions, the receipt of a “location” meant a minister received a church and thereby became a minister. Within Methodist discourse, granting a “location” has held quite the opposite meaning: it has meant a departure from the ministry.

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