THE SADDLEBAG PREACHERS
Mounted and with Bibles in hand, the Methodist Circuit Riders carried the Gospel to the American frontiers
"Rooted and grounded in love, settled and established in sound doctrine, but in everything else he should be as moveable as a soldier on the land or a sailor on the sea." Such was the philosophy that motivated a group of America's hardiest frontiersmen - the Methodist circuit-riding preachers.
Circuit riding took its precedent from the examples of John Wesley and George White-field, both of whom carried their ministries from city to city. Wesley said, "The world is my parish," and the early Methodist itinerants showed every evidence of having captured his spirit. The Methodists were the fastest -growing churches in post-revolutionary America and a key to their success was a dedicated group of circuit riders, sometimes known as saddlebag preachers.
John Wesley's plan of multiple meeting places called 'circuits' required an itinerant force of preachers. A circuit was made up of two or more local churches, sometimes referred to as 'societies' by Methodists. These travelling pastors were responsible for caring for these societies. Ranging far and wide through villages and wildernesses, they preached daily or more often at any site available be it a log cabin, a barn, the local court house, a meeting house or an outdoor forest setting. A typical circuit could be from 200 to 500 miles in circumference and it would take a circuit rider about four weeks to complete the round.
Educationally and socially, the early Methodist preachers were cut from the same fabric as the farm and artisan families who madeup the bulk of their audiences. Most of them had nothing more than a common school education and they received a paltry salary. In addition to sheer poverry, they were often placed in the worst accommodation; and yet no matter how crowded, smelly, filthy or insect-and-disease-ridden the cabins, they were bound by the very nature of their calling to accept their lodgings without complaint.
The early circuit riders preached and travelled at a gruelling pace. Peter Cartwright (1785-1872) wrote in his autobiography: "A Methodist preacher, when he felt that God had called him to preach, instead of hunting up a college or Biblical Institute, hunted up a hardy pony and some travelling apparatus. He went through storms of wind, hail, snow and rain: climbed hills and mountains, traversed valleys, plunged through swamps, swollen streams, lay out all night, wet, weary and hungry slept with his saddle blanket for a bed and his saddlebags for a pillow."
Not only did the preacher face physical hardship, but often he endured persecution. Another rider, Freeborn Garrettson, wrote "I was pursued by the wicked, knocked down and left almost dead on the highway, my face scarred and bleeding, and then imprisoned." It is no wonder that nearly half of the circuit riders died before they were thirty.
Francis Asbury (1745-1816), set the pace. Born in England, he was ordained a Methodist minister and volunteered as a missionary to the American colonies in 1771. By 1784 John Wesley had made him Superintendent of the entire American Wesleyan societies. A man of total dedication and a tireless worker, he travelled 270,000 miles and preach 16,000 sermons during his 45 year career on the circuits.
Wherever Asbury went, new churches were formed, new circuits laid our and hosts of preachers raised up to carry the Gospel to remote villages. Concerning slave owners who would not free black slaves, he announced without hesitation, 'God will depart from them.'
Asbury never married and often recommended that his circuit riders give themselves to celibacy because of the extreme hardship and solitary nature of the life. It is not surprising that one contemporary called early Methodism 'a boiling hot religion.'
Between 1770 and 1820, American Methodists increased in number from fewer than 1,000 members to more than 250,000 and rose from a dozen ministers to more than 4,000. Largely as a result of the zeal and passion of these 'saddlebag preachers', radical Christianity was firmly planted at the frontier of the infant United States of America.
Source: Bob Jones University, www.bju.edu/faith; John Wigger: Christian History magazine.
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