I felt my heart strangely vexed...

In Chapter 2 of American Methodism, it is noted that “Coke performed. Asbury governed” (32). There is harshness here, as in other places throughout chapters 2 and 3 that spoke to the realities of what was happening between white men in terms of power struggles and Methodist identity formation. Rhetoric surrounding inclusion of black members and white women, however, speaks through the tone of giving our historical figures the benefit of the doubt. For instance, “Methodists had difficulty in credentialing black leadership” (31), “If gender vexed early Methodism, so did race and language” (37), and the preacher’s wife who exercised ministry “in teaching, in visiting, in comforting the ill and bereaved, in witnessing, in heading missionary societies, in modeling family piety, in interpreting her husband (to women and other preacher, in supporting the ministry, in negotiating the frequent moves, in short, in functioning as a sub-minister” (54). Methodists did not have “difficulty” credentialing black leadership- they didn’t want to- and if they did, they were complicit in not getting what they wanted. I’m sorry, gender and race “vexed” white, male Methodists? What a burden. And if I’m reading that extensive list correctly, I’m seeing that the preacher’s wife was no “sub-minister” but a minister. This is something we seem to do quite frequently in historical writing, where it is totally acceptable to give realistic accounts of the bitterness that raged between white male leadership, but then to dilute the matter as soon as race and gender vex the conversation. In what ways does this type of historical writing linger on in our own conversations, sermons, and complicity within the institution? Are Methodists still having the same trouble in allowing “benefit of the doubt” and respectability politics; are we allowing it to carry us?