Shouting, embracing, and dancing with ecstasy : the growth of Methodism in Newfoundland, 1774-1874

An impressive study of the important role common people play in reviving faith. "In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century, Newfoundlanders, who often lived in small, mobile communities where they supported themselves through strenuous work and ingenuity, increasingly broke away from Anglicanism to find joy and comfort in the Methodist tradition. In a remarkable study of a region's reasons for changing how they practiced their faith, Shouting, Embracing, and Dancing with Ecstasy presents a unique perspective on the histories of Methodism and Newfoundland." "Contesting previous historical scholarship, Calvin Hollett argues that the growth in Methodism was not the result of clergy-dominated missionary work intended to rescue a degenerated populace. Instead, the author shows how Methodism flourished as a people's movement in which believers in coastal locations were free to experience individual and communal rapture, and giving rise to large lay revivals in more populous areas." "An insightful look at the growth of a religion, Shouting, Embracing, and Dancing with Ecstasy reasserts the importance of laypeople in religious matters, while detailing successful ways to bring the religious experience into daily life."--BOOK JACKET Cover Contents Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Maps Introduction CHAPTER ONE: Newfoundland Methodism as Social History CHAPTER TWO: Methodism and Newfoundland Religion in the Nineteenth Century CHAPTER THREE: Dialectical Tensions within Methodism CHAPTER FOUR: Newfoundland Methodism and the Question of Distinctiveness CHAPTER FIVE: Early Methodism in Conception Bay, St John's, and Trinity Bay CHAPTER SIX: Bonavista and Bonavista Bay CHAPTER SEVEN: Twillingate and Notre Dame Bay CHAPTER EIGHT: Burin and Placentia Bay CHAPTER NINE: Grand Bank, Fortune, and the South Coast Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Contesting previous historical scholarship, Calvin Hollett argues that the growth in Methodism was not the result of clergy-dominated missionary work intended to rescue a degenerated populace. Instead, the author shows how Methodism flourished as a people's movement in which believers in coastal locations were free to experience individual and communal rapture and welcomed at lay revivals in more populous areas. An insightful look at the growth of a religion, Shouting, Embracing, and Dancing with Ecstasy reasserts the importance of laypeople in religious matters, while detailing successful ways to bring the religious experience into daily life.