|
|
The Heritage of Jamieson Memorial Methodist Church
1830 – 2001
Complied by James and
Louise Sheppard
Prologue
Our story starts thousands of years ago when
Abraham came out of Ur and made a covenant with God. From that day until
today the message has been carried on by men and women inspired by God. Two
thousand year ago, God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to save the world. After
the crucifixion, the disciples of Jesus carried on the work of spreading his
word. Some like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were outstanding men followed
be the giant intellect of the great teacher and leader, Paul. But not all
the work was done by such men as these. Ordinary men and women inspired by
the message of Jesus rose to the occasion and spread the Word. Some in a
dramatic way, some in a very quiet manner, but all helped, each in their own
way to spread the message of Jesus. And spread it did, so much, that four
hundred years later Christianity became the State Church of Rome and the
Roman Empire which covered a large part of the known world. This Church
became known as the Catholic Church with a leader known as the “Pope”. Soon
the positions of Pope and Emperor became on and the same.
In 1517, and Augustinian
monk named Luther shocked the Catholic world by leading a movement for the
reform of greed and corruption in the Catholic Church. Called the
Protestant Reformation, this reform movement led to the creation of many
reform groups such as the Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian, and other
protestant churches.
This set the stage for
change in England where everyone was required to belong to the Catholic
Church. The English king, Henry VIII, in 1534 persuaded the English
Parliament to make him the head of the Church of England in addition to
being king. This new Church of England became know as the Anglican Church
and the Catholic Church was outlawed in England. In 1607, the first English
settlers in American at Jamestown brought the Anglican Church with them and
it became the official church of English America.
Back in England, a most
remarkable young man, John Wesley (1703-1791) was a young minister of the
Church of England. Educated at Oxford, Wesley was the son of an Anglican
minister. Not completely at ease with himself or his profession, he went to
the Georgia Colony in America to convert the Indians and to perhaps put his
own soul more at ease with God. In 1738, he returned to England feeling he
had failed with both quests. That same year at a prayer meeting at
Aldergate in London, something happened that changed his life. He said that
“his heart was strangely warmed”. Whether his studies and prayers came
together at the prayer meeting or whether God touched him does not matter.
His life was changed from that moment on. He came to feel it was not
following church rules that really mattered in one’s life. Rather having
faith in God’s mercy and being holy in one’s owns life were the things that
really mattered. Only this kind of life could bring peace and true love of
God. He had no idea of starting a new religion, He just wanted to make the
Anglican Church a more personal religion. His brother, Charles Wesley,
supported him completely in this denomination called the “Methodist”. In
American, where ordinary men and women were not tied so tightly to old
traditions, the ideas of Methodism as a new denomination came in the
1770’s. John Wesley, however, remained loyal to the Anglican Church and it
was only after his death in 1791 that Methodism in England became a separate
religion.
The story of Methodism
in America and the story of American becoming an independent country are so
intertwined that it is almost impossible to separate the two. Many
Americans were ready for a change in both government and religion by the
early 1700’s.
Methodism came to
America by several paths. One was by a Methodist lay preacher from Ireland
named Robert Strawbridge. In 1764 in Maryland he started what may have been
the first Methodist M3eeting House in America. Strawbridge and other lay
ministers seem to have preached in Virginia about this time. In 1771 Wesley
sent Richard Wright and Francis Asbury to America. Francis Asbury soon
became a great leader of the Methodist in America. Bu the close of the
Revolutionary War in 1783, there were about 15,000 Methodists and 80
ministers in America. It was then that John Wesley sent Thomas Coke to
American as “superintendent” and made Francis Asbury a “second
superintendent”.
One year later in 1784,
the Methodist Episcopal Church of America was organized. This was when the
American Methodist Church made a real break with the English Anglican
Church. The first Methodist minister in the area near Clarksville may have
been Robert Williams. He came over from England around 1769. In 1774 he
established the Brunswick Circuit of the Methodist Church. He attracted
followings in 14 southside Virginia counties and two North Carolina
counties. Some have called our area “the cradle of Methodism in the South”.
Methodists started
meeting in the Clarksville area well before the town was formed in 1818.
Probably, they met as early as 1775 in peoples’ homes as small prayer groups
and in larger outdoor “camp meetings”. There were Methodist Churches or
meeting housed built in the county a few years later. One was near
Northview in 1780, one in the north end of the county near Smith Creek in
1784, and Easter’s Church was in existence before 1794. After 1800
Methodist Churches began to spring up around the county. Clarksville was
only a tiny village with a ferry landing until after 1819. Oral history
says that a Dr. Whealty was the first minister of the Methodist Church which
was organized around 1830. It would be 1835 before the Methodists in
Clarksville felt that they could erect their church.
|
|
