Shouting, Embracing, and Dancing With Ecstasy: The Growth of Methodism in Newfoundland, 1774-1874 (Mcgill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion)

In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century, Newfoundlanders, who often lived in small, mobile communities where they supported themselves with strenuous work and ingenuity, increasingly broke away from Anglicanism to find joy and comfort in the Methodist tradition. In this 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 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.