This illustration by artist Don Cluff appeared above the caption “a pastoral visit by Jesse Lee” in 1976 in a special supplement to Zion’s Herald, a Boston-based Methodist publication no longer in print.
Preaching at muddy roadsides and in orchards and farmhouses in Ridgefield and Easton, Norwalk and Redding, Stamford and Stratford two and a quarter centuries ago, itinerant circuit rider Jesse Lee told of God’s “perfect love” and the “sense of pardoned sin” he’d felt in Virginia in the 1770s, after being touched by the spirit of the Methodist movement started by John Wesley in England.
“Jesse Lee came in June 1789,” said Pastor Bill Pfohl of Ridgefield’s Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church, “and he preached his first sermon in Norwalk, and he preached here on the 26th of June at the Independent Schoolhouse — about where town hall is today.
“Jesse Lee was a circuit rider, so he would be visiting a number of communities at the same time — he’d be in Norwalk, he’d be in the Easton area, he’d be in Ridgefield.
“To quote the Scripture,” Pastor Pfohl said, “foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man (and Methodist preachers) have nowhere to lay their heads.”
After his work in southern Connecticut Jesse Lee went north, spreading the word from Massachusetts to Maine, rousing souls to the Methodist ethic of striving to make Christian goodness a part of everyday life.
“Jesse Lee is known in Methodist circles as the Apostle of Methodism to New England,” Pastor Pfohl said.
Ridgefield’s Methodist congregation began with a few people getting together, talking about their faith.
“There weren’t really services that were happening, these were small group meetings. The church began as a small group,” he said. “The church met in people’s homes for 45 years before the first meeting house was built.
“We were the third church that Jesse Lee started in New England,” Pastor Pfohl said.
Ridgefield’s congregation can now claim to be the second oldest surviving church among the Methodist gatherings that trace their founding to Jesse Lee’s preaching around New England in the late 1700s.
“The oldest is Jesse Lee Methodist Church that’s in Easton,” Pastor Pfohl said.
Conscience and war
A 1976 supplement to the Boston-based Methodist newspaper Zion’s Herald — no longer in print — offered a description of Jesse Lee’s development from man of conscience to preacher.
“In July 1789 Jesse Lee was drafted in to the Revolutionary Army. Having scruples against war, he declined to bear arms. While in detention, he was given to vigorous hymn singing and preaching of Weslyan doctrines.
“His earnestness soon became transparent to all concerned. Thus, as a conscientious objector, he was made a wagon driver, from which assignment he was honorably discharged as a ‘sergeant of pioneers.’
“Formerly a layman with some Anglican associations, Lee joined the Methodists in 1774. Fulfilling his appointments as an ‘exhorter’ and local preacher, despite a limited academic background, Lee became a zealous evangelist in proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Historical view
A glimpse of the challenges he faced coming north to preach is offered in Jerry O. Cook’s book Roots and Branches: Historical Essays on Methodism in Southern New England. Essayist Paul D. Woodbury Jr. wrote of Jesse Lee’s ministry in New England, after years of preaching in the South.
“In June 1789, Jesse Lee set out for New England on horseback all alone. His appointment read ‘Stamford, Connecticut,’ but no such circuit actually existed. It would be up to Lee to create a viable circuit on his own.
“Jesse Lee preached his first New England sermon in Norwalk, Connecticut, on June 17, 1789 … The sermon was based on the texts ‘Ye must be born again’ (John 3:7) and it was delivered under an apple tree by the side of the road…
“The next day, June 18, Lee preached from the courthouse steps in Fairfield, Connecticut, which was 16 miles from Norwalk. On Sunday, June 21, he preached at the courthouse in New Haven. From there he went on to Redding, Danbury, Ridgefield, Rockwell, Canaan, and Middlesex, before returning to Norwalk on July 1…
“Although there had been no conversions and no attempt at organizing classes or societies, Lee had managed to get a Methodist foothold on New England. A foothold was not all he got, however. He also got plenty of resistance! He was denounced from several pulpits, and received quite a few rebuffs from the general populace.”
Peter Parley
The skepticism with which Methodists were viewed by some in those decades is evident in a passage from Recollections of A Lifetime by Samuel Goodrich, who grew up in Ridgefield and wrote under the pen name Peter Parley.
Writing in 1853 and looking back on his youth, Mr. Goodrich said: “For a considerable time the Methodists made few converts in Ridgefield, but they planted themselves in the neighboring towns, and soon their numbers were sufficient to hold camp-meetings in various quarters.
“At length, Dr. Baker, a respectable physician of our village, became imbued with the rising spirit, and began to hold meetings in his kitchen. Here there was praying, and exhorting, and telling experiences, and singing sentimental airs to warm and sentimental religious hymns.
“The neighbors gathered in, and soon it was noised abroad that a great work was going on. Various passions were insensibly wrought upon to swell the movement; curiosity was gratified by something new and strange; the love of the dramatic, implanted in every bosom, was delighted with scenes in which men and women stood up and told how the Lord had brought them from death into life…”
Celebrations
In June Ridgefield’s Methodist Church celebrated the 225th anniversary of Jesse Lee’s first talk to Ridgefielders. Come January it will celebrate the start of an organized Methodist community in Ridgefield.
“We began with the 225th anniversary of his first sermons,” Pastor Pfohl said, “and we expect our bishop will be here on Jan. 25, for the 225th anniversary of Jesse Lee being incorporated as a church.
“In the eight months or so, seven months, between those dates, the church was small group meetings in people’s homes in the Limestone area of Ridgefield.
“Worship, as in a Sunday service, wasn’t the predominant activity of Methodist classes, bands and societies — those were the different terms for those small groups,” Pastor Pfohl said.
“Jesse Lee was a layperson as he founded these classes and societies. He was actually ordained the day before he left Ridgefield. We were incorporated and he was ordained that same weekend, and then he left this circuit and began starting churches up in Massachusetts, in the Lowell area, then there’s bunches of Jesse Lee churches up in Maine.”
Circuit riding was no easy task in the era of horse travel through what was then a less densely populated area.
“Being a Methodist circuit-rider was very dangerous and challenging work,” Pastor Pfohl said. “Many circuit riders did not live very long, particularly in New England.”
Weather was a concern.
“Summer’s generally pretty good. But if you’re traveling through woods, with streams that go up and down, there’s no bridge — in and through the winter months, crossing streams in the winter. There are many stories of circuit riders having horses die out from under them, because they froze to death.
“There’s a song, and it’s not a long one: ‘Only the crows and the Methodist preachers would be out on a day like today.’”
Methodism was originally a movement within the Church of England.
“The Methodist brand, so to speak, was more about what we would speak of as practical divinity. It was a very hands-on — and still is — expression of Christianity.
“Methodism would have been much more of a lifestyle than it was a faith that was practiced. There were a variety of folks from different church traditions that would be part of Methodist societies.
“The founders of Methodism were two Anglican priests, John and Charles Wesley — this was in England — they would gather groups from a variety of denominations and simply seek to encourage one another to live out their faith in practical ways.”
Slavery opponent
Methodist founder John Wesley was a leading voice in England against what he called the “complicated villainy” of the slave trade.
John Wesley also did much to get preaching out of the chapel — and he had mixed feelings about it at first — going out among the people.
“He preached in the outdoors. He would go to the fields. He would go to the mines. And he would lead services there, which was not proper for an Anglican priest to do, because practically speaking that’s where he saw people who needed to know the love of God, and weren’t getting it, carrying out their lives,” Pastor Pfohl said.
The early Methodists — whether the Wesleys in England or Jesse Lee in New England — not only preached, they worked by getting people to form small groups and discuss how they sought to live their religion.
“The focus was practical: How do people live in the love God and allow their hearts and minds to be transformed by God’s will,” Pastor Pfohl said.
“They would met on a regular basis, they would study the Bible, they’d offer exhortations or preaching or encouragements to one another. They’d report on the progress of their spiritual journey and seek ways to serve the community or to serve the cause of Christ in the community.”