“Our people die well”: Deathbed scenes in John Wesley's Arminian magazine

Abstract

John Wesley established the Arminian magazine in 1778. It ceased publication in 1969, by which time it had become the longest-running religious periodical in Western history. The diverse content of its first issues included several narrations of the last days and hours of various good Methodists. By attention to the growing number of death scenes that appeared in the Arminian magazine between 1778 and Wesley's death in 1791, this paper seeks to reconstruct the constitution of the Methodist framework of holy death and, in so doing, make a contribution to the way historians understand religious movements. It argues that those engaged in holy dying behaved in ways designed to demonstrate their assurance of salvation to themselves, their families and friends, and to God. Biographers of the moribund then made additional embellishments and omissions designed to further perfect these tableaux and maximize their utility to those Christian readers looking for ready proofs that they themselves would go to heaven. Exploring the methods used to make these potentially morbid accounts as appealing as possible to a diverse national readership, we can gain a sense of how Wesley used the new technologies of mass communication to inculcate a feeling of community between readers while at the same time using this new channel as a tool of religious instruction.

Keywords:

• Methodism
• deathbed
• mass communication
• genre theory

Notes

Biographical note

Richard J. Bell is an advanced graduate student in the History Department at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA. His dissertation examines the cultural significance of suicide in revolutionary America.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard J Bell

Biographical note Richard J. Bell is an advanced graduate student in the History Department at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA. His dissertation examines the cultural significance of suicide in revolutionary America.