The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England.

Heitzenrater, Richard P.

The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England. By D. Bruce Hindmarsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. xv + 386 pp. $110.00 cloth.

No other book published in the last 150 years contains the words "evangelical conversion narrative" in the title. With this study, however, Professor Hindmarsh has proven just how much such a book has been needed. His main argument is that, in spite of the differences that are evident in the context and styles of spiritual autobiography of evangelicals in the eighteenth century, a study of their chronology, literary form, theology, and social conditions reveals identifiable similarities and conventions that define the evangelical conversion narrative as a genre central to the religious history of the period.

He not only exhibits a masterful interpretive grasp of the spiritual autobiographical accounts themselves but also manifests a mastery of the related secondary literature as he looks at the background and nature of the genre and the historical context and literary manifestations of specific narratives (see for instance his excellent summary of John Wesley's story, 111-23). Fortunately, Hindmarsh does not become bogged down in linguistic ideology or psychological analysis. Rather, he demonstrates a careful balance of examining the historical context, using the tools of literary criticism, and developing an experiential morphology. Some chapters unfold historical developments; other sections entail comparative analysis of individual narratives and experiences. The bulk of the study deals with the Protestant Evangelical Revival in early modern England, with an occasional glance at the American scene, especially Jonathan Edwards.

The introductory chapter analyzes "theoretical questions and concerns" and "distant antecedents" of the eighteenth-century narratives. In the former section, the author looks very carefully at the nature of five topics central to the study: autobiography, narrative, identity, conversion, gospel. In the last half of the chapter, he traces the development of spiritual autobiography from St. Paul and Augustine through the reformations of the sixteenth century.

The first two chapters provide the background for the narratives that are the heart of the study. First, the author examines the crucial role of Puritan and Pietist narratives in the development of spiritual autobiography as a genre that became a membership requirement of some gathered churches. He shows how they developed a recognizable pattern, typified by the Puritan morphology of the penitential struggle. Second, Hindmarsh examines the influence of literary and social forces in the eighteenth century, showing that the evangelical awakening had a connectedness that was partly the result of increased mobility and communication in society--local revivals, built around personal conversion, became networked nationally and internationally.

These narratives began as oral set pieces that were then inserted into journals, sermons, or letters, formed the heart of testimonies at Love Feasts, and were carried abroad in letters that were read in society meetings on "letter days." Serial journals and successive publications soon became a standard means of telling an unfolding life story of spiritual development, including not only multiple accounts of spiritual awakenings but also, in some instances, stories of apostasy or "unconversion" as in the case of Joseph Humphreys (86-87).

The third chapter focuses on the experiences of George Whitefield and the Wesleys, John and Charles. They represent a major shift from the private confessional diary to the public narrative journal, which the author shows convincingly was often associated with common travel journals. These publications played an important role in stimulating similar conversion experiences and forming a "narrative community" (128). The individual nature of autobiographical reflection, however, meant the development of quite different paradigms within a variety of narrative communities.

Chapters 4 and 7 look at early Methodist lay people and lay preachers. For the former, the author examines a large group of letters from the 1740s, collected by Charles Wesley, especially from women, which demonstrate the role of preaching and individual conversion in the formation of a narrative community that nurtured a mimetic religious culture. The lives of the early preachers, solicited by John Wesley in the 1780s and first published in his Arminian Magazine, reveal the development of an invariable narrative convention that always included a detailed account of their conversion. The author shows that their "syntax of a retrospective consciousness" differs from the "punctual identity" of 1740s accounts or the "serial identity" of the early journals (228). In many cases, conversion led to itinerancy and forms the leitmotiv that gives meaning to the whole of their lives.

Chapter 5 examines the Moravian narrative culture, which Hindmarsh not only shows is differentiated from the Methodist (which was more "agonistic" and "legal"), but also asserts is a rejection of the Pietist focus on Busskampf. The Moravians developed a pattern of self-consciously collected spiritual memoirs (Lebenslauf) that were quietist, preoccupied with sufferings of Christ, and shaped by liturgical rhythms.

Chapters 6 and 8 describe the spiritual autobiographies that emerged from the Cambuslang revival in Scotland (collected by William McCulloch) and the life stories of the Olney evangelicals, John Newton, William Cowper, and Thomas Scott. Hindmarsh's discussion of the role of the contemporary editor adds a fascinating element to this part of the study. These largely Calvinist narratives, both mimetic and unique, also display a defined morphology of conversion and a common narrative structure, even though they are individuated in special ways.

Chapter 9 shows how conversion stories, required of many dissenters for church membership in the seventeenth century, become part of an increasing involvement with the community of faith by the end of the eighteenth century. This development is demonstrated in the experiences of people such as Anne Dutton and John Ryland, Jr. Their stories entailed not a changing of religious affiliation, but their transformation became a means of passing on not only the "grammar of conversion" but also the piety of the community of faith.

The last chapter, "After Christendom," begins with an excellent summary of the main arguments of the book (321-26). The author then looks at spiritual autobiography beyond the bounds of Christianity, both chronologically and ideologically. He fulfills his earlier promise to study the context across lines of race and geography, as well as gender, age, and class.

Professor Hindmarsh brings his study to a close by showing how the nature of autobiography changed at the end of the eighteenth century. Using a figure that bridges many themes in the book, he displays the Memoirs of James Lackington as an example of "modern" self-analysis that reveals a trend toward the autonomy of Enlightenment individualism. However, Lackington, who had experienced an "unconversion" shortly after becoming a Methodist and then became a very rich book dealer, later had a "reconversion" and rejoined his old denomination. Yet in his subsequently published Confessions he continues to portray himself as fully in control of his fate, contrary to the evangelical conversion narratives of the previous half-century. He becomes, for Hindmarsh, an exemplar of the end of a period of transition that marks the context for the earlier narratives that appear between the "trailing edge of Christendom and the leading edge of modernity" (340).

Though some readers will look for more theological analysis than is present, this excellent book is a sensitive combination of historical investigation, literary criticism, social analysis, psychological awareness, and religious evaluation. Its price may keep it out of most personal libraries, but it should be read by every serious student of eighteenth-century Christianity.

Richard P. Heitzenrater

The Divinity School, Duke University