Texas frontier fueled Methodist rebellion
From the East Texas Journal, December 2023
By Hudson Old, Journal Publisher
HUGHES SPRINGS – In the process of community college honor students researching the story of a Methodist pastor who defied Spanish rule when he crossed the Red River following a trail blazed by an 18th century French expedition through Daphne Prairie into present-day Franklin County, they discovered Dan Hoke, a retired Methodist pastor with a passion for the denominational backstory of his church’s arrival in the New World.
“Dr. Andrew Yox is crafty,” Dan Hoke said of the history professor whose award-winning honors program at Northeast Texas Community College has been built by student researchers who write, direct and star in film adaptations of characters stepping from pages of epic tales.
By the time production of the film telling the story of the establishment of the earliest Protestant Church in East Texas was completed for its debut in spring of 2024, “his students knew more than me about the movement of Protestants across Texas.
“I say he’s crafty because he gets them on a topic, piques their interest to research, write and work their way through all the logistics involved in transforming a story to a dramatic production,” said Mr. Hoke, who brought the story of Methodist “Traveling Preachers” to the Hughes Springs chapter of a women’s literary society.
Monthly meetings of the Sesame Literary Club feature local writers and historians, said Club Historian Brinda Mandella.
The idea of taking church services beyond the walls of the sanctuary “was an anathema to the Church of England,” Mr. Hoke said. “In the traditional view, the world beyond the church doors wasn’t refined enough for the glory of God.”
Convinced of the value of “open air preaching” Bishop Francis Ashberry left England for the American colonies in 1771. The rebellion in the ranks of the church moved parallel in time with the American Revolution.
Led by John Wesley, recognized as the founder of a liberated denomination, “by 1784 a group of Bishops downloaded the Methodist Church from the Church of England,” Mr. Hoke said.
Traveling ministers established churches nurtured by circuit riding pastors.
“They were distinctly different,” he said. “The circuit riders worked settlements”
The Traveling Ministers pushed into the frontier where the gospel met with people hungry for social interaction.
“The first thing a traveling pastor needed was a good horse,” he said. “What Ashberry figured out was that people grew spiritually in small groups. Methodists created the Sunday school concept in which Christians became accountable to each other rather than a church hierarchy. That strengthened the sense of community among the earliest immigrants arriving after the American Revolution.”
Funding was the key to taking church to the people rather than waiting for people to find the church.
“The traveling pastors weren’t lavishly paid, but they were paid well enough,” he said. “It was the critical thing that separated Methodists from the other Protestant denominations,” he said.
