The End of Circuit Riding
It makes sense to date the beginning of circuit riding at the Christmas Conference of 1784, but it is much more difficult to date the end of circuit riding because it was never an official category of ministry, so it never appeared in Annual Conference records. The U.S. census eliminated "frontier" as a category in 1890, but the need for "old fashioned" circuits generally ended much earlier, sometime before the U.S. Civil War. Whenever Methodist Episcopal congregations became well established, bishops would appoint clergy to groupings of small congregations rather than the territories to which earlier clergy had been appointed. Of course, this development moved west as the U.S. frontier moved west.
Read more about this topic: Circuit Rider (religious)
Famous quotes containing the words the end of, the end, circuit and/or riding:
“When you’re at the end of your rope, all you have to do is make one foot move out in front of the other. Just take the next step. That’s all there is to it.”
—Samuel Fuller, U.S. screenwriter, and Milton Sperling. Samuel Fuller. Merrill (Jeff Chandler)
“It is seen
At the end that the kind and good are rewarded,
That the unjust one is doomed to burn forever
Around his error, sadder and wiser anyway.
Between these extremes the others muddle through
Like us....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The Father and His angelic hierarchy
That made the magnitude and glory there
Stood in the circuit of a needle’s eye.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Wilmer Cook: Keep on riding me, they’re gonna be picking iron out of your liver.
Sam Spade: The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”
—John Huston (1906–1987)