CIRCUIT RIDERS

CIRCUIT RIDERS. Ministerial circuit riding was devised by the English religious dissenter John Wesley. A circuit consisted of numerous places of worship scattered over a relatively large district and served by one or more lay preachers. The original American circuit riders introduced Methodism into the colonies. Robert Strawbridge, who came to America about 1764, was the first in the long line. Wesley sent eight official lay missionaries to America from 1769 to 1776, and several came on their own. By the end of the American Revolution there were about one hundred circuit riders in the United States, none of whom were ordained. With the formation of the Methodist Episcopal church in 1784, Francis Asbury was chosen bishop, several of the circuit riders were ordained, and the system was widely extended into the trans-Allegheny West.

Circuit riding was peculiarly adaptable to frontier conditions, since one preacher, equipped with horse and saddlebags, could proselytize in a great many communities. In this way the riders kept pace with the advancing settlement, bringing the influence of evangelical Protestantism to new and unstable communities. Peter Cartwright, active in Kentucky, Tennessee, the Ohio River valley, and Illinois, was the best known of the frontier preachers.

The circuit system largely accounts for the even distribution of Methodism throughout the United States. Other religious bodies partially adopted it, particularly the Cumberland Presbyterians. By spurning religious conventions, preaching to African Americans, and challenging the established churches, these visionary preachers gave voice to a rising egalitarian spirit in American society in the early years of the nineteenth century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989.

Heyrman, Christine Leigh. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt. New York: Knopf, 1997.

Wallis, Charles L., ed. Autobiography of Peter Cartwright. New York: Abingdon Press, 1956.

William W.Sweet/a. r.

See alsoAfrican American Religions and Sects ; Dissenters ; Evangelicalism and Revivalism .

Circuit Riding The Judiciary Act of 1789 required that the justices of the Supreme Court serve also as judges of the circuit courts. The justices complained that circuit riding caused serious physical hardships and diverted them from more important duties in the nation's capital. The southern circuit, for example, required travel of nearly 1,800 miles, twice a year, in a country that had poor roads or, in some places, none at all. The early justices even agreed to take a reduction in salary if Congress would appoint separate circuit judges. Congress, however, believed that circuit riding transformed the justices into republican schoolmasters, who brought federal authority and national political views to the distant states. Through their charges to juries in early criminal cases, for example, the circuit riding justices impressed on the citizenry the authority of the remote national government. Circuit riding also exposed the justices to local political sentiments and legal practices.

Congress in 1801 abolished circuit riding on grounds of efficiency, but a year later a new Jeffersonian Republican majority restored the practice, obliging each justice to hold circuit court along with a district court judge. Gradually, however, improved communications, increasing business in the nation's capital, and the strengthening of American nationhood following the Civil War rendered circuit riding anachronistic. Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1869 established a separate circuit court judiciary, although the justices retained nominal circuit riding duties until the Circuit Court of Appeals Act of 1891 (see Judiciary Act of 1891). Congress officially ended the practice in 1911.

See also Circuit Courts of Appeals.

Kermit L. Hall

circuit rider itinerant preacher of the Methodist denomination who served a "circuit" consisting usually of 20 to 40 "appointments." The circuit system, devised by John Wesley for his English societies in their formative period and developed in America by Francis Asbury, proved especially adapted to the conditions of the American frontier and came into its own in the trans-Allegheny region. Its success was a factor in establishing Methodism in America. The circuit rider, traveling usually on horseback because it was economical and suited to the forest pathways, preached nearly every day and twice on Sundays, thus covering his circuit every four or five weeks. His appointments were usually in pioneer cabins, schoolhouses, or tavern barrooms. The circuit rider often had a limited education, but he was usually an effective preacher and lived a very self-sacrificing life.

Bibliography: See E. K. Nottingham, Methodism and the Frontier (1941, repr. 1966); W. W. Sweet, The Methodists, 1783–1840 (1946, repr. 1964).

Circuit Rider, The, novel by Edward Eggleston.