The History of the Obscure Primitive Methodists

This week  being the 150th anniversary of the founding of the first chapel of the Obscure Primitive Methodists in Husborne Crawley, I feel it important that we not let the event pass, and instead share the story of this short-lived denomination.  Or, in fact, denominations.

The Beds County Council archives (make the most of their website - the council has been abolished) and Genuki mention the Primitive Methodist congregation, which existed from  1800 to c. 1924.  But the "Prims" were never primitive enough for the people of Husborne Crawley.  I am blessed in possessing the archives of the "Obscure Primitives", and they refer to the day in 1860 when old Jabez Butning, after a breakfast of mouldy rye, was blessed with a vision.  In it, he saw the words "My Grace is Sufficient" in crop-marks on Wicca Leys, and understood from it that he was to found a new church which rejected all modern comforts and trust in Grace alone.  Bearing in mind that these were Victorian "modern comforts", he set up his new congregation in a cow-shed in the northern half of the village.

For a few years, the congregation thrived and grew.  These were the days when Evangelicalism was strong in the land, and a fellowship living in such extreme Christian poverty was bound to make converts.  But, as so often, schism was never far away.  The inevitable break-down occurred through a radical disagreement over - as is so often the way - Church music.  The traditional accompaniment for the Obscure Primitive Methodists was the kazoo.  But, on a disputed reading of 2 John, some members of the congregation came to believe that the kazoo was "the harmonica of the Dark one".  Bloody proof-texting waged for weeks, but eventually it became clear that the situation could only be resolved by the two groups going their separate ways.

Accordingly, the Obscure Primitive Methodists (Lord Rockingham's Connexion) was formed, and built itself an even draughtier chapel - in red brick, but with large holes in the walls and ceiling -  in the south of the village - in what was once "Crawley" as opposed to the northern, "Husborne", part of the village.
The next few decades were a grim time of internecine warfare.  Members of each chapel knew that, if the Minister did not agree with them on any point of practice or doctrine, they could always walk out and go down the road.  And among a bunch as fractious as these - and Bedfordshire folk are famous for their stubbornness - many people could change congregation on a weekly basis.  Indeed, on one occasion the ministers discovered that their entire congregations had swapped allegiance during the week, and moved en masse to the other church.  Then one Sunday both the ministers seceded to each other's church, which was a real shock to those of their flocks who had defected during that week.

Numbers decreased sharply in the 1930s.  So the church stewards and one remaining minister got together and agreed that it was both a Christian and a prudent idea for the churches to re-unite - "that they may be one".  Accordingly in 1933, the United Obscure Primitive Methodists were founded.  There was great celebration that Sunday, at the newly-renamed Unity Chapel.
And also at the newly-formed Free Obscure Primitive Methodists.  They had founded a new connexion.  They refused to join the United chapel, on the grounds that brickwork was forbidden in Exodus unless made with mud without straw.
And also there was a celebration at the Extremely Primitive Methodists, which my Granddad Orville founded in a tin shed on the estate.  The Extremely Primitives objected to the green "Beryl" cups and saucers that the Uniteds used for coffee mornings.  The Extremely Prims claimed that only the light-blue version was genuinely scriptural.  And there were rumours that the Free Obscures used the cursed and heretical yellow type.

Of course, it all came to an end as the congregations dwindled and died out.  By the time my parents were taking me to the new Re-re-united Extremely Obscure Primitive Methodists in the early 70s, there was only the one congregation left.  Due to their rejection of modern technology - which included any artificial heating except Fisherman's Friends - they mostly froze to death on a cold January Sunday in 1979.  Well, it was a particularly long sermon.  Then when Mummy and Daddy had that accident with the hay baler there was only me left.  Which, given that the Obscure Primitive Methodists strictly limited women's ministry to tea-making and cleaning, meant that it was all over.

Due to their shoddy building methods, nothing now remains, either in Husborne or Crawley, of those many congregations.  But it is said that, of a summer's evening after the sun has set, if you walk down School Lane you may hear singing.  Just an auditory trick - the rumbling of cars on M1?  Or the echoes of  hymns once sung, as the unquiet spirits of those dissenting dissenters dissent themselves from dissenting chapel to dissenting chapel?