Ideas

Evangelicalism: Midcourse Self-Appraisal

Kenneth S. Kantzer

Encouraging strengths must be weighed against disturbing weaknesses.

As we ring in the new year, we are likely to-take stock of the past—and make resolutions for the future. Yet, sizing up evangelicalism’s place today is no easy task. It would be simpler to wait a hundred years when hindsight becomes more objective and probably more accurate. But at such a distance it is also less useful. Though dangerous and uncertain, we must handle in the living present the task of reckoning up liabilities and assets as we plan for the future.

Opinions diverge over where evangelicalism stands today. Leland Hines, for example, writes, “Evangelicalism is a dying movement. It is very sick and dying of old age.” It is easy to understand why he makes such a doleful prediction. The weaknesses of evangelicalism are obvious, and every evangelical ought to face them with rigorous honesty.

1. Weak evangelical institutions. In the great liberal take-over at the turn of the century, evangelicalism lost control of institutions such as colleges, seminaries, foundations, retirement homes, and publishing houses. Gradually it has been able to build up new resources, but in some areas they are still meager by contrast with those of the nonevangelical religious establishment. (In other areas, such as publishing, evangelicals have gone far beyond the liberals.)

2. A house divided. All the old divisions from the Reformation period remain with us, along with many new ones. To make matters worse, religious differences among evangelicals are far more divisive simply because we evangelicals take our religion so seriously.

3. Reactionary tendencies. In its early years, fundamentalism shaped its identity in opposition to liberalism. Evangelicalism, as its spiritual child, has not yet freed itself from this warping. In spite of its strong emphasis on sola Scriptura (the Bible alone), it still reflects its heritage of one-sided opposition to liberalism. Surely this alone explains the deep-seated evangelical suspicion of social action as it identifies it with the social gospel.

4. Combative lifestyle. Evangelicals fought so long against liberalism that this approach became a permanent lifestyle. We have not known how to work with others with whom we had differences, and the only proper stand of the church seems to be that of a militant combatant for the truth.

5. Religious inferiority complex. Rejection by the leadership of the liberal religious establishment led to further rejection by the intellectual and cultural centers and eventually by the structures of political and social power. Evangelicals became hypersensitive to criticism and tended to look upon give and take, which is normal for a pluralisitic society, as a subtle form of religious persecution. In our relationships with others we tended either to withdraw so as to avoid contact or to become pushy in our endeavors to witness to our own faith.

6. Poor institutional leadership. We failed to develop institutional leadership partly because of our retreat from the centers of power and influence. Also, we no longer had any great loyalty to the church or to the denomination or to the institution that had rejected evangelical faith. As a result, an individualized leadership—charismatic in the popular sense of personal magnetism—arose to hold together segments of the movement. And because loyalty was so largely personal, enduring institutions suffered from a dearth of dedicated leaders.

7. Immature followers. The evangelical rank and file have failed to do their homework before taking positions on political and social, and even religious, issues. In the village church of South Overshoe, no great harm is done. But the same immaturity displayed during a march on Pennsylvania Avenue can be devastating for the evangelical cause. Not all popular conservative causes are consistent with a faithful application of biblical theology. Moreover, evangelicals want everything done at once. We tend to respond vigorously to a momentary crisis, but when nothing happens, we are unable to sustain an enduring effort.

8. Cultural conformity. We may well stand at the end of an era extending from the Reformation to the Russian revolution. A religious ice age is drifting down over Europe and North America (though with significant exceptions in the form of pockets of evangelical vigor). Materialistic paganism has become the dominant world view. This growing secularism, which fashions a culture alien to Christianity, erodes the biblical values in our society and penetrates the church. While not serious enough to force us to take to the streets, the overall cultural drift began long ago and influences the church.

9. Privatized Christianity. Liberals think that evangelicals are not showing up on church rolls. Actually they are, but they are not in the churches where liberals are keeping the books. Rather, we are showing up in storefront churches and in new congregations dotting the land. But too few of us are willing to carry our faith into the marketplace. We forget that a “private” Christianity is a contradiction in terms (Rom. 10:9). Even people who are just becoming active in community and national affairs on single issues tend to be glued to their TVs much of the time. Full involvement in PTA, politics, and business, as disciples of Christ, is still rare.

10. Doctrinal and ethical ignorance. In the ancient church at Constantinople, even the barber could defend his church’s Christology. Today evangelicals are biblically and theologically uninformed; the CT-Gallup Poll showed that few could distinguish biblical views of Christ’s deity from Arian views, for instance. As a cover-up for our ignorance, we often display irritation even at a discussion of fine points of biblical doctrine.

These liabilities are serious, but certain assets counterbalance them:

1. Numbers. Evangelicalism represents the largest cohesive minority in the United States. It is larger than the body of Roman Catholics dominated by the church. One-third to one-half of all Protestants are evangelicals.

2. Heritage. Evangelicals have a history. They adhere to the creeds of the ancient church and devoutly repeat the confessions of the Reformation churches. They belong to the families of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Menno Simons, and Wesley. While they may be alienated from their denominational leadership or current structure, they identify with an evangelical fellowship that extends back to the Reformation and beyond.

3. A coherent philosophy. Evangelicals possess a well-developed, intelligible coherent philosophy of life. This can give meaning and richness to their religious experience and direction to their lives. This, so Dean Kelley argues, is the real reason for the growth of the conservative churches. They possess a heritage from Calvin and others that they can tap for a coherent overview of life. Liberal churches have no such philosophy. So evangelicals alone are giving people a sense of meaning.

4. Nonevangelical allies. Evangelicals gain strength beyond their numbers by support from nonevangelical Protestants with conservative views not only in doctrine but especially in ethics and politics. The chilling winds of modern theology have swept many a disillusioned liberal besides Karl Barth in the direction of conservative evangelicalism. A common enemy and, in some cases, a new and living faith, have enabled conservative Roman Catholics and evangelicals to discover how much they share—particularly in social and ethical convictions. And, of course, sects like the Mormons, which preserve biblical values in such areas as home and family life, are strong supporters of many evangelical positions. All this gives the evangelical a far greater political heft than he could otherwise exercise.

5. Weak alternatives. Liberalism is drifting off into secularism. Neo-orthodoxy, which held so much promise for some a generation ago, proved extremely unstable and too complicated to win the allegiance of the man in the pew. In the nonevangelical sectors of Protestantism, no dominant theological position is emerging. And denominations whose theology is dominated by a nonevangelical pluralism are mostly in retreat.

6. Evangelical commitment. In answer to the question “What is the most important thing in life to you?” evangelicals in large majority answer: God—to know God personally, to be in fellowship with him, to please him, to find forgiveness and salvation in him. By contrast, nonevangelicals in and out of the church usually place as their supreme concern their own personal health and physical well-being. Only one person in 12 among nonevangelicals says that God is his or her greatest concern. It is also significant that evangelicals are far more faithful in church attendance than nonevangelicals. They are, in fact, one of the few religious groups in America that attends church more than once a week. Their giving patterns, too, indicate an unusual depth of commitment. One-half of all evangelicals tithe their income. No other religious group comes near this sort of financial commitment. These factors indicate that religion is uniquely important to evangelicals. It controls their thought and life more than for any other major religious group. Consequently, they tend more than most to share their faith with others.

7. Authority. There is a self-correcting principle at work in evangelicalism. The greatest asset of the evangelical is his open Bible. The Bible is a transforming book because it reveals the Savior and all his benefits. And it provides the objective standard by which our Lord judges his church, corrects its errors, and guides it in the right direction.

The liabilities of evangelicalism are great and ought to disturb us more than they do. Yet we must not ignore its assets. We can enter 1983 boldly because our faith is in the living God and his Christ. With Martin Luther, we too can say, “God and I are a majority.”

Eutychus and His Kin: January 7, 1983

Charisphobia

You can tell a man’s level of maturity by observing the things he fears. The bogeymen are always there, but they change from year to year as we grow older. But along with these changing bogeymen are others whose terror lessens or increases with time.

At 4 we fear the barber, at 8 the dentist, at 16 the driving examiner, at 24 the loan officer. How odd that in the sociology of the church one can determine a Christian’s level of maturity by marking what he fears. To the non-Christian, the bogeyman who constantly terrorizes secularia is the lay evangelist from the local church. Once converted, the new Christian fears the nominating committee, which is trying to annihilate his clock and calendar with churchianity. To the year-old Christian, there is a desperate fear of the church pledge campaign.

Then our fears grow larger: if we are moderate evangelists we fear zealots. If we are zealots we fear moderates, lest their lukewarm affection for Christ canker our own lives. If we are charismatic, we fear the cerebral and cold proclamation of the “straights.” If we are “straights” we fear the fever of the smiling charismatics. To nonemotionalists, charismatics appear as the archbogeymen of biblical exegesis: they lurk on the perimeter of our prayer meetings and threaten to pounce upon the church with glossolalia blazing from both barrels.

To avoid being suspected of charismatic fever, noncharismatics always pray with distinct diction. If they wave at a fellow Christian they are careful to raise only one hand at a time, they embrace no fellow Christian unless there has been a death in the family, and they smile only when they are in the car on the way home.

Ah, how the fear marks our immaturity. We cannot help but quail before the unseen specter—that on some balmy night it will happen to us. We will put on our Praise IV album and open our Bible to the Psalms. Then, as the music fills the dark room, some unseen force will descend upon us and we will become what we have always feared—an honest-to-goodnes, second-blessed, hand-raising, hugging, and nonepiscopal charismatic.

Perhaps our fears are needless. Charismatics may be ordinary people as capable of conversation as other Christians. Perhaps they are ordinary believers trying to make life a meaningful pilgrimage. It may be possible to greet them just by saying “hello”—not “who is your cell group leader?”

It is said that Bavarians who feared werewolves set traps nightly in the Black Forest. They were always amazed when they caught only good Lutherans. No longer afraid, they gave up trapping their fears. Growing older, they quit fearing either werewolves or Lutherans: the former did not exist and the latter only read their German New Testaments when the moon was full.

Perhaps when we are fully mature in Christ we will no longer suspect our brethren of being bogeymen but brothers who have found their own way of celebrating Christ. Perhaps then there will be no one who names the name of Christ who is not instantly our brother—and all our phobias will be gone. After all, “perfect love casts out fear!”

EUTYCHUS

Sorry!

When my letter [Nov. 26] was condensed, an error was made that destroys its meaning. I had written: “But the Bible does not teach that a human being has or possesses a soul or spirit, but rather that a human being is a body/soul/spirit unity.” The emphasized words were omitted in the published version.

RICHARD H. BUBE

Stanford, Calif.

Hang In There!

I am a long-time subscriber, partly because you keep me informed, and partly because you keep me angry.

HAL H. EATON

Mouth of Wilson, Va.

Corrections

I wish to express my appreciation for an informative and balanced news article concerning PUMA’S eighth annual World Mission Conference and some of the organization’s goals and objectives [“Missions Interest Grows Among United Presbyterians,” Nov. 12].

I would like to make two corrections First, the director of the UPCMS is Dr. Frank Satterberg. Second, there is a misleading implication in one section of the article regarding PUMA’S attitude toward national leadership in Third World churches, PUMA is not opposed to such, but in fact encourages it. As evidence, I submit that 7 of this year’s more than 60 speakers were Third World national leaders and another 8 were either immigrants who have become leaders of mission enterprises in America, or were of U.S. minority ethnic origin.

NEIL ELSHEIMER

Presbyterians United for Mission

Advance

Sunnyvale, Calif.

Impossible

May I ask, respectfully but earnestly, why in your editorial, “A Christian Education Worthy of the Name” [Nov. 12], you ask Christian colleges to do something which cannot be done?

I lament with you the unhappy situation in which evangelical colleges fail to give students more than a rare and tantalizing taste of what it might be like to approach every discipline in the light of an integral, biblical world view. At the same time, I think it might be more to the point to ask them to look squarely at the presuppositions in the light of which they are working than to ask them to pull together two things that are never separate.

ALBERT E. GREENE, JR.

Alta Vista College

Medina, Wash.

Refined?

Just what is being refined in the Refiner’s Fire column? Could it be the fine art of seeking the praise of men? What is its purpose, besides celebrating every culturist idol under the humanist sun?

JOHN CLIFTON

New York, N.Y.

Commendations

Walter Elwell [“Putting God Back into Theology,” Nov. 12] is to be commended for his clarity of thought and expression regarding the crucial error of much of modern theology: the loss of transcendence. His conclusions remind us of the need for a constantly biblical proclamation of the “… high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy.…”

REV. BRUCE E. FELT

Augusta Baptist Church

Augusta, Maine

Chart Misinterpretation

I would like to correct a possible misinterpretation of the chart accompanying “Christian Colleges: Some Will Not Survive” [Nov. 12]. Although no doubt accurate mathematically for 1979–80, a year during which enrollment at King College suffered a sharp temporary decline, our subsequent dramatic, if not miraculous, increase in enrollment to an all-time high of 434 students (383 FTE) this fall, has sadly not been matched by the large increase in endowment that would have been necessary to retain the $10,560 per student figure mentioned in the article.

JOHN STROTHER GAINES

King College

Bristol, Tennessee

Biblical Illusions Or Vulgarity?

Daniel Pawley’s article, “Updike’s Rich Rabbit: Suffocating in Sin” [Nov. 12] appears to give tacit encouragement to CT readers to read John Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich in order to discover the spiritual truths and biblical illusions that Updike has supposedly woven into his book. What they will discover is a book loaded with gutter vulgarity and minutely explicit sex.

HI LAKE

Rochester, Minn.

This article offered an incisive treatment of a significant book. Updike still possesses a facile genius for portraying American life without God in all its shades of “angst.”

REV. MICHAEL A. ROGERS

Church of the Savior

Williamsville, N.Y.

Compromise Or Fight?

I find it unfortunate that Mr. Clapp [“The Police Lock a Baptist Church,” Nov. 12] must add his part to a common misconception regarding those who would bear the title “fundamentalist.” To imply they “relish a fight” is to stretch the truth a bit, I’m afraid. Should the alternative to fighting be compromise of our biblical convictions or constitutional freedoms, then fight we shall, and to the end.

BYRON D. HARVEY

Chattanooga, Tenn.

We Nebraskans are an independent breed. We want to run our own lives without outside interference. Many Christian schools have been operating in Nebraska for years with no qualms about complying with state educational standards.

To those well-meaning but misguided souls who have compared Sileven’s stand with that of Luther at Worms: Sileven has as much in common with the great Reformer as the sparrow does with the soaring golden eagle.

REV. EDWARD A. JOHNSON

Messiah Lutheran Church

Broadwater, Neb.

Trinity Lutheran Church

Dalton, Neb.

Bias Showing

I am writing to say that I was disappointed in your article “Norman Lear’s Lobbying Style Troubles Some Supporters” [Nov. 12]. The words “extravagant,” “cantankerous puberty,” “emotional,” “hyperbole,” “histrionics,” “broad brush,” “isolated,” “avoided,” and “ostensibly political,” can all indicate your bias.

Falwell and Robertson have called for the ending of public education. Many of us in People for the American Way have debated the fundamentalists and been refused additional opportunities many times. We see some humor in Cal Thomas’s statement about the Jews since Norman Lear is about. 100 percent Jewish.

CHARLES V. BERGSTROM

Lutheran Council in the USA

Washington, D.C.

Tradition

It is nice that we can now add Clark Pinnock’s caution to Catholic theologians [“Tradition Can Keep Theologians on Track,” Oct. 22], We can pray that he is right when he writes, “An alliance between the more classical Catholics and Protestants appears to be shaping up to meet this new development.”

JUAN FELIPE CONNEALLY, S.J.

Loyola High School

Los Angeles, Calif.

Profoundly Dismayed

Your publication of “The Christian Connection” [Nov. 12] has left me profoundly dismayed. Whitehead’s encouragement to the church to adopt for its own the litigious spirit of our society, to sue the “secular humanists” until we get our way, and his sweeping endorsement of “Christian” political interest groups do not readily commend themselves to this Christian’s conscience.

Equally disconcerting is Whitehead’s subtle suggestion that God must bless such political and legal activities insofar as “his plan ends in victory for the church, not defeat.” While recognizing Whitehead’s status as a member of the legal profession, his tacit approval of exploiting the legal system for “Christian” ends is not in harmony with either the letter or the spirit of Scripture.

ALAN E. VERSAW

Denver, Colo.

With Whitehead, I confess and firmly believe that Christ is Lord of all life. But that does not mean that the institutional church, on either the local or denominational level, should go beyond prophetic preaching to organizing political action. In some traditions, Christians have learned to set up Christian schools, that is, schools that are Christian but are not under church authority. It’s high time we learned to establish Christian citizens’ organizations, free from the control of the institutional church, but standing unabashedly under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Strong Christian (but nonchurch) organizations can be powerful illustrations to the secularists that the separation of church and state does not mean the separation of religion and life.

JOYCE RIBBENS CAMPBELL

Sioux Center, Iowa

History

John Wesley: A Gallery of Family, Friends and Foes

William Law

(1686–1761) spearheaded the Evangelical Revival with his Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life ( 1728). The most brilliant young men of the time sat at his feet and absorbed his every word—the Wesleys, George Whitefield, and a host of other evangelists were his legacy. What he taught was the way to live a practical holy life. As his thought developed in the 1730’s towards mysticism, his young students parted ways with him. This vigorous champion of spirituality took on all comers in defense of Christianity. He feared no opponent. His last twenty years were spent in tireless devotions, study, and charity.

Richard “Beau” Nash

(1674–1762) was a social celebrity and master of ceremonies at the fashionable resort of Bath. He lived high, gambled with great stakes, and had very bad luck confronting John Wesley. Nash told Wesley that he did not like Wesley’s preaching. Wesley asked whether Nash had heard any. Nash had not but knows of Wesley’s preaching through the reports of others. Wesley then asked whether he should judge Nash only by others’ reports of him. Nash was silenced by this rebuke, and one old woman rubbed salt in the wound by telling Nash to leave alone the man who could give them all God’s word. Nash’s view was typical among the upper crust, but few would have condescended to speak out loud about how they felt. Even Samuel Johnson, the composer of the great English Dictionary, seems to have disapproved of Wesley’s “enthusiasm,” even though he does seem to have liked Wesley the man and attended one of his sermons!

Peter Boehler

(1712–75) the Moravian missionary and bishop, gave John Wesley the strength to seek faith in his moment of doubt after his return from Georgia. Wesley’s journal records the warm and vibrant conversation and correspondence between him and Boehler and reveals the critical role Boehler played in helping Wesley totally reassess the nature of his religious commitment and the meaning of faith. Thereafter Wesley was so interested in Moravianism that he learned German and went to Herrnhut to see the community at the source. Ultimately breaking away from the Moravians, John Wesley’s organization, some points of doctrine, and missionary zeal were deeply influenced by them.

Thomas Maxfield

(1720–85) was Wesley’s first lay preacher in England, converted at Bristol and put to use but “not to preach.” But preach he did, and Wesley, after hearing him, gave him permission. He was imprisoned and persecuted for his work. Finally ordained in 1764 he differed from Wesley over doctrinal differences and with Thomas Bell became head of a congregation that split from Wesley.

The Wesley Family

seems to have been the primary influence of John Wesley’s life. On the one hand were his mother’s devotions, on the other was his father’s scholarship and stern morality. On the one hand was his brother Samuel’s example as a High Churchman, on the other were his brother Charles’ friendship and support. At all times he endured with his siblings the regimen of hardship to which preachers’ families had to become accustomed in those days. John Wesley seems to have brought away from his family a model for the ideal society, which he had to temper with experience and with a few other models and mistakes. That John and Charles set up their own community at Oxford indicates that they desired to live a life that no one offered ready-made in the educational system of the time.

George Whitefield

(1714–70) the champion of field preaching in England and America urged John Wesley to take to the fields to preach. He was eloquent and powerful as a preacher. His sermons brought crowds to their knees. One report tells how listeners would cry and moan and turn to Christ. The people would gather in crowds numbering 20,000 to hear him preach, and he seems to have been Wesley’s match in endurance. Yet he could not match Wesley’s organizational ability, for after he had drawn a crowd he had no supportive Christian “family” for his followers to link up with. Because of his ideas on election, he and his Calvinistic Methodists broke off from Wesley’s group, but he and Wesley remained friends for life.

Bishop Joseph Butler

(1692–1752) Wesley’s contemporary, lamented the encroaching secularity of England and called for nationwide reform and revival of faith, but ironically he was opposed to Wesley’s kind of revivalism. Bishop of Bristol, where Wesley established his head camp for the Evangelical Revival, he locked horns with the young “enthusiast” and even told him to stop preaching in his diocese. Butler’s noted work Analogy, was the major defense of revealed religion against attacks by Deists. In the deepest sense the men were allies and both champions of the historic faith, even though as contemporaries they did not cooperate.

Charles Wesley

(1707–88), John Wesley’s younger brother, gave music, heart, and soul to the Methodist movement. Overshadowed by his brother, he directly influenced him throughout his career. Charles began what became the Holy Club at Oxford, went with John to the Colonies, and set up in Bristol to do the work of revival. As energetic in composing hymns as John was in keeping his journals, Charles composed around 6500 hymns, many of which are still sung today. Early in life Charles turned down a fortune to gain a greater crown—that of “Poet of the Evangelical Revival.” One of the most famous of his works was his version of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”

George Bell

(?–1807) Sometimes a convert to Methodism would turn out to be an opponent. Such a man was George Bell who converted to Methodism in the 1750’s. Bell made extravagant claims for himself and his followers, such as they had attained absolute perfection. Finally Wesley excluded Bell and his followers. Bell went on to predict the end of the world with God’s judgment on February 28, 1763. The world did not end, but Bell had done very severe damage to the Methodist cause in London.

Thomas Coke

(1747–1814), joining the Methodists in 1771, rose quickly under Wesley to become president of the Irish Conference in 1782 and joint superintendent with Francis Asbury of the Methodist Church of America in 1784. When Coke arrived in America, Asbury, who had refused Wesley’s order to return to England before the American Revolution, forced an election and became the first bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church to be consecrated in America. Coke with Asbury wrote the Doctrines and Discipline for the Methodist Church of America in 1784, but Asbury, not Coke, was the great organizer in America. Coke travelled between England and America frequently, and his commitment to be a missionary among the heathen finally led him to apply for the position of bishop of India—a position which required his return to the Church of England. Failing in this attempt, Coke raised money on his own and embarked on a Methodist mission to Ceylon, but died on the voyage out.

Francis Asbury

(1745–1816) seized the reins of Methodism in the United States just after its independence and shaped what later became the Methodist Episcopal Church. Riding over 5000 miles each year on horseback, often in bad health, he personally linked up the congregations from Maine to Georgia and set up the method called circuit riding that remained the line of communication for a century. Not always in agreement with Wesley, he was so like him in energy and organizational ability, he has been called the “Wesley of America.”

The Wednesbury Mob

a group of people from the lowest class of society, were after Wesley’s limbs and health, if not his life, and they were typical of the violence with which new preaching could be met in the eighteenth century. Not only did Wesley stand his ground as long as possible against this shouting, pot-and-stone-hurling rabble, but again and again he managed to return to the place of violence later and make it his own. In another mob incident, Wesley was interrupted by a bunch of rowdies who brought a bull up to his lectern. Undaunted, Wesley moved a little ways off and began to preach where he had been forced to leave off. In other mob scenes he actually quelled the mobs, turning the leaders back against the crowds and preaching to the quieted masses.

Richard Boardman

(1738–82) was the first Methodist missionary in America, responding to Wesley’s call in 1769. With Pilmoor he served in Philadelphia as Wesley’s associate until Francis Asbury’s arrival. Thus Boardman became not only Wesley’s bridge from England to the American colonies, but Methodism’s bridge from Wesley to Asbury.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

History

Revival and Revolution

In this series

John Wesley grew up in a world of rapid change, very much like ours in some respects and very different in others. The whole way of work was changing in eighteenth-century England. Revolutions in smelting, spinning, and distilling created whole new industries. The world of science was unfolding—the first chemical tables, the first comprehensive biological classification system, the first experiments with the physics of electricity, of photographic materials, and of the steam engine, emerged during Wesley’s life.

Meanwhile, the cities collected the debris of society. Poverty, gin, and filthy living conditions in the city contrasted with the refined life of the new city gentry and the new country gentry, with their ample incomes or lands. The gentleman with his fixed income did not worry about work. He bought a military commission or spent his days with good friends and good literature, as did the young James Boswell. Very few Britishers were this fortunate.

When Wesley began his itinerant preaching in the seventeen thirties, there were no railroads, only a few coach lines, a network of notoriously bad dirt roads, no well-marked maps, no restaurants, and only occasional inns. Instead of welfare or any other relief for the poor, the government gave punishment for the crime of poverty—confinement to a work house. Churches helped some of the poor, but they were mainly the domain of the well-to-do. Still, only five or six members of Parliament even went to church!

Personal health and cleanliness were deplorable. The plague, smallpox, and countless diseases we call minor today had no cures. Rodent and insect control was minimal. Most dwellings had no running water, had chamber pots only for elimination, and had no soap as it was not yet in common use. Infant mortality was extremely high, and a person’s life expectancy was in the forties. Clothing was expensive, so many of the cities’ poor wore rags that were, like their bedding, full of lice. Even though the penalties for crimes today seem barbaric (hanging for petty thievery), no man was safe in the cities or on the highways or even on the high seas.

Imagine a world with no street lights, with no numbers on the doors of homes to tell addresses, with no television, no radio, no telephone, no telegraph, no efficient mail system, no frozen foods or even effective refrigeration, no cars, no vending machines, no electricity, no free libraries, and no aspirin. School of any kind was for the very few; therefore literacy was very rare. Corporal punishment was public—the stocks, the whip, the clipping of ears and nose, worse.

To us today even the terms of apprenticeship seem more like slavery than like work. Young boys and sometimes girls were bound over to a master for seven years of training. They worked six days a week, every day from dawn to dusk and often beyond. Finally they might gain their freedom and set up shop on their own. Or they would journey to work for whatever masters could use them for a while.

Those that migrated to the cities from rural areas neither had the proper skills nor could find many jobs. Perhaps you could sweep streets, run behind a man’s carriage, or sell yourself as a lowly servant. Perhaps you might drink with a group of good soldiers and awaken in camp with other forcibly recruited vagabonds, bound for the wars. If you were unlucky and starving, you might fall foul of the law and be packed off to the stench of Newgate Prison. From there you might have the chance to go to the New World in a boat loaded with prisoners of all sorts. Once you left the countryside, which was closing up, you did not return. Men took to theft, women to prostitution—whatever would feed them.

Samuel Johnson, the great doctor and creator of the great dictionary of English, wrote that if a man is tired of London, “he is tired of life.” Yet Johnson himself had to write with fury a book called Rasselas to make money to give his mother a decent burial; otherwise she would have been cast in a pauper’s grave. Johnson’s friend Oliver Goldsmith wrote The Vicar of Wakefield, a documentary view of poverty in the rural England of his day. In the city or in the country poverty was the norm.

Views of city and country life with a touch of romance are in Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding, and Roderick Random, by Tobias Smollett. Fielding was a judge and Smollett was a medical doctor who retired to write and to live off his wealthy wife’s fortune. The Rev. Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, was so outraged by the injustice around him that he wrote “A Modest Proposal,” which ironically suggested that child abuse and infant mortality were so bad in Ireland that children there should be raised only to be cooked and eaten. Poor Swift died mad and in delirium.

One of the greatest indictments of the age was in William Hogarth’s prints about the conditions of life around him. Hogarth’s print series warn about promiscuity and idleness and extreme religiosity, particularly that strain of evangelism brought out by George Whitefield, Wesley’s friend. Gin Lane and Beer Street rival, and in some respects surpass, present-day city scenes. One ragged mother in Gin Lane is letting her crying baby fall to his death while she, oblivious, seeks her moment’s pleasure in a glass of gin. Gin was fed to the babies too, to keep them quiet, with blindness and often death as a result. The people’s love of tormenting animals at bull-baitings was equalled only by their delight in a public execution.

If a woman could find work in the slave-trading town of Bristol, Wesley’s base of operation, she could look forward to none of the privileges of modern workers. Stifling heat or bitter cold, no breaks, no benefits, no child-care, small wages, and firing for the least provocation were standard fare. Of course, there were no unions. Swearing and physical abuse set the tone of work. There was no variety, there were no vacations, there was no advancement.

If a man was able to find work in one of the coal mining towns (started when the iron works shifted from charcoal to coke), he was thankful to rise at three-thirty AM for breakfast, work in the mine shafts with poor ventilation all day, then creep into bed at nightfall to begin again the next day. On Sunday he was too dirty and too poor to find comfort in a church, and he was likely to be turned away by an Anglican beadle if he tried. He lived in a warehouse-like building in the same enormous room with other mining families and had no privacy. Yet he bred many children, and those who lived went back to work in the mines when they were old enough. It was the overseers’ policy to keep miners on the edge of starvation, and what were the miners to do? They could barely eat and there was nowhere else to work.

What we know of today as a social conscience was not a prevailing state of mind in Wesley’s day. Remember that the Declaration of Independence was written when Wesley was an old man and the Rousseau’s Social Contract was written when he was in middle age. Political guarantees were considered revolutionary. The Church of England preached that man’s station in life was a reflection of his state of grace. The monarch was God’s vicar, and the power descending down the chain of being from the throne reached to the gentry and perhaps the artisans and no further.

In this world of little hope and few options, John Wesley appeared on the scene. Where his brother Samuel followed the prescribed path for sons of the clergy—to become a stolid gentleman preacher in the Anglican Church, associating with the gentlemen and wits of the day, John and Charles Wesley took a path that was hazardous and requiring self-sacrifice. John decided to live on a stipend of 28 pounds annually (well below the poverty level by today’s standards), using any additional earnings to fund his various ministries. Charles turned down a fortune in inheritance from an Irish relative to do God’s work. What made such men? And why did they turn out so very different from their elder brother Samuel?

John Wesley was born in 1703 during the reign of Good Queen Anne. His childhood was ruled by his pious and strict mother and exacting father. His mother believed that children’s wills should be subdued, that they should be whipped soundly when they misbehaved and that they should cry softly after being whipped. John was the fourteenth child. He would have perished in a fire at Epworth Rectory except that he was snatched from the blaze by a neighbor who stood on another neighbor’s shoulders. He was seven years old at the time, and frequently thereafter his mother would remind him that he was “a brand plucked from the burning”. She felt—and he later felt—that he had been spared for a purpose, to serve God.

Samuel, John’s father, was a scholar, for many years at work on a monumental scholarly work on the Book of Job. A stern, not to say relentless preacher, once required an adultress to walk the streets in her shame and he forced the marriage of one of his daughters after she tried to elope with a man not of her father’s choosing. From his father and mother, John Wesley developed excellent study habits and also became used to physical hardship.

John Wesley went to Charterhouse School in 1714, to Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1720, and in 1726 was elected fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford. After taking a position of curate at Wroote, Lincolnshire, from 1727 to 1729, he returned to Oxford not only to continue his studies but also to begin living the holy life. Many other bright young men had gone through a curriculum like Wesley’s, but few had his diligence. He mastered at least seven languages and developed a truly comprehensive outlook on all areas of investigation. His mind never closed to inquiry for the rest of his life. When he resumed to Oxford from Wroote, he assumed leadership of a group called the Holy Club, begun by his brother Charles. Here they sought to reinforce faith through scriptural study and of measuring the quality of holiness of each member’s life.

The Holy Club did more than think and pray. They went to the prisons to bring salvation to prisoners. Although they were ridiculed by their fellow Oxfordians, from their small ranks came towering men of the age, particularly the Wesley brothers and George Whitefield. Their regimen required periodic fasts, regular study meetings and self-examination. Only much later did John Wesley realize that they followed more the letter than the spirit of Christianity.

In 1735 great changes beset John and Charles Wesley. Their father died, and both men went with Governor Ogilthorpe to the colony Georgia with their mother’s blessing and encouragement. Georgia was a test for John, who reamed that he really did not like the Indians and that his strictness was not much appreciated by the Georgians. More important than this was John’s contact with a small band of Moravians on the voyage over to the colony. These men and women fearlessly sang hymns during dreadful storms at sea while he despaired. He wanted to know the faith they seemed to have. In 1737 he returned to England.

It is to John Wesley’s credit that he could be critical enough of himself to stop now that he was an experienced minister to examine his lack of faith. Peter Boehler, a Moravian, gave him the key—to preach faith until he had it, and then he would preach faith. So it came about that John Wesley dwelled on faith until on Wednesday, May 24, 1738, at the well-known Aldersgate meeting, he had a conversion, a deep and unmistakable experience of faith. His “heart was strangely warmed.” Then his real work began in earnest.

For all his independence of mind, John Wesley could still draw on the best resources of the best minds of his time. For example, William Law was his teacher, friend, and mentor for years, but Wesley found that an important ingredient was missing from Law’s program for a devout life—faith. The Oxford Platonists were able to impart to Wesley an intellectual framework that was spiritual rather than material, but Wesley’s habit of mind was as much as molded by Newtonian analysis as by Platonism. The Moravians were the closest to a synthesis of all the elements he desired that he could find. He even visited Herrnhut to see how their community worked. But something was missing there as everywhere else, and in 1740 he and his followers broke off from the Moravians, but not before he had learned to give open-air sermons, which were an essential part of his later program.

John Wesley at age 37 began to travel and preach. He often exaggerated the numbers of those who came to hear him. Very often the very people who needed his help the most persecuted him. He would preach in pulpits until they were closed to him, and he would then preach in the open fields. He would preach three times a day, beginning at five AM since workers could stop to hear him as they walked to their daily drudgery.

He sometimes covered sixty miles a day on horseback. Weather conditions made no difference; he made his schedule and kept it regardless. He would flee an angry mob by jumping into a cold pond, swim out and go on to preach again. He had the ability to turn hostile people his way.

He went to South Wales in 1741, the north of England in 1742, Ireland in 1747, and Scotland in 1751. In all he went to Ireland forty-two times and to Scotland twenty-two times. He returned to cities again and again. Sometimes he would return years after his last visit and record that the little society he helped form was still intact and still faithful. He would examine every member of every society personally to search for faith and spiritual growth. The societies thus formed provided the local organization for his movement.

What did Wesley preach? Thrift, cleanliness, honesty, salvation, good family relations, dozens of other themes, but above all, faith in Christ. He did not ask his listeners to depart from their own churches but to continue going to them. He gave them spiritual refreshment they did not find outside his circle. As his decades of trial yielded to decades of triumph the crowds increased. High and low came to hear him speak. He developed networks of lay assistants. His exhortations to live perfectly in love today seem harsh, but consider the effects on his congregations. Swearing stopped in factories, men and women began to concern themselves with neat and plain dress, extravagances like expensive tea and vices like gin were dropped by his followers, neighbors gave one another mutual help through the societies.

Wesley taught as much by example as by his measured sermons. His annual expenses have been mentioned. He published many volumes for use in devotions and turned profits into such projects as a dispensary for the poor. His personal life was beyond reproach. He translated hymns, interpreted scripture, wrote hundreds of letters, trained hundreds of men and women, and kept in his journals a record of expended energy that has hardly a rival in western literature. His manner of speaking in the language of the common man had an immeasurable impact on the emergence of modern English, just as Charles Wesley’s numerous hymns had an impact on English hymnody, not to mention poetry of the subsequent Romantic Age.

But the impact of the Wesleys on the lower classes runs deeper than merely in habits of living and in habits of speech. John Wesley provided a religious framework that was local and personal as well as energetically moral. His theology did not disenfranchise anyone, for everyone could find God’s grace to resist evil and to be saved, if only he will seek and receive it. The societies that he formed preserved in their studies a focus on faith—a faith that also led to a way of coping with the reality of lower class living. Religion was not just for the rich, but neither was Wesley’s preaching a revolt from Anglicanism—until very late and then almost by historical accident.

John Wesley’s Anglicanism was very strong, even though Anglican pulpits became universally closed to him. Only when he was eighty-one years old did Wesley permit a rift between his followers and the national church. Having sent many men to America, in 1784 he ordained more for this missionary effort and, because “ordination is separation,” effectively started a new church. Wesley’s conservatism was political as well as religious. He published an open letter to the American colonies warning them to stay loyal to Britain just before the American Revolution. He would not have tolerated any talk of civil upheaval in England.

It has been argued that other forces were at work in England besides Wesley and a few other preachers. For example, the coming Industrial Revolution progressed faster in Britain than elsewhere giving men new kinds of work, the Justice of the Peace system and Prime Minister government were unique in form to England and gave much more power than elsewhere was possible to the local middle class, and the major problems that might otherwise have caused revolution—just were not present after 1750. Still, without Wesley and his followers, how could widespread atheism such as existed among French peasants be avoided and how could a downtrodden and vice-ridden underclass see hope?

John Wesley died on March 2, 1791, about three years after his brother Charles died. Up until his final years he made the same journal entry each year on his birthday, thanking God for his long life and his continued good health, and stating that early morning sermons and much outdoor activity had kept him fit for God’s work. From the time he became free of influence except from God, he had fifty years of steady service and did England immeasurable good through perseverance, endurance, and faith. His legacy was not just limited to his century or country, but survives today in the faith of millions in a variety of churches.

The following diary entry was made on Tuesday, 28 June, 1774:

This being my birth-day, the first day of my seventy-second year, I was considering, How is this, that I find just the same strength as I did thirty years ago? That my sight is considerably better now, and my nerves firmer than they were then? That I have none of the infirmities of old age, and have lost several I had in my youth? The grand cause is, the good pleasure of God, who doth whatsoever pleaseth him. The chief means are, I, my constantly rising at four, for about fifty years: 2, my generally preaching at five in the morning, one of the most healthy exercises in the world: 3, my never travelling less, by sea or land, than four thousand five hundred miles a year.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

History

John Wesley: From the Journal

In the previous edition of Christian History we printed excerpts from John Wesley’s Journal describing key moments in his spiritual growth and discovery. A large reader response to this particular article prompts us to include here further comments from the Journal wherein Wesley summarizes his early spiritual journey, concluding with his conversion.

Wednesday, May 24, 1738

What occurred on Wednesday May 24, 1738, I think best to relate at large, after premising what may make it the better understood. Let him that cannot receive it, ask of the Father of lights, that he would give more light to him and me.

1. I believe, till I was about ten years old, I had not sinned away that Washing of the Holy Ghost which was given me in baptism, having been strictly educated and carefully taught, that I could only be saved by universal obedience, by keeping all the commandments of God; in the meaning of which I was diligently instructed. And those instructions, so far as they respected outward duties and sins, I gladly received, and often thought of. But all that was said to me of inward obedience, or holiness, I neither understood nor remembered. So that I was indeed as ignorant of the true meaning of the law as I was of the Gospel of Christ.

2. The next six or seven years were spent at school; where outward restraints being removed, I was much more negligent than before even of outward duties, and almost continually guilty of outward sins, which I knew to be such, though they were not scandalous in the eye of the world. However I still read the Scriptures, and said my prayers morning and evening. And what I now hoped to be saved by was, 1. Not being so bad as other people. 2. Having still a kindness for religion. And 3. Reading the Bible, going to church, and saying my prayers.

3. Being removed to the university, for five years, I still said my prayers both in public and private, and read with my Scriptures several other books of religion, especially comments on the New Testament. Yet I had not all this while so much as a notion of inward holiness; nay, went on habitually, and, for the most part, very contentedly, in some or other known sin: Indeed with some intermissions and short struggles, especially before and after the Holy Communion, which I was obliged to receive thrice a year. I cannot well tell what I hoped to be saved by now, when I was continually sinning against that little light I had; unless by those transient fits of what many divines taught me to call Repentance.

4. A When I was about twenty-two, my father pressed me to enter into Holy Orders. At the same time the Providence of God directing me to Kempis’s Christian Pattern, I began to see that true Religion was seated in the heart, and that God’s law extended to all our thoughts as well as words and actions. I was however very angry at Kempis for being too strict, though I read him only in Dean Stanhope’s translation. Yet I had frequently much sensible comfort in reading him, such as I was an utter stranger to before. And meeting likewise with a religious friend, which I never had until now, I began to alter the whole form of my conversation, and to set in earnest upon a New Life. I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement. I communicated every week. I watched against all sin, whether in word or deed. I began to aim at and pray for inward holiness. So that now, doing so much, and living so good a life, I doubted not but I was a good Christian.

5. Removing soon to another College, I executed a resolution, which I was before convinced was of the utmost importance, shaking off at once all my trifling acquaintance. I began to see more and more the value of time. I applied myself closer to study. I watched more carefully against actual sins: I advised others to be religious, according to the scheme of religion by which I modeled my own life. But meeting now with Mr. Law’s Christian Perfection and Serious Call (although I was much offended at many parts of both, yet) they convinced me more than ever of the exceeding height, and breadth, and depth of the law of God. The light flowed in so mightily upon my soul that everything appeared in a new view. I cried to God for help, and resolved not to prolong the time of obeying him as I had never done before. And by my continued endeavour to keep his whole law, inward and outward, to the utmost of my power, I was persuaded that I should be accepted of him, and that I was even then in a state of salvation.

6. In 1730, I began visiting the prisons, assisting the poor and sick in town, and doing what other good I could by my presence, or my little fortune, to the bodies and souls of all men. To this end I abridged myself of all superfluities, and many that are called necessities of life. I soon became a by-word for so doing, and I rejoiced that my name was cast out as evil. The next Spring I began observing the Wednesday and Friday Fasts, commonly observed in the ancient church; tasting no food until three in the afternoon. And now I knew not how to go any further. I diligently strove against all sin. I omitted no sort of self-denial which I thought lawful; I carefully used, both in public and in private, all the means of grace at all opportunities. I omitted no occasion of doing good. I for that reason suffered evil. And all this I knew to be nothing, unless it was directed toward inward holiness. Accordingly this (the image of God) was what I aimed at in all, by doing his will, not my own. Yet when after continuing some years in this course, I apprehended myself to be near death, I could not find that all this gave me any comfort, or any assurance of acceptance with God. At this I was not then a little surprised; not imagining I had been all this time building on the sand, (not so; I was right as far as I went) not considering that other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid by God, even Christ Jesus.

7. Soon after a contemplative man convinced me. still more than I was convinced before, that outward works are nothing, being alone: and in several conversations instructed me how to pursue inward holiness, or a union of the soul with God. But even of his instructions, though I then received them as the words of God, I cannot but now observe, 1. That he spoke so incautiously against trusting in outward works, that he discouraged me from doing them at all. 2. That he recommended, as it were to supply what was wanting in them, mental prayer, and the like exercises, as the most effectual means of purifying the soul, and uniting it with God. Now these were in truth, as much my own works as visiting the sick or clothing the naked, and the union with God thus pursued, was as really my own unrighteousness, as any I had before pursued, under another name.

8. In this refined way of trusting to my own works and my own righteousness, so zealously inculcated by the Mystic writers, I dragged on heavily, finding no comfort or help therein, till the time of my leaving England. On shipboard, however, I was again active in outward works: where it pleased God, of his free mercy, to give my twenty-six of the Moravian brethren for companions, who endeavored to shew me a more excellent way. But I understood it not at first. I was too learned and too wise; so that it seemed foolishness unto me. And I continued… trusting in that righteousness whereby no flesh can be justified.

9. All the time I was at Savannah I was thus beating the air. Being ignorant of the righteousness of Christ, which, by a living faith in him bringeth salvation to every one that believeth, I sought to establish my own righteousness, and so laboured in the fire all my days. I was now, properly under the Law; I knew that the Law of God was spiritual;” “I consented to it that it was good. Yea, I delighted in it, after the inner man.” Yet I was “carnal, sold under sin.” Every day I was constrained to cry out, “What I do, I allow not; for what I would I do not, but what I hate, that I do. To will is indeed present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not. For the good which I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. I find a law, that when I would do good, evil is present with me: Even the law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and still bringing me into the captivity to the law of sin.”

10. In this state, I was indeed fighting continually, but not conquering. Before, I had willingly served sin; now it was unwillingly, but still I served it. I fell and rose, and fell again. Sometimes I was overcome, and in heaviness: Sometimes I overcame, and was in joy. For, as in the former state, I had some foretastes of the terrors of the Law, so had I in this, of the comforts of the Gospel. During this whole struggle between nature and grace, which had now continued above ten years, I had many remarkable returns to prayer, especially when I was in trouble: I had many sensible comforts, which are indeed no other than short anticipations of the life of faith. But I was still under the Law, not under Grace, the state most who are called Christians are content to live and die in. For I was only striving with, not freed from sin: Neither has the witness of the Spirit with my spirit. And indeed could not: for “I sought it not by faith, but, as it were, by the works of the Law.”

11. In my return to England, January 1738, being in imminent danger of death, and very uneasy on that account, I was strongly convinced that the cause of that uneasiness was unbelief, and that the gaining a true, living faith was the one thing needful for me. But still I fixt not this faith on its right object: I meant only faith in God, not faith in or through Christ. Again, I knew not that I was wholly void of this faith; but only thought, I had not enough of it. So that when Peter Boehler, whom God prepared for me as soon as I came to London, affirmed of true faith in Christ, which is but one, that it had those two fruits inseparably attending it, “Dominion over sin, and constant peace from a sense of forgiveness,” I was quite amazed, and looked upon it as a new Gospel. If this were so, it was clear I had not faith …

12. … they added with one mouth, that this faith was the gift, the free gift of God, and that he would surely bestow it upon every soul, who earnestly and perseveringly sought it. I was now thoroughly convinced; and, by the grace of God, I resolved to seek it unto the end, 1. By absolutely renouncing all dependence, in whole or in part, upon my own works or righteousness, on which I had really grounded my hope of salvation, though I knew it not, from my youth up. 2. By adding to the constant use of all the other means of grace, continual prayer for this very thing, justifying, saving faith, a full reliance on the blood of Christ, shed for me; a trust in him, as my Christ, as my sole justification, sanctification and redemption …

13. In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a Society in Aldersgate-Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ; Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

14. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there, what I now first felt in my heart. But it was not long before the enemy suggested, “This cannot be Faith; for where is thy joy?” Then was I taught, that “Peace and victory over sin, are essential to Faith in the Captain of our salvation: But, that as to the transports of joy that usually attend the beginning of it, especially in those who had mourned deeply, God sometimes giveth, sometimes withholdeth them, according to the counsels of his own will.”

15. After my return home, I was much buffeted with temptations: But cried out, and they fled away. They returned again and again. I as often lifted up my eyes, and he “sent me help from his holy place.” And herein I found the difference between this and my former state chiefly consisted. I was striving, yea, fighting with all my might under the law, as well as under grace. But then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered; now, I was always conqueror.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

History

John Wesley: Did You Know?

John Wesley never intended to form a church separate from the Anglican Church. The separation occurred as a result of his personally ordaining preachers destined for America after the Revolutionary War. “Ordination is separation.”

During his ministry John Wesley rode over 250,000 miles on horseback, a distance equal to ten circuits of the globe along the equator. He preached over 40,000 sermons!

Charles Wesley wrote over 6500 hymns! Many of those hymns are still in hymnals the world over today.

Though not a doctor of medicine, John Wesley invented many cures for diseases he had, wrote a book on medicinal cures for the masses, and started clinics for the poor. If this were not enough to show him interested in medicine, he also experimented on the effects of electric shock to treat nervous disorders and treated thousands this way—none had adverse side effects from the treatments!

John Wesley preached in the open air to audiences estimated in the tens of thousands after Anglican pulpits were closed to him. Sometimes he began preaching at daybreak or even before daybreak, and regularly he preached three times a day.

Churches, said Wesley, should be built “in the octagonal form” (with eight sides) and the interior should have a rail in the middle “to divide the men from the women.” There were to be no pews and no backs to the seats!

Benjamin Franklin printed Wesley’s sermon “On Free Grace” and several sermons by Wesley’s friend and fellow preacher George Whitefield. In turn, Wesley read everything Franklin wrote on the physics of electricity, then wrote his own treatise on electricity. The two men never met!

Because of the enormous output of publications designed for the common man, John Wesley has been called “The Father of the Religious Paperback.” Sermons, tracts, pamphlets of every kind—numbering around 5000 items came from his pen!

John Wesley was one of eighteen children, eight of whom died in infancy.

When John and Charles Wesley founded the “Holy Club” at Oxford in 1729, not more than five or six members of the House of Commons went to church at all!

Before John and Charles Wesley went to Georgia as missionaries in 1735, they consulted their mother, who said, “If I had twenty sons, I should rejoice if they were all so employed, though I should never see them more.”

When John Wesley had his “heart strangely warmed” on May 24, 1738, he was already ordained as a minister of the Anglican Church!

The greatest success of Methodism was not among the rich and “successful” but among the poor, but ironically, simple commoners were often the very ones who persecuted Wesley and the open air preachers most!

For all the power of his eyes and voice, John Wesley measured five-feet-three inches tall and weighed 128 pounds!

At John Wesley’s death in 1791 his followers numbered 79,000 in England and 40,000 in America, but by 1957 there were 40 million Methodists world-wide!

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

History

Tapping the Riches

Charles Yrigoyen, Jr.

Wesley set out to renew the church he loved and he was prepared to employ any appropriate material from the whole history of Christianity to do it.

In this series

The theology of John Wesley was not created in a vacuum. His experience, understanding and practice of the Christian faith were influenced by many expressions of its historic development. His theological heritage was shaped by the views of his parents, formal education, extensive reading and study, and constant reflection. By these means he became familiar with a wide variety of personalities, movements and schools of thought whose theological positions informed his life and beliefs.

Wesley was not reluctant to appropriate any portion of Christian tradition which he considered reputable and suitable to undergird Christian commitment. If it passed his critical scrutiny, he was ready to adopt it for his personal use and for the guidance of the Methodist societies. Without disparaging his creativity one must acknowledge that he was a skillful borrower and synthesizer of ideas from many sources.

An outstanding example of Wesley’s ability to use some of the breadth of Christian tradition and to incorporate its riches was the publication of A Christian Library. Between 1749 and 1755 Wesley carefully assembled and published this fifty-volume collection of devotional nourishment for the Methodist people and their preachers. It contained what Wesley judged to be the best tracts of “practical divinity.” Included were selections from the early church fathers, Pietism, mysticism, the Puritans and Church of England authors. This ambitious project illustrates Wesley’s willingness to draw instruction and inspiration from different eras of Christian history.

A comprehensive and definitive account of the influences on Wesley’s life and theology has yet to be written. We can mention, however, a few of the principal sources which provided a context for his beliefs and molded his theology. Although they seem to be listed as individual threads, Wesley hardly considered them in isolation from each other. For him they were parts of the whole fabric of a lively and dynamic Christian faith.

John Wesley was a Church of England man. He was born and reared in an Anglican environment. His home, academic training, ordination, missionary service, and the remainder of his ministry to the day of his death were related to the Church of England. It was never his intention to form a new church. We should not be surprised, therefore, to learn that the theological heritage of the Church of England was the first major ingredient in his perception of Christianity. It was the bedrock of Wesley’s theology. He highly esteemed and learned much from the writings of classical Anglican thinkers such as Chillingworth, Hooker and Laud. His profound respect for scripture, reason and tradition as authorities for Christian thought and practice was rooted in standard Church of England theology.

Yet the Church of England and its glorious legacy which Wesley loved so much were not above his critical examination. He was troubled by a cold rationalism which threatened to hold it captive. The church’s apathy and its inability to minister to the moral and spiritual needs of eighteenth-century England seriously distressed him. He therefore set out to renew the church he loved, and he was prepared to employ any appropriate material from the whole history of Christianity to do it.

The convictions and piety of the early church fathers impressed Wesley. They were represented in A Christian Library by Clement of Rome, Polycarp of Smyrna and Ignatius of Antioch, all part of a first- and second-century body of Christian literature known as the Apostolic Fathers. Also included was material from Macarius the Egyptian whose understanding of Christianity was formed by Gregory of Nyssa, the great eastern Christian teacher of the fourth century. Through the writings of Macarius, Wesley became acquainted with the treasures of Byzantine spirituality. His concept of Christian perfection as a process owed much to this ancient eastern tradition. Patristics, the study of the lives and writings of the early church fathers, was very important to Wesley.

Of course, John Wesley was also indebted to the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century. Chief among them were Martin Luther and John Calvin. Like them, Wesley was persuaded that scripture, grace and faith were of the highest importance in one’s knowledge of the faith and the Christian conduct of one’s life.

There is more than a casual similarity between Wesley’s early (pre-1738) attempt to please God and earn divine favor and Luther’s endeavor to do the same about two hundred years earlier. It does not seem strange that the events of Aldersgate on May 24, 1738, the date of his transforming, heart-warming experience, were drawn to a climax as he listened to someone’s reading from the preface to Luther’s Commentary on Romans, the fruit of Luther’s spiritual pilgrimage. But Wesley was not uncritical of Luther. He found the great Protestant reformer particularly deficient in his conception of sanctification and the Christian life.

Likewise, Wesley respected the work of John Calvin. He agreed with Calvin’s emphasis on the seriousness of original sin and its infection of every person. Furthermore, Wesley found himself in accord with Calvin on the matter of salvation by God’s unmerited grace. But he could not accept the Genevan reformer’s position that God unconditionally decreed salvation for some and damnation for others. Rather, God’s grace was free and available for all and the benefits of Christ’s atoning death were free for all. Contrary to the teachings of Calvin’s later disciples, Wesley held that divine grace could be rejected; it was not irresistible. And a believer could “fall from grace,” lose salvation; there was no necessary “perseverance of the saints.”

Wesley read with profit the noted American preacher Jonathan Edwards, but could not accept his Calvinism. He also argued with his friend, George Whitefield, about the latter’s commitment to Calvinistic predestination. Wesley preferred to be known as an Arminian to denote his disapproval of predestination Calvinism. Although Wesley appreciated both Luther and Calvin, he was unwilling to give assent to every aspect of their doctrines.

Mysticism also made a significant contribution to Wesley’s theology. He was attracted to the mystic’s quest and achievement of genuine religious experience and their views on the nature of inward religion and holiness. A Christian Library included representatives with a mystical inclination such as Blaise Pascal, Antoinette Bourignon, Don Juan D’Avila and Miguel de Molinos. Wesley also displayed a liking for the mystics Madame Guyon, Francois Fenelon and Jean-Baptiste de Renty. Alas, in Wesley’s opinion there were also weaknesses with mysticism. He was especially disturbed by its tendency to withdraw from the world and its too frequent disparagement of the eucharist, scripture, attendance at public worship and service to others as a means of grace.

The English Puritans also figure in the construction of Wesley’s theology. Their role may be traced, first of all, to his family background. In both of his parents’ ancestry there was a predominent Puritan presence. His maternal and paternal great-grandmothers and grandfathers had strong ties to Puritanism, even though his parents, Samuel and Susanna, had cast their lot with the Church of England. The large number of Puritans in A Christian Library attests his admiration for Puritan devotional literature.

There is little doubt that some of Wesley’s ideas about worship were formulated in light of Puritan thought and practice, especially his use of extemporaneous preaching and free, spontaneous prayer. There is also an affinity between his views on education and those of the dissenting Puritan academies. Furthermore, Wesley shared with the Puritans a major commitment to relate the gospel to the daily life of the believer.

Continental Pietism was another force which made its mark on Wesley, particularly through the Moravians. During his struggling missionary months in colonial Georgia and immediately thereafter contacts with the Moravians were critical. From them he gained new insight into the importance of supportive group fellowship, Bible study, hymn singing, and a quiet personal trust in God for salvation. The 1738 heart-warming experience occurred in a meeting in London on Aldersgate Street in which there was a notable Moravian presence. Wesley’s connections with the Moravians probably reached their zenith when he visited Herrnhut and Merienborn, their famous settlements on the continent. At Hermhut he conversed with their celebrated leader, Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Wesley was not entirely satisfied with the Moravian way. Among other things he found their view of the church and sacraments lacking and he criticized what he deemed their neglect of holiness.

There have been critics of John Wesley, living and dead, who have accused him of promoting shallow emotional religion and theological ignorance. That labeling may apply to some persons who have called themselves Methodists, even Wesleyans, but it certainly does not pertain to Wesley himself. Quite the contrary. John Wesley was an accomplished theologian. He was a scholar-evangelist-organizer whose reading and reflection spanned his entire adult life. He was acquainted with Christian history and tapped its riches. In the words of Albert Outler, one of the premier interpreters of Wesley in this generation, John Wesley was “one who had glimpsed the underlying unity of Christian truth in both the Catholic and Protestant traditions and who had turned this recognition to the services of a great popular religious reform and renewal.”

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

History

John Wesley – Revival and Revolution: From the Publisher

Warm heartfelt thanks to the many of you who have written in response to our “inaugural” issue devoted to Count Zinzendorf and the early Moravian missionary movement.

Requests and inquiries for subscriptions flow in on a daily basis and we regret that final plans for frequency of publication and subscription are still not settled. We hope to reach commitments and decisions on this shortly.

We are already at work on the life on John Wycliffe. This coming issue of Christian History will commemorate the 600th anniversary of his translation of the Bible into English.

This present issue, devoted to John Wesley, will prompt you to dig into his writings. And what a study is John Wesley! The essence of his message bursts forth from its eighteenth century shell with a contemporary prophetic and evangelistic power. Especially see the sermons in the special foldout section.

In the book Lord Vanity Samuel Shellabarger (we thank Frederick Maser for this citation) described the impact of Wesley on one of the characters in this novel:

In the churches of Venice and at his Jesuit school, Richard had heard sermons on this theme before, but Wesley had the gift of making it seem both new and ultimate. He spoke with an authority lacking to the urbane, rhetorical Abbati in their lofty pulpits. Why? Because of his own absolute singleness of purpose. It occurred to Richard, that behind Wesley’s voice, behind the thoughts he uttered, amplifying and authenticating them, lay the thousands of miles on horseback up and down England, lay the hardships, dangers, courage, poverty, effort, and persecution of the twenty years. Whatever he said was backed by that sanction. His power derived not only from believing but from living his doctrine. It was the power of Paul of Tarsus or Francis of Assisi or Loyola.

Many have been curious as to where we are coming from and what is our purpose. The questions are fair because every communicator or communications presentation has an agenda whether conscious or unconscious.

Christian History is published by Christian History Institute. We have no particular denominational or sectarian position to actively promote. We come from a variety of Christian denominations. Our conviction is that the Lord of history will continue to direct and lead his people to new levels of understanding and obedience in the future as he has in the past. We believe that we are better prepared to discern his leading as we are grounded in our heritage.

So it is not our intention to romanticize the Christian past but to examine it. We will draw upon qualified specialists and scholars and communicate in a way that can be understood by the lay person. We do not seek to contrive any particular response to the historical materials presented but trust that as individuals and groups deal with them they will be moved to see, learn and respond and grow.

Recall the words from the Book of Isaiah 51:1–2

Hearken to me, you who pursue deliverance, you who seek the Lord;
Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
And to the quarry from from which you were digged.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

History

Wesley to Wilberforce

John WesIey’s last letter from his deathbed

Written February 24, 1791 at age 88 from Balam, England, six days before his death, this last letter of Wesley’s was addressed to William Wilberforce. Wesley had spoken out forcibly against slavery, repeatedly referring to the slave trade as the “execrable sum of all villainies”. In 1774 he wrote the influential Thoughts Upon Slavery.

Wilberforce, a Member of Parliament, was active at the time in an unsuccessful attempt to pass abolition. Debate continued for several years and in 1807 the abolition of slavery was effected thoughout the British Empire.

The text of the letter is given below and can be used to follow the aged, faltering hand of the still hearty Wesley. The “tract” to which Wesley refers was written by a former slave, Gustavus Vassa, who was born in 1745 in Africa, kidnapped and sold for a slave in Barbados. In 1757 he was sent to England and, according to church records, was soon converted to Christianity.

24 February, 1791

Balam. England

Dear Sir:

Unless the divine power has raised you up to be as “Athanasius against the world,” I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy, which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them stronger than God? O be not weary of well-doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.

Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by the circumstance, that a man who has a black skin being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a LAW in all of our Colonies that the OATH of a black man against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this!

That He who has guided you from youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and all things is the prayer of, dear sir,

Your affectionate servant,

John Wesley

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History

John Wesley and Women

Intense, charismatic, indomitable, John Wesley lived according to rules established by the only woman living in his time who may have been his equal—Susanna Wesley, his mother. But women for Wesley were a special class of beings with spiritual sensitivity and with gifts for elevated conversation and correspondence. Throughout his life John Wesley was naturally attracted to women, and he attracted a wide range of women to him. Although he was disappointed in love and more so in his marriage, nevertheless, for spiritual comradeship, Wesley especially cherished contact with faithful women.

With men it was otherwise. From his father Samuel and his brothers, particularly Samuel and Charles, to his mentor William Law, to his Holy Club associates, to the Moravians Peter Boehler and Christian David, the early male influences on John Wesley were vigorous and deep, but he systematically transcended any single male influence and by 1738 was finally freely himself. Wesley had the gift of attracting men with the highest personal powers to himself and of organizing them effectively. He used men, he led men. But among men perhaps only his brother Charles was a real, lifelong friend. All other male relationships seem to have been professional in the highest sense—in doing God’s work.

So profound was the influence of Susanna Wesley upon her son John Wesley that she has been called “The Mother of Methodism.” But the force of her character was also an obstacle to John Wesley’s appreciation of women in general, for what woman could possibly have measured up to her?

Susanna Wesley’s regime at the parsonage was very strict even by eighteenth century standards. She bore many children—John was the fourteenth—but Susanna Wesley knew precisely what to do with them. She broke her children’s wills early so that their young minds could be formed in a wholly Christian fashion. Beatings were administered frequently, and the children learned to cry softly so that they would not be beaten again. Devotions were held before daybreak each day, and study was a normal part of the daily routine for all the family. Harsh cold and a sparse diet also prepared the way ahead for John.

Susanna and Samuel Wesley agreed in their manner of governing the home. The childhood of ministers’ children was a product both of the low salary paid to ministers and of the minister’ desire to maintain a dignity above any class distinction. Ministers were the educated class, and they prepared their children for the hardship of getting through the best schools without a family fortune behind them. John Wesley won scholarships and a fellowship to put himself through. In his journals and letters he never wrote of one regret for his childhood, and indeed again and again prescribed his own upbringing as the ideal Christian childhood.

In the year that Samuel Wesley died, his two sons John and Charles asked their mother whether they should proceed to Georgia to do the ministerial work for which they had been invited. She answered that indeed they should—even if she should never see them again. Her devotion to God called for the joyful sacrifice of all her children for His glory. Can there be any question why John Wesley, brought up with such a model of Christian sacrifice, was impatient with his early congregations for their easygoing ways?

John Wesley’s home was not exclusively dour and serious. He and Charles, being educated and eligible young men, naturally fell in with the upperclass society. In those days children in such circles amused themselves by assuming names and carrying on platonic or abstract philosophical correspondence. John was “Cyrus” and his first love was Sally Kirkham, who was “Varanese.” This relationship was different from that typical of contemporary youth. There was nothing whatsoever physical about it. The record in Wesley’s journal is in code and is sketchy—it is clear, though, that John Wesley was reticent even to tell the young girl that he was fond of her. She was the last person of her social position to whom Wesley was personally attracted except through his ministerial role.

After this nebulous first love, John Wesley continued to circulate in the country-house culture, occasionally taking a glass of wine, dancing with his sister, or reading the fashionable literature of his day. Only when he went to Georgia was he again attracted by a young girl, but now the situation was public, not private.

“Sophy” Hopkey was one of John Wesley’s young parishoners in Georgia. She was, by all accounts, not very , exceptional, but Wesley saw a lot of her. They would go walking or riding or picnicking. The relationship was not physical in the least. In fact, John Wesley waited so long to tell her that he cared for her that “Sophy” pledged I herself to another man. That was betrayal in Wesley’s mind, and he took revenge in a most uncharitable way—he refused to perform the marriage ceremony for the girl on the basis of narrow legalistic grounds. As a result, the whole community was in an uproar, and Wesley literally fled the territory, departed for England, and never went to America again. So by the time of his Aldersgate conversion, Wesley had suffered two defeats in love—one minor, the other somewhat unsettling.

Wesley’s third encounter with romance was with Grace Murray, who had been his nurse during an illness. Grateful for the kindness she had shown him, Wesley employed her as his assistant while he preached around the country. She was devoted to him, and he became very attached to her. They decided on marriage, but unfortunately Charles and John each had agreed to allow the other to approve or disapprove of his choice of a bride. Charles not only disapproved, but upon discovering the plan, he rode immediately to Grace Murray and forced her to break the engagement and to marry one of John’s preachers. No one knows what was said at the interview or why Grace Murray so radically changed her mind, but John Wesley was crushed.

Charles’ preemptive strike had a very bad consequence. The next time John Wesley decided to marry, he did so in secret, and the marriage was consummated before Charles knew anything about it. This marriage—to Mrs. Vazeille—was one of the worst mistakes of his life.

Mrs. Vazeille was the wife of a sailor, who was lost at sea during a voyage made shortly after he and his wife had argued about Mrs. Vazeille’s frequenting Methodist societies. One novelist has postulated that his death was the gallant suicide of a wronged husband, but nothing really is known concerning the circumstances. Mrs. Vazeille, now Mrs. Wesley, became insanely jealous of her husband, reading his mail for incriminating evidence. She embarrassed her husband in public on numerous occasions. At first she tried to keep up with Wesley in his routine, but finally she could not. The two separated, but never divorced. Wesley’s journal entries are significantly cold and detached in their mention of her, even when they record her death.

Clearly, John Wesley never had a satisfactory love relation in the full sense of the term with anyone. “Varanese,” “Sophy” Hopkey, and Grace Murray were all will-o-the-wisps, though Grace Murray may have turned out as more than that if Charles had not interfered. Mrs. Vazeille was like a judgment. But what woman could pass family muster or withstand the hardships imposed by Wesley on himself and his associates? With physical relationships closed to him, Wesley concentrated on platonic, non-physical ones.

Selina, Countess of Huntington, one of those who walked out of the Moravian society with Wesley, remained a friend for life. Even though later she personally favored George Whitefield’s Calvinism to Wesley’s Methodism, she maintained her communications with Wesley and was a voice for him in high places. When Wesley told hostile justices that his power was from the throne, he in part meant that he had powerful friends in court—like the Countess.

Farther down the social chain were women, who, like many women today, had deep, visionary experiences. Whenever Wesley heard of such a woman, he would interview her and minutely record the experience in his journal. Brought up to consider the world as alive with supernatural powers, Wesley often went out of his way to find this kind of informant, whether male or female. But he seems to have considered women more susceptible to such experiences than men. In the same vein, Wesley records every instance of prophecy and of what we now call telepathy in women. He produced no treatise on the subject, but his scientific interest in women was profound and lasting.

For Wesley women had equal stature to men in God’s eves. He used women in his work, and he elaborated on the special service of women who died doing good for the poor and for prisoners. He did not see equality in God’s sight as meaning equality in the world of work or in the world of ordained preachers. But this should not diminish the importance of his elevation of women well above their station in the Anglican Church. Only recently has Wesley’s idea of women’s roles been explored in biographical studies of some of the early Methodist women, done by women whose own advances chronicle an ongoing development of roles for women in the churches that have sprung from his teachings.

Copyright © 1983 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

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