A Dynamic Faith: The Story of Early Methodism, Part I
The story of Methodism is larger than often imagined. For many years the story was told as though it began and sometimes even ended with John Wesley. He repeatedly told the story this way himself. But Methodism was always bigger than Wesley. The story is actually one of international scope, of war-fatigued nations and peoples, of historical memories both good and bad, and of men and women swept up by the Holy Spirit in seemingly random outbursts of revival over the course of decades. Those who encountered this dynamic work of the Spirit often spent the rest of their lives in wonder, just trying to describe what happened.
Our story begins not with Wesley, born in 1703, but earlier with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It could easily start before that time, but the Revolution of that year ended – for the most part – the struggle caused by shifting cultural, political, and ecclesiastical power in the centuries following Henry VIII’s departure from Rome, or when the church in England became the Church of England. This was a watershed moment. It was at the Glorious Revolution, named quite blatantly by those who claimed victory, that Protestant monarchs William and Mary unceremoniously replaced James II, a Roman Catholic. What was odd about this is that new monarchs usually replace dead ones, or even defeated ones, and James was neither. He was absent.
James was the son of Charles I and brother to Charles II. His royal pedigree was unimpeachable. But he had embraced the Catholicism of his mother rather than the Protestantism of his martyred father. England by the late 17th c. had had enough of religious strife and so the support that he needed to reign as monarch evaporated. This strife was behind the beheading of Charles I earlier in the century after a series of civil wars that led to his defeat and the rise of Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan-inspired Commonwealth. But that eleven-year experiment with monarch, bishops, and Prayer Book banned was of little success. The monarchy was restored in 1660. But in a few decades the fragile balance that held this peace together was beginning to fray. It’s hard to hold together a Protestant establishment, including its state church, when the one at the top appears to be playing for a different team. And so at the invitation of Parliament, William and Mary acceded to the throne. By 1701 the laws of the land mandated that only Protestants will ever do so.
The struggles of the 17th c. changed England and led to a deep-seated desire in the English heart to restore that which had been lost. But they weren’t interested in simple mimicry. That alone wouldn’t do. So as this period unfolds, the English embraced a vision of progress that can be described as restoring the best of the past in the present. In the political realm, this meant restoring the monarchy with the safeguards of Parliament. In the religious realm, this meant restoring the order of the church, its liturgy, its structure, and taking their cues from the good and great of church history, particularly the early church fathers. Even their architecture reflected this view of progress, taking its direction from ancient Greece and Rome. Restoration was the order of the day.
Growing Up in Epworth
This restoration-focused society is the one in which John and Charles Wesley were born. They weren’t the only Wesley children; in fact the number of Wesley children born to Samuel and Susanna Wesley is unknown, 18 or 19 according to Samuel. Nine of these children will grow into adulthood, three boys and six girls. All of the boys will become priests in the Church of England like their father. All of the girls will struggle in life, particularly in love. But all of the children will be raised with sound teaching and devotion, baptized by their father as infants in St. Andrew’s Church, Epworth where he served. The Wesley children memorized the Lord’s Prayer and the creed at an early age, and they were taught to read beginning at the age of five–unusually for the time, this included both the boys and the girls. But the boys went off to school, Samuel Jr. and Charles to Westminster School in London adjacent to the famous Abbey. And John was sent to London’s historic Charterhouse in the shadow of Wren’s newly completed St. Paul’s Cathedral. All of the boys went up to Oxford.
There was an age gap between the brothers. Samuel Jr. was born in 1690 or 1691, John was born in 1703, and Charles in 1707. The sixteen, or seventeen, years between Samuel Jr. and Charles meant that when Charles attended Westminster and his brother taught there, Samuel was much more like a father figure to him. Later, Charles will sweetly refer to Samuel and his wife Ursula as his “best friends.” Despite their later connection, John and Charles won’t become close to one another until Charles is a student at Oxford and John an Oxford fellow. And like almost every sibling relationship, all three brothers had complex and sometimes contentious interactions with one another.
Life at Oxford
Oxford in the eighteenth century was a strikingly conservative place. This was true politically and religiously, although we shouldn’t imagine that every undergraduate was pious all the time. But the university was inherently connected to the Church, predominantly Tory, favored Aristotle over Plato (especially his virtue ethics), and took seriously the high church theologians of the 17th c. called the Caroline Divines, the English Reformers of the 16th c., and the early church, known then as “Primitive Christianity.” They looked for the best of the past in order to better the present. All of this profoundly impacted the Wesley brothers.
It was at Oxford that John Wesley began to feel a call to ordained ministry, where he excelled in academic study, particularly Greek and Logic, and where he read the early church fathers and later Caroline Divines such as William Law and Jeremy Taylor, all of whom inspired in him a great devotion, even a methodical one. Taylor in particular was responsible for Wesley’s decades-long attachment to daily accountability, and his now famous journal. In 1725 Bishop Potter ordained him a deacon in Christ Church Cathedral in the heart of Oxford. Until the English Reformation this was the site of the shrine of St. Frideswide, an Anglo-Saxon saint who built a church in Oxford well before the university ever existed; her witness an abiding reminder of the centuries of Christian devotion that served as the foundation of the university itself.
Within the Church of England – and there really was no other church in England at the time as it claimed over 93% of the population – one is ordained a deacon and then later a presbyter or priest. Wesley would be a deacon for quite some time, receiving his priestly ordination in 1728. But 1725 was pivotal; he not only entered holy orders but was also made a fellow of Lincoln College. In the words of the time, he also “took a turn toward seriousness.”
Both John and Charles Wesley were raised with “high church” principles. Charles barely budged from them for the rest of his life, John a bit more. The high churchmen stress continuity with the past in both the church’s message and its order. In the 18th c. this meant allegiance to the king, to the three-fold order of ministry (bishop, priest, and deacon), to apostolic succession, and to a renewal of sacramental life. Within high church thought we also see a great emphasis on a holy life, one driven by a dynamic and relational grace. It is from these formative principles that the first rise of Methodism took place.
The First Rise of Methodism: Oxford
Later in life, John Wesley will refer to the three rises of Methodism: Oxford, Georgia, and London. Each of these episodes will impact the Wesleyan movement in unique ways, adding depth to the search for a restored primitive Christianity. This search is key to the entire enterprise; at every moment, despite differences that develop, Wesley’s vision for Methodism was always driven by a search to restore the purity and passion of the earliest followers of Jesus. He loved the early church. Critics then and now – and he has always had critics – can debate how well that vision played out, but it’s difficult to overlook the fact that it was this vision that drove him.
The Oxford episode is where the Wesleyan form of Methodism began with the creation of a small group in 1729. Charles started the group, but John will develop it into something recognizably Methodist. The initial vision was to gather a group of students to help one another, both as students and as Christians. This is where the method of Methodism takes root. The initial small group will expand and contract, and other small groups will develop in other colleges and in the town, but a method emerges among them of accountability, good works, and sacramental devotion. The desire for holiness fueled their outlook. Figures such as George Whitefield and John Clayton emerge as leading figures alongside the Wesley brothers. And they were picked on, which is likely the source of the term “Methodist” and definitely the source of another name, the Holy Club. Some later interpreters will misunderstand the continued importance of the first rise, labeling it as legalistic. But what the Oxford rise provides Methodism is a vision for holiness that takes seriously the need for formation, or put differently the way that our walk with Christ changes us, step by step.
Small groups in the eighteenth century were oddly both celebrated and taboo. The period saw the rise of the Religious Societies, an effort within official Church channels to encourage devotion and good works patterned on the work of Anthony Horneck and other English Pietists. They set up these religious societies to counter an apparent rise of immorality in the post-Restoration kingdom. At the same time, a war-weary society looked with suspicion on alternative groups, or even worse “conventicles.” These were illicit gatherings that earlier in the seventeenth century had been used by Puritans and other Parliamentary supporters in competition to the establishment and its Church before the outbreak of civil war, thus tying the idea of these groups to insurrection and violence.
In his heart – and he says this many times – Wesley would have loved to have spent his entire life in Oxford. He may have tactlessly railed against nominal Christianity from the university pulpit, but he loved the life of the mind. However, his search for primitive Christianity and desire to spread it led him away from his beloved university that in the later words of Evelyn Waugh “exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning.” But the vision that took hold of him was larger than Oxford.
And he dragged his brother Charles along for the ride. Charles had his own “turn toward seriousness” but was not as sure as his brother was that he either wanted to be a missionary or even ordained. But John ensured that both took place, and quickly. In fact, Charles Wesley was ordained a deacon and a priest within the matter of a week in preparation for his move to Georgia to serve within the colonial government and shepherd the people of St. Simon’s Island. Charles wouldn't last long in Georgia – only six months – even though John remained in the new world for a year and a half. But John crossed the Atlantic en route to his new work both unprepared and overly idealistic.
The Second Rise of Methodism: Georgia
Despite a deep loathing for most of what Voltaire said and stood for, Wesley swallowed whole his concept of “the noble savage.” This is the idea that people groups untouched by what was called “civilization” would be found in a purer or more natural state. For Wesley, this meant an opportunity to bring the pure gospel (i.e. primitive Christianity) to a purer people who would not be encumbered by the vices of civilized society and thus would embrace it without reserve. His idea, however, died very quickly. In fact, he wasn’t even off of the ship when a contingent of Native Americans came to speak to him and complained of the competing modes of evangelism between Catholics and Protestants, bursting this naïve bubble. Georgia would be a learning experience for John Wesley.
But it was also because of the Georgia episode that Wesley encountered a group of pietists known as the Moravians. He met them first on the ship while on the crossing and was struck by the resolve of their faith. As the English passengers were terrified by the storms they encountered en route, the Moravians sat calmly singing their hymns. Wesley was more than impressed. He wanted what they had.
The Moravians were a unique group of believers from Central Europe and part of a pietistic movement within Protestantism that had been developing for a number of decades. But by the 1720s and 30s, they were caught between competing forces on the continent: orthodox Lutheranism to their north and a resurgent Roman Catholicism to their south. They were caught in the middle in something of a pressure cooker, oppressed by both camps and often on the move to find peace. The thing about pietists, though, is that they carry their faith in their hearts and so when they move, they just bring their faith with them, encouraging others on the way. Pietists spread from Siberia to North Carolina. So Georgia is important to the story of Methodism for a number of reasons: it was an attempt to re-create primitive Christianity in a new place, it’s where the Wesley brothers publish their first hymnal, and also where they encounter a truly experiential form of Christianity. The combination will prove vital to Methodism.
But Georgia will also prove to be controversial. It used to be said that Wesley had trouble connecting to the parishioners in Savannah and then cold feet when it came to Sophia Hopkey, a woman he probably loved. But recent scholarship has shown that in addition to these challenges Wesley was also an outspoken critic of the way that the colonial government undermined women and the poor. He ticked off just the right people and ended up fleeing the colony.
When Wesley returned to London, he came back bruised. He had doubts about his vocation. His vision of planting “primitive Christianity” in the unspoiled outpost of colonial Georgia had come into contact with reality. And although the vision itself was not lost, this is one moment in his life where he faced a heavy dose of realism. But we must remember that as confident as he liked to present himself, he was a new clergyman, still a young man, and still learning what it means to put great ideals into actual practice.
The Third Rise of Methodism: London
The third rise of Methodism centered in London. It's the least straightforward of the three. It’s 1738 and the Wesley brothers are both back from Georgia still licking their wounds. But both of them have now encountered pietists in London, much like the Moravians that they met while crossing the Atlantic. And in their bruised state they are faced with questions from these pietists, including one that strikes at the heart; “do you know that you’re saved?”
Peter Boehler, originally from Central Europe where revival had been breaking out and spreading, in the words of David Hempton, “from the Alps to the Appalachians,” had come to England to spread what we would call an evangelical message of conversion and the experience of assurance of faith. This rattled the Wesley brothers. Boehler taught that to have any doubt was to lack faith at all. His perspective was all or nothing, leaving no room for what Wesley would eventually embrace as degrees of faith. But out of challenging encounters like this, the Wesley brothers seek assurance above all else. And in due time, they receive it.
Charles Wesley experienced an evangelical “Pentecost” a few days before his brother. It’s a unique story. He had been questioning his faith for some time and now he’s sick in bed at his friend’s home. One of the maids came to see him and spoke words over him that he heard, not as from the maid, but as from Christ. Upon recovering, he had experienced the assurance of faith that he so desperately desired.
John Wesley’s encounter is more widely known, even if often misunderstood. It’s called his Aldersgate experience. For weeks he had been seeking assurance of faith but on May 24, 1738 he experienced signposts of assurance. These begin in the morning when he opened his bible to the words of Peter, “There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that ye should be partakers of the divine nature” and also “Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.” He later attended Evening Prayer at St. Paul’s Cathedral and the choir anthem touched him. The words, again from scripture, spoke to his heart:
Out of the deep have I cried unto thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice. Let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may abide it? For there is mercy with thee; therefore shalt thou be feared. O Israel, trust in the lord; For with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from all his sins.
Having attended St. Paul’s he surely heard the bells of the cathedral sound that day to mark the birth of the future George III, born not too far away in St. James’ Square. But his day was not yet over. For as he writes in the Journal:
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.
Even though he makes the claim at the time that this is when he became a Christian, Wesley later corrected himself. This wasn’t his conversion to Christianity. In fact, if we read his words carefully, this is an experience of assurance. This is when he comes to know, not just as an idea but as an experienced reality, that Christ died for him and saved him. It’s a wonderful moment in his life; one of many. It’s also his entrance into the Evangelical Revival. He’s being swept up like so many others.
Ryan Danker is the director of the John Wesley Institute, publisher of Good News magazine, and associate lead editor of Firebrand.