A Dynamic Faith: The Story of Early Methodism, Part II
Lithograph of the Foundry by Hugh Humphreys, circa 1830. (Source: WikiCommons)
This is Part II of a three-part series. You can read Part I here.
Caught up in the Sweep
With their evangelical conversions, the Wesley brothers are changed. And they're caught up in an international movement of the Spirit that is sweeping up people of all walks of life, in different church traditions, even seemingly opposing ones. We have to keep in mind that the Revival included Calvinist stalwarts such as the London firebrand William Romaine, the author of "Rock of Ages," Augustus Toplady, and the former slave boat captain turned hymn writer, John Newton. The upper classes are even caught up in this movement, including such figures as Lady Huntingdon and Lord Dartmouth. But the average participant is not some noteworthy or powerful figure; these are everyday people, often women, who experience a life-changing encounter with Christ. They are the heartbeat of the movement.
What we see in the Wesley brothers, though, is a deep yearning to share the good news. In fact, in the earliest years of the Revival, they are so passionate in their desire to share their experiences that they offend many clergy and congregations who might have otherwise been more open to them had they been less zealous. And they're kicked out, or even blocked out, of pulpits for it! This isn't simply because of their lack of tact, but in many cases because their behavior – and some of their language – is reminiscent of previous mavericks, some of which upended the very peace of Britain, igniting the civil wars of the previous century. The concern about renewed violence is lost on the evangelists, but not on everyone.
The Wesley brothers, George Whitefield, and Peter Boehler established a new religious society on Fetter Lane in London in response to their experiences of the Spirit. But this was anything but a quiet gathering of Christians. And it both attracted an international gathering but also served to spread experiential Christianity well beyond its walls. Hempton called it “a religious pollen factory.” Fetter Lane attracted all sorts of people, from high church Anglicans like the Wesley brothers to Central European pietists and even those called the French Prophets, a highly controversial and eccentric group. There were reasons why the Wesleys’ friends wrote them letters during this period worried that they’d been caught up in some form of religious extremism. But it was all part of a new experiential Christianity and the brothers were open to quite a bit of it, but not all of it.
Experience by its very nature is subjective. For example, I can’t tell you what you experienced, but you can try to explain it. However, that explanation is anything but objective. Experience is personal, even when felt by larger groups of people. On its own, experience can only unite people so much. In terms of the larger Evangelical Revival, the radical experience of the new birth – being made new by the Holy Spirit – united evangelicals across social, economic, national, and theological differences. The idea that an encounter with Christ changes a person, and that this change is not simply a change in lifestyle but a religious conversion, an awakening, brought people together in ways that no one expected. But once you try to put that experience into words, to share it even, our perspectives come into play and interpretive differences emerge.
In the case of Fetter Lane, the French Prophets caused initial turmoil that united the majority of its members against their ecstatic claims. The Prophets declared that God had revealed to them who in the society should actually be married to whom, and they tried to make this happen, even at the expense of existing marriages! Charles Wesley and others put a stop to this very quickly. But a deeper divide lay under the surface nonetheless. The question was not: do you have an assurance of God’s love and mercy, believing that Christ died for you and rose again that we might have life? The question, rather, was how to “wait upon the Lord” in the meantime. This may seem a minor question, but it’s not. English Moravianism – a part of the pietistic tradition that came out of Central Europe – insisted that one has to “wait” for this assurance by doing almost nothing.
Theology matters, in part, because it determines how we live. And the English Moravians at the time – including Boehler – insisted that in waiting for assurance, one should refrain from the means of grace, from scripture reading, from partaking in sacraments, from fasting, and from active engagement in works of mercy. Anglicanism taught the exact opposite. If one was to “wait” on the Lord, it must be done in openness to God’s grace, meaning that those who want to experience this transforming encounter need to be actively engaged in the means that God has given to us. Waiting is not a passive act. Division within the Revival wasn’t far off.
This is vital to the story because it shows that the Wesleys – who led the way in opposing this passive approach called “stillness” – were not simply formed by the last rise of Methodism, but by each and every rise. Even religious experience, as wonderful as it can be, must be understood within the story and patterns of God’s revelation and his continued work in the life of the church throughout the centuries.
The Wesley brothers had gleaned from their upbringing and their formation at Oxford a keen appreciation for the historic patterns of Christian discipleship. In other words, they took seriously the lessons learned throughout history about what it means to walk with Christ. Wesley summed up his perspective later in his sermon “On Working Out Our Own Salvation” when he wrote: “God works; therefore I can work. God works; therefore I must work.” Everything begins and ends with God’s initiative, and we are called to cooperate with his work. This is classic Christianity.
It will take some time for the Wesleys to work out how their traditional Christian beliefs and practices correspond to the experience-driven reality of the Revival, but what will emerge is a form of evangelical catholicism. Their vision was shaped and formed by scripture, the church fathers and mothers, the universal councils of the church, the sacraments and other means of grace, the insights of the Reformers (particularly the English ones), the treasures of the Church of England such as the Book of Common Prayer, and the expectation of religious encounter. The Wesleyan tradition will emerge from the deep wells of the Christian faith.
The Emergence of the United Societies
As the Revival unfolds and continues to break out across the British Isles – and even across the globe – Wesley will begin to organize a portion of it under his supervision. London, Bristol, and Newcastle will become the centers of a growing and increasingly national movement. The first Methodist building that Wesley will build is in Bristol. In 1739, he constructed the New Room, a center for Methodist work that still stands today. Bristol will be pivotal to the movement in numerous ways.
One tactic of previous mavericks – of monastic friars in the Medieval period and even “Lollard” heretics – was that of field preaching. This doesn’t always happen in fields, but wherever people gather, from the town square, often at a market cross, or even outside of mines where workers gather before and after a long day of work. Howell Harris, a Welsh layman, had begun to field preach to great effect and he taught this practice to George Whitefield. In turn, Whitefield taught Wesley. The practice will become a hallmark of Methodism for more than a century to include both clergy and laity, to speak wherever necessary in circumstances good and bad.
But initially, when Wesley first heard that Whitefield was preaching out of doors near Bristol, he was scandalized. He wrote in his Journal that throughout his life he had been “so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.” Yet having witnessed Whitefield’s success and being reminded of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “one pretty remarkable precedent of field preaching,” he relented to “be more vile.” It was on the outskirts of Bristol that Wesley preached his first outdoor sermon, an experience that surprised even him. He saw the fruit of the work. He saw how the people responded.
In London, he will establish the Foundry, taking over an old canon factory on the northern side of a growing London. In Newcastle, he will build an orphanage and a meeting house. London will eventually emerge as the headquarters of the new movement as both Wesley and Whitefield will set up bases there in the same neighborhood, eventually pinning Foundry and Whitefield’s Tabernacle against one another.
In many locations throughout Britain, the Wesleys are not planting new groups but shoring up older ones, societies planted earlier. Wesley planted some, as did many others throughout the eighteenth century. But he organizes these varied groups in a more connected and disciplined way. This is a pattern that is seen over and over again in early Methodism. Like the Revival itself, Wesley didn’t start this pattern. In fact, he’s often trying to catch up with the Spirit’s movements, chasing after “the showers of grace” as he described it. There is a method to Methodism, but Methodism itself was often more wild than tame.
Much of the Wesleyan work will be in places like Yorkshire and Cornwall. It will not be found in places of power or where the Church has a strong presence. For example, despite early outposts in Oxford and London, the southwest of England was called a “Methodist desert” well into the nineteenth century. Instead, it will be found, as John Walsh said so poetically, “just beyond the peel of church bells.” Where Methodism often found root was on the outskirts of large parishes where ancient boundaries had not been updated to meet the needs of shifting populations. Parish churches had yet to be established near new growth. In this case, it was not that the Church of England was lacking in life, but that its structures limited it at the time and societies were easily planted in places with little clerical cover. The picture is not of a vital Methodism saving a dead Church of England; it’s simply more complicated than that.
But the method of Methodism, its growing number of societies, and the army of lay preachers – Wesley’s “helpers” – needed greater oversight. And so in 1744 in the upper floors of the New Room in Bristol, Wesley organized his first conference. This was not a large gathering – there were only six listed as being there – nor did it make the news. Like so many great things, it started out small. But here we see in the first Minutes of Conference what they set out to do where it is recorded:
…after some time spent in prayer, the design of our meeting was proposed, namely, to consider:
1.What to teach;
2. How to teach, and
3. What to do, i.e., how to regulate our doctrine, discipline, and practice.
What's confusing in the first half-century of the Methodist movement is that the word "Methodist" didn't always refer to those connected to Wesley. Throughout much of this period, the term was one used to describe evangelicals, and primarily evangelicals within the Church. Only later in the century will the word be almost exclusively associated with the Wesleyan movement, and in particular its denominational forms first in America and only in the nineteenth century in Britain. But here we see a distinct group begin to take form.
The Emergence of Methodist Practice
To understand the development of Methodist practice, it must be kept in mind that the entire system was designed to lead people from awakening to entire sanctification, to enable the faithful to walk with Christ and to be formed by his life and thought. There were evangelistic practices to be sure, aimed at those who did not know Christ, but within Methodism itself, practices emerge – sometimes by trial and error – to find patterns that lead to holiness. Kevin Watson wrote that, “Wesley’s conviction that those who received the gifts of justifying faith and the new birth must grow in holiness led him to join people together.” The practices alone were not sacrosanct, but what Wesley believed in his time to be most beneficial to a full Christian life.
In December of 1738 Wesley produced a text called Rules of the Band Societies, a revision of the rules that he and Boehler had written for Fetter Lane. But it was his 1743 General Rules of the United Societies that will become a standard outline of Methodist intentionality. The text, which is not very long, lays out how to become a member of a society and how not to get kicked out. Societies were divided into classes where they would care for one another with greater attention, although it must be noted that classes were initially set up to raise funds. Finally, bands were established as another level of accountability. These three strata (society, class, and band) formed the structure of Methodism, itself seen within the Church. Wesley states:
There is one only condition previously required in those who desire admission into these societies, ‘a desire to flee from the wrath to come, to be saved from their sins’. But wherever this is really fixed in the soul it will be shown by its fruits. It is therefore expected of all who continue therein that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation…”
And then he provides three general ways by which this is done: “doing no harm,” “doing good,” and “attending upon all the ordinances of God.” Under each category is greater detail such as “avoiding evil of every kind” in the first, “by doing good especially to them that are of the household of faith, or groaning so to do” in the second, and finally in the third partaking in “The Supper of the Lord.” Richard Heitzenrater noted about the third category that it “is a precise enumeration of the means of grace that the quietist Moravians would have people omit.”
Wesley often talked about Methodism as though it simply espoused basic Christian belief and practice and there is much to that argument. But it is good to remember that it was intended to be a particularly intentional – and intensive – movement of renewal aimed at the larger church. Charles Wesley once wrote pointedly to remind his brother of this fact: “The Methodists the Church are not!” This wasn’t to say that Methodists weren’t a part of the church, but that their initial purpose was to be leaven. And leaven without flour and water can’t fulfill its purpose.
In early Methodism, many chose no longer to associate with the movement because of its demands and the tension that it created with those outside of it, particularly families, masters and mistresses, the clergy, or even common acquaintances. Others departed Methodism because they were actually kicked out by the Wesley brothers themselves. In 1743, Wesley records that in the Newcastle society 76 people had left on their own initiative. And then he lists out the reasons why he kicked out an additional 64:
2 for cursing and swearing
2 for habitual Sabbath-breaking
17 for drunkenness
2 for retailing spirituous liquors
3 for quarrelling and brawling
1 for beating his wife
3 for habitual, willful lying
4 for railing and evil-speaking
1 for idleness and laziness, and
29 for lightness and carelessness
In order to grasp early Methodism it may be useful to think of the movement as a form of monasticism. Like the monks and nuns that have been a part of the Christian tradition since its earliest centuries, Methodists lived regulated lives, held one another accountable, and confessed their most intimate dreams and failures to one another. Like St. Benedict’s Order, the Methodists had the General Rules. And like monasticism at its height in the Medieval period, their work included care for the soul and for the body, running medical clinics and orphanages, and even setting up programs to help people start businesses and other enterprises to support themselves. Given this reality, Methodism was always intended to be outward-looking, not insular. This is one of the reasons why Wesley never wanted to separate his work from the Church of England, even if he sometimes acted like it.
We shouldn't imagine that the Methodists either launched these efforts out of nowhere or that they were the only ones caring for their communities. In eighteenth-century England there existed a web of care within established parishes. Until late in the century with greater movement to cities, it must be understood that the people of England lived in small to moderate-sized villages, towns, and cities with long-established ties. And the Poor Laws of the nation created something of a social net. There are also examples of particular initiatives to care for others in local communities such as the Tithing Men of Norwich, a group of men who existed well before the Methodist class leaders but carried out very similar work as they visited their neighbors and organized care for those in need – acts driven by their Christian faith.
In many ways, Wesley was not an innovator, but an amalgamator. He brought together ideas and practices from numerous quarters to address the needs of the people under his care. What the early Methodists often did was to add additional levels of care within their communities, sometimes with even greater relational intentionality (i.e. they knew one another very well in their bands), adding to the social net that was in place and expanding its impact. Early Methodism can be seen as a movement of those who “watched over one another in love.” All of this, though, was seen within the sacramental life of the Church of England. To fully grasp Wesley’s thought, in fact, it must be acknowledged that he never divorced a holy life or care for others from the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, “the grand channel of grace.” This was a revival of heart and sacrament.
Ryan Danker is the director of the John Wesley Institute, publisher of Good News magazine, and associate lead editor of Firebrand.