Methodists and Monarchy

Photo by Mark de Jong on Unsplash

He may not have been the first member of the House of Lords to serenade the House, but that’s precisely what Lord Griffiths of Burry Port did on Sept. 10th during his remarks in honor of the Queen. He sang a hymn admired by the Boys’ Brigade, a group of young people who serve as attendants at official functions, and a group he has served as president—and the Queen as patron. The hymn is “We have an Anchor,” one that many of us know well. After singing the first verse, he told the Lords that the words of the hymn “steadfast and sure” describe the late Queen to a tee. 

Lord Griffiths, known the world over (and lovingly) as Leslie, is the former Superintendent Minister of Wesley’s Chapel, London, the Mother Church of Methodism, built by John Wesley in the late 1770s as his London headquarters and eventually the location of his grave. Many a Methodist pilgrim has made his or her way to the chapel on City Road, and for many years these pilgrims were greeted by the grace, wit, and warmth of Leslie Griffiths. But Lord Griffiths, in his recent speech to the Lords, spoke not of Wesley’s Chapel but of his love and admiration for the Queen, a “stateswoman of the first order,” and even now the King, who he described as the Queen’s living legacy. 

Methodists have always had a relationship with the British Monarchy. Arguably, John Wesley was born after the end of an argument between his mother and father over the rightful monarch—in this case William III, the one sitting on the throne, or James III, the Jacobite claimant. When Queen Anne acceded to the throne in 1702, a monarch pleasing to them both, it wasn’t too long after that the elder Wesleys made up. John Wesley was born in 1703. You do the math. 

Everyone in the Wesley home was a monarchist. In fact, no one in the generations that followed could be called a republican. The question wasn’t the monarchy, but who should be given the title of King. Eventually, everyone in the family except Susanna would be happy with the Hanoverian dynasty that started under George I, a Protestant dynasty, one that safeguarded the Church of England, holding Catholicism at bay. It was during the eighteenth century that two rebellions would break out against the Hanoverians, the first in 1715 and the second in 1745. 

In 1745, John Wesley was keen to support the Hanoverians, even traveling up to Newcastle to preach to the town and the troops, to encourage them, and to encourage morality so that God would not turn against them in their cause as they fought off the Stuart advance making its way south from Scotland. In Wesley’s view, even if God had turned against England and its reigning monarch, it wouldn’t be to support the Stuart cause, but rather to correct the English and encourage them to greater piety. His journal account rings much as the prophets of the Old Testament who pleaded with Israel to remain faithful so that God would provide protection, convinced that defeat should be seen as divine chastening. There were Methodist Jacobites, though. Lady Huntingdon, key to the spread of early Methodism, and her husband, Lord Huntingdon, were both Jacobites, as were many of the congregation at George Whitefield’s Tabernacle in London. But Hanoverian loyalty reigned with John and Charles Wesley. 

John Wesley was a through-and-through monarchist, and his commitment to the constitutional monarchy of England was unwavering. In a 1775 letter he described himself as “a High Churchman, the son of an High Churchman, bred up from my childhood in the highest notions of passive obedience and non-resistance.” This is classic Toryism. As a Tory, he believed that all power comes from God and that God has gifted power to the King; any derivative authority, whether Parliament or government ministers, came from the Crown. This system—with an established Protestant church to which the monarchy was required to belong—ensured the maintenance of order, liberty, and of the true faith. In the aftermath of the 17th c. marked by civil war, the beheading (or martyrdom) of Charles I, the Puritan Commonwealth, the Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, together with the ejection of Puritan ministers soon thereafter, the maintenance of a Pax Anglicana was paramount to eighteenth-century churchmen, including the Wesley brothers.  

I still remember a panel of scholars at the American Academy of Religion some years ago organized to discuss Wesley’s political vision. Not one of the panel participants in the multiple-hour session cared to mention that Wesley was a monarchist. Unsurprisingly, every one of them was an American. Without this acknowledgement of Wesley’s monarchical commitments, though, one will never understand Wesley’s political vision. And arguably, one will have a hard time grasping his larger social commitments without it. Wesley was convinced that a Christian monarchy beholden to God ensures the liberty of the people and the true worship of God, and that this establishment will seek the common good, defined by God’s intention for human flourishing. 

During the 1745 rebellion that I mentioned earlier, Wesley penned an open letter to King George II on behalf of the Methodist people. This was a “loyal address” meant to assure the King of the support of the Methodists. But Wesley never sent it. His brother, Charles, and another clergyman of the Church of England, Samuel Walker, talked him out of it. This move wasn’t inspired by an aversion to the content of the letter, but rather to the idea that the Methodists were a separate people in need of declaring their loyalty, rather than faithful members of the Church. Wesley eventually published the letter in one of his journal volumes. 

But the idea of sending greetings, or loyal addresses, to the monarchy continues to this day in Britain. Throughout her 70-year reign, when the Methodist conference met yearly in Britain, they would send the Queen their greetings. And like clockwork, her response would arrive and be read at the conference before its close. The Queen’s love for the Methodists, and their love for her, was obvious. 

American Methodism has had a less cordial history with the monarchy, as might be expected post-1776, but the history is not altogether antagonistic. Colonial Methodism was marked by loyalty to the monarchy. We must keep in mind that the vast majority of Methodist leaders—and not a small number of its adherents—fled the emerging United States during the revolution, many going back to England and others moving to Canada. Francis Asbury was noteworthy in that he didn’t leave! 

But today, as Methodism is a global movement, it’s also imperative to remember that a large portion of Methodism—in all of its forms—lives in countries where the British monarch is head of state or in one of the over 50 Commonwealth countries with close and lasting ties to the monarchy. The American perspective is not the only one, and may be a minority view when global Methodism is taken into consideration. Methodists—now in Uniting churches—in Australia and Canada have the monarch as their head of state. In African Commonwealth countries such as Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, and Mozambique, large numbers of Methodists in their various forms can be found. Mozambique, for example, has a large population of Nazarenes. Fiji, a Pacific Commonwealth country, has the highest percentage of Methodists of any country in the world. 

It may not be that modern Methodism has the same relationship with monarchy—and the British monarchy in particular—as did John Wesley. He was not averse to connecting republicanism with atheism! In his 1748 Word to a Freeholder, perhaps the most concise description of his political vision, Wesley wrote: “Above all, mark that man who talks of loving the Church, and does not love the King. If he does not love the King, he cannot love God. And if he does not love God, he cannot love the Church. He loves the Church and the King just alike. For indeed he loves neither one nor the other.”

Modern day Methodists don’t have to agree with Wesley on every count. It would be difficult, especially for Wesleyans in the United States, to argue that monarchy and faith must be held together so tightly. If nothing else, though, Wesley’s words should remind us to pray for our leaders, for their salvation, their flourishing, and for God’s will to be carried out within the nation we call home. But monarchy and Methodism have a rich history and a contemporary reality for Methodists the world over. The monarchy—and particularly the British monarchy—remains central in the lives of millions of Wesleyan believers today. Acknowledging this reality is to acknowledge the diversity of Methodism and its global character. 

In these days following the Queen’s death and the accession of King Charles III it is right to pray for them, and to keep in mind the fact that we mourn not just a monarch but a person, a mother, grandmother, and great grandmother who remained a faithful follower of Jesus Christ throughout her 96 years. Lord Griffiths paid tribute in the House of Lords to a fellow believer. And it’s only reasonable to expect that the Queen’s—and now the King’s—public commitment to the faith once delivered should warm any Wesleyan heart.

Ryan N. Danker is Director of the John Wesley Institute in Washington, DC, and an assistant lead editor for Firebrand.