The Methodist’s Duty: Wesley’s “Constant Communion” and the 21st Century Methodist

When the Revolutionary War ended, John Wesley’s Methodists in North America were cut off from the Church of England of which they were members and left to their own devices. In seeking a solution to the spiritual void left behind by institutional Anglicanism’s withdrawal, John Wesley finally settled upon a succession plan that positioned American Methodists as inheritors of his own form of Evangelical Anglicanism, and he abridged his own Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer for their use. Along with this abridgement, The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America, he wrote a letter that unequivocally instructed his spiritual descendants: “I also advise the elders to administer the Supper of the Lord on every Lord’s day,” that is, to celebrate Holy Communion (also called Communion, the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper, but for consistency hereafter simply referred to as Holy Communion) every Sunday.

In doing this, he not only echoed the teachings of other high churchmen in the Church of England, but also taught the corollary of his Sermon 101, “The Duty of Constant Communion,” which exhorted faithful Christians to take Holy Communion every time it was available: if Methodists were to take Holy Communion every Sunday, then their ordained elders (the celebrants of Holy Communion in Methodist ecclesiology) would need to be celebrating Holy Communion every Sunday. In the early days of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and even through into the 20th century, this did not mean that every Methodist congregation celebrated Holy Communion weekly. Early Methodist clergy rode circuits that could often take multiple weeks to complete on horseback. Even if a Methodist ordained elder was celebrating Holy Communion every Sunday, every Sunday was spent at a different congregation, and so a single Methodist congregation may only have Holy Communion available to it one out of every six or more Sundays. By the mid-to-late 20th century, the number of circuit riders had declined and the number of clergy authorized to celebrate Holy Communion increased due to the creation of the Licensed Local Pastor (a non-ordained clergy category consisting of people authorized to administer the sacraments in a particular congregational setting). By this point, however, the expectation had been largely set among Methodists that Holy Communion was only celebrated infrequently, either on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Even in eighteenth-century England, weekly celebration of Holy Communion was an exception rather than the rule, which makes it even more unusual that Wesley would emphasize the importance of frequent observance of the sacrament of Holy Communion. But then, Wesley had high church inclinations—indeed, he said that he was “a High Churchman, the son of a High Churchman”—and saw nothing mutually exclusive about having a high sacramental theology and an emphasis on evangelism or salvation by grace through faith. 

As Wesley observes in “The Duty of Constant Communion,” there was an expectation on the part of the Church of England that every layperson would partake of Holy Communion at least three times a year. But at the same time, there was instruction that in areas that had adequate numbers of clergy, everyone was expected to receive Holy Communion at least weekly: “In all cathedral and collegiate churches and colleges, where there are many priests and deacons, they shall receive the communion with the priest, every Sunday at the least.” Wesley also points out that for the early church, not taking Holy Communion when it was celebrated was grounds for excommunication: “What opinion they had of any who turned his back upon it [taking Holy Communion] we may learn from that ancient canon, ‘If any believer join in the prayers of the faithful, and go away without receiving the Lord’s Supper, let him be excommunicated, as bringing confusion into the church of God.’”

In Wesley’s England, as in eighteenth and nineteenth-century America, various factors undermined church teaching. But by the middle of the 20th century, something of a liturgical revival had taken place both in the Protestant Episcopal Church (the United States’ Anglican denomination) and the Church of England, likely the influence of the nineteenth-century’s Oxford Movement (also called Tractarianism). In the Oxford Movement, Anglicanism looked back at its pre-Reformation past and encountered the practices of the early Church as it related to Holy Communion. Strangely, though Wesley and the Methodists heavily appealed to “primitive Christianity,” the church of the first 500 years, later Methodists did not follow Wesley when it came to holding the early church’s practices up as the standard for Holy Communion. Where it was once the norm for the Episcopal Church’s congregations to celebrate Holy Communion only once a month, by the mid-twentieth century, the norm had shifted to weekly celebration of Holy Communion. Conversely, for Wesley’s heirs, a weekly celebration of Holy Communion is much rarer. Some congregations do so, but many do not—and may object to celebrating too often!

Most commonly, the objection to weekly celebration of Holy Communion is not theological but sentimental: even in Wesley’s day, there were those who did not want to take Holy Communion every Sunday because they were concerned that “it abates our reverence for the sacrament.” Wesley answers this objection by pointing out that there are two sorts of reverence possible—proper reverence, which cannot actually be decreased by partaking of Holy Communion, and novelty, which naturally decreases the more often one takes Holy Communion. Novelty is no excuse to refrain from taking Holy Communion, he argues. But even when objectors do not do so on the grounds of lessening their sense of novelty, they often do so because they feel that they are spiritually unprepared—that they do not want to “eat and drink unworthily,” as Paul warns them not to do. Even in the Anglican Church in North America today, frequently there are instructions during the invitation to the Lord’s Table in the celebration of Holy Communion that if one is not “walking in fellowship with Christ and his Church,” or is otherwise in need of repentance, one should refrain from taking Holy Communion. The ACNA’s 2019 Book of Common Prayer also includes the admonition, “If the Priest knows that a person who is living a notoriously evil life intends to come to Communion, the Priest shall privately instruct that person not to come to the Lord’s Table until he or she has given clear proof of repentance and amendment of life” (BCP2019, pg. 143).

Here, Wesley differs with his fellow Anglicans, as he regards Holy Communion as itself a “converting ordinance” which brings spiritual renewal to the baptized Christian who takes Holy Communion. In “The Duty of Constant Communion,” he nonetheless answers both of these objections. First, he rightly points out that the only way to “eat and drink unworthily” in St Paul’s sense, so as to “eat and drink damnation to ourselves,” is to do so in a drunken and disorderly fashion. Second, we are all unworthy, Wesley says, so if we were to wait to take Holy Communion until we were worthy, we would never take it at all. But contrary to this, we are specifically commanded, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Indeed, it was the practice of the early church to meet together on a weekly basis, where “[t]hey devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42 NRSV)—that is, to hearing the Word proclaimed in a sermon, to fellowship, to Holy Communion, and to “the prayers,” which would have been a formal liturgy of Jewish origin. 

Instead, Wesley says, repent there and then, and take Holy Communion, since it is a holy food which gives you spiritual strength just as natural, physical food gives strength to your body. Methodists say with Wesley that Holy Communion is a sacrament, and though we choose not to define our understanding along the lines of transubstantiation or consubstantiation (Methodist Articles of Religion, Art. XVIII), we do nonetheless believe in the Real Presence (that Jesus is present “after a spiritual manner,” Art. XVIII) and that this sacrament is both medicine and food. As a sacrament, Holy Communion is a channel of grace for us. Indeed, Wesley says that Holy Communion is a “certain means of obtaining his help,” and was given to us “for this very end: that through this means we may be assisted to attain those blessings which he hath prepared for us; that we may obtain holiness on earth and everlasting glory in heaven.” 

As Wesley’s spiritual descendants, then, let us offer this “certain means” every week. It was the pattern of the early church, it was the pattern of the early Methodists, and it was Wesley’s own desire for his heirs.

James Mahoney is a librarian and chaplain. He is an ordained elder in the Global Methodist Church.