Wesley, the American Revolution, and Christian Engagement in the Public Square
Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull, 1818. (Source: WikiCommons)
When John Wesley sent his Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America to the newly independent United States in the Fall of 1784, he included a number of items with his revision of the Prayer Book, including a letter sent to “Our Brethren in America.” In fact, he sent more than just a letter, for as Randy Maddox notes, this letter “was published as a two-sided flyer, so that Coke, Vasey, and Whatcoat could carry copies of it when they departed from King’s Road, Bristol, on Sept. 18, 1784” on their way to the United States (The Works of John Wesley, 30:268).
The letter is fascinating on several points. First of all, it’s a justification for Wesley’s actions earlier that month when he ordained these three men, two as elders and one as superintendent for the American work. He argues that it was “Lord King’s Account of the Primitive Church,” a book published in 1691, that gave him the idea even if he took King’s revisionist approach and applied his own further revisionism upon it. He also described the U.S. at the time as not having “any parish ministers,” which was also a stretch (Works, 30: 269). But the letter doesn’t start with his justifications for irregularity but rather a begrudging acknowledgement of American independence.
Wesley wrote that, “By a very uncommon train of providences many of the provinces of North America are totally disjoined from their mother country and erected into independent states” (Works, 30:268). The concept of providence runs throughout Wesley’s writings. He was more than convinced that God was intimately involved in the outworking of history. In his 1783 sermon “On the Education of Children,” he mocks the concept of “chance” as something unbefitting of a Christian worldview (Works, 3:353). God is involved in everything, even if we don’t always understand it.
We shouldn’t read this, however, as though Wesley liked this “uncommon train of providences” in and of themselves. He believed that providence always worked for ultimate good, but that providence can also imply a negative experience that is meant to turn someone, or some nation, to repentance.
During the second Jacobite rebellion in 1745, Wesley went to Newcastle where he preached to the Hanoverian troops. Even if his mother was a Jacobite and perhaps his oldest brother, Wesley was not. And so, he preached to these men, trying to turn them from their wicked ways, fearful that by the providence of God the Jacobites would be victorious and impose Roman Catholicism on England as punishment. From this viewpoint, providence would guide the unfolding of history in order to call the faithful—and Wesley meant Protestants here—back to their first love, even using a Catholic dynasty to do it.
To grasp this approach, simply look at the Old Testament prophets. Over and over again, the prophets call Israel to faithfulness in order that God, by his providential hand, would not allow opposing nations to defeat Israel. Scholars have identified a “Deuteronomic history” within portions of the Old Testament where the overarching theme is that God will maintain Israel if it remains faithful. And if not, he will use the enemies of Israel to remind them of their calling. It is through this lens that Wesley saw the War of Independence, or rebellion, depending on how one viewed it.
Not all Methodists in America were against the revolution. Francis Asbury was annoyed by it. In his biography of Asbury, John Wigger notes, “For Asbury, all of this was little more than a regrettable distraction, drawing people’s minds away from the fate of their eternal souls” (American Saint, 87). Asbury was careful during the war, however, and spent much of it sequestered to Delaware. He might be described as neutral, as he was suspected by both sides of competing loyalties, even if he became more sympathetic to the American cause and was dismayed at Wesley’s comments on the revolution. Many of the American Methodist leaders, like Wesley, were loyalists. Some of the early leaders in New York emigrated to Canada. Joseph Pilmore, a leader in Philadelphia, went back to England during the war, even if he would return to the United States and commit himself to an evangelical ministry within the Episcopal Church in the decade following.
But looking at Wesley’s letters during the outbreak of war and the ensuing years offers a glimpse not only into his thoughts on the American Revolution, but also the political theology that grew out of his Christian witness. Note, of course, that Wesley’s political views and his theological views should never be separated. He refused to think in bifurcated ways. The gospel was central; politics was an aspect of life that grew out of the gospel.
This approach can be seen very clearly in a letter that he wrote to Lord Dartmouth in June of 1775. He states very clearly that “All my prejudices are against the Americans,” but it is the next sentence that stands out for its political theology: “I am an High Churchman, the son of an High Churchman, bred up from my childhood in the highest notions of passive obedience and non-resistance” (Works, 29:154). Scholars have debated just how High Church Wesley actually was and have argued that this sentence should be read politically, but that is to miss what he was saying. He was, in many respects but not all, a High Churchman. His father and his brothers were much more so, but the point that he is making is that his views about the world derive from a version of Anglicanism—one distinctly connected to Toryism—and it is from this foundation that he approached the issues of the day.
At this point in mid 1775, Wesley actually shows some openness to the American argument. He continues the letter to Dartmouth by saying that even as a High Churchman, “I cannot avoid thinking (if I think at all) that an oppressed people asked for nothing more than their legal rights, and that in the most modest and inoffensive manner which the nature of the thing would allow” (Works, 29:154). This approach sits well within eighteenth-century British political thought. His driving concern in the letter, however, is for human life.
Keeping in mind the heavy British casualties that same month at the Battle of Bunker Hill, Wesley openly enjoins Dartmouth, who was Secretary of State for the Colonies, to consider reports of heavy British casualties and the unified determination of Americans to defend “their wives, children, liberty!” (Works, 29:155). On top of this, the depletion of the British military, according to Wesley, would leave Britain itself vulnerable to any number of enemies, including internal ones. Human life at home and abroad was at risk.
Only later in the year will Wesley take a firmer stand against the American cause in his Calm Address to Our American Colonies. This was a pattern with some within the British establishment, including Dartmouth, who had initially wanted to see some form of conciliation with the Americans. As the war progressed, however, moderate voices were less heard. But Wesley’s concern for human life, the costs of war, and the retention of what he understood to be the basic rights of an Englishman remained. He was also concerned about what impact the war would have on the Revival.
In a letter to Thomas Rankin, an American Methodist leader, Wesley encourages him to leave Philadelphia and go on a preaching tour to “country places” or the Carolinas. He argued that “I believe you will have the largest harvest, where they know little and talk little about politics.” By the Fall of 1775, conflict had spread well beyond Massachusetts into other northern colonies and revolutionary fervor even further. Wesley wanted Rankin to go away from the scene of war to where “hearts are engaged with something better” (Works, 29:183).
In a letter that Wesley penned earlier that year “To the Methodist Preachers in North America” he offered them advice on how they should act in the face of a turbulent moment:
You were never in your lives in so critical a situation as you are at this time. It is your part to be peacemakers; to be loving and tender to all, but to addict yourselves to no party. In spite of all solicitations, of rough or smooth words, say not one word against one or the other side. Keep yourselves pure, do all you can to help and soften all; but ‘beware how you adopt another’s jar’ (Works, 29:133).
Wesley’s use of “jar” might best be understood here as “jargon” even if the reference is to a poem written by his older brother. But the point is clear. Be peacemakers, loving and kind to all, don’t adopt the language of secular interests, and avoid partisanship. This last point, partisanship, needs particular attention because of the vitriolic nature of partisanship in England during this period.
The relationship of Tory and Whig in the eighteenth century is fraught with complexity (see George Owers’ recently published The Rage of Party). As these parties developed, they created not only political tension but what might be called separate spheres of existence. The Tories had their coffee shops, newspapers, and pubs, and so did the Whigs. At one point, they even refused to go to the same hospitals! There are reasons why Washington himself was so adamantly set against partisanship. And it is this sort of divisive behavior that Wesley attaches to the term; a divisiveness that has no place in Christian community.
The letter continues as Wesley reminds the American Methodists of their primary task; to be faithful Christians together:
See that you act in full union with one another. This is of the utmost consequence. Not only let there be no bitterness or anger, but no shyness or coldness, between you. Mark all those that would set one of you against the other. Some such will never be wanting. But give them no countenance; rather ferret them out and drag them into open day (Works, 29:133).
Yet knowing human nature, Wesley wasn’t convinced that this was an easy prospect. Political fervor has a distinct ability to create an “us vs. them” mentality, even one that endangers the fundamental command to love one another. In a particularly revealing letter to his brother, Charles, written in October 1775 he admits that “I find a danger of a new kind, a danger of losing my love for the Americans.” He quickly adds, “I mean for their miserable leaders; for the poor sheep are ‘more sinned against than sinning’” (Works, 29:180). That he’s concerned about this potential lost love is important, even for leaders.
Wesley will spend a good amount of time in 1775 either engaging in arguments about the American situation, or counseling Methodist leaders on how to avoid the pitfalls that emerge from it. As already mentioned, he published his strongest critique of the American Cause in the Fall of that year. His Calm Address may have taken a standard Tory line, and was intended to calm, but it faced great opposition from Whigs in England and American revolutionaries alike. That year, he also preached a charity sermon called “On National Sins and Miseries,” sharing his concerns over the American argument but even more so calling the British people to repentance and faithfulness, as he believed that the war was the result of human sin.
But the overarching message of this year in Wesley’s life is not one of political argument. Even in the midst of great social and political turmoil, his focus remained steadfast on the life of discipleship. We can clearly see a Christian leader trying to lead his people through turbulent times, even violent ones, calling them to “the one thing needful.” Throughout his correspondence, his greatest call to action is a call to prayer. Of all the themes that emerge, prayer is primary. At the same time, it is very clear from his writings in 1775 that the praying Christian’s duty is to ensure that the gospel remains primary, both in proclamation and in life itself. Politics is secondary, and faithful Christians will disagree on political policy. Their first task is to pray, to repent, to order their lives according to God’s will, to trust in the goodness of God’s providence, and to seek peace. The peace that they seek is the peace that ends wars but also the peace that Christians are called to embody in the church and in the world, rejecting the world’s jargon and the political division that follows it. As such, even as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence and even celebrate the freedoms enshrined in our founding, we can look to Wesley, Tory loyalist that he was, and see very clearly a Christian pattern for public engagement.
Ryan N. Danker is the director of the John Wesley Institute, Washington, DC and a member of the Firebrand lead team.