Christianity John Wesley\'s Many Distinctive

¶ … Christianity

John Wesley's many distinctive contributions to the Christian movement certainly set a worthy and powerful example for those Methodists who were to follow him and emulate his grace generations later. His iconic example, his organizational work and sermons planted the seeds for the good works that Methodists would actively engage in many years later -- and continue to do in the 21st Century. This paper will review many of the contributions that Wesley and the Methodists have made to the Christian movement, including the Methodist's moral decisions vis-a-vis social policy that reflected conscience-driven principles.

In the book Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Heitzenrater, 1994) the author touches on Samuel Wesley's son John as he makes what is apparently his first significant contribution to the promotion of Christianity. At the turn of the eighteenth century, John became active in the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), which, to its credit, did not try to reform the whole English nation "in one grand stroke," as Heitzenrater points out. Rather the SPCK movement attempted to transform society "by changing one person at a time" (Heitzenrater, p. 21). The way in which SPCK and John Wesley made an impact was not through "an evangelistic zeal to bring vast numbers of persons" into the already existing spiritual societies, Heitzenrater explains on page 22. Rather, SPCK and Wesley had a strategy "grounded more in the process of nurture than conversion" (p. 22).

The approach by SPCK was based on "quality than quantity" (p. 22), and clearly this involvement on the part of John Wesley was a tremendous contribution to the Christian movement. Noteworthy too is the fact that like Jesus Christ, the SPCK worked closely with the poor, the sick, and those imprisoned -- basically the underdogs -- to help bring the less empowered to a place of higher moral and spiritual values. On the subject of prisons, John Wesley learned how to use a printing press and took his ministry to those on death row in England; on page 155 Heitzenrater describes the materials that Wesley printed and handed out as "direct and forceful calls to repentance and holiness." Wesley's plea to prisoners was to "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and though shalt be saved" (Heitzenrater, p. 156). How many church leaders in the 18th Century were ministering to murderers and thieves? No one knows, but surely John Wesley and his followers understood how to go about sharing the Christian faith.

Another example of Methodists contributing to the Christian movement was George Whitefield, who preached in the open air to all those who would come to hear him. It would be hard to imagine a better way to build enthusiasm for Christianity than to preach to "thirty thousand people" in an open field as Whitefield did (Heitzenrater, p. 99). Wesley was at first turned off by the idea of preaching out in the open -- "field preaching" -- but Whitefield's example convinced him that it made sense in terms of spreading the gospel. "By this method, the gospel could be brought to the people where they were, to people who could not or would not go to a church" (Heitzenrater, p. 99). Wesley even preached in graveyards, "with a tomb as a pedestal," the author explains. On page 137 Heitzenrater reports that Wesley went to the poorest neighborhood in Newcastle and began singing the doxology "…whereupon three or four curious souls came out… [and] soon there were four or five hundred" and "before long Wesley was preaching to four or five thousand." That kind of contribution no doubt brought many hundreds of thousands to the Christian table in Wesley's career as a field preacher.

Author Randy Maddox's book Responsible Grace (p. 70) brings into focus a "human faculty essential to human morality"

that Wesley championed -- conscience. Conscience was so "central to being human that Wesley could term it 'our inmost soul'" (Maddox, p. 70). Wesley believed conscience "continually assesses our tempers, thoughts, words and actions against the moral standard by which we are supposed to live" (Maddox, p. 70). The emphasis that Wesley placed on Christians having a conscience set a standard and a tone for what Methodists would do many decades later in the United States. Some may argue that prominent Methodists taking positions on social issues (like terrible workers' conditions in factories; the slaughter of Native Americans; etc.) was out of the purview of a Christian organization, nonetheless "human morality" was on the line for Methodists many times, including 1894 in Chicago when the Pullman workers went on strike.

Taking a page out of Wesley's book, Rev. William H. Carwardine of the Methodist church showed the conscience of a true Christian and "…came to the defence of the rights of the workers"

(Norwood, 1974, p. 344). Carwardine's sermon "made the front pages of the Chicago papers" and was reported nationwide, Norwood explains (p. 344). But because Carwardine had the moral courage to challenge the conscience of the nation on workers' rights -- even in the face of "vicious" attitudes in the press (including the Methodist press) -- the country began to face up to "the unanticipated, but unavoidable, problems of the Industrial Revolution" (Norwood, p. 344). And eventually the Methodists adopted their "Social Creed" in a general conference "which incorporated all the principles" that the Pullman workers were fighting for in 1894. Hence, the Methodists made a contribution to the Christian movement in the U.S. By standing up for what they believe the true Christian principles should be, including justice and fairness.

When it came to justice for Native Americans, the Methodist Episcopal newspaper, Western Christian Advocate (1876) denounced any "war of extermination" prior to the disastrous events at Wounded Knee, and indeed the Methodist publication advocated dealing " honestly and fairly with the Indian" (Norwood, p. 346).