Last month, I explained how the “hornet’s nest” of rebels around Mecklenburg County (where I live in North Carolina) who were early to the freedom bandwagon, were primarily Scots Presbyterians. They were by nature and habit allergic to all governmental authority. Methodists there were in North Carolina, almost all down east along the coast. I wish I could give them more credit for the move toward independence.
If the Methodists had gotten to Mecklenburg first, there likely would have been no MeckDec or even that “hornet’s nest” reputation. John Wesley was a loyalist to the crown. His “A Calm Address to Our American Colonies” (notice the pronoun “Our”!) advised the colonists to settle down and be grateful for the freedoms and protections they enjoyed under the benevolent British rule.
And yet if we reflect on the quandary posed by the Declaration of Independence – that the Founders understood fully that freedom and equality were not being extended to more than 20% of the population, and that many of them owned slaves themselves – we have cause to take pride in Mr. Wesley. Yes, the Methodists were “threatening the social order,” and “urging the lower classes to think for themselves.” Of great importance was Wesley’s friendship with John Newton, former slave-trader and composer of “Amazing Grace.” Newton in turn was tight with William Wilberforce, credited with the abolition of slavery in the United Kingdom.
It was Wesley, the loyalist, who was one of the very first to come out against the slave trade, way back in 1774. His popular and controversial pamphlet “Thoughts on Slavery” shook the kingdom and changed minds. He spoke of slavery as an “execrable villainy,” and condemned Parliament for voting against its abolition.
His last letter before he died was addressed to Wilberforce, and dealt with the battle being waged against slavery: “If God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it. …Your affectionate servant – W.” Wilberforce retrieved and reflected on this letter many times in the years to come.
Wesley’s own time in America was a mess. In 1735 he’d been invited to serve as a missionary to the newly founded colony of Georgia – without pay. On the voyage across the Atlantic, he was terrified constantly, fearing he’d drown, and fretting that if he should die at sea, he was not at all sure he would be saved – as in salvation, going to heaven. But he saw the calm, the pious trust of the Moravians on board the ship, and was moved.
The mercy he experienced on the ship slipped out of his mind fairly quickly. His work in Savannah is remembered by a statue downtown in Reynolds Square; the only people who seem to notice it are Methodist clergy visiting the city!
Wesley’s demands on his church people there were severe. Yes, he wanted them, as all of us preachers do, to take Jesus seriously! But he demanded fasting; you had to earn tickets by behaving according to his strictures in order to receive communion; four times daily he summoned the entire town of 200 citizens to prayer – by the roll of a drum. Before long, the people were ready to put him on trial.
And then, being single, he thought he should marry. But dating Sophy Hopkey turned sour. Dozens witnessed the very public incident of her chasing him down the street with a pistol in one hand and scissors in the other. It was time to go home to England.
His goal in America had been to convert the Indians, those “noble savages.” What he discovered wasn’t just their lack of interest. Also, traders and early settlers had already turned them against Christianity! How often is the Christian mission undermined by the mean arrogance of Christians? What’s the old Pogo cartoon line? “We have met the enemy – and he is us!”
Wesley didn’t save any “savages.” He was able to admit his deepest motive – hidden even from himself, which he confided in a letter to a friend, John Burton: “My chief motive, to which all the rest are subordinate, is the hope of saving my own soul.” God has built into the structure of our psychic and spirituality reality the peculiar paradox that acting selflessly is the best thing you can do for yourself, that in sharing God’s love with others, you too are blessed beyond all measure – which may have been what you were trying for! But the others are blessed anyhow.