John Wesley, the Holy Club and the social conditions of the 1700s.

By George Davis in Sermons

This address, setting Wesley in the context of his time, was given as part of the Youth service at Mornington.

I am delighted to be able to share in the portrayal of John Wesley in this service led by the youth group of Mornington. Thank you for this morning's presentation on John Wesley. This matter is of great importance to us who call ourselves Methodists. We need to understand what we stand for in order to respond to others. Wesley felt we should treat others and their opinions with respect.

John Wesley is the founder-figure of the Methodist Church. Its unitary or connexion structure and fundamental attitudes derive from his teachings and practices. He was a child of the early 18th century - an era unfamiliar to most of us. It was an early British colonial age involving populating America and subduing India, an age of unsettled religion, pre-democratic, and with increasing urbanisation, and trade based on often foolish financial investments. John Wesley was a child of privilege - his father , Rev Samuel Wesley was an orthodox Anglican priest, who wished his son John to follow him in the profession, but his mother Susanna, was the daughter of a famous non-conformist preacher, Rev Samuel Annesley. There were tensions in the household: a headstrong independent Susanna and her conservative husband, Samuel however, whose own Westley family also came from a line of non-conformist preachers. So, it seems heredity had a good deal to do with young John's choice of vocation as a preacher.

Why did this promising young student help found a university group called the "Holy Club" which practised a vigorous religious discipline combined with a strong sense of social purpose? Well, young people feel things deeply and Wesley was no exception. His was a life that had purpose branded on it. As he grew up he saw a world of inequalities, a world far distanced from the Christian ideal of sharing, loving and honouring Gospel teachings. He saw slavery and servitude growing in England and worse, being increasingly exported to America. He saw people sheltering in ditches and hedgerows who had lost their homes in the countryside as a result of enclosures of small farms by the rich and the growing middle class; he saw women turning to prostitution in order to provide for families but more in the cities to satisfy their need for the new drug of choice - gin; he saw chaos in the social order at a time when the traditional parish-based church seemed less effective; and he saw governments run by the privileged for their own ends with no thought for the poor who were loosely described as sturdy beggars and leeches on the parish. It was a time before public sanitation as we know it, and life expectancy was 35 not 70. Life was as the philosopher Thomas Hobbes stated, "poor, nasty, brutish and short." Roads were terrorised by robbers or "highwaymen" and cities and towns by roving mobs in this pre-police age. It was a brutal time of brothels and public houses, betting on cock-and dog fighting, bare-knuckle fighting. Most people rented poor premises as very few people owned their home. The few rich were conspicuously wealthy in relation to the multitude of the poor. Less than 5% of the population was able to read and write. All of these social evils pushed a young John Wesley to take action.

In 1794 William Blake wrote of London:
I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appalls,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

These same criticisms of the society were also reflected in the works of the painter and caricaturist William Hogarth and in the works of poet Robert Burns.

In 1729, aged 26, John Wesley became a university tutor in Lincoln College, Oxford and joined the Holy Club. This group met three or four evenings a week and read the classics of literature together, prayed, kept personal diaries, and engaged in "charitable employments." The last included visiting the sick and those in prison - these activities were widely censored by the authorities. The group gained nicknames: 'Methodists, Enthusiasts, Bible Moths, Bible bigots, Sacramentarians, Supererogation [those who uplift particular days in the week] Men.' The group petitioned on behalf of prisoners, looked after children destitute after the imprisonment of their parents, secured legal advice for prisoners, advanced them money, and taught the children of the poor to read and write. The criticism of the activities of the group speaks volumes about the cynical state of society.

What made Wesley 10 years later in 1739 to take up a life in service of the poor and with the poor? "Expediency" to use his term. It was the only, the necessary and the vital thing to do. The parish churches were often led by vicars and priests who were unenthusiastic about the Gospel and some traditional parishes refused to allow him preach. Consequently, Wesley had to take his message to where people would listen. As well, personally, he felt he had "an extraordinary call" to be an itinerant preacher. In this matter he was following well-trodden steps previously experienced by early Roman Catholic monks and the Lollards who attempted to place the English translation of the Bible before the people.

What was his message? Wesley felt 'A Methodist was one who has the love of God in their heart, who loved God with heart and soul, and with all their mind, and with all strength, and who was therefore, happy in God.' His was a teaching role where repetition was effective. Wesley offered the people a choice. You could choose to be a Christian because God's Grace is offered freely to all. It is still an eternal choice waiting to be accepted. To the poor of the eighteenth century the offer of Grace was indeed appealing.

What has changed? We don't have poor in ditches, but under bridges and in drop in centres, we don't have widespread slavery but we do have immigrant labourers and shop workers working for poor wages, prostitution is still with us, and gin has been replaced with "ice, cocaine, marijuana, party shots, and readily available alcohols. Highwaymen have been replaced by bikie gangs, and while the literacy rate might now be 95% the divide between the poor and the conspicuously rich is increasing in New Zealand and the rest of the western world. We need Wesley here today as much as ever.

Essential reading: James Stuart, The John Wesley Code: Finding a Faith that Matters, Philip Garside Publishing Ltd, Wellington 2008.

George Davis,
Nov. 8, 2009