Celebration of the 312th birthday of John Wesley : 15th June 2015 on the terrace of Ponte Sant`Angelo Methodist Church Rome.
Today is the anniversary of that great milestone in social and legal history, the signing of the so called Magna Carta on the meadow by the Thames at Runnymede. 500 years later religiously minded people still didn`t enjoy equal rights under the law in England. John Wesley was an evangelist who asserted his rights as a British subject to preach a Gospel in a way that often challenged what he saw as a socially lax and morally permissive culture. That was the democratizing ethos which David Hempton has described in his “Empire of the Spirit” which created by the Wesleyan revivals spreading worldwide and helping create a stronger ethic of religious freedom in both Britain and the Americas.
The laws of 18th century Britain theoretically offered relatively free rein to evangelization by revivalist preachers. But the cultural reality was often very different. Wesley was a priest in the Church of England. Most of his followers were communicants in that church. Yet their spiritual enthusiasm (described by the local bishop as a “horrid thing”), and moral threat to the drink and gambling interests of his day, and the empowerment of ordinary people through popular education and access to health care, all these things aroused tremendous hostility, some of it violent. Members of the gentry and clergy who resented the Methodists often promoted riots against them. Methodist preaching places were attacked by mobs, and followers set on violently with clubs, livestock, especially bulls, set loose on the crowds who gathered in market places and open spaces, and preachers pelted with rocks. Sometimes Methodists were themselves jailed, charged for disturbing the peace, while their assailants went free. Three hundred years ago such a party here on our roof terrace held by a religious minority might have been regarded in rather different ways and dealt with harshly.
It was Wesley’s policy “always to look a mob in the face.” He wanted to be a “friend of all and enemy of none”. One admirer recounts of him: “An indescribable dignity in his bearing, a light in his eyes, and a spiritual influence pervading his whole personality often overawed and captured the very leaders of the riots.” Late in life, when Methodism had become more respected but others, notably Catholics, still endured hardships, Wesley denounced religious persecution. But even he could not extend this limited toleration to all Christians. Fortunately we have come a long way since, as we gather together as Protestants and Catholics on this occasion to celebrate our common heritage. But there are some lessons we can learn from John Wesley for those of today’s Christians facing cultural hostility and increasing legal infringements on religious freedom in various parts of the world. Resistance to the Gospel where it is faithfully preached with vigour and passion is present in every age of history. Persecution is an opportunity for witness in what others have called “an ecumenism of blood”. But persecution should not be sought or glorified. Wesley, like St. Paul, wanting to be regarded as a loyal citizen, for King and Country, appealed to the law and magistrates for protection for his preaching, insisting on his rights as an Englishman.
The early Wesleyan revivals, although not political, were democratizing and liberty-enhancing in their ultimate social impact, benefitting persons of all faiths and no faith. Christians today, in contending for full religious liberty, even on the edges, serve not just themselves but the rights of peaceful co-existence of all children of God.
So let us on this day of celebration of freedom and human rights enshrined in laws remember the small part that John Wesley the founder of Methodism played in the development of a more openly diverse religious landscape in Great Britain and Ireland where neighbours, Protestant and Catholic, those of other faiths and no faith, could live together in harmony.
Tim Macquiban
15th June 2015
For further information, see the articles by Mark Tooley, Director of the Institute of Religion and Freedom, on John Wesley and Religious Freedom in First Things