At the roots of Methodism: Separate events give glimpses into Wesley
6/4/1998 NOTE: This is a regular feature on Methodist history by John Singleton prepared especially for distribution by United Methodist News Service. A feature photograph and a head-and-shoulders photo of Singleton are available. By John Singleton* Once, when John Wesley visited Birmingham, England, he and his followers were hounded by a violent mob. Nothing unusual in that, of course -- no doubt the founder of Methodism dealt with the situation in the same calm manner he is said to have diffused many such incidents. However, I was reminded of that particular visit when I recently took part in a huge, but entirely peaceful, demonstration in Birmingham.
When the heads of state of the world's most powerful nations gathered in Britain's "second city" for their annual G8 summit, more than 60,000 people linked hands and surrounded the convention center where the meeting was being held.
We wanted the eight world leaders, including President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair, to hear our pleas on debt. In particular, we wanted them to do something that they have in their power to do: cancel the unpayable debts of some of the poorest countries in the world by the year 2000 and give millions of people a new start.
We think they heard us, but as I linked hands with thousands of Christians in this extraordinary human chain, I thought of how Wesley might approve our action. You see, we were calling for the breaking of the chains of debt -- or the abolition of the "new slavery," as it is being called. And Wesley was very much against slavery.
As early as 1774, he had written a strong attack on it. And one of his very last actions before his death in 1791 was to write a letter of support to a young member of parliament, William Wilberforce, who had recently embarked on a long campaign to abolish the slave trade.
"Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils," Wesley wrote. "But 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 ..."
More than 200 years have passed, and the people called Methodists are among those still demanding the liberation of millions held in "slavery" by the chains of debt in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
A week after the Birmingham demonstration, I joined another crowd, this time of several hundred, to mark the 260th anniversary of John Wesley's conversion experience. We prayed; we listened to the word; and we sang the hymns of Charles Wesley (who had a similar experience only a few days earlier than his brother). We gathered as near as you can get to the site of the house in Aldersgate Street, London, where the conversion experience happened.
At 8:45 p.m., the tolling of a bell at the Anglican church of St. Botolph-without-Aldgate (which has a late 18th-century Wesley window and a plaque commemorating his conversion) reminded us of the crucial extract from Wesley's journal, reproduced on the nearby Wesley Flame memorial:
"In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance was given to me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death ..."
In the space of a week I had been part of two very different crowds assembled for very different reasons ... and yet inextricably linked through the roots of Methodism.
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*Singleton is news editor of the weekly Methodist Recorder newspaper in London, England. He can be contacted at: editorial@methodistrecorder.co.uk
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