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Invitation to a Journey Session Twelve: Traveling Together vs. Traveling Alone
I am more convinced than ever that the preaching like an apostle, without joining together those that are awakened and training them up in the ways of God, is only begetting children for the murderer.
John Wesley
Christianity is essentially a social religion, and [that] to turn it into a solitary religion is indeed to destroy it... When I say this is essentially a social religion, I mean not only that it cannot subsist so well, but that it cannot subsist at all without society, without living and conversing with other men.
Wesley, SOM, IV, I.1
The grace that renews us in God's image and leads to holiness of heart and life is a grace that both calls persons into community and nurtures that renewal communally. God's grace is a shared characteristic of Christian community, not just individuals. God's prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying graces possesses social as well as personal significance. Wesley's sermon series on the Sermon on the Mount demonstrates Wesley's deep conviction that inward and outward righteousness are not two separate things, but one reality. Love of God is inseparable from love of neighbor (i.e., all humankind). In short, in the Kingdom of God, the healing and renewal of individuals is not divorced from the healing and renewal of society (and indeed, all creation).
God's restoring/renewing grace works socially in two ways in Wesley:
I. Life Within the Christian Community of Faith
The corporate worship/liturgy of the church (cf. Sessions 10-1 1) [the ecclesia]
The Societies [the ecclesiolae]
Wesley understood that spiritual growth was not automatic. It requires training, discipline, education, and accountability, all of which is primarily a social process (i.e., joining persons together). We grow in grace personally, but that growth is often mediated to us in a corporate context.
The society defined: "a category of Christian communion which acknowledges the truths proclaimed by the universal church and has no wish to separate from it, but claims to cultivate, by means of sacrament and fellowship, the type of inward holiness which too great an objectivity can easily neglect and of which the church needs constantly to be reminded. A society ... calls its own members within the larger church to a special personal commitment which respects the commitments of others." (Rupert Davies, WJW, 9:2-3)
The genius of Wesley's network of small groups (the ecelesiolae within the ecclesia) was that they were instruments through which God's grace could work in the lives of persons who were at different stages of their faith journey.
Key small groups for Wesley:
The Family.
For Wesley, the family was the primary place where love for God and neighbor was nurtured. Parents were responsible to nurture and care for each other, and especially to train their children. Cf. "On the Education of Children," WJW, 3:337. See also Wesley's collections of prayers for families, children, and forms of prayer for every day of the week.
The Society.
This was the centerpiece of Wesley's system of pastoral care. Societies were groups of people who met for fellowship/accountability in addition to their normal worship in parish churches. Their aim: to promote holiness of heart and life. There were basically four types of society meetings:
Sunday evening (scripture, hymns, exhortation)
One Weekday morning @ 5 AM
The Watchnight (once per month celebration service on Saturday evenings)
The Love Feast (meal of bread/water, testimonies)
Wesley's goal was to help the thousands of poor artisans and others who had responded to the Gospel to participate fully in the Body of Christ, which for him always remained the Church of England. His hope was that the societies would serve as an evangelical order within the Church of England, with a mission to "reform the nation and church, and spread scriptural holiness over the land."
The Class Meeting.
Groups of 10-12 persons who met weekly for reproof, comfort, advice, and exhortation, in order that their souls might prosper. The class was led by one of their own members.
Every society member was required to join a class. Three rules were required: 1) avoiding all evil; 2) doing good to all; 3) use of all the ordinances of God (public worship, sacrament, prayer, fasting, etc.
Continued membership in a class required evidence that a person desired salvation, demonstrated by regular attendance and quarterly examinations.
The class meeting provided a democratic forum for free expression in an accepting environment by people from widely divergent backgrounds. Here rich/poor, educated/illiterate, employer/employee, met as peers and equals. Women assumed strong leadership roles and became successful preachers and leaders. It has even been argued that the Methodist class meeting did more to undermine the rigid British class system than any other single force. (Cf. David M. Henderson, "Wesley's Instructional Groups," Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University, 1980).
The Band.
Bands were groups of 4-6 persons who "had remission of sins." The aim of the band meeting was taken from James 5:16, "confess your faults to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed." Bands were organized around commonalities of age, sex, and marital status.
Not everyone sought to join a band, even though Wesley felt that the best work was accomplished through them. Meetings were often emotionally intense due to the probing inquiry into the lives of the members. Trust, confidentiality, and mutual accountability were integral to the successful functioning of the bands. Members had to be willing to be told "whatsoever we think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we hear concerning you," in a manner which searched to the bottom of the heart. They were also queried with a list of questions each week:
What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?
What temptations have you met with?
How were you delivered?
What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?
Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?
The Select Societies. Comprised of smaller groups than bands, with three additional guidelines: 1) confidentiality, 2) submission to the minister in things indifferent; 3) sacrificial giving of money toward a common goal.
Groups of Penitents: Designed for sincere persons who, for whatever reason, kept being recaptured by some besetting sin. They desired to do right but had not yet found the discipline and strength to forsake completely their sins and stay on the path to perfection.
Summary:
Wesley's societies provided a voice for the poor and the artisans whom the upper class had shut out of society, both in religion and politics. Wesley's societies were a place where England's "nobodies" became "somebodies" because God had made them so. Here persons were empowered with responsibility and accountability. Through these small groups God was saying "yes" to the dreams and aspirations of a whole new group of people.
II. Christian Life in Society
While the Kingdom of God is not identified with the aims and goals of political society, as the Kingdom of God it exerts an influence over the social, economic, and political forces of life by setting priorities for the action and behavior of the Christian community.
As the emblem of the Kingdom of God on earth, the community of faith is involved in spiritual warfare, the political consequences of which become noticeable when the Church as a community of grace encounters situations of injustice and oppression, just as Wesley did when he encountered slavery.
Impact of Wesley and the Methodists on Eighteenth Century England
Wes Tracy observes:
When the storm that was the industrial revolution howled through the winter of England's soul in the eighteenth century, it blew humanity into the cities like maple leaves before a cold November wind. And it left them, like leaves, piled in random heaps. Housing conditions were such that ten persons per unfurnished room was common. Diseases like typhoid, smallpox, dysentery, and cholera went nearly unchecked. Horse manure was sometimes piled fourteen feet high on both sides of London's streets. In the larger cities, graveyard operators maintained "poor holes" - large common groves left open until the daily flow of corpses finally filled them. Every sixth building in London was on alehouse. Gambling and gin drinking became national pastimes. Sporting events included boxing, cockfighting, bullbaiting, and hangings. Children had a choice of either entering the sweatshops or living on the streets. Only one child in twenty-five attended school of any kind. ("John Wesley: Friend of the Poor," Herald of Holiness 80:2 [1991]).
How did Wesley respond?
Education of the poor, especially children. Wesley started Sunday Schools, boarding schools, slum schools, vocational training schools, and adult literacy schools. This in addition to his religious societies, classes, and bands.
The Sick Visitors Corporation. Wesley selected 46 people from his London society, and divided the city into sections. He appointed persons to visit the sick in their assigned divisions three times per week. Each visitor was to provide material as well is spiritual comfort. This practice extended to those who were not members of societies as well as those who were.
Establishment of the first free medical clinic in English history. Wesley started a free dispensary in 1746, largely as a result of what he perceived to be inadequate provision for public health, especially among the poor. Persons in need were encouraged to come every Friday, regardless of whether they were members of a Methodist society. Less than three months after starting, more than 500 persons were coming each week. (Medicine was a sort of avocation for Wesley. One of his most popular publications was his Primitive Physik: Or an Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases, which went through 23 editions by 1828).
Prison Reform. Wesley lobbied for prison reform, and even took over Newgate prison in Bristol. It became a model facility, and government officials were invited to inspect and copy it.
Daily Distribution of food and clothing.
Hospital for destitute and unwed mothers. Wesley provided them prenatal and postnatal care, vocational training, and religious instruction.
The Stranger's Friend Society. An organization supported by Methodists for non-Methodists. It's purpose: "to hunt poverty, sin and disease ... to lessen or remove the immense load of human ills...to look death in the face ... visiting the wretches in cellars and garrets...where the most virulent contagion had dwelt for many years."
The Christian Community. A League of workers dedicated to ministering to the paupers in London workhouses.
Orphanages, Poor Homes, and Homes for Widows.
Established a credit union for persons wanting to start their own business.
Established an unemployment plan for Methodists.
Lobbied Parliament for legislative changes in such things as child labor laws, Factory Acts, Mining Acts, and Slavery.
Commenting on Wesley's impact, Luke Keefer notes:
One can hardly be thoroughly acquainted with the Wesleyan sources and be unimpressed with Methodist social achievements. If one compares the Methodist record from 1725-1850 (which some see as its pre-liberal days) to that of any other organized group of the period - sacred or secular, one cannot help but conclude that no other group can match it at the point of social service. ("John Wesley, the Medodists, and Social Reform in England." WTJ 25:1 [Spring, 1990]).
Summary:
Christianity is necessarily a social religion because the healing of the soul and our renewal in God's image cannot remain hidden and secret. It invariably manifests itself in the lives and works of believers in increasing measure, permeating society. God's transforming power makes possible the distinctive characteristics of the kingdom of grace on earth, characteristics that are experienced in Christian community as a foretaste of the kingdom of glory to come. Salvation is more than individual conversion. It is a conversion that gives entry into the life of the kingdom, bringing a participation in a community that demonstrates changed lives, changed priorities, and which challenges social strictures. Righteousness is ill of a piece: personal and social. Salvation is all of a piece: God is making all things new.
Wesley's model steers a middle way between excessive individualism with its penchant for reducing salvation to the accumulation of individual virtues, and those views concerned to locate sin exclusively within oppressive structures of society but which have a weak view of justification and devote little attention to individual repentance.
For Further Reading:
John Wesley. "Thoughts on the Present Scarcity of Provisions." Works [Jackson], 11:53-58.
John Wesley. Upon Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount.
Luke L. Keefer. "John Wesley: the Methodists and Social Reform in England." WTJ 25:1 (Spring 1990).
David Guy. "John Wesley: Apostle of Social Holiness," in John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. John Stacey. London: Epworth, 1988.
Wesley D. Tracy. "Economic Policies and Judicial Oppression as Formative Influences on the Theology of John Wesley." WTJ 27:1-2 (Spring-Fall, 1992).
Wesley D. Tracy. "John Wesley: Friend of the Poor." Herald of Holiness 80:2 (1991).
R. George Eli. Social Holiness: John Wesley's Thinking on Christian Community and its Relationship to the Social Order. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
Maldwyn Edwards. John Wesley and the Eighteenth Century: A Study of His Social and Political Influence. New York: Abingdon, 1933.
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