Ideas and Ideals: Wesley and Whitefield and the Evangelical Revival
This is the ninth of a series of articles describing formative movements and ideas in the history of the church. These were the crises of thought and conviction which brought us to where we are.
The three founders of Methodism were born within eleven years of each other. John Wesley in 1703, Charles in 1708 and George Whitefield in 1714. This latter date is significant in the lives of all three, as the colony of Georgia in British North America was also founded then, and was to figure largely in their work of evangelism. John fully appreciated the task to be undertaken there. ‘Here are adults from the furthest parts of Europe and Asia and the inmost kingdoms of Africa ...who shall come over and help us, where the harvest is so great and the labourers so few?’ George Whitefield was to return seven times. The gentler upbringing of the two Wesleys forced them to return from a colony where many of the settlers were convicts.
The three had met during their studies at Oxford; John was already a Fellow of Lincoln College and had gathered around him the nucleus of ‘Our Company’ or the ‘Holy Club’, when Whitefield, in the summer of 1733, was invited to breakfast. The ‘Holy Club’ was accustomed to take the Eucharist every Sunday, to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, and they firmly believed in the Apostolic succession of the Church of England priesthood. Each of the three was eventually to be ordained within that Church. George was soon to experience conversion. Recovering from ill health at home in Gloucester, ‘God was pleased to remove the heavy load...when the weight of sin went off and an abiding sense of the pardoning love of God and a full assurance of faith broke in’.
The central beliefs of the two Wesleys rather followed the gentler Lutheran evangelicalism characterised by belief in ‘justification by faith’ and ‘the priesthood of all believers’. Their father the Rector of Epworth had initially been educated for the dissenting ministry before joining the Established Church and their maternal grandfather had even been ejected from St.Giles Cripplegate. Furthermore, they were initially strongly influenced by the Lutheranism which Moravian refugees brought with them from the continent. John even thought of himself as a Moravian minister for a time. It was a little later that the strict and methodical way of life of them and their followers earned them the title of ‘Methodists’.
The Moravian influence took the Wesleys into the ethos of Central Europe. Moravians from Bohemia had inherited the mantle of John Huss, had been forced to flee to Saxony and had then absorbed that state's Lutheranism which they subsequently brought with them to England. In spite of attracting a following estimated to number some 100,000, their weakness lay in their failure to secure naturalisation; their societies remained dependent upon German preachers and administrators.
George Whitefield, following the tenets of Calvinism, believed in the doctrine of predestination, that the death of Christ referred particularly to the elect, ensuring their salvation, and in the evangelical doctrine that the essence of the Gospel consists in the teaching that salvation depends upon faith rather than works. The foundation of his ministry was his emphasis on the ‘new birth’ and ‘Predestination to life’ as the everlasting purpose of God.
Later, Wesley’s Lutheranism and Whitefield’s Calvinism led to a separation between the two leaders. John Wesley could not accept ‘the horrible blasphemies contained in this horrible doctrine (predestination) which represents our Blessed Lord... as a hypocrite or deceiver of the people, a man devoid of common sincerity ...it represents the most Holy God as worse than the Devil’. He set out what was to be the chief characteristic of his movement - that of Christian Perfection or Holiness which was ‘An attainable condition in which the sinful nature is eradicated and the soul entirely sanctified’. To George Whitefield this was ‘Papistical ignorance and refined Deism’ and ‘if this doctrine is true...how few ...will be saved?’ (Deism, a form of religious rationalism, regarded God as simply the force which was present in creation and which could be termed ‘Natural Religion’).
From 1739 the title of Methodism rather than the original ‘Our Company’ had been universally adopted and Charles Wesleys’ fine Hymn Book, in its new edition, made clear to all their supporters the brothers’ teachings. As well as members of the Church of England, Independents, Baptists and Presbyterians were to be made welcome. From 1750 there was some measure of reconciliation between Wesley and Whitefield, although the latter wrote ‘Have you thought about a union?...I believe we are on two different planes’. But he was soon to renounce his leadership of his supporters.
One of the strengths of the evangelical movement was its appeal, not only to the poor and dispossessed - this goes without saying - but also to the aristocracy and leading politicians. The contact was made when George Whitefield was appointed as one of Selina Hastings’, Countess of Huntingdon’s, chaplains. She has been described as, ‘A combination of Puritan Churchman, Dissenter and Reformer’, and her wealth enabled her to build chapels in Bristol, Brighton and Bath as well as in Tunbridge Wells. Among her supporters were the elder Pitt, Lords North and Bolingbroke, the Earl of Chesterfield and Frederick, Prince of Wales. But the poor were not forgotten. John Wesley was a social reformer, opening dispensaries and distributing medicines, while George Whitefield dedicated his life to his Orphanage House in Georgia. Although Wesley was too revolutionary ‘he affirmed unfeigned loyalty to the king and sincere attachment to the constitution’. Some of his lay preachers were rather more anti-establishment. It was noted ‘their doctrines are more repulsive and strongly intrenched with disrespect towards their superiors...it is monstrous to be told you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl upon the earth’.
John Wesley, before he died, drew up a deed of declaration; 100 ministers were named as the governing body of the Methodist Church and vacancies were to be filled by election by the ministers. The chapels were grouped into circuits and the circuits into districts. The itinerant ministers were appointed for three years. Neither John and Charles Wesley nor George Whitefield wished to leave the Church of England, but in 1795 after their deaths, the English Methodist congregations broke with the established church. However, on 2nd November 2003, at a ceremony attended by Her Majesty the Queen, the Methodist and Anglican churches signed a covenant which is intended to heal the 200 year rift and move towards re-unification.
When the spread of Methodism in Kent is considered, it might be assumed that the Wesleyan rather than the Calvinistic Whitefieldian form would be preferred. Whitefield made more converts in those areas newly affected by the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, while the softer Lutheranism of the Wesleys had a greater appeal for the largely agricultural areas of the country. But the ports and riverside industries of north Kent were frequently visited by Whitefield as he slowly made his way down the river to begin his many voyages to Georgia. Embarked at Deal he records lengthy visits ashore. The Wesleys ventured abroad less frequently but occasionally there was rivalry with Whitefield’s supporters. Whitefield’s opinion was ‘Let the Lord send by whom He will’ and so that Christ is preached. At Chatham Wesley preached to ‘nearly twelve thousand people’. He frequently visited the then rural settlements in north west Kent of Blackheath, Lewisham, and Bexley. His visits were to centre on Blendon House in Bexley, the home of the wealthy sugar importer, whose son Charles Delamotte had been a member of the Oxford Holy Club, and who had accompanied the Wesleys on their early visit to Georgia. George Whitefield unsuccessfully courted Charles sister, Elizabeth, but his great open air gatherings on Blackheath and Bexleyheath attracted, ‘above twenty thousand people’ and perhaps comforted him. On one Sunday alone three thousand came into Blendon garden to listen to Whitefield preach to them from the top of the garden wall.
The spiritual guide of the Delamotte family was their parish priest, the Vicar of Bexley, the Rev. Henry Piers, ‘An awakened clergyman’ and ‘A strenuous ally’ of the Wesleys. It was he who was credited with introducing them to his Dean, the Vicar of Shoreham, Vincent Perronet, who was later to be regarded as ‘the Archbishop of the Methodists’, in the words of Charles Wesley, written almost forty years later in 1782. Year after year the brothers came to stay in the sixteenth century vicarage lacking a devout group gathered by the kitchen. From the vocal opposition of the first visit in 1744 when, ‘The wild beasts began roaring, stamping, blaspheming, ringing the bells and turning the church into a bear garden’ To ‘The most lively society in the circuit’.
In their later visits Vincent Perronet and his family remained strongly supportive of his friends’ teachings. Some years later two Methodist chapels were to be built in the village; the larger surviving one, until its closure, was always known as the Wesleyan Chapel.
The Wealden area of Kent, so responsive to earlier Protestant teaching brought across the Channel, had remained a centre of dissent. William Cobbett, riding down to Dover, ‘All across Kent from the Weald of Sussex’, although opposed to Methodism could not help but note the enthusiasm for ‘these roving fanatics’ as he passed by their many chapels. And in Canterbury, many of the soldiers temporarily stationed in the barracks were converted by the local congregations. Not only was Kent part of John Wesleys’ ‘Home circuit’, but Archbishop Potter, who, as Bishop of Oxford had ordained John as priest, was not unsympathetic. By 1844, the centenary of the Methodist movement, there were eleven circuits in Kent.
The zeal of these three men kindled a fervour within and without the established church which resulted in evangelism and social reform.
Joy Saynor
Suggestions for further reading.
- A Dallimore, George Whitefield - Life and Times. Banner of Truth Trust 1980
- N Currock,. Journal of the Rev. John Wesley Epworth Press 1938
- R Southey. Life of Wesley and the Rise of Methodism. 1890
- E P Thompson, Making of the English Working Class Penguin Books 1991.
- M White and J Saynor, Shoreham, A Village in Kent Shoreham Society 1989
- I Murray, Whitefield’s Journals, new edition. Banner of Truth Trust 1960