Evangelicalism, Piety and Politics: The Selected Writings of W. R. Ward

Abstract

W. R. Ward (1925–2010) was one of the most respected historians of his generation. Known to scholars of Methodist and Wesleyan traditions for his Religion and Society in England 1790–1850 (1972), for his two-volume edition of the correspondence of Jabez Bunting, and for his collaboration with Richard Heitzenrater in the seven volumes of John Wesley's journals and diaries issued by the Wesley Works Project, Reg Ward's expertise ranged widely across religious, social, and political history in many countries and several centuries. The present volume, edited with an affectionate and informative introduction by Andrew Chandler, illustrates the breadth of Professor Ward's interests and the depth of his learning. Chapters on Gottfried Arnold and Gerhard Tersteegen are juxtaposed with reflections on the reception of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the former German Democratic Republic and on the extent to which the early writings of Karl Barth may truly be said to show Socialist political leanings; J. S. Bach and Emanuel Swedenborg keep company with Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke; the influence of Paracelsus is discussed alongside the Wesleyan doctrine of the Pastoral Office; the effectiveness (or otherwise) of church establishments is considered with reference to eighteenth-century England and late twentieth-century Switzerland. As well as giving an insight into an historian of wide interests, formidable scholarship and trenchant opinions, this collection of articles, spanning some thirty years, offers the reader access to several significant essays. For the present reviewer, Professor Ward's articles ‘Power and piety: the origins of religious revival in the early eighteenth century’ (1980), ‘The religion of the people and the problem of control’ (1971), and ‘The legacy of John Wesley: The Pastoral Office in Britain and America’ (1973) made the most compelling reading, placing the revival in a broad European context, analysing the challenges confronting Wesleyan Methodism in the age of Bunting, and tracing the trajectories of Methodist itinerancy in Britain and North America in the decades either side of Wesley's death. It is good to be reminded of the fluidity and flexibility of the revival, and of its multiple spiritual and intellectual antecedents, before the advent of greater denominational and institutional control. Reg Ward's erudition, particularly in the byways of European mysticism and Pietism, demands attentive reading in order fully to appreciate his important insights. The editor recognizes that he was ‘contrarian – and waspishly anticlerical’ (11), and there are times when this theme becomes uncomfortable (for instance, in the repeated dismissal of Bunting as ‘execrable’ on pages 133 and 144, and in some of Ward's ventures into contemporary Methodist and ecumenical politics, especially in the concluding sentences of the final essay). There are some unfortunate proofreading slips, including the consistent misspelling of ‘Heitzenrater’ and the (possibly Freudian) rebranding of Lloyd George's 1935 Call to Action as a ‘call to fiction’ (215). All in all, however, this is a useful volume, and a welcome tribute to a great historian.