John Wesley in America: Restoring Primitive Christianity

Abstract

Geordan Hammond's valuable and deeply researched study of the Georgia mission of 1735–7 offers a fresh assessment of John Wesley's effort at ‘saving [his] own soul’ by planting primitive Christianity anew in virgin territory. It is an episode which has traditionally been characterized in biographical accounts as an instrumental failure: sometimes presented as the great, chilling spiritual frustration which broke the High Church Wesley, enabling him to break through to his ‘warmer’ and mature evangelical phase. Most frequently the Georgia mission is mentioned in connection with the Moravian influence on Wesley and his conversion; or with his limited encounters with the Native Americans; or, more pruriently, with his disappointment in the love affair with Sophia Hopkey. While taking account of these aspects of Wesley's experience, Hammond, Director of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre and Senior Lecturer in Church History at Nazarene Theological College, takes a different approach.This is a theologically sophisticated and comprehensive exploration of Wesley's understanding of apostolic Christianity at the time of his utopian experiment. As Hammond puts it, ‘the ideal of restoring primitive Christianity was at the forefront of Wesley's thinking and is crucial to interpreting the Georgia mission’ (6). He seeks to reverse the old tendency to ‘de-anglicanize’ the early Wesley, and aims instead to locate him more fully and precisely within the spectrum of High Church views with which he is commonly associated. There is a slight question at the back of this reviewer's mind about the extent to which this is a necessary correction to contemporary scholarship—the significance of Wesley's Anglican heritage and upbringing was much discussed in the twentieth century, not least in Martin Schmidt's theological biography. Nonetheless, Hammond's careful excavation of Wesley's reading habits, his networks and priorities in this important period, is illuminating and undoubtedly offers rewarding insights. Especially persuasive is the claim (expounded most fully in the Conclusion) that the Georgia venture, far from providing merely a negative model for mission and reform, contained the imprint of a primitivism which can clearly be observed in his vision for Methodism. In this, Hammond is contributing to and synthesizing trends in Wesley studies which emphasize continuity in the pre- and post-Aldersgate Wesley, in his ecclesiology, doctrine of the ministry, and Eucharistic thought.The first chapter explains the origins of ‘John Wesley's Conception and Practice of Primitive Christianity’, exploring the profound influence on Wesley not just of the later nonjurors, but of the very spikiest (to use an anachronism) of that generation, the Usagers, in their bid to revive the most ‘apostolic’ practices. This entailed not only restoring the four liturgical ‘usages’ (the mixed chalice, the prayer for the dead, the epiclesis, and the prayer of oblation), but also renewing ancient habits of ascetic discipline, charity, and unity in worship. Chapter 2 analyses in depth Wesley's reading (especially on the apostolic sacraments) and his daily regime while on board the Simmonds, drawing on evidence from Wesley's manuscript diary, and journals kept by Benjamin Ingham and two Moravian fellow-passengers. The third chapter illustrates the strain placed on Wesley's relations with Moravian and Lutheran missionaries by his radical High Church primitivism, especially his rigid episcopalian sensibilities and commitment to trine immersion at baptism. Chapter 4, the longest of the chapters at around fifty pages, offers a full account of Wesley's ministry in Georgia. It deals first with Wesley's liturgical reforms: Hammond argues that his (unauthorized!) revisions drew on the 1549 Prayer Book but also on the apostolic constitutions and Usager reorderings of the service. Wesley's pastoral priorities and resolutions for clerical practice are also discussed (these seem to owe as much to the example of Wesley's father as they do to the example of the early church); and Hammond describes his regime of sacramental observance and especially his insistence on immersion and weekly communion. The controversial establishment of religious societies, for public confession and penance, is presented in the light of Wesley's zeal for primitive Christianity. Perhaps the most startling rumour of the Georgia period was that Wesley had appointed deaconesses in accordance with the Apostolic Constitutions, but this tantalizing possibility remains obscure. The chapter also deals with the disappointing interactions with Native Americans, and the ascetical life pursued by Wesley to aid his mission. The final chapter considers the varieties of ‘Opposition to Wesley's Primitive Christianity’ in Georgia, and the stigmatizing accusations of enthusiasm and popery levelled at him in ‘an unstable frontier environment’ where his reforms were experienced as subversive.In summary, this is a welcome and refreshed account of ‘Wesley in America’, and I am sure it will be widely read. OUP's notoriously light editorial touch can unfortunately be discerned in places (I was a little confused by headings which were variously but irrationally capitalized and in boldface), but this does not distract greatly from the book's undoubted strengths.