the main place in the study of Wesley. Only the first volume of

the main place in the study of Wesley. Only the first volume of

Good News to the Poor

THE MODEL DEED

The majority of sermons that contain evidence of Wesley's vacillation with respect to evangelical economics are those that are included in the "Standard Sermons," which provide one of the norms of Methodist doctrine. The main elements of Wesley's evangelical economics—including the demystification of wealth, solidarity with the poor, and the theory of stewardship—are also found there, usually in the same sermons.

A fair reading even of his early sermons would confirm that Wesley is far more concerned to emphasize these features than he is to accommodate them to the worldly wisdom of his readers.

But the fact remains that these sermons do provide loopholes that Wesley will later seek to close.

The difficulty of doing so is exacerbated by the fact that Wesley has in the meantime made these sermons the legal norm of doctrine for the Methodist preaching houses through the establishment of the Model Deed (1763) and, subsequently, of the Deed of Declaration (1784). These steps, which were taken to secure continuity and order in the connection, had a distorting effect on Methodist perceptions of Wesley's preaching. Wesley's views on nearly every point of theological importance—including the results of regeneration, the permanence of perfection, the nature of the law, and so on—underwent significant modification in the years following

1763. Still, the "Standard Sermons" have continued to occupy the main place in the study of Wesley. Only the first volume of the Journal and Wesley's Appeals have anything like a similar standing. Thus the first half of Wesley's theological development as leader of the Methodist movement typically eclipses the second half!'

The result is that only that portion of Wesley is generally read which opens the door to an anti-Wesleyan ethic! If we are to understand how Wesley himself contributes to the collapse of the Methodist project, then we must give a role to the establishment of that very Model Deed whereby Wesley sought to secure Methodism from decay. Perhaps there is more wisdom than Wesley suspected in his Master's injunction to "take no thought for the morrow."

Why Did Wesley Fail?

THE DEFENSE OF METHODISM

The establishment of the Model Deed tells us why Wesley's most equivocal statements acquire canonical status and so place in obscurity his more decisive and mature statement of evangelical economics. But this does not explain how Wesley came to make such equivocal statements in the first place. The effect of such statements is to accommodate Wesley's views to the then prevailing "common-sense" thinking about Christian participation in economic life. Why was Wesley concerned to do this? What leads him to compromise his own insights in ways that ultimately prove fatal to his own project of spreading scriptural holiness throughout the land? (We must remember that this is Wesley's own judgment, not one that is imposed from outside his thought.) I think that we can come to a better understanding of the dynamics that produce equivocation in some (though by no means all) of Wesley's formulations of evangelical economics in this early period if we remember that Methodism was under concerted attack during this time by those who sensed in the movement a vaguely defined, but nonetheless monumental, threat to their ideology and privilege. The groups and interests who felt themselves threatened by Wesley's project mounted an intense campaign to discredit Wesley with the government, with the Church, and with the people. Nor did things stop with propaganda. The accounts of violence directed against Methodists in general and Wesley in particular is no invention of Methodist legend. The sheer physical courage, especially of Wesley, makes gripping reading even today. What hagiographic legend does do, however, is to render all of this conflict utterly unintelligible to us. Why did these powerful interests feel so threatened by Wesley's movement that they resorted to a campaign of concerted violence and intimidation?

Surely these interests are not enraged by being told that God loves them! When we recall the main points of Wesley's evangelical economics, however, that outrage becomes somewhat more intelligible. The denial that wealth and privilege are the sign of God's favor; the assertion that all of this is instead a robbery of God and the poor; the insistence that the poor have a

Good News to the Poor particular place in God's action and that concern for the poor be made the litmus test of our action; the articulation of a notion of stewardship that undermines the sacred character of private property—these are themes that are quite capable of enraging powerful interests and of leading them to incite violence and campaigns of attempted intimidation, to denounce the proponents of such views as insurrectionists in the employ of sinister foreign powers.® No one who has the slightest acquaintance with the history of the Church in Latin America in the last few decades particularly would find the reaction of the powerful to this sort of message in the least bit strange. That sort of persecution characterizes the life of the Church wherever it is a Church of and for the poor.

Wesley was accused of amassing an army of the poor and of being in the employ of Spain (Journal, 1:322-33), or of fomenting insurrection (Journal, I:199). Wesley responded to these political charges by making himself and the Methodists out to be super-patriots. He won that battle—and lost the war.

He had produced the very sort of position that makes his political ethic unusable for any situation, save that of monarchy.

Much the same dynamic is at work on the economic front.

Wesley was accused of preaching a doctrine that results in economic irresponsibility on the part of the poor and the laboring classes. To his credit, Wesley's first response to this accusation is to admit a part of the force of the objection by boldly asserting some of the principles of his evangelical economics:

I believe many of those who attend on my ministry have less of this world's goods than they had before, or, at least, might have had if they did not attend it. This fact I allow; and it may be easily accounted for in one or other of the following ways:—

First. I frequently preach on such texts as these: "Having food and raiment, let us be content therewith." "They who desire to be rich, fall into temptation and a snare... ." "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth. .

. ." (A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, VIII:125) Some cannot follow their former way of life at all; (as pawnbrokers, smugglers, buyers or sellers of uncustomed goods;)—others cannot follow it as they did before; for they cannot oppress, cheat,

Why Did Wesley Fail? or defraud their neighbour; they cannot lie, or say what they do not mean; they must now speak the truth from their heart. On all these accounts, they have less of this world's goods; because they gain less than they did before. (Ibid., VIII:126-27)

This response is in general rather forthright. It does, however, pass over in silence the whole notion of stewardship for the poor.

Whatever may be said for Wesley's response, it turns out to be ineffective. The attacks at this point are not deflected. Thus

Wesley is led to make even more concessions in his defense of Methodism, concessions that play directly into the hands of the precursors of what I have called the gospel of wealth and success. Here are some examples:

You affirm, Sixthly, that I "rob and plunder the poor, so as to leave them neither bread to eat, nor raiment to put on." (Page 8.)

An heavy charge, but without all colour of truth. Yea, just the reverse is true. Abundance of those in Cork, Bandon, Limerick,

Dublin, as well as in all parts of England, who, a few years ago, either through sloth or profuseness, had not bread to eat, or raiment to put on, have now, by means of the Preachers called

Methodists, a sufficiency of both. Since, by hearing these, they have learned to fear God, they have learned also to work with their hands, as well as to cut off every needless expense, to be good stewards of the mammon of unrighteousness. (Letter to the Rev.

Mr. Baily [1750], [X:81-82) We, on the contrary, severely condemn all who neglect their temporal concerns, and who do not take care of everything on earth wherewith God hath entrusted them. The consequence of this is, that the Methodists, so called, do not "neglect their affairs, and impoverish their families;" but, by diligence in business,

"provide things honest in the sight of all men." Insomuch, that multitudes of them, who, in time past, had scarce food to eat or raiment to put on, have now "all things needful for life and godliness;" and that for their families, as well as themselves. (Letter to the Rev. Mr. Downes [1759], IX:99) In these passages, Wesley boasts of the very industry and frugality that are to lead the Methodists into fatal contradiction to the project of scriptural holiness. To be sure, Wesley does not

Good News to the Poor go so far as to commend prosperity. He does not simply say one thing here and quite another when he speaks of the dangers of growing prosperity. But he does not make it easy for Methodists to see that they are doing anything wrong when the very results here commended are later the subject of warnings and admonitions. It looks like no more than a matter of degree rather than one of principle. And if so, why not use the dodge that one is not nearly so rich as so-and-so?

It seems likely that some of the tensions in Wesley's presentation, at least in the early period, are produced by his response to critics of Methodism. In these responses, Wesley chooses to emphasize those elements of his teaching that are most innocuous in order to make the critics appear ridiculous.

Wesley seldom could resist a rhetorical knock-out punch. And the prospect of defusing these critics may have caused him to so formulate his position as to appear to accommodate the worldly wisdom he otherwise attacked. It certainly appears that Wesley gives way before the very sort of prudential reasoning he knew to be destructive of the life of faith.

THE WEIGHT OF TRADITION

It is noteworthy that those critics who attack Wesley for encouraging economic irresponsibility, and so elicit from him the responses that make difficulties fer his own view of evangelical economics, are members of the clergy. They were not likely to have been the only persons to have raised these objections. But they are the ones to whom Wesley responded— in such a way as to insist on the Protestant work ethic. This is by no means fortuitous, for the clergy were expected to enforce the virtues of diligence and frugality and general economic

"responsibility." This was an essential part of the doctrine of the Church of England as represented by the official Homilies.

Now, this placed Wesley under a particular difficulty.

According to him, Methodists preached only the received doctrine of the Church as contained in the Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Homilies.' This was the

Why Did Wesley Fail? core of the case made by Wesley in defending his teaching about faith, about the witness of the Spirit, about empowerment by the Spirit, and so on." Thus when the establishment accused Wesley of "enthusiasm" he would turn the tables to show that he, and not they, adhered to the doctrine of the Church. This may have been an especially effective ploy where bishops were concerned.

The same rhetorical ploy used to combat the political charge of insurrection and to combat the ecclesial charge of "enthusiasm" is used to deflect the charge of economic irresponsibility (a kind of insurrection and enthusiasm). Wesley is especially sensitive to this charge when it is made by clerics, since to be found in opposition to the Homilies, for example, would result in the unraveling of his defense of core doctrines. Thus Wesley has a strong incentive to make his teaching appear to be as much in harmony with the Homilies as possible, using the very language of the Homilies wherever possible. This is precisely what Wesley appears to be doing at those points where we have noticed tensions and hesitations in the treatment of evangelical economics.

The Homily "Against Idleness" emphasizes the sort of "diligence" that Wesley believed is necessary to Christian existence, but that also results in the dilemma of "increasing riches," which destroys "true religion." The Homily maintains:

... every one ought, in his lawfull vocation and calling, to give himselfe to labour: and that idlenesse, being repugnant to the same ordinance is a grievous sinne...

. [Therefore] earnestly apply yourselves, every man in his vocation, to honest labour and businesse, which as it is enjoyned unto man by God's appointment, so it wanteth not his manifold blessings and sundry benefits.

. Itis the appointment and will of God, that every man, during the time of this mortall and transitorie life, should give himselfe to such honest and godly exercise and labour, and every one follow his owne business, as to walke uprightly in his owne calling.

(Certaine Sermons or Homilies, p. 249) Many of the phrases of this Homily are used by Wesley in the responses to attacks we have cited above. As we have seen in Wesley's discussion of the poor (chap. 3), he does draw the line at agreeing to the Homily's observation that "a great part of the

Good News to the Poor beggary that is among the poore, can be imputed to nothing so much as to idlenesse " (Ibid, p. 251). Indeed, Wesley maintains that the view that idleness is the chief cause of poverty is

"wickedly, devilishly false" (Journal, Feb 9, 1753, II:280).

That the Homilies should teach something other than evangelical economics should not be too astonishing. After all,

Wesley has himself developed the idea of the Church's fall "when Constantine called himself a Christian." And what is the established Church but a perpetuation of that very corruption?

If this is so, then is it so very surprising that such a Church's official economic teaching should be at variance from the gospel? Yet, Wesley's determined loyalty to the Church prevented him from seeing this contradiction. He was determined, as he said, to be a "churchman" first and last. This served as a final barrier to his development of a truly thoroughgoing evangelical economics.

This conflict becomes especially acute at the point of Wesley's growing sense of the importance of the description in Acts of the pentecostal community. We have seen that the recognition of the significance of pentecostal commun(al)ism is a direct consequence of the development of his view of stewardship. It is, then, the culmination of Wesley's evangelical economics.

But precisely at this point the prospect of a definitive break with the established Church appears, for what is in question here is not the content of one or another Homily, but one of the Articles of Religion. Article XXXVIII, "Of Christian Men's

Goods, Which Are Not Common" reads:

The Riches and Goods of Christians are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same; as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast. Notwithstanding, every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, liberally to give alms to the poor, according to his ability."

We need only compare this with Wesley's view, expressed, for example, in the sermon on "The General Spread of the Gospel," to see the conflict:

The natural, necessary consequence of this will be the same as it was in the beginning of the Christian Church: "None of them will

Why Did Wesley Fail? say, that aught of the things which he possesses is his own; but they will have all things common. Neither will there be any among them that want: For as many as are possessed of lands or houses will sell them; and distribution will be made to every man, according as he has need" (V1I:284) Nor is this merely an eschatological dream, for:

If the whole church had continued in this spirit, this usage must have continued through all the ages. To affirm, therefore, that Christ did not design it should continue, is neither more nor less than to affirm that Christ did not design this measure of love should continue. (Notes; note to Acts 2:45)

Thus the inevitable consequence of the view of evangelical economics developed by Wesley is a direct contradiction of one of the Articles of Religion!

This conflict is also seen in the Homilies, where the "having all goods in common' is treated exclusively as a consequence of the chaos that would result if there were no obedience to kings.

Thus the early "Exhortation Concerning Good Order, and Obedience to Rulers and Magistrates"

warns:

Take away Kings, Princes, Rulers, Magistrates, Judges and such estates of God's order, no man shall ride or goe by the high way unrobbed, no man shall sleepe in his owne house or bedde unkilled, no man shall keepe his wife, children, and possession in quietnesse, all things shall bee common.

(Certaine Sermons or Homilies, p. 69) The third part of the later Homily "Against Disobedience" speaks of the rebels "who by their willes would leave unto no man anie thing of his owne" (p. 293). It is easy to see how

Wesley's teaching about stewardship could alarm an establishment that views this only as inciting rebellion against the divinely sanctioned orders that protected their position and privileges.

Did Wesley see this conflict? It is possible that he did and that this was the reason he persuaded himself to forego the reference to pentecostal commun(al)ism in the rules for the

Good News to the Poor select societies.!? It is clear that Wesley stopped short of such a break, even though his views were'sufficiently well known on this subject that it was the occasion of public rebuke of the Methodists.' After Wesley's death it fell to Coke to officially deny that Methodism taught any such thing."

Wesley himself let stand the offending Article in his revision for the American Methodists, with the result that a somewhat less polemical version of the original is part of the Articles of Religion of American Methodism. Therefore, Article XXIV reads:

The riches and goods of Christians are not common as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as some do falsely boast.

Notwithstanding, every man ought, of such things as he possesseth, liberally to give alms to the poor, according to his ability.® All that is lacking is the reference to the Anabaptists. Did Wesley surrender his convictions at this point? Did he suppose that a sufficiently radical (consistent) interpretation of the second sentence would obviate the need for a definitive break with established Church tradition? Did he simply fail to see the contradiction? Was he persuaded by Coke, who obviously opposed the implications of Wesley's evangelical economics, to retain the offending Article? Or is there some other explanation?'

In any case we should note that while the American Methodists were let comfortably off the hook of Wesley's views about stewardship, there were still Wesleyans who did not wholly forget. Article XV of The Confession of Faith of the Evangelical United Brethren Church reads as follows:

We believe God is the owner of all things and that the individual holding of property is lawful and is a sacred trust under God.

Private property is to be used for the manifestation of Christian love and liberality, and to support the Church's mission in the world. All forms of property, whether private, corporate or public, are to be held in solemn trust and used responsibly for human good under the sovereignty of God.!

Why Did Wesley Fail?

This is clearly a compromise formulation, which is not a fully adequate expression of Wesley's teaching."* Nevertheless it is manifestly more adequate than the formulation of either version of the Articles of Religion.

The consistent application of Wesley's view of stewardship leads to an acceptance of pentecostal commun(al)ism as the model for the new society of scriptural holiness. But Wesley's movement in this direction runs up against the protection of the established economic order as enshrined in The Articles of Religion. Thus Wesley's determination not to break with the Church of England in any point of doctrine means that irreconcilable equivocations are introduced into his economic ethic. The price of maintaining a doomed relationship with the Church was the weakening of Wesley's evangelical economics to the point that it could be largely forgotten following his death.

The failure of the Methodist project was the price paid for an illusory continuity with official tradition.

CONCLUSION

Wesley knew that, in this respect, Methodism was a failed enterprise. He also knew that the point of failure was the abrogation in practice of the evangelical economics he tirelessly supported.

As we have seen, this recognition led Wesley to cry out:

I am distressed. I know not what to do. I see what I might have done once. I might have said peremptorily and expressly, "Here I am; I and my Bible. I will not, I dare not, vary from this book, either in great things or small. I have no power to dispense with one jot or tittle of what is contained therein. I am determined to be a Bible Christian, not almost, but altogether. Who will meet me on this ground? Join me on this, or not at all. .

. But, alas! the time is now past; and what I can do now, I cannot tell. ("Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity," V11:287) Any attempt to rethink the practicability of an evangelical economics must take this question seriously if it is to profit not only from Wesley's teachings but also from his mistakes.

Good News to the! POOt, sys sels tee ie ea It is clear that Wesley himself recognized that he had not enforced these precepts with adequate rigor. What I have attempted to demonstrate is that some of Wesley's own formulations, especially in the early years of the revival, introduce ambiguity and equivocation between the demands of the gospel and the ethos of "worldly prudence." These very formulations become "canonical" through the effect of Wesley's attempt to legally secure the future of Methodism by the Model

Deed and the Deed of Declaration. Moreover, these dubious formulations also appear to be motivated, at least in part, by the attempt to deflect the hostility of the powerful toward the Methodists. Despite Wesley's recognition that persecution was the inevitable consequence of true Christianity, he nevertheless shrank from a direct confrontation with vested interests over the principles of an evangelical economics. This accommodation may have been motivated in part by Wesley's reluctance to open a breach between his movement and the Church of England.

Now there is good reason to believe that Wesley himself could have been persuaded of the cogency of something like this analysis. It is not an external critique but an internal one. It holds Wesley accountable not to alien norms but to those he himself propounded and insisted upon. In plain terms, Wesley compromised with worldly prudence and so opened the way toa wholesale abandonment of his own principles on the part of the Methodists.

Of course, when we consider the enormous weight of official Church tradition and the violence of the persecution unleashed against the Methodists, we may be astonished not that Wesley compromised, but that he did not capitulate. The equivocations in his position are, in fact, few and far between, the articulation of principles generally clearly and vigorously expressed.

Whatever his faults, he sounded the trumpet far more clearly than his successors have done, ourselves included.'® Were we to be only half so radical in our proclamation and _ practice,

Methodism in its various forms would be utterly transformed.

But if we were to seek such a transformation, we would have to learn from Wesley's mistakes that evangelical economics means that we must forego any attempt to ensure the survival of

Why Did Wesley Fail?

Methodism, that we must be prepared to subject the traditions of a Constantinian Church to relentless criticism on the basis of the gospel, that we must be prepared to accept virulent opposition from vested interests as the price and seal of our discipleship. None of this should seem extraordinary. It is the character of any "scriptural Christianity."

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CHAPTER NINE

THE RELEVANCE OF WESLEY

he aim of the Methodist movement as conceived by Wesley was not to generate a prosperous and successful denomination, or even several of them, but "to spread scriptural holiness throughout the land" and thence throughout the earth. The success or failure of this project depended not on increase of numbers and influence, but on an increase in faithfulness, in holiness of life. And that holiness of life had as its test or criterion the fact that the people called Methodists practice the tenets of what I have called here "evangelical economics."

By Wesley's own standard, the Methodist movement must be reckoned a failure.' Despite all that may and must be alleged to its credit, it has, as a movement, become a mirror and an instrument of the reign of mammon. In spite of the intentions of its founder, it has basked in the upward socioeconomic mobility of its members, making the middle class the object of its solicitous regard, the norm of the efficacy and relevance of its programs.

It has made itself hostage to the dream of denominational success and influence, perverting stewardship into a new temple tax and appropriating the management and organizational models of institutional maintenance and growth.

The concern for the destitute and oppressed has not been silenced, but it has been marginalized, placed not at the center, but at the periphery of institutional life and commitment.

Inthis the Methodist churches are not in worse condition than

Good News to the Poor are other denominations.

We merely echo the general forgetfulness of the evangelical call for sacrificial solidarity with the poor. But to admit this much is to see the enormity of our failure, for Methodism does not have the excuse of other denominations, which were founded on other than Wesleyan principles. If we are not centrally committed to the actualization of evangelical economics, then we are no more Methodists than we are Rosicrucians.

Although our situation is desperate, it need not be without hope. The grace we once received in the call to scriptural holiness, the grace we have squandered away in our concern for institutional survival and even success, may not be utterly withdrawn. We may yet turn and live. And if we do, we may yet be a source of life for those who are perishing, a serviceable instrument of the divine mercy.

For some, the study of Wesley may be an instrument of this turning. Others may find the study of contemporary liberation theology, with its reflection upon the experience of the poor gathered together in base communities, an impetus to turn toward something like the practice of evangelical economics.

Still others may find a rereading of the Bible, the same Bible that nourished Wesley and that illumines the lives of the poor in base communities today, the most effective prod to a turn toward evangelical economics.

But however and by whomever it is done, the turn to an evangelical economics is an urgent task. Just as it mattered little to Wesley whether the members of his societies were Anglicans like himself or Quakers or Presbyterians or Congregationalists or even Catholics, so also what matters today is not so much whether Methodists rediscover evangelical economics but whether Christians do.

THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

It is becoming increasingly clear that the anti-evangelical economics of institutionalized greed and violence is destroying the earth and its inhabitants. During the Nazi horror twelve

The Relevance of Wesley million victims, half of them Jews, were sacrificed to national pride and institutionalized insanity. But in the decade of the 1980s, one hundred million children worldwide died of poverty. One hundred million! Each year of the past decade, more children have died of poverty—of starvation, malnutrition, and the diseases that feed on the starving—than the Nazi horror machine could exterminate in all the years of its feverish and fiendish activity. Each year there is a new holocaust, a new sacrifice to the Moloch of greed and indifference. And like the good German neighbors of Dachau, we scarcely notice.

This slaughter of the innocents is no fortuitous calamity but the direct result of economic arrangements that blind us to reality by making us complicitous in calamity. Mortal poverty is not due, as some blasphemously maintain, to an act of God. It is the work of our economic idolatry.'

The earth, reeling as it is, produces more than enough food to feed plentifully every man, woman, and child on the planet.

There is enough food; yet, our economic system produces murderous scarcity. A few have more than they can consume, so much that garbage disposal is a critical problem; while millions perish in sight of plenty. One nation, containing a tiny fraction of the earth's population (the majority of whom think of themselves as Christians), consumes half the earth's resources; yet, it still manages not to feed its own hungry.

If we make proposals to remedy this iniquitous hoarding and waste by the few at the expense of the many, we are told that this would destroy the economy. The economy of death.

That is an economy worthy of destruction. It is open contempt of God.

This same economy of death imposes upon poor nations the crushing burden of debt, extorting interest payments by which poorer nations subsidize the excesses of richer nations. Thus the countries of Latin America, for example, so far from receiving aid from their immensely wealthy neighbor, actually export capital. And the banks and international lending agencies propose that in order to solve the "debt crisis" the poorer countries should accept "loans," the effect of which is to increase their debt and their payments of interest to these same banks.

Then the United States dominated International Monetary

Good News to the Poor Fund has the audacity to demand as the price of this "aid" that the poor countries actually reduce their assistance to the poor of their own nation, cutting back food assistance to the hungry, medical care to the dying, and education for the illiterate in order to have the honor of continuing to subsidize the wealthiest nation on earth. Neither Latin American bureaucrats nor international bankers nor the technocrats who negotiate these

"final solutions" pay a penny. On the contrary, they grow wealthy creating and solving the "debt" crisis. It is only the poor who pay. The solvency of the international financial market is the blood of the poor.

The labor of the poor cannot bear the burden. Their hope of avoiding for a time the starvation that threatens them is to produce, out of the bodies of poor women, more hands to work.

Since many of these infants will die, it is necessary to produce more and more. It is the only "natural resource" to which they are permitted access, the only "social security" they have. The population explosion is a direct consequence of the economy of death. Rather than seek ways to distribute more equitably the abundance of the earth, the wealthy make the problem the fault of the poor and seek to control the last remaining economic lever still in the hands of the poor.

The same economy of death that hoards resources for the wealthy must protect their "rights" against both their greedy counterparts in other nations and the increasingly desperate masses of their own. In the name of "property rights," those who protest this iniquity are imprisoned, tortured, made to disappear, and executed. Human rights are sacrificed on the altar of property rights for the privileged. What some are pleased to call the "God-given rights of liberty and property" turn out to be the right of liberty for the propertied from the protest of the poor. But no such "rights" derive from the God known to the Bible. That God is not the god of property and security but of justice and compassion.

The same economy of death diverts human resources and those of the planet to the creation of weapons of death toensure the security of the greedy and the complacent. Vast sums are squandered on unproductive arms industries even by the

The Relevance of Wesley poorest nations, or rather by the elite of those nations, in imitation of their wealthier cousins of the north. Thus the instability generated by the greed of the few and the impoverishment of the many induces the greedy to protect themselves from the many, thereby reducing the resources available to redress the grievances of the many, further destabilizing the societies they pretend to protect. If the poor are not deterred, they are called "communists" for not respecting the rights of the exploiters to exploit, in the certain knowledge that wealthier nations (especially the most wealthy) will provide additional loans to purchase additional arms.

The vicious cycle of impoverishment and violence feeds upon itself.

This same economy of death is masked as ideological conflict, pitting two great materialistic empires against each other for the "right" to possess the earth itself, each threatening the other with the capacity to destroy the planet itself, holding the entire earth hostage to their imperial demands. The economy of death produces international nuclear terrorism as the price for maintaining itself under the mask of self-defense.

This same economy of death, meanwhile, is rapidly destroying the earth itself. More than half the arable land of the globe has already been turned into desert by the agriculture of avarice, arrogance, and ignorance. The waters of the earth are becoming cesspools, the air poisonous. Where once forests stood to cleanse the air and make it healthful for all creatures, there is now drifting sand. Where grassy plains stretched to the horizons to feed the creatures of the earth, there is now only desert. The prophets promise that the deserts can be made to bloom like gardens, but the economy of death turns the garden that remains into a desert. Already the vast majority of the earth's plant and animal species have been exterminated.

Is there no remedy? Certainly no minor adjustments in this mechanism of death will transform it into something that nourishes life. Without a radical transformation of our ways of dealing with one another and the earth, God's teeming creation may become a lifeless rock hurtling through the void of space.

But from whence can such a radical transformation come?

Good News to the Poor

IS THE GOSPEL RELEVANT?

Of course, we have heard that the gospel has something to say about radical transformation. Perhaps we have even heard that this transformation extends to the renewal of all creation, a new heaven and earth. But too often that very gospel has been subverted. Instead of producing a real and visible transformation, it has settled for an invisible and only nominal change. It has seemed content to produce only the religious trappings to decorate the same old greed and violence, becoming indeed a distraction from the tasks of genuine transformation by which the earth can be renewed.

How shall we explain to ourselves that nearly one-third of the earth's inhabitants claim to believe the gospel, while leaving human relationships as much characterized by greed and violence as ever they were before the gospel was first sounded forth among the poor of Galilee? If the gospel is about transformation, how is it that two thousand years of proclamation have had so little effect? How is that the wealthiest nations on earth, and the greediest and most violent, are those that claim the highest proportion of "Christians"? How is it that the gospel of Jesus Christ, so far from producing radical change, has instead become a cloak for avarice and arrogance, for a willful deafness to the cry of the poor and of the earth itself? How is it that the message of good news for the poor has become a sedative for the privileged while the poor perish?

Those who claim that the world can only be changed by converting persons one by one (or stadium by stadium) must ask whether the gospel they are preaching in fact produces any real transformation at all. Does it produce more than a nominal change, a change only in the name of the god in whose honor we continue to make the bloody sacrifice to Moloch? And in particular we "Protestants" must ask whether we have not so emphasized the sovereignty of grace as to make it impotent, so extolled its sufficiency as to render it invisible, while "faith alone" has been so stressed as to make faith a collaboration in the dominion of sin rather than liberation from it. And if we also speak of love, have we so emptied it of reality as to render it a

The Relevance of Wesley pretty sentimentality that no longer has any idea what it would mean to lay down one's life for one's neighbor?

It is only possible to speak of the gospel as a source for a remedy of the planetary crisis that we face if we are talking about a gospel that makes possible, indeed requires and in fact produces, a radical and visible transformation in all dimensions of life. Only a gospel that produces holiness, scriptural holiness, can transform the economy of death—or rather, abolish it and give in its place something that can really be "good news to the poor."

In his own place and time, and with his own limitations and failings, Wesley sought to sound the call for just this gospel. He resolutely opposed the so-called gospel preachers who spoke of conversion without holiness, of justification without sanctification, of the vacuous sovereignty of an impotent grace.' These pseudo-evangelicals preach a forgiveness of sins that leaves us still enslaved to the power of sin, removing the guilt without touching the reality of sin, thus making their savior a collaborator in the dominion of Satan. But Wesley knew that the grace of God was the power to abolish the dominion of sin in human life. He had no more use for a grace that left lives and relationships unchanged than he did for the Deist's god.

Because Wesley insisted on the efficacy of grace, on its power to transform human life here and now, he was able to generate an evangelical economics. And this, not as an addendum or an extra, but as the center and the norm of the Methodist project as such. If the gospel is to be brought to bear in a meaningful way on the global economic crisis, this will occur through the development of just such an evangelical economics. Thus it may be that Wesley's reflections and practice in this sphere will at least point us in the direction of an appropriate response to the economic holocaust of our time.

THE CHALLENGE

What if the Methodists had heeded Wesley's call? What if the project of Methodism had not shattered on the rocks of

Good News to the Poor prosperity and hardness of heart? What if the people called

Methodists had demonstrated by the empirical evidence of their lives the truth of this gospel, the power of this grace?

A century after Wesley, a German empiricist sat writing in the British Museum, a few city blocks from the places where Wesley had preached. He wrote a description of the economic reality of England. What reality would he have described had the Methodists so-called been Methodists indeed? What if evangelical economics had triumphed over the economy of death or had at least taken the field in unswerving commitment?

When Karl Marx wrote a description of the economy of death, there was no empirical evidence that Christian commitment made any difference whatever to the course of history or to the development of the economy of death. Marx, like Wesley, was an empiricist. He looked for evidence, the evidence of altered interests, of altered relationships, of transformed society. If, several decades before, Wesley had already found Christianity generally and Methodism in particular lacking in evidence of real transformation, is it any wonder that Marx concluded that religion changed nothing, that it only distracted people from the concrete task of transforming reality? To what extent is

Marxism the product of the failure of the Methodist project?

What wonder is it, then, that Marx did not conclude that Christian conversion would produce a just world? Where was the evidence? Like Wesley, Marx looked at economic reality from the perspective of the poor. Like Wesley, he was committed to the realization of a society in which all things were common, in which need was the sole criterion of possession. But if there was no evidence that the fire of economic injustice could be combated with the pentecostal flame of a renewed humanity, then some other means would have to be found to fight fire with fire. If the study of the Bible would not make people just, then perhaps the study of economic reality would. If class meetings failed, perhaps party discipline would not. If the message of divine love yielded nothing, perhaps class warfare would work.

If grace proved impotent, perhaps a totalitarian state would be less impotent.

Marx chose a different path to reach a goal something like that envisioned by Wesley. Despite all of Marxism's historical

The Relevance of Wesley achievements, it cannot be said to have succeeded. Indeed, it appears with each passing year that the Marxist experiment is yet another long and bloody detour on the road to justice. In its

"orthodox" forms, it has only further postponed and even evaded and finally subverted the hope of the poor.* If anything, the experiments with Marxism should at least have taught us that one cannot produce justice by the means of injustice, that ends justify only those means that are themselves expressions of the ends.

Is there then no hope? Is there no real alternative to the economy of death? Was Marx right to suppose that Christianity is incapable of producing justice? Or was Wesley right after all?

There are many who will say that both Wesley and Marx were wrong to suppose that there is an alternative to the economy of death. Meanwhile, the planet is perishing. Those who share with Wesley the view that the gospel does mean a real and radical transformation, capable of transforming history, have the opportunity and the challenge to prove it. We hope for the reign of justice and joy. Can we give any evidence that this hope is well founded? Can we offer to our dying planet any sign of hope, any visible evidence of things not yet seen? That is the challenge to which we are put by our Wesleyan heritage and by the urgency of the global economic crisis.

AN AGENDA FOR METHODISTS

If Methodists are to respond to this challenge, we must seek to embody a truly evangelical economics; we must show by our lives together that grace is not impotent. In the global economic crisis that confronts us with the slaughter of the poor and the rape of the earth, there are many levels of response that may have validity. Here I want only to focus on some of the ways in which Methodist churches may seek to embody an evangelical economics. All of our calls for justice will ring hollow if we asa people do not embody the gospel that motivates these calls.

What, then, would it look like for the visible and public entities

Good News to the Poor known as Methodist churches to embody, if only ina partial way, this evangelical economics?

Of course, this will mean that we place the fate of the poor at the center and not at the edge or margin of our concern. It will mean that every program, every policy, every board or agency will have to justify itself in terms of the welfare of the poor. This is to say nothing more than that the gospel must be our norm and criterion.

But to do this would mean some dramatic changes in the way in which we operate. Take the way we talk about stewardship, for example. We should begin with a revision of our Social

Principles to make clear that stewardship is not only from God but for the poor, thereby giving a more clearly Wesleyan basis to our reflections on the economic order.® We will have to consign to oblivion all the stewardship literature and campaign strategies that make of stewardship and of tithing a new temple tax. It will mean that we declare forthrightly that stewardship means restoring to God in the poor all that we have above what is necessary for life and holiness. All. It will mean that we banish forever the vain superstition that one can give to God by giving to the church. God has appointed the proper recipients: the poor. We must forswear all this ecclesiastical diversion of funds for our own institutional maintenance.

Of course, if we begin here some may claim that the church needs the money. But why should this be so? Is it not so because we have somehow deluded ourselves into thinking that it is good and right to build not just one temple in Jerusalem, but hundreds of them in every town and village? Do we anywhere read that Jesus or his disciples launched a building campaign?

That we are commanded to build temples in the name of the gospel? Do we not, in fact, encounter the opposite on nearly every page of the Gospels? Are we not told that if we desire to identify ourselves with Jesus we may do so not by constructing temples or even social halls, but by feeding the hungry? Andis it not plain that our commitment to building serves to divert a vast proportion of our resources that otherwise might be used to feed the hungry and clothe the naked? Are these temples, then, anything other than open defiance of God?

But perhaps we are not yet ready even asa church to sell off all

The Relevance of Wesley these white elephants (or camels) and give to the poor. If this seems too hard, perhaps, we could take only a modest first step:

We could establish a moratorium on all new church construction until the hungry are fed. We don't have to raise an extra dime or part with a single beloved building. We just won't build anymore until children stop dying for want of food and medicine.

Everything that we might have spent on pews and brass candlesticks, on bricks and glass and steel, will go for food and medicine. It might not be enough to solve the problem, but it would be a concrete sign of hope, visible evidence of our good faith. If we don't do this, can we expect that anyone will take us seriously?

Why is it that there are still some Methodist churches that have a gap, indeed a chasm, between the salaries of the highest and the lowest paid pastors? Have we so utterly sold ourselves to mammon that we must measure achievement and responsibility by the salary structure of the economy of death? Perhaps we are not yet ready to serve as Jesus commanded his disciples to serve, without a shekel in their pocket or a change of underwear (Matt.

10:9-10; Mark 6:8-9; Luke 9:3; 10:4). But surely we can agree that all those who are devoted to the gospel will receive a living wage and not a penny more. Do we imagine that anyone will believe that economic justice is possible if we do not take even this small step? The Methodist churches, descended from British Methodism, have long had the practice of uniform salaries. But wherever American Methodists have gone, we have introduced the salary system, which mirrors a corporate, rather than a Christian, standard.

We need not restrict ourselves to clergy here. Why is it that we do not insist that all who are employed by the church receive the same salary: janitors, secretaries, pastors, bishops, professors, administrators? It is often said that the greater responsibility of some justifies a greater reward. Is not the responsibility itself the reward? That some have the privilege of education, which opens the mind, of work, which gives them rewarding contact with other people and the exhilaration of relating complex ideas or institutions, ought to suggest that those who do not have these benefits should be compensated. But to suppose that because I have all the fun and glory I should also get all the 191]

Good News to the Poor money is mind boggling in its sheer perversity. How shall we give evidence of a countereconomics of the gospel, an economics of solidarity with the poor, if we are not prepared for solidarity even with our secretaries and janitors?

And what of evangelization and church growth? Can these be reformed along Wesleyan lines so that we are committed to preach good news to the poor? Can we rid ourselves here once and for all of our preferential option for the affluent? Of course, it will help if we have committed ourselves to the building moratorium; the affluent have shown an insatiable desire for temples since the days of Solomon. But can we, like

Wesley, seek out only the poor, and so disentangle ourselves from the embrace of the wealthy and the influential? The California-Nevada Annual Conference sought denominational advice on how to start new churches in 1987. It was told to appoint an advisory council to the bishop of "rich men." How remarkable that the Conference did not return the proposal with the explanation that they had really had in mind churches of Jesus Christ, not temples of Baal! Why can we not ask, as Wesley did, what will enable the poor to hear good news; what will enable them to join in community? If this is not at the center even of evangelization, how can we think that we are talking about the same gospel as the one Wesley proclaimed?

And what of our institutions? We have founded hospitals and schools and homes for the elderly. But are they really oriented to the poor? How is it that Methodists build hospitals that the poor can enter only as the exceptional charity patient, homes for the elderly that only the wealthy can afford, universities that cater to the affluent? Can we not say that at least from now on we will support institutions that are primarily, centrally, perhaps even exclusively, devoted to the welfare of the poor? Hospitals that provide the least expensive care possible for the indigent, schools that meet the needs of the poorest children and youths—this is quite different from institutions that are primarily directed toward the affluent, but as a kind of charity make space for a few of the "deserving poor."

These suggestions are intentionally very modest. They only ask what would be the first steps we could take as a people to embody an evangelical economics. Surely other proposals might

The Relevance of Wesley be advanced. But above all it is urgent that we begin to raise this sort of question, that we begin to take some steps, however faltering, toward the actualization of scriptural holiness as evangelical economics. As Methodists, we have the possibility of learning something about evangelical economics from the practice and the teaching of Wesley. But as Wesley saw, far more is at stake here than the faithfulness of the people called

Methodists. What is at stake is the truth of the gospel and the healing of the earth.

THE THEOLOGICAL TASK

Although I have argued throughout this book that Wesley provides us with an important challenge both to understand and to practice an economics worthy of the gospel, I do not suppose that this can be accomplished through a simple repetition of what Wesley said and did. Rather, his thought and practice provide an impetus for attempting to do in our time and situation what he attempted to do in his. In this section, I want to indicate some of the ways in which it seems necessary to alter or transform Wesley's project if it is to become a project for us.

One of the most important advances to be made over Wesley lies in the area of biblical interpretation. Wesley sought to be, as he said, "a man of one book." That is, it was his intention, especially following his return to Oxford in 1729, to base his thought on the Bible. But Wesley was often prevented from adequately understanding the Bible by the lack of an appropriate manner of reading it. In the early days especially,

Wesley tended to read the Bible as a heap of "quotable quotes," as a fund of learned citations, or as enigmatic counsel rather than as a connected whole. Thus Scripture early served for him simply as a pretext for the development of an idea.' Later, especially in the course of preparing his Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and under the necessity of defending his views from those of others, Wesley came to a far more contextual reading of the text. As he did so, his doctrine of the Christian

Good News to the Poor life became more adequate both to the New Testament and to experience.

Never, however, does Wesley attain to a way of reading the Bible in general or the New Testament in particular that succeeds in seeing it as a whole. In the case of his evangelical economics and social ethics generally, this means that Wesley does not really succeed either in freeing himself from the remnants of traditional exegesis (as in the case of the "rich young ruler") or in seeing the connection between a concern for the poor as the fulfillment of a dominical command and the prophetic tradition of the divine judgment upon the failure to justly deal with the weaker-and more vulnerable.

In this respect, it seems to me, modern biblical scholarship, especially the work of liberation theologians, provides a more ample framework of biblical reading and interpretation than was available to Wesley (or to the eighteenth century in general).

One of the ways in which it is important for a contemporary Christian ethic, and especially an evangelical economics, to improve upon Wesley is precisely in the grounding of this in a more ample understanding of the biblical witness to the way and will of God. In this way it will be possible, I think, to make clearer to ordinary Christians than Wesley did the place of such a commitment to the poor.

A second area in which it seems to me to be necessary to "go beyond" Wesley is the area of anthropology. Wesley is often accused of being too individualistic in his view of human sin and salvation. Of course, in this way Wesley was simply reflective of his time, insofar as this refers to an inability to think clearly about institutions and structures. The eighteenth century was the century of the individual. But this does not mean that Wesley should be held responsible for the sort of individualism that came to characterize nineteenth-century piety or that characterizes the secular pietism of the "me" generation. Wesley did not imagine that the self in isolation could be either a Christian or a human being. Nor did he imagine that the inner drama of the interior life was more important than the transformation of relational behavior. In many ways, Wesley was far less tied to an individualistic anthropology than most of us are.

The Relevance of Wesley But it is the case that Wesley focused on the personal level of relationships rather than on the institutional level. He did attempt to move beyond this. He did recognize the role of social forces, for example, in the essay "On the Present Scarcity of Provisions," and he did see the interlocking interests that implicated a whole society in the slave trade. But precisely when he was operating at this level of analysis he did not think, or at least write, theologically. The categories of sin and righteousness, of grace and mercy, deserted him when he did get to the level of institutional reflection. And he was certainly at his best when he was using this theological language to illuminate the life of the person and his or her immediate relationships.

I do not think that it is fair to fault Wesley for this. But I do think it is possible and necessary to do differently. This possibility is, in part, provided by a greater clarity about the way in which biblical language and categories themselves exceed the domain of the individual and personal in order to direct themselves to the social, and even political (indeed cosmic), levels of meaning.

At the same time, it has become increasingly clear as we struggle with forces like racism, poverty, and nationalism that it is not adequate to speak of these things as simply the accumulation of personal sins. We are learning that the social reality is more than the sum of individual realities. Again, it seems to me that the attempt of liberation theologians to deal with the social character of our existence, the social character of sin and of salvation, is of great help here. In doing this, they in fact do what Wesley also did: use the best insights of the available human sciences to clarify the character of our existence."

There are two contributions that Wesley may make to this attempt to take more seriously the social and institutional dimensions of our life. In the first place, Wesley's emphasis on the sinfulness of the human condition, combined with his strong confidence in the efficacy of grace in overcoming that condition, may be of help. It helps to clarify how we can really hope for a new humanity without falling into self-delusion. Capitalists tend to dismiss socialists as mere dreamers. Socialists tend to regard the defense of capitalism as a justification of sin. Surely a

Good News to the Poor Wesleyan view would enable us to acknowledge the depth of human captivity to avarice and arrogance without this acknowledgment's becoming a way of excusing the inexcusable.

Similarly, it should be possible for a Wesleyan view to affirm the vision of Christian perfection and the disciplines of approximating to this end without falling into fanaticism or idle dreaming.

The resources of the Wesleyan tradition—worked out, to be sure, on the plane of the personal—may nevertheless be helpful in clarifying the way in which it is possible to speak of social transformation. We should note that Wesley certainly intended this. He certainly supposed that the gospel would transform not only individuals but also the nation. And he certainly came to see the point of Methodism as just this transformation of social reality.° He lacked the categories and language to make this case compellingly to his own followers. Perhaps we may be more fortunate.

The other contribution of Wesley to the project of a liberation theology lies precisely in the area of his emphasis on personal transformation. There are, to be sure, ways of speaking about faith that preclude any real or social transformation. Thus some kinds of contemporary evangelicalism do preach a faith that does not issue in any real transformation, especially not in our participation in economics. Certainly Wesley has nothing in common with this. Thus he provides a way of speaking about personal transformation that is not inimical to social transformation.

This is important because the project of liberation cannot be sustained without the transformation of persons. If arrogance and avarice are not rooted out of our lives, then so-called structural changes become merely changes in the personnel and ideology of those who occupy the same old place in the socioeconomic pyramid. This is recognized, I think, by a number of liberation theologians, perhaps with special clarity by Gustavo Gutierrez.' We cannot hope to have more just societies without having persons who are prepared to forgo vengeance, personal security, gain or privilege, and so on. Wesley's version of Methodism may offer a model for the development of such personal transformation.

The Relevance of Wesley It also seems to me thatit is necessary to move beyond Wesley in the readiness to see a fundamental conflict between the gospel and the world.

Certainly, Wesley recognized that powerful forces are at work in the human heart, struggling against the birth and growth of faith. He also rightly recognized that these forces are not confined to the heart but can be expected to oppose true Christianity wherever it presents itself.

He thought of persecution as the normal condition of Christian existence, and in this certainly had the New Testament on his side. He also knew that the new life he proclaimed meant coming into conflict with the ways of the world, and he roundly attacked conformity with worldly standards, not least of all in economics. Nor did he yield to the temptation to withdraw from the world despite the attraction of the secluded life at Oxford.

The business of the Christian was to be in the world while rejecting worldliness. These are very important insights.

But Wesley did not succeed in making clear to his followers the true danger of worldly prudence, especially in economics and politics. As we have seen, he was far more insistent on this in the economic sphere than in the political. But even there his compromises with the language of prudence were enough to permit his followers to ignore the core of his ethic. But this problem really comes to the fore in his political ethic. Wesley was not able to see that political structures could themselves be expressions of injustice, of avarice, of sin. To be sure, he sensed this in biblical language and could employ it at times in the supposition that national calamities could be seen as punishment not simply for individual but also for national sin.

Still, in order to go beyond Wesley here, it will be necessary to see more clearly the ways in which political structures are or may be demonic, idolatrous, enslaving. This again is one of the important contributions of liberation theology. These contributions do not mean a rejection of Wesley; indeed, one could argue that they do more consistently what Wesley himself recognized must be done. They make clear how it is that persecution, for example, really is ingredient to Christian existence. They suggest how it is that wealth and power are, as Wesley intuited, really hostile to Christian faith.

These are some of the elements that I believe are important if

Good News to the Poor we are to seek to develop an evangelical economics (and politics) that builds upon Wesley's best insights without falling into the snares that threatened even in his day to render the Methodist project unintelligible or a "dead sect." Insofar as we are prepared to develop for our own day an economics worthy of the gospel, we may yet make good Wesley's claim that never before since the days of the apostles has it been so true as it is for us that the poor hear "good news."

APPENDIX

WESLEY ON POLITICS

ny attempt to deal constructively with Wesley's social ethic must face the conflict between Wesley's concern for the poor and oppressed on the one hand, and his apparently reactionary politics on the other. Wesley's political views threaten to make any attempt to grapple with his more radical socioeconomic views seem arbitrary.

Wesley's political views seem to make him a most unlikely advocate of anything remotely like a radical social ethic. He was devoted to the king, wrote vigorously in favor of the institution of the constitutional monarchy, opposed democracy, attacked the American Revolution—even appears to have offered to raise an army in support of the king when the revolution threatened to spread to England—and maintained that his preachers should deal with politics only to defend the king against slander. These are not the sort of views that are likely to commend Wesley to the attention of even the most reactionary

Tory (who presumably accepts democracy at least as a fact of life), let alone more mainstream, liberal, or radical points of view. When it comes to working assumptions about political life,

Wesley is not merely of a different era, he seems to be from a different planet.

Since appeal to Wesley's political views is sometimes made by those who desire to deflect attention from some of the more radical elements of Wesley's social ethic,' it is important to attend to these views in order to make possible a more clear-

Good News to the Poor sighted reading of Wesley's socioeconomic ethic. In what follows

I will attempt to present Wesley's political views in the context of the Anglican political theology to which he held himself accountable and in relation to the specific issues that led him to assert his own loyalty to the king. This will then open the way toa consideration of some of the more theoretical aspects of Wesley's political ethic, especially as they bear upon the question of democracy versus monarchy. This discussion will show that for Wesley the question of human rights is the decisive norm for the development of a political ethic. It is this principle, rather than its specific application in terms of constitutional monarchy, that is Wesley's lasting contribution to a Christian political ethic.

WESLEY AND ANGLICAN POLITICAL THEOLOGY

An attempt to understand Wesley's political views and their connection to the Methodist project must take into account the political theology that was the official teaching of the Church of England. Wesley took very seriously his position as priest of the Anglican Church. Among the rules of the first Methodists at Oxford was a strict adherence to the doctrine and the rubrics of the church. This included the strict observation of all fast days and regular (at least weekly) participation in the Eucharist.

When he was a priest in Georgia, he was regarded as far too strict in his rigorous application of the rubrics of the church with respect both to baptism and to admission to communion.

This rigorous adherence to Anglican doctrine and polity was to a certain extent weakened by the necessity (as Wesley saw it) of preaching in the fields and, later, of designating lay preachers to care for the rapidly growing societies. This departure from settled polity brought with it the suspicion, indeed the frequent charge, that Wesley's preaching and teaching were contrary to the doctrine of the Church of England as well. Wesley vehemently denied this. Indeed, it became his practice to defend Methodist doctrine as the true teaching of the Church of England, especially as that doctrine was formulated in the Book of Common Prayer, the Articles of Religion, and the Homilies.

Wesley on Politics In order to see the normative place the Homilies played in Wesley's theology, it is only necessary to look at the way in which he buttresses key arguments by appeal to them. The early sermons, which lay out the basic doctrines of Methodism, contain frequent references to the Articles of Religion, the Liturgy (especially that for ordination), and the Homilies. So, for example, the sermons "The Almost Christian," "Justification by Faith," and "The Marks of the New Birth" all demonstrate the conformity of Wesley's teaching to that of the Homilies.

The reference to the authority of the Homilies is central to Wesley's defense of Methodism in the Appeals. Thus in An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion Wesley defines the church in accordance with Article XIX and then defines faith in terms of the Homilies

(VIII:31)

in order to show that Methodism in fact strengthens the church through the true proclamation of faith. This case is then clinched in A Farther

Appeal by extended quotations from the "liturgy, Articles or Homilies"

(VIII:51). He then proceeds to show that his proclamation of justification by faith conforms to this norm

(VIII:51-55). He makes extensive use of quotations from the same sources to justify his preaching of an assurance of pardon

(VIII:73-75), and for his teaching on the testimony of the Holy Spirit (VII:103-5). He concludes this defense of Methodism by saying that if he and the Methodists are enthusiasts for teaching these doctrines then so were Archbishop Cranmer, Bishop Ridley, Bishop Latimer, Bishop

Hooper; and all the venerable compilers of our Liturgy and Homilies; all the members of both the Houses of Convocation, by whom they were revised and approved; yea, King Edward, and all his Lords and Commons together, by whose authority they were established. (VIII:110) Wesley's apology for Methodism is, then, a bravura performance that shows that Wesley, rather than his episcopal critics, is the true defender and exponent of orthodox Anglicanism. By this means the "legitimacy" of Methodism was tied to the official teaching of the Church of England. As a national church whose

Good News to the Poor head was then and is now the English monarch, the Church of England has a certain obligation to the sovereign, whose responsibilities include the selection and appointment of bishops charged with the oversight of the normal functioning of the church. In short, commitment to the Church of England entails a certain kind of political theology.

This is especially clear in the very Homilies to which Wesley appealed in defense of the legitimacy of Methodism. The Book of Homilies is composed of two sets of addresses written to be used by the priests in explaining the nature of true doctrine. The first set was published at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI and sets out the basic doctrine of the Church of England. The second set was written at the direction of Elizabeth I and has the task of extending the rather scanty instruction of the first set.

These officially approved sermons, then, occupy an important place in the development of the doctrine of the Anglican

Church. Moreover, they may have been the model for Wesley's much longer series of doctrinal essay-sermons, which were made to be the basis of official Methodist doctrine. These

Homilies treat not only of doctrinal themes like grace and faith, and of such practical themes as almsgiving, excess of apparel, and drunkenness, but they also deal prominently with the royalist political theology appropriate to a State church. Thus one of the longest of the Edwardian Homilies is entitled "An Exhortation Concerning Good Order, and Obedience to Rulers and Magistrates." And by far the longest of the Elizabethan sermons (actually six homilies in one) is entitled "An Homilie

Against Disobedience and Wilfull Rebellion."?

Wesley, as a priest of this church, felt himself obligated to uphold its doctrine. And his apologetic stratagem of insisting on the legitimacy of Methodist teaching by reference to these

Homilies means that the political theology of the Homilies plays a privileged role in the articulation of his own political views.

In order to see how this material presents Wesley with a ready-made political theology, let us first look briefly at the earlier Homily, produced under Henry VIII. The sermon begins with the notion of the ordaining will of God, which is evident in creation. This is then applied to the stratification of society on the basis of a somewhat Lutheran view of "office."

Wesley on Politics Every degree of people in their vocation, calling and office, hath appointed to them their duty and order: some are in high degree, some in low, some Kings and Princes, some inferiors and subjects.

(Certaine Sermons or Homilies, p. 69) This notion of the stratification of the social order plays a small role in Wesley's thought generally. It would be unthinkable for Wesley that abject poverty (what we today call "marginalization") could be considered a specific status ordained by God. But he could use this view to encourage people not to seek to overturn the essential distinctions between groups or classes.

One indication of the difference between a right-wing interpretation of this political theology and that of Wesley is evident in one of the examples adduced in the sermon itself of the mischief that would follow if the established orders were overturned. In addition to the reign of lawlessness and violence,

"all things shall be common." So, far from being a sign of chaos, this would be for Wesley a sign of scriptural holiness.

But the point of this first part of the Homily is that religion compels us to be obedient to kings.

[The Bible commands us] all obediently to bee subject, first and chiefely to the Kings [Majesty], supreme governour over all, and the next to his honourable counsell, and to all other noble men,

Magistrates, and officers, which by GOD'S goodnesse, be placed and ordered.

. That the high power and authoritie of kinges, with their making of lawes, judgements and offices, are the ordinances not of man, but of GOD.

. That this good order is appointed by GOD'S wisdome, favour, and love, especially for them that love GOD... .That a Kinges power, authoritie, and strength, is a great benefite of GOD, given of his great mercie, to the comfort of our great miserie. (p. 70)

It is here, then, that we encounter the explicit basis of a pious monarchism.

The second part of the Homily (actually the second mini-sermon in a series of three with the same subject and title) emphasizes that the duty to obey the king is an absolute one, not

Good News to the Poor dependent on the goodness of the king's rule. The thesis is "that all Subjects are bound to obey them as God's ministers, yea, although they be evill, not onely for feare, but also for conscience sake" (p. 72). From this it follows:

It is an intolerable ignorance, madnesse, and wickednesse for subjects to make any murmuring, rebellion, resistance, or withstanding, commotion, or insurrection against their most deare and most dread Soveraigne Lord and King, ordeined and appointed of GOD'S goodnes for their commodity, peace, and quietnesse. (p. 74) But this duty is not absolute, for "we may not obey Kings,

Magistrates, or any other, (though they bee our owne fathers) if they would command us to doe any thing contrary to GOD'S commandments. In such a case wee ought to say with the Apostle, [We] must rather obey GOD [than] man."

Even in this case, however, there is no justification for rebellion, but only for passive disobedience.

The third mini-sermon in this Homily emphasizes the view that kingly authority does not derive from, nor may it be superseded by, ecclesial authority, but comes directly from God.

This serves as the legitimation of the separation of the Church of England from Rome.

The Homily as a whole presents a rather beneficent view of the institution of monarchy and of the place of that institution in the scheme of God's ordering of the world. To be sure, a modern reader will find some of its statements rather self-serving in the light of the royal authority that "authorizes" the teaching. But there is not to be found here the more blatant apologetics for absolutism that come to prevail in much of Continental political theology, especially during the time of Wesley.

Even the much longer Elizabethan Homily does not warrant absolutism, though it is almost entirely directed to the theme of the second part of the first Homily—the impiety of rebellion— and does make a more detailed and forceful case for obeying the prince than the Homilies in general make for, say, the importance of reformed doctrine. Some idea of the rather more

Wesley on Politics forceful language of the Elizabethan Homily may be conveyed by the following quotations.

It is evident, that obedience is the principall vertue of all vertues, and indeed the very root of all vertues, and the cause of all

Feheive, 24% ... Thus became rebellion, as you see, both the first and the greatest, and the very root of all other sinnes, and the first and principall cause, both of all worldly and bodily miseries, diseases, sickenesses, and deathes, and which is infinitely worse [than] these, as is said, the very cause of death and damnation eternall also. ..

For he that nameth rebellion, nameth not a singular or one onely sinne, as is theft, robbery, murder, and such like, but he nameth the whole puddle and sinke of all sinnes against GOD and man, against his Prince, his country, his countrymen, his parents, his children, his kinsfolkes, his friends, and against all men universally, all sinnes I say against GOD and all men heaped together nameth he, that nameth rebellion.

. Heaven is the place of good obedient subjectes, and hell the prison and dungeon of rebels against GOD and their Prince.

(Certaine Sermons or Homilies, pp. 275-76, 292, 296) This Homily makes loyalty to the prince the sum of all virtues and disloyalty the sum of all evil. The Crown, then, is given ultimate sanction, and monarchism is made the absolute criterion of temporal and ultimate salvation.

The remarkable thing about the much longer and more monarchist Elizabethan Homily for our purposes is the insignificant role it plays in Wesley's own thought. He seems to have been content, as Elizabeth I obviously was not, with the more temperate royal theology of the first Homily. Even when

Wesley deals directly with the question of the rebellion of the American colonies, he stays away from the more extreme

Elizabethan language and favors the more benign and balanced view of the earlier Homily. This may also be related to Wesley's evident disapproval of Elizabeth I and his championing, in a purely scholarly way, of course, the revisionist view that Mary

Queen of Scots had been unfairly and even outrageously mistreated by Elizabeth and by subsequent royalist historiographers (see, for example, 111:317-18; 111:383; [V:326).

It was to this royal theology, or at least some version of it, that

Good News to the Poor Wesley felt himself bound as a priest of the Church of England.

To oppose this monarchism on any other ground than the originally sanctioned loophole (for conscience's sake to obey

God rather than humans) would mean that Wesley would, in his rather strict view, have perjured himself. We shall see that Wesley was not persuaded by the American rebels that this loophole applied to their case. Still, when one considers the prominent place that this royalist theology plays in the Homilies, it is remarkable how little use Wesley makes of it. It is to a consideration of the occasions of that use and its manner that we next turn.

THE CHARGE OF SEDITION

Itis remarkable that Wesley's monarchism has so little place in his sermons. Certainly it is not the case that this doctrine has anywhere near the function in Wesley's thought that it does in the Homilies of his church. For Wesley to advert to this royalist political theology, some particular crisis or catalyst appears to be necessary. This is true in spite of the fact that this political theology is not just "politics" in the modern secular sense, but is the official doctrine of the church of which Wesley was a priest.

The first crisis that leads Wesley to invoke Anglican political theology coincides with the rise of Methodism as a popular movement. Wesley's habit of preaching in public squares, marketplaces and fields meant that he was able to draw great crowds of the poor, most of whom had never voluntarily entered a church (except, perhaps, for baptisms, weddings, or funerals). These crowds generally heard him gladly, if only for the novelty of the occasion. But as they were persuaded by his message and became not only hearers, but also followers, they left off former habits of drunkenness and gambling, to the great displeasure of those who gained their living from the vices of the poor.

Clergy, too, were outraged that the Methodists reached far many more members of the parish than attended church. The "spiritual populism" of Wesley's offer of free salvation to all by

Wesley on Politics grace through faith offended more aristocratic sensibilities, while it attracted growing numbers of the poor and marginalized of England. Add to this the not uncommon view of the comfortable and powerful that any stirring of the masses could only bode ill, and we begin to get an idea of the vested interests who were alarmed by the Methodist phenomenon.

The response of many, not unnaturally, was to launch a vigorous campaign of persecution against the Methodists. The decade of the 1740s, especially, witnessed a violent campaign against the Methodists. Frequently mobilized and led by the wealthy, the middle class, and the conventionally pious, mobs would attack Methodist meetings, stone the preachers, and destroy the homes and threaten the lives of ordinary Methodists. A particularly full description of one such incident is found in Wesley's Modern Christianity Exemplified at Wednesbury

(XIII:169-93), which consists of a series of depositions taken by Wesley of the victims of this persecution. In addition, there appears to have been something of a campaign to round up

Methodist preachers by "press-gangs" to be put aboard naval vessels as virtual slaves (see Journal, July 21, 1743, 1:212; and Journal, July 3, 1745, 1:503).

As is not uncommon in the world even today, the victims of that orchestrated mob-violence were held responsible for having caused it! After recounting his own experience at Wednesbury, Wesley notes that the Methodists have now been charged with sedition and are to be hounded out of the country.

He laments: "The Christian country, where His Majesty's innocent and loyal subjects have been so treated for eight months; and are now, by their wanton persecutors, publicly branded for rioters and incendiaries!" (Journal, Feb. 6, 1744,

1:454; see also Oct. 20, 1743, 1:436-41) To add further insult to injury, Wesley himself was accused of leading an insurrection

(Journal, Feb. 6, 1744, 1:453), of organizing conventicles of sedition (Journal, June 4, 1739, 1:199), of being in league with the pope, and of conspiring with England's enemies. Thus he reports the charge that "Mr. Wesley had large remittances from Spain, in order to make a party among the poor; and that as soon as the Spaniards landed, he was to join them with twenty thousand men" (Journal, June 26, 1741, 1:322-23). This array of

Good News to the Poor charges, if translated into contemporary idiom, will not seem unfamiliar to those Christians whose principal work it is to serve the poor.

How should one respond to this crisis, which threatened to destroy the Methodist movement before it had been fairly launched? Certainly, Wesley was not one to back off in the face of a threat of this magnitude. Tiny, even dainty, he may have appeared, but his courage was legendary. Time and again he would face down the mob, seek out its leader, and confront him face to face. That was one level of response.

Another was to appropriate the biblical themes of the conflict between the kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of God, of the inevitability of persecution, and of the requirement of unflinching witness, even to the point of martyrdom. Time and again he reminds himself and his reader that persecution must ever be the lot of those who are committed to true Christianity.

Perhaps his most extended treatment of this theme is found in his sermon on Matthew 5:8-12 ("Sermon on the Mount,

Discourse III," V:286-90). But this is by no means an isolated theme in Wesley's preaching. He returns to it again and again.

Yet, however powerful this theme is in his own reflection and preaching, Wesley did not, indeed could not, bring himself to draw from it the consequences for an evangelical political theology that would have placed him in flat contradiction to the political theology of his beloved Anglican Church.

Instead, Wesley appealed for justice. And it is in connection with this appeal for justice that Wesley invokes the Anglican political theology. He insists that his doctrines "do not tend to weaken either the natural or civil relations among men; or to lead inferiors to a disesteem of their superiors, even where those superiors are neither good nor sober men" (A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, VIII:65). Nor are the Methodists seditious: "We do nothing in defiance of government: We reverence Magistrates, as the Ministers of God"

(Ibid., VIII:114). In these contexts, indeed, Wesley is driven to equate the Methodist project with support for the king. Thus he writes:

"If he does not love the King, he cannot love God" ("A Word to a Freeholder," XI:197). And he describes the results of the Methodist revival as follows: "Thousands of sinners in every

Wesley on Politics country [have] been brought to 'fear God and honour the King' " (A Farther Appeal, VIII:238). Wesley writes in his Journal

All I can do for his Majesty, whom I honour and love,—I think not less than I did my own father,—is this, I cry unto God, day by day, in public and in private, to put all his enemies to confusion: And I exhort all that hear me to do the same; and, in their several stations, to exert themselves as loyal subjects; who, so long as they fear God, cannot but honour the King (Journal, Sept. 21, 1745,

1:519) Taken in isolation, these and similar texts would persuade the unwary reader that Anglican political theology was a central and regular theme of Wesley's preaching and teaching. Such a view would be mistaken. This political theology only appears in responses to charges made against the Methodists. Wesley deploys it here for purely defensive purposes. This is not to say that Wesley was insincere. He accepted, as a matter of course, the authority of the Book of Common Prayer, the Articles of Religion, and the Homilies. Indeed, he felt obliged to do so asa priest of the church, and he regarded those priests who did not as being guilty of perjury—a crime to which he was particularly sensitive and against which he inveighed so strongly in a famous sermon for Oxford ("True Christianity Defended," VII:45262; see also "Scriptural Christianity," V:51). Wesley accepted the tenets of this political theology, but he never made them central themes.

As it happened, events turned out to justify this theology.

Despite pressure from powerful and influential figures in church and politics, the king let it be known, as Wesley would phrase it, that there was a law even for Methodists. Much later,

Wesley gave this account:

God stirred up the heart of our late gracious Sovereign [George II] to give such orders to his Magistrates as, being put in execution, effectually quelled the madness of the people. It was about the same time that a great man applied personally to His Majesty, begging that he would please to "take a course to stop these run-about Preachers." His Majesty, looking sternly upon him, answered without ceremony, like a King, "I tell you, while I sit on

Good News to the Poor the throne, no man shall be persecuted for conscience' sake. ("On God's Vineyard," VII:210) The protection of the king meant that Methodists were granted equal protection under the laws. This was enough for Wesley.

When ordered to stop preaching in Shaftsbury, Wesley replied:

"While King George gives me leave to preach, I shall not ask the leave of the Mayor of Shaftesbury" (Journal, Sept. 3, 1750,

II:207). The irony that the king's position was based not on his role as head of the Church of England but on his Deistic principles was not entirely lost on Wesley. But that is another story."

In any event, the king had acted in such a way as to fully justify Anglican political theology. The necessity of developing a counter political theology on the basis of the theme of persecution had passed. To be sure, these themes continue to play an important part in Wesley's theology; they are, after all, relatively prominent in the New Testament. But Wesley was able to account for the suspension of the persecution on the basis of the extraordinary providence of God in restraining the hand of Satan (see again his sermon on Matt. 5:8-12, V:290).

Wesley was naturally grateful to the king for this intervention.

He had received justice. And this strengthened both his personal loyalty to the sovereign and his confidence in the institution of the constitutional monarchy, established by the Glorious Revolution of the previous century. While this by no means resulted in an uncritical attitude toward government policy (see chap. 4), it did mean that Wesley concerned himself with the question of making the system work. Thus he attacked the smuggling that was rife in Cornwall as robbery of the king

("A Word to a Smuggler," XI:174-78), inveighed against corruption and fraud in elections ("A Word to a Freeholder,"

XI:196-97), and urged his preachers to counter slander against the king ("How Far Is It the Duty of a Christian Minister to Preach Politics?" X1:154-55). Such was the result of the first crisis. Wesley was publicly committed to a moderate constitutional monarchism and thus to the political theology of the early

Homilies.

Wesley on Politics

AGAINST THE REBELLION IN AMERICA

Wesley, ever the pragmatic empiricist, had learned from experience that the constitutional monarchy of George II and George III justified by its policies the moderate royalism of the early Homilies. In spite of this, when unrest was reported in Britain's North American colonies, Wesley was prepared to take seriously the grievances of the colonists. Indeed, he makes clear that he initially believed them to be in the right over against the king's ministers. Thus writing in 1768 in his "Free Thoughts on the Present State of Public Affairs," he avers: "I do not defend the measures which have been taken with regard to America: I doubt whether any man can defend them, either on the foot of law, equity, or prudence" (XI:24).

But when protest turned to outright rebellion, Wesley had second thoughts. Now what was at stake was not the reform of the system but the rejection of the system—the repudiation of the very principle of monarchy and thus the heart of Anglican political theology. Nor was this threat limited to the colonies.

They were Englishmen after all. And there was sympathy for the cause of these seditious republicans in England itself, where the economy had been battered by a severe depression (which had occasioned Wesley's "Thoughts Upon the Present Scarcity of Provisions" in 1772).* Moreover, the "German" king had no automatic base of nationalistic fervor from which to draw as a defense of the throne.

Now this crisis could have been regarded as an entirely secular matter in which an evangelist need not interest himself. But Wesley threw himself into the political debate with characteristic zeal and thoroughness. For the sake of clarity, we may distinguish three levels of Wesley's response: (1) a personal defense of the king, whose father had saved the Methodists from persecution; (2) a consideration of the justice of the claims of the colonists; and (3) a theoretical discussion of the relative merits of constitutional monarchy versus republican democracy. A consideration of each of these levels is necessary if we are to see that Wesley's response to the American Revolution was by no means the knee-jerk reaction of an ideological monarchist but a careful and measured reflection.

Good News to the Poor Defense of the King Wesley first comes to the defense of the king whom he believed to be unfairly and personally attacked. Thus Wesley writes of the monarch's being pilloried in the colonial press: "His whole conduct, both in public and private, ever since he began his reign, the uniform tenor of his behaviour, the general course both of his words and actions, has been worthy of an Englishman, worthy of a Christian, and worthy of a King" ("Free Thoughts on Public

Affairs," X1:20). In "A Word to a Smuggler" (1766), Wesley writes: "King George is the father of all his subjects; and not only so, but he is a good father. He shows his love to them on all occasions; and is continually doing all that is in his power to make his subjects happy" (XI:174). Wesley even felt obliged to defend the king against those who derided his Germanic extraction:

I was desired to go and hear the King deliver his speech in the House of Lords.

But how agreeably was I surprised! He pronounced every word with exact propriety.

I much doubt whether there be any other King in Europe, that is so just and natural a speaker. (Journal, Jan. 24, 1786, 1V:325)

High praise indeed from one of the century's most noted public speakers!

Moreover, Wesley was in a position to counter alarmist views of the state of the nation (see "A Serious Address to the People of England, with Regard to the State of the Nation," 1778,

XI:140-49; and "A Compassionate Address to the Inhabitants of Ireland," 1778, XI:149-54). His views on this matter were credible because of his earlier critical analysis of these conditions in his reflections "On the Present Scarcity of Provisions" (XI:53-59).

Perhaps the most bizarre episode in all this is Wesley's admission of having gone much further than mere political advocacy in defense of the king. By far the most astonishing testimony to the extent of Wesley's monarchism is found in a letter of 1782 in which he writes:

Two or three years ago, when the kingdom was in imminent danger, I made an offer to the Government of raising some men.

The Secretary of War (by the King's order) wrote me word, that "it

Wesley on Politics was not necessary; but if it ever should be necessary, His Majesty would let me know." (Letter to Joseph Benson, Aug. 3, 1782,

XII:430) Wesley himself seems to have realized that this may have been going too far, as he adds: "I never renewed the offer, and never intended it."

Debunking the Rebels Those who take both the success and the justice of the rebels' cause for granted can only find Wesley's opposition to the rebel cause inexcusably reactionary. This is all the more true in the United States itself, where the cause of the revolution has come to be synonymous with "liberty and justice for all." How is it possible that Wesley—with his clear commitment to the cause of the poor and downtrodden as well as a commitment to justice, which led him to oppose both the slave trade and colonial policy in India—could have closed his eyes to the nobility of the revolution? The answer, of course, is that Wesley had a very different view of the rebels.

In the first place, he was suspicious of them precisely because of his opposition to slavery. When the rebel propagandists claimed that they had been deprived of liberty, that they were resisting tyranny, Wesley replied with massive sarcasm: "You and I, and the English in general, go where we will, and enjoy the fruit of our labours: This is liberty. The Negro does not:

This is slavery" ("A Calm Address to Our American Colonies,"

XI:81). In short, the protestation that the rebels were fighting for the cause of liberty was pure humbug. Their interest was not in the cause of human liberty but in their own "independency."

And Wesley, the indefatigable champion of the poor, had even more cause for regarding the rebels' cause with antipathy, for these rebels were not like the poor of Sligo, who had taken matters into their own hands to protest their exploitation at the hands of the wealthy (Journal, May 27, 1758, 11:446), nor were they like the poor of Belfast, who had been driven to outright insurrection by similar exploitation (Journal, June 15, 1773,

[11:499). With these causes Wesley had expressed sympathy (as

Good News to the Poor he had with run-away slaves; see chap. 4).*° But the rebels in America seemed to Wesley to be cut of quite a different cloth.

Wesley gives some idea of who he takes these rebels to be in his sermon "Some Account of the Late Work of God in North-America," written in 1778. After recounting the spread of the gospel, he writes:

But now it was that a bar appeared in the way, a grand hinderance to the progress of religion. The immense trade of America, greater in proportion than even that of the mother-country, brought in an immense flow of wealth, which was also continually increasing.

Hence both merchants and tradesmen of various kinds accumulated money without end, and rose from indigence to opulent fortunes, quicker than any could do in Europe. Riches poured in upon them as a flood, and treasures were heaped up as the sand of the sea. (VII:412) He goes on to link this wealth to the increase of pride, sloth, and luxury and thus to the growth of a spirit of independence and a corresponding loss of concern for religion.

Now, isit so mysterious that Wesley would find little sympathy in his heart for the rebellion of slaveholders and merchant princes and Deists? These were the very sort of people whose injustice to the poor he so regularly denounced in England. Nor is it possible to dismiss Wesley's suspicions of the motives of these rebels as mere royalist propaganda. The great American historian Charles A. Beard discovered much the same when he investigated the authors of the Constitution a century and a half later.° But there is more reason for Wesley to be suspicious of the motives of the rebels. They claimed that they were unjustly treated, since they had no representation in Parliament. One of their slogans had been "no taxation without representation."

Wesley was not impressed: "Indeed you had no vote for members of Parliament; neither have I, because I have no freehold in England" ("A Calm Address to Our American

Colonies," XI:89). At that time the vote was restricted only to those who held real estate. Wesley, of course, had none and wanted none. Of course, the rebels might reply, "But we are men of property and yet we have no vote." But then again we are

Wesley on Politics back to the point above. These "freedom fighters" were not interested in human rights generally but in the rights of the propertied classes. Wesley was unmoved.

The rebels urged their cause by appealing for the rights of the people to elect their own governors. Two hundred years later it seems a reasonable request. But Wesley saw it differently, for in truth this rhetoric about democracy was simply moral imposture. The colonists argued that what was at stake was the inalienable right of all those created by God to liberty, to participation in government, and so on. But in truth these were mere empty words. They claimed that "a right of choosing his governors belongs to every partaker of human nature." But if this be so, Wesley notes, then consequences will follow, which the rebels will be most decidedly not prepared to draw:

If this be so, then it belongs to every individual of the human species; consequently, not to freeholders alone, but to all men; not to men only, but to women also; nor only to adult men and women, to those who have lived one-and-twenty years, but to those who have lived eighteen or twenty, as well as those who have lived threescore. ("Thoughts Concerning the Origin of Power," XI:53)

Wesley makes the same point in another essay: "But who are the whole body of the people [who have this right]? .

. Every free agent. ..

. [But] are not women free agents? Yea, and poor as wellas rich men" ("A Calm Address to Our American Colonies,"

X1:81). All this talk of inalienable rights, then, is but the cover for insisting on the exclusive rights of the class of merchant princes and slaveholders!

It is difficult even two hundred years later to dismiss Wesley's arguments. After all, it took a century for the United States even to recognize the principle of extending the franchise to blacks

(1870), and one hundred and fifty years before these rights were extended to women (1920), and two hundred years before real progress even began to be made in actually extending these rights to the descendents of slaves. Even today the idea of equal rights is controversial. And those who oppose things like the Voting Rights Act or the Equal Rights Amendment or the application of Constitutional rights to new cases of inequity are

Good News to the Poor the ones who continue to insist that the most important rights are the rights of property. Even today Wesley's cynicism about the motives of those who talk grandly about rights as a cover for greed and arrogance has an unfortunate ring of truth.

Political Philosophy Despite Wesley's loyalty to the king and his deep suspicion of the motives of the rebels, he was not inclined to let the case rest with these contingent issues. What if the king had been a tyrant?

What if the rebels had been saints? Wesley's inquiring intellect could not let things go with an argument about cases; he wanted to get to principles as well. The principle issue is whether

"democracy" is better than monarchy.

One of Wesley's arguments is based on the royal theology of the Anglican Church ("Thoughts Concerning the Origin of Power," XI:46-54). It is that the source of sovereignty is God, rather than the people. Thus the monarch's position is the one that reflects Paul's well-known argument in Romans 13 that our governors are servants of God. The notion that the people are sovereign utterly destroys the sense of Paul's argument. It is interesting in this regard that the flip side of Wesley's argument is that where sovereignty does reside in the people, then

Romans 13 is no longer applicable, and the whole of Anglican political theology falls to the ground. This means that the only group who can appeal to Wesley's conservative argument that we ought to be obedient to our governors are those who deny that sovereignty flows from the people—that is, they deny the foundation of democracy. But where governments derive their legitimacy from the people, whether actually or rhetorically, then no appeal to this sort of political theology is possible. It is astonishing that even in that majority of nations where governmental legitimacy derives from the people, at least in theory, people continue to cite some version of a "divine right of kings" argument to forestall civil disobedience!

But Wesley seems to know that this is not a very good argument in any case. It begs the question. It proves the superiority of monarchy by reciting the theoretical basis of monarchy. But it is just this theoretical basis that must be

Wesley on Politics justified. It may also be that Wesley was uncomfortable with this argument since it proved rather more than he wanted. It proved not only the superiority of the British monarchy but, even more, the absolutist claims of some European monarchies as well. But why should that bother Wesley? Because his main concern was not with monarchy at all but with a principle that today would be called human rights.

There was considerable common ground between Wesley and his opponents in this dispute. Both sides, at least in principle, agreed that the test for government was the principle of human rights. Which form of government really did best protect these universal rights? Wesley was persuaded that democracy was bad for human rights: "No governments under heaven are so despotic as the republican; no subjects are governed in so arbitrary a manner as those of acommonwealth"

("A Calm Address to Our American Colonies," X1:87). And when Wesley turns to rate the various options for government he finds: "There is most liberty of all, civil and religious, under a limited monarchy; there is usually less under an aristocracy, and least of all under a democracy" ("Some Observations on Liberty," X1:105). In all of this Wesley is simply working within mainstream political theory. Indeed, one of the severest problems faced by the framers of the Constitution was how to prevent democracy from becoming a dictatorship of the mob. It is a question as old as Plato and the beginnings of political theory.

As we know, Wesley was also an empiricist. It is not surprising, then, that one of his most telling arguments is based on experience. What is the actual state of civil and religious liberty in the rebellious colonies as opposed to monarchical England?

In the colonies, he maintains:

There is not the very shadow of liberty left in the confederate provinces[.] There is no liberty of the press.

A man may more safely print against the Church in Italy or Spain, than publish a tittle against the Congress in New-England or Pennsylvania. There is no religious liberty. What Minister is permitted to follow his own conscience in the execution of his office? to put man in mind to be

"subject to principalities and powers?" to "fear God and honour

Good News to the Poor the King?" Who is suffered (whatever his conscience may dictate) to "pray for the King, and all that are in authority?" There is no civil liberty. No man hath any security, either for his goods, or for his person; but is daily liable to have his goods spoiled or taken away, without either law or form of law, and to suffer the most cruel outrage as to his person, such as many would account worse than death. ("A Calm Address to the Inhabitants of England,"

XI:136) The contrast to the situation in England is stark.

English liberty commenced at the Revolution [of 1688]. And how entire is it at this day! Every man says what he will, writes what he will, prints what he will. Every man worships God, if he worships him atall, as he is persuaded in his own mind. Every man enjoys his own property; nor can the King himself take a shilling of it, but according to law. Every man enjoys the freedom of his person, unless the law of the land authorize his confinement. Above all, every man's life is secured, as well from the King, as from his fellow-subjects. So that it is impossible to conceive a fuller liberty than we enjoy, both as to religion, life, body, and goods. (Ibid.,

X1:137) For Wesley, the empirical argument concerning the actual state of human rights was devastating to the pretensions of the rebels.'

It is not necessary to rehearse here all of Wesley's arguments in justification of the view that limited monarchy, rather than democracy, is the best guarantor of human rights, of "religious and civil liberty." What is critical for our purposes is that Wesley makes this argument at all. Clearly for him the test of any government is how it protects these liberties, these rights. It is here, rather than in his use of Anglican political theology (which in any case applies, in Wesley's view, only to monarchical governments), that we find the relevance of Wesley's political thought for the altered circumstances of our era.

Now it must be clear that Wesley does not simply talk about the criterion of liberty as a concession to his opponents. While it is true that Wesley only invokes Anglican political theology in times of crisis (as in the persecution of the Methodists or the defense of the king from the propaganda of the American

SW esey PONS rebels) this is by no means the case with respect to the talk of liberty and human rights. This is not an ad hoc theme for Wesley but one that he employs in quite varied circumstances. It is for him a truly basic principle.

Thus Wesley uses this principle to show the unacceptability of slavery and of religious persecution. He uses it to Oppose press-gangs early in his ministry and to oppose the corruption of legal institutions throughout his ministry. Early and late, in addressing a broad range of issues, Wesley defends and applies this principle. Thus he is more than prepared to admit its relevance to the discussion of political theory. It is his principle, after all, in a way that royalism never was. Wesley's talk of liberty is not a mere "flag of convenience" under which to protect the ship of monarchical state.

Moreover, it is a principle that is consonant with other of Wesley's constant theological themes. The doctrines of creation and of the image of God were directly linked to the aspiration for dignity and liberty. The doctrine of universal grace further emphasized the ultimate worth of individual persons in the work of God. Moreover, the principle of human rights fits neatly into Wesley's practice not only of reaching out to the poor with the gospel but also of championing their cause against the multitude of ways they were subjected to humiliation and exploitation. Indeed, on this basis Wesley had far greater claim to this principle than did the merchants and slaveholders who called for revolution.

We began this discussion of Wesley's response to the American Revolution by noting that it occasioned his use of the political theology of the Homilies. But we have seen that Wesley does not do this as a knee-jerk reaction. He does have reason to believe that the king is the friend of religious liberty; that has been proven by experience. He also has reason to believe that the American claims are simply a mask for special interests and have nothing to do with either liberty or justice. And he is persuaded that democracy is a poor protection for liberty and justice. None of these arguments can be simply dismissed as reactionary.

Wesley was prepared to come into conflict with official Anglican theology. We have seen him do so in the case of his

Good News to the Poor appropriation of a radical economic ethic based on the New

Testament. Thus the mere fact that the defense of monarchy was enshrined in Anglican political theology would not have absolutely precluded Wesley from reluctantly criticizing it. But the monarchy's defense of essential rights had been more than amply demonstrated by Wesley's own experience. He thus had no hesitation in making use of the Anglican political theology, which called for obedience to the king, and in calling for others to do so as well. It is against this background that we must understand the apparent "royalism" of passages like the following.

It is my religion which obliges me "to put men in mind to be subject to principalities and powers." Loyalty is with me an essential branch of religion, and which I am sorry any Methodist should forget. There is the closest connexion, therefore, between my religious and my political conduct; the selfsame authority enjoining me to "fear God," and to "honour the King." (Letter to Walter Churchey, June 25, 1777, X11:435)

Assessment We began this study confronted by what appeared to be a mystery: How was it that Wesley, with his radical economic ethic, could have held such a reactionary royalist political view? It turns out that where there appeared to be flat contradiction there is instead fundamental harmony. Wesley did not invent the monarchist political ideology that he sometimes employed.

It was a key element in the theology of the Church of England.

To break free of it would require compelling reasons. But Wesley had learned from experience that the monarchy protected religious liberty even for the Methodists. Those who were accused of rabble-rousing the poor were protected by the king over the objection of the powerful and the influential. That in itself was enough to earn Wesley's gratitude. And the very sympathy for the poor and down-trodden, which governed his economic ethic, made it impossible for him to find sympathy for

Wesley on Politics a rebellion of the wealthy and, from his point of view, oppressors. And far from rejecting talk of human liberty and dignity as dangerous rubbish, there is every reason to say that Wesley took these things far more seriously than did many of the rebels.

This is not to say that Wesley's views of human rights are in every way like those of modern thinkers. He was passionately committed to the freedom of conscience and religion and, over time, came to be persuaded that slavery was an appalling deprivation of rights. But beyond this his views are, at best, embryonic. He does seem to support the freedom of the press, so long as writers are held accountable for veracity, but he obviously was not persuaded that liberty entailed active participation in government. In general his view of civil liberty was modest, claiming that people had the right not to be robbed, beaten, imprisoned, or killed by the powerful or the government. These rights were not absolute since he did suppose the government had a right to tax its subjects so long as this was done in conformity with constitutional standards. And government had the right to deprive criminals of their liberty (and presumably their lives) so long as this was done in accordance with law and did not serve to deny freedom of conscience. But Wesley saw no contradiction between this view and the support of constitutional monarchy. Indeed, he feared the loss of these liberties, especially the most basic freedom of conscience, if the existing order were overthrown. Thus he could defend the traditional Anglican political theology with a clear conscience and characteristic vigor.

In our time the Anglican political theology of kingship that Wesley supported has very little relevance. It has become very much a dead letter for most of the earth's population. But that does not necessarily mean that Wesley's political ethic has no relevance, for that ethic is far more than royalism. It tests the state by two inter-related criteria: (1) What is the consequence for the poor? and (2) What is the consequence for human rights? Wesley directs these to public policy and to political systems.* And they remain important questions today.

A Wesleyan political ethic may find ample room for development here. But +t also has the added precedent of

Good News to the Poor Wesley's "hermeneutic of suspicion," directed against those who use talk of liberty as a cover for the promotion of special and limited interests, who use talk of democracy as a cover for avarice and arrogance.' The spiritual descendants of the slaveholders and merchant princes of Wesley's day have often acted in ways that have left many in the Third World more than a little dubious about the motives of those who promote "liberal democracy" or even "democratic capitalism." They may find that Wesley is a useful example of the sort of critique that may also be relevant today.

In many places in the world, it may also be fruitful to reflect on the "road not taken" by Wesley. Wesley's confidence in the king was not blind; it was not the product of royalist ideology.

Rather, the king had earned his loyalty. The king had acted to defend the religious and civil liberties of his subjects. In consequence, Wesley had no need to develop an alternative to the Anglican political theology. But the means for doing so were readily at hand. He knew that the way of Christian witness was a way that always led to persecution, to the opposition of the powerful. He could maintain that "being despised is absolutely necessary to our doing good in the world" (Letter to His Father,

Dec. 10, 1734, in Journal, 1:184). And he could regard it as extraordinary that persecution had abated (Journal, I1:222,

298).

As I have shown, Wesley did not need to develop his political theology on this basis. But for many Methodists in many parts of the world, the government does not thus protect the rights of its people. Instead the government itself launches the persecution of those who bring hope to the poor and who work in solidarity with the marginalized. In these circumstances the land is fertile for the development of a different political ethic, one based on, perhaps, a broader biblical foundation than the one Wesley was able to embrace in eighteenth-century England. That is the road not taken. But those who take it today are more "true" to Wesley than those who seek to do what Wesley never did: legitimate the rule of oppression and exploitation. The circumstances are right for Wesleyan theologians, on Wesleyan principles, to develop a thoroughly radical political ethic: a theology of liberation.'°

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