Wesley Didn't Say It

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Director of Mission Theology at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

Today, I'm joining in the Methodist blogosphere past-time of debunking John Wesley quotes. Within the last couple of years, I have seen increased used of a quote attributed to John Wesley that reads, “I continue to dream and pray about a revival of holiness in our day that moves forth in mission and creates authentic community in which each person can be unleashed through the empowerment of the Spirit to fulfill God's creational intentions.” The problem with this quote? Wesley didn't say it.

The quote appears to come from a book entitled, How To Pray: The Best of John Wesley on Prayer, where it is attributed to Wesley. I'm not sure where the editor or compiler of this book came up with this quote, but it is false to say it came from Wesley.

First off, it should be noted that the language of this quote is very modern. This can be documented with Google Books' Ngram tool. According to the Ngram, use of the word "unleashed" doesn't start to grow until the 1900s. The phrase "authentic community" does not start to appear in the English language until the mid-1960s. And the word "empowerment" is even more recent, not catching on until the 1980s. Certainly the language doesn't fit an 18th century Britishman.

Does this quote reflect sentiments in keeping with John Wesley? Yes and no.

Certainly, Wesley did pray for a revival of holiness in his day. In an authentic quote, Wesley mused, "Q. What may we reasonably believe to be God's design in raising up the Preachers called Methodists? A. To reform the nation and, in particular, the Church; to spread scriptural holiness over the land." For Wesley, the whole point of Methodism was a revival of holiness.

As for whether Wesley expected that revival to "move forth in mission," it depends on how one understands mission. Wesley did expect that scriptural holiness would show forth in works of mercy that include caring for the poor, sick, and imprisoned in Methodists' local settings. But as Monday's post on Thomas Coke mentioned, other than his ill-fated trip to Georgia, Wesley wasn't very interested in foreign mission. He was focused on the revival of holiness in the British Isles.

Would Wesley have expected his holiness revival to "create authentic community in which each person can be unleashed through the empowerment of the Spirit to fulfill God's creational intentions"? That's a bit harder to say, because not only is the language contemporary, some of the concepts behind it is as well. Wesley did believe that Christian fellowship, or community, was an necessary means to grow in holiness. His theology did give a significant role to the work of the Spirit in the process of sanctification. Wesley did believe that the process of sanctification, or growth in holiness, restored people to the image of God in which they had been created and allowed them to live in the way that God had created them to do before sin crippled their ability to do so.

At its best, then, this quote is mostly congruent with John Wesley's theology and interests in language that is not at all congruent with his style. Rather than use this quote, Methodists would be better off using Wesley's quote about "spead[ing] scriptural holiness" to talk about Wesley's theology and vision for early Methodism and using Thomas Coke when they want to talk about international mission and the global church.

Recommended Reading: Thomas Coke on Mission

When United Methodists talk about mission, we often use John Wesley's quote about "the world is my parish" as a way of linking mission to Methodist DNA. (The actual quote is "I look upon all the world as my parish.") UM & Global itself has used that sentiment on its social media pages.

The only problem with this use of that quote is that John Wesley wasn't talking about international mission or the global church when he wrote it. He was talking about his right to preach in other people's parishes, with or without their consent. Frankly, other than his ill-fated Georgia expedition, Wesley wasn't that interested in spreading Christianity outside the British Isles. He was more interested in reforming Christianity within them.

The founding Methodist who did care a lot about international mission and the church outside the British Isles is Thomas Coke. Coke was one of the first two bishops of Methodism in America and was involved with spreading Methodism to the Caribbean, Canada, Ireland, France, and Sierra Leone. He died en route to start Methodism in Sri Lanka, with companions headed to South Africa as well. You can learn more about Coke in this short biography and this short video about him.

Coke also wrote the first Methodist mission literature: a pamphlet entitled, "An Address to the pious and benevolent, proposing an annual subscription for the support of missionaries in the Highlands and adjacent islands of Scotland, the isles of Jersey, Guernsey, and Newfoundland, the West Indies, and the provinces of Nova Scotia and Quebec." He wrote it in 1786, over twenty years before William Carey's famous pamphlet, "An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens," which is often credited as kicking Anglo-American mission work into high gear.

Coke's pamphlet is still worth a read. It also contains this lovely affirmation of the global church, which this blog has adopted as its new Methodist mission/worldwide church affirmation: "Oceans are nothing to God, and they should be nothing to his [sic] people, in respect to the affection they bear one another." As United Methodists around the world, may we be affectionate to each other as Thomas Coke envisioned.