As
we read John Wesley’s address to “our” American colonies I was struck by how
little it sounded like good ole’ John Wesley. JW always writes in a very
organized manner with a clear thesis, and supports his argument by alluding to
countless scriptures One could expect the use of Romans 13.1 but it is never
used. However Wesley wades into this political divorce without scriptural
evidence. We are taught to see Wesley as interacting with the social issues of
the day through his pragmatic theology, but here we see a biased Wesley not
being informed by much else other than his English biased.
But
in seeing a Wesley who didn’t support the idea of the colonies becoming
independent, we can also understand a Wesley who never wanted his “Methodists”
to become a separate independent Church either. We can probably also see why
Wesley’s missions is Georgia never worked if he entered the colonies with this
elitist mindset, and I would be interested to hear George Whitefield’s opinion
on the American colonies to see is his colonial-view was why he succeeded
stateside more than JW.
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