Perhaps nothing makes Kimbrough’s account of Charles Wesley’s understanding of the Eucharist more compelling than his suggestion that the poor have spiritual as well as material needs. It is not simply the well-off who must be ready to sell their possessions, but the poor also can be possessed by what they do not possess. So it is surely right that Charles Wesley understood his preaching to the poor and their sharing in the meal of communion with Christ to be constitutive of what justice looks like when it is shaped by the love that is God’s very life. Kimbrough rightly describes this participation as theosis, that is, the very participation of our lives in God’s life. Theosis is often thought to be some ideal not reachable, but in Charles Wesley’s understanding of what it means to be poor and to be with the poor, we begin to understand that this is no unrealizable ideal but the very substance of the life of the church. Theosis turns out to be the expression of Matthew 25. So understood, we gain a glimpse of what it means for all humankind to be made one through the love of God.
Accordingly, Charles Wesley’s christological understanding of what it means for the church not only to care for the poor but also to be the church of the poor makes clear that his christological understanding of the poor is inseparable from his understanding of the church. In particular, it is the worship of God that is the heart of what it means for the church to be the church of the poor. For it is in worship that any distinction between the poor and those who are not poor is called into question and even obliterated.
It may seem odd to think that the church’s first responsibility to the poor is to provide right worship of God, but it turns out that the poor know better than others what they need. Through worship, through the beauty of liturgy, they discover, in a manner that those who are not poor do not, that there is no standing more significant for learning our worth than learning to kneel before God. That Kimbrough ends his reflections on Charles Wesley’s accounts of his preaching to and care of the poor with “worship resources” is a gift to the poor.
I think it is, moreover, no accident that the one who rediscovered the christological significance of the poor was a poet. The worship of God depends on the language honed from souls shaped by the love of God—a love recognized most intensely by those not satiated by the goods of the world. Charles Wesley was an extraordinary poet whose poetry enabled us to sing that the poor and the not-so-poor could be united in one voice. As odd as it might seem, that unity turns out to be not only what is needed if the church called Methodist is to be renewed, but the unity thereby discovered is the hope of the church as a whole, and of the world.
Stanley Hauerwas
Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics
The Divinity School
Duke University
Durham, NC
Acknowledgments
The author expresses gratitude to Dr. Carlton R. Young for a variety of suggestions for this volume, to Dr. Stanley Hauerwas for his careful reading of the text and his encouraging emphasis on the importance of the volume for the church of the twenty-first century, and to The Divinity School of Duke University for making its valuable research resources available.
Abbreviations
John and Charles Wesley
HSP (1739) Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739
HSP (1740) Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1740
HSP (1742) Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1742
Poet. Works George Osborn, editor. The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley. 13 vols., 1868–72
Whitsunday Hymns of Petition and Thanksgiving for the Promise of the
Hymns Father, 1746
Charles Wesley
Jackson, Journal Thomas Jackson, editor. The Journal of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A. 2 vols., 1849
HSP (1749) Hymns and Sacred Poems. 2 vols., 1749
Hymns of Hymns of Intercession for All Mankind, 1758
Intercession
MSJ S T Kimbrough, Jr., and Kenneth G. C. Newport, editors. The Manuscript Journal of the Reverend Charles Wesley, M.A. 2 vols., 2007
Redemption Hymns for those that seek and those that have Redemption
Hymns (1747) in the Blood of Jesus Christ, 1747
Resurrection Hymns for our Lord’s Resurrection, 1746
Hymns (1746)
Rep. Verse Frank Baker, editor. Representative Verse of Charles Wesley, 1962
Scripture Hymns
(1762) Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures. 2 vols., 1762
Unpub. Poetry S T Kimbrough, Jr., and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, editors. The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley. 3 vols., 1988–1992
Other abbreviations
AV/KJV King James Version of the Bible (1611); Authorized Version of the Church of England
BCP Book of Common Prayer
UMH The United Methodist Hymnal (1989)
Introduction
The situation of the poor and marginalized of eighteenth-century British society was desperate. It is estimated that roughly half of the population were considered poor when measured by the government standards of the time. Poverty was rampant. There was extensive unemployment, vast economic displacement, and physical and mental infirmities due to lack of medical care, poor sanitation, and malnutrition.
In the view of many politicians and economists, the poor were thought to be a detriment to society. The Poor Relief Act of 1601 was supposed to establish a system of relief for the poor. It sought to develop programs to aid the weak and infirm, to employ those who were able, and to provide assistance to those in need. In these ways one hoped to bolster the nation’s economy. In a sense the Poor Relief Act humanized some aspects of dealing with the poor, as earlier laws had allowed for beggars and vagrants to be branded and enslaved for at least two years. Beggars could be whipped, or even executed if they were caught in a third offense. “The Poor Laws were designed to take care of the infirm and to furnish work for the underemployed, not to provide maintenance for the unemployed. The original theory and design may have been admirable to some, but in practice it failed miserably.”1
The Workhouse Act of 1723 mandated local parishes to erect workhouses for the poor. Even so, the requirement was generally not followed due to the high costs involved for such a building. Some parishes sought less expensive ways to assist the poor.
Workhouses tended to become havens for the sick, senile, and infirm. Orphanages were to be places of security for destitute and often abandoned children, who were to become apprentices in various jobs. Nevertheless, both often became hovels of illiteracy, thievery, corruption, sickness, and abuse. As there were no child labor laws, children were often exploited and abused in despicable ways in the labor market of eighteenth-century England. Many aspects of the exploitation of children have been chronicled in some of the plates of the eighteenth-century graphic artist William Hogarth.
The treatment of the poor and the Poor Laws were not without their critics,2 both negative and positive, and while there were some efforts to improve the living and working conditions of the poor, on the whole these efforts failed.