Talk:John Wesley

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An event mentioned in this article is a May 24 selected anniversary.

Is his date of birth in New Style (Gregorian) calendar?

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This is not written from NPOV.

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I agree with the above anonymous comment. Reads like a Hagiography. --Pjacobi 09:42, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)

If you see NPOV, then be specific. I guess you guys think that anything that doesn't contain an indictment is NPOV or hagiography. Matter of fact, Welsey was indeed saintly. (He was certainly a nicer person than Luther or Calvin or the founder of his mother church, Henry VIII.) I have never read or heard anything about him, in all the literature, which significantly varies from the assessment in the article. Of course, if one is so inclined, one can infer many things — stubbornness, self-righteousness, intolerance, etc. — from the article. Actually, the article is one of the best, as a capsule biogrpahy, that I have ever read and is an outstanding contribution to Wikipedia. — J M Rice 17:39, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I didn't want to imply that there is a dark spot in his life, which isn't covered. It's the overall tone of the article, and some comments like: Wesley's call to personal and social holiness continues to challenge Christians who struggle to discern what it means to participate in the Kingdom of God. --Pjacobi 21:39, 2005 Jun 18 (UTC)

Areas for improvement

I put material into the lead to make it a stronger FAC. My own interest is on 18th c. British literary history and philology, so I have a bias that way, but I was raised Methodist and am the grandson of a circuit rider. There are quite a few things, good and bad, missing that could help the article.

1. Wesley and the controversy of "enthusiasm": Once the field preaching began, the controversy followed sharply. Whitefield is one thing, but when he had the sponsorship of an Establishment figure like Wesley, the doors of the CoE were opened to what we would now call charismatic preaching. One bishop (I'll research the quote, if needed) wrote to Wesley, "Sir, pretending to extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit is a monstrous thing." The context here is vital: evangelicals and Low Churchmen were associated with the Cromwellian forces in society still.
2. Wesley and social reform: The Idea of the Penitentiary (F. Bogel, I think) has a good long section about Methodist prison reformers being instrumental in the development of the penitentiary (as opposed to the jail), and the transformation from the old model of the prison (a place where one waited for sentence to be carried out) to the new (a place where the sentence was carried out) was Methodist before utilitarian. (Penance-tentiary to penitentiary; by enforcing regularity on the men, one would calm their minds and instill order, and one could make their ordered activities reflect penance.)
3. Wesley and the doctrine of grace: From the point of view of history of ideas, Wesley's theology is an important effort at bridging the gap between Luther's notion of grace and the older Roman Catholic (and Anglican) notion of grace. He wanted to find a way that could avoid the severity of Ronald Knox and Calvin, and yet he wanted it to allow perserverence of the saints. I.e. he was filling a need he felt in the Anglican doctrine.
4. Wesley and psychology: Hartley had been one of the first to argue that the simuli one had influenced the organism of the brain. Well, Wesley was erudite, and he knew these theories. Although contemporary Methodists play all this down considerably, the first noticeable characteristic of the movement was its emphasis on regularity and strict method in ordinary practice.

There are many other things to say as well. Whether the present article is hagiographic or not, I won't say, but I will say that it's somewhat incomplete in comparison to what could be said about his general context. Geogre 04:20, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)