As Methodists Unravel, Remember: John Wesley Disregarded His Own Quadrilateral When He Changed His Mind on Slavery
By: Ken Wilson
Tags: LGBTQ, Spirituality, Christianity, Wesley, United Methodist Church

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

The United Methodist Church is in the drawn-out throes of splitting over whether to retain or reject the global policies against LGBTQ+ people. While UMC traditionalists claim the orthodox high ground in this fight, it’s worth reading John Wesley’s, Thoughts Upon Slavery. Tellingly, the founder of Methodism violates the much vaunted “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” when opposing slavery. The “Quadrilateral” refers to the four-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience — needed to keep us sitting squarely in the camp of knowing-what-God-thinks. As today’s Methodist traditionalists know, Wesley ascribed only a limited role to Experience (for him it referred to the witness of the Spirit in conversion and the forgiveness of sins.)

You need to limit the role of experience to keep things neat and tidy. But here’s the problem: Wesley himself abandoned the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (a term coined by Albert Outler in the 20th Century) when it came to his late-in-life opposition to slavery, unveiled in Thoughts on Slavery.

Thoughts in Service to a Prophetic Screed

As a title, Thoughts Upon Slavery, is a whopper understatement. His treatise amounts to a prophetic screed against slavery. Buy it and read it. Scripture, Tradition, Reason, Experience: how does Wesley use them? In a highly un-Wesleyan Quadrilateral way.

Wesley simply ignores tradition (which was squarely on the side of slavery in his day.) He employs reason throughout — marshaling evidence and arguments like a Federal prosecutor, wielding the rules of logic to make his case. But Wesley leans into experience like nobody’s business, and not experience narrowly defined, as in the Quadrilateral that later bore his name. He appeals to the experience of slaves suffering the gruesome brutality of slavery: citing newspaper reports, historical accounts, and laws allowing and requiring the mistreatment of slaves. And throughout Thoughts on Slavey we have Wesley’s own intense emotional response to all this.

Regarding Scripture — You Could Hear a Pin Drop

Most telling, though, is Wesley’s appeal to Scripture — normally regarded as the privileged leg in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral stool. He includes, of course, reference to the Golden Rule, biblical injunctions to show compassion, and threats of divine punishment to those who harm, especially, the most vulnerable. But despite his characteristic care in refuting the common justifications of slavery in his day, Wesley is strangely silent on the primary Christian justification for slavery at the time: the many texts that support it, and the absence of texts that explicitly condemn it. Read Thoughts Upon Slavery and listen for the sound of a pin dropping as Wesley stands mute in the face of this mountain of biblical justification for the practice of holding slaves. His silence is especially telling given the fact that Wesley supported the biblical case for the legitimacy of slavery earlier in his life. He did so, that is, until he knew in his heart it was wrong, deeply wrong — a great scourge of socially acceptable wickedness backed by the ruling powers of Christian orthodoxy in his day.

Now is the Time to Summon Wesley’s Heart

As I read the wringing of hands by Methodist clergy who identify as “progressives” — over how to keep a viable pension plan in the event of a split (or a loss of traditionalist dollars) … or who gets to keep the church buildings when the split happens, I want to shout: summon your nerve, pastors, summon your nerve! Read Thoughts Upon Slavery — let your hearts be strangely warmed by the religious trauma suffered by LGBTQ+ people, and determine that, come what may, you will no longer enforce the policies that lie at the heart of this suffering. Don’t roll over to whatever bullying tactics may be used against you in the political days ahead. Go ahead and fight for your fair share of the pension and the buildings — but at the same time, release your attachments to these things. Go into the next convention ready to walk away from the damn pensions and the buildings if need be. I swear advisedly: the pensions and the buildings are damned if, against your own conscience, you let the suffering of queer folk continue in order to hold onto these things. Walk with the suffering sexual minorities of the church, grieving like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and see if your eyes aren’t opened to the Lord walking with you.