Authority and Order: John Wesley and his preachers
Adrian Burdon
Ashgate £40 (0-7546-5454-0)
Church Times Bookshop £36
Colin Podmore looks at Wesley’s view of order and ordination
From the early 1740s, John Wesley “set apart” preachers — privately and without laying on hands. They were temporary “assistants” to him, and not ordained to the Church’s ministry. In 1745, he still believed that only those with “a commission . . . from . . . bishops . . . in a succession from the apostles” could baptise or celebrate communion.
By the mid-1750s his view had changed, though he still regarded ordination as inopportune. This book recounts the stages by which he came to ordain ministers for America (1784), Scotland (1785), and finally, after Charles Wesley (who opposed presbyteral ordination) had died, for England (1788).
The author then analyses John Wesley’s abridged Ordinal, printing it alongside the 1662 original. (Though Wesley claimed that ordination was functional and not for transmitting grace, he retained the words “grace . . . given thee by this imposition of our hands”.)
The issues this interesting story raises are indeed those of authority and order. Wesley demanded obedience from his own preachers, but defied both those who had ordained him and what this author rather dismissively labels “the old authority of rubric and canon”. (There is little sense here of rubric and canon as expressions of the Church’s mind, guided by the Spirit.)
Though sometimes attempting legalistic special pleading, fundamentally Wesley believed that he possessed an “extraordinary call” that took priority. The first Methodist Conference (1744) decided to obey the bishops only “in things indifferent”, and to obey the canons only “so far as we can with a safe conscience”.
Despite all this, Wesley persisted in claiming fidelity to the Church of England, and resisted calls for formal separation. Actions (and inaction) told another story, however. As early as 1745, Wesley approved the registration of a Wesleyan meeting house for “dissenting worship” (a fact not mentioned here). When unordained preachers celebrated communion, he turned a blind eye; forced to rebuke them, he did so only gently.
The jacket copy promises an exploration of the implications for modern Methodism with reference to the Anglican-Methodist Covenant. Though the absence of this is disappointing, more important for future relationships will be what Methodists today think of episcopacy — and of authority and order.
Dr Podmore is the Secretary of the House of Clergy, the Dioceses’ Commission, and the Liturgical Commission.
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