John Wesley and Religious Freedom

Lumping
together the recently attempted Arizona religious freedom law with new criminal
laws against homosexuality in Nigeria and Uganda, the United Methodist Church’s Capitol Hill lobby lamented that “legislation that denies the human rights of people who are
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender is being deliberated and enacted in
states of the United States and countries around the world.”

This
United Methodist General Board of Church and Society further declared that “such legislative actions that discriminate, abuse and commit
violence against persons on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual
orientation, gender identity or expression violate human rights and should be
condemned.” And they insisted that “religious and cultural
traditions do not excuse any form of discrimination, abuse and violence.” Their statement commended the United Methodist bishop of Arizona,
who had denounced the now vetoed law as “discrimination under the
guise of religious freedom.”

The Arizona law, vetoed by its
governor, of course made no mention of sexual orientation and only reiterated
that “state
action shall
not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion,” expanding the stipulated protected
from “a
religious assembly or institution” to “any individual, association,
partnership, corporation, church, religious assembly, or institution, estate,
trust, foundation, or other legal entity.”
And new laws in
Nigeria and Uganda are unrelated to religious liberty, instead expanding
already existing criminal penalties for homosexual behavior.

The United Methodist statement’s primary objective was to discredit
religious liberty in the United States as a defense against the current
Kulturkampf on traditional mores. Some liberal-leaning Evangelicals have
similarly disparaged religious liberty protections, denouncing them as codified
bigotry. Of course, another major flashpoint for religious liberty is Obamacare’s HHS mandate compelling employers to
subsidize contraceptives and abortifacients. The United Methodist lobby has
publicly endorsed the mandate and dismissed faith-based objections, such as by
the Sisters of Laredo, a charitable order of nuns currently litigating against
the mandate.

Once universal assumptions about
religious liberty in America are fraying. As Evangelical author Eric Metaxas
recently told the National Religious Broadcasters, “Americans are so
spoiled, we’ve had so much
religious freedom, we don’t know what it is to
miss it,” adding, “We take holy gifts for granted.” He warned against
romanticizing persecution, suggesting “Mr. Hipster Evangelical” can visit North Korea if he truly wants it.

Liberal Evangelicals and United Methodists
are perhaps ambivalent to indifferent about religious liberty because they have
forgotten their own history. Early Methodists, as precursors of modern
Evangelicalism, were often despised and persecuted. John Wesley as an
evangelist demanded his rights as a British subject to organize and preach an
unpopular Gospel that challenged a morally permissive culture. The
democratizing ethos created by the Wesleyan revivals helped create a stronger
ethic of religious freedom in both Britain and America.

The laws of Eighteenth
Century Britain theoretically offered relatively free rein to Protestant
evangelization. But the cultural reality was often very different. Wesley was a
priest in the established Church of England, and most of his followers were
communicants in that church. Yet their spiritual zeal, moral threat to liquor
and gambling interests, and empowering of common people aroused tremendous
hostility, some of it violent. Gentry and clergy who resented the Methodists
often fomented the riots. Methodist preaching houses were torn apart by mobs,
congregations assailed with clubs, livestock set loose on outdoor audiences,
and Methodist preachers pelted with rocks. Sometimes Methodists were themselves
jailed, charged for disturbing the peace, while their assailants went free.

A Methodist baker in
the 1740s was threatened by a mob who for days stoned him and threatened to
destroy his house. He appealed for protection from the mayor, who replied: “It is your own fault for entertaining
those preachers.” The baker remarked: “This is fine usage under a Protestant
government; if I had a priest saying mass in my house, it would not be touched.” Unmoved, the mayor retorted: “The priests are tolerated, but you
are not.” Sometimes Methodists were offered contracts of protection
if they pledged no more to host preachers. And sometimes the mob attacks
against them were reported in newspapers as Methodist riots. There were
occasional outright murders and sexual assaults.

It was Wesley’s policy “always to look a mob in
the face.” One admirer recounts
of the evangelist: “An indescribable
dignity in his bearing, a light in his eyes, and a spiritual influence
pervading his whole personality often overawed and captured the very leaders of
the riots.” Another offers similar
praise: “When encountering the
ruffianism of mobs and of magistrates, he showed a firmness as well as a
guileless skill, which, if the martyr’s praise might admit of
such an adjunct, was graced with the dignity and courtesy of the gentleman.”

On one particularly
harrowing evening Wesley was taken captive by several mobs, who escorted him to
the homes of indifferent magistrates, where the mob cited disruptive Methodists
who “sing Psalms all day, nay, and make folks rise
at five in the morning.” The magistrates
refused to intervene, leaving Wesley hostage, repeatedly pummeled, spouting
blood from his mouth, amid cries of “Hang him!” He afterwards claimed he felt no pain. Later the same
magistrates tried to press charges against him for disturbing the peace.

Wesley cited mobs as
the “many-headed beast,” investing them with spiritual implications and seeing them as
predictable earthly resistance to the Gospel. “Such is the general
method of God’s Providence, where all
approve, few profit,” he said. Although
riots were morally validating and offered opportunity for courageous Christian
witness, including occasional conversions of the unruly, Wesley still demanded
protection of the law. In 1748 he was attacked by a club-wielding mob
instigated by an Anglican clergy promising ale to rioters. Afterward Wesley
appealed to the local constable, tartly calling the riot “imputable” to the constable’s neglect if not complicity. His apprehension by the mob had
been an “assault upon the king’s highway, contrary to his peace and crown.” Although the constable had directly witnessed much of the mob’s attack, he had stood aside, despite his “talking of law and justice.”

“Suppose we were dissenters . . . ; suppose we were Turks or
Jews; still are we not to have the benefit of the law of our country,” Wesley implored. “Proceed against us by
law, if you can or dare, but not by lawless violence. . . . This is flat
rebellion both against God and the king.”

Late in life, Wesley
denounced religious persecution: “Let there be as ‘boundless a freedom in religion’ as any man can conceive.” But he, like John Locke, denied such tolerance could be
extended to Roman Catholics who could not give allegiance to their Protestant
regime, under the worrisome Catholic principle, as he conceived it, “No faith is to be kept faith with heretics.”

Early Methodists in
America often themselves faced hostile, sometimes violent crowds. American
Methodism pledged loyalty to the United States, and its adherents largely
aligned with Jeffersonian disestablishment of state supported churches, their
movement thriving under the legal protection of religious liberty, even amid
some cultural hostility.

Here are some Wesleyan
lessons for today’s Christians facing
cultural hostility and increasing legal infringements on religious freedom. Resistance
to vigorous proclamation of the Gospel is present in every age. Persecution,
even low scale, and often abetted even by religious institutions, is
opportunity for witness. But persecution should not be sought, or glorified. Wesley,
like St. Paul, appealed to the law and magistrates for protection, insisting on
his rights as an Englishman.

The early Wesleyan
revivals, although not political, were democratizing and liberty enhancing in
their ultimate social impact, benefitting persons of all faiths and no faith. Christians
of today, in contending for full religious liberty, even on the edges, serve
not just themselves but the conscience rights of everyone.

Mark D. Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy.

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