Charles Wesley in America by S T Kimbrough Jr

Author:S T Kimbrough Jr. [Kimbrough, S T]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781725272217
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2020-12-15T17:20:25+00:00

Summary and Evaluation

What are we to make of this unexpected visit of Charles Wesley to Boston? Clearly, though a young priest who had just served four months in the colony of Georgia and was on his way back to London, he seemed to attract considerable attention. His immediate invitations to preach at the most prestigious Anglican churches, Old North Church (Christ Church), and King’s Chapel, indicate that his presence was regarded as significant. The Boston community was wrought with religious strife and steadily American patriotism was surfacing with increasing tension between people of the Anglican persuasion on the one hand and Puritans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and diverse Dissenters on the other. Into this atmosphere of religious tension came a young priest of the Church of England, who must have been a symbol of hope and affirmation to the Boston Anglicans. He was dined, entertained, and placed before the community in the most conspicuous places, namely, the most significant Church of England pulpits of Boston. Wesley seems to have enjoyed himself in Boston, aside from his illness and the overbearing hospitality. He seems to have been comfortable circulating among the Anglican clergy of the colony, and there is no indication that he had previous contact with any clergy of the churches who were increasingly at odds with the Church of England. No doubt he used his position as Governor Oglethorpe’s secretary and Secretary for Indian Affairs in Georgia as an entrée to the governor of Massachusetts, Jonathan Belcher, whom he visited shortly after his arrival. There is no record of his conversation with the governor, only a record of the visit itself. Nevertheless, as a man with credentials from the Church of England and Oglethorpe’s emissary to the proper authorities in London, when Wesley arrived in Boston, he was received with graciousness and respect.

One thing is very clear, however, from his letters to his brother John at this time. He was in no wise persuaded that he should remain in Boston either to receive an appointment to a church by Commissary Price or long enough to recover from his illness and regain strength before setting out on a voyage home. He was determined to leave at all costs.

What possible impact could the Boston visit have had on Wesley the hymn writer and poet? He was not yet known as a sacred poet, and it was not until after his conversion on May 21, 1738, that he appeared on the sacred literary horizon, destined for enduring notoriety as Britain’s greatest eighteenth-century religious poet. His lifelong commitment to ministry within the Anglican Communion is affirmed in his experience with the Anglican clergy and their parishes, which is almost the exclusive sphere of his experience while in Boston. While in his later life he, with his brother John, was an initiator and integral part of the Methodist movement, he never thought of it outside of the Church of England. And the high ecclesiology he espoused in his hymns, which he seems to have begun writing

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