While I'm woking on another project, here's an excerpt from my IWS paper "The Great Awakening and the Development of Experiential Worship." I'll be back to blogging soon...
John Wesley was a very devout but somewhat spiritually insecure Anglican minister when he experienced a transforming encounter with God at a Moravian prayer meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, May 24, 1738. “There as someone was reading Martin Luther’s preface to Romans, which describes ‘the change that God works in the heart through faith in Christ,’ Wesley felt his own heart ‘strangely warmed.’” This experiential dimension of feeling and sensing God’s love filled the emptiness of dutifully fulfilling the hollow religious requirements of “correct doctrine” and “proper discipline.” This very personal encounter with God changed Wesley forever and “proved to be the turning point of the Evangelical Revival ‘What happened in that little room was of more importance to England than all the victories of Pitt by land or sea’.”
Wesley recorded in his Journal another remarkable encounter on New Years Day, 1739. At a “love feast” prayer meeting “the power of God came mightily upon us insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy and many fell to the ground. As soon as [we] were recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His majesty, we broke out with one voice ‘We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord’.”
Wesley defended the notion of personal religious experience from being discredited as “subjectivism” (that is religious experience that is individual, private and non-verifiable) by asserting that experiencing the reality of God is “not the product of the subjective imagination but of the divine Spirit,” based on Romans 8:16, “the Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” He developed the “cord of three strands” theology of faith which balanced the three essential elements of “right belief” (doctrine), “right conduct” (devotional discipline) and “right passion” (zeal for God) , also referred to as orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy. The experiential/ emotional component was new and controversial, but absolutely crucial to his theology.
The power of God accompanied Wesley as he preached tirelessly to huge crowds through out England and America during the revival era of 1736-1768 and until his death in 1790. There were heights of passionate praises to God mixed with bizarre, hysterical behavior. Wesley and the revival were criticized for these charismatic, intensely emotional displays. But “since Wesley regarded revival as the unpredictable work of God’s Holy Spirit which could work in quite powerful and bizarre ways he tolerated the emotional excesses which often attended Wesleyan revivals.” His brother Charles however, was known to remove people causing too much commotion.
Sources are cited in the paper. There's a download link is on my previous blog entry.
