WHAT kind of a Christian woman would:
■ LEAVE her father’s church as a teenager and join up with the tradition that once persecuted him?
■ RISK her marriage by refusing to give in to her husband in a political quarrel?
■ DISOBEY her husband – and church law – by holding “irregular” prayer meetings in his absence?
■ TELL her college professor-son what he ought to be reading?
■ REBUKE her newly-converted son for a loss of theological perspective?
None other than Susanna Wesley – mother of Methodism founders John and Charles – who is much more interesting when we read her actual work than the prevailing myth allows.
The myth, of course, has elements of truth. Raised a Puritan, Susanna Wesley spent most of her adult life as a communicant of the Church of England. She literally “put the method into Methodism” in the regular way of life she instilled in her 10 children.
However, as a published edition complete writings shows, Susanna Wesley was no ordinary Christian woman, especially given late 17th- and 18th-century expectations.
Reading her letters, spiritual diaries and teachings on “practical divinity” meant primarily for educating her daughters, we glimpse an intelligent, well-read, strong and conscientious woman.
Her spirituality, in fact, was the mainspring of a brand of Christian feminism visible at every stage of her life. As a girl not quite 13, Susanna had repudiated her father Samuel Annesley’s moderate Puritanism and joined the state church, making her decision after reading and weighing the theological evidence.
After marrying Samuel Wesley, another young convert, she played the dutiful parson’s wife – up to a point. But when her husband’s prayer for King William offended her “divine-right” belief that James II’s line belonged on the throne, she refused to say “amen”, and the marriage nearly dissolved.
Six months later they reconciled, however, and not long after she gave birth to John.
In 1712, Susanna Wesley’s conscience moved her to lead Sunday evening worship in the rectory kitchen – against her husband’s wishes – while he was away on church business. And a decade later she regularly tutored John by mail, providing him the practical theological perspective that Oxford University could not supply.
The strong-minded mother was also not above taming the emotional excess of newlyconverted son Charles. She once scolded him with, “you are fallen into an odd way of thinking” in response to his claim of no spiritual life or “justifying faith” prior to his recent experience.
And at the end of her life, she published a scathing, anonymous critique of George Whitefield, perhaps the most popular preacher of the day, criticising him for his Calvinist opposition to her son John’s teachings. — Interpreter.
The Rev Charles Wallace Jr is a chaplain at United Methodist related Williamette University in Salem, Oregon, and a member of the Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference.