Studies in Interreligious Dialogue

STEPHEN SKUCE “A FIRM AND GENEROUS FAITH” Towards an Authentic Wesleyan Inter-Faith Understanding1 Introduction In Wesley’s generation, the British of the “long eighteenth century”2 were starting to become more aware of non-Christian religions, but the level of accurate knowledge was relatively low.3 The European interaction with Islam had centred around the crusades, with the final expulsion of Muslims from Spain occurring in 1602.4 In 1683, only twenty years before Wesley’s birth, the Ottoman Turks had laid siege to Vienna and this violent engagement with Muslims continued immediately after Wesley’s death through Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign from 1798-1801. The British East India Company controlled much of India for the duration of Wesley’s ministry. Knowledge of Hinduism and Buddhism was increasing, but, as with Islam, the interaction occurred in an atmosphere of conflict and perceived Western cultural superiority. Awareness of Chinese and Japanese religion dated back to at least the Middle Ages through the journeys of traders 1 When reflecting on the life of Gordon Wilson, Irish Methodist peace cam- paigner and survivor of the Remembrance Day bomb attack in Enniskillen in 1987, the then President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, commented on Wilson’s “firm and generous Methodist faith” (Mary Robinson, “Foreword,” in: McCreary 1996: xi. 2 An accepted designation among historians to refer to the period between the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 and the Parliamentary Acts of 1828-9 when Roman Catholics and dissenters received emancipation. 3 People of other religious and ethnic backgrounds were paraded as curiosities for amusement and interest. Oglethorpe, for example, brought a group of Georgian Native Americans to England in 1735 to provide “exotic publicity for the project” (Rack 1992: 112). 4 When the Turkish siege of Malta was lifted in 1565, Anglican prayers celebrat- ing the perceived deliverance referred to “that wicked monster and damned soul Maho- met” (Vitkus 1999: 210). 66 TOWARDS AN AUTHENTIC WESLEYAN INTER-FAITH UNDERSTANDING and Catholic missionaries but accurate knowledge was scarce, partially due to the distance between Britain and the Far East but also due to Chinese and Ja- panese policies of isolation.5 In the North American colonies very little atten- tion was paid to the religious understanding of the Native Americans (see Mc- Dermott 2000). The first systematic study of other religions published in Britain was Edward Herbert’s De Religione Gentilium (1683). His argument was that clergy and priests had distorted all religions, and he wrote to attack the contemporary role of clergy within Christianity.6 A few years earlier the Puritan Richard Baxter gave a fairly positive assessment of people of other faiths when he wrote, “I find not in myself called or enabled to judge all these people as to their final state, but only to say, that if any of them have a holy heart and life, in the true love of God, they shall be saved.”7 Joseph Pitts’8 Faithful Account of the Reli- gion and Manners of Mahometans (1704) gave a sympathetic and accurate portrayal of Islam but still argued for the supremacy of Christ. By Wesley’s death in 1791 William Robertson was publishing A Historical Disquisition Concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients Had of India, giving a positive image of Hinduism when compared to ancient Greek religion. The general British inter-faith view in the eighteenth century can be summar- ised as one of Christian supremacy supported by little accurate knowledge of other faiths.9 Yet this was starting to change. The upsurge in Protestant mis- sions at the end of the eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth century re- sulted in numerous publications on the religious beliefs of the peoples being evangelised. Colonial explorers and administrators potentially had a more ob- jective perspective than missionaries; the work of Sir William Jones, who founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, and the Asiatick Researches journal in 1788 being outstanding examples of this. Jones’ work facilitated Western access to the original sources of Indian religion and culture and so overcame the problem of writers using biased secondary accounts and consequently repeating the errors and distortions of earlier authors. Because many of 5 Wesley alludes to Chinese antipathy to foreign influence in Works, Vol. 18, Journal, 2 December 1737. 6 Alexander Ross’ Pansebeia (1653) surveyed world religions but attributed a positive role to clergy. 7 From The Reasons of the Christian Religion (1667) quoted in Pailin 1984: 156. 8 Joseph Pitts (1663-1735) was captured at sea and sold to Muslim traders as a slave; forcibly converted to Islam, before his escape he was one of the first Englishmen to go on Hajj to Mecca. 9 For a more positive view of the Western Christian interaction with other religions see Nederman 2000, Wheatcroft 2003 and Grady 2005. 67 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 19 (2009) 1 the early commentators on other religions were Christians seeking to validate internal Christian arguments, these commentators often had little first-hand knowledge of other faiths and were content to perpetuate the errors of their predecessors (Blanks 1999: 22). It was only by the end of Wesley’s life that this approach was being superseded by a more accurate appraisal. John Wesley Objectively defining the inter-faith view of John Wesley is a difficult task since “Wesley’s writing is so voluminous in scope that selective quoting could back up almost any argument” (Harris 1997: 53). Additionally, in considering Wesley’s writing and experience to discern his inter-faith understanding it needs to be borne in mind that he was not a systematic theologian but rather “an experiential Christian thinker interested in the doctrines relating to experience” (Whaling 1995: 18). A further issue is the need to avoid using Wesley as a “guru” by simply quoting him as the definitive voice that concludes any argument. Rather, Wesley should be seen as a “mentor” where his contextual perspective gives underlying principles for contemporary study rather than specific answers (see Maddox 1992). This approach allows the development of Wesley’s thought beyond the confines of his limited experience, and allows an authentically Wesleyan perspective to develop rather than creating a fossilised snapshot from history. Experience had a very significant impact on Wesley’s theological reflection and his direct experience of other religions was primarily that of Native Amer- icans in Georgia and Jews, the latter in Britain, Rotterdam and Georgia. That said, he was able to write in his sermon “On Faith” that “with Heathens, Ma- hometans and Jews, we have at present nothing to do” (Wesley Works, Vol. 3, Sermon 106 “On Faith”).10 In his writings Wesley used language that could not be considered appropriate today, describing heathens as “inferior to the beasts of the field” (Wesley Works, Vol. 2, Sermon 63 “The General Spread of the Gospel”). While it may be unfair to judge a man of the eighteenth century by the norms of the twenty-first, some of Wesley’s statements do little for inter- faith harmony. Wesley never wrote about other religions in a systematic or de- tailed way; rather, as Miles highlights, most of Wesley’s comments on other faiths “are rhetorical devices used to persuade his Christian listeners to be bet- ter Christians,” the general approach in eighteenth-century Britain (Miles 2000: 66). 10 This can be considered to be Wesley’s mature reflection, preached on 9 April 1788 when Wesley was aged eighty-four. It was the first time Wesley was recorded as preaching on Hebrews 11:6. 68 TOWARDS AN AUTHENTIC WESLEYAN INTER-FAITH UNDERSTANDING Despite his early hopes, Wesley had relatively few contacts with Native Amer- icans in Georgia.11 He initially considered them to be “as little children, hum- ble, willing to learn and eager to do the will of God; and consequently they shall know of every doctrine I preach whether it be of God” (Wesley Letters, Vol. 1, 10 October 1735 to John Burton).12 In July 1736 Wesley was able to question five Chickasaw Indians about their religion and report a factual account to the Georgia trustees (Wesley Works, Vol. 18, Journal, 29 July 1736). His relatively positive assessment of Chickasaw religion was amended after discussions with a Frenchman who had lived for some months among them (Wesley Works, Vol. 18, Journal, 9 July 1737). By late 1737 Wesley considered various Native American religions in a uniformly negative way, considering them little more than a licence for immorality and that “They show no in- clination to learn anything, but least of all Christianity, being as fully opinion- ated of their own parts and wisdom as either modern Chinese or ancient Ro- man” (Wesley Works, Vol. 18, Journal, 2 December 1737). Eventually, Wesley’s opinion of Native Americans was they “torture all their prisoners from morning till night, till at length they roast them to death; and upon the slightest provocation, to come behind and shoot any of their own countrymen” (Wesley Works, Vol. 2, Sermon 38 “A Caution Against Bigot- ry”).13 An important strand in Wesley’s theology can be deduced from this change. Wesley was, to a large extent, an experiential theologian and allowed experience to help mould his theology, not vice versa. His experience of lived religion challenged his conceptual knowledge of Native American religion. The mature Wesley may well have written differently about world religions if he had had greater exposure to Islam and Hinduism. The fluidity of Wesley’s understanding can be seen in his attitude to Jews. In Savannah he recorded that, “I began learning Spanish, in order to converse with my Jewish parishioners; some of whom seem nearer the mind of Christ 11 Wesley met some Native Americans before he left for Georgia.

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