Living Wittily

Category: Evangelical Spirituality

  • Reinventing Evangelicalism 1.

    Reinventing English Evangelicalism, 1966-2001. A Theological and Sociological Study, Rob Warner, (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2007), £19.99. ISBN 978-1-84227-570-2

    Spstandard_9781842275702 This is a book that compels contemporary Evangelicalism to become more self-critical and less self-congratulatory, more aware of changing social, cultural and global realities and less absorbed in preserving partisan self-interest. It is a study that presents astute social analysis rooted in historical research, displays theological acumen which combines sympathetic exposition and at times astringent critique, and draws upon personal experience of the high points and subsequent developments of late 20th Century Evangelicalism as one who played a central role in some of those developments. It is a hugely important theological and sociological audit, based on empirical data, carried through with honesty and clarity, and providing a reality check for a movement not averse to ‘vision inflation’.

    The central thesis can be stated succinctly: in under 40 years, a homogeneous yet diverse movement, grew rapidly through entrepreneurial vision building, paralleled within the movement by another wing much more theologically conservative. The theological transitions Warner charts during these years expose the growing bifurcation between those increasingly committed to a form of fundamentalist conservation of Evangelical essentials, and others seeking an Evangelicalism more accommodating and progressive in its response to the mission situation of the third millenium. This is not a comfortable conclusion, but it is supported in the book by evidence-based research, cogent argument, and a clear understanding of the various trajectories already well plotted within and beyond the current English Evangelical scene.

    This is, in my view, the most important analysis of Evangelicalism in Britain since David Bebbington’s ground-breaking account published in 1989. It is of course a different kind of study, and in important ways, moves the discussion forward. Bebbington  provided a detailed survey of Evangelicalism as a movement rooted in the Enlightenment, influenced by Romanticism, responsive to social and cultural changes, and for that reason capable of remarkable degrees of adaptation and self-reinvention. Bebbington explored with characteristic precision and authority, definitions, origins, core theological values, historical analyses of Evangelical diversities which were nevertheless containable within a set of shared characteristics.

    Warner’s study intentionally covers only the two latest generations, and deals with recent developments; but by so doing he provides a diagnosis so accurately evidenced, so current to the present scene, and supported by his personal inside experience, that his overall argument, and offered prognosis has to be taken very seriously indeed. And the prognosis is not reassuring for those of us who wish to go on using the term Evangelical in the hope that it still expresses something meaningful about ‘the fellowship of the Gospel’, and that it will go on representing a tradition that enriches the Church with its own peculiar yet vitalising emphases.

    The real questions that arise in my mind as I compare Bebbington and Warner can be asked three ways:

    1. at what stage does a movement’s capacity for adaptation to environment become accommodation?
    2. who safeguards the tradition if refusal to change closes down the possibility that ‘the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his word’?
    3. who decides when change has gone so far that continuity with the original tradition is harder and harder to trace?

    This book will be the subject of a number of posts, as I try to weigh the implications of questions like these as they impinge heavily on the future of British Evangelicalism.

  • “…the hospitable hearted, spiritually exercised Evangelical…”

    0_post_card_portraits__jrre_pursey_ ‘Get yourselves into a relation of indebtedness to some of the great writers of the present and the past…..’ The advice of Principal Alexander Whyte to New College Students, in a lecture on Thomas Goodwin, a Premier League Puritan, later published in Thirteen Appreciations. I am an admirer of Alexander Whyte for many reasons, though well aware he may be too Victorian for some tastes; psychological moralism, occasions when sentiment and scolding get in the way of persuasive insight, and all the time his fascination, in almost equal terms, with both sin and grace.

    But at his best Whyte has the dazzling, glimmering presence of Scheihallion, (his favourite Scottish mountain) covered in snow. In his sentimentality there isn’t a whiff of insincerity, and in his scolding there is the unmistakable solidarity of pastor with people, of scolder with scolded. And one of the main reasons I admire this Victorian Free Kirk preacher, is because he explains why I have long valued the writings of the most famous 20th century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. And if you think a Free Kirk minister, who was Moderator of his church, who was Principal of its most influential College, and who for decades filled the pulpit of the Free Church’s most influential Edinburgh church, might raise a hoary eyebrow at a Baptist minister who is also Principal of a Denominational College claiming his support for such a reason – you’d be wrong and you’d be surprised.

    In the volume referred to Alexander Whyte wrote appreciations of thirteen Christian writers. As a Scottish Presbyterian Calvinist you’d expect Samuel Rutherford and William Guthrie the Fenwick Covenanter, and the New England Puritan Thomas Sheppard, to be ‘appreciated’. And Thomas Goodwin the Puritan was Whyte’s theological and spiritual mentor-in print – he read Goodwin so much the books had to be rebound in leather to withstand the wear and tear of a reader who lugged such tomes around with him while on holiday in the Highlands. But Whyte’s appreciation reached much further afield – he wrote one of the most penetrating reviews of the sermons of Cardinal John Henry Newman, and as a younger man visited this celebrated Roman Catholic Convert at the oratory in Birmingham. His appreciation of Teresa of Avila was reviewed in The Tablet and read in religious communities as the lunchtime sacred reading. His review of father John of Kronstadt took him into the Russian Orthodox tradition where he sensed the importance of bowing to mystery, gazing on the beauty of holiness and lifting the heart in passionate and unembarrassed devotion to God.

    Merton1 So what’s the connection between Alexander Whyte and my appreciation of Thomas Merton? Quite simple – Whyte urged those who would preach and pastor others to be a "true Catholic…a well read, open-minded, hospitable hearted, spiritually exercised Evangelical", and to be "in a relation of indebtedness" to those who on the journey with God are further down the road than I will ever be. At many important turns in my own journey, Merton has been one of those who knew the road better than me. As a guide he has helped me map some of my own inner geography, that changing landscape of the soul where psychology, spirituality and the reality of God provide the raw material of my own humanity in Christ. Over many years few writers have taught me better than Merton, the importance of knowing myself known, loved and called by God, to serve Him open of mind and heart to the truth and the presence of God in all of life.

    Whyte understood as few others in his age did, the damage done to the Gospel of Jesus, the mission of the church, and our personal spiritual development, by misguided and exclusive loyalty to the one narrow strand of the Christian tradition to which any of us happens to belong. Evangelicalism has been a tradition that, perhaps as a defensive buffer zone, developed strands of intolerance, its own list of no go theological areas and traditions, its in-built hermeneutic of suspicion that simply does not trust other traditions to be as ‘sound’, as ‘biblical’, in their understanding, interpretation and living of the truth of Christ. My own heart has never settled for such exclusiveness. Instead, like Alexander Whyte, A W Tozer, Thomas Goodwin, John Wesley, Richard Baxter and many, many others who stand either in Evangelicalism, or in the earlier traditions from which it emerged, I have put myself ‘in a relation of indebtedness’ to great souls of the Christian tradition, and been taught so much by those guests I have made welcome companions on my own journey.

    This Baptist then, has learned a lot I needed to know about loving God without pretence, from Merton the Trappist. But I’ve also learned how not to limit the range and depth of the love of God in Christ from the medieval Julian of Norwich and the Methodist Charles Wesley. The studied devotional precision of Anglican George Herbert, the astringent but healthy questioning of the Welsh priest R S Thomas, the verbal virtuosity in service of spiritual certainty and uncertainty of the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins, continue to teach me the importance of words in conversation about God, more especially in conversation with God. But these are other stories, for other times.

    For now, over Christmas, I’m re-reading The Seven Storey Mountain, surely one of the 20th Century’s genuine spiritual classics. Not least because it is a frank, flawed and distilled account of spiritual emptiness and hunger, and of the remorseless mercy that pursues us with gracious and loving intent.

  • Cyclones of power, consuming glory fire

    Within Reformed Christianity of almost all flavours, there is an entire spectrum of corporate and individual devotional practice. Within Evangelicalism prayer tends to be a combination of pragmatism and mysticism, extempore vernacular and inspired corporate worship, brash intercessory claiming of God’s blessings as if God were a bank and we were demanding, as of right, an increased overdraft; and on the other hand, those for whom prayer is humble patient waiting on God, whose depths of mercy and mystery, require silent wonder, wordless adoration, and only then ecstatic praise.

    Hvg_oval_2  Frances Ridley Havergal could write of both. Her most famous hymn, ‘Take my life and let it be’ is a personal inventory of all the dimensions of human life and experience that have to be handed over to God. But it is one of her less known poems that demonstrates this woman’s sweep of intellect and mystical depth. Havergal’s vision of God inspires breathless, adoring wonder, and places her amongst the genuinely mystical poets.

    In ‘Thoughts of God’, Havergal offers, not her own faltering thoughts, but a bold description of the inner mind of the Almighty. She knew she was treading on holy ground and her imagination hesitates before being drawn inwards and upwards by the beauty of her vision. The poem ends in serenity, repose and the contemplative joy of those who know they are loved:

    They say there is a hollow, safe and still,

         A point of coolness and repose

    Within the centre of a flame, where life might dwell

    Unharmed and unconsumed, as in a luminous shell,

         Which the bright walls of fire enclose

    In breachless splendour, barrier that no foes

         Could pass at will .. .

    So in the centre of these thoughts of God,

    Cyclones of power, consuming glory fire –

         As we fall o’erawed

    Upon our faces, and are lifted higher

    By His great gentleness, and carried nigher

    Than unredeemed angels, till we stand

         Even in the hollow of His hand –

    Nay, more! we lean upon His breast-

    There, there we find a point of perfect rest

         And glorious safety. There we see

         His thoughts to usward, thoughts of peace

    That stoop to tenderest love; that still increase

    With increase of our need; that never change,

    That never fail, or falter, or forget …

    Gentleness, intimacy, perfect rest, tenderest love, grace that increases with increase of need, and a thoughtful God who never fails or falters or forgets, are ideas which provide the secure emotional substructure of her theology of consecration.

  • Call to Conversion

    Just finsishing a paper on Evangelical Spirituality for Edinburgh Diocese tomorrow night. Got me thinking again about what it means to be converted! I was converted on April 16, 1967 – like George Whitefield I can still see the place, and recall the exact time. I have, however, been converted many times since, and always by that same grace of God that found me that night. Here’s Jim Wallis on conversion, which he argues (rightly as I see it), is not only a personal event or process of turning, but also that constant turning that is part of our faithfully following the One who goes ahead and doesn’t always walk in a straight line.

    .

    Wallis We are called to respond to God always in the particulars of our own personal, social and political circumstances…As such, conversion will be a scandal to accepted wisdoms, status quos, and oppressive arrangements. Looking back at biblical, saintly conversions they can appear romantic. But in the present, conversion is more of a promise of all that might be; it is also a threat to all that is. To the guardians of the social order, genuine biblical conversion will seem dangerous…there are no neutral zones or areas of life left untouched by biblical conversion. (Call to Conversion, Lion, 1981, page 6)

    Where the Kingdom of God collides with all the other status quos, that is precisely the point where conversion and witness to the One who called us, coalesce in response to God. Mission is our response to the divine commission. As John Stott put it, avoiding that pietistic, devotional self-centredness that wants to privatise faith, "Love for God is not an emotional experience but a moral obedience". Conversion is just that – the regeneration of moral life, through a renewed will, inspired by revived religious affections, and turned outwards in a passionate following of Jesus in the service of the Kingdom of God – which, as Jim Wallis so consistently witnesses, calls all status quos into question.

  • Charlie Simpson – a quiet presence in my memory…..

    Charlie Simpson was one of the cheeriest human beings I’ve ever met. An old school Baptist minister, complete with deep dog collar, black stock, striped trousers and black jacket. He trained for the Baptist ministry just after the Second War and did much of it by correspondence with the London Bible College. Like many people going into ministry after the war when there was an acute shortage, he was fast-tracked in, and most of his life he felt the lack of a formal academic training. I met him when he was minister at Carluke Baptist, and he was the one who led me to faith in Christ. He guided my first hesitant enquiries about ministry, (less than a year after my conversion), he lent me several of his books (one of them Spurgeon’s "nae messin aboot’" approach to baptism, called Much Water and Believers Only!). He was also one of the first Christians who modelled a love for learning, a passion for books, and the importance of continuing personal development. Remember this was in 1967 he had no degree – no diploma – just a man in love with God, and determined to serve God with the best he could be.

    Two further early memories of Charlie Simpson the lover of God who happened also to be a book-lover, which have influenced me subtly but permanently. The year I was converted (1967 – forty years ago), he persuaded me to go to Filey Christian Holiday Camp. I still remember the embarrassment, the strange world of big gatherings and having to drink bucketsful of Christian devotional cordial concentrate. BUT – I also remember Charlie took me into the humungous Book Tent and I stood there like Moses gazing at the promised land – except in my case I’ve been allowed to go in and possess it. I wandered around, picked up what I think was the first commentary I’d ever handled, and Charlie bought it for me. It was John Stott’s Tyndale Commentary on John’s Epistles, hardback. I still have it. He told me that he always had a commentary on his desk that he was slowly working through, and he encouraged me to read my bible using a well informed guide. And so, from then till now, I have been a commentary reader.

    And then there was the time, near the end of my ministry training, I went into Charlie and Nettie’s house in Knightswood, Glasgow, and Charlie came to gloat over his new purchase. It was the Baker Dictionary of Christian Ethics. It was 500 pages of double column text covering loadsa stuff. I was impressed and, by now as bad (or as good) as he was, decided I needed to get one as soon as I could afford the £6 – which by the way was expensive in 1975. Then Charlie said something which ever since, I’ve refused to forget, and which probably contributes to my ongoing love for learning and desire for God. This wonderfully cheerful, spiritually serious man of curious intellect, hefted the book in both hands and said, ‘I’m going to read this. I’m going to start at A and work my way through to Z’. It turned out that Charlie read reference books. Oh, he knew they were for consulting. That they were the quick route to the essential information. But he also knew, that if you want an overview of a subject, if you want to know where your gaps are, if you want to have a mind stored with the salient issues, the varied perspectives, and the relevant arguments, then there was nothing to beat a systematic browse through a recognised reference book. The New Bible Dictionary, and the New Bible Commentary, and the Baker’s Dictionary of Practical Theology, and the New International Dictionary of the Christian Church were amongst the goodly land he traversed from Ararat to Zion, from Agape to Zeal, from Abelard to Zwingli.

    Charlie Simpson raised my intellectual awareness and nurtured my love for books. But more than that; the gleam in the eye and the heft of a heavy book, and the anticipated hour or two at the desk with a book it would take a long time to finish, but which would feed his faith and increase his mind’s capacity for the truth of God, showed a 17 year old retro ned, that study is a way of loving God. From that first Spurgeon book on baptism, and Stott’s Tyndale Commentary, and Baker’s Dictionary of Christian Ethics, Charlie, that self-taught, well read, disciplined scholar (he would have laughed at the word scholar predicated of himself, but I reckon I’m now qualified enough to recognise one when I see one), who was my pastor and friend, has been a quiet presence in my memory. He is in the front row of that section of the great crowd of witnesses nearest where I am on the track. And if the communion of saints means anything at all, then he is likely to be cheering cheerfully and wanting to know what commentary I’m reading.

    51qz4afx6xl__aa240_ I tell you all this for two reasons. First, people like Charlie Simpson shouldn’t be forgotten. Through an honest ministry conducted with a total absence of self-advertisement, who knows how many souls were touched, lives turned and minds made up for following Jesus? He is a central loved presence in my testimony. Second, in the 40th year since Charlie led and guided me to Jesus, and just under 30 years since he died, I am going to do something in his memory. I’m going to read a reference book, from A to Z, Abelard to Zwingli. The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought is a mega-book – 808 pages, 27.7 x 22.6 x 5.8 cm (that’s big!). Now and again, I’ll use one of the articles to blog – just to map my progress from relative ignorance to the promised land of knowing some stuff! Hope my wanderings won’t take forty years.

  • Evangelicals of substance..Hmmmm?

    Yes I hear all these suggestions in the comments. But as that eloquent Scottish pundit, Kenny Dalglish opined when asked about a certain fitba’ job, ‘Ehhh. Maybes aye…..an’ ehhhh, maybes naw!’ That’s how I feel about some of the suggestions so far!

    First, not sure any of those mentioned compare in stature to others over the past three hundred years- that may be a matter of historical persepctive. Maybe we don’t fully recognise some people’s contribution till the next generation. And Margaret, thanks for the thought, but modesty forbids…Stuart can speak for his self?

    Second, where are the women – is Evangelicalism still so structured as to exclude / prevent / silence, the voice of women in roles of spiritual influence and gifted presence? (Please note I avoid the words leadership and authority!) I find it interesting that there is a stooshie going on at one of the Evangelical Anglican Colleges down south where Elaine Storkey is subject to disciplinary proceedings – the story is murky but has been all over the Christian blogosphere, with suggestions that issues of ministry and gender lurk in the background. Oh dear!

    Third, people like Peterson and Yancey represent a moderate and almost journalistic form of evangelicalism – soft in a way that for example John Piper or Jim Packer are not. The modern publishing machinery and publicity technology market names and personalities in a way that perhaps inflates their value unfairly compared with previous figures whose influence was established more by personal reputation. is that true – fair – relevant?

    Fourth, Jim Wallis and Tom Smail are two very intriguing suggestions – would both want to own the term Evangelical as their primary self-descriptor? The Sojourners, and Wallis as their founder, have made it impossible for Evangelicals to avoid the relation of Gospel to issues of justice, politics and culture. Smail has long been a key theological voice within the Charismatic movement, and with a deepening commitment to Anglican thought.

    Fifth, Donald Bloesch is a self confessed Evangelical who may well be thought of by other evangelicals in the way previous generations both admired and were cautious about R. W. Dale, James Denney and P. T. Forsyth. Indeed one or two criticisms of this book on its first outing asked questions about the inclusion of Dale and Forsyth in a book about Evangelicals! But I DO think Bloesch is an Evangelical of significant stature and well worthy of study – in fact several theses and at least two books are dedicated to his thought. But while we are thinking about evangelicals that other evangelicals might not want to include, there is also Clark Pinnock…. and the late and hugely lamented, Stan Grenz…

    Nobody has yet mentioned Tom Torrance – Hmmmm?

  • Evangelicals of substance?

    I’m currently doing a revision and some rewriting of my book, Evangelical Spirituality: From the Wesleys to John Stott. The past 20 years have seen a huge increase in interest in Spirituality as a subject for scholarly activity and research. When I wrote Evangelical Spirituality in 1991 there was very little published on the Evangelical spiritual tradition. This is now changing, and Evangelicalism itself has become a major area of scholarly activity – the recently published Cambridge Companion to Evangelicalism is evidence that Evangelicals (a much more varied group than often supposed) are a substantial and important tradition.

    Mw114911 So as I’m ploughing through the cosmetic reformatting, converting over 1500 endnotes and in-text references into newly formatted footnotes, and reconstructing and updating the bibliography; then I’ll do the revision and updating of the text. While doing all this, I’m being re-introduced to a community of saints, attractive or annoying, conciliatory or confrontational, melancholic or exultant, but whose love for Jesus transcends differences in temperament, diversity of experience and variety of theological emphases. As noted a couple of days ago when quoting R. W. Dale, (pictured) many earlier Evangelicals lived out their faith at profound levels of thought and spiritual experience. This meant that when I wrote the book I was able to follow through on my chosen approach – which was to take two contemporary significant Evangelical figures, and to compare and contrast their spiritual experiences, the way they lived the doctrines they believed, and how their theological emphases exerted leverage on lifestyle, spiritual discipline, relationships and social action.

    The latest pair I dealt with was Martyn Lloyd Jones and John Stott. So here is the question –

    if I were to write a further chapter, comparing and contrasting two contemporary leading Evangelicals, who should they be?

    Who in their lives, Christian activity, writing, teaching stands anywhere near some of those earlier pairings – the two Wesleys, Whitefield and Edwards, Hannah More and Charles Simeon, D L Moody and Frances Havergal, Lloyd Jones and Stott, to mention only a few. I’d be interested to hear suggestions – is it just me, or am I right that there’s a dearth of people of stature, significant figures who both define Evangelicalism at its best and embody a tradition that is still living, growing and enriching the Body of Christ?

  • No Politics in heaven!

    Mw36422 R. W. Dale is now largely forgotten, except for a few conclaves of those interested in Victorian Non-conformity, and probably some of the better informed local politicians and Congregational Church members in Birmingham. That’s a great pity – Dale was one of the most significant churchmen of the nineteenth century. Here’s just a few of the reasons why he shouldn’t be forgotten:

    1. He was a major mover in the City of Birmingham Council and was a key figure in the upgrading of the drainage and sewage systems as a way of preventing cholera.
    2. He was one of the first Victorian churchmen to recognise and argue for the link between poverty and crime
    3. He promoted the civic Gospel, insisting it was the individual’s duty to pursue the same civic and humane goals expected of good government.
    4. He supported trade unions, schemes for housing improvement, extension of the franchise.
    5. He was one of the finest preachers of his generation – not as impassioned orator, but as persuasive and cogent exponenet of a Christian moral vision rooted in the Gospel of grace and the reality of the Risen Christ.
    6. He wrote one of the most learned (and difficult to read) treatments of the doctrine of the Atonement, upholding the moral seriousness of sin and the righteous love of God.

    One quotation:

    Accused of spending too much time pursuing political goals, and told by some church members to concentrate on spiritual activities because ‘there are no politics in heaven’, his answer was a superb piece of righteous scoffing:

    No politics in heaven! well i suppose not; but there are no agricultural labourers there living on twelve shillings a week…there are no hereditary paupers there…there are no gaols to which little children are sent for an offence committed in ignorance, no unjust wars to be prevented. Politics unchristian!…by going on to Boards of Works and Town Councils and improving the drainage of great towns, and removing the causes of fever, men are but following in Christ’s footsteps. (Laws of Christ for Common Life, page 268)

  • Sparrows of the Spirit? Eh?

    41dn6hdmvyl__aa240__2 Read some more John Wesley last night. His sermons are foundational in shaping classic methodist theology and spirituality. It isn’t that Wesley’s sermons are rhetorically clever, or devotionally inspirational – they are substantial essays, replete with biblical reference, focused on experience which is to be understood by reason as well as appropriated by the heart. He is a formidable theologian of the heart.
    The modern edition of his works, published by Abingdon, running eventually to 34 volumes, is solid, dead scholarly looking, and serious fun for historians. Serious because each volume is equipped with full critical notes relating to the text; fun because some of the information just is, fun. Here’s one snippet I never asked to know, it won’t change my life, but it did make me send an email to Stuart about the creative homiletics on offer in the early Augustan period!
    A certain Mr Tavernour preached in Oxford St Mary’s and this was the opening sentence of his sermon:
    Arriving at the mount of St Mary’s in the stony stage wherein I now stand [ie the high pulpit] I have brought you some fine biskets baked in the oven of charity and carefully conserved for the chickens of the church, the sparrows of the Spirit, and the sweet swallows of salvation.
    Now if that was the opening sentence – the rest of the sermon must have been like serving a sentence. Anyway, when you go to church tomorrow I hope you chickens, sparrows and swallows get some fine biskets baked in the oven of charity.
    If not, come home, go online, and get a Wesleyan wholemeal sandwich with organic filling – try one from this online list. Acts 4.31 is on Scriptural Christianity. But don’t expect to eat without chewing………..

  • John Wesley on domestic (dis)harmony

    Doing a lot of digging around the history of Evangelicalism in preparation for a revised edition of my book on Evangelical Spirituality. Came across a paragraph in one of John Wesley’s sermons that made me blink, think, and again reflect on the rich flawedness, spiritual complexity and surprising commonsense of the founder of Methodism.

    Scan_4 One of my treasured possessions is a Victorian cockle plate with John Wesley’s portrait on it – he looks as if butter wouldn’t dare melt in his mouth! The passage was about domestic violence – in 18th Century, urban and working class culture, this apologist for Christian perfection, this strategic organiser of new forms of community, uncompromisingly tackled the issue of violence against women. No he doesn’t use the obvious answer – it’s just wrong, unacceptable, and he doesn’t use the blunt ‘no man has the right’. But in an age when often such violence wasn’t even a moral issue, he underpins his rejection of domestic violence against women by rooting it in principles derived from a practical and prudent spirituality from which God’s love imperative can’t be diluted by social conventions.

    But you cannot dismiss you wife, unless for the cause of fornication, that is adultery. What can then be done, if she is habituated to any other open sin? I cannot find in the Bible that a husband has authority to strike his wife on any account, even suppose she struck him first, unless his life were in imminent danger. I never have known one instance yet of a wife that was mended thereby. I have heard, indeed, of some such instances; but as I did not see them, I do not believe them. It seems to me, all that can be done in this case is to be done partly by example, partly by argument of persuasion, each applied in such a manner as is dictated by Christian prudence. If evil can ever be overcome, it must be overcome by good. It cannot by overcome by evil: We cannot beat the devil with his own weapons. Therefore, if this evil cannot be overcome by good, we are called to suffer it. We are then called to say, "This is the cross which God hath chosen for me. He surely permits it for wise ends; ‘let him do what seemeth him good.’ Whenever he sees it to be best, he will remove this cup from me." Meanwhile continue in earnest prayer, knowing that with God no word is impossible; and that he will either in due time take the temptation away, or make it a blessing to your soul.

    From Wesley’s Sermon ‘On Family Religion’

    I wonder how many other Eevangelical leaders were as outspoken, defensive and socially specific in the application of Christian ethics. Anyway, for me it was a welcome glimpse of Wesley’s conviction that the whole of life is to be brought under the scrutiny of the ethic of love.